The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Those of you who think the Wild Wild West is gone from the gentrified South End, I’ll tell you a story. I got a call this morning at an uncivilized hour, something that the mizzus really hates, especially when it’s a threatening phone call, another victim of Skeeter’s satire taking serious umbrage. The Barefoot Bandit’s demented mom called one time while I was on a field trip and she didn’t sleep until I got home to take care of my mess, figuring, probably for good cause, someone might want to knock the door down to discuss matters. This call, however, was from a neighbor pissed off I had called him out in the widely circulated Crab Cracker for poaching crab. “You must have a guilty conscience,” I laughed in the pre-dawn hours.

Bingo. Sometimes Skeeter’s right on target. Rare, but it happens. My pal had been poaching crab, the police had been summoned and …. well, no point repeating the tale. I said I had someone else in mind, happened to use your given name, purely coincidental. He was unconvinced until I mentioned I’d written the story six months before his transgression.

“Well, okay,” Poacher Paul sez, still not totally sure I wasn’t conning a con. “But I got a better story for ya….” This, dear reader, is how reporters work. We develop contacts, undisclosed sources, ‘anonymous’ insiders. And then we wait for them to call us, why go hoofing around the nettlebottoms looking for leads? They’re dying to tell their story.

So maybe you remember the heroin addict up the road stealing from my neighbors I wrote about this past month? Or maybe you don’t. We got this yahoo addict living in the ‘hood, sheltered by a buddy’s neighbor. My buddy was robbed three times. He goes to see the neighbor and the neighbor won’t even talk to him. He sees the pilfering addict and the addict runs into the woods when he’s approached. It doesn’t take Perry Mason to figure who’s guilty here. But the cops can’t do anything but take reports and hope for a break in the case.

Down on the South End, we don’t like to wait for the break in the case. We like to be a tad more hands-on. So my neighbor and Poacher Paul and an ex-cop they bring along, go to visit our thief, ‘alleged’ not really applicable at this point. Did I mention it was 3 in the morning? And they brought a shotgun, a semi-automatic assault rifle and — my favorite part! — a video camera to record the whole thing. They commence to banging on the doors and bedroom windows, yelling to come out with hands up, guns drawn … and hear screaming that ‘they’re going to kill us, they’re going to kill us!’ If you’ve lived here as long as me and Dave, the guy now sheltering Needleboy, you would know the sheriffs shot a man to pieces wanted on warrants same time of night a house or two away back in the ‘80’s. Threw in a stun grenade, then shot him up like Bonnie and Clyde. He’d been seen firing his assault rifle on Bernie Road, a peaceful little cut-off to pretty much nowhere back then. We don’t cotton to that down here, I don’t care how much we seem to like firearms and the NRA.

Dave probably figured sleepily what his options were here and came out on his porch in his BVD’s blasting away with a sawed off shotgun. Events involving weapons have a way of getting out of hand…. By now my neighbor is in Dave’s house with his shotgun, waving it around like a can of aerosol air freshener. He wants his stuff back and he wants it right %$!!?**#@ NOW!

Course you know and I know that stuff is long gone, sold for peanuts and used to buy a few more fixes. I’m assuming our vigilantes knew that too, they simply wanted to put an exclamation on their point. Which was …? Well, hard, really, to say. I’m just a reporter, not a psychologist. But I’m guessing they wanted him to move up the line, maybe the North End. If you’re from up there, you might want to think twice before taking in boarders.

So okay, the terrorists are killing cartoonists and satirists. Make sport of them at your own risk, Monsieur! There’s definitely something lacking in a jihadist — a funny bone maybe?

Don’t ask me why, but you take folks real serious about their religion — any religion — and you poke a bit of fun at their beliefs, good chance you’ll need Kevlar clothing. Mix in some politics — and no, let’s not call that a religion yet — and you got all the makings for a full blown riot.

Now you might not believe this, but old Skeeter here pulls his punches. Religious idealogues and right wing Tea Partiers, I try to avoid poking my elbow in their eye socket. Too easy a target, maybe. Or maybe freedom of speech should have some self –imposed limits. Granted, I think those limits shouldn’t be imposed by the government — and definitely not by pissed off terrorists and North Korean chubby dictators. Bad taste is offensive but doesn’t meet the capital punishment test. Not only that, but the counter-reaction is going to be grim, nasty and violently incommensurate with the perceived grievance. You think a Fatwah to kill Salman Rushdie is ill advised, wait til the Europeans’ favorite hairstyle is Skinhead and the new Jew is Moslem. The joking’s going to stop real quick.

So forgive me if I skip the cartoon of you-know-who or the name-that-cannot-be-spoken or the politician-who-needs-horsewhipping-with-his-own-tongue. Short of a funny bone transplant, what’s the point? Their world is set in granite, nothing humorous is going to penetrate their idealistically pure forcefield. I’d poke fun at us satirists, but hey, we’re a little busy right now screaming First Amendment! First Amendment! in our building that’s not quite on fire. There’s no one left here except us trampled few….

I was chatting it up with my neighbor today who bought the old farm next door. He’s been out of work awhile but said he’d been doing a little consulting this past year. Consulting. I like the sound of that. Conjures up visions of bathrobe and slippers, a cup of joe and a home computer screen. “Sounds good!” I offered, semi-envious. “Well, he countered, “I don’t know about that … but it’s good to make some money for a change.” Indeed. And isn’t that the question for all us South Enders: how much money versus how much work? Or, as I opined to my neighbor, “what’s the bottom here? What’s the LEAST amount of money we need to live so we can have the time to do just that?” Live. Sure, it’s probably germane to a more global audience too, but … let’s be honest. This is THE burning question on the sloth-inducing South End. How much is Just Enough? Wen do we draw a line in the beach sand and say, No Mas!

Admittedly it’s a slippery equation, one fraught with peril. Foreclosures, collection agencies, repossessions, divorce, severe depression. But obviously we didn’t move to the end of a skinnyass island off the beaten career path looking for a management position with a high tech startup. Those people RETIRE here. The rest of us, we’re hoping to retire here too — just a lot earlier. Without a pension, without a 401-K plan.

Let’s just say it’s a high wire act without the safety net.   Sure, plenty of us slipped. Hit bottom and couldn’t scrape ourselves off to try again. You don’t get second chances down here. The bank isn’t going to offer grief counseling and Tyee Store isn’t going to extend credit. It’s a hard road when you screw up. Paradise when you balance the risk to the reward. Point is, you want to keep both in equilibrium. You need help, call me, I’m available for consultation.