The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Jihad Jack was parked in his usual spot at the beer-stained bar in the Pilot House, the South End Marina’s answer to marriage counseling. Any divorce attorney worth his margarita salt would drink nightly down there and write off his bar tab as a legitimate business expense. Jack was twirling his plastic trident in a concoction he’d gotten Brad, the usual bartender during Happy Hour, to ‘create’ for him, something with multiple boozes, eye of newt and a dash of habanero sauce. Jihad called it his Fox News Cocktail since he always watched it on the big screen directly in front of his customary stool.

“There it is,” he hollered so every manjack of us would halt our own conversation for his. “Cornavirus” he cried. “First E-bola and now it’s Covid! You tellin me it’s a coincidence?”

As usual us assembled drinkers began to choose sides, sort of touch football without a football, just fire a pass out over the seating area and see who wouold risk catching the hot potato. “What’s your point, Jack?” Jesse asked, as if he didn’t guess. “You think the government brought this here?”

“Damn right they brought it here,” Jack replied, “just like AIDS.”

Pete set his beer aside and asked, grinning, “What would be their strategy, Jack?”

“They want to inoculate us, can’t you see?? They want to make you bring your kids in and shoot them full of vaccines and autism. Who knows what’s in those shots?”

Dave, two stools downriver, who’s a Physician’s Assistant at the South End Clinic, took his glasses off to study this guy Jack. “You kidding me?” he finally asked. “We got measles cured. We vaccinated kids and it worked. That’s all you have to do. Vaccinate the population. It’s like polio. There’s a cure!”

Jihad Jack smirked. “Yeah, and you want to fluoridate the water too, I bet! The government’s got no right — NONE! — to tell me what to do.” Dave shook his head. “It’s like living in the Dark Ages, that attitude,” he muttered and returned to his beer.

“At least they didn’t have to study propaganda as history, Doc.” Dave half finished his glass and headed for the door. The Pilot House, most nights, is pretty rudderless. Trouble is, it’s the only watering hole for a long ways.

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