The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

My old construction partner, boat building mentor and former roommate nearly 50 years ago is sailing up today from Seattle and Gomorrah to pick me up for a second run into the San Juans, that snooty archipelago that refuses Camano entry into its ritzy island club. Our last adventure ended in a flipped sailboat, my prized Pelican, the S.S. Pterodactyl, off the shores of Lummi Island. We did not drown, but we were more than slightly embarrassed to be rescued by the Coast Guard and other boaters, after which we hightailed it to solid ground near Bellingham.

Undeterred, bent but not broken in spirit, a great deal older and probably no wiser, we’re off again in his 15 foot sailboat, cramped quarters but we’re not Mark Zukerberg who needs 3 mega-yachts to boost his puny ego. No, we have what we need. And hopefully calm seas, a steady wind at our backs and stars to steer us by. Cap’n. Joe wants to cruise for two weeks. Me, I have one week before I have to return to shore duty.

Enjoy some time off yourselves from these Daddle diatribes. We both deserve the respite.

I guess since all my cronies are throwing in the towel and taking retirement on schedule, it’s only reasonable I’ve been getting calls from the Mabana Financial Services asking if I’d like to come on down to their lavish offices overlooking the Port of Mabana and discuss fiscal strategies for my upcoming Golden Years. Ho ho, would I ever? Course, like I tell Ben, the head honcho down at MFS, it’s a little like saddling up the horse that ske-daddled when I left the barn door open back in my earning years. Earning years. Old Ben loves expressions like that.

I said I’d talk to him, but only over beers down at the newly opened Bar 282, named after our zip code’s last three numbers, probably some numerology factoid that becomes apparent deep in the cups. Better, I suppose, than 666, what the Little Church in the Ravine refers to it as. So if Benjamin and I are going to discuss finances, what better place? At least that’s what I told him when he asked, why there?

We got through the first two schooners okay, managed to navigate around my Social Security numbers which, admittedly, were poor, a reflection of my life as a fiddling grasshopper while my neighbors labored as productive ants. My mistake, at least from the vantage point of an old grasshopper, but I wouldn’t change anything even if I had a time machine. Ben commiserated the way a funeral director would offer comfort to the bereaved, not totally heart-felt, but what his job calls for. What’s he gonna say, you deserve poverty, Skeeter? Instead he mentioned annuities, aggressive equities, municipal bonds and a dozen other financial instruments. Instruments. I kid you not, that’s what he called them. Like something in a fiscal orchestra and he, I guess, was the maestro.

By the 3rd beer we were both convinced it was hopeless. I wasn’t going to catch up to Warren Buffet, not in the remaining years, not if I worked until I was 300 years old. “Ben,” I said, “I appreciate you trying to help. But you can’t prime a pump if you don’t have water.” Ben shook his head wearily. “You change your mind, Skeeter, drop by and we’ll strategize some more.” I haven’t been in since, but I might go for another beer with him. Maybe some of that high rolling fiscal firepower will rub off. That, or I could trade a few of my banjos for a couple of his instruments.

Judge Jack was kicking himself. Down at the South End Senior Center a sculpture they’d thought had been donated 12 years ago was now in Limbo. The donator’s brother had seen it there, seen it for the first time, and since they had owned it when they ran their restaurant into a backwash bankruptcy, he now wanted it back. The Center had grown fond of the carved basswood dolphin over the years and they were more than reluctant to give it back. Statue of limitations, apparently….

What to do, what to do??? Turn it over to an arbitrator, of course, some poor sap who would willingly step into the vise. Who you gonna call? Judge Jack. And Jack had said naively, sure, he’d mediate. Now he regretted it. No King Solomon decision here, he soon learned to his dismay. Someone was going to be sorely disappointed and he would take the fall, maybe lose a friend. “Let em flip a coin,” Two Toke Tom advised. “The Gods of Fate, my friend. Better than the judicial system, you ask me.” Two Toke, naturally, thought a septic system was superior to the judicial, having been harassed for most of his so-called adult life over recreational preferences and underground agriculture. Two Toke was legendary for a life of minor cannabis crime and he was a man who held a grudge.

Judge Jack sipped his latte thoughtfully. Tom was usually in geosynchronous orbit a bit too far out to take seriously, but he had a point. Flipping a coin might be the way to go. Nobody right, nobody wrong, no judge hung on his own petard. Just bad luck calling that head over tails. Way of the world. Keep the dolphin, lose the dolphin. Jeez, who cares when the Middle East is collapsing into sectarian war? Just art, after all and Judge Jack knew better than most that art in corporate America was worth about what bitcoins were on the South End. And sinking fast.

