The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

When I first moved to the Left Coast, I had a yearning to get myself a motorcycle, learn to ride, then set myself free on the byways of the Cascades. Being poor, I bought a used Honda 350 that hadn’t run in years, wouldn’t start and looked like it was ready for the crusher. I paid $100 for the piece of junk, hauled it back to my house in the ghetto and pushed it down the basement stairs where I could spend some quality time diagnosing why it wouldn’t start over the winter months.

By summer I had the problem solved and so, with the help of my roommates, I hauled it back up and out to the backyard, kick started it into an oily smoke idle and admired the thing in the full light of a Seattle sunny day. Now all I had to do was figure out how to ride it. I called the police and asked what kind of temporary license I would need to take it for some learning spins on their city streets and was told it was illegal, no temporary licenses were to be had. I said how am I spozed to learn how to ride. The sergeant said it wasn’t his problem.

So right from the start I became an outlaw biker, stalling my crappy bike on half the shifts, careening down the mean streets of my neighborhood, searching for large empty parking lots to practice sharp turns and fast starts. Trouble was, my clutch didn’t shift right and every so often the engine would shut off in mid-travel for no apparent reason that I could diagnose. On one of my ventures I came across a fellow biker working on his Harley at Seward Park, tools spread on the parking lot and so I thought why not ask an expert about my clutch problem. He was hard at it in his Joker leathers with his tattoos bulging as he strained to his work, a fellow outlaw. I interrupted him to ask about my clutch dilemma. He looked at my battered scooter and said — I can remember it clearly to this day 40 years later — ‘Get the fuck away from me, man.’ I took it to mean us real bikers fix our own bikes without outside help.

On the way back to my ghetto house I was idling at the red light on Jackson and 23rd when a menacing group of black gangbangers roared up beside me on both sides, about 15 or so, all revving their Harleys as we waited for the green so that I thought I was inside a Boeing 747 engine. I didn’t think this was an initiation test. And I didn’t think it would end well either. The light, after what seemed like an hour, turned green and we all popped our clutches, ready for a tire burning, wheel skidding jackrabbit start … and my bike died right then.

I suppose a lesser man, a man not accustomed to the outlaw biker life, might have been embarrassed. A lesser man might have thought the laughter and catcalls from the black Banditos was too much endure. A lesser man might have junked his prized Honda 350 and succumbed to the temptation to buy a Vincent Black Shadow and show these hooligans who really ruled these mean urban streets. But me, I pushed my spray painted motorcycle ten blocks back to the basement and sold it a month later. For $100. My easy riding days had come to an end. There was nothing more to prove, I guess.

If there was a place worse than homelessness itself, the While-a-While was it. Ancient RV’s, rusted out Winnebagos, Airstreams down on their axles — they all came to die, slowly sinking into the wetlands, grass up to their pitted aluminum windows that seldom opened anymore, a muddy trail leading to the communal restrooms and showers which occasionally all functioned but not usually.

In the summer the While-a-While offered tourists and fishermen some spaces, most without power, for $25 a night. Half the permanent residents had come and for reasons best left for late night binge talk, they ended up trapped there. Milt came 20 years ago in his reconditioned Cortez, a heavy 20 foot industrial RV built when gas was 24 cents a gallon but was now too much for Social Security retirement if he wanted to actually drive it somewhere else. And now it was a rusted relic, flat tires, busted front axle, long dead battery. Milt lived there with his menagerie of cats, half of them feral, all of them breeding like rabbits. Residents who’d ventured inside claimed the place smelled like one giant litter box over a gas burner.

Most inmates of the While-a-While gave Milt a wide berth. If familiarity bred contempt, with Milt it bred outright hostility. He was a hermit now among enemies, most of whom he’d alienated over slights so small they never really understood they were slights and so they concluded the man was a total asshole, a near universal assessment at the trailer park. If you were a dog owner, too bad if they growled or chased Milt’s feline herd. If your politics were left of Genghis Khan, too bad, you were a hopeless radical. If you drank or used drugs, he wrote you off. So what if he’d done more of those than half the park in a quarter of the time — he’d reformed, rehabbed and now was righteous as a born-again preacher.

Maybe we all end up where we deserve at the end of our ropes. If so, the poor souls consigned to the While-a-While probably wished they could have a do-over. But they were there, not to while awhile, they were doomed to quite awhile. With Milt as a neighbor.

My brother and I were comparing notes on our mutual maturity this last visit. I guess we both inherited some genetic predisposition toward hair trigger tempers, something we both thought we had made some progress on holding in check, but of course, we have our stumbles. He was telling me his latest, a sad little story of a woman who didn’t quite make it through an intersection before the light turned red, leaving her blocking the pedestrian crossing.

