The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I was minding my own business in the Pilot House Lounge and Bar — or at least tending to my beer and scribbling away in a notebook I always carry — when a guy I didn’t know parked at the table next to me with a cup of coffee. Army fatigue jacket, butch crewcut, aviator sunglasses hanging from a strap. Probably ex-CIA or retired corrections officer. He had his back to the ballgame on the bigscreen TV over the bar, apparently more interested in my antics. I tried to avoid eye contact, watched a bunt down the first base line, but he didn’t need a cue.

“Whatcha think of that drilling ban in the Arctic?” he finally asked. I looked up from my great American novel, took a slow sip of suds and studied him for motives. He didn’t offer anything obvious. Just a guy in a bar, a student of politics, no doubt.

“Okay with me,” I said non-commitedly. And waited. “You rather have nuclear?” he countered. His coffee sat untouched. I sighed. Here we go …. “Okay with me,” I said again. Cap’n. Klink nodded.

“How about those Muslim terrorists, you okay with that?” I put my pen down. Slid my notebook to the edge of the table. Took a slow sip of beer whose taste seemed metallic now. Why me, Lord, why me? We were alone except for Jerry wiping down the bar that didn’t need wiping. The batter took a called strike. I looked at my inquisitor, some bridge troll out for a holiday.

“We don’t get too many down my way on the South End,” I finally said. “So you aren’t bothered?” he sneered.

“Oh, I’m bothered,” I said, feeling the blood rising. “I’m bothered right now.” He finally sipped his coffee and smiled. Now he was getting there. Strike two to the batter on the TV. I smiled back, hoping to cut off his air supply. It did — he dropped the phony grin. “Whatcha think of us white males turned into second class citizens?” he fairly snarled. I laughed out loud this time. Jerry looked up. Behind him a baseball landed in the outfield stands. I left my beer half finished and stood up to go.

“Try not to be a victim, friend. Especially if you’re white and male. Doesn’t leave much for those terrorists to take from you.” Jerry waved so long and gave me a quizzical arched eyebrow. The pitcher put a baseball in the manager’s hands and headed for the showers. Me too.

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Mama said there’d be days like this. You get up on a sunny hopeful morn, you take your shower, brush your teeth, wash the breakfast dishes, toss in a load of laundry, help yourself to another cup of joe. You’re psyched for another day in the mine, just glad to be alive. You go back in the bathroom, get rid of those first two cups of caffeine … and hear the sink gurgling like a bad gargle. Odd, you think. The kitchen sink chimes in, a drain duet. Then you noticed the toilet water isn’t going down, it’s coming up!

What the …? And then you find the bathtub filling up … with … omigod! With what should never be in your bathtub.

Who ya gonna call? Crapbusters? Being a modern South Ender, I postpone my optimism and pull the shades down on the mocking sun. Ain’t no sunshine when the sewage comes home to roost, trust me. Then I go to my computer and google up Invasion of the Turds, pass up the first ads and go to the How-To and You-Tube and the Suicide Hotline. I pick the How-To. The Hotline will come later, I’m half certain, but it’s a last resort. I have the internet — I have a global support team.

I’m no novice to this plumbing paradox, I pretty much know the bad news that’s coming. I’m just hoping to find a glimmer of hope, some yahoo who sez check the toilet float, jiggle it, you’ll be good to go. My ‘team’ focuses instead on more likely and infinitely worse diagnoses: a plugged sewer line, a ruined drainfield or a full septic tank. Pick yer poison! The tank was pumped recently so I’m down to 2 options. I choose the only one I can fix myself — the line.

That was yesterday. I started at the tank and dug down, found the line a few feet down, then trenched back toward the house. An old growth forsythia thwarted my forward progress. I sawed it off, whacked at its roots, chained it to my truck and jerked it out like a bad wisdom tooth. Sure I felt bad. For me! Its roots were what had clogged my line where the pipes had broken. Iron to clay to PVC. It was like an archeological dig through plumbing eras, Roman to modern.

