The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

This coming week I’m taking to the highway, heading down to Trump’s favorite state, California, to perform a wedding that his next pick for Supreme Court will probably de-legalize in no time flat. Who knows, maybe this matrimony will be the last legal gay marriage in America. If his lapdog Pence has his way, it probably will be.

But … we Sodomites and Democrats, Liberals and Anarchists need to proceed with some modicum of optimism in these new Dark Ages and so I’m driving for a few days toward San Francisco, an ordained minister carrying the message of truth and even love in the era of bellicosity and lies. Diogenes of the Digital Age. Two days ago I was visiting an old friend who had had a detached retina while in Florida, spent six weeks recuperating and was now back home, apparently healed and 20/20 with corrective lenses. We were both very glad and sat for a time with a beer catching up since our last visit before his eye went haywire.

He asked what I was up to these days and since I don’t have a helluva lot going on, I mentioned how I was circuit riding down to Frisko to marry a couple. He chuckled and asked if I’d been ordained and I said you bet, even got an official certification right off the internet. Dick is ordained too, has been since about 50 years ago, a protestant minister of the old school variety, now retired. When I mentioned this wedding was for two women, he nodded and laughed. “I married two girls this summer myself,” he said. “Met them at a get-together and when they found out I was a minister, they asked if I would consider marrying them? I said I would. And then they asked what I might charge for my services.”

He told them he would do it for gratis, seeing as how they were poor and in love. Dick is a softie, why I love the guy. I bet he was a great pastor. “So when I married them out in their orchard beside their little farm, I said I hate to be rude but I have to leave right away, have to be someplace in an hour, and they handed me a dozen eggs and twenty dollars.”

Ah, I said, the barter system. And Dick said, you bet, the barter system. So like I say, I’m heading down to California. Who knows, maybe I’ll get a dozen eggs and a chicken. Guess I’ll bring a cooler….

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