The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The little house to the north of us is going up for sale soon. The last couple of decades, it’s been a rental.  All kinds of folks lease it and since it’s about the cheapest rent on the South End, cheaper even than the rent for a converted chicken coop a mile up the road, we get some interesting neighbors.  Once we had a glassblower, we’ve had veterinarians, school teachers, a gay couple, a Navy guy, the milkman (twice) and plenty of others.  I suppose it keeps life interesting for us … but mostly it’s a steady stream of transient neighbors, some good, some not, some we barely met or saw.

Our shack was originally built by Pearl … and her daughter Ruby built the house now for sale.  Ruby was a burlesque dancer in Seattle and Gomorrah, eventually came back to the South End and taught ballroom dancing in Stanwoodopolis in the early 40’s.  We have a 5 foot high full size Art Deco photo of Ruby we found in the wall of the shack Pearl built that we keep now in our bedroom.  It’s a bit risqué, but hey, history is history.

We were over at the house next door awhile ago today.  They’ve got the old wellhouse torn down and we were staring down the 110 foot well hole, hand dug, 3 feet in diameter.  All of us thought it had collapsed some 30 years ago … but no, it had 6 or 7 feet of water down there, catching debris and unsuspecting mice and wayward children.  I suggested they maybe cap it off a little more securely than the old plywood, the rotted cedar door and the wheelbarrow turned upside down over the hole.  But then, who am I, the building inspector?

We’re considering buying the place.  A lot of money.  But if someone else buys it, they’ll cut the trees and build a McMansion up on the hill for the view.  Might be okay, might be it changes our own view.  Hard to say.  If we buy it, what do we do with the house?  Rent it?  Use it as another studio?  Tear it down?

We’re considering, what you call em, Options.  What’s our privacy worth.  Do I need to mow more lawn.  Do we need more gardens and home improvements?  And … what are we gonna do with that well?  Right now it’s a big hole in the ground.  Could be we end up with a mortgage that’s the same thing….

I got more than a couple of friends who think the economy — the world economy, no less — is on its way down the toilet. Huge debts, large deficits, the Federal Reserve printing money like it was Charmin — they see a Fiscal Armageddon on the horizon. Depression, unemployment, then the collapse of civilization as we know it. They’re wondering if it’s time to buy a gun. Or an arsenal. They’re wondering if they should buy Chinese currency or a year’s supply of food and water. They’re wondering what to do with their money that will keep them afloat when their neighbors drown.

I remember one of my dad’s pals, Malcolm, building a bomb shelter in his basement. Great guy, Malcolm, salt of the earth, a family man, just taking care of his family down in Northern Georgia near the foothills of the Appalachian where we lived. He took me down into his basement — I was all of 12 years old — to show me the shelter that would keep his family alive after the communists attacked us with nuclear weapons, an event he saw as inevitable.

He had water tanks and shelves full of canned goods. He had gas masks and a propane stove. He had flashlights and a ton of batteries. “Electricity’ll be gone. Maybe forever,” he told me. There were bunk beds and a portable toilet. It looked like Motel 6 had mated with a Goodwill. It really didn’t look like a home for months of subterranean living, unless you were gophers.

In the corner by the door Malcolm had his hunting rifle. “For food?” I asked, thinking maybe a dinner of radioactive deer might be the way to go. Malcolm picked up the gun and gave me a ‘serious’ look. “No, Skeeter,” he said solemnly. “Your dad didn’t plan for what’s coming and … well, when you all try to come to our shelter, I’d have to stop you. There’s only room for us.”

Now, I wasn’t the sharpest kid on the block, but I took his meaning pretty quick. “You mean you’d shoot us, Malcolm?” Malcolm set the rifle back in its spot and nodded. “I have to protect my family first. That’s the way it is.”

It’s real hard to like a man who tells you he’d kill you, whether you’re 12 or 64. The world after a nuclear war, and probably an economic Armageddon too, would be filled with Malcolms. They see the bleakest future and the darkest side of human nature, I suspect because they find it in themselves. Me, I’m not interested in either. But I’m always glad to know who to avoid, catastrophe or no.

I got a couple of friends who live back off the blacktop down a dead end dirt road, a place they could be left alone in peace and quiet. They’re pretty typical South Enders, grow their gardens and plant orchards, live in co-existence with nature and the nettles. An angry God didn’t kick everyone out of the Garden … or so it seemed.

No, sometimes He just sent neighbors instead. The new couple didn’t like how dark their new property was once they’d moved in and the winter monsoons pulled the shade. At first they tried a little pruning, mostly on the southern side where my pals lived. Mostly my pals’ trees, not the seasonally affected couple’s. Well, mistakes happen, my friends thought, probably just some small confusion concerning property lines, no big deal.

When pruning didn’t let much extra sunshine into their place, the new folks cut all their trees … and a few of the adjoining neighbors. My friends’ old cedar was felled while they were out working so imagine their surprise finding a favorite cedar laying in their yard. Words were exchanged. The new couple claimed the trees were on their property, they’d even moved the old survey markers to help prove their contention.More words flew, but post-logging, and those trees would only take 100 years to grow back. My pals hired a survey anyway and their neighbors served them with summonses. For trespassing on their newly expropriated property and also for harassing their kids.

Lawyers were hired, money began to leave faster than trees, a judge asked the couple why they’d filed a suit against one of my friends after the other was acquitted for lack of any evidence, and the husband testified, “because he lives there.” Case dismissed, money lost, peace and tranquility too. The husband put his own non-survey stakes in this week and now my friends wonder what’s next???

There are people who will take an inch, then grab for the mile. The law is an expensive remedy for those like my friends without much money. I don’t advocate taking the law into our own hands, usually, but there are folks who could use a little frontier justice, who thought maybe if we were this gentrified they could take all they wanted while Law and Justice took its own sweet time. They don’t know the South End. But they will shortly.

It’s hard, ya know, living in these hyper-polarized times. I feel like Shi-ites are taking on the Republicans and the Sunnis are tackling the Democrats. It all feels like Jihad to me, tribal warfare gone viral. Better to fight to the last TV commercial and leave the country nothing but ash. We denigrate the Taliban, but hellfire, we’re becoming just like them. OUR way or a highway riddled with IED’s.

I believe in arguing my beliefs — I’m just not sure I want to fight for them. Last I heard we were a democracy. I even heard we were a Paragon of that form of government. Down on the South End we’re split about 50/50. Half are card carrying GOP and the other half are cannabis smoking commie leftists. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. That other half isn’t all artists.

But here’s the point. We live down her on this skinny-ass end of the island and life is way easier when we get along rather than take up arms against the folks we disagree with. Hellfire, I disagree with most everybody, even my friends. Doesn’t mean I want to wage war. I got a pen, not a gun … and like they say, at least those of us not in the NRA, it’s mightier than the sword. An AK-47, maybe not.

I say potato, you say tomahto. Let’s make a salad and call a truce. I’ve fought a few battles with the folks across the street. But … we just put in a davit together down at the bulkhead and we use it to launch our boats for crabbing and fishing. I admit, I had to compromise a lot to pay to use their trail, the one I had originally been granted beach rights for when the developer cleared the woods for 23 lots back in 1980. But the value of peace in the neighborhood is far more than my yearly dues.

They’re good folks, really, and I’m probably so-so. Still, I like getting along. I don’t have to agree with them. I don’t have to join their political party. All I have to do is go to the neighborhood picnic they’re kind enough to invite us to. Or they can come to our parties. Whatever we pay in dues is way cheaper than ammunition would cost these days. Plus, it feels like a neighborhood, not a warzone. Something to be said for that…..