Flip a coin and walk away. “How you gonna rule, Judge?” Tom smirked over his coffee. Jack shook his head sadly, shoved his mug into the center of the table. “Refill?” Brenda asked, holding the coffee pot, working the tables. Jack said mournfully, “Hell if I know, Brenda. Come back in five minutes. I got to give it more thought.”

Tom fairly howled. He slapped the table. “Hit me again, Brenda.”

My shack has ghosts. Poltergeists. Gremlins. Whatever you care to call the little demons that are turning my lights off intermittently, then turning them back on. I don’t really believe in phantasms, but I know my lights are flickering off, then going off completely, then later suddenly snapping back to life. It’s disconcerting, I do know that.

I pulled the breakers outside, replaced them and for awhile, they seemed to work. But only for a day or so. Now the lights are turning themselves on and off again. It’s driving me batty. Yesterday I tore into the walls, jerking out switches and outlets, looking for a loose wire, a faulty switch, a connector come undone. So far nothing…. Now more lights are turning themselves off, turning themselves on. I was convinced there was a logical explanation, but more and more I’m starting to wonder.

I wake up every day to strange stories in the news. Sexual harassment, Russian probes, Senatorial races with a bigot and child predator, lies and faux news, it never ends, just drives me crazy. The nation seems stuck in a reality meltdown where paranoia reigns and obvious lies are uttered without embarrassment. I need meds. Lithium, valium, anti-psychotics, whatever it takes to reduce the brain-fever. The truth is flickering on and off. The news is driving me insane. Faux news, real news, on and off, on and off, day after day.

Today the lights in the house went off. I checked the fuse box and nothing was amiss. No breakers were OFF, but the power was. To half the room I’m in right now. Half on, half off. I’m sure it has a logical explanation. I’m sure an electrician could explain this phenomenon in a nano-second. The truth is out there somewhere. But somewhere isn’t here.

I shut off the power entirely to the shack finally. I turn it on when I’m down there working, but I’m afraid to keep it on when I leave the building, something might spark and the place will go up in flames. I should probably do that with the news, just turn it off, but I’m afraid the country will go up in smoke if I don’t pay attention. Am I crazy? Are we all going crazy? Maybe I need to turn off all the lights once and for all. Before they turn themselves off. Except that seems illogical. Doesn’t it??????????

Every blue moon or so a new entrepreneurial startup appears in the sleepy hollows of the South End. A computer repair shop stuck out a shingle ten years ago, some techie kid who figured the retirees would need his skills first time their desktop Dell froze up — and he was right. Trouble was, there aren’t enough of us old timers. There was that dog groomer place, the Pampered Pooch, who specialized in poodle pompadours but quit shortly after Jenny Winesack’s fox terrier took issue with the jetted bubble bath and bit her on the face, nearly taking out an eye. The neighbors claimed the terrier was vicious even without the water torture treatment and advised her to sue Jenny, but she said no, she guessed she just wasn’t the Dog Whisperer she’d thought she was.

So when I saw the wooden sign down past Tyee Store nearly to the Head where the road hairpins back north toward our place, I shook my head, figuring Ralph’s Old Time Tonsorial Emporium would last a month or two. I also figured I ought to get myself a trim before the place closed its doors forever and so I rode my bike in one sunny day down the long overgrown driveway into the nettle festooned interior, surprised to discover Ralph had added a room off the old Stuart place where he’d installed an old time hydraulic barber chair, a double basin porcelain sink and even a vintage barber pole spinning red white and blue on its axis by the door.

Little Jimmy was in the chair and Fairlane Fred was sitting his turn. “Take a seat, won’t be long, I cut faster’n a logger on meth,” Ralph, I presumed, said in greeting. I took off my hat and joined the crowd. The conversation was lively, political and heated enough for my liking. The cut was fair and the price too. “Come back,” he said, sweeping my locks into a metal dustpan, shaking the apron for Big Walter who’d come in behind me. “I will,” I said, and I have. And damn if Ralph’s Old Time Tonsorial Emporium didn’t make a go of it, despite all odds.

Some of us layabouts at the Poker Parlor were trying to think up something special for an upcoming 4^th of July celebration.  We figured we got so many Vets down this way the Diner might as well declare itself a VFW South End Auxilliary.  And since most of them are vintage car guyz too, they could hold their own annual Independence Day Parade from Camano Head to the Elger Bay Store.  I, of course, wanted to just use these militiamen as an excuse to secede from the Island, but cooler heads prevailed.  As usual.

