The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Holy Mackerel, another New Year already! Every year we throw a party, usually with about 60 to 70 yahoos looking for a shindig close by so the sheriffs don’t need to be too concerned about their wobbly drive home. We get mostly neighbors and old friends, plus the usual stragglers who feel guilty they might be crashing the party … until we explain it’s basically open to all comers. So far we haven’t had to toss anyone out and no lives have been lost.

Although … there was that year when Steve came running toward the fire pit and never saw the bricks piled up next to the driveway. I saw him go down from my vantage coming up the hill. It was ugly. He never got a hand out, just went down like a Doug Fir cut by a 30 inch chainsaw. No one yelled Timber! They didn’t have to. I turned and went back down the hill to the shack figuring the revelers by the fire could call 9-1-1 or administer CPR if necessary. Too many docs spoil the triage, I think the expression goes. Steve, it turned out, was fully medicated and the faceplant caused bruising and bleeding, but pain was factored out. He was up in no time, fresh painkiller in hand.

We did have the year when the Belgian girl took her dance ensemble onto the main stairs up to the second floor, shaking their booties to some throbbing techno music they’d brought to dance to, high as Katmandu kites, when the staircase gave way. Turns out I’d attached it at the top when I built the house with only a couple of deck screws rather than lag bolts or something a bit more substantial. These things happen, I guess, and once I’d done a cursory investigation of the problem, I suggested they dance upstairs on the more solid living room floor.

There was the year the sheriff sat out in front of the driveway busting someone we hoped was not one of ours. Took forever and no one dared leave the party until those blue lights turned off and our scouts declared the coast clear. Those strobing blue lights merged with the strobe I had in the window of the shack just above, plus the megawatt floodlight that illuminated the fir tops, plus the disco colored balls that rotated out through the back room’s windows. All in all, pretty impressive light show!

We used to grab a crew and dig clams after midnight some years, but not so much anymore. One New Years Day we found Mike sleeping in the rain out on the lawn, not really too much worse for wear even though he had no blanket or tent. And there was the time Tom left his wedding ring on the bathroom sink in what turned out to be a Freudian slip that led to divorce soon after. And no, most of the neighbors across the street won’t come anymore, not since Bear hollered obscenities from the deck at our new house at them, something about ‘go back to the &%$@@# city, you pukes!!’ I explained later the sentiments weren’t universally shared, but, well, you know how people’s feelings get hurt.

So in a day or so we’ll have at it again. Am I nervous? Oh, not very. I usually just stand back and watch from the sidelines. I kind of think of it as their party, not mine. The days when we went until 4 or 5 o’clock are pretty much a thing of the past. Some New Years Days I feel okay, not like the time we closed up at 5 then had stragglers come a couple of hours later to spend the Day with us. You try sleeping two hours, then entertain hung over. No, New Years is a mellower affair these days. At least I hope so. Wish us luck. Or come on down, see what the shouting’s all about….

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