The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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About 50 years ago Karen and I made our first foray into Mexico along with my brother and his buddy in a ’62 Chevy Impala we weren’t sure would get us back. Gringos on a road trip, drinking too much cervezas, slept on the side of a road in sleeping bags hastily thrown down near the car and the gila monsters, then woke to find we were camping on the streets of Tijuana.

We didn’t last long in old Mejico. Even though we were young and poor, we encountered real poverty. Made us feel like Ugly Americans, larking around while the folks who lived there saw us as privileged and rich. Which we were —comparatively — and we didn’t much relish the comparison.

I know folks who go to Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, Vera Cruz, Acapulco and stay at the gated resorts, venturing out to see the temples or the ocean, maybe buy some trinkets in the local ciudads, but mostly hang out poolside and dine at the restaurants inside the compound. The weather is nice, the staff impeccably polite, the narco-trafficers not an immediate threat, a perfect colonial vacation.

Today I took a short road trip up the coast along Chuckanut, our miniature Big Sur, and finally arrived at Bellingham where I wandered downtown, ate a quesadilla at a tequila bar and noticed the alleys crowded with the homeless and the run-aways. Everywhere I go off our little island enclave, this is what I find, makeshift tents, shopping carts with all worldly possessions, food banks lined up with people in need.

There are wealthy people in Mexico. In India. In China. Here too. Who rarely share the plenty. Kids scavenge in the dumps, families live in makeshift shelters, the rich give themselves tax breaks and harden their hearts.

I may never go to Tijuana again so long as I live, but Tijuana is coming here. I’m not that poor young Ugly American anymore. I’m the older version.

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Did you know the world’s richest 8 people had more wealth than the poorest 50%? You think maybe this is an April Fool joke? Faux facts? No, eight people had amassed as much riches as 3.7 billion people at the bottom of the heap. Stop and think about that for more than a nano second. Stop in your tracks. Let your jaw drop down to your knees. 8 people – 8! — with more money than 3.7 billion people combined!! 3.7 billion people in poverty, some starving of famine, some refugees from wars, some just us South Enders who maybe didn’t want to work very hard and never started up a Tech Company.

I guess I knew we had some income inequality, growing wider every year, but c’mon, this seems slightly skewed. I don’t begrudge Gates and Bezos and Buffet and Zuck a few billion, but show me the trickle down. Better yet, show the 3.7 billion people at the bottom whose only trickle is maybe a golden shower. Oh, I know I got a lot of neighbors who think whatever we do, don’t tax the rich! Because they think they might be rich one day…. You know, get an inheritance from Uncle Bezos or finally get around to that start-up tech company or reap the gains from those bitcoin investments or … more likely, win the Powerball Lottery. That, or just bottle lightning and sell it to the poor.

God forbid that we redistribute wealth!! Wouldn’t want to be accused of communism or social engineering or even basic Christian values. Those eight fellows made their money the old fashioned way, with lobbyists and sweetheart deals, with ruthless monopolies and cut-throat capitalism. Why on earth would we tax them exorbitantly when we can take the money from regressive taxation, user fees, sales taxes and other old fashioned usury? Sure, we could use those trillions to feed the poor, cure diseases, fund scientific advances, stuff like that, but you know and I do too we’d probably just build a bigger military. Kill the poor, let them die of disease and starvation, pay them as little as possible. After all, they’ll get to inherit the earth, right? Not that I’m blaming those 8 fat cat rich guys, no sir, they’re probably nice fellows, the way we’ll be when we win the Sweepstakes. I’m just saying there’s billions of folks who maybe deserve a slightly bigger piece of the pie. And I don’t mean Humble Pie.

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Little Jimmy was on his second or maybe his third last beer of the night down at the Covid-spaced Pilot Lounge the night he’d gotten his 2nd inoculation so naturally he was celebrating. Maybe a little too hard. Jerry’s grandson had just been accepted into a prestigious private college, a fact that he announced with a toast ‘to the kids’, at which point Jimmy’s ebullient mood did a 180.

‘My kids,’ he said solemnly, ‘are still paying off student loans. Joe’s got a job at Amazon, a mortgage that weighs a ton and just barely hangs on. Ronnie’s out of rehab, totally broke. He just gave up, all I can see. Wasn’t it supposed to be our kids would do better than us? What the hell happened to this country?’

Well, you want to kill a buzz, this is one way to go about it. Two Toke, kidless and not exactly the Poster Child for the American Dream, declared ‘noboy promised us a rose garden, Jim.’

Little Jimmy gave that pearl of wisdom a fat snort of derision. ‘I wanted more for my kids. I expected more. That’s what America was all about, a ladder up to the next rung. Or a rung on the next …. Hell, you know what I mean.’

‘A bigger slice of the pie,’ TT said, not exactly trying to help. ‘Bigger house in the suburbs, trips to Greek islands …’

‘Better vintage wine,’ Jerry tossed in. ‘Two chickens in every pot!’ Harry chimed. ‘Two pots for every chicken!!’ Did I say that?

‘Don’t you guys get it?’ Jimmy moaned with emotion. ‘It’s a downhill slide now. And you think that’s okay?

‘Make America great again?’ Jerry asked, risking a quick end to the night, and sure enough, Jimmy gulped his last last beer and declared it was time to go home. Jerry lives in a 4000 square foot McMansion on the bluffs overlooking views of Mt. Rainier, the Olympics, Whidbey Island and the Saratoga Straits. He retired at 45, a dot.com millionaire, been bored ever since. The rest of us layabouts basically retired early too … but without stock options or 401-K’s or pensions.

TT watched Little Jimmy put on his coat forlornly, muttering ‘night, guys’ and head for the door. ‘Too bad I don’t have kids,’ Tom said, finishing his own drink and standing up to leave too. ‘I guarantee they’d be a rung up on me. But I doubt they’d be happier.’

Downward mobility on the South End never was much of a cause for concern, I guess.

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