The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I call my old man every day who just turned 97, about 40 years since his date of retirement at 57, to check in, see how he’s doing. When I ask him what he did today, he invariably says Nothin. He reads a little, watches some news, naps, takes his daily mile walk, makes himself meals and watches movies at night. It’s enough for him, no complaints, no depression and no whining. Life is what it is and he’s not a man with regrets and he’s not someone in search of ‘meaning’. Those who say an unexamined life isn’t worth living haven’t met my old man. Those who say that, you ask me, are full of shit. And I’m one of those who does examine life. I just don’t think it raises me to some higher spiritual plane — if anything, it just overly complicates things.

Today he asked me, as always, what I did today. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘pretty busy. Pretty important stuff.’ He perks up, never really remembering I pull this on him half the time. ‘What’s up?’ he asked, ‘you working on that new glass project?’

‘No, no,’ I reply. ‘That’ll wait.’ He’s talking about a mural I’m supposed to be designing for a Washington Art Commission 1% project. ‘No’, I told him, ‘I was building a scarecrow for the garden.’ This flummoxes him, like usual. ‘What for?’ he wants to know. I say ‘I don’t know. Something to do. The garden needed a watchman maybe. Liven the place up if nothing else.’

My father and I share pieces of our world every day — as does my brother who lives near him. We all 3 look at it differently, maybe everyone does. But what we have in common is that this is what it is. If there’s something More, fine, write back when you find it. But this is plenty. Personally I suspect folks would be happier if they made a scarecrow once in awhile and let the philosophers decipher the rest.

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How long, Lord, how long? We’ve been quarantined in this hellhole of the South End now for, who knows anymore, how many weeks, months, possibly years. Same old same old, rinse and repeat. The world has shrunk to an area about the size of a dog’s fire hydrant loop. Trail to the beach, walks back in the woods, the weekly drive to the grocery store with masks on and empty aisles, my path to Tyee Store that’s now closed. Last week I whacked the blackberries back and mowed down a barricade of snowberry bushes, sickled the nettles and salmonberries, all to keep that trail open, you know, just in case the Tyee Megastore ever opens its shuttered doors again. It’s a Sisyphean joke on myself is what I think, but … it adds another mile to the perimeter of my confinement.

Today in a burst of energy, spurred on by a need to Escape, I hacked my way into the back of our property. We only have 7 acres of prime nettle territory, not what you might call an estate, certainly not a vast area of unexplored terrain. And yet … there are places that we rarely traverse, fern shrouded, blackberry brambled wildernesses we just leave for some future shopping mall or an array of condominiums when we depart these mortal coils. Don’t ask me why I decided today was the day to open a path into that heart of darkness. Blame it, I guess, on the Covid. If I can’t go anywhere but here, then by god, what we need is more here.

I started with a sickle, whacking and slashing fern fronds nearly head high, mowing down elderberry and salmonberry and nettles, bucking up old deadfall with a chainsaw, moving logs with a peavey. Inch by inch, foot by foot, yard by yard, my freedom expanded into the jungle. I felt released from my Covid chains, if only by a short trail. I was in unexplored habitat where not even the deer ventured. Lewis and Clark hadn’t passed this way and who knows, maybe not even the natives.

I’m still cutting trails, a couple more already. Eldorado awaits possibly. Or the remains of a deceased civilization. Possibly a blackberry shrouded temple. So far, though, I’ve only stumbled across an old bottle dump, the Barefoot Bandit’s lair and a family of illegal immigrants. I suspect I’ll make important archeological discoveries when I start tunneling. Probably next week. Hopefully I can use the illegals for most of the gruntwork.

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Here’s a bumper sticker to replace the maskless yahoo I ran into at the local grocery store last week’s DON’T TREAD ON ME. How about DON’T BREATHE ON ME. With schools scheduled to return to the classroom in a month and with the country spiking in 40 states after nearly half a year of contagion that for awhile seemed to be settling down, we can’t get a federal commitment to fighting this Covid plague. We can’t even get a straight answer from the Man in the High Tower whether we should wear a mask or not. He certainly won’t. When Congress authorized payments to facilitate more and faster testing for the virus, the White House blocked its implementation. What the President wants is for the states to battle this out on a local level. Local control, better results. Although when it comes to authorizing federal law enforcement on the streets of Portland, inflaming the situation, federal control is better.

If you’re confused about what this Administration’s policy is, join the club. If you think there is a policy, wake up. Even Republican governors, mayors and legislators are alarmed. When the White House team of rivals attacked Dr. Fauci as being wrong most of the time, even the dumb refused to be dumber. Despite the President’s reassurance that this epidemic will just fade away, a beautiful thing to watch, it won’t and everyone outside the Bubble knows it won’t. When he tells Fox News in an interview this weekend that eventually he will be proven right, even his most ardent admirers wiped the smile off their maskless faces. The man may be more of a menace than the disease he refuses to fight.

