The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

If there is a more devolved creature on God’s green earth than a used car dealer, it’s got to be a rental car service rep. I’m in L.A. waiting for a car I reserved, but, oh, we’re sorry sir, we don’t have one available. They tell me they’ll have one in 30 minutes so here I sit an hour later as rush hour traffic builds, something I’d hoped to avoid by flying in early. What do you do, what do you say? You gonna walk??

These lowlifes have more scams than dogs have ticks. Extra insurance, cheap gas if you let them charge you for a fill-up as if it were on Empty, all kinds of bogus deals for the unwary or those in a hurry. RENTER BEWARE ought to be in large block letters over every Budget, Alamo, Avis, Bend-Over rental agency in America. I blew a tire in Arkansas on a car with over 30,000 miles and was charged for a new tire that I spent a day rounding up, ordering and finally getting it put on even though the old one was 75% used up. Sure, I argued politely. Course I asked to speak to the manager who explained patiently that since I hadn’t purchased the insurance policy (an amount approximately equivalent to the cost of the tire) I would have to pay for a new tire. He even agreed, finally, that, yes, it was unfair to charge me full price for a tire nearly beyond its expected lifespan. And then he said, “Here’s what I’m gonna do. Take some coupons for a discount on your next rental.” Well, there’s a sucker born every day but I don’t plan to be born again, not with religion and definitely not with rental car goons.

A nice couple sat next to me on the bench reserved for Suckers. Same deal, same scam, same sorry story. Their car would be arriving, oh, oddly enough, about when mine was expected — an hour ago. My guess (and I didn’t want to depress them any further than the depth they’d already sunk to) was we’d both get the same car, kind of a ride share deal. I’m just hoping we’re going in the same direction….

When the investigation on Hillary’s emails was completed, the GOP and Trum demanded to see the full report. They didn’t get the Reader’s Digest condensed report, they got the unredacted entire enchilada. If that wasn’t complete enough, they grilled her for 11 straight hours. And when it was over they chanted Lock Her Up, Lock Her Up! It would be mind-boggling to watch these hypocrites defend the notion that we have all the information we need on the Mueller investigation based on a 4 page summary by an Attorney General whose stated position prior to getting the nomination was that a sitting president can’t be indicted for matters such as obstruction of justice — until you remember we are 3 years into the Trump era where facts are ridiculed, news demonized, political enemies are mocked and bullied. Hypocrisy? Gimme a break.

Yesterday all 9 Republican members on the House Judiciary Committee called for Adam Schiff’s resignation for being too partisan, this from the boyz who demanded to see complete FBI reports on various topics and whose chairman at the time, Nunes, dropped them off after dark at the White House. Hypocrisy? Gimme another break.

Schiff countered their unanimous demand to step down with an item by item detailing of Trump’s transgressions, a list that laid out the case for future legal problems for Donald and said of each, ‘some may find this okay.’ At the conclusion he told his smirking and whispering accusers that he was NOT okay with it and that when we accept these actions of the President, that will be the day America has lost its way.

It is heartening to hear a full throated defense of justice when a lot of us are beginning to think we’ve already lost our way. I know there are days when I want to throw up my hands, turn off the news and just walk the beach. Trump called Adam Schiff ‘Pencil Neck Schiff’ at a ‘Victory Lap’ rally in Michigan shortly after. Some may find this okay — and most of the crowd did — but … I’m not okay with this. I can only hope most of us never will be. The man needs to go … and so do his Enablers.

I’m flying the friendlier skies out of Paine Field in Everett this morning, avoiding the gauntlet of megalopolis through Seattle and Gomorrah and driving into a two gate airport with a TSA checkpoint line shorter than a McDonald’s at midnight. In other words a nearly enjoyable experience after our last misadventure on icy roads trying to make a flight out of SeaTac … which we missed after over an hour in their TSA cattle line. A long day, that one.

Course in a few hours I’ll land in LAX and fight rush hour traffic to push through Los Angeles gridlock to where my final destination waits open-jawed further north. But for now, like the stewardess says, push back and enjoy the ride. My seatmate is a four year old girl engrossed in her personal device, some game gizmo impersonating as a cellphone, her fuchsia glitter tennis shoes tapping occasionally to the beat of a thumb 20 times more dextrous than mine, manipulating icons in whatever game of solitaire she’s queued up until her short attention span changes the game. She has no more interest in me than the man in the moon, four years old and already marching to the Pied Piper’s walled cave with all the other kids.