Two Toke Tom served in Viet Nam and now is pretty much anti- every war.  Jimmy Z, who’s old enough to be Tom’s old man, fought the Japanese in WW2.  Tom thinks Jimmy’s still fighting em and maybe so, but I notice Jimmy driving a Toyota pickup now even though he swore for 60 years he’d never buy a ‘Jap Car’.  Baghdad Bill fought in the second Iraq War and Big Larry just got back two years ago from Afghanistan.  Jerry spent a year in Korea and frostbit a couple of fingers he wishes he had back, but he still can play a mean guitar.  We even got Crazy Eddie who ‘liberated’ Grenada.  We’re missing Somalia and Panama and Bosnia, but with all the newcomers rolling in, we may cover those too eventually.

Sometimes the boyz argue among themselves about those wars and sacrifice and what patriotism really means at the Friday night poker game we’ve been running since 1986 down at the Marina and Bait Shop.  Two dollar limit on bets, no limit on alcohol.  The pots don’t do much damage, but single nettle Daddle Distillery moonshine sometimes does.  I sit in with these war-hardened patriots most Fridays and serve as their patsy and their sometime referee, the one who never served even in peacetime.  Or what Two Toke calls a draft dodging, student deferred, flag burning, Summer of Love hippie protester.  He takes great joy in telling me I would’ve loved the smell of napalm in the morning over there on the Delta.  Jimmy Z chimes in how his platoon could’ve won Viet Nam single-handed although Jimmy never once has told us one iota the hell that must have been Iwo Jima.  But he’s the one who puts a liver spotted hand on Bill’s arm whenever Bill gets overwhelmed by memories of buddies lost in the HumVee he was driving when it was blown off the road to the airport in Baghdad.

We’ve fought too many wars, I think, before realizing I’ve said it out loud.  I see by their pinched lips and averted eyes I won’t get an argument tonight.  Patriotism comes in all uniforms, even no uniform at all.  Big Larry finally breaks the swelling silence, pushes a handful of quarters into the pot and says, real quiet, “I’m willing to spend a couple bucks, Skeeter, to see if you got more than bluff in this hand.”  Grateful to change the subject, I say, “Name of the game, Big.  Read em and weep.”

We just got back from the American Outback, ready for the dreaded Chores with happy hearts, exactly what a vacation is supposed to do for ya. But life is always full of those surprises that are meant to provide an extra helping or two of Humble Pie. So we woke to find a puddle of water on the downstairs bathroom floor. After mowing some lawn I went in the upstairs bath to do the dreaded troubleshooting. I am very very familiar with the sadistic tendencies of the plumbing gods and I do not trespass lightly on their turf, not with the scars I could offer up as proof of their capricious cruelty.

No sir, I intended to proceed with Utmost Caution! The leak, it was determined by my vast experience in matters household hydrologic, was in a recessed cranny up under the pedestal sink where only hobo spiders dared lurk. I tried tightening the nut up in there, but you know and I did too, that would be far Too Easy. I sensed a trap, no fool I. Ignoring any obvious warning signs, I began to disassemble drainpipe, cabinetry, any impediment to providing clearance to that obstinate brass nut. The first water inlet valve uncoupled with some considerable effort — the second, the hot water, wouldn’t budge. A bit more force, I deduced … and snapped the half inch CPVC plastic pipe right off the wall. Hot water shot out in a 5 gallon per minute stream. I reacted with alacrity and stuck a finger in the gaping wound, the Dutch Boy Dike Strategem.

Only … how long could I wait? The Dutch Kid had a town to come and help. I had old age and slow starvation before help arrived. I pulled the plug, my finger, and raced to the basement shutoff, knowing the water was spewing freely upstairs. Got back up and no let up, just the hot water tank emptying its 40 gallons. I grabbed buckets, I threw down towels, I offered my first born to these plumbing gods, I swore, I emptied pail after pail and squeezed towel after sopping towel.

When it finished disgorging the tank, I was totally soaked, the bathrooms were swimming pools, the gas hot water heater was heating air. I finally shut off the gas, not sure if this would ruin it heating without water.

As I write this, the pedestal sink sits in the middle of the room while I’m mowing my little park across the island. I’m drinking a beer before the next grassy section along the highway. I’ve learned these things, plumbing, I mean, they take time. Lots of time. I’m sure glad to be home. You know … if I decide to return.

The Fender Bender Repair Shop hides down past Tyee Store’s huge footprint, mostly just a pole building with four stalls, one with a hydraulic lift over a three foot pit. Ben Paulsen started it then years ago as an auto repair business to replace the income he lost when the tool and die shop he’d worked at twenty years closed down during the Great Recession. Ben used his 401-K savings to buy the dilapidated metal shed and lost a fortune on the penalties for cashing in early.

“How’s Biz?” I asked when I drove up with my truck that needed a new clutch. Ben groaned and said sadly, “You’re it, that’s how business is lately.” Most days Ben and a few layabout cronies can be found in an upstairs office with large windows overlooking the empty bays, television on with Fox News yammering in the background and a refrigerator full of barely cold beer the boys haul in but never take out. If Benny’s making money, it pretty much goes into the fridge and cable. Us locals know to make our appointments in the morning before the noon Happy Hour if we want quality repairs. Late afternoon, we might as well do them ourselves, just as bad but far cheaper.

