The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Maybe it’s old age or maybe just the onset of senility, but lately I’ve been waxing nostalgic, remembering nearly lost memories from the long ago past, wondering sometimes if they’re accurate or simply how I’d like to remember them. A few days ago I was driving the backroads north of here, almost to Canada, when I found myself turning off on Mosquito Lake Road, a curvy stretch of blacktop I used to use getting to my old friend Melinda’s place. She and her biker boyfriend were living in tents and trailers while they built a rickety cabin board by board, added old doors and recycled windows, all one entire summer. I would drive up to help but Paul, her Hells Angel beau, mostly wanted to drink beer. Which we did.

Somewhere around early fall we put the roofbeam up and they finished the roof before the rains of autumn and winter arrived. Melinda had bought the land cheap after the loggers had clearcut her property and the hillside behind which now, with the rain, sprouted springs and creeks, making her homestead a muddy mess. Like myself with my shack and cut-over land, she loved the place, warts, stumps, mudslides and all. She cut firewood and lived alone when she caught Paul sleeping with a waitress down the road and she kicked his sorry ass out once and for all.

Every few years I’d journey back through time and space to visit, but eventually the trips ended and we communicated mostly by Christmas card, once a year, a few paragraphs, she’d married Robert, her mother had died, she got a job driving the Bellingham school bus, she’d built an addition, Robert was found dead in the river after fly fishing, she’d retired, she was pruning bud for a cannabis grower in town, stuff like that, but we kept in touch if barely.

I had a hard time finding the place now, maybe 30 years since the last time I’d walked the log across the creek to her Shangri-La, but finally I found a bridge she’d built, made me nervous driving onto it, but it held and there, tucked into the shelf between the woods and the creek, sat her cabin. A horse munched contentedly in its pasture, flowers filled the property with color, the cabin had been remodeled and looked like a pastoral dream with cedar shakes, paned windows, brick chimney.

Thirty years you can transform a muddy homestead into a reflection of yourself. Melinda certainly had. She squinted at me hopping out of my car, said who is this? and finally satisfied herself I was who she thought I was. We sat by the creek awhile, toured the property, caught up our lives, watched the hummingbirds and bumblebees work the flowers, savored for an hour or two the distances we had traveled. Nothing feels much warmer than old friends. And nothing brings a smile faster than knowing they did okay despite the setbacks. Melinda lives in paradise. And ya know, beauty isn’t just in the eye of the beholder, despite what they say, it is the beholder.

Crabbers are like fishermen, only worse. They’ll exaggerate, lie outright, then tell you the most wild-eyed outlandish whoppers only the chronically gullible would believe. Three Finger Fred loves to hold up his stubs and tell any newcomer who’s unfortunate enough to gravitate into Fred’s barstool orbit, how he was pulling traps in a full gale out of his 10 foot dinghy one terrible November.

“You don’t mean …?” the poor unsuspecting stool neighbor would invariably ask in horror.

“Yup,” Fred would nod, finishing his beer in a final gulp … and ordinarily the newbie would tell the bartender to give Fred another, on him.

“Terrible storm,” Fred would continue once his glass arrived. “Worst we’d seen all year. But I had traps to pull and by god, no storm ever stopped Fred Jensen, not before, not since.” Fred would glance at his victim, raise his glass and toast the courage of a man such as himself. “I almost swamped on the first trap gettin her in. Full pot, top to bottom with the clacking monsters. I no sooner opened the side hatch than half the beasts were in the boat, grabbin on to my boots, crawlin up my rainpants. It was awful those 8 legged bastards all trying to get at me. And the wind was blowin awful too. And the rain was comin in sideways. I knew right then I’d have to row out of there, crabs or no.

“I was kickin em off me, rowing into the wind and rain was an inch deep in the bottom so the crabs were sloshin back and forth and up my legs. About halfway to shore two of the biggest buggers made it up to my chest, clackin those nasty claws, tearin at my life preserver. It was a nightmare, me tryin to row and swat at the beasts same time. I was half crazy … and that’s when the big one got hold of my swattin hand. Took those fingers right to the bone. I had to beat him with the oar before he’d let go.

