The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The last few weeks we’ve had a few windstorms so I’ve been patrolling my little county park lately, picking up fir branches and limbs, looking for downed trees, all that stuff we get in the winter storms. I had pretty much made the circuit of trails right about dusk, but when I rounded the last corner, I stumbled on a guy with a hoodie and bags of what I assume were groceries from Tyee Store sitting on a wet log scrolling through his cellphone that cast an electronic light on his nearly hidden face. We’re talking here about a spot back in the park where virtually no one goes even in the daytime, much less after dark. Being the vigilant ranger I am, I assumed he was homeless, probably had a makeshift campground nearby.

Not certain he had even noticed me, as intent as he was on his phone and possibly drug addled to boot, I just moved along in the gathering darkness. If he needed a place to sleep, why not leave him alone? If Hooverville starts to form in the coming months, well, I guess I’ll have to recalculate my response. I don’t really want garbage and human waste building up back there.

But what I thought about as I left our mystery man was this: if he’s as destitute as I suspect he is, how does he afford a cellphone?

I remember my couple of years living in the ghetto of Seattle and Gomorrah with neighbors who could barely afford rent, but managed to own a plasma TV in a barely furnished living room and a Cadillac parked on the lawn. I know, priorities might be different for folks. But if I were nearly destitute, what luxuries would I jettison? My boy tonight obviously had ditched the Cadillac. Or any wheeled contraption. And I suspect a TV hookup in those woods was out of the question, even one without cable, just an antenna hanging from a tree.

What I wondered is if the last vestige of civilization for us when the dystopic future strikes … or abject poverty in this case … would be a cellphone? Once that was gone, after all, what slim shred of society remains? I picture my park indigent tonight, huddled near a smoldering campfire, the trees wild in the wind and a darkness closing in, scrolling through his text messages. Even if I had a cellphone myself and had his number, what on earth could I possibly say to him? E.T., phone home? Tomorrow, I suppose, after tonight’s storm, I’ll have to go over there and see if he’s okay.

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