The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Merry Christmas, Everyone! I guess it’s okay to say Christmas, but if you find that offensive, Happy Holidays! This has been a great year for the Daddle family and as we do every year, we like to share our glad tidings. Daughter Brenda went back to community college after her degree from Swarthmore proved less than marketable. She is taking Business Accounting and expects to find much better prospects after graduation. We told her English Renaissance History narrowed her career chances, but you know kids these days. A year working for Burger King convinced her to change her major. Even with the minimum wage increase that’s coming.

Son #1 Jeremiah served his 9 months and two weeks at the Snohomish County Jail for some breaking and entering. Drugs! You think you’ve warned them about the consequences but they think we’re just old fogies. Jerry should be fine after his Narcotics Anonymous regimen. For the time being he’s comfortable in the basement apartment Linda and I set up. Sure, I miss the pool table, but family always comes first! And it’s great to have him home again, even if we have to lock up our valuables.

Son #2 has joined a religious commune down near Santa Cruz. Brian is not supposed to contact his earthly family so we haven’t got much news to report. Occasionally he writes for money and we are happy to help out. Well, Linda is, I confess it irks me no end to send that little twerp anything beyond a message to Wake Up! But these things too shall pass, isn’t that what they say?

Linda is doing much better this year. As you might remember she struggled with some mild depression. Empty nest syndrome is what I thought it was, nothing she wouldn’t pass through soon. Boy, was I ever wrong this time! But her doctor has her on some very effective medications and her crying has greatly lessened. Jerry has been a great help. Sometimes he even makes his own lunches.

Retirement, as a friend of mine likes to say, is greatly underrated. Oh, I struggled a little with boredom at first. Like everyone. But right after my heart attack in February (not to worry, I’m okay, just a couple of stents) I started walking more. You know I never really liked exercise of any sort, but that ticker-tweet kicked me in the butt to get up off the couch and get outdoors. I’ve been walking every day. Truthfully, I walk almost all day. Linda says I’m obsessed, but I say a walk a day keeps the cardiologist away. I tried to talk Linda into walking with me, but she says 20 miles is too much for her. Ha ha. Her sense of humor is coming back!

We did make a couple of trips this year. One to Santa Cruz to see Son #2 at his Seeing Orb Commune, but we were told at the security gate no one was allowed inside, not even parents. Admittedly things got slightly out of hand and the sheriff’s office had to intervene, but in the end I settled down — without some damn mantra — and we drove to the coast and stayed at a very nicely restored auto court overlooking the beach before driving back home.

We also attended a Trump rally in October up at Lynden. The man can connect with an audience, I’ll say that, and we were happily surprised when he won on Election Night three years ago. He’s making America great again and even though I know some of you didn’t vote for Mr. Trump, I think you must to be pleasantly surprised. The business of America is business and this is a billionaire businessman. Okay, enough politics….

Hope you and your family have a warm holiday. We in the Daddle household are going to make Christmas Great Again. It will be Yuge, as Donald says. Ha ha! I mean Ho Ho! Love at ya! Linda and Jeremiah and Skeeter

Breakfast at the Diner is usually a war zone, but the other day things heated up hotter than Big Larry’s grill sizzling with 10 pounds of bacon. Jimmy the Geek mentioned that his mizzus had heard Pastor Paul down at the Little Church in the Ravine preaching that Christmas was under attack. Walter chimed right in. “You can’t even say Merry Christmas now,” he declared to everyone in the place. “Starbucks gives you a red cup, no words, they’re so %#@>&* politically correct. It makes me want to puke.”

“Settle down, Walter,” Anita warned him as she refilled his coffee. “We don’t have anything written on our cups either.” Two Toke, ever happy to tweak Walter, asked him when he last went to Starbucks. “I thought you were boycotting the Yuppies, Walt.”

“You bet I am! This mud in a mug is all I need,” he declared, brandishing his cup like the gun he carried with his concealed permit. Walter’s ready for battle, trust me.

