The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The stock market dropped over 1000 points the other day. Japan’s dropped 12%. The Tech stocks took a dive and immediately the day traders did too. Plenty of hair on fire, pundits weighing in, money lost, money moved, money bouncing up down and sideways. Gee, after a long upward climb, folks thought there was only one direction, same as the evangelicals, Up.

I keep hearing about the middle class, got to help them out, need to pull them up another rung on that upwardly mobile ladder. I don’t hear so much about the bottom rungs, the homeless, the jobless, the minimum wage worker who can’t afford rents and groceries much less any kind of health care. You think they have money in the damn stock market? They can barely afford to shop the food market.

Shelly, newly hired at the deli of one of Stanwoodopolis’s ‘super’ markets, makes better than minimum wage with a few benefits to boot. When her deadbeat husband left her last month for a floozie a few trailers down from theirs at the Tillicum Village, she went into shock, then grief, then anger, then despair. Two kids, no alimony — at least not until she can afford an attorney to draw up the divorce papers — plus a pile of credit card bills. Her mother takes care of Julie and Billy the days she works at the store. Daycare wasn’t much of an option.

“I’m treading water, Skeeter,” she told me in a whisper at the checkout line. “This job barely pays the bills and Frank won’t even return a phone call now that he’s shacked up with that drug addict bimbo he’s ….” She let that drop when a customer neared hearing range with a cart loaded to the top rails.

Shelly’s the daughter of Carl, a fellow school bus driver from back in the late ‘70’s who was a fellow part-timer, both of us able to keep our own heads above water, could even afford to buy our own houses. Shelly will never own hers. And it sounds like she may not be able to afford the rent on her mobile either. My guess is she and the kids will end up with her folks in a year, maybe less. If Carl were still alive, he’d be down at this husband Frank’s new address giving him a much needed ultimatum. I suppose there are plenty of folks who would say the blame lies with Shelly, bad choices in life, what do you expect? I hope I never get so high up the ladder I’ll think the one on the lower rungs got it coming. Or the ones at the top either….

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