“My god, man!” his listener would cry, “give this man another drink!”

Fred, of course, would drag the story out until the drinks stopped coming. Sometimes the boat went over crabs, oars and all. Sometimes the crab that amputated his fingers was kept by the U.W. Science Department, it being the biggest Dungeness ever caught in Puget Sound. Sometimes he rowed back out for the second pot, undeterred by blood loss or hurricane winds, a saltier dog than any in song or story.

Usually, though, one of us South Enders would yell down the bar, all of us yahoos laughing and hollering, “Hey, Fred, didn’t you say you lost those in a saw accident?” And another would shout, “Naw, he took em off in a nose picking incident.”

Fred would growl. Fred would swear. Fred would give us the finger … even if it was nothing but the stub. And if it was late enough and he was sufficiently liquified, Fred would tell the saga of the saw. “I was cuttin through this old growth maple, see? Harder than iron and my saw had a 52 inch blade I’d just sharpened, ran it off a Plymouth slant six I’d rebuilt the week before….”

So now we’re treated to crowds of yahoos chanting, not Lock Her Up, but Send Her Back! What part of the democratic process, if any, do these pea-heads understand? Me, I’ve had a dose of ignorance to last me a lifetime. Enuff, I think, to demand an end to it. You want to believe Obama was born in Kenya, I can’t help you. You want to doubt we landed Apollo 11 on the moon, fine by me. You think JFK was killed by aliens from Mars, have at it. But I don’t want you writing the history books, I don’t want you telling me your latest conspiracy theory, I don’t need you screaming en masse that if a person doesn’t agree with your angry imbecility they ought to be deported. I’m sick of it and I’m sick of you. Read a book occasionally. Educate yourself. You think every opinion ought to be treated with equal respect, forget about it. We might agree that you have the right to be stupid, but that doesn’t make your opinion right.

We live in the algorithm of ignorance these globally warmed days. Anger, resentment, bigotry, all combustible fuel in the forest of stupidity, just waiting for a spark or a match or a dogwhistle or two. I won’t say every person who voted for Trump was a racist or even deplorable. I have friends who voted for the carnival barker and yeah, they’re still my friends. But there are a lot of folks who voted for the guy who would just as happily have voted for George Wallace in the day howling about de-segregation, who would vote for Judge Roy Moore even when they knew he stalked under- age girls, who would vote again for Trump full knowing he was guilty of conspiring with Russians and guilty of covering up payments to porn stars and guilty of obstruction of justice. They’re mad as hell and they’re not gonna take it anymore.

Trouble is, they just don’t have much of an outlet other than to rage against the machine. Along comes a demagogue like Donald, pissed off 90% of the time, tweeting his outrage, venting his narrow minded wrath against Muslims and immigrants and liberals and the media, against most everything, even the foundations of democracy. The future looks dim to him and the mob. It was better when the country was white, when Ozzie loved Harriet, when the kids were heterosexual, when cars had huge fins and got 10 mpg, when TV didn’t have sitcoms with people of color or people who were gay or people who looked different than … you know, Us. We didn’t have crime, we didn’t worry about climate change, we didn’t have transsexuals, we didn’t have any problems.

Oh, sure, the Russians and that communism stuff. Maybe some nuclear scares. But Father knew best and the Brady Bunch were a nice wholesome American family. What happened to all that Norman Rockwell goodness? Was it the uppity black folks? Did the immigrants erode the culture? Maybe the women wanting equality? Drugs and the hippie culture and now heroine and meth? Was that it? The American Dream became darker and darker. Jobs paid less. The Mexicans took all the good jobs from our white kids, you know, picking cucumbers and framing houses or working at Motel 6 as a maid. The government maybe, telling us cigarettes were bad, the air was filthy, the rivers were polluted, always the government, the goddamn government telling us what to eat, what not to eat, what was good for us, what wasn’t. Like we were children. Like we were too stupid to know any better.

