The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The ‘Make My Day Guns & Ammo” shop does a brisk business these days on the heavily defended South End. Earl and his brother Biker Billy watched their revenues double in the 2008 election, then double again in 2012, most buyers convinced the government was going to confiscate all the firearms in America. Earl and Billy could keep up with their gun inventory, but ammo was rationed and frightened homeowners were put on a waiting list. Ralph Hansen wanted to know if he’d need to ask his ‘intruders’ if they’d mind waiting before they broke into his house, raped his wife and daughters, then killed him. In the end, Earl sold him a Browning over and under and a box of 12 gauge slugs he said would stop a rabid rhinoceros. Billy shook his head when Ralph walked out with the shotgun in its tooled leather case proud as Hemingway. “How many shotguns does he have?” he asked his brother. And Earl smiled as he put Ralph’s check under the cash drawer in the register. “Probably one shy of enough.”

Down my well armed end of the Alamo I hear plenty of gunfire. The mizzus took years to get used to the sudden bark of semi-automatic practice sessions of the local militia excercising not only their right to bear arms, but their obligation to shoot them as often as possible. She’d ask, alarmed, what is THAT?? Gunfire, I’d say nonchalantly, and she’d grow more alarmed, her fears realized and then want to call the police. It’s America, I’d explain patiently, figuring that was explanation plenty, all Clint Eastwood would bother with, why waste words OR ammo?

A few years back we had a bad hombre stroll down Bernie Road when it was a one lane dirt cutoff to Tyee Store, occasionally letting loose with an automatic assault rifle beside the cow pastures up there, alarming more than just the mizzus. Turns out he was wanted on felony warrants and the local gendarme treated him like Machine Gun Kelly on meth, waited until he’d gone to bed at his moll’s place off Dallman, then dropped a stun blast through the window and shot him to pieces reaching for either his trousers or his gun. The sheriffs around these parts don’t much cotton to automatic weapons being practiced on the roadways. Especially by hardass criminals.

I won’t say the mizzus has gotten used to country livin’, but she doesn’t race to the phone to call 911 every artillery session or the opening of hunting season. I guess she just figures it’s slightly better than moving to Beirut or Baghdad or the wrong side of Everett. At least the casualties are somewhat less. Even if supposedly we’re not at war.

The topic up for the debating societies down at the Diner this week was Obamacare, what nobody calls by its official name, the Affordable Health Care Act. The House of Representatives wants to delay or modify or hopefully kill the bill so two days ago the government shut down over the impasse and in two weeks we may default on our debt obligations. For about half the patrons, this was worth cheering. “Last chance to stop this before we become a socialist state,” Harold cried, raising his coffee mug in salute, we thought, but actually signaling Anita for his 3rd refill, no doubt on his way to politico-caffeine overdose.

Down the counter, hunkered over his biscuits and gravy, Ozone Davy took up the gauntlet. “The train’s left the station, Harold. Yesterday I signed up for a new health plan. You boys are a little behind the curve….!” Anita put her head down and worked the room, figuring here we go. Sure enough a voice from the back booth she recognized as Walter, usually only spokesman for NRA issues, jumped into the fray. “They shut the damn government down and I say that’s a good start — KEEP it shut down, I say.” Anita thought if only Walter would keep his big mouth shut, now THAT would be a good start.

“Easy for you two,” Davy replied, pointing a biscuit speared on a fork at Harold that dripped grease and bitterness. “You old farts got MediCare, what do you have to worry about? Me, I got a wife, kids, and I couldn’t afford insurance being out of work. But I can now. How about that?”

“Maybe you should’ve kept a job, Dave,” Harold said cruelly, grinning over his chicken fried steak covered in milk gravy. “I worked for mine and I sure didn’t expect Obama to pay my way.”

“He’s probably paying for breakfast with food stamps,” Walter hollered from across the room. “Free food, unemployment compensation, now free health care. Paid for by all the rest of us.!”

Anita groaned audibly when a table near the door erupted in applause. Tips always went south after these debates. Nobody won, not outright, but once again she’d be the loser. “More coffee, honey,” Harold summoned. “I’m paying hard earned cash.” She knew Harold was collecting disability, but she also knew to keep her lip buttoned. Maybe, she thought, she’d look at this health care stuff when she got off shift tonight. No point giving up all her tips.

