The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I recently had a buddy who advocated that the government, rather than pay out trillions in Covid unemployment compensation and business relief, pay each of us 125,000 dollars to infect ourselves with the virus, thereby achieving herd immunity and sparing us further deficit spending. Basically the Administration is promoting the same idea. But without the 125,000 buck incentive.

Lately I’ve been feeling happily isolated from the Herd. Course, I don’t have kids sequestered at home learning their ABC’s from a laptop instructional video, we don’t have rent payments backing up like a plugged toilet, we aren’t worried about the jobs we lost or the jobs that aren’t coming back, we live in a part of the world where social distancing was pretty much the norm and our routine wasn’t disrupted greatly by the plague. If you offered me a quarter million dollars for the two of us to infect ourselves, I suspect I might have to turn it down. Not just because one or both of us might die or be greatly diminished by the virus, just that money seems like a poor incentive when we’re already living in a South End paradise.

It’s a grand thought experiment though. How many of us would take the money? I suspect quite a few, especially if you were younger. You got a couple kids, you could walk away with half a million. Not bad for snorting up a shot of covid. If you were old with underlying medical conditions, maybe the gamble would look like a sucker’s bet.

My buddy thinks this would save the economy. Sweden thought the same way. Nice try, Stockholm. Course, Sweden never quite reached herd immunity, just ratcheted up their mortality rate. But they didn’t have to pay anybody to catch the coronavirus. The reward was the right not to wear masks and drink in crowded bars. For a lot of Americans that would be incentive enough, forget the cash incentives, some big savings!

For the good of the herd! Try that as a slogan for the upcoming election. Probably about as rallying a cry as Wear Your Damn Mask, Dimwit!

The South End Senior Center—what the wags at the Marina and Bait call the Senile Center—is basically a pole building down by the Camano Cut and Curl, about a stone’s throw from the now defunct Tyee MegaStore. A pole building, for those unfamiliar with architectural stylings, is a metal sided structure constructed with beams instead of stud framing. Barns and shops are often built this way. So is our Senior Center. Cheap and stout enough.

The Center has a Board and it has a small staff—which is Jenny Hancock and various volunteers who man (well, okay, woman) the desk and phones. Jenny has the only room, other than the unisex toilet in back, that has its own door. This makes it perfect for the occasional dance and their annual fashion show, the flea market fundraiser and their gala auction, capital G, that brings in most of their yearly funding.

The auction used to be held at the close of the flea market, sort of an afterthought. Year after sorry year, the stragglers would bid on bad local art the artists couldn’t sell or give away on the Mother’s Day Studio Tour, plus the usual items from South End biznesses. A day of fishing Jesse’s Deep Sea Charters. Believe me, an hour would be plenty. Or a perm at the Cut and Curl. An hour of acupuncture down at Pins and Needle Therapy. Whoa, Nelly, you can imagine the bidding wars!

Just before they decided to throw in the towel on the auction, Jenny convinced the board to go Gala. Meaning, basically, play dress-up and serve wine and beer, charge an entry and serve coldcuts and cheese with crackers. The first year the Center made 5 times what they HAD been making. The second year they doubled that and on the third they served hard liquor. And made even more. Two Toke Tom is lobbying for medical marijuana sampling, but he’s not on the Board.

The Center is raising money now for a new building. The toxic mold is starting to be an issue and anyway we’re feeling growing pains, not so much from all the new immigrants as that demographically we’re inexorably moving into our senile years. If the auction keeps on improving, we might just make it. Believe me, 3 martinis and even the Bait Shop Boyz will bid a day’s wages for an hour with Janice, head dominatrix at the Pins and Needles.

The salon chairs have started to fill up down at the Cut ‘N Curl beauty parlor at the newly vacated Windy Rear Realty office. Real estate might have gone virtual but the hair styling business is completely hands-on and now that the island has moved into Phase 2 of the Covid epidemic, folks are clamoring for a haircut. Jennie Fitch, the new owner who moved the shop out of the flood zone of Stanwoodopolis, jumped at the chance to locate closer to home here on the Virus-free Zone of the South End, something scientists should probably take a closer look at, see if our nettle pollen might be a natural antibody. The past few weeks business has been brisk, if not actually hyper. She and her fellow stylists, Rhonda and Ronald, have been staying late most nights to keep up with their appointments, something Jennie is glad for and not just for the extra income. Her 30 year old son has returned home, her home, to live in the back bedroom while he ‘sorts things out.’

“I read today that over half the kids between 19 and 30 are living with their parents,” Ronald was saying through his paisley print mask, snipping happily on Carol Abercrombie’s bleach blond curls before touching up those dark roots showing after months without a treatment. “I tell you girls, I’m glad I’m gay without children. No way could I handle having them bringing that nasty virus home to poppa.”