Down here in Holiday Central, the South End, we love Christmas. We love muzak, we can’t get enough of month-long advertising, we feed like candy canes on Bing Crosby and another viewing of It’s a Wonderful Life. We practically dress in tinsel and we don’t care who’s naughty or nice. Christmas! Most of us leave the strings of colored LED bulbs draped on the gutters and eaves all year round. So when we hear there’s a war on Christmas, you better believe we get up in arms, concealed carry or not. What Grinch wants to ruin our party? we asked ourselves. Couldn’t be WalMart. Couldn’t be the Little Chapel. Couldn’t be TV and their sponsors. Who would want to kill our buzz? Who hates Christmas???

Two Toke said even the South End Greenworks was in full holiday hype, selling faux mistletoe bundles of thai sticks. Flathead Fred’s mizzus had stood in line Thanksgiving midnight waiting for shopping sales at Elger Bay Store’s Black Friday super sale. Flathead avowed that if there was a war on Christmas he sure didn’t see one. Walter shouted “Open your eyes, Fred! The government hates Christmas!!”

Well, we boys at the Diner must be conscientious objectors, cause we couldn’t see a skirmish, much less find that war. Tyee Megastore is open early and closing late. Our stockings are hung with care as always, it’s snowing once again in Bedford and Jimmy Stewart isn’t going to kill himself this year either. Down here on the South End we’re all dreaming of a White One. The rest of you, take cover!

Call me a cynic and slap me with Greta Thunberg’s last report card, but listening to some guy on NPR who had a startup company whose mission was to counsel folks on their carbon footprints, I felt the way I do when I hear about people who pay money for ‘life counseling’. Probably just entrepreneurial jealousy, wishing I’d thought of it first. Kinda like wanting to be the first used car salesman. Or the guy who sold his art-lined cave to another Neanderthal and took a small fee.

Greenland is melting 7 times faster than it was in the 90’s. I get it, by god, I definitely Get It. The world is going to hell in a hurry. The ocean’s are rising, the hurricanes are wicked stronger, the earth is getting wilder. I don’t need a weatherman to tell me which way the wind blows, it’s blowing down my house, but thanks anyway, Bob.

This tree hugging capitalist figured folks needed a bit of guidance to assist them in navigating the labyrinth of politically correct and green purity avenues that confront and befuddle us modern folks. We’ve fretted nights worrying if we should use plastic or paper, buy organic straws, purchase a hybrid or a full electric vehicle or just walk to town. Should we convert to propane or stick with electric furnaces? Does it make sense to order from Amazon or just shop at the local hardware? Is it better if we order milk in a glass jug and have it delivered? Aluminum or glass? Paper or plastic? Hamburger or Beyond Meat patty? Fly or stay home? Newspaper or internet? Hybrid Prius or 640 horsepower Dodge Charger?

What is an environmentally conscientious yahoo to do? Get a Green Counselor, amigo, that’s what! He can map out a more gas saving route to work than the one you have now. He can tell you to skip having that fifth kid. He can reduce your carbon footprint from Sasquatch to baby print. And … you’ll sleep better knowing that you, one of the billions of people on this warming planet, is doing your bit. Guilt will slide off you like sweat off a Malaysian boat stripper. You may not save the planet, but you will win arguments with your less conscientious pals. And isn’t that worth the money spent?

Many and varied are the dangers of crabbing on the South End’s Puget Sound. As well I know. Most are natural hazards, but, considering we’re South Enders, born and bred, nearly as many are self-inflicted. A month or so ago I was out in the killing fields, about a quarter mile row when I noticed water collecting at the bottom of my crab boat. I figured a small leak, one that I would no doubt patch, you know, eventually. In my own good time. Later. But only a few minutes went by before the puddle was now a kiddie pool. I tried hoisting my shoes against the side of the boat to keep them dry, but finally I had to remove them, tear off my socks and roll up my pants. Obviously, at least to a grizzled old crabber like myself, this was no little leak.

