The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

My neighbor Fred is standing next to his 40 foot expandable travel trailer with his SUV hitched to its bumper as he’s venting his ire at the free transit bus that’s just gone by. “See that?” he asks, waving irately at the emergency lights flashing while the driver picks up another neighbor’s teenage kid, skateboard under one arm. I give him a fish face, not much meaning he can read, because I know where Freddie’s headed. He’ll start with the bus subsidy for all the freeloaders on the South End, then he’ll move on to taxes, most of them wasted, frittered away on government services he sure doesn’t want or need. He voted for our Tea Party commissioner, he’ll tell me again and again, in hopes she’ll ‘starve the beast’, what he calls shrinking government down to something the size he can flush in a toilet.

Freddie worked all his life at Boeing, bastion, he says, of a Free Enterprise system. I used to argue with him about all the military contracts and tax breaks, but Fred worked on 747’s , not cruise missiles. He retired a wealthy man after 30 years, bought a nice home, owns motorcycles and sports cars and travel trailers and about every piston driven device that he can fit in his driveway, the motorcoach shed and a three car garage. He’s got HIS and by god he doesn’t want a red cent going to someone who didn’t work to get THEIRS. Not directly and not indirectly. That free bus bugs him no end and it’s only one item on a very long list of Grievances.

No one says you have to be generous. Or magnanimous. Or take care of the needy or the poor or the infirm. Freddie doesn’t see any, not one, familiar face among the downtrodden and he doesn’t see it as his problem. More than half us South Enders and the island too don’t either. They got theirs and they can’t imagine losing it to bad health or a bad economy or just bad luck. They aren’t their brothers keepers.

“See that kid getting a free ride,” Freddie says sneeringly. “you just taught him he doesn’t need to work.”

“He’s 13 years old, Fred,” I say. “Too young to drive, too young to buy a car. He goes to middle school. You think he should pay tuition?”

Fred pauses a nanosecond. “Might not be a bad idea.” I expect he’ll write a letter tonight to our current commie commissioner.

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