“Oh, Ronald, you don’t know what you’re missing, the joy of children,” Carol Abercrombie said. “Drugs and sex and cooking for them what they won’t eat.” She laughed. “At least my little dear won’t be coming back to live in the basement.” Her little dear, Brandon, was serving 5 to 10 for a drug deal gone bad a few years back in Everett. The State could find housing for him, she said to Ronald who muttered There but for the grace of God. “You do what you can,” she muttered back as blond curls gathered on her black apron.

“I should be so lucky,” Jennie said. “Jonathon moved back three months ago after Covid ended his job. Now he watches TV and expects me to cook and clean and do the laundry. Just like old times. His father tells me it’s only temporary but now I have two of them. Grown kids, lazy and no help at all.”

“Marital bliss,” Ronald intoned happily. “See what I’m missing.”

Everyone laughed but Jennie. This damn plague, she was thinking. She picked up her cellphone and called Nancy Baumgarter. “Nancy, I got an opening late today if it’s not your supper hour. No, I don’t mind a bit staying open late. Great, see you at 7. Bye now.”

Ronald grinned. “Looks like the boys will have to fend for themselves again tonight.” Jennie chuckled. “Looks like.”

I’m looking out my front window this morning and all I can see is this yellowish haze that is half smoke and half fog and about a third the ground-hugging swamp gas from rumors generated by viral internet addicts. Swirling in this soup of toxic crap is the latest scare: Antifa is starting these fires that are burning up millions of acres in the West. That’s right, urban anarchists are running amok in the grasslands and forests just over the mountains. Evidently, they’re tired of firebombing police stations and tossing Molotov cocktails in unlocked police cars.

I guess it’s time to take the fight to the ranchers and the farmers and the loggers on their own turf, torch their homelands and suffocate the rest of us. You bet. No doubt they had a meeting in their secret hidey-hole in Portland, then fanned out to put a match to the forests of Utah, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and California, exactly what you’d expect Antifa to do, right? Right? Go out where nobody lives and burn their cropland. Good thinking, right? Right?

This is what we have now instead of real news. We have idiotic conspiracy theories that offer no proof and certainly no intelligence. I figure the whackjobs who resend these messages from the Russian GRU Fancy Bear military counterintelligence units have no clue that they’re helping the commies sow doubt in our country with their brainless propaganda. The Russians figured us out, apparently. We’re clueless sheep so bored with our lives we have nothing better to do than surf the Net for National Enquirer quality stories that satisfy our pent-up anger and resentment toward … toward … well, most everything.

We’ve lost all perspective. We don’t know our anatomical parts from a hole in the ground. We actually believe there’s a cabal of pederast perverts who kidnap our kids, hide them in a bunker beneath a D.C. pizza joint that doesn’t even have a basement much less a torture chamber, then … my god in heaven! say it isn’t true!! … they eat the kids.

Now, you might ask yourself, if this were true wouldn’t we see milk cartons with a dozen photos of missing children every time we ate our cereal? But no, we don’t ask ourselves. We accept this sick pablum and better yet, we retweet, we forward the email, then we go back for more. Mother of God, what kind of idiots have we spawned out there in La La Land??? Maybe, just maybe, Antifa has the right idea. Burn the damn place down and let’s start over.

So the Covid-in-Chief knew how deadly the virus was back in the beginning, just didn’t want to scare us. The Head Cheerleader wanted to paint a smiley face on the coronavirus, tell us it would fade away, tell us it was contained, tell us we didn’t need to wear masks or avoid crowded bars, assure us there was nothing to fear here. Right. This from the Town Crier whose doom and gloom messages about everything from immigrant caravans to socialist takeovers are intended to scare the pants off every undecided voter in the country.

Our cities are burning! Looters and rioters and those liberal Democrats have run amok in left wing urban enclaves. Illegal immigrants are flooding into white America, raping and killing and selling our kids drugs. Crime is rampant. The cops are being handcuffed by socialist legislatures. If Biden is elected, the stock market will crash, the economy will plunge, the coming Depression will be like nothing we’ve ever seen.

This is the stuff of a calming cheerleader? One who doesn’t want to incite panic in the population? Gimme a break, the man would scream Fire! in a crowded maskless theater if he thought it might get him some votes from the survivors. No way do any rational people, if there are any left, think Donald J. Trump wanted to spare us undue hysteria. We’ve had three plus years of anxiety, fear, terror and dread. You sleep okay at night wondering about this guy’s finger on the Big Red Button? Even his fixer, Michael Cohen, will tell you this narcissist would say and do anything to stay in office. If cranking up the fear factor would work, he’s all in.

