The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

On the capitalistic South End there’s no end to entrepreneurial recklessness. Folks move here for what once was cheap digs only to discover this is the Outback for employment where only the strong survive. Or retirees with strong pensions. The rest? They start their own bizness. Or become artists who naturally disdain business — and of course become what we recognize from time immemorial as Starving Artists.

Jimmy’s Fitness Center opened last year next to the O-Zi-Ya Auto Body Shop. Jimmy figured, according to wags down at the Diner, that this would give us South Enders complete Body Works. Like a lot of our start-up enterprises, Jimmy’s Fitness Center was, oh, a tad undercapitalized. The Bank of Stanwoodopolis, burnt too many times by wild-eyed, far-fetched business plans from south of the Mt. View/Dixon Line, looked askance at Jimmy’s loan application before turning him down flat. Jimmy turned to his friends and family for fiduciary assistance, a primitive form of venture capitalism, and decided to go ahead and throw the dice.
He figured if he could last six months, get some monthly memberships going, he’d be okay. Course, he bought some pretty well used equipment from dreamers before him, mostly stationary bikes that pedaled like rusty 3 speeds up a dirt road hill, a couple of stairmasters and for good measure hung a punching bag up, I guess to let customers vent on the speedbag rather than Jimmy. Country music provided the ambiance Jimmy thought we would appreciate … or Brenda did, Jimmy’s shapely receptionist and fitness instructor. Better maybe than religious ministry, but sadly off the mark by a country mile or two when it came to judging our musical inclinations.

A few clientele came the first introductory month, half off. But no one really liked waiting their turn for the one shower and rumors of Brenda and Jimmy’s extended shared water escapades sure didn’t bring new business in and actually provoked an outcry from the Mabana Church of the Ravine. Not to mention Jimmy’s wife Lisa.

None of us were unduly surprised when the Fitness Center quietly closed. Last any of us heard, Jimmy and Brenda were off to Colorado to raise golden retrievers at the J&B Puppy Farm outside Ft. Collins. On the South End, entrepreneurs never die, they just recapitalize.

Ralph’s Old Time Tonsorial Emporium

Every blue moon or so a new entrepreneurial startup appears in the sleepy hollows of the South End. A computer repair shop stuck out a shingle ten years ago, some techie kid who figured the retirees would need his skills first time their desktop Dell froze up — and he was right. Trouble was, there aren’t enough of us old timers. There was that dog groomer place, the Pampered Pooch, who specialized in poodle pompadours but quit shortly after Jenny Winesack’s fox terrier took issue with the jetted bubble bath and bit her on the face, nearly taking out an eye. The neighbors claimed the terrier was vicious even without the water torture treatment and advised her to sue Jenny, but she said no, she guessed she just wasn’t the Dog Whisperer she’d thought she was.

So when I saw the wooden sign down past Tyee Store nearly to the Head where the road hairpins back north toward our place, I shook my head, figuring Ralph’s Old Time Tonsorial Emporium would last a month or two. I also figured I ought to get myself a trim before the place closed its doors forever and so I rode my bike in one sunny day down the long overgrown driveway into the nettle festooned interior, surprised to discover Ralph had added a room off the old Stuart place where he’d installed an old time hydraulic barber chair, a double basin porcelain sink and even a vintage barber pole spinning red white and blue on its axis by the door.

Little Jimmy was in the chair and Fairlane Fred was sitting his turn. “Take a seat, won’t be long, I cut faster’n a logger on meth,” Ralph, I presumed, said in greeting. I took off my hat and joined the crowd. The conversation was lively, political and heated enough for my liking. The cut was fair and the price too. “Come back,” he said, sweeping my locks into a metal dustpan, shaking the apron for Big Walter who’d come in behind me. “I will,” I said, and I have. And damn if Ralph’s Old Time Tonsorial Emporium didn’t make a go of it, despite all odds.