The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The South End Slammers are the local Roller Derby queens, mean mamas on ball bearings, elbows sharp as their tongues. Jammin Janice, by day a demure office secretary down at Windy Rear Realty’s south office, captain’s the squad with an attitude like an unfed piranha. The Slammers are a no-holds barred bunch of bruisers with a volcano of pent-up aggression they unleash on their opponents as they hurtle around the maple track that’s canted for increased speeds on an oval circuit. Cheryl is a teller at the local branch of Coastal Bank 5 days a week, but weekends she’s the spearhead for the Slammmer’s feared Flying Wedge, a vicious phalanx of boiling estrogen mowing down any and all opposing skaters too slow or witless to get out of the way. Elbows hammer chests, bodies slam bodies, skates are used the way a mallet is used to tenderize meat.

Paula is the point getter, small and wiry and able to stoop low and slide under or around the opponents’ blockade. She’s their best Jammer, lapping with graceful strides on her custom made skates like a dancer on bearings. Paula waitresses at the Diner part-time and if some of the patrons mistake her quiet demeanor for mousey modesty, she has a tongue fast as her trademark passing maneuvers. You want a refill on that coffee, mister, you learn to say please. And you better try a thank you when you get it.

The Slammers are ranked #1 this season. For good reason. I ran into Betty, the team’s burly Blocker, the other night. Not many Jammers get by Betty. And if they do, they’ll pay for it next time around. She was at the Pilot House Lounge ordering her 3rd whiskey on the rocks. “Nice shiner,” I remarked, sliding onto the adjoining stool. Her eye was swollen half shut and she had a bandage over her right eyebrow. The whiskey was probably half painkiller. Betty laughed. “You should’ve seen the other skater when I got back up and caught her on the next rotation. She’ll think twice next time she elbows this mother.”

“Betty,” I said, “that’s true of ALL of us.” The Slammers, like I might’ve mentioned, aren’t to be trifled with on the rink or off the rink.

Freddie was holding the podium at the Diner yesterday, practically setting up the proverbial soapbox, you’d think he was running for Congress, nothing new there, not for us citizens of the sectarian South End. New England has its town meetings — we have breakfasts at the Diner. Sheila, the current owner, tolerates it for awhile, but if newcomers are in attendance, she limits floor time for speeches. To NO time…. Business, after all, is business, and Freddie can give his stump speeches down at the Pilot House Lounge where alcohol fuels the debates and the debates fuel alcohol consumption. Sheila’s selling coffee and omeletes without the salsa of politics.

“What ABOUT it, Sheila?” Fred hollers across the formica tabletops, the tables about half full this late in the morning. The Hispanics have come and gone — they have work to do and Fred’s filling his retirement years with coffee refills apparently. “You gonna feel okay serving gays? You got that sign that says you have the right to refuse service to anyone, how about the government telling you you got to serve criminals and perverts and terrorists? How about no shoes, no shirt, no morals, hey?”

Al, over on Table 4, spoons his 4th pack of sugar into his coffee and asks, “What’s next, Fred? No blacks? You gonna brink back a Colored water fountain again for gays? “

“It’s about freedom, Al. Religious freedom. The Bible says men on men, well, that’s why we got a Hell, know what I mean?” Al knows very well what he means and decides the debate isn’t worth ruining breakfast, which Anita serves up right then. He throws a hand up in dismissal and digs into his biscuits and gravy.

“Whadday think, Sheila?” Fred persists. “You okay with the government forcing patrons down your throat?”

“Freddie,” Sheila says, laughing, “you are SO 1950’s. Ike is dead. The Cold War is over. Women can vote. And maybe you never noticed, but plenty of gays eat here. You just never can tell, can you?”

Fred took a slow look around the Diner. When his gaze settled on me, I nodded and blew him a kiss. I figure Fred needs all the love he can get ….

