The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/AUDIO-UNEMPLOYMENT-FIGURES.mp3[/podcast]AUDIO — UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES

On the capitalist South End we entrepreneurs have been forced by lack of normal fiscal opportunity to adapt to our harsh circumstances.  To an outsider we may appear, oh, somewhat desperate, possibly a little deranged, but once you acclimate a bit to the slower pace of backwash living, you’ll apprehend the frontier wisdom of these moss-backed pioneers.

From free range clam herders to hydroponic nettle farmers, from every kind of artist working in every conceivable medium, we got folks scrounging up a marginal living with their bare hands and their even barer wits.  Two Toke Tom is a fine example.  For decades he’s been farming his pitiful piece of scrub, five acres of logged off old growth nettle forest that he’s been what agriculturists call ‘amending the soil’, meaning, he’s fertilizing with the neighbor’s chicken poop droppings to grow his income of Camano Cannabis.  Course, pot was illegal and Two Toke was, I guess you’d say, a criminal.  Kind of a harsh assessment, you ask me, but then, I got Daddle Distilleries back in the tundra so maybe my assessment is a mite biased….

Now, of course, with Medical Marijuana about to be legalized, old Tom is forced to adapt once more.  Dr. Tom, he calls himself down at the South End Diner.  A local healer.  Practically a shaman.  He’s got a few good years, he figures, to make a fast killing before Phillip Morris and the Big Boys grow bud commercially in climate controlled greenhouses guarded by Blackwater contractor/soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan.  Pretty soon, he says, you’ll buy weed from CostCo in the Liquor Department and he’ll be back to painting watercolors for the tourist trade at Tyee Store.

No one ever said the Good Times would last forever down at our Shangri-La-La, but if anyone is ready for unemployment, it’s a South Ender.

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/audio-breaking-news.mp3[/podcast]audio — breaking news

Down here at the cell tower challenged South End, we get our news the old fashioned way:  via gossip.  You want to know what’s happening in real time, you don’t try to adjust the rabbit ears to bring in Fox News on the new improved digital airwaves that dropped our reception by half, you go down to the Diner for breakfast or stop by Tyee Store for a cuppa or sit a spell at Jolene’s Beauty Salon and Spa.  Their antenna pick up more than snow and weak signals.

Word of mouth always spreads faster than bird flu, especially in confined areas where ricocheting rumors hail in like birdshot off aluminum trailer siding.  We got a little crime wave going on right now, mailboxes getting stripped by some meth heads looking for bank account numbers or credit card info or just some reading material on the cheap to save em from applying for their own library card.  Sammy the Skillet, head cook and chief dishwasher at the Diner, had his box rifled and by noon, half the South End was on full vigilante alert.  The newcomers got tamper-proof boxes that are basically safes on poles cemented into the ground, that, or they got post office boxes in town, but for us old-schoolers, we got slightly  more exposure to identity thieves.

Personally I figure a few of these java sippers hanging over their chipped porcelain mugs most of a promising morning could use a new identity and if having the old one stolen proved a useful catalyst, well, maybe these meth head robbers serve a useful function.  Now that the Barefoot Bandit is cooling his heels in a federal pen and we’ve lost our favorite Jesse James, the Postal Pirates offer up some pretty good opportunity for dryer time observations at Jolene’s, mostly surmises on whose no-account delinquent kid is probably behind the current crime spree.

I suspect if the Postal Pirates go viral the way the Barefoot Burglar did, Jolene will get her own segment on Fox News.  Course, it’ll be old news by the time it airs for the fair and balanced crowd by then.  You want breaking news, you best stay tuned down here.

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/audio-.mp3[/podcast]audio —

You see folks everyday who are more stressed than a government service employee in a GOP administration.  Stress, as we should all know by now, is a Killer, capital ‘K’ and I don’t mean Jerry Lee Lewis.  Traffic tie-ups, hellish commutes, bad bosses, a co-worker who needs meds or a capital K for Killing —- we all know what that does to our blood pressure, our marriage and our equanimity.

On the South End we definitely believe in Equanimity.  Let the rats race, we don’t really have a finish line, so why hurry?  Some of the boyz down at Karls Kustoms Hot Rod, lounging around the lift, were comparing notes on headers and 4 barrel carbs over a few cold ones and inevitably they got around to jobs they hated the most.  It’s an old list, something to talk about when politics goes stale, and better than worrying about whether to take Social Security early or hold on a few more years of odd jobs and piecemeal work.

Karl used to run the service department at the Ford dealership a few years back.  Long commute, pressure job.  Unhappy customers.  Unhappy Karl.  But like the rest of us spinning socket heads and imagining ourselves behind the wheel of the cherry red little Vette Karl was putting the final touches on with an artist’s concentration, he’d tossed in the grease rag one Friday payday, told the boss to shove it and  took the long way home past every tavern and dive from the dealership to the cold dinner, then began living off his wits and his savings, neither a gold mine.

Poverty, of course, can be the cruelest stress of all, wondering week to week if you can tread water a little longer, not really expecting your ship to come in or even sail by, just holding on.  Course, the months pass, then the years and there finally comes a day when every South Ender worth his salt decides to quit worrying.  History is on his side.  Precedent.  Patterns.  And now … probability.  Truth is, we’ve learned the art of Making Do without making much money.  Hard to believe for a lot of folks.  But … belief is what we had to learn.  Things usually work out fine and worrying about em won’t help.  We leave that to the folks up north.

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/audio-around-the-corner.mp3[/podcast]audio — around the corner