The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I guess it’s news worthy to report each and every professional athlete who decides to make a political statement by refusing to stand up for the national anthem. Personally, I’m still trying to figure out what the hell spangled means. Splattered maybe? My handy dictionary sez it’s plastic or metal objects that are shiny. I guess Betsy Ross’s old flags might have had sewed-on plastic stars, but I kinda doubt it. Not that it matters, it’s a song, not a Magna Carta.

When I was a teacher, the school where I taught always played the anthem every morning through the loudspeaker in each classroom. My kids would dutifully rise and put their little hands over their hearts and listen half heartedly to the words, probably no idea they came from the War of 1812. Me, I’d sit at my own desk. The kids didn’t know quite what to think of this treasonous act and were too timid to ask. And I didn’t feel it necessary to give them my reasons. My business, my class. Freedom in America.

When I was a kid myself in Georgia, we had to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning and then one of us would read a verse from the Bible. Even as immature as I was, something about this smacked of tyranny. When my turn came to pick a verse, I picked the shortest one in the New Testament: ‘Jesus Wept’. Short and sweet and it always got me a trip to the principal where I was treated like an atheist communist sympathiser. Mr. Crawford would sit me down in the little room outside his office and explain to me, a Yankee intruder in his Confederate fiefdom, that insubordination would not be tolerated. When I tried to explain that I had met the terms of my assignment by reading a Bible verse of my choosing, he glared down at me like I was the grandson of William Tecumseh Sherman, the man who burned a swath through the state in the Civil War, and said ‘You know what I’m talking about here, Little Man.’

Indeed I did. Indeed I do. These folks who won’t stand up for the Star Splattered Banner do too. You think it’s a free country, think again. The herd makes its demands and you pay a price for ignoring them. But like the weekend armchair patriots like to say, freedom isn’t free.

Jesus wept.

A friend of mine just wrote to say she might have discovered she has a heretofore unknown brother, discovered, apparently through the wonders of DNA analysis. He is either her half brother or the son of her father’s brothers, the result, she says of a one night stand in some hick town in Arizona with his mother who until he was 11 thought was his sister. Yeah, I’m confused too. To make the story all the more interesting, his mother is African American. Of course I’m interested in selling the movie rights…

There are studies that show between 10 and 30% of us may not have the right dad when we send those father’s day cards. This is a testament to the infidelity of the American Mom whose libido may have been vastly underestimated. I had a buddy, a white guy, who had a black kid. Kind of a surprise at the birth, but like he said, the mizzus got drunk at a party one night and hey, these things happen, but he was going to raise the kid, someone else’s genetically, his by choice. Gotta say, I was impressed. If you met his wife, you’d never guess her wild side judging by her mousey disposition.

Another buddy of mine got a knock on his door one day a few years back and found his old paramour of even further back darkening his doorway with her son in tow. He’d had a fling with her when she was 15, picked her up in a park, took her home and carried on an affair for a week or two. Yeah, I know what statutory rape is. He did too, but it didn’t stop him. So now the chickens were flying home to roost. My pal, being the distrustful sort, decided to call her bluff, especially since the kid was pretty dark like his mom and didn’t show much Caucasian. And because she wanted money. Turned out the boy wasn’t his after all. I don’t know if he gave her some money anyway, but I hope he did.

I guess these DNA tests are great for exploring the family tree. Personally, I’m okay letting Dad be Dad. I don’t need to be sending multiple father’s day cards every damn year….

Yesterday the smog index for pollution particulates here reached a number where air quality advisories were issued to the region’s asthma and emphysema sufferers. I hafta admit, the smoky haze on the South End looked worse than the days of burn barrels when everything from plastic to rubber was incinerated in 55 gallon drums. Now that the drums are plastic, the neighborhood pollution is way down, score one for polycarbonates!

We’ve just set the record for the longest drought in history here in the Pacific Northwest and we still have a month of typical drought to go. British Columbia is burning and the fires are only starting here in America and I’m not talking political partisanship. The smoke from those northern blazes has been pulled down here, giving us red ball sunsets but obscuring the Olympic Mountains all day long. Beijing was one tenth the pollution level we were. Another day and we’ll all be taking our hikes in surgical masks if we dare to venture outdoors at all.