My little brother was the pedestrian she was blocking. He shook his head sadly before continuing, obviously embarrassed at his behavior at the ripe old age of 64. I cut into his recounting to guess that he had walked across this miscreant’s hood just to teach her a lesson. Which, I told him, I had done once or twice, but you know, when I was less temperate than my mellow self is now. But no, he didn’t stomp across her hood. Instead he walked around behind her car and then, beyond helping himself, he smacked his open hand on her trunk, something I’m sad to say I’ve done plenty of times.

But … this time the lady, startled at the apparent collision from behind, hit her accelerator and plowed into the car in front of her. Day ruined. Car too. My brother said he just put his head down and walked away as fast as possible, feeling like a total you know what. I did know what.

I said my last road rage I had a tailgater crawling up my bumper for a few miles. I tried slowing down but the driver wouldn’t take the hint and inched even closer. This, of course, infuriated me to righteous indignation and finally I’d had more than enough so I hit my brakes without warning, expecting to give my too close friend a little driving lesson that might back him off for the rest of the trip into town. Except instead of braking, the little jerk lurched out into the oncoming lane.

This, like my brother’s anecdote, is an example of Unintended Consequences. People can be hurt or killed, vehicles can be damaged or wrecked. Lessons may or may not be learned. Our combined ages, my brother and I, are 138 years on this little planet. If we both got as old as Methuselah, we probably will still be telling these stupid stories. “So this woman rolls out into the hallway in her wheelchair, see, and blocks my way into the cafeteria and all I meant to do was give her cart a little bump, then next thing you know….”

Now that we’re living lives totally encumbered by the restrictions of Covid-19, I have been forced to adjust, to adapt, to make the best of a crappy situation. What else can a stained glass artist do? I can’t have an audience of wheezy sneezy art fans standing around my table while I cut glass into exquisite shapes and form them into designs that dazzle the peanut gallery, now can I? No, in case you were hesitating there for an answer.

So I took a page from the sports folks. I’m cutting out cardboard life size figures to arrange around the studio. There’s a cute one of Kurt Vonnegut, waving with a thumbs up. Another of Stormy Daniels, which I can’t tell you about if I want to save my marriage. Barack Obama is smiling from the corner and Robert Duvall is sitting on a horse waving hello. Bruce Springsteen has his electric guitar and Bob Dylan has a harmonica. Both are looking pretty damn interested in this new panel I’m working on. Bonnie Raitt is winking at me. You bet I want to cut glass with her.

America’s pastime has to be enjoyed now at a safe distance. Meaning nowhere close to a stadium. Same will be true of basketball, hockey, football and lawn bowling. Why not art? Every time I cut a piece of glass I have the soundtrack of American Idol and WWF Smackdown blasting approval, just like the baseball stadiums. And if by chance I cut a piece poorly, a groan goes up from the sound system that can be heard across the highway. I need to set up a live feed and a podcast, but money is, after all, an issue, and don’t get me going on lost product sponsorships, I know I’m losing out bigtime.

What this pandemic should teach us is how to adjust to the changing times. Sure, I know no potential client will walk through my studio doors for months, years even, but if baseball can survive with non-paying cardboard cutouts filling its stands that don’t buy tickets, I should be able to withstand a drought. Hell, I don’t have employees making 20 million dollars a year. Not even 20 dollars an hour. My payroll is definitely survivable is what I’m saying. I just have to figure out how to monetize this art show.

Course, that’s always been the problem, hasn’t it? I have artist pals who paint a picture, print 50 to 500 copies, sign half of them as Artist Proof, then sell them online for a nice hefty profit. You think anyone is interested in a 2-D rendition of a stained glass window??? Think again, muchacho. I even thought about making a coffee table book of my public glassworks, full color, annotated, nice layouts, signed even by the artist himself … until I calculated the printing costs, delivery charges, the website hosting and realized each book would cost more than my unemployment checks.

I’ve always maintained no one goes into art to get rich. But none of us realized the phrase ‘starving artist’ might be accurate either. Today I’m making a cardboard cutout of Warren Buffet. He’ll be holding a large check in both hands. And you know, don’t you, whose name will be on it. It’s a start….

I suppose police are like health insurance, you don’t need it til you need it. But I have to say, I try my damnedest to avoid them at all costs. Not just because I figure they have better things to do than mess with the likes of me, but because the few encounters I’ve had have been fairly unpleasant. When I reported stolen items a couple of times, they made it very clear that 1. my items were gone forever. And 2. they wouldn’t waste their time filling out a report. Once they even told me they knew who it probably was that stole my stuff, but petty theft wasn’t high on their To-Do List.