Darlene’s Antique and Collectibles was once an honest to Abe vintage emporium. One hundred year old oak chests of drawers, apple cider presses newly oiled but still glowing with the patina of fruit juices, rusting resort signs, ornate brass beds lascivious with untold stories, dollhouses from the Victorians, real stuff, not facsimile. Old wood stoves she bought from South Enders converting to heat pumps, wringer washers still able to churn a family’s laundry, coil top refrigerators cooled by sulpher dioxide rather than Freon. The one I bought from Darlene punctured a line a year later and the SO2 in combination with moisture, what we chemists call H20, formed sulfuric acid, what I called when I dragged it outside hissing like Assad’s assassins: Chemical Death. Foliage turned brown Right NOW in an invisible line snaking into the woods.

Darlene was a huge woman. Sitting at her table by the front door where her brass cash register sat like a South Sea icon ready for sacrificial offerings, she was half Cajun voo-doo queen, half posterchild for diabetes and definitely mostly intimidating, especially after you got to know her. She had a network of pickers who scoured the thrift stores and junk shops and garage sales throughout the state. And she had a steady supply of sellers, mostly neighbors broke and desperate, willing to part with the mizzus’ prized china or her mother’s silver, rarely some good tool of their own. She could burn a Tennessee horse trader, sell you a knockoff you’d never learn wasn’t really old, spin you a yarn that was finer than spider thread. You had to be on your toes with Darlene. She had the scruples of a southern politician and the aim for the jugular of a gypsy car salesman.

When E-Bay drove her prices down and she wearied of watching the city slickers – what she called ‘cidiots’ – checking prices on their I-pads and tablets, she began to carry ‘gifts’ too, junky look-alikes of vintage signs, antiques knickknacks and craft items –what she called ‘crap’ items – but her sales plummeted despite watering the trade down and she closed up finally.

Rumor has it she moved down to Sedona or maybe Taos and opened up a high end art gallery for tourists. One of my neighbors told me she’d bought a Georgia O’Keefe signed print from a woman with 6 chins wearing a Navajo blanket shawl and enough silver earrings and turquoise bracelets to start a jewelry store. I’m guessing Darlene is still nicking us South Enders, just a longer drive for us to get fleeced.

I notice lately I’m growing old. Middle age has been a prolonged era for this goofy geezer. I shouldn’t be surprised. Adolescence lasted 2 or 3 decades and Adulthood sometimes still seems as elusive as a job. I never wanted to grow up, much less grow old.

But … I bet even Peter Pan is whiling away his days in an assisted living home with a drool bucket and a big screen TV, wondering when Tinker Bell is coming back to change his adult diaper. Probably got a hearing aid with dead batteries. You better believe when the crocodile with the ticking clock in its stomach comes around, old Pete won’t hear it til he and the clock are part of a belly full. Too late then….

They say Old Age is a state of mind, and to a degree, it is. Nevertheless, whether I keep seeing the world like a kid with zits, my eyes are developing cataracts and I wear bifocals. My knees ache, my rotator cuff is a mess, my teeth are crummy and …. Well, I don’t want to make this a saga. Let’s just say there’s a reason why we die.

I know people who want to live forever. Holy rabbits, I assume they’re figuring on a Whole Body Transplant. No way do I want to live 500 more years in this package, attached to it as I am, and as far as transferring my brain into a fresh vehicle, well, I’m not sure the old engine on my shoulders won’t need a rebuild too. I’m sure I’m not going easy into that Good Night, but hey, there’s only so much room on the planet and I’ve used up more than my fair share in this one lifetime. I say let the kids have their turn. If they get to live 250 years, I’m not gonna feel like I got the short end of a stick.

But I want to warn you, if you’re going to live like Methuselah, pace yourselves! My generation likes to lie and say we never thought we’d make it past 30. You’ll be saying, gee, I never dreamed I’d get past 300. All I can say is I hope science can regrow brain cells. But good luck to ya!

There comes a time in every man’s life, even a South Ender’s, when a living has to be earned, not made.  Filthy lucre, root of all evil, the spoils of Mammon, etc etc.  But you can only barter your unsalable art for so long, you can only eat the scrawny leftover beans in the garden until not even the snails and the slugs have much to pick over, you can only scavenge the mussels and the free range clams so long before they’re on the local endangered species list … but the time will come when a homesteader worth his salt has to throw down the hoe and accept defeat at self sufficiency.

That time, I’m not happy to report, has come knocking.  The fat sassy days of an indolent summer are gone and now the rains are here driven by the storms that drive them.  The time has come to pursue the greenback of dollar, not moss.  So … for a few days old Skeeter has to put his tail firmly between his legs and mosey up to moose country where, rumor has it, there may be a job waiting if everything works out right.  Last time, things didn’t work out right, but … ever the infernal optimist, I’m going back.  Wish me luck, take a few days to go cold turkey on this blog site, expect some chilly arctic stories when I get back.  Maybe we all need a break ….