The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Living at the bottom of some right wing wishing well, the patriots, the true patriots, are sounding the bugle for military intervention, this time not for taking over the Capitol Building and restoring Donald J.’s rightful place on the throne, but for standing up to Vlad the Impaler over in Ukraine. They say if only Trump were still Fuhrer, Ras Putin would never have dared invade Ukraine. These are the same folks who declared that Biden was warning about a phony invasion in the first place, but now it’s his fault.

I’m worn down by these people. The same ones who rallied round the flag for the Gulf Wars, calling anyone who disagreed, traitors. Now America is weak, they say, its leaders are impotent and exhausted. What we need, they say, is a guy who, when in office himself, toadied up to Putin every opportunity he got and who now calls him a genius for how he handled the Ukraine invasion. Very smart guy, that Vlad. Well, I can tell you two guys who don’t qualify as smart or geniuses.

There are always people who admire dictators, authoritarians, bullies and overlords. Strongmen, they call them. There will always be folks who like the idea of a boot on someone else’s neck. So long as it’s not theirs. Apparently we have more of these people among us than I ever realized. They might not pick up a gun and march to the Capitol, but they don’t see anything wrong with the crowd that does.

I’m not sure what qualifies as patriotism anymore. Used to be, a loyalty to your country. Obviously the line has shifted. I suspect when the entire world condemns our boy genius, Putin, these folks will be eating crow and denying they ever cheered him on. Hypocrisy, if not patriotism, is certainly a virtue to them.

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Back when I first tried to make a ‘go’ of my stained glass, I paid for a yellow page ad in the local phone book. You know, until there were half a dozen different books. And before the internet made them essentially obsolete … despite the proliferation dropped off on the ground by our mailbox. Invariably I got calls for window repair, safety glass, mirror, about everything glass related EXCEPT stained glass commissions, but … I answered every call and message machine and always they thanked me for getting back to them.

This, I sincerely believe, is our obligation as bizness people. But not, apparently, on the salty South End. Never was, never will be and I should know, having been here 45 years. The new arrivals, folks who maybe need a roof repaired or a toilet fixed, ask me why, when they’ve left a message for Bubba’s Fix-It Shop, Bubba never calls back. And neither does Clyde or Will or any of the other contractors down here or up island. They think maybe they’re being discriminated against by the locals, meaning us old timers. I say, naw, just good ol’ boys who never return calls when the economy is good, only when they’re out of work and the mortgage payment is overdue and the mizzus is threatening to leave them with the kids after the divorce is finalized.

I hired a neighbor to grade and gravel my driveway about a year ago. I’ve called him to see if maybe the gravel is sitting on one of those container ships I see anchored across Saratoga Straits over by Whidbey Island, you know, a supply chain issue. My guy never answers a phone and if you think he’s called me back, I got some prime nettle acreage you might be interested in instead of investing in cryptocurrency. Folks like to believe in the quaint notion of Shopping Local. Me, I gave up on that a long time ago. Nowadays I let my fingers do the walking, maybe not in the phone book, but on the internet. You want to Shop Loco, be my guest, but Bubba’s not calling you back.

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One of the dangers of moonshine wit is that the so-called humor will be misunderstood. When I write about the neighbors, they think I’m actually writing about them. That’s the trouble with shotgun humor, it’s imprecise. I was really aiming at the house next door, not theirs. You know that, I know that, but try to convince them last night’s pellet blast rattling off their trailer’s aluminum siding was inadvertent. Gives them the willies and probably bad dreams too. But a writer has to write and a jokester has to joke, collateral damage be damned!

The Flatheads, our vintage car club in these parts, I have it on reputable reporting from a buddy who is one of the happy wrenchers, apparently feel that the name is derogatory, not funny. Now if you’re not an old car guy, you possibly don’t know that a flathead is an engine block before the modern engines we have today. Before the overhead valve engine, the Wankel rotary engine, before the hybrids, before battery powered Teslas. Flatheads were in vogue from the 1890’s to the 1950’s. They had poor compression ratios, weren’t very efficient, couldn’t really rev up like modern ones. Just so you know….

I’ll quit boring you with the history and mechanics of flatheads. All I want to get across here is that calling the car guyz Flatheads is sort of funny, at least to me. Kind of plays off the real thing and hints at, well, maybe these fellows are … okay, maybe it isn’t funny to them. I get that. Two Toke Tom thinks it’s funny, that’s good enough for me. And he’s an unofficial member of the club with his 1966 Volkswagen bus, the one you see with the peace sign and the faded Grateful Dead logo on the front end. Course, Tom thinks most everything is comical.