I get it. We don’t have a lot of deputies on the island and we certainly don’t have many who bother with the South End. You know what? That’s okay with me. The little crime we have isn’t all that serious, unless driving 50 in the 35 speed zone is heinous to you. Drugs, domestic abuse, petty theft, that’s what we have down here and if it means living without heavy police intervention, fine. When we do have something serious, they call in the SWAT teams, folks who know how to handle felons on the loose. Or neighbors’ girlfriends who go after their low life boyfriend with a gun. The cops here work traffic. I sleep about as soundly now as I did when none were on duty after midnight the first years I came here.

So the protesters on the streets of America have been crying Defund the Police. At first I thought the terminology could have been better. Maybe Re-Imagine the Police. But defund is okay too. Take the money, redistribute it to social agencies, mental health professionals, specialized drug intervention units, shelter for the homeless, all those things cops shouldn’t be doing anyway. And when we’ve defunded half the police force, take the ones who are left, the ones who want to be part of their community as peace keepers and protectors, and train them in those skills. What we have now are heavily armed military minded personnel with way too much testosterone jamming their brainpans. Which they’re encouraged and which is undersupervised. They’re headbangers first, Officer Friendly maybe never.

Are they racist? Sure, some of them. But mostly they’re stationed in the poor parts of town to keep the citizens there under control. Black folks, white folks, everybody who’s down and out. Is there more crime there? Sure, poverty breeds crime. So we garrison the centurions where trouble is most likely to break out. Is this the best way to go about pacifying the crime zones? You ask me, putting a cop on foot who knows the ‘hood, knows the shopkeepers, knows the troublemakers, knows what’s going on and … here’s the deal … knows how to deal with this as a fellow member of the community, his community, chances are he or she can smell trouble and nip it in the bud. Is this liberal snowflake bullshit? Sure, some of it, but we’re learning this month that Stormtroopers tossing gas grenades and shooting rubber bullets is a symptom of something much more troubling going on in law enforcement. Wouldn’t bother me one bit to try something else for a change, look at a larger picture, maybe see if crime isn’t more of a social disease that can be cured, not beaten with a baton.

Down at the Little Church in the Ravine the congregation is gearing up for the End Times. Pastor Paul comes from the Cotton Mather School of Preaching, meaning, he intends to scare the holy bejabbers out of his flock, wake them up before it’s too late and lead them into the nettle-less valley of righteousness. He’s offering Salvation, take it or leave it. Woe unto those who don’t take it ….

Jimmy the Geek’s mizzus listens to these sermons Sunday after Sunday. She recently volunteered to minister to the Little Lambs of Jesus, the youth group that meets an hour before the late service, and Jimmy, an electronics engineer down at the Boeing plant, is at a complete loss what to do about her evangelical fervor. “She wasn’t like this when we got married,” he told our decidedly profane group of sinners gathered at the booths beside the pool table in the Pilot Lounge. “I’m not real religious, ya know, but I agreed to go to church with her. It’s almost a cult what they got down there in the ravine. I didn’t know we’d be drinking Kool-Aid instead of grapejuice.”

“Armageddon, man,” Two Toke pronounced over a tough 8 ball side pocket. Which he missed by a country mile …. Chalking his cue thoughtfully, he commiserated with Jimmy. “Scary stuff, Revelations. Mark of the Beast. Four ponies of the Apocalypse. I been listening to midnight radio lately. Biden’s the anti-Christ and the Middle East is heating up. The Russians are coming in. The Pandemic is the Sign of the Second Coming. Anytime now, they say.”

“Pastor Paul predicts Iran will get the bomb in a year and that’s the End. Jenny believes this stuff,” Jimmy blurted. He waved his empty pint glass at Vic, tonight’s fill-in bartender. Jimmy wasn’t going home soon, it was obvious to all of us and by god we were going to stick with our pal til the glasses were broken or the bar closed. South End Sinner’s Code. “What am I gonna do? I already said I won’t go anymore and now she’s teaching Sunday School too?”

Robbie stopped mid-shot, pointed with his cue and said solemnly, “Call her bluff, buddy.” Jimmy shook his head. Robbie continued. “Give her a year for the End Times to happen. When it doesn’t, time to reassess. Check and mate, dude!”