History will not be kind to this President. And as the election looms, neither will his former friends and allies, his enablers who watched in studied silence as blunders and buffoonery circled like hungry vultures overhead. Why rock the boat when it was sailing high above the waterline with an economy that made millionaires of their fellow stock investors? Sure, the folks in steerage were making minimum wage bailing water, but the unemployment rate was low, surely an optimistic sign.

But now the economy has bottomed, primarily the result of ineptitude on the bridge. The captain is morphing into Queeg, mutinies on all sides, paranoia driving him to listen only to his inner voices and the pipsqueak Kushner. No one can be trusted, maybe not even Jared. Rumors are circulating that the officers are against him. Fox News has turned softball interviews into perplexingly hard questioning. He claims to be one of the highest IQ people on the planet, acing, in fact, his recent medical intelligent test. Chris Wallace, the Fox interviewer told him he too had taken that test. It asked them to identify a picture of an elephant. Wallace didn’t ask the President if he’d gotten that one right, but the rest of us on the S.S. America know, the correct answer is it’s what’s in the room at the White House.

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In the 1300’s when another round of bubonic plague was sweeping the floor of civilization, a marauding army of Tartars set siege to Caffa, a port city on the Black Sea. The citizens there, fearing contamination, refused to surrender to the infected army so the Tartars, mightily piqued at this unseemly lack of camaraderie, catapaulted some of their dead over the battlements of the walled city. Velkommen indeed.

A friend of mine was in one of our local grocery stores recently on the wild and unwalled South End, a provisioning locus for State Park refugees fleeing the plague cities of Seattle and Gomorrah and a quickie mart for us residents who ran out of beer or wine and dreaded the nightmare run five miles north to the IGA. Not a mask on a single employee. When the manager was asked why not, given the Governor’s edict that all retail shops and all citizens should wear one, she was told the staff had medical exemptions. ‘How many employees do you have?’ she asked and was told, with a straight face, 27.

I suppose we should applaud our local retailer for hiring the sick and the infirm. Although I wonder what maladies, besides Covid, they might be harboring at that cash register. This past week’s editorial page in our local fishwrapper featured an angry letter from a local man who claimed it was against God’s will to wear a mask. And furthermore, it was unconstitutional to infringe on his personal, and I suppose, God’s freedom. I can only suppose the Constitution has some bill of rights not to wear masks. Or shoes or shirts. Or pants. We apparently have the right to infect our fellow citizens. God’s will be done.

These are tough times in the Land of the Plague. Partisan politics takes precedence over sound medical advice and in those places where the Lockdown was lifted and the partying commenced, the virus has proven immune to political debate, surprise surprise. Other countries have managed to contain the contagion, but here, we subscribe to the Don’t Tread on Me, I Can Do What I Want philosophy. So much for the idea that we are all in this thing together. Better to let the virus run its course and the survivors can carry on. Another few months of this and I expect to see catapaults launching the dead over the gated communities.

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This is Year One in the Plague Era. If you follow the death reports, the daily Covid cases, all the statistics from all the states, you can monitor the slow and inexorable spread of the virus. If you’re holed up in your Covid cocoon with only the weekly grocery run wearing your mask and your shields, you have plenty of time to read plague predictions, even time to research pandemics throughout history. It’s a frightening read. Millions dead of bubonic, AIDS, smallpox, cholera, flu, you name it, it ravaged the civilized and uncivilized world.

Occasionally I peek at the coronavirus stats for the world, the nation, even the counties of my state, Washington. My county, Island County, for the past month or so had a death toll of 12. A few days ago we were listed as 11 dead. I figured a misprint, checked the following day and the day after, but nope, 11 dead now. This is great news for those who think the plague is a political prank or a liberal hoax. Even better news for those who believe the President when he claims the virus will just fade away. Not only will it fade away, the dead will return to life!!

I love magical thinking as much as the next superstitious anti-vaccine yahoo, believe me. I want to throw my plague mask in the trashcan and go back to partying with my pals down at the local watering hole. If I get sick, so what? Survival of the fittest, right? Except, I don’t want to believe in Darwinism, none of that scientific hocus pocus baloney you get every day in the fear infested media. And if I die of this disease, well, a chance in 12 I’ll return to the living, how’s that for statistical analysis? And don’t get me going on zombies. Nobody is talking zombie here.

All I’m saying is, like the President, let’s be optimistic. This thing is headed in the right direction. Be of good cheer. Stop doomscrolling. Stop worrying. We’re going to be fine and even the dead will be home soon. Count on it. But stop counting.

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