Later would have to be Now. Well, astute as I am, I quickly diagnosed the problem. The plug in the transom bottom had fallen off and half of Saratoga Straits was pouring into my little 12 foot boat. Any neighbors watching from shore with their livingroom telescopes would probably think my catch was so bountiful the boat was settling half a foot into the waters from the sheer weight of gigormous Dungeness, a haul they dreaded I might turn into a Homeric mythology, boring them for the rest of their retired lives.

Trouble was, I couldn’t find the missing plug. Had it dropped out back at the bulkhead? I stuffed a handkerchief into the hole, which helped some, but I needed that plug. Perseverance, right next to improvisation, is a trait we South Enders have in abundance. Panic was not going to stop me from reaching my pots, that’s for damn sure. Submersion, however, might. I needed that plug.

Which I found under the seat among old crab claws and and clam shells and rotted bait. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I got to thinking I needed to draw one up, notarize it, maybe that afternoon. Crabbing, like I said, is risky bizness.

Today I planned to pull my pots for the season. Winter crabbing has been poor, the winds and storms are frequent, the dangers are magnified. Most of the time I’m out there with no other boats in sight, no chance of a sea rescue if a mishap occurs. In fact, the wind had come up a bit by the time I reached the bulkhead, but — have I mentioned Perseverance as a South End trait? — I pressed on, lowered the boat onto the shore, loaded up and pushed off.

I once lost an oarlock out there. You ever tried rowing a boat with its most dangerous catch back to shore with one oar, winds roaring in your ears and no one around, believe me, you will understand the words of Gordon Lightfoot’s song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. ‘Does anyone know where the love of God goes When the waves turn the minutes to hours? ‘ Well, a South Ender does.

But I digress, as usual. Today I was pulling hard on the oars, fighting waves and current and killer whale attacks, undaunted as always, my very own Captain Courageous … when I felt the right oar go catty wampus. Trust me, my first thought was the oarlock, but no, it was intact. I stroked again both oars and noticed, keen-eyed that I am, the end of one oar was missing. Actually, it was floating away from the boat and I had basically a long stick left. You ever tried rowing a boat with one oar and one stick, trust a salty dog on this, it’s not good seamanship. Any sailor with salt in his veins knows that if he knows anything. Even a South Ender.

Well, sir, you probably guessed I made it back to shore okay or I wouldn’t be sitting here in drydock regaling you with another adventure. Sure I could embellish the story, keep you in suspense, but by now you’ve come to expect Houdini-like escapes, hair raising cliff hangers, impossible catastrophic aversions. Truth be told, I was three feet from shore. Just jumped right out of that scow of mine and dragged it back to the beach. Crabbing — you just never know what the next peril will be. Even if it’s of your own making….

I got a friend who was bothered that we spent tax payer dollars, HIS tax dollars, to conduct a survey of the island, maybe find out how many people are homeless here in Shangri-La-La. If you think if this bothered him, imagine what his irritation level will be when the next step pops up: funding for shelters or god forbid, small houses. Out here on the Left Coast we have warmer winters than most places back east so homeless folks can survive a bit easier without frostbite or hypothermia. From Seattle and Gomorrah to San Diego, our cities are crowded with people living in their cars, in tents, huddled over heat vents, hiding under freeway overpasses and back alleys, entire families struggling to stay alive in whatever shelter they can scrounge up.

RV’s can be found lining multiple blocks, rusted and busted vehicles that no longer run, without water or power or sewer, without garbage pickup, without most of what the rest of us in the Land of Plenty have in abundance. But … there are those who find no compassion for these American refugees, no sympathy for their plight, no pity for the poor. If my pal is any indication, the best remedy is to keep them out of sight and out of mind and definitely away from his wallet and tax dollars. He believes the ‘homeless situation’ is a hoax, just a ruse to use tax money for bogus bureaucratic bullshit. He asked me if I had ever, ever, known anyone on this island who was homeless. I said of course. Stinky Steve, for one. My heroin addict thief for another. And that was only on the South End. Up north, closer to town, there were plenty more than that.

