The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Literacy exists on the South End, despite rumors of its premature demise. Oh sure, the Little Library was sacked and books burned in its first month of opening over at Hutchison Park, but pockets of erudition still flourished. The Salish Sea South End Book Club has been meeting monthly since 2010, its membership mostly stable until the Covid Epidemic forced some to avoid public contamination. Finally the Club went on pre-vaccine hiatus, vowing to return when the plague ran its course.

Naturally the final book selections dealt with … well, you guessed it, disease and epidemics. Sheila Brockhurst wanted to select Andromeda Strain, some nightmare scenario of extraterrestrial origin unleashed from secret labs in the American desert, but she was outvoted for the last selection before the group went into quarantine. Last Town on Earth, the Club pick, scared everyone enough to go into Lockdown themselves, a frightening little novel about the Spanish Flu and a town, supposedly modeled on Darrington, that sequestered itself from outside contamination. A little close to home in more ways than one, Ginny Schwimmer complained over her Chablis and cheese.

Half wine club, half literary review, some of the members were notoriously averse to reading, coming primarily for the camaraderie and vino. Sylvia Nostrum once voiced her opinion that those who didn’t read the week’s selection should just stay home and binge-watch Netflix serials, but the bibliophiles tabled that, worried that too few of them would be left for a meaningful discussion. And anyway, the social aspect of the book group probably outweighed rigid enforcement of reading rules. Besides, the non-readers were entertaining in their own right. And they brought the best hors-douerves.

The Club members took turns meeting at each other’s homes, which, if you’re the spousal unit, literary or not, meant heading for a nearby tavern, a friend’s house or just sequester voluntarily in a back room. The ladies were always inviting us menfolk to join in, always nice to get a gendered opinion on the book of the month, see if the pheromones could get a word in edgewise. I admit, as one of the menfolk, I considered the invitation but in the end decided discretion might be the better part of valor. Or at least an easy way to avoid divorce.

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