The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

So I’m in the Dairyland State here in Wisconsin showing the liquor store clerk my driver’s license and he notices I’m from Washington. He notices this every time I come back here so I know he’s going to mention he was out my way a few years back. Which he most certainly does. But instead of waxing nostalgic over his memories of the San Juans like usual, he segues surprisingly into a reverie of wanting to return to the mountains.

Okay, I say, we got those. “I want to look for Sasquatch,” he announces. “You ever seen Sasquatch?” he wants to know, a look on his face that tells me he’s dead serious. We’ll be on alien abductions before I can get my change and I’m seriously considering bolting for the door.

“No,” I answer, “haven’t seen him.”

Plenty of others have though,” he says, “and I wouldn’t mind seeing him myself. Might even have to drive down to Oregon.”

“Yeah,” I say agreeably, “Oregon seems to have lots more Bigfeet than we do.” My boy doesn’t seem like the outdoors type, more a full time mouse jockey, but the quest for Bigfoot has apparently gotten a grip on him, probably alien voices controlling his dreams, maybe just the thrill of the hunt, who the hell knows and what fool would ask, not me for sure. We live in a world coming unmoored from facts or logic, untethered from gravity or reality, a world populated by people who obviously rarely visit my own.

Sure, I want to respect their visions, their different perspectives, their unique world views. I don’t subscribe to the idea that normality is real, or quantifiable, or even desirable. I am, after all, a child of the ‘60’s. But … I don’t want to live in the psycho ward either. This past week folks were traveling to Area 51, UFO-ville, alien sightings, crashed flying saucers, green people autopsied in government morgues. Me, I just go to my liquor store in Wisconsin. You think about it, there’s no escape.

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