The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The South End Diner, usually a cauldron of corny jokes and bad but upbeat behavior, fell eerily quiet the other morning in the wake of the growing coronavirus tsunami. Big Walter stirred his cream into his coffee for what seemed like half an hour without saying more than four words, which were ‘I Can’t Believe It’. The back table where the Flatheads held court was devoid of the usual vintage car talk, as if the mere mention of carburetors, hemis, dual mufflers or V-8 engines had been banned by edict from the Governor along with school attendance in the area and any event with more than a few hundred potential Typhoid Marys.

The Diner patrons, mostly those at high risk for the viral onslaught sweeping the world like a new Spanish flu, still gathered in their morning groups although a few were muttering that it would probably be best if they avoided the café in the near future, ‘at least til this thing settles down’. When Ralph sipped his coffee, sucked a little down the wrong chute and fell into a coughing fit, the entire place held its collective breath thinking they’d all been exposed to Covid-19. To a slow and miserable death itself. Little Jimmy left half his breakfast, lunged for the counter where he paid his bill and fled. A few others quietly laid aside their forks and coffee cups and followed Jimmy out the door to their antique vehicles and a nervous ride home.

This is the Year of the Plague apparently. The watchword is ‘social distancing’. Meaning, to the boyz of the Diner, imprisonment with the mizzus. Most of the sports they usually hungered for were delayed or canceled. Football, baseball, hockey, basketball, ping pong — all a thing of the past, victims of coronavirus. The boyz were still in shock. What would they do evenings? Weekends? Trapped in their cage with nothing worth watching on their cable television? All that money spent on ESPN and now nothing to see. Was life worth living, really, without March Madness to occupy their time? Judging by the cavernous looks on their faces, the answer was a resounding NO!

Two Toke, trying to lighten the mood, declared that this might be a good opportunity at self-improvement, maybe read a book or two. Fairlane Fred growled, ‘That isn’t funny, Tom.’ And someone back near the restroom replied, ‘The libraries are closed, haven’t you heard?’ Two Toke decided to shut up. The mood was far too ugly. Driving home in my soon-to-be-vintage pickup, I knew I wouldn’t be going to the Diner tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the days after that. We would all hole up in our caves, no ballgames, no sports page in the newspaper, nothing to buffer us from politics and plague. The South End was going dark. For how long, nobody knows.

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