Here’s another perk with a small airport: we back out onto the tarmac, rev up the engines and skip the 20 plane taxi. We’re always going to be the first in line on the jetway.

Off to the side a group of the Boeing 737 Max jets that were grounded after two crashes sit in a row with the Olympics as backdrop, waiting for a software fix to prevent their computers from misreading anti-stall demands causing the nose to ‘porpoise’ before plunging to the ground. My seatmate, innocently unaware of the lethality potential of planes certified by their same manufacturers, is busy learning the skillsets necessary to find work right here in her hometown. I’m just glad we’re both on this plane, not one of those. Strike One against self-flying planes, trucks and automobiles, but … it won’t be long. My seatmate will just take it for granted. Driver’s license? She won’t need no stinking driver’s license. Her fingers will do a lot more than just the walking….

Now in case you’ve taken up residence under a rock, you’ve probably heard the news. The State is in the preliminary planning stages to build a one mile tunnel under the present Hwy 532 to bypass Stanwoodopolis. Sure, the city is upset, all those potential shoppers who for years were bottlenecked up at the gauntlet of stoplights and figured they might as well turn in to the grocery stores or the Rite Aid while traffic is backed up, they’ll zip right past on the four underground lanes, no exits.
Can’t say I blame them, but hey, they had a century to make their profits with a captive audience and the slogan ‘Shop Local’. A tunnel, ladies and gentlemen, 4 lanes UNDER not only the Stillaguamish, but under all of Stanwoodopolis. Out of sight, out of mind. A win-win for the Camano commuter sick of big box grocery chains, dying strip malls, bad signage and the Twin City Foods Concrete Curtain. Sure it’s an engineering challenge. Sure it costs more than an above ground freeway. But in 2050 dollars, probably what a unit costs in Camano Condos.
Us South Enders want to applaud the State for finally solving the ‘Stanwood Bottleneck’. It’s a good start. But while we’re planning for the future’s highway solutions, why don’t we think a bit more Long Term. The South End, as always, is way out front on the region’s transportation issues. Take the Elger Bay Canal, the Big Dig. Eighty years ago we were advocating a series of locks and dams to connect Port Susan with Saratoga Passage, open up shipping through the South End – South End ISLAND, I might add — to the Mainland from Langley, Greenbank and Coupeville. Lock fees would offset the costs, something the Stanwood Tunnel won’t have. Yet, anyway. No doubt the Legislature will eventually consider tolling the tunnel once commuters are hooked on its advantages.

So call your commissioner, call your state representative, call the lady with the alligator purse, this is our best opportunity to solve more than the Stanwood Sewer Lagoon Seawall Bottleneck. It’s our chance to create shipping lanes, possibly a port for a ferry terminal and definitely a new island for the county and the state. South End Island, a stone’s throw from Camano, a world apart for future tourists. The possibilities are beyond imagination. Don’t let this opportunity slip by. The Tunnel budget can easily be amended to include another transportation fix.

Our local pharmacist just announced he’s pulling down his shingle and calling it a career. Mark was one of the last remaining hometown druggists who held out against the big box pharmacies over the past few decades. You were more likely to see a doctor making house calls than a pharmacist competing with CVS or RiteAid. I had a brother who ran five pharmacies back in Wisconsin, but they’re all gone now, absorbed by the mega-chains. So are the small chains he competed with, so are most of the bigger ones too. For us on the island it’s the end of an era that pretty much ended for everyone else a long time ago.

I went down the other day to bid Mark a fare thee well but he’d already boarded up the space. I’d only been in to have prescriptions filled twice, once for the flu and once for some cataract surgery drops so I felt like I needed to apologize for staying in good health while his business was struggling. Mark hadn’t put in coolers for milk and beer and pop, he hadn’t expanded into gifts and toys and stationary, he didn’t have aisles of cosmetics and health supplements. What he had was medical stuff and pharmaceuticals you needed a doctor’s prescription for. If he’d asked me for advice he didn’t want, I’d have suggested an ice cream counter. But I know he would have rejected that as a little too new-fangled. The man was an apothecary, all he wanted to be. Minister medications to the sick, fill prescriptions, give advice when he could. My brother always told me if I needed medical advice, talk to my pharmacist, cheaper than a doctor and for most maladies, just as good.

