The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Hits: 17

Hits: 13

New Year is coming right up, plenty of time to make those resolutions for 2025. Being a South Ender, it’s difficult to conjure up anything much that needs improvement, but then again, nobody’s perfect, I guess, so I’ve been wracking my brain for some small trait that might need bettering. So far I’m kind of stumped.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I think I’m Buddha or anything, not as if all my waking thoughts are pure as the driven snow, not like I couldn’t find a flaw or two in my persona, but jeez, you start messing with a good thing, hellfire, you might just be asking for trouble, create some distortion in the cosmos, open yourself up to worry and woe. Sure don’t want to start the New Year off on the wrong foot, stumble into 2023 when a waltz might have been more apropos.

Oh, sure, I suppose I could be more generous maybe with those donations to the Food Bank or the Senior Center. And I could probably dial up my Humility a notch, but I’m not really after Sainthood, not that I was actually in the running. At least I don’t think so …. And besides, it’s hard, really hard, to be humble as a long term South Ender. We Old Timers just try not to be Braggers, about as close to humility as we can get.

So maybe, once again, I’ll leave the Resolutions to all the rest of you. And please, whatever you do, don’t resolve to move down here on the South End thinking that migration or refugee status would suffice. It’s not that simple and honestly, some of my fellow Enders, just between you and me, could use some serious improvement. Maybe that’s my Resolution: to help these folks. To be a Light and a Way! To show them the Path!!

Then again, that attitude just puts a dent in my Humility Index. Naw, folks got to make their own Resolutions. Sorry, you’re on your own. Same as last year. Good luck to ya! You’ll be fine. Probably.

Hits: 14

Hits: 10

For the past 25 years or so the mizzus and me throw a big New Year’s Party here on the South End, partly so we don’t get to know the sheriff’s deputies any better than we do now, which is what we tell the neighbors, but the real reason is a bit more shrouded in the mists of lost memories. I got a call today from Brent, an old friend now in Alaska, and it triggered a couple of neurons into firing spasmodically once more and voila, I was back in, oh, 1985 down at the shack with just a few of us struggling mightily to make it to midnight so we could toast the new year and pass out in our bunks.

My brother was here with his wife Judy and we had Brent and Liz visiting from Portland. My brother is what you’d call a spark plug for party stuff. Meaning, when conversations lag, he springs into instant action. ‘Let’s go around the room,’ he says, ‘and tell what the best day of the year was for each of us.’ So Brent goes first and he relates a warm summer day when he and his collie were at the park and the sun was shining and the Frisbees were sailing and it was just a golden day, a boy and his pooch, fetching the Frisbee. Not maybe what my brother had in mind, I bet, but just a hippie dippy zen day that stood out for Brent more than some birthday or Christmas or the day he got a raise or the usual dopey stuff we trot out when you play Name Your Best Day.

I don’t remember what my favorite day was. I don’t remember Karen’s or my brother’s or my brother’s wife’s favorite day. But I remember Liz’s turn, Brent’s girlfriend who I’d know a long time. A real long time. A way too long a time. And as the clock ticked glacially toward 1986, gears needing oil, glasses waiting for that toast and then goodnight everybody, my brother sez, ‘Okay, Liz, what was your favorite day?’ And to this day I can remember Liz turning to Brent who was rubbing his collie’s head, probably still warm in his remembrance of a summer day in the park, and the clock’s hands stopping forever, the wood stove throwing a heat nothing like what she was focusing on poor Brent with a laser look that would burn through titanium like it was cheap plastic, and our glasses with champagne broke in the sudden stillness before she said, ‘My favorite day …. (and the ‘my’ was a small caliber bullet) My favorite day was the day we got back together, Brent.’

Maybe you’ve had a New Year’s ‘Party’ like that. The room emptying of air and sound and mirth, as if a stopper had been pulled from the tub of our happiness and no matter how hard you try, and Brent desperately tried, that stopper won’t go back in and all the merriment drains out by your feet and deep down in your cold curling guts you know, you know absolutely this is not the way you wanted to ring in the next year. You know what they mean by ill-omened now and all the months to come you will dread the next New Years’ Eve the way you would dread death itself. And of course Liz and Brent broke up and Brent moved to the furthest corner of the earth and my brother admitted maybe that wasn’t the best holiday icebreaker of all time and we decided either to forsake New Year’s altogether or bring so many people in we couldn’t possibly go around the room and play parlor games like Stab Your Lover.
And that is how the South End got its gala New Year’s Extravaganza Potluck and BYOB Party. And of course, you’re invited! Unless you got some serious issues with your girlfriend or boyfriend, lover or husband, wife or mistress. Then I think you got a new parlor game for you and a few select friends. Happy New Year anyway.

Hits: 12

Little Walter, Big Walter’s oldest boy, was sucking on a Marlboro, one boot up on the chrome bumper of Harry’s newly restored ’64 Nova, waving his can of Pabst in the ketone-laced atmosphere of the Tyee Paint and Body Shop. He was addressing the assembled masses on this particular Friday afternoon, the boyz’ favorite day. Not because it signified the end of a work week; after all, most of us layabouts are unemployed, self-employed or just employment challenged. Naw, we just like to remember when Friday was PayDay and Friday night was a night of freedom. Now everyday is a day of freedom and it seems like a subtle form of slavery.