I’m not on the homeless census count committee. And I doubt it’s epidemic here yet. But on any given day the Food Bank is open, the number of folks seeking handouts is incredible. Most have apartments, I’m betting. Some might even own a house. But there must be plenty who haul their bounty back to a tent or a shed somewhere back in the woods. Why begrudge them these morsels? Why go ballistic over trying to count them and, god forbid, even help them in some small way. We’re not going to build them a 3 story house and buy them a BMW so they can feel like a part of our community. Although maybe if we did, they’d side with my buddy and stop all future funding for those other leeches who want a free ride. Maybe I’ll try that argument on him, see if it works. Cause I want this whining to end. The rich have got to stop complaining!

One of the curses of being wired to the world in our modern, advanced civilization, the one we think of as the zenith of mankind’s endeavors, is feeling like what happens in some village in Indonesia somehow should be of interest to me. ‘Honey, I shrunk the world’ should be the theme song to every YouTube, Yahoo News, Facebook and Google feed. It’s important to stay tuned in, I suppose, maybe know what the folks in Tierra del Fuego think of the recent killing or the Estonians are doing about Russian meddling in their politics. Hard enough when we’re swamped with news stories here in our own little country, everything from impeachment hearings to the latest mass murder in some town we may or may not have heard of before the media rolled in to cover the mayhem.

It’s not only exhausting, in case you didn’t notice, but … well, it’s a constant distraction from living your life. When I first dropped anchor on the South End, I didn’t have a television, much less a computer. We had a telephone and a stereo that played cassette tapes and records. The telephone was on a party line with a mom and her teenage daughter. In other words, we really didn’t have a telephone that was usable, not with that single mom and her chatty daughter using it 24/7. Not that we really had many people to call anyway….

I bring all this up because the last few days I’ve been sliding back into those early years. It’s winter and the days are short and getting shorter. Back then we did a lot more reading, I played a lot more music, we did a lot of hiking the beach and the woods, time was plentiful and we had to find ways to fill it without resorting to the babysitter we call internet. Early this morning I walked down to the beach with some crab bait, rolled my boat over and lowered it into the water, then rowed out to my pots. Mt. Rainier was perfectly framed in the Straits, golden glaciers in the sunrise glowing majestically. A half dozen cormorants watched me from a raft moored far out from shore and the gulls waited to see what I would toss them from the bait traps when I got to my pots. The now familiar seal that follows the wake of my rowboat kept popping up and checking on me, each time eliciting a bark from me, not maybe a real good impersonation of a seal bark, but he was listening. A fogbank beyond Whidbey lay like a dropped blanket at the foot of the Olympics, those mountains now immaculate with new snow after a summer of melt. Nothing much but me made noise. My oars dripped a line of water each stubborn stroke, circles falling back following small whirlpools both sides. The world was perfect. And I was in it. Not distracted, not jumping to the next crawler or ad, just a tiny sliver of the world with me pulling at the oars, gliding through it.

We’ve lost that, I think, now that I’m back on shore, back up at the house. We’ve let it slip through our fingers because we’re bored, we’re lonely, we’re forever looking for something to fill up the space between the last thing and the next thing. But it’s like calculus, the intervals get smaller and smaller, but they never become Now. Now is now. Some days, like today, I remember where to find it.

I was out on the road the other day trying to sell the last of my Skeeter Daddle Diaries, the second printing. I’m about as good at door to door sales as I am at hedge fund managing. Me and money don’t really mix, I’ve learned slowly over a long life without an MBA degree. Neither of us trusts the other….

I meet folks — even down here on the indolent South End — who knew shortly after teething that they wanted to make money, get rich, retire early. They didn’t go to college and spend four years on a Philosophy degree. They picked careers in law or dentistry or finance. You don’t drill for water in the Sahara, that’s what they understood.