If you walk through our back 40 you can see the remnants of the fire of the 1880’s. Charred cedar snags rise out of the nettle canopy and the stumps of old growth fir show blackened bark even to this day. My former neighbor used to pile brush and debris on our side of the property line and when I asked him about it, he told me it was a fire break. You know … for his property, not ours. Changed my opinion about him 180 degrees. Good fences might make good neighbors, but not fire breaks.

Nature, in case we didn’t know already, can turn on you fast. Some folks are muttering already about global warming — and of course it may be partly or mostly to blame — but even the cyclical explanation isn’t any comfort. Me, I’m just hoping those burn barrels are definitely a thing of the past.

I used to raise peacocks.  You ever seen peacocks strutting thru a South End shack yard, it’s sorta otherworldly.  They brought an elegance that was indescribable to our backwash palace.  You ever HEARD one of these exotic creatures, you might reconsider classing up the bottom land.  They got a scream like a child being tortured.  I guarantee the neighbors will wear out 911 with their calls of mayhem and madness at your place.  Course when I had the peacocks, we didn’t have neighbors.  No, they didn’t move away because of the noise, they just hadn’t discovered the fabulous South End yet.

      My peacocks, no offense to you Bird Huggers out there – my peacocks had a head about the size of a big martini olive.  And inside that head they had a brain the size of, well, a pea.  My peacocks were not bright.  They made a chicken look like Albert Einstein.  They thought my Banty hen, who’d hatched their eggs, they thought she was not only Einstein, but their mama and God too.    Don’t ask me what I was thinking.  My brain isn’t real big either.  Although I’m pretty sure who my mama is but don’t ask me about Pop.  I’m like the peacocks – I just go on faith.

     I had the peacocks a few years until Mama Banty got picked off by a Wily Coyote.  They wouldn’t come back to the henhouse after that, so they roosted in the cedars every night.  Dumb or not, they figured out the climbing ability of a coyote.  Finally they decided to go looking for Ma.  The Police Blotter in the Stanwood Gazette – and this is the Gospel Truth – would report on their progress north.  Peacock sighting at Dahlman Road.  Peacocks seen gathering at Sunnyshore.  Eventually they found a chicken surrogate ma up by O-Zi-Ya.  O-Zi-Ya is Southendomish, meaning, I think, Ornithological Orphanage. 

Sometimes I miss those little pea-brains.  Although I can sleep longer w/o an alarm clock that sounds like a nightmare.  I wonder, though, if I’d kept em, if the South End mighta stayed, oh, I don’t know, less developed.  Maybe forced the new neighbors to move north instead.

We just got back from a trip to the Great Smokeys. No, not the ones out in the Appalachians, the ones all over Washington State, the Great Hazies. Got home and turned on my computer only to discover it had died. Ordinarily I don’t grieve for machines that have given up the ghost, but you maybe know yourself that a goodly part of your life resides in those PC’s and Macs. E-mails, files, photos, news, all the digital connections that keep us tethered to the outside world.

Sad, really, since our outside world here is pretty much all we used to need. Another day or two of internet withdrawal and it will be again, trust me. So bear with me, or not. I know blogger loyalty is probably not high on anyone’s list these days, and if you need to move on, I’ll try not to feel too spurned. In the computer world, you trip, the folks behind you will trample you to death. I understand that. Which is why I’ve hijacked the mizzus’ machine to type in this message.

But now I have to turn my attention to computer repair. Always iffy, always dangerous, always scary. Yesterday I managed to reach into the motherboard, changed a cmos battery, rebooted … and nothing. Today I go in with a hammer. We’ll see soon enough who’s boss here. Although … I think we all know how this movie ends. Cyberspace … where nobody hears me scream.

