The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

When this primary season started, I prayed to my gods for one miserable thing: give us someone young. Mayor Pete, well, I liked Mayor Pete but when I said young, I meant someone out of diapers. Experience does count, although judging from the current regime, not always…. One by one the kids fell by the wayside, victims not so much of gaffes and wrong-headed convictions, but a general anxiety pervading the land that this wasn’t the year for experimenting. Gays, women, candidates of color — sorry, no need to apply. We wanted something safe, a known entity, no surprises, nothing but white bread men would do. Old white bread evidently.
I tell you what. I’m about to turn 70, but if I was 50 years younger, I’d be sick and tired of the line of bullshit I get from these old shits. I’d be sucking tear gas again like we did in the 60’s. I’d be out in the streets screaming bloody murder about this Trump turd and his shit-eating little family of privileged hangers-on. I’d be outraged over income inequity, racism, welfare for the rich and I’d be hollering to get rid of these old farts who have no clue what the future is bringing.

But the truth is, I’m an old white guy myself. The world has accelerated past my wheelchair and hurtled out of my bi-focal line of vision. When the Grammy’s announced their winners, I hardly recognized a name, much less the music they sang. When the Super Bowl half time comes on, I think I’m watching soft core porn shows, not listening to great musicians. C’mon, I’m part of the problem now, not any sort of solution.

White guys, old ones, voted in Trump. Not gonna vote some woman, definitely not some woman named Hillary. Nope, rather have a dope. Drain the swamp, shake the tree, tell it like it is. Like it is is stupid. Ignorant. Anti-science. Conspiracy theories. Mumbo jumbo jingoism. Racist and ugly. That’s what the old white guyz voted for. Bring back coal, bring back the textile factories, bring back the 1950’s. Close the borders, exile the immigrants, build a Wall. Dumb and dumber, that’s what us old white guyz were selling. That and fear.

Well, now we got the Pandemic. We got fear, all right, plenty to go around. And we got the Doc-in-Chief, a know nothing idiot who worries more about his poll ratings than a death toll, more about the Dow Jones than the coronavirus. This is what you get with old white guy morons. Talk is cheap, but the toll will be heavy.

So yeah, we’ll run Uncle Joe. Nice old Uncle Joe, steady, calm, predictable. I’ll vote for him, sure. But this is the 21st Century and maybe, just maybe, we could use someone who looks to the future, not a grandpa from the last century.

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The good reverend of the Little Church of the Ravine is standing up for his belief that his flock should be allowed to congregate for Easter services under Freedom of Religion. Pastor Paul told the assembled fellowship this past Sunday that he felt Rome should keep its nose out of God’s business and God will keep his nose out of theirs. “If prayer in this time of Pandemic isn’t essential,” the minister declared, slapping his well-worn leather-bound King James, “then I surely do not know what is. If the Bud Hut can remain open to sell Satan’s marijuana merchandise, how is it that this church of God is considered dangerous?” A hundred amens rang out in the old steepled church.

Well, I don’t have a great answer to the Bud Hut burning question of the day, but … most of us South Enders are quarantined up, avoiding friends and family, shopping once a week with masks and gloves. It’s not like the virus is epidemic down here. Yet. But why take chances? Even the South End String Band quit practicing together, not because we were worried about achieving early perfection, but after that choir up in Mt. Vernon gathered together to sing joyful noises and ended up with 3 dead, 4 in intensive care and two dozen infected, we thought practicing at home by ourselves might make more sense. Thankfully none of us have suggested Zoom for cyber practicing. A little hiatus will be just fine.

Easter is this weekend and even though the President once told the True Believers the pandemic would be over by then and businesses would open, it doesn’t look at this point that this will come to pass. Except for the Little Church of the Ravine, looks like. I guess these folks and Pastor Paul aren’t watching secular news from the temporal world. That, or they assume the Good Lord will be watching out for them. I kinda worry She may not be watching out for the rest of us, maybe bring plague to our neighborhood through the Typhoid Marys of their little church. Plus it sets a bad example for the sports zealots who want nothing more than to get back to basketball tournaments and baseball openers. You want True Believers, check out the Pilot Lounge down at the South End Marina on any given weekend before the Pandemic shut it down. They’d be willing to risk a virus or two and maybe the bubonic plague to congregate once again in front of that 52 inch big screen TV over the bar. Half of the boyz think the alcohol in their glass is better preventative than hand sanitizers. They figure Pastor Paul is passing out sacramental wine he buys from the liquor store. Another essential business, they notice. Churches and bars, open up them pearly gates!