Me, I always thought I’d rather do something I loved doing. Call me naïve and slap me with an IOU, but I figured there was always a job, even a miserably low paying one, that would pay the bills and allow me to pursue some quaint interest or other. So I took English, majored in literature and poverty, then stepped off the educational track years later with a nice solid background in arts and history and yeah, literature, then promptly discovered I had virtually NO marketable skills. Kind of a shock. You kind of figure if they sell you a degree, there be a placement.

I worked awhile in a dog pound, ran a cafeteria, drove metro buses, wrote poetry and short stories that got published for, oh, nothing, drove school buses, seriously considered graduate school (maybe get a PhD. in Unemployment or Swahili), moved around a bit, lived in shabby apartments, ate a lot of macaroni and cheese. To be honest, I didn’t mind. What I did mind was not finding the exact perfect job that fulfilled some as yet undiscovered passion in life. Four years at a university and I sure didn’t find it. Now I had to do it AND work crap jobs looking.

I can tell you youngsters — in hindsight — the only thing worse than some crummy job is looking for the next crummy job. But I can also tell you — and don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Perfessor of Smartology — if you settle for the money, or the security, or the health insurance benefits, or the pension, you’ll maybe be satisfied, possibly even happy, but you will never find the thing that makes working really worthwhile. It took me plenty of dead end jobs, too much macaroni, far too many bad bosses, but in the end, you’ll persevere. Probably not rich, but trust me on this, a helluva lot happier.

I’ve known some folks on the South End who didn’t own a car, incredible as that seems. And this was back before the Island Transit free buses plied the highways. They’d hitchhike or walk, they’d ask for rides at Elger Bay Store. Some rode bicycles. They weren’t making some ecological, enviro ‘green’ statement — they were just poor. And without transportation, they kept getting poorer since there weren’t many local jobs.

A lot of us South Enders commute. Seriously commute. After my one night at the Twin City Food assembly lines and a mangled arm, I quit and found myself in a familiar predicament: unemployed with no prospects for work. Just about when I hit rock bottom and figured I’d need to move to Seattle just to keep my homestead, I got a graveyard job at Everett General Hospital as an orderly two nights every weekend. 40 miles one way. I thought it was a trip to Oregon every week, an adventure in my old ’60 Chevy Apache pickup that needed constant mechanical attention, often on the side of the road.

Maybe it’s an indication of just how paradisical the South End is that we’ll drive to Hell and back just to live here. The missuz drove 75 miles to the University of Washington Library in Seattle for her job. I knew folks who drove to Tacoma, over 100 miles away, to find work that paid enough to keep their piece of Shangri-La-La. Course, they probably never saw it in the light of day —- mostly just imaginary real estate, sort of exactly like Heaven. Maybe without the streets of gold.

My own commuting days are about over. Walk down the hill to the workshop, fire up the woodstove on cold days, go back up for the third cup of coffee and wait for the place to warm up. Sure I miss those drives through the farmlands, the tulip fields, over the rivers and past all those Puget Sound views and the volcanoes and the mountain ranges. But my truck’s gonna last a decade or two longer and if I get real nostalgic about the good old days of commuting, I just take a road trip, you know, without the 8 hour shifts at the end.

I decided, in the dreary months of the monsoons, to while away the sunless days by learning a new trade. If you read what passes as medical news, you’ll no doubt know that exercising the brain is supposed to thwart dementia, Alzheimers and probably premature hair loss, something to do with synaptic heat generation upstairs. Course, like with physical exertion, it’s best to go slow, work into it, don’t strain, know your limits — all that cautionary advice — before you tackle, oh, quantum mechanics or the future subjective clauses of Swahili.