A man can only take so much of this summer heat. Naw, not the actual temperature outside. The constant coverage by the news media giving advice about not locking your kid in the car when you go in for your liquor purchase, wearing sunblock, drinking fluids, staying indoors, taking cold baths. I can’t take it anymore. Even Trump gets backpage coverage behind the weather. I mean, c’mon, it’s not an oven out there, it’s a hot summer day. Take a swim, take a shower, take a break, man.

Which is what I’m going to do. We’re driving over the mountains and into some REAL heat, triple digits with air quality alerts from the fires burning in British Columbia and Montana and our own state’s conflagrations. Beats listening to the caterwauling from the hyperventilating meteorologists, that’s for certain.

Anyway, if you’re not passed out already from heat prostration, let me offer my own advice. Go right now to the refrigerator and grab yourself a cold one. Sit back down and scroll thru some back posts with frequents trips to the refrigerator or, if necessary, to the nearest air conditioned grocery store with beer coolers. And don’t leave the pooch or the kid in the car while you run in. Do keep drinking fluids. And go easy on these sketches, maybe a couple per adult beverage. I’ll be back when the temperature comes down. Or my own beer supply runs out. God help us all.

Our stove lost a burner awhile back and although usually I would try to fix it myself, I decided the old girl wasn’t worth even the cost of a replacement burner. So when the oven started overheating by 75 degrees at 350, burning whatever we baked, I guess I could’ve replaced the gizmo that substitutes as a thermostat but isn’t a thermostat, another 50 buck item, about 40 bucks more than the stove is worth. A house call by an appliance repairman has always been out of the question, the closest one being about 50 dollars away. Once I tore down a clothes dryer right on the sidewalk outside the appliance dealer’s shop in downtown Mt. Vernon. When I couldn’t figure out how to install a newly purchased used part, Tim the Repairman came out and mentored me. Figured, I guess, anyone this desperate or poverty stricken or stupid, probably needed compassion and help both.

One of my bandmates, Monika, said she was purchasing a gas range and I could have her fairly new electric one for free. I offered to pay her, but she insisted. So yesterday I borrowed a dolly from a neighbor and drove over to pick up my almost new Frigidaire ceramic top electric stove, happy as a dodo over my good fortune. Free is my favorite price.

So I got the stove on the dolly, strapped it in with not one, but two ropes, then headed for the truck. Monika’s porch was really narrow so I went to wheel it around and go down the steps, but I misjudged the edge, dropped one wheel over the step and … lost the stove down the stairs. It landed with a bang and the sick sound of glass breaking. The glass was the ceramic stovetop.

Of course I was pissed at myself. Of course I felt like the kid who broke his best Christmas toy taking it out of the package. Of course I loaded the wreckage into my truck and drove the ruined stove home. Of course I googled up replacement tops and yeah of course they were way expensive. Of course I googled used ones on E-bay and they were a fortune too. So of course I went straight to the dump and paid $22.50 to dispose of my now useless range.

I went to Craigslist looking for a cheap stove. Not free. But hopefully cheap. Found one, but never got an answer from the seller so after an hour or so I drove 40 miles north to the used appliance store, bought a stove for $275, drove it home, dragged it into the house, dragged the old one out, loaded it into my truck and headed for the dump. The nice lady in the booth said, “Didn’t you bring in a stove already today?” I said I had heard there was a two for one sale. She was having a bad day too so her sense of humor was greatly diminished. Before she could say $22.50, I handed her $22.50. “I guess you know where to drop it,” she muttered. I nodded sadly. You could probably guess that when I got home the cheap Craigslist stove seller had sent me an e-mail saying the thing was available and gave me directions to her place, a couple miles from where the used appliance place. This is what is called in common parlance, insult to injury.

We are now in possession of a pre-1999 white electric, no electronics, coil top stove with the old 3 prong cord that fits our 3 prong receptacle. Everything works well. By my reckoning our free stove only cost us $320 plus the price of gas. This is runaway inflation in anyone’s book. Free, like those patriots with the American flag flying ragged on their 4×4 trucks like to say, isn’t free.

Little Jimmy was off on another of his Paul Revere speeches while the denizens of the Downrigger Lounge at the Yacht Club were hauling up the Happy Hour specials before the 6 p.m. cut-off