But … in my fair and balanced way, let me add that when he met with the Californians while their forests and suburbs burned, he didn’t yell Fire! No, he assured them that global warming was a hoax and science wasn’t always right. In fact, or something he’d like to think is fact, the world will grow colder instead. Soon. You wait and see, he told us. Great Leaders sometimes have to put a positive spin on catastrophe. And if a positive spin on catastrophe makes a man a great leader, well, need anyone say more? I know I’m feeling a definite chill in the air.

These past few pandemic-filled months, the Pilot Lounge has banned Fox News on its big screen TV so rather than fight over Wheel of Fortune or the Fishing Channel, Jerry the bartender keeps the channel on old sports, Archival Football he calls it, meaning, reruns of long past playoff games and grainy championships back in the day. Keeps the political arguments at a slow simmer, if nothing else.

Two Toke and I like to take the edge off the morning occasionally with a pint or two. When the Flatheads, our vintage car guyz, hold their breakfast meeting at the Yacht Club, we end up becoming honorary Flatheads whether we want to or not. Two Toke drives a battered Ford 150 pickup, circa last century, so he sort of qualifies. You know, if the rust and the flaking paint and the missing tailgate weren’t factored in. Me, my days of wrenching on crappy cars is nothing more than fodder for tall tales and automotive exploits at my own expense, mental and financial. I have a ten year old Toyota truck now, neither vintage or new, just right. It doesn’t break down and as long as that holds, it’s the love of my life. Or was until the mizzus bought a Prius that lately is pulling 70 mpg. I wouldn’t be caught dead parking that hybrid next to Fairlane Fred’s ’57 T-bird or Jimmy’s Hudson or even Wally’s VW microbus with the opera windows. The Toyota Tacoma, okay, I’ll take the ribbing for the ‘bullet holes’ on the sides where my lawnmower keeps catching rocks and flinging them at high velocity when I mow the park I maintain, gives it a gnarly panache, if nothing else. I just tell them I have enemies and leave it at that. They don’t have any trouble believing that.

The nice aspect of a morning pick-me-up at the Pilot Lounge is the morning barkeep, usually Jason the new owner, is the TV is never on. Jason likes the peace and quiet and we do too. The Flatheads, they like the sound of their own V-8 engines rumbling, mufflers belching. “Hey, Jason,” Little Jimmy calls out the other morning when the entire parking lot is filled with antique rigs, “how about we catch a little Fox and Friends for once, get the pulse of the nation?” Two Toke laughed and I ordered my second pint. Jason shook his head, as always when Jimmy made the inevitable request. “The truth, Jimmy? You looking for the truth?” And as always, Two Toke, Jason and I hollered in unison, “You can’t handle the truth!!!”

And as always, the Flatheads filled the joint with their jocular ribbings and hooted catcalls. Two Toke and I pulled our table near theirs. You might as well join em…. we sure can’t beat em.

People ask me all the time why would I want to donate my glass to all these public places around the area. And I used to say, it’s my way of giving back. Which is as trite and idiotic an explanation as a politician leaving office to spend more time with his or her family. Oh right. Their family probably long ago gave up on seeing them and probably stopped caring. They leave office because some scandal or the long arm of the law caught up with them so who’s kidding who? Their family probably is about as happy having them come home to their loving arms as Covid couples enjoy the kids quarantined in their two bedroom rambler.

I even ask myself why I do this, if you want the honest to god truth, not that there is such a thing in post-fact America. When I was starting out trying to make a living creating glass art, I got a job with the WA Art Commission after I was fortunate enough to be juried into their roster on the second try. My handler told me when I was selected not to expect a commission to follow, but a few months later one did. Small, but bigger than what I’d been doing. I turned that small project into a 15 foot by 7 foot curved mural, about four times what the budget would have required. I thought why not do something on a grander scale than a bathroom residential to keep the neighbors from seeing my client tinkle. Even my handler warned me I wouldn’t make any money if I scaled up. I said what, you think I wanted to be an artist so I could get rich?

The second commission came 3 years later, the required wait until us roster candidates could receive another one. Trust me, I was spoiled by that first project and small residential windows and autonomous panels seemed, oh, a lot less satisfying. My next commission was an okay budget, but I gave them a 70 foot by 20 foot mural to fill up their curved front bank of windows. If you want to become addicted to large scale formats, this is how you do it, plunge the horse syringe deep into a vein.

To compete in the world of hungry artists hoping for these commissions, you needed, back then, a slide portfolio of work, usually 10, what now is a digital portfolio. I didn’t have 10, but that 70 footer was proof the guy could do projects of monumental size. Still, I needed 8 more slides. So I donated a few glassworks to the new Visitor Center on the island, the Stanwoodopolis Senior Center, the Camano Senior Center, the Mukilteo Library, the Mt. Vernon train station, to name the first few, and voila, my portfolio was fat even if my bank account was flat. And each one opened another door to a large art project. My foot was firmly planted in that door and I was a finalist for projects from Alaska to Florida. Nothing was too far away and none were too intimidating to keep me from going after them. I was younger then and a lot hungrier. I figured whatever I needed to learn, I’d learn.