“Whatcha got for me, Skeeter?” Ben finally asked. I told him my clutch was starting to slip. “All right, lemme order a new one, get it tomorrow. That okay?” I said it was and asked if I needed an appointment. Ben cast an arm out over the barren bays. “I think you’ll be first in line.” He dug his grease fissured hands into his ancient overalls. “Trump don’t bring those jobs back soon, this place is toast,” he lamented forlornly. I didn’t have the heart to argue with him.

“I’ll see you morning after next,” I said and got back in my old pickup, started it and backed up. Ben stood watching, then turned and headed back up the stairs. Fox News was flickering through the big windows. The Fender Bender Repair sign, bordered by small theater lights, flickered too. In Ben’s mind, the whole damn country was doing the same.

I got a knee that’s been bothering me. For about three years. I finally figured it wasn’t going to heal up so I went to my local clinic, got a checkup and was sent into town for some X-rays, then back to the original doc who took ten minutes before we both came to the same diagnosis: I was NOT Fred with the bad wrist. When we finally got Skeeter’s medical file, he told me he didn’t see anything particularly wrong, no doubt scribbling in my chart after I left — HYPOCHONDRIA.

A year later and no improvement in that knee, I switched clinics and tried again, this time asking the attending physician for an MRI, which he scheduled along with more X-rays. The MRI, I was certain, would show him the cause of my knee pain, hopefully something easily repaired. When I scheduled my consultation after the MRI came back and my answering machine mentioned ‘torn cruciate ligament’ I was confident we were going to get to the root of my chronic problem. At last!

My next doc mentioned he hadn’t had time to read my MRI’s yet, but he took a moment to have a look. “I see some arthritis in that left knee,” he told me and I told him my problem was in the right knee. “Not much arthritis there,” he said after studying the photos, “but that must be it.” (I’m sure he underlined the aforementioned HYPOCHONDRIAC in red ink.)

“I know I’m shy a few credits on my medical degree,” I protested, “but it sure feels like something’s wrong in there. A tear maybe?”

He patiently explained he was an osteo-surgeon and if I wanted a knee replacement, he was my man. “Whoa,” I said, “I’m not shopping knees today, I just want to figure out what this problem is.”

Disappointed, I went home, back to Plan A — see if it would heal itself. A month later my brother asked how the MRI’s turned out. When I told him, he said let’s look at your charts (his wife is an RN) and when I told him I hadn’t seen them, he explained it was almost two decades into the 21st Century, they would be available On-line, let’s have a look, so we did and right there in black and white on the MRI report were my two ligament tears, anterior cruciate and posterior too.

That was three months ago. I know I should go back, get a 3rd opinion, see if this knee can be repaired. My trouble is, I figure 50/50 they’ll amputate the leg. Probably the left one. So for the time being, I’m sticking with Plan A. Seems a helluva lot safer bet.

Maybe you’ve heard recently about the 40,000 acre data center just approved in Utah. Sure, it’s huge, a black hole going to suck water and power for Northern Utah. If you’re like me, data centers and the protests against them are fairly new to my radar. When I searched, probably with unasked for AI assist that seems to be ubiquitous now, I discovered there are over 5000 data centers in this country, more than the total of the next top ten combined, ten times more than the closest two, Germany and the UK who each have a little more than 500. China, in case you were wondering, was next with over 400.

How is it we missed these things? Well, for one thing, they’re being built in primarily rural areas, places that might think jobs are coming to save the day. And maybe didn’t realize the amount of water and power they’ll be consuming. Their water and power that will soon cost a helluva lot more than before the Center went online. Lately, tho, the public is waking up, if belatedly, to the proliferation of these things. AI is here and where did we think all that computation was being done?

Utah is, or at least was, trying to conserve water. The Great Salt Lake is drying up after years of drought. But 3 county commissioners approved the application anyway. When two podcasters threw themselves into the scrimmage, those commissioners accused them of being spies for the Chinese. No doubt the People’s Republic has plenty of espionage teams in the Mormon State, keeping an eye on polygamy maybe.

It looks like this genie is definitely out of its bottle. AI has seeped into our everyday lives without most of us noticing. College and high school students use it for a little more than research. Forget Cliff Notes, they can pop out a research paper in less than a minute. Amazon just limited the number of new books by any one author to three. A day! Writer’s block? I don’t think so. One musician I read about in this morning’s fake news had 7 albums out this year already. He was not one bit or byte embarrassed to let us know he used AI. Just another tool in the box.

It’s a brave new world. Just not our world anymore….