The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Down at the Cupcake Hut, the South End’s only bakery, the talk over the Hobart bread mixer consists mostly of yeasty gossip and glutinous outrage over fears of being asked to bake a gay wedding cake. Rita Mae, the current owner and born-again Christian, was slapping dough down on the kneading table the way a sado-masochist masseuse would pound a hated client.

“No way,” she was fuming for any and all of us pastry lovers standing in front of the display case filled with bismarks and jelly rolls, danishes and apple fritters, muffins and doughnuts, worrying we’d never get our orders until Rita Mae was finished slapping that loaf silly. “I won’t do it. My beliefs come before the law and my law is Higher than theirs and that’s the real truth,” she grunted with a ferocious fist to the lump on the table.

But she wiped the flour off her hands on her apron and slid behind the pastry case to take our orders. Ronnie took a few doughnuts for his landscaping crew and I ordered a fritter and a cup of coffee. To go. I sure didn’t want to sit at one of the little round formica tables while Rita Mae was in one of her Full Rants.

“What’s next?” she shouted and at first I thought she meant what else did I want. “That’ll about do it, Rita,” I shrugged, wishing I was already out that front door.

“Boy oh boy, that’s the truth,” she retorted, ringing up my coffee and fritter. “Next thing’ll be wedding cakes for polygamists. Who knows where this is going? Sodom and Gomorrah right here and I’m supposed to cater the orgies??”

I could feel my sweet tooth going rotten, decaying faster than civilization. “I don’t know, Rita, maybe it’s not really that big an issue. I mean, you don’t get all that much call for wedding cakes, do you? Much less same sex ones.”

Rita Mae shot me the evil eye and I shut up. Ronnie, always the provocateur, turned at the doorway, his bag of pastries held high. “Love thy neighbor, Rita Mae!” Rita Mae grabbed a day old muffin from the tray beside the register and just missed Ronnie as he slammed the door on his way out. The muffin exploded against the back of the sign that said WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE. That was probably going to be my last fritter, I decided. I can read the writing on the wall about as well as Rita Mae can read her Good Book. “You have a nice day,” she frowned as she gave me change and somehow I knew I wouldn’t.

Freddie was holding the podium at the Diner yesterday, practically setting up the proverbial soapbox, you’d think he was running for Congress, nothing new there, not for us citizens of the sectarian South End. New England has its town meetings — we have breakfasts at the Diner. Sheila, the current owner, tolerates it for awhile, but if newcomers are in attendance, she limits floor time for speeches. To NO time…. Business, after all, is business, and Freddie can give his stump speeches down at the Pilot House Lounge where alcohol fuels the debates and the debates fuel alcohol consumption. Sheila’s selling coffee and omeletes without the salsa of politics.

“What ABOUT it, Sheila?” Fred hollers across the formica tabletops, the tables about half full this late in the morning. The Hispanics have come and gone — they have work to do and Fred’s filling his retirement years with coffee refills apparently. “You gonna feel okay serving gays? You got that sign that says you have the right to refuse service to anyone, how about the government telling you you got to serve criminals and perverts and terrorists? How about no shoes, no shirt, no morals, hey?”

Al, over on Table 4, spoons his 4th pack of sugar into his coffee and asks, “What’s next, Fred? No blacks? You gonna brink back a Colored water fountain again for gays? “

“It’s about freedom, Al. Religious freedom. The Bible says men on men, well, that’s why we got a Hell, know what I mean?” Al knows very well what he means and decides the debate isn’t worth ruining breakfast, which Anita serves up right then. He throws a hand up in dismissal and digs into his biscuits and gravy.

“Whadday think, Sheila?” Fred persists. “You okay with the government forcing patrons down your throat?”

“Freddie,” Sheila says, laughing, “you are SO 1950’s. Ike is dead. The Cold War is over. Women can vote. And maybe you never noticed, but plenty of gays eat here. You just never can tell, can you?”

Fred took a slow look around the Diner. When his gaze settled on me, I nodded and blew him a kiss. I figure Fred needs all the love he can get ….