Here at home I got stoked after building the Visitor Center and the Sculpture Park that we could turn our little backwash island into the Art Island. We organized an artist group, started a Mother’s Day Studio Tour, put art in the local schools, libraries and senior centers, gave the island a new and not always welcome identity where prior there wasn’t much of one. Why not? Well, I can answer that, but not here, not right now. But in case you’ve never worked with us artists, believe me when I say we’re not good in the sandbox together and so, after too many meetings and egos that would stretch a hatband to the breaking point, I decided to just lone wolf my efforts, skip the board meetings and drop a glass mural here and there like bread crumbs to follow back to some imagined cottage, a terrific time saver and a mental health tactic I recommend highly to others.

So why would I want to donate all this glass? I sure don’t need a larger portfolio now, I’m not searching for a ‘legacy’ and I have my doubts about creating that Art Island. I guess I’m getting older and more cynical. The simple answer is I like working large and there aren’t enough projects and commissions out there now to get my fix. I know, it doesn’t sound noble, doesn’t sound high minded, doesn’t even sound philanthropic. Just another junkie in search of his high. That, or maybe I just don’t want to spend time with my family. And the scandals have yet to catch up to me….

Why on earth, the man asked, would anyone go to Viet Nam when they could stay home and make real money? This from the same guy who asked the same question about folks who went into public service. No big payoff in civil service, no millionaires in the government. Only a dope would work for peanuts. Only losers and suckers and, well, maybe patriots. Inconceivable to him, almost a kind of mental illness. Philanthropy would be a pathology to the man. Public service a neurosis. We were put here to make money, simple as that. You don’t believe that, you need a straitjacket.

Maybe that’s what people who like this guy think too. All those coal miners and farmers and small businesses. Elect a man who tells them he’s a billionaire real estate developer, a man who would lie and cheat and steal to make even more billions, that’s what we want for our President. A man who thinks soldiers who died in World War One and Two were stupid. Losers. Better to take Daddy’s money and parlay it into a bigger pile than get his butt drafted for Viet Nam, then call John McCain a loser for getting captured by the enemy. You can’t make much money in a Hanoi prison camp.

Take a good look at the crowd at one of his rallies, that sea of people with the red MAGA hats, cheering every angry word that spews out of his mouth. They look like folks who had bone spurs to avoid the draft? They look like they figured out how to make their first million? They think John McCain was a loser for getting captured and tortured and still refused to be released if he cooperated? I’m not sure if they’re deplorables or not but I know this, the guy they plan to elect one more time sure is. Fool them once, shame on him, fool them twice, man, what’s wrong with that picture?

Historic preservation on the South End is slightly different than other places. Most areas restore an architecturally significant building — the way folks did in Stanwoodopolis with the Odd Fellows Hall — or you fix up a fancy theater or tidy up the old Pearson House, maybe rehab a train station. Tie a little history to art, throw in a chamber orchestra, occasional theater group, poetry reading — get some volunteers, apply for a grant, hey, we’re halfway there to creating cultural identity.

Down by us we’re toying with a campaign to save the Tyee. The Tyee Store, I mean, an iconic example of 70’s minimalist architecture done in masonry block painted a classic mildewed white with a low sloping shed roof blown off once or twice, and a fully functional outhouse. The store owners weren’t real happy with our ad hoc group to save the Tyee, but considering they’re losing money hand over fist, we plowed ahead. Jack Gunter had already restored the adjoining garage to its present pristine glory, proving that expensive restoration isn’t always necessary for the South End Historical Preservation League.

But it was the EPA that finally derailed our high hopes of creating the Tyee Opera House and Expresso Stand. It turns out those rotating rotisserie deli dogs with their infra-red warming oven carbon tracking for decades, well, apparently it created a super strain of E-coli no known agents can destroy. It was like a culinary meth lab and if they can create bio-suits secure enough to withstand the new strain of unearthly bacteria, they might have a 50/50 chance of burying the place in glass and concrete like a South End Chernobyl. That, or the Defense Dep’t. is interested in expanding it as a toxic agent lab…..

We South Enders are in no danger, we’re told, somehow building antibodies to the superbugs, but we sure couldn’t expose outsiders to the pestilence. So… for the time being our cultural aspirations are on hold. But don’t you all worry. We won’t be stopped. After all, the Elger Bay Store has that early ‘80’s shotgun stripmall architecture that will be stylish in, oh, a decade or so….