So I detoured away from Kantian philosophy or a complete study of Middle Eastern history from the ancient Assyrians to Modern Israel. I’d keep it simple, South End, just baby steps toward a rich and complex intellectual pursuit of, well, who cares? Crossword puzzles, they say, work as well as anything. Why not learn words that no one ever uses? Me, I decided to build a banjo. I can guess what you’re thinking. I can guess because the missuz thought the same thing.

A banjo is a simple device, got a drum attached to a skinny neck with strings you whack and the thing makes a rhythmic caterwaul that you either tap a foot to or you want to stomp on with that foot. You could attach a cigar box or a cookie tin to a 2×4 and tie some wire and when you got done, it would sound pretty much like a banjo. Hell, it would BE a banjo. And sure, I could’ve done that, I could’ve taken the Easy Road, but … the point is to avoid Dementia, not embrace it. So I set out to build not just a banjo, but a work of art. And hopefully … one I could play.

I thought I’d apply my limited luthier skills to this, then probably move on to maybe cellos, make the missuz a grand piano, then when my intellectual stamina was up to it, move on to a new theory of music based on atonalities, discordant triads and a rap musician-on-meth’s rhyming Simon phraseology. Roll over Alzheimer, give Beethoven the news…

I write this after a month of whittling necks, carving pegheads, cutting saddles and nuts and armrests and dowel sticks, all those ephemera you’ll never use outside the NY Times Crossword Puzzle. But I had to design them, laminate and saw them, fit them, adjust them …. more than once, more sometimes than twice. For a novice, this is like flying to the space station — but you need to build the vehicle. And somewhere, oh, maybe when you ignite the propane canister boosters you think will propel you through the first layer of the atmosphere, you realize, far too belatedly, it’s not Alzheimers you should fear, not dementia, not even South End Senility.

No, it’s insanity. And if you could only forget … if the memory of this was forever lost … you might feel blessed. But you’ve closed that avenue now. You’ve got the synaptic strength of a hormonal teenager. And so, sadly, I plow on. I’m building acoustic guitars now. Certain, I want you to know, that I’ll learn from all my mistakes.

When I was a kid, I don’t remember the weather folks being quite as apocalyptic as they seem to be now. Snowmageddons, polar vortexes, macrobursts, haboobs, thundersnows, bomb cyclones, firenadoes — the weather is not your friend these days. Is it because every weather event other than mist or sunny days is now attributed to climate change? Every flash flood, blizzard, hurricane, tornado and earthquake is usually followed by the obligatory addendum that the weather is becoming more unpredictable because of global warming. What we used to call where I came from, ‘variable’, a term we used facetiously to make the obvious point that weather changes about every day. A rainstorm rolled in after an afternoon of sun, we said, ‘sure is variable, this weather!’ We just never knew what was around the corner.

Now we keep records. We have satellites in geosynchronous orbit to keep an eye in the sky for what’s coming next. And we got computer simulations to make pretty accurate predictions days ahead of time. We know that 100 year floods come every other year now, hurricanes crank up to Category 5 more often and twice as fast, the polar vortexes drop further south and the haboobs look like latter day Dust Bowl versions. Last night on our TV weather the meteorologist warned us about temperatures dipping below freezing and, hold on to yer hats, the wind gusts would exceed 10 mph. Be prepared! he cautioned us sternly, this is serious and dangerous.

Seriously dangerous? C’mon, maybe if I go out in my birthday suit and jump in the sprinkler…. But hey, if it were really hazardous to my health, wouldn’t it have a name befitting the monstrosity of the meteorological event, something that would put the fear of god and climate change right into my bones? Category 11 CryoWind maybe. Or Force 7 Chillnado! Do NOT try to reach your car in the driveway, you will be hyperthermed in the time it takes to get your key in the lock. Stay indoors and hope to heaven the power doesn’t go off and you have no furnace to save your lily soft ass. Stay tuned to your television. Public announcements will be made every ten minutes. The news is not good. Bundle up, pray to your god and await further developments. Bombogenesis! The End is Near. If that doesn’t do you in, the pollution haboob will. Have a nice day. And keep your windows rolled up!