It’s hard to say, hard to put a finger on it, hard to find the reason things went to hell. But the jobs don’t pay, the kids are on drugs, the kids are hooked on their devices, the kids are addicted to Facebook, the kids don’t want to work manual labor any more, the robots are taking over, the cars are driving themselves, the country is a mess. Hollywood has perverted everything, the media lies about everything, nothing is true unless it’s on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. Something went terribly wrong back when and now, who knows, maybe it’s too late. But along comes this guy, a billionaire TV star, maybe he can fix it. Maybe we got nothing to lose. Maybe he can turn things around. Maybe he’ll drain the swamp.

Well, I got some bad news for you deplorables. He is the swamp.

I might’ve been the only yahoo I know who watched the Mueller hearings yesterday, all 5 hours. Friends told me they didn’t watch, couldn’t watch, wouldn’t watch … and when I asked if maybe they had read the 450 page report, or even the summaries, they said no. There are Senators and Representatives who haven’t either, so they’re in good company.

If ignorance is bliss, welcome to the United States of Happy. Today the Governor of Puerto Rico announced he would resign after emails between himself and his cabinet came to light full of homophobic references, misogynistic attacks, snarky disdain for the survivors of Hurricane Maria, enough to send tens or even hundreds of thousands of islanders into the streets to demand he step down and go away. It made me yearn for a million Americans to march to the Capitol and demand this President of ours go back to his Tower and his golf courses. Course I live in the land of Hee Haw, the Garden of Fantasy, the sovereign nation of Fox watchers, where most of its citizens are merrily cherry picking facts and fervently hoping the next election makes moot the crimes of Donald J. Trump. Or just forgives them and offer him another 4 years.

Mueller didn’t offer much in the way of Netflix binge-watching, just answered questions in a stoic mono-syllabic manner more fitting to a courtroom than a House hearing of high drama. But what he did offer was testimony to prove obstruction of justice, high crimes and misdemeanors, collaboration – if not collusion – with the Russians and Wikileaks and a warning that the election of 2020 will be corrupted the same as 2016’s was. The only drama here was the repeated assertions by the Republicans that the investigation itself was corrupt. Where was the investigation of Hillary Clinton? What about Benghazi? Wasn’t Mueller’s team a bunch of partisans? Who leaked those reports?

Not one rebuttal, not a single refutation, not one defense of the facts laid out by Mueller that this President lied, this President had welcomed stolen information from the Russians, this President had met with them to further his financial gain, this President’s cabinet and staff were indicted and convicted, this President was guilty but could not be indicted himself while sitting in the Oval Office. Not one murmur of denial by these Representatives. No defense other than to attack the messenger.
Puerto Rico might have the right response. Trump may not understand they’re citizens of the United States, but they definitely gave us a lesson in democracy yesterday. We the people. Sometimes you have to stand up for what’s right and kick the bastards out. Obviously, their northern neighbors aren’t going to do it. It’s a shameful state of affairs.

I suppose most of you, at one time or another, have considered printing your own money. Just bypass the greenback of dollar and establish your own currency system. Usually sovereign nations do that, something to do with national interests, but if you were big enough, oh, say about the size of an Amazon or a Google, you might ask yourself why am I bothering with yen and yuan and loonies when I can just go directly to the billions of folks who subscribe to our platform, go directly to the bank we can establish ourselves. And if you’re a digital format, you can jump right into cyber-currency.

Well, Facebook is the first one to pounce on this idea. You’d trust them to handle your money with the utmost concern for your privacy, right? They tell us they’re concerned about all those billions of folks who have Facebook pages who don’t have access to a bank so what they’re doing is offering a service basically for the poor. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Almost philanthropic.

Almost. Mark Zuckerberg isn’t happy with just 2.3 billion subscribers and billions in advertising dollars selling ads and client information. Naw, he’s like Bezos and the Google Boyz, he’s after world domination. There’s something pathologically messianic about these fellows and their techie pals. It doesn’t smell exactly like greed, but more like power. Facebook has a plan to make crypto-currency the new Coin of the Realm. Not enough that their platform makes it possible to manipulate elections here and abroad, naw, they want to become a kingdom beyond the reach of Rome.

I don’t know what these clever little shits will dream up next, I really don’t. A new religion? Artificial Intelligence that enslaves humanity? A cure for the common cold? Our kids are half psychotic with the ‘likes’ and ‘unfriending’ that adolescents take far too seriously. They’re addicted to the social medias, they’re unhappy, they’re stressed to the roof. They’re on anti-depressants at 12 years old.

I don’t think getting hooked on a cyber-currency is going to cure what ails them. What ails them is a world moving way too fast, changing in ways Mark and the Tech Czars haven’t factored in beyond a profit margin, flying off its axis before our very eyes. No wonder they’re depressed. No wonder we are too….

A friend just invited me to join her and her ensemble for a night of reverie at the Stanwoodopolis Hotel’s fabled Karaoke Night. In case you are unfamiliar with the Hotel, count yourself one of the Lucky Ones. The Hotel, ever since I had the misfortune to stumble into the place back in 1977, is what my brother refers to as a Bucket of Blood. Meaning, not so much the violence of the joint, but just a sad watering hole for, well, for want of a better word, losers. Unfriendly losers. Losers with no jobs or jobs they hate. The kind of place where I can order a beer and move to a table in the corner with a notebook, only to find myself harassed by some beer bellied bully for literary pretension. That kind of place.

I once removed myself to their ‘beer garden’, a fenced off area behind the bar outside where the smokers congregate, only to have the first future cancer victim amble up to ask if I had a light. ‘Sorry’, I said, interrupted from my literary pretensions, ‘ I don’t smoke.’ “WHY NOT?’ he roared. This, essentially, sums up the camaraderie of the place. A little later another inebriated patron stumbled over to inform me the peanuts I was shelling from the big 55 gallon drum in the front room weren’t allowed back in the beer garden. ‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘appreciate the heads up.’ He was troubled when I kept shelling the nuts. ‘You can’t do that here,’ he said. ‘Got the message the first time,’ I replied, popping a couple and returning to my notebook. Pretty obviously he was considering some kind of intervention, but ultimately decided I was sober and he was probably going to take the worst of it. I half expected him to return with a posse. The nuts were only partially stale.

Add to these delightful personages the spectacle of drunken singing by folks who fancy themselves Friday night stars, the people who come back week after week for that small slice of the limelight, couraged up with shots of Jack Daniels and a beer chaser, encouraged by their friends. I know, let them have their fun, what business is it of mine? And of course, that is what I prefer to do, leave them to it, not become part of the audience or another singer in a pretend rock and roll band.

In full disclosure I have sung in the fabled Stanwoodopolis Hotel more than once. With the equally fabled South End String Band. It is a tough crowd, trust me. The usual patrons don’t like their haunt invaded by the likes of us and our own fans, not even for St. Pat’s Day. Like most Buckets of Blood, they prefer the company of their own tribe. And when you get right down to it, I guess I do too. The Band skipped the Hotel this St. Pats and I’m skipping the Karaoke Night too. I can always sing in the shower.

Old people like myself, I’ve noticed, love to talk about their ailments and maladies. My old man has made a pastime of medical recounting, nearly a body of literature regarding doctor visits and various pathologies. One night at a dinner party with old friends, ‘old’ being the operative word here, the kids of our friends finally interrupted the incredibly fascinating chronicle of knee injuries, dental woes, eyesight troubles expounded upon by their parents and begged to return to the internecine political wars we’d agreed to put aside and just enjoy our meal. Anything is better than listening to reports of operations, tooth extractions and gastro-intestinal triages, I guess.

I’ve been fairly lucky over the years, not much to report to my geriatric friends or you either. Until yesterday when, are you interested?, I took a whiz and about passed out with the pain. Felt like fire in the tunnel, since you asked. Urine like lava. Kinda scared me. Scared me even more when the next few trips to the bathroom were repeat performances. Usually I avoid doctors, clinics, hospitals, most of the medical apparatus, but damn, this seemed like something that couldn’t be ignored and hope it would just go away with clean living and a little time to heal.

Okay, I thought as I drove the 20 miles to the clinic in Stanwoodopolis, old age has finally come knocking. A couple hours later, one painful pee into the plastic cup and lab results that showed blood in the urine, my doc wrote a script for antibiotics, theorizing a possible infection in the kidney or bladder, if it doesn’t go away, start looking at cancer or prostate problems, chemo, radiation, probably update the will, make plans for cremation, say goodbye to friends and family.

Funny how sitting in a waiting room a few hours with people who exhibit all the malfunctions the human body is capable of can give you, oh, a slightly skewed tilt toward pessimism.

I left the clinic and drove to the pharmacy, stoic on my pity potty, telling myself I’d lived a good life, now it was time to pay the piper. While I waited for my antibiotics, I decided to take one more dreaded piss before the drive home and the pain was barely noticeable. Was I getting inured to pain? Toughened up? Accepting of my fate? After a long wait, I got my pills, took one with my own home remedy, a beer and hit the long road home, now a pitiable metaphor.

Got home still feeling a little sorry for myself, kissed the mizzus thinking, you know, for better or worse on those wedding vows, sat down and helped her clean crab for a late dinner. Last supper, maybe. Woe is me. But miracle of miracles, next bathroom expedition was normal. Pain was gone. Pissing was fun once again. Life was good. I would live! I would live to pee again! Pain free!

I assume, based on my vast medical experience as a graveyard weekend orderly, I passed a kidney stone. My lab tests came back this morning, all within acceptable parameters. I canceled my antibiotic regimen, told the funeral home to put the cremation on hold and said to hell with writing a will. Hopefully, for you and me both, this is the last medical story you’ll get from me for a very long while. Count yourself lucky. Me too!

A few years back I had a bank lady ask me if I minded telling her where the checks I infrequently deposited came from, inasmuch as they were fairly large sums and came from various government agencies. I told her I was a glass artist and these were 1% for Art project payments. The next time I cashed a check she informed me that — and she hoped I didn’t mind her frankness — well, she didn’t much care for the fact I made money that her taxes paid for. Waste of her hard earned money, she said.

I can only imagine how she might feel this year when the new Stanwoodopolis High School goes on-line, probably totally hacked off about whatever art project their committee will choose from the WA State Arts Commission roster, an absolute waste of her tax dollars. My bet is she voted against building a new school, the old one was good enough, just drag in some more trailers when needed.

But as I told her, I don’t think 1% for Art is a waste of money. Oh sure, we could build a cement block Soviet-style school, maybe skip carpeting and ballfields, cut out the performing arts addition, keep costs to a bare minimum and call it good enuff. Nevertheless, we’re the richest country in the world, maybe ought to build architecture that reflects our values and no, a warehouse for education isn’t what I think of as our values. Maybe our public buildings should inspire us, maybe reflect our best aspirations.

Art and architecture to some may seem more frivolity than necessity, but I beg to differ. Great civilizations are judged on their aesthetics more than just their wealth or the power of their military. We remember their sculpture, their music, their writing, their philosophies and yeah, their architecture. And the reason for that is that these represent their values and aspirations in a manner that is both aesthetic and ennobling. Good art tells us who we are as a community and as a society.

Great art and architecture does something more. They contribute to the creation of a public place in the true democratic sense, they give dignity to our workplaces, to our schools and our courthouses with the hope that we might, through the sheer power of a collective aesthetic, inspire in ourselves and our children a vision of possibilities and dreams and higher aspirations. Myself, I don’t consider that a waste of money. Course, I might be slightly prejudiced….

The past month I’ve been watching a pair of eagles down at the Head sitting on two eggs and finally seen those eggs hatch. Two white fluffy furballs, barely the size of a golf ball. The last week the two adults have been leaving the nursery more and more often, no doubt convinced the crib is safe so long as they keep an eye on it from their perches in the firs up above. Good spot for babysitting duties and hunting for food. Crab seems to be high on the menu.

Yesterday I stopped by with a camera and the parents were out of the nest up in the trees. This time I only spotted one chick. When the mom flew in with some rapid clicks, only one stumbled over to her, so I assume something happened to its sibling. Crows maybe or just starved to death, who knows?

Couple of days ago I went down to Cama Park to see the elephant seal pup sleeping on the beach. God only knows where the mom was, but the 500 pound seal was seemingly doing okay, cordoned off from the park humans so it could molt and finally slip back out to the sea. Nice to think of us humans being protective….

Today I was down by the garden and those pesky wabbits were hopping all over the yard. I hid behind a plum tree and caught an unsuspecting bunny by the legs. It screamed its bunny scream and immediately momma came loping around the corner, circled closer and closer to me holding her wiggling baby. I sat still, bunny in my paws, close to the ground, curious what she would do. I know, kind of a cruel experiment. You may think a rabbit is a cowardly creature, fearful, timid, but trust me when I tell you she finally raced over to me and gave the hand holding her kid a good bite. Served me right. I let her pup loose and the two of them went back to hiding in the garden where they could bite my beans and lettuce.

Last week I had found a hummingbird nest hidden in the bough of a cedar tree near our outhouse. For a few days I would walk by and the sitting adult would jet out of the nest and wait for me to pass. But one day I noticed no bird exiting. Or the next. Or finally the subsequent days after. I presume the parents were missing in action. Just left two tiny eggs in a nest lined with moss and lichen that would never hatch.

A couple hours ago I was back to the eagles’ nest. This time I spotted the second chick being fed morsels of a fish the parents had caught. Talk about relieved. I guess watching these guys for a few weeks had given me a keen paternal interest in their welfare. When I first arrived I found a fellow birdwatcher, a woman crouched in the brush. “Excuse me,” she called out, “I’m taking a piss.” I told her I was moving right along, no problem. We ended up watching the eagles together.

“You live around here?” I asked. She said she was living in her car. Her father had lived on the island, but he had died and her sister had sold the house and kept all the proceeds. Her sister, she told me, had run off with her husband and now her ex and her sibling were trying to have her committed to a mental institution. We watched the eagles for about half an hour, waxed philosophic about birds and cheating husbands, then bid adieu. I said good luck with all this. She said things would work out. I sure hope so, I said. But between you, me, the rabbits and the hummingbirds, I sort of doubt it.

Direct from the bully pulpit, our Fearsome Leader has some advice for the liberal women who think he ought to be impeached and put behind bars: Go back to the hellhole countries you’re from. If you don’t like it, if you don’t like your President, go home and take your #MeToo attitudes with you!! Great advice from the man who claims he wants to unite the country.

I have a bandmate who’s half Ojibway Indian. She was sitting next to a woman recently who was ranting about the tribes in our area building malls and casinos, renting houses on their reservations, taking half the crabs and clams and salmon and she was fed up. Sick of these redskins and their un-American ways. As she got wound up, the madder she got until finally, exasperated, she says to my bandmate: Why don’t they go back where they came from!

If ignorance is bliss, we’re living in Paradise these days. My friend pointed out, probably quietly, that they have gone back to where they came from. She probably did not tell the lady next to her to maybe go back where she came from. Trump, of course, He Who Never Apologizes or Admits Wrong, doubled down today when the four Representatives explained they were actually from here, a place we call America. To assume these four women of color were from what he’s referred to as ‘shithole countries’ smacks of xenophobic racism. Trump excoriated by tweet that these women still need to leave and furthermore, clean up their despicable language. I looked up shithole and sure enough, it still is a vulgar term.

Since three of these Representatives were born in America, the other a war refugee, I can only assume Mr. T is calling the United States a shithole country. Give the man another four years and I think he’ll be proven right.