Jimmy took Vic’s refill the way a pilgrim clutches sacrament. Robbie slammed the 6 ball into the corner pocket with a bang, left himself an easy 2 ball on the side. “That’s what I would do,” he declared.

Two Toke could see his own End Times if Robbie hit the 2 ball. “Easy for a man with no wife, Rob,” he smiled, maybe put a little Doubt on the table. “Faith’s a funny thing. Hard as hell to argue it …”

“Damn, Tom, you want Jimbo to start stockin food and guns?” Robbie eased the 3 into the side with a soft sweet stroke. The 8 ball waited, hard cut, but Robbie was hot, all the confidence in the world. Two Toke groaned, leaned on his useless cue. “No,” he muttered, “I just want him to save a marriage.” Jimmy nodded mournfully. Robbie cut the 8 ball and we all watched it roll half a mile down a long green to the far corner pocket, hang for a breathless second, then drop with a dull clatter.

“End Time, Tom” the shooter laughed and Two Toke slapped a new set of quarters on the felt. If any of us thought we’d solve Jimmy’s problems tonight, it would take more beers than Vic would serve.

A couple days ago I was wandering the garden, something I do a lot more now with the pandemic lockdown, and caught sight of a weirdly shaped bird nest in last year’s bean trellis. Elongated with an offest hole at the top, what I took to be an oriole nest. Having never seen an actual oriole nest, I was pleased to find one and planned to keep it with a few other nests collected over the years. One, a hummingbird nest with two very tiny eggs, I took after realizing the parents weren’t coming back. This oriole nest I carefully cut away the twigs holding it to the bean fencing and mounted it in my shack near the hornet’s nest and a few other museum pieces.

The next day we were inside the studio and Karen kept asking, what is that noise? I didn’t hear anything but she kept asking anyway and finally I went back into the room she was standing in and holy orioley, the noise was chirping coming from that nest! I’d stolen the nest AND the babies! I not only robbed the cradle, I took the cradle too. Orioles are fairly rare in these parts so I felt terrible, guilt-ridden over probably bringing them to near extinction, something akin to killing the last pterodactyl. I felt bad. I felt like an idiot. The nest looked old and I’d just assumed it was last year’s nest. What a moron. What a fiend! Nature is cruel, it sure doesn’t need help from me.

Without much hope of success I took the nest back to where I’d stolen it, reattached it to the bean trellis and hoped, without much reason to have any hope, the parents would return to their offspring. I’d always heard if a bird nest was disturbed the adults wouldn’t come back to it, probably something I heard on Fox News or Breitbart, but what else could I do? Put a notice in the newspaper: Lost Oriole Chicks, Need Good Home? Probably get some coronavirus survivalist who would take them for food, one more layer in the new freezer filled with locker meat.

Well, I went out the day after I’d rehung the purloined nest, not expecting much, but … sure enough, out hopped the mom and I noticed the pop jumping limb to limb in the fir tree behind her, both watching the creep who’d stolen their prodigy, maybe see if he was monstrous enough to try it again. He wasn’t. I don’t suppose they appreciated a parents’ day off while I babysat the kids. No, I don’t suppose they did.

‘If you decide to leave civilization, expect to live without its comforts.’ I don’t know who said that but they were absolutely right. We live down at the bottom end of a skinny island 17 miles from the bridge that connects it to the mainland and all things modern. Shopping malls (before they started closing), restaurants and taverns (before Covid shut them down, schools (before they went virtual), theaters (before the plague hit), all those amenities folks took for granted until the Coronovirus Epidemic of 2020.

I feel sorry for folks, I really do. But … we got our own problems. Down by us we live across the great digital divide. Meaning we finally got DSL internet, not the old dial-up, but because our ‘provider’, and I use that phrase loosely, doesn’t deem it worthwhile to provide better fiber optics this far from Rome, we have very slow internet. Better than the old dial-up, okay, but nothing like you might have expected from the promises our provider made when Ma Bell was broken into Baby Bells. If we try to watch a movie streaming over Netflix, the buffering is nearly as long as most commercials on TV. A two hour movie becomes three hours. Plenty of time to make popcorn, grab another beer (or three), check our email (which is now even slower), use the restroom (even mop and clean it), do the laundry, wash the dishes and take out the garbage. We get a lot done watching a movie we probably won’t even like.

The mizzus ran into the ‘provider’ yesterday, some guy in a truck from the new outfit that bought the old outfit, now called Zipley. What a name! You just know the service will improve. Fast internet? Sure, zipley. The name says it all. She wanted to know, confronting this poor schmuck with the toolbelt laden with every electronic gizmo hanging from his waist, when we’d be getting better internet. He was busy, he told her, hooking up ‘cross cable’ and didn’t really know when, if, why, or how faster internet would be coming to the wild South End. And … he was a little too busy cross cabling to chat with her further. So much for anything remotely resembling zipley.