“This country,” Little Walt was saying, “went down the crapper when we started giving people all this free stuff. Socialism, that’s what it’s called, and it killed folks’ incentive to work.” Little Walter has been unemployed for most of his adult life. He’s currently laid off from the hardwood mill over in Arlington and for the past year he’s been living off the unemployment comp he gets plus some loans from his old man. Big Walter isn’t happy about this, but he places the blame squarely on the ‘ruined’ economy. He let the boy live in the spare bedroom of his double-wide and now he has to feed the kid too and fight over what programs they watch on his 50 inch flat screen entertainment center. They both have beefs.

“You talking about that tax break we gave Boeing?” Terry asked. Terry is the kind of guy who, if he knows someone is a hypochondriac, asks them how their health is, what we on the South End call a Pot Stirrer. He doesn’t really take a side, he just wants to light a fire.

“Hell no, I’m not talking about a tax break!! I’m talking about giving these people who don’t work for a living everything they need to keep on not working for a living, that’s what I’m talking about.” He crushed his Pabst can in his right hand and beer foamed out the top and onto Harry’s new paint job. Harry said Hey Man and Walter grabbed his dirty handkerchief and Quickly wiped off the suds.

Terry said, “You must be talking about those people on unemployment compensation then. Folks sitting around drinking and not looking for honest work. You mean people like that?”

Well, you can maybe guess where that conversation went. It’s just another day loitering on the South End, debating the issues of our time, nothing much better to do than drink beer and chit chat with the neighbors. Somewhere else they got wars and refugees, they got terrorists and beheadings. People starve, people are killed, people live hand to mouth. I don’t know much, but I know this. Things here aren’t too bad, they aren’t really bad at all. You ask me, and I know you’d hate to, it seems like complaining is damn close to a sin.

Hits: 14

Hits: 13

Donate Now!

I know, I know, you just finished giving to our local charities, probably gave til it hurt. So to mention in these inflationary times that perhaps you should consider giving more might seem a quixotic ask. But! The big boyz, the billionaire class, the captains of industry and the tech moguls, they’re all trooping down to Mar-a-Lago to offer fiscal help to their fellow billionaire toward his coronation ceremony in January, surely not to toadie up to m’lord, but merely to offer some small monetary assistance, no doubt without the slightest smidgeon of expecting any quid pro quo from his administration. This is just good citizens engaged in high social purpose, nothing more.

It isn’t too late for the rest of us. Even if you’ve bought the sneakers or the perfume or the Fight Fight Fight t-shirts or the commemorative coins or the ballpoint pen set or the action Trump figure bobble head or the NFT trading cards or the Trump Bible or the autographed guitar or the presidential cigars or the embossed wine glasses or the MAGA gear or all of the above, you can still help. Not to curry favor, but to support the country. After all, if the rich can find it in their hard hearts to help, surely you can too.

Inaugurations cost money, friend. So do lawsuits and felony cases. We’re talking teams of folks, accountants, attorneys, pardoned criminals, hair stylists, the list is as long as the Trump merchandise and certainly as expensive. Why not dig deep in your pocket and find it in yourself to help? What you hold back from the Food Bank or the Free Health Clinic, trust me, trust him!, it will give returns far exceeding your paltry gift. That trickle down economics will be a hundred year flood. The rich aren’t going to be the only ones to get a little richer. Open your hearts and definitely open your wallets. America is on course to be great again, bet yer bottom dollar. And, if you’ve recently been convicted of a crime, this might be your get out of jail free card. Or even an appointment as an ambassador or head of a federal department. Generosity doesn’t need to be selfless….

Hits: 17

Maybe you used to write Christmas Cards , the one time of year you actually put pen to paper and wrote a note to old friends, family members, school chums, co-workers and anyone else you hated to lose touch with, good opportunity to keep a thin thread of connection. Happy Holidays! Some of you typed up a chronicle of what you and the spouse and kids did over the past 12 months, a huge yawn to most of those not in the immediate family circle, but it saved you all those handwritten notes even if it bored the pajamas off the rest of us.

One year I sent a mock chronicle of the Daddle Family’s year long escapades, a summary of drug rehab, chronic depression, school dropouts, cult joining, a litany of the exact opposite of the usual success stories of the kids and their beaming parents. A few of the recipients who actually read this were confused and later remarked they never realized we had children. We don’t. So much for satire in the era of text messaging.

Or you could do like a lot of my lame relatives, use one of those family group photos, pay Shutterfly to make a few cards, then send it with no note whatsoever, maybe not even sign the damn thing and call it good for another holiday season. Bah humbug, I say. What a waste of a stamp. What a statement to the recipient. We’re too busy to scribble a single thought on this hectic holiday but we managed to address the envelope. Thanks, y’all, thanks not at all. Thought that counts, right?

Now, of course, we get e-mail Holiday Greetings, some with music and individualized identifiers of us as the recipients. Merry Christmas, Skeeter, followed by some corporation’s cute and humorous video, no doubt a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards, updated for the 21st Century and the social media crowd.

I just finished sending 3 dozen handmade Christmas cards, all with a long personal letter to folks who will probably not send anything this year and if they do, count on it, just a store-bought card with their signature under the Happy Holiday text inside. My shirt sleeve relatives will send the family photo card and no message, probably not even a signature. They figure I can identify them in the picture, I guess. Every year I say I’m not going to do this again. And so, I’m saying it again. Oh, if you’re reading this, have a great holiday. Sorry I didn’t include a family photo but Susie’s still in rehab and Wyatt’s commune doesn’t allow picture taking. Maybe next year….

Hits: 27

Hits: 12