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We are Americans, rugged individuals, don’t tread on us!! We built the Empire State Building and the trans-continental railroad. We drive Range Rovers to our office job. Nobody can tell us what to do, we’re too rugged, too individual. Sometimes we wear socks that don’t match, usually by accident, but we won’t apologize for the fashion gaffe! No, we’re tough, we’re independent, we’re Americans.

We ride Harleys and we wear black leather jackets. Even the motorcycle gangs all wear black leather jackets, not to look the same, but to look different than You, because they’re the Wild Ones, the Different, the Dangerous, not anything like You. We wear sports jerseys, sports ballcaps, sports sweatshirts and jackets, not the same ones but ones with the number of our favorite player on our team, not your team, not your favorite player.

We live life on the Edge. We let the Costco toilet paper run down to only a few rolls before we buy another 40 roll replacement, that’s the kind of rugged individuals we are. We all buy sports utility vehicles because you never know when we’ll swerve off the highway and take the road into the wilderness. Or we might not, you just never know. We drink Bud Lite. I think that speaks for itself, don’t you?

We bought a house with a different color door than the other houses in the neighborhood. We had an affair with the neighbor too, just so you understand we’re not tied to conventions. We’re our own person, not some cookie cutter version of a TV sitcom. We don’t care how many Likes we get on Facebook even though we check the count. Some days we don’t even color coordinate our wardrobe! We use underarm deodorant to spare you our rugged odor. We have a stylist cut our hair once a month and sometimes we even change the style. That, my friend, is our wild hair! Feeling our oats. Not playing it safe. Because, yah, you guessed it, because we’re rugged individuals!!

Some nights we even watch foreign movies with subtitles on Netflix! Not kidding, we do! Crazy stuff like that, like going to Burger King instead of McDonalds or ordering something other than the burgers. Chance Takers, that’s who we are, the progeny of the pioneers who tamed this country. Any given day we might quit our stupid job and hit the road, never look back. Tell the boss to shove it. Take the risk. Because we’re Risk Takers, we’re tough as a Chevy truck. We vape tobacco and maybe we even still smoke cigarettes, because nobody is going to tell us what to do. We’re the Marlboro Man, Stetson on straight, burning our way across the landscape, solitary riders on the American plains, we’re independent, we’re free, we’re the new cowboys, same as the old cowboys.

Giddy up and Go, that’s our motto. Not that we have to giddy up and go anywhere, you understand. If we want to stay home, by god, we will. If we want to babysit the grandkids, that’s what we’ll do. If we want to read crap on the internet half the livelong day, you got it, we will. Nobody tells us what’s what. We’re Americans, dammit, we’re rugged individuals so don’t tread on us.

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Maybe some of you are of an age where you get senior discounts at various retail stores and, a reward for surviving the travails of living. With the coronavirus plague shuttering those places and menacing us in even the most trivial of errands out there in zombieland, the local grocery stores here have embarked on offering us geezers an early jump on shopping, figuring we probably get up early since we don’t sleep well anymore, and more importantly, we need to keep our distance from shoppers carrying the seeds of our early death. I, for one, appreciate the thought.

Actually, no I don’t. But … in one instance I acted on this offer. Costco. For weeks I have been hearing about traffic backups, long lines to enter, enforced separations, limited shopper numbers, more long lines, enough rumor to convince me to avoid the enchanted warehouse. Forget buying bulk, I growled, I’ll pay more for less at the local markets. But after a month I realized I needed half a dozen items that would make it worth my while to return to the consumer cathedral and so when I heard they had Geezer Hours early in the morning three days a week, I set an alarm and drove up to the nearest Costco from me, about 40 miles or so.

I got there an hour after they opened but even so the store was wonderfully vacant. I cruised a couple of aisles with the other geriatrics, snatched my required items, queued up with only one cart in front of me and sailed out in the unheard of time of 7 minutes, no doubt a national Costco speed shopping record. Not that I got any medals, but… I had reward enough.

These are strange times in Plague Town. Driving through Stanwoodopolis, like most towns around here, the scene is post-apocalyptic, a dystopian glimpse of a future we thought only existed in sci-fi. Gas stations are open with unheard of llow prices we haven’t seen since the golden years of the 60’s, but they’re basically empty since no one is driving much of anywhere with no stores, no malls, no shopping other than groceries and cannabis, the essentials. Pretty soon they’ll pay you to store their excess gas in your tank. And as incentive, offer you a free roll of toilet paper now that toilet paper is more precious than gas or gold.

Personally I’m waiting to fill up … til they offer geezer incentives. Adult diapers, not toilet paper.

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