The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

When I first came to the desolate South End, my first priority was finding a job, sad to say. I tried some dead ends, then got a school bus driving gig, but my boss decided I was probably a long-haired dope smoking leftist radical who needed to find other means of employment. The writing, as they say, was on the wall. So … I picked up a part-time furniture stripping job 35 miles north just in case the ax fell.

I’d finish my morning bus driving shift, then head up north for my dose of ketones and other chemicals known to the State of California as Killers. Trouble was, the repair shop didn’t open til 10 so I would drop into the Freedom Café in downtown Mt. Vernon and have coffee and breakfast, fritter some time and maybe do a little writing while I waited. I still had visions then of becoming a poet. Or a novelist. Who knows? I had a notebook, I had a pen, I had time on my hands. You can write the Great American Novel over coffee and eggs and toast if you keep at it. And if the stripping solvent fumes don’t scramble your brains first.

My waitress, after a month or so, asked what was I writing? They evidently don’t get a lot of would-be Kerouacs in for breakfast specials. The sight of rambling Jack scribbling away over his omelette provoked some serious curiosity. When I told her, she seemed mildly impressed. After all, how many literary furniture strippers had she served?

Well, after some light banter over the next few months, she finally asked me out, maybe shoot some pool, drink some beers, see how the wind blew. I said sure, be fun, but when I came up to find her a week or so later to make it official, this date of ours, she’d quit her job and taken another one up at the Farmhouse, the new café on the highway to Whidbey. So I drove up there, figuring what’s another 10 miles more. Of course when I asked at the restaurant they told me it was her day off.

So I drove home and had some time to wonder what it was about her that was so attractive to me. On the long lonesome drive back to my shack, it hit me. She reminded me of Karen, the woman I’d left back in the Midwest, and so, I resolved to call her up after these intervening years, see if she was married with children, and if not, maybe ask if she would forgive this fool, see if she was footloose and fancy free, see if this cruel universe offers a reprieve occasionally, deserved or not. And just so you know, just to offer some small glimpse of optimism in this otherwise bleak old world we live in, sometimes it does….

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My brother and I were comparing notes on our mutual maturity this last visit. I guess we both inherited some genetic predisposition toward hair trigger tempers, something we both thought we had made some progress on holding in check, but of course, we have our stumbles. He was telling me his latest, a sad little story of a woman who didn’t quite make it through an intersection before the light turned red, leaving her blocking the pedestrian crossing.

My little brother was the pedestrian she was blocking. He shook his head sadly before continuing, obviously embarrassed at his behavior at the ripe old age of 64. I cut into his recounting to guess that he had walked across this miscreant’s hood just to teach her a lesson. Which, I told him, I had done once or twice, but you know, when I was less temperate than my mellow self is now. But no, he didn’t stomp across her hood. Instead he walked around behind her car and then, beyond helping himself, he smacked his open hand on her trunk, something I’m sad to say I’ve done plenty of times.

But … this time the lady, startled at the apparent collision from behind, hit her accelerator and plowed into the car in front of her. Day ruined. Car too. My brother said he just put his head down and walked away as fast as possible, feeling like a total you know what. I did know what.

I said my last road rage I had a tailgater crawling up my bumper for a few miles. I tried slowing down but the driver wouldn’t take the hint and inched even closer. This, of course, infuriated me to righteous indignation and finally I’d had more than enough so I hit my brakes without warning, expecting to give my too close friend a little driving lesson that might back him off for the rest of the trip into town. Except instead of braking, the little jerk lurched out into the oncoming lane.

This, like my brother’s anecdote, is an example of Unintended Consequences. People can be hurt or killed, vehicles can be damaged or wrecked. Lessons may or may not be learned. Our combined ages, my brother and I, are 130 years on this little planet. If we both got as old as Methuselah, we probably will still be telling these stupid stories. “So this woman rolls out into the hallway in her wheelchair, see, and blocks my way into the cafeteria and all I meant to do was give her cart a little bump, then next thing you know….”

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