The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Now that the South End Diner has reopened with its tables separated the mandated distance and its customers wearing masks —well, half of them wearing masks — the usual debate society has taken up their coffee mugs to parse the intricacies of this plague and now the protests. Big Walter the other morning weighed in on what he thought we ought to do with those folks down in Seattle and Gomorrah who had taken over a police precinct station and set up barriers for what they declared were police free zones.

“Take em out!” he hollered. “Hose em down. Gas em, club em, drag em out of there. Who do they think they are, anyway?” Walter is an NRA guy. His real solution is to shoot the whole lot of them. Whoever ‘them’ is. He thinks they’re antifa anarchists, cruising the Capitol Hill area with assault rifles and sawed off shotguns. Walter knows how to handle those types, he’s told us many a morning, maskless and spitting in fury. Even his pals sit as far away from Walt as possible.

Two tables away Jerry declares that this is America, dammit, and people have the right to protest without being tear gassed or shot with rubber bullets. Walter, predictably, said he wouldn’t use rubber bullets. Jerry rolled his eyes, shook his head and set his coffee mug down with a bang, sloshing java onto the formica. He pulled his mask back up and muttered “You should have been a cop, Walter.” Which pleased Walter immensely, judging by the smirk on his face.

Two Toke and I exchanged eyeballs, impossible to judge expressions through these plague masks, maybe the worst part of wearing the damn things, but I saw his eyebrows lift slightly, a sign he was about to enter the fray, stir the pot as he liked to say. “I hate to do this, but I gotta agree with Walter, Jerry.” Walt stopped chewing his eggs, wary of T.T. since they agreed on nothing, ever. Jerry looked shocked too. He pulled his mask down to drink his coffee and waited for Two Toke to make his point.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for protests. Been to a few myself. Been tear gassed and pepper sprayed, all part of the fun. But taking over police stations and setting up your own little government, I don’t think so.” Jerry argued, “It’ll wake the city up. And it’ll show them the People can govern themselves if the city fathers can’t do it right.” Walter choked on his mouthful, waved a fork at Jerry and tried to talk and chew at the same time before T.T. beat him to the punch.

“Picture this: instead of the Black Lives Matter folks taking over Capitol Hill, it was the Proud Boys. Or the Aryan Nation. Posse Comitatus. Folks with guns and attitude. Not your attitude. Walter’s maybe. Not yours, not mine. How would you like it then? I wouldn’t. Not one bit.”

Jerry didn’t want to relinquish his point. Walter wanted to see this new side of the argument. He liked that notion of vigilantes with guns controlling a few blocks of a too liberal city. “Suppose tomorrow we came to the café and the Flatheads declared this a new car free zone. Nobody but the car guyz allowed. Barred the door and set up a roadblock down the road, vintage cars lined up across the highway. Nobody gets in but the Flatheads.” A couple of the vintage car guyz at a table by the door hooted their approval. T.T. said “See what I mean?”

And so normality was restored at the Diner, plague or no plague, mask or no mask, logic or no logic. We all would agree it was good to be back.

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