The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I seem to be always warning you good folks out there in your thermostatically controlled world about the perils of plumbing, the horrors of auto repair, the nightmares of everything from carpentry to toaster fixes, fully knowing you probably think I’m a complete anachronistic moron to throw myself at these endeavors when all I have to do is pick up my cellphone and call for help and a repairman would be at our doorstep in half an hour. Of course you don’t live on the South End. Number one, I don’t have a cellphone and #2, no repairman is going to come out that day, not that week and probably not even within the remainder of the year. At least not while the economy is humming and the tradesfolks are back to work after that long recession. Thanks to Trump. Thank him too for getting us out of the Great Depression, all his doing, making us great again. Good job, Brownie.

But I digress. I’m afraid I have to speak to you about something we all, well, most of us, take for granted, something that really hasn’t been around too much longer than our lifetimes, mine anyway, and that rarely gives us much trouble. I’m talking about electricity. Rural electrification in my case. Alternating current, thanks to Tommy Edison, and brought to me by my quasi-socialized utility, the PUD. Unlike most of you, I do not take electricity for granted. Winter storms knock out our power for days on end and while the neighbors power back up with generators that sound like a lawnmower marching squad, we just go without, a small reminder of how the folks a couple generations ago lived. Yeah, like cavemen.

I have a shack —what was my old abode for 17 years, now my glass studio — that started exhibiting strange behavior nearly a year ago. Lights would flicker erratically, grow constant again, then kick out the breaker. I would walk out to the breaker box outdoors, throw the switch, then … nothing. Next day, the power would return. I replaced breakers, I tried troubleshooting, I googled, I prayed, I started replacing every switch, outlet and light in the place. Sometimes, actually many times, I thought I had found the glitch. But inevitably the following day, or the next few hours, same damn thing.

Sure I worried about fires from electrical shorts. I even broke down and called some electricans. One actually called back. He didn’t have a clue any more than I did. He said work my way down the circuit and change everything. Which I’ve been doing. Now … understand … my wiring in that shack is not what you would call exactly code. Not by the book. It is, if I can be honest with you, kind of seat of the pants. Probably dangerous, definitely illegal. And maybe you’re thinking I’m getting what I deserve. But before you judge me harshly, if fairly, let me say in my defense that I was desperately poor when I did most of this. And okay, ignorant too. And yeah, I know, ignorance of the law is no excuse.

But what I’m getting at is the Law of Electrons, at least the little buggers down in my shack, aren’t playing by the rules. So we’re equal, I guess. All my life people have explained to me, patiently, that electricity is like water, it flows where you allow it and stops where you block it. It is, in other words, like plumbing. And if you have been paying attention the past few years, you know I think plumbing is faux science. I think it is more akin to voodoo than it is rational. Now I see that electricity belongs to a creepy underworld unbeholden to logic as well. At least the electricity in my haunted house of a shack. Don’t think, though, that I have admitted defeat. I intend to fight on, outlet by outlet, switch by switch, light by light. And if I have to work by lantern, by god, I’ll work by lantern. No tiny little electrons are going to break my spirit. No sir, tomorrow I’m going back down to that dark place and may the best man win. Or particles….

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