The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

People always ask me, how is it you can manage to live down at the Millionaire Club of the South End when you don’t really have a job? They think the way the world works is you make an hourly wage or a salary, then you hop right out and buy a new car, a palatial house, a super size TV —- all of it on time, all of it figuring out those payments the mortgage company or the credit card company or the car dealer is gonna fit into your income.

I think the schools in America, at least the ones I went to, wanted to keep us in the dark about interest and principal. The only principal me and my wiseass buddies saw was in his office, reading us our detention notices. I don’t owe anybody anything. Except maybe an apology. I drove a jalopy. I lived in a shack for 17 years. I built my ‘new’ house myself. I’m not saying it’s going to make the Street of Dreams, but it’s paid for and I tell you young’uns, that’s a dream come true for a boy a mortgage would’ve made into an indentured servant.

I had a former friend’s punk teenage boy ask me one time if I was rich. Big smirking grin. Real smug kid. Already a con-artist like his old man. Smarter than you and me by a country mile, he figured. I thought about wiping that smile right off his map. But finally I said, naw, I’m not rich, not the way you mean, not in any way you’d ever understand. But I am free. I don’t owe anybody a red cent. Don’t have debts weighing me down. Don’t have to worry about the mortgage. Course, that’s a rich money won’t touch. That’s a wealth you can’t take to the bank.

I won’t tell you my buddy’s punk son got any lessons here — but at least I figured he wouldn’t come back after dark to see what he could steal. He’d go find a rich guy….

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In Finland this week the fjord-folks are lining up to obtain the tax records of their friends and co-workers. The government makes these documents available to any and all, apparently in an attempt to keep the income disparities we have here in the Yew Ess Aye from growing too large in their wintry environment, I guess by letting everyone know that the guy in the next cubicle makes more than they do for the same or similar work. Might be a good idea. Might shame employers who pay men more than women or whites more than people of color. Probably won’t shame hedge fund managers or CEO’s. Shame is not part of their lexicon.

But then … maybe it just makes us South Enders crazy with envy for those who worked for Boeing or Weyerhauser, Microsoft or Google, made quick fortunes and retired with golden parachutes. I seriously doubt we need financial disclosure statements of those neighbors behind gated fences. What is worrisome, at least for me, is the potential for just saying to hell with the whole system, why work for measley wages when the millionaire across the ravine is traveling full time in Asia, New Zealand, Costa Rica and Paris? A few years back my UPS driver, who had a shack up in the foothills, told me, when I mentioned my brother worked for Big Brown too and made pretty good money, that he only worked for ‘wages’. I asked what he meant, ‘only work for wages’?

“I deliver to all these dot.com retirees who made a fortune,” he said. “I just make wages.” I said I think I’d look at it a little bit different. You got a nice place up in the hills, got a decent job at a decent wage, why not be happy with that? He shook his head sadly and muttered that it was hard when half his deliveries went to folks who retired at 45, got a whopping pension and stock options, and now they sit back with the life of Riley while he has to work his ass off to make ends meet.

I told him again I’d rethink that if I were him. I said I don’t make squat but I don’t have fantasies of being rich either. Poverty won’t buy you happiness, but it won’t deprive you of it either. He didn’t think that was funny or cute and he left shaking his head, no doubt driving off to the next mansion past my shack, maybe stopping at Tyee Store to buy a lottery ticket before delivering a gold plated mailbox to my neighbor.

I don’t care what folks make. I don’t care if my own mailbox is bent and the flag isn’t gold. I do think we have too low a minimum wage and we have too many rich people taking more than their fair share. But this is America. Money talks and the poor can take a backseat or hitchhike. But some of us aren’t poor, not really, and maybe we should enjoy what riches we have. Instead of envying the wealthy.

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