I don’t know doodley about most things technical. If I can’t fix it with a wrench or a screwdriver or just pounding it on a table or throwing it on the floor, I have no real comprehension. Black boxes are just that to me. Magic electrons, ethereal waves, wifi, routers, servers, providers, very large monthly bills. The mizzus knows this stuff and believe me when I tell you she didn’t like some macho yahoo with a toolbelt talking down to her like she was the little woman at the service desk of a car repair shop telling her her whatchamacallit was acting up and maybe she should sit quietly in the waiting room and read a woman’s magazine until the repairmen had finished. Somebody was cross cabled all right. The trouble was, it was probably us. If you think Zipley implies something speedy, forgetaboutit. It really means zip up yer lip, Lady.

I call my old man every day who just turned 97, about 40 years since his date of retirement at 57, to check in, see how he’s doing. When I ask him what he did today, he invariably says Nothin. He reads a little, watches some news, naps, takes his daily mile walk, makes himself meals and watches movies at night. It’s enough for him, no complaints, no depression and no whining. Life is what it is and he’s not a man with regrets and he’s not someone in search of ‘meaning’. Those who say an unexamined life isn’t worth living haven’t met my old man. Those who say that, you ask me, are full of shit. And I’m one of those who does examine life. I just don’t think it raises me to some higher spiritual plane — if anything, it just overly complicates things.

Today he asked me, as always, what I did today. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘pretty busy. Pretty important stuff.’ He perks up, never really remembering I pull this on him half the time. ‘What’s up?’ he asked, ‘you working on that new glass project?’

‘No, no,’ I reply. ‘That’ll wait.’ He’s talking about a mural I’m supposed to be designing for a Washington Art Commission 1% project. ‘No’, I told him, ‘I was building a scarecrow for the garden.’ This flummoxes him, like usual. ‘What for?’ he wants to know. I say ‘I don’t know. Something to do. The garden needed a watchman maybe. Liven the place up if nothing else.’

My father and I share pieces of our world every day — as does my brother who lives near him. We all 3 look at it differently, maybe everyone does. But what we have in common is that this is what it is. If there’s something More, fine, write back when you find it. But this is plenty. Personally I suspect folks would be happier if they made a scarecrow once in awhile and let the philosophers decipher the rest.

How long, Lord, how long? We’ve been quarantined in this hellhole of the South End now for, who knows anymore, how many weeks, months, possibly years. Same old same old, rinse and repeat. The world has shrunk to an area about the size of a dog’s fire hydrant loop. Trail to the beach, walks back in the woods, the weekly drive to the grocery store with masks on and empty aisles, my path to Tyee Store that’s now closed. Last week I whacked the blackberries back and mowed down a barricade of snowberry bushes, sickled the nettles and salmonberries, all to keep that trail open, you know, just in case the Tyee Megastore ever opens its shuttered doors again. It’s a Sisyphean joke on myself is what I think, but … it adds another mile to the perimeter of my confinement.

Today in a burst of energy, spurred on by a need to Escape, I hacked my way into the back of our property. We only have 7 acres of prime nettle territory, not what you might call an estate, certainly not a vast area of unexplored terrain. And yet … there are places that we rarely traverse, fern shrouded, blackberry brambled wildernesses we just leave for some future shopping mall or an array of condominiums when we depart these mortal coils. Don’t ask me why I decided today was the day to open a path into that heart of darkness. Blame it, I guess, on the Covid. If I can’t go anywhere but here, then by god, what we need is more here.

I started with a sickle, whacking and slashing fern fronds nearly head high, mowing down elderberry and salmonberry and nettles, bucking up old deadfall with a chainsaw, moving logs with a peavey. Inch by inch, foot by foot, yard by yard, my freedom expanded into the jungle. I felt released from my Covid chains, if only by a short trail. I was in unexplored habitat where not even the deer ventured. Lewis and Clark hadn’t passed this way and who knows, maybe not even the natives.

I’m still cutting trails, a couple more already. Eldorado awaits possibly. Or the remains of a deceased civilization. Possibly a blackberry shrouded temple. So far, though, I’ve only stumbled across an old bottle dump, the Barefoot Bandit’s lair and a family of illegal immigrants. I suspect I’ll make important archeological discoveries when I start tunneling. Probably next week. Hopefully I can use the illegals for most of the gruntwork.