The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I got a buddy who’s been predicting a worldwide economic Armageddon for about a decade now. He prays for it since he’s pulled out of the stock market after the 2008 debacle. What he thinks, what he hopes for, is that a good dose of economic hardship will drag Trump out of office, a result he dearly desires. He’s sitting pretty, pension, big Social Security checks, wife who worked too, plenty of money in the bank. If the little people have to suffer inordinately along with the rich boyz, okay by him. Small price to pay for ridding the country and the world of Donald J. Trump.

This morning the stock market went into such a head-spinning free fall that they closed trading down for a bit, see if that would cool some fevered brains selling like the world was coming to an end. Or coronavirus was about to go Pandemic. Oil prices dropped by a third on news of the virus and also because the Saudis and Putin decided to play chicken with the reserves, see who could outlast the other. As I write this, the Dow Jones is down about 2000 points and still sinking. Oil is closing in on 30 bucks a barrel. Another day of this and gas stations will give free fill-ups if you purchase a drinking glass.

I’m no economist, as you may have surmised over the years, but I know this. No one wants to see another Great Depression, except maybe my buddy. He asked me once what I was doing to protect myself in case his prophesy proved true. He was squirreling silver into deposit boxes, investing in gold, probably burying money out in the backyard. How about you, Skeeter? What’s your fallback?

My fallback? I don’t really think like that. I’m the grasshopper who fiddled away his summers while the ants labored. C’est la vie, I guess is my answer. But, I told my buddy I’d just buy a gun and come and take what he had. You know, if the neighbors hadn’t already cleaned him out by then. Don’t wish for a Depression, we’re all in this jungle together.

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It is encouraging to know that this coronavirus thingy is being ably handled by our President whose motto must be The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Facts Themselves. The spin doctor is In. I suspect when he claims to be fantastically knowledgeable about all things medical, evidently because his gene pool has an MIT expert somewhere in the family tree, we can all relax, we’re in capable hands. In fact, if we’re symptomatic of Covid-19, go ahead and go to work. Do us good and probably generate optimism among our co-workers.

Apparently the folks out here on the Left Coast, ground zero for this mutating virus, aren’t reassured one bit. Josephine Nursing Home in Stanwoodopolis just went into quarantine mode. The Community Center just canceled the South End String Band’s scheduled St. Patrick’s Day dance and concert. Along with most every other public event this coming month. I tried to explain the band was infectious, not contagious, but panic had already spread from the nursing homes to the senior centers, schools to fire stations. Naturally we agreed it was probably in the public health interest, then immediately booked a gig at the Stanwoodopolis Hotel for St. Pat’s Saturday March 14th, figuring, I guess, green beer would inoculate any and all from the scourges of this fast spreading epidemic.

Me, I’m recovering from my yearly bout of Camano Crud, the symptoms of which seem astoundingly similar to Covid-19, but of course there are no tests available right now which is reassuring to the Doctor-in-Chief who wants those numbers to stay low. Even now a cruise ship is drifting like a plague ship off San Francisco, but offshore, those contaminated aren’t going to be counted in the national numbers. If I don’t miss my guess, the stricken in Washington will soon be quarantined in dinghys and rowboats off the western coast to reduce the headcount of victims. Let’s not even imagine what will become of the fatalities, but tomorrow’s death count should be substantially less. Today’s count? A hoax to embarrass the President.

They say St. Patrick chased the snakes from Ireland. Kind of like St. Skeeter’s Day, memorializing ridding the South End of crocodiles. We may, before long, have to celebrate St. Donald’s Day, to commemorate chasing the plague from our shores. Stay calm, go to work, come down to the Hotel Saturday night, nothing to fear here.

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I guess you know you’ve reached the Left Coast when your motel room offers a Gideon Bible and the Teachings of Buddha. Us weary travelers, still on the road, might just be in desperate need of Guidance after a dozen wrong turns on the Google Map. Who knows how many converts have left these over-priced motels and returned Saved ….

Personally I’m in near Satori just to reach the rock strewn shores of the Pacific in one piece. One of our old friends back on the highway in Sedona, Arizona suggested I read the works of Tibetan monks so I scrolled the Teachings a bit. But as I told a carload of proselytizers who had driven up on Guitar Bob and me, chainsaws in our hands atop a slick log pile ten feet high that suddenly let go under us, you have to seek converts among the lost and forlorn, not those who miraculously just survived near death and came up grinning.

The Universe is an incomprehensible place, I reckoned when I was about 16. A friend of mine — let’s call him the Zig Zag Man — once told me ‘for those who require no explanations, there are no mysteries.’ Sage words, I thought then and still do. I stopped looking for God a long time ago. She wants to get hold of me, call me up, I’m in the phone book.

Otherwise life itself is plenty. I can’t spend my time trying to figure out what essentially is indecipherable. Better, I think, to live it, not try to explain it.

The roadmap to the Universe isn’t something you can publish. Maybe those who seek a Guru find some solace there, fine by me, but Universal Truth? I don’t think so. Better to read poetry, make music, enjoy friends, help others, be kind. The world may actually be what you believe. But only for you.

We’re headed to Big Sur today, a long and winding road. If we discover Nirvana on the way, I’ll get back to you … but don’t hold your breath.

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