The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I was following a Cadillac SUV with a bumper sticker that read: YOU’RE THE REASON YOU’RE SUFFERING. This is bad news indeed for most of us down here on the South End, but at least now we know who to blame for our misfortunes. Although … I don’t think I care for the Winners in the Game of Life telling us Losers we deserve what we got. Some of us sure do. And I’m one. But I don’t ask for favors … or sympathy … or welfare either. I’m not going to make it to the 1% and I’m not gonna work myself to death trying.

But there are folks like Janet down the road, two kids in preschool and daycare, a husband John back from the Oil Wars with one leg and a head bounced too many times in IED explosions who’s pretty much a permanent casualty. She’s trying to hold a job and hold things together too. She’s 24 going on 60 and I seriously doubt she thinks her suffering is on account of her.

Joe the Plumber — and no, not that Joe the Plumber — has meliosomethingorother, the cancer from breathing asbestos when he unknowingly worked with the stuff in his youth. I doubt he’s going to take kindly to a Cadillac bumper sticker that thinks his Attitude must be to blame for his disease.

The rich think the rest of us are lazy, I guess. The 1% think the losers are takers. The corporate boyz think they made it on their own, no help from the education system, no assistance from the government that built the infrastructure, no subsidies or tax credits or loopholes in the law. They got theirs and if it happens to suck up most of yours, well, tough. You coulda done it too. Course, you might have been born black or Hispanic, you might be autistic or handicapped, you might be a single mom or a laid-off worker, you might get sick, you might be discriminated against, you might have been born on the South End.

We all want to believe we’re the captains of our destiny. But the waters we sail are more treacherous for some. It doesn’t take much compassion to pick up survivors in the water from the lifeboat off your yacht. Course, when the time comes we take the yacht away from you, I hope you’ll understand, it’s going to be your fault.

“A rating of U.S. presidents found Donald Trump was the nation’s worst ever leader while Joe Biden ranks 14th, putting him among the top-third of commanders-in-chief.
The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey asked more than 500 members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association and recently published scholars to rate the 46 presidents in “overall greatness” on a scale of one to 100.
Respondents ranked Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and George Washington, respectively, at the top of the list. Trump finished dead last behind James Buchanan, who preceded Lincoln and governed in the lead-up to the Civil War.”

Here it is, the holiday celebrating Lincoln and Washington’s birthdays, so why not have the experts rate the Commander in Chiefs top to bottom. Top was Lincoln and Washington, kind of makes sense since these are the two Presidents we honor with a holiday. Plus, they’re on Mt. Rushmore. Probably harder to decide who was the worst. Or maybe not. The day before the rankings came out, the guy who raced to the bottom was pitching 400 dollar Trump Sneakers. I know, the Man has to make money to pay back the nearly half a billion in fines he’s accrued so far for tax fraud and for defamation of the woman he raped. Kind of surprised he didn’t roll out a line of women’s underwear, the E. Jean panties with the small handprint in the crotch. Maybe later….

The MAGA folks will back this pitchman for another 4 year term. And half a chance they’ll put him back in office, give him an opportunity to raise his ratings above Hoover and Buchanan’s down there in the cellar. At least there’s no way he can drop any lower. Unless he makes good on that underwear line….

Alaska Bob and I were swapping stories last night, one I told about the bartender in Jeno’s (now Jimmy’s) in Stanwoodopolis calling the cops when she thought we were laughing a little loudly, something hard to do in the best of times in that town, which reminded him of a visit to Pekin, Illinois back about 1980. “I was having a beer in the Holiday Inn lounge,” he reminisced. “Only three guys at a table across the room and me at the bar. They were all agitated about the name of their mascot being changed, getting a little heated.”

Pekin apparently was named for their sister city, supposedly a direct line through the center of the earth to Peking, something another Illinois town believed had similar to its namesake Canton. Probably they had different surveyors but for the point of this story, let’s not worry about the veracity of lines through the earth’s core. The point is that Pekin had adopted for its mascot names, the Chinks. And even as early as 1980, some liberal snowflake pre-Woke yahoos had taken offense at using a racist slur for their teams’ names. The Chinks. Who’d have thought anyone would mind? Down the road the roller skating emporium was called, amusingly enough, the Chink Rink. All in good sport, eh?

The boys across the lounge wanted to know what Bob thought of this ‘mess’, changing the hallowed name of their beloved mascots. And Bob avowed as how it didn’t bother him, might even be a sensible move, times even then being what they were. This, needless to say, provoked the Chink lovers and a brief but long distance argument across the empty lounge ensued, neither backing down until finally the leader of the group who mentioned he was the mayor of Pekin, said he was going to call the police if Bob didn’t shut the hell up. Bob could see the handwriting on the wall, mandarin maybe but translatable, diplomatically stated that he would finish his beer and be on his way, nice talking with y’all.

In 1981 Pekin High School changed its name to the Pekin Dragons. Who knows if the Chink Rink bowed to the liberal crybabies? Not if the mayor had anything to do with it! As for Canton, until 1932 they were the Plowboys then the Little Giants named after an International Harvester tractor. And Peking, China? Your guess is probably better than mine but I’m hoping it was the Rednecks.

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.