The world belongs to Big Money now. Amazon will probably take over most everything on earth in ten years or so. Grocery stores, book stores, hardware sales, clothing goods, yeah and drugs too. Drone delivery in a guaranteed two hours. Big is cheaper, competition is a thing of the past, the internet is the new Sears Roebuck catalog. Small town newspapers are dying, mom and pop groceries are absorbed, the real estate offices are consolidating, even the malls are dinosaurs on their last poop. Way of the world, nothing we can do about it, cry if you wanna….

Mark’s Pharmacy ought to be preserved by the local Historical Society along with Elger Bay Store, Huntington’s Grocery and Tyee MegaMart and a shrine to Mark ought to be erected out front. If there was ever a poster child for Pharmacist, he was the guy. Funny, considerate, concerned, professional — all those traits a great hometown druggist should have. Then add to that he and his wife Debbie’s involvement with the community, yeah, he’ll be missed, that’s for sure. As for me, sorry to see you go, Mark, but if you have any surplus of that new nasal spray ketamine that’s psycho-active you’re cleaning out of the backroom, call me, we’ll meet behind the dumpsters any day, any time, plenty of customers still left down here on the South End.

Is this a great country or what? The President of the United States just got a summary report that, in effect, stated there was not enough proof to convict him in a court of law for obstruction of justice. Sure he fired Comey and bragged to the visiting entourage of Russians that he’d gotten that monkey off his back. Sure a dozen or more of his associates are going to jail for lying about meetings he and the kids had with the Russkies. Sure his lawyer testified to all manner of criminal behavior on his boss’s part. Sure there’s plenty more to come out in federal district courts, grand juries, state courts and municipal courts. But so far they haven’t proved beyond reasonable doubt anything yet.

So we’re offered up the spectacle of a self-righteous mobster declaring himself fully exonerated when the Mueller report states in no uncertain terms it is NOT an exoneration. They just couldn’t make an airtight case. In America you’re innocent until proven guilty. Ask O.J. Simpson. Ask the Republicans who screamed Witch Hunt! how it is they think Hillary should be re-investigated. Or Bill on the Whitewater matter. Were they exonerated? No, but they couldn’t be found guilty in a court of law.

I have no quarrel with the system. I do have a quarrel with folks — let’s call them Enablers — who ignore facts, who demean a free press, who support a man so corrupt even his personal attorney denounces him. Take a Victory Lap, by all means, when their Leader wasn’t charged (yet) with high crimes or treason, but the threads of that investigation lead to all sorts of corollary crimes, still to be revealed and possibly adjudicated. I know a lot of us judged Trump guilty at the beginning of the Mueller probe and a lot of us are disappointed the President wasn’t indicted, locked up and tossed on the trash heap of history.

Personally I think the verdict is still out. But you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Okay by me. But let’s be honest here, the Enablers weren’t going to be swayed even if Mueller had found probable cause, airtight proofs and bodies piled in heaps behind the White House dumpster. This, I guess, is the state of partisan politics. Not a resounding endorsement of democracy as it’s practiced in America these days.

Trump has played fast and loose with the truth, with the laws, with the Justice Department, will all of us. He says he’s not a crook, but most of us know he makes Nixon look like a boy scout. Mueller’s investigation was narrow as per the mandate he was given. That won’t be the case with other jurisdictions. And even his Enablers won’t be able to help him then. Me, I’m waiting to vote him out of office, then let the courts have their say.

Our old shack was built about 1910. Probably didn’t have any electricity back then, pre-World War One before rural electrification came to the end of this island. Probably didn’t have a well either with no way to pump it up from over one hundred feet deep. If you dig into the walls of this old house, you will find rough cut 2×4’s, full size 2×4’s, not the modern size that’s smaller today, and you will find old knob and tube electrical wiring, rags stuffed into crevices for insulation, theater posters and cardboard, paper and tarpaper to keep the wind from penetrating, you can find disconnected galvanized plumbing, you will find dryrot and powder post beetle damage and carpenter ant burrows. This old house has been added to, partially torn down, rebuilt, shingled over, reroofed and re-sided, painted and stained and weathered. It’s a miracle it still stands, testament to the virtues of wood and an owner who loves the damn shack because it saved his life in more ways than I care to recount.