Today I joined the new pipes, ran some serious water as a test then filled the grave. I tell you, there’s a damn good reason to keep the old outhouse!

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The old adage — when life gives you lemons, make lemonade — is certainly true on the South End despite the fact that citrus is in short supply in our Banana Belt of Global Warming. Won’t be long, but in the meantime we have an overabundance of nettles. Stinging nettles! Stalks that reach 7 feet high by late May. We got a jungle full of the monsters.

So every spring when the fresh stalks reach a foot high or so, we garb up with gloves and go harvesting. We eat the greens the way we’d eat steamed spinach, but what we’re really after is that lemonade. Without the lemons. I’m talking, of course, about our infamous spring tonic: Nettle Beer. Folks accustomed to our exaggerations naturally think we’re pulling their leg yet again. Nothing could be further from the truth this side of political e-mails. We brew the stuff, we age it and oh yeah, we quaff it too. Probably goes a long way toward explaining our artistic propensities down here. Reality, whether it’s brewing or job avoidance, definitely skews away from the top of the bellcurve. It may even be true that the consumption of nettle ales cures a lot of what ails us, but the studies of South End longevity vs the Chablis drinkers of the polar North End , while statistically significant over the short term, are still out on the long term.

Anecdotal evidence certainly bears scrutiny if Old Lady Kirby is any example. She makes a concoction that resembles nettle beer in name only, its primary ingredients having neither malts or hops. She calls it Tonic. I got other descriptors for it, but then I’m a confirmed Believer in the Barley and adjuncts like mango and ginger and lemongrass tea leave me scratching without the nettles. Nevertheless, I will say for a woman of her advanced age, she’s a spry old gal. I’ve seen her and the mizzus two-stepping up a storm a few nights at the Hotel to some band a third their ages. Oh, I know, it could just be the clean living of the South End, but … I suspect those nettle beverages clean out more than the cobwebs.

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Cap’t. Ned was leaned up against the new gold fleck paint job of Willy’s restored 1965 Mustang, I guess to test if it was completely dry. That, or he didn’t know Willy very well, but either case, his life was hanging by a spider thread here in the O-Zi-Ya Body and Paint Shop. A couple of the Flatheads were two cars down, admiring Larry’s 88 Olds he’d brought in this morning for a touch-up where some yahoo had keyed him the Plaza parking lot. The mood was decidedly vengeful.

Cap’t. Ned was saying how he’d make em regret that little piece of vandalism, yessir, and it wouldn’t involve the police, you better believe it! If Ned’s coat zipper catches Willy’s paint, he won’t have to worry about punks keying his ’72 Gremlin, not that a scrape would show on those elegant curves. “Trouble with these kids,” he was saying, “is they got no respect. Not for themselves. Not for anybody.”

Ned’s a Tea Party Patriot, so far to the right Republicans look like frothing radicals. Jimmy, the shop’s owner, looked over. “Hey, Ned, that paint’s barely dry. Be careful, huh?” Jerry chimed in with “Respect the car, respect the owner.” Ned pushed off and hoisted a shoe onto the chrome bumper. “I mean,k do these kids have parents or are they all on drugs?”

“The parents or the kids?” Jerry asked. “Probably both,” Ned answered his own question. “They don’t learn anything in school, I guess, except how to take tests. No wonder they don’t love parents or their country or any damn thing but theirselves.” Willy said, “Hey, Ned, you don’t respect the President. Or Congress. Or the government. Why would they? And take your feet off my bumper, wouldja? I mean, talk about respect….”

“Don’t get him going,” I pleaded, knowing what was coming. “Oh, I know Ned here’s a card carrying Patriot,” Jimmy laughed. “He’s still got his McCain/Palin bumper sticker on that golf cart he calls a car.” “You guys laugh now, but wait, we’ll see how you like a woman for President. You think the black guy was something, get ready.”
Most of the Flatheads are Republicans, but Cap’t. Ned makes a few of them hope — even if they wouldn’t admit it — the ‘woman’ wins next election. Just to enjoy Ned’s harangues for awhile longer. Entertainment at the Body Shop can always use more spice.

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