Judge Jack was kicking himself. Down at the South End Senior Center a sculpture they’d thought had been donated 12 years ago was now in Limbo. The donator’s brother had seen it there, seen it for the first time, and since they had owned it when they ran their restaurant into a backwash bankruptcy, he now wanted it back. The Center had grown fond of the carved basswood dolphin over the years and they were more than reluctant to give it back. Statue of limitations, apparently….

What to do, what to do??? Turn it over to an arbitrator, of course, some poor sap who would willingly step into the vise. Who you gonna call? Judge Jack. And Jack had said naively, sure, he’d mediate. Now he regretted it. No King Solomon decision here, he soon learned to his dismay. Someone was going to be sorely disappointed and he would take the fall, maybe lose a friend. “Let em flip a coin,” Two Toke Tom advised. “The Gods of Fate, my friend. Better than the judicial system, you ask me.” Two Toke, naturally, thought a septic system was superior to the judicial, having been harassed for most of his so-called adult life over recreational preferences and underground agriculture. Two Toke was legendary for a life of minor cannabis crime and he was a man who held a grudge.

Judge Jack sipped his latte thoughtfully. Tom was usually in geosynchronous orbit a bit too far out to take seriously, but he had a point. Flipping a coin might be the way to go. Nobody right, nobody wrong, no judge hung on his own petard. Just bad luck calling that head over tails. Way of the world. Keep the dolphin, lose the dolphin. Jeez, who cares when the Middle East is collapsing into sectarian war? Just art, after all and Judge Jack knew better than most that art in corporate America was worth about what bitcoins were on the South End. And sinking fast.

Flip a coin and walk away. “How you gonna rule, Judge?” Tom smirked over his coffee. Jack shook his head sadly, shoved his mug into the center of the table. “Refill?” Brenda asked, holding the coffee pot, working the tables. Jack said mournfully, “Hell if I know, Brenda. Come back in five minutes. I got to give it more thought.”

Tom fairly howled. He slapped the table. “Hit me again, Brenda.”

The South End String Band didn’t start out planning to be a band — they were mostly a back porch drinking society with music as a viable excuse to offer their wives for staying out til after midnight. What most of them didn’t know was how grateful the mizzus was to have a peaceful evening to herself. Well, at least until Shelly joined the band.

For years the boys hauled out their guitars and banjos, pulled their fiddles off the wall and strung up all those mandolin strings, met up down at the South End Grange Hall where Tommy the fiddler was Master. In the beginning they were all much more proficient on the jug than on their own instruments, but as often happens with practice, they got better. And as they got more proficient, they drank a little less and began to talk playing in public. When the South End Historical Society asked them to perform for their annual salmon bake fundraiser, they jumped on the opportunity. “Can’t pay you anything,” Edith Wonkszeski told the boys, “but we’ll feed you. And the beers are on us.” That sounded more than fair, Tommy told her and warned her to stock up on those beers, you might lose money on this band.

And so the newly named South End String Band went public. If they liked drinking and strumming, they loved live performances for an appreciative audience twice as much as both put together. Trouble was, they soon found out, none of the boys could sing outside a shower worth a hoot or a holler. Billy on the banjo tried, but he sort of talked his way through, not really sang. And then Shelly came up to them after a gig at the Mabana Sunset Villa Nursing Home and said, “You ought to give me a listen.”
Which they did. She came to the next practice wearing a low cut cowgirl dress and even if she’d sung out of tune, the boys knew she’d be their new vocalist. It didn’t hurt either she could outdrink every manjack of them.

The South End String Band still performs, but after a couple of divorces, the personnel have shifted frequently. Shelly fronts the band now and she’s pretty much the last remaining original member. You can always find a banjo picker in the backwash here, but not another Shelly. The Band practices at her cabin these days and when the night winds down past midnight, Shelly shows the boys the door and always says, “Jug’s empty, boys, time to face the music.” It would be funnier if it wasn’t so godawful true.