The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

  audio — java jive

It might seem to some of our northerly neighbors who only very occasionally wander down to this low end of the island that they’ve ventured back into more primitive times.  No doubt this is given credence by the simple fact that they rarely explore off the main road, a bit like judging L.A. by driving through on the interstate.  Of course we seem to lack modern  amenities and urbane sophistication.  It’s like judging Smokey Point by the rest area on I-5.

A friend who visited recently lamented the predicament that she couldn’t get a decent cup of coffee down past the Mountain View/Dixon Line, as though civilization itself teetered on that cardboard cup of latte.  Caffeine addiction no doubt spawns all manner of snobbish sophistry, and caffeine withdrawal can reduce even the most cultured city dweller to a snarling savage.  Before things degenerated into a border war, I took her over to Java Jive, our answer to Starbuck’s attempt at world coffee hegemony, where Brenda Bodice, once the infamous bare barista in Stanwoodopolis’ ill-fated bikini expresso before the town’s fathers found their teenage sons inexplicably hooked on flavored coffee drinks, serving up hot steaming grandes of freshly roasted beans brought in daily from our own O-Zi-Ya Roasters.

Brenda, now less subject to bouts of pneumonia, is always conversationally entertaining.  My friend bought us both two bars of freshly baked blackberry tarts, no puns exempted, from the South End Diner’s pastry shop.  Later I would surprise her with another fine culinary experience at the Tillicum Bistro, another off-road adventure, but I didn’t want to overwhelm her with a tsunami of our clandestine culture all at once.  It would only make her own world seem somehow bland and tasteless … and we sure don’t need more immigrants hungry for authenticity.

  audio — gyppos

This past week South End Hardwoods padlocked its gate, boarded up its windows, handed out the pink slips and closed down once and for all.  Nobody but the couple of stoned part-timers on the greenchain were surprised, but the axe had been ready to fall for more than a few months.  The yard was pretty near cleared and the skidders looked small and rusty standing idle against the chain link fence with no trucks rolling in every half hour with their increasingly skinny loads of sorry pecker poles.

The hey days of old growth nettles are long gone, now just black and white memories on the Mabana Logging Museum’s walls, photos of the now unemployed’s fathers and grandfathers atop logs scarcely imaginable today, once dragged out of the forest primeval by oxen and horse,  gone to chip and bark and ash, gone forever.  A couple of the boys not near enough to retirement to cash it in but too old to sign on for re-training for jobs requiring computer competency, drowned their sorrows at the Hotel Bar and kicked around running a gyppo operation, run  the logs they could scrounge down to Everett maybe.  But woods work is a young man’s game and if felling trees didn’t kill them outright, a heart attack probably would.  Better to idle away a few hours and too many beers and crazy talk than face the music coming when their wives got the news of their layoffs. Maybe they should’ve gotten out when the getting was good, not waited til the ship was listing and half under water, headed straight for Davy Jones’ locker.  But between them they had 60 years at South End Hardwoods and not much desire to start swimming toward a receding shoreline.

Truth is, it was all they knew, those jobs at the mill. By midnight they’d close the bar down, shake calloused hands, tell each other things would work out.  It would be a long ride home, past the new stores, the gated communities, the golf course, the fire stations, past the forgotten forests they’d helped clear, past the dreams and their hopes, past even their own future looking for all the world like ghosts on stumps receding in the rear view.

  audio — elger bay institoot

No one is really sure when the Elger Bay Institoot of Aesthetic Enlargement first opened.  Probably most of those early students are gone now —- starved to death probably or else moved on to actual working lives, the kind of lives you commute to, pay taxes with, pay your mortgage and try to forget that misspent fantasy of your wayward youth.  Some say it was a response to the Honey I Shrunk the Art Show down at the old garage gallery by the Tyee Store.  The Shrunk Show’s still going strong after more than 25 years, what would be called a quarter of a century  to most folks, what we call Quittin Time down on the South End.

The Institoot isn’t exactly flourishing.  Nor is it enlarging.  But it does still train its students to paint and sculpt and about any other  form of artistic skill when it can muster instructors.  They’ve taught macramé and basket weaving, duck decoy carving and motorcycle airbrushing.  Back in the wilder days they taught body painting — now they offer the occasional tattoo workshop.  At the completion of every semester the graduates have a student art show of current work over at the Grange.  The instructors bring in their own work and most of the South End attends the gala opening, looking for deals and possibly signing up for the next quarter’s admission.

I’d say most of us have taken a class or three.  I took a night class back in 1980 to learn how to make stained glass windows so I could replace the plastic stapled to half my shack’s window-sized holes.  Half of us go to meet someone single, which is how, I suspect, the place got its real reputation for more than just artistic license.  They had more bacchanalias than baccalaureates at the Institoot and probably twice the orgies the Pilchuck Glass School was famous for.  Plus the tuition was about one tenth what the eyepatch crowd wanted to attend.

Admittedly, not many of us moved up to the NY galleries or the Frisko art scene or even the avante-garde of Everett.  Most of us never had grandiose ambitions, you want to know the truth.  We just wanted to wet our feet, try a little brushwork and rub a shoulder with the artistic crowd.  After all, we’re South Enders, not crazies….  Course , that art stuff has a way of weaving up the synapses.  Our art might’ve shrunk, but the South End sure got a lot wider.

  audio — elger bay academy

So you wannabee an American Idol?     You’ve practiced in the shower, you’ve performed countless hours at the Stanwoodopolis Karaoke bars, you’ve taken it about as far as you can on your own.  Now it’s time to take it to the Next Level!      The Elger Bay Academy of Pickin and Grinnin, the Julliard of the metropolitan South End, now offers advanced Idol training, especially focusing on proven techniques to maximize your chances at becoming an X-Factor finalist or an American Idol winner.  Our instructors, graduates from the finest D.J. discos in the U.S. and Canada, will provide you with that ‘insider’ knowledge you need to compete at the national level.     You’ll learn  HAIR STYLING TECHNIQUES guaranteed to turn judge’s heads.                             DANCE ROUTINES so easy yet effective that judges scarcely notice  wrong notes.                           FASHION TIPS of former graduates and even regional finalists!  Dress for success!      Our professional staff will train you in voice stylings from rap to bebop, Sinatra to Madonna.  Croon like Crosby one song, then gangsta rap to Eminem.  Wow your friends with versatility instead of virtuosity!

Before your 2nd quarter tuition payment is due you’ll be headlining at the open mikes of Smokey Point and Mt. Vernon.  By graduation you’ll be forming your own act and performing in nightclubs and lounges where Everett talent agents water down.

Don’t spend your most productive years in the Karaoke caverns.  Let the Elger Bay Academy of Pickin and Grinnin hone your talents to a fine edge and put you on the freeway to musical success.        Enroll Now!   Call I-WANNABEE –A -STAR   today and get ready for a dazzling career in the spotlights.   Ask about our E-Z Payment Plans.   Highly endorsed by the South End String Band, 1998 graduates!!