The point is, humor is in the eye of the beholder and yeah, sometimes a finger too. Just can’t be helped. And no, I’m not pissed off the boyz won’t give my 2010 truck full membership in their exclusive ranks. Has nothing to do with why I decided to call them Flatheads. Really, it doesn’t.

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A few of us South Enders were over at the Marina’s Pilot House lounge, a hole in the wall tavern claiming “The Best Burgers on the Island.” Maybe when there wasn’t another restaurant…. It was a Monday night Seahawks game and the few sports fanatics who didn’t subscribe to cable and ESPN were hunkered expectantly at our formica tables drinking bottled beer from the cooler next to the cash register and a table selling golf balls and tees.

Must’ve been a total of three tables, the sum total of cable-deprived islanders. Ralph was grumbling that maybe we should’ve driven the extra ten miles to a bar with TV’s bigger than his laptop screen, but the game had started and the rest of us weren’t all that die-hard a fans and weren’t motoring off island in search of some sportsbar with 16 TV’s mounted strategically so every seat was Front Row. We had a front row right here. The beers were cold, the 19th Hole had advertised the ballgame and we’d taken the bait. Even Ralph accepted the finality of the decision and grabbed another bottle from the trap.

What I think we’ve accepted, all of us, is that sports are king in modern America and football is more popular by far than politics or American Idol. Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses, but he never imagined 15 cable channels of every sport from soccer to ping pong, bobsledding to skateboarding, rugby to kickboxing. As more and more of us couch potatoes hunker down over our laptops and bigscreens, eschewing any and all physical involvement with the real world, we seem addicted to almost anything that smacks of competition, whether it’s football or ballroom dancing.

One of our buddies here at the 19th Hole, Harold, never misses American Idol. He secretly thinks he’s a crooner and I have no doubt whatsoever he imagines himself under the klieg lights on the neon-lit stage, belting out Sinatra to 30 million crazed viewers who plan to vote for him. He’s elbow down with his Bud Lite watching the halftime show. Our team is losing by a field goal and maybe Jerry at the far table is warming up his kicking leg in his private fantasy.

We’re all lost in those fantasies these days. Doesn’t really hurt, I guess, but I suspect a lot of what we used to call real life is only glimpsed on the crawlers at the bottom of the screen while we’re all dancing with the stars. Way of the world, nowadays, I suppose, just living vicariously, way more losers than winners in the Big Game of Life. Although …. we all imagine ourselves the winners. Harold is singing some jingle from the last commercial as he heads to the cooler, only slightly off-key. I decide to have one more beer too. Might as well make it a duet.

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If ignorance is bliss, half the country is living in Paradise now. If the level of ignorance proves any indication, Paradise must have tiers of Happiness with the upper level a joyful mix of Qanon believers and anti-science yahoos all blowing bubbles from the soapsuds in their heads. Every day I read a news feed (from the lamestream media) that boggles my already boggled mind. Jewish lasers in outer space starting forest fires, government distribution of crack pipes for addicts in today’s news, and now Marjorie Taylor Greene, House Representative for the great state of Georgia sounding the alarm, warning us of the coming of Gazpacho Police.

Trust me when I say the last thing in the world any of us want in this besieged nation is Gazpacho Police unleased on us citizenry. Hordes of storm troopers checking our pantries for banned Campbell soups, terrorizing housewives and restaurant chefs, followed by … what? Stew Surveillance, Casserole Cops, Chili Patrols, Bouillabasse Swat Teams or the dreaded Chowder Corps? No, the time has come to put our foot down and say No Mas! Get government out of our kitchen! Bad enough government wants to be in our bedrooms, but enough is enough, leave our kitchens alone!

Marjorie T. has sounded the alarm and hopefully her many paranoid followers will take up the call and march, ladles in hand, to the steps of the Capitol for more ‘legitimate political discourse’ even if it means hanging Pelosi and Pence. This Gazpacho onslaught must not stand! All patriotic Americans must defend the galleys of freedom despite the cost, reason be damned! Beat the pots, bang the pans, throw spices to the wind! The time is now, the enemy is at the kitchen door! Be brave, comrades, and sharpen that cutlery!

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