The guy before me, about 1975, bought it cheap and dug it out of the blackberries that had grown over the second story roof. He rewired the electrical and must have found a circuit panel box at a second hand shop, one meant for a barn or a shed where the main power came off another building where it could be cut off. The box I have can’t be disconnected from the power pole out on the road. Meaning if you have to work on it, you’re playing with fire. Potentially literally. I have worked on it in the past, terrified each and every time, so much so I haul out a rubber truck tire and stand on that while fiddling with live feeds that could kill me, hoping, I guess, I’m not real grounded. Most of the people who know me could tell you I’m not real grounded most of the time. But I’m a cautious man.

For those of you who lack my superior understanding of electron rodeos, the power from the street comes down a masthead, through a meter and into the circuit breaker box where two metal strips carry juice to one side and another side next door, all grounded to the box and hopefully a metal rod deep in the earth where, god forbid, a short can be carried to the center of the planet. Breaker fuses slot into the two metal strips. One side of mine stopped working. My superior understanding of electron roundups didn’t help me figure anything out, so, like I always do, I started dismantling stuff, muttered mightily the curses that would curl the hair of Odin and proceeded to play with fire.

It didn’t take long. A recalcitrant 60 amp breaker wouldn’t budge and it wouldn’t respond to my obscenities, the bastard, so I grabbed a little metal prybar and tested the above description of the box being grounded when I touched both it and the hot bar carrying enough voltage to knock a lesser man clear across the driveway with burning hair and screams of desperation. Me, it just scared the bejabbers out of me when the sparks kept shooting at me standing idiotically in near shock on that old truck tire. The video would have gone viral in an hour, an instructive how-to primer for would-be arsonists. Or suicide by more creative means than knives, guns or pills ….

It’s ten days later. It feels like ten months. Tomorrow, hopefully, we slap on a new panel (one with a shutoff at the top), rewire the new breakers, call the state electrical inspector and if we pass, call the power company who will, for an exorbitant fee, charge to channel electrons generated who knows how many miles away. Once again the old shack will light up, run outlets, play music, power tools and live to lean deeper into its second century. Me, I’m glad to be working on the first.

Down at the docks beside the marina’s Pilot Lounge a few fishing boats were puttering back in after a long day of fishing, mostly without much luck. The boyz hauled their AlumaCrafts and C-Dory’s up onto their trailers and hauled them into the parking lot before joining us layabouts in the Lounge for a few bottle bass before going home to the mizzus empty handed and empty headed. Just another Sunday on the South End….

Well, not quite. Mueller’s report had hit the press Friday and Attorney General Barr had just released a 4 page summary which was the News Flash between the college basketball games on the Lounge’s big screen TV in the back. Big Walter was pounding a table when the crawler read: No Evidence of Trump Collusion with the Russians. Jerry’s glass spilled ale onto the formica table top and Freddie grabbed a handful of napkins to capture the foamy mess before it reached his lap. “Aw, for cripe sakes, Walt,” he yowled, but Big Walter was hollering in full vindication. “Witch hunt, witch hunt, nothing but a damn witch hunt, what I been saying for two years!!”

Two Toke had moved his own glass off the soaked pulpit and removed himself to an adjoining table out of range from the Richter rumblings but not Walter’s booming exultations. “I wouldn’t crow too soon, Walt,” he cautioned, carefully sipping his salvaged beer. “You won’t see your boy impeached, looks like, but don’t figure he’s off the hook.” A couple tables over a foursome of sports pointed to the next crawler under the Washington – North Carolina game: No Exoneration on Obstruction of Justice … and started a mild cheer, clicking glasses and high fiving one another. Two Toke smirked and raised his glass to Walter who kept repeating No Collusion No Collusion.

No Exoneration. No Collusion. The Lounge began to take sides, some stood up, others shook their fists, the new fishermen entering through the front door must have thought a brawl was about to start. They looked hesitant to enter, but Harold, the weekend bartender snapped off the ballgame with a remote held in his hand like a gun and the joint instantly became quiet. “Let’s have some order here, gentlemen,” he demanded, pointing his weapon in Walter’s general direction, “or we’ll have no ballgame. This is a drinking establishment, not a debating society!”

Of course we could have debated that premise as well, but the boyz, chastened by Harold’s edict, settled down meekly and the TV snapped back on. No Collusion, No Exoneration, the crawler scrolled beneath the fourth quarter game. Two Toke took a heavy draw on his glass and said, loud enough for everyone in the place to hear, “No conclusion either.” I parked next to TT and ordered another round for both of us. “Two more,” I said to Harold. “Beers or years?” he asked. “Both,” I replied sadly, “both”.

‘The kettle is black’, said the pot accusingly.

“It’s truly incredible that shows like Saturday Night Live, not funny/no talent, can spend all of their time knocking the same person (me), over & over, without so much of a mention of ‘the other side.’ Like an advertisement without consequences. Same with Late Night Shows……” POTUS. See? Even Donald has had enough. And where is the investigation into Hillary and the Russians? Where are those investigations about SNL colluding with the Democrats? How about Benghazi?? Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi. Why did we quit investigating Benghazi???

Those damn commies writing for NBC, they think they can get away with undermining American confidence in their president week after week by satirizing everything he says, everything he stands for, everything he tweets. Writers? C’mon, Donald writes the script nearly verbatim for them. They shouldn’t be paid, they should be locked up as subversives, same as Colbert, same as Noah Trevor, same as most of those left-leaning smug comedians and their sneering Hollywood pals.

The secret to a good Presidency is to attack when attacked. Sure, that article came out last week in the New Yorker by Jane Mayer, pretty much connecting Fox News with this administration in damning detail, so rather than make a spirited defense, take a spirited offense. Find a scapegoat, spin the news, punch somebody in the face. Roy Cohn taught him well. The ghost of Eugene McCarthy is smiling from the gates of Hell every tweet. Great student, Trump!

This morning he went after Saturday Night Live AND John McCain. When the going gets tough, double down, two punches are always better than one. Now McCain is the one who needs to be investigated. McCain was no hero; in fact, he might have been a traitor, the guy who gave that Steele report to the Enemy. You need to sink pretty low to punch a man in the face who’s already down in the grave. But low has become the new standard the past few years. Never apologize, never admit to wrongdoing, blame the press, blame the dead, blame the lady in the porn star dress.

‘The pot is black’, said the kettle, defending itself. Meanwhile the stew is burning.

Light the candles, haul out the cake, open the presents! The Web is 30 years old. Remember when we all thought this would free the oppressed, topple authoritarian regimes, democratize information and liberate us all? Barely ten years later Google opened up shop and every bit and byte of data was available to anyone who owned a computer at the touch of a keystroke. Nine years after Google the I-phone made computers mobile and Apple rich. This was 2007, a mere 12 years ago. Time flies when you’re revolutionizing the world!

Thirty years. You probably remember the first personal computer you owned. Not that long ago. They were introduced in 1975. The mizzus had one probably about 1985. I got one about turn of the century. The one I’m using now is probably the 4th generation. Karen’s is probably double that. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with her and a friend, arguing whether a computer was just a tool or whether it was a revolution. That conversation has morphed into whether the revolution is beneficial or malevolent. Future Shock is behind us now. Future Fear is here.

The Tech magnates rule the world. They own the data for every keystroke you make on the internet, every purchase you make online, every biographical reveal you put up on Facebook, every route you take, every step you make. They analyze it, they use it, they sell it, they watch you day and night. Zuckerberg believes in an open society, one without secrets, one where you cannot hide. He made it so.

The democratization of information turned out to be only half the story. The dissemination of false news is the other half. Turns out we don’t have the wits to check our facts so we’re suckers for every hate monger, political dirty trickster, government intrusion, crooked scammer and the 500 pound kid on the bed in his parents’ basement. We mumble about monitoring Facebook or Google, we pound our chest about loss of privacy, we make speeches in the legislatures about clamping Pandora’s Box partway down. Give me a break.

The genie is out of the box and howling now. Artificial Intelligence is just around the corner. We can no longer imagine the world before the Web any more than we could imagine one before the steam engine. No one pines for the horse drawn carriage, no one wants to be tethered to a land line phone, no one wants to live without their Facebook friends. I had a fire down at my electrical panel box yesterday and my neighbor, the one I’d run across the road to have call the fire department, seemed to gloat when he asked me after the fire had been put out, if I still thought I was smart not owning a cellphone. I told him there was no way I was buying a $#@&^ cellphone. It doesn’t make me smart, but I’m digging some heels against the winds that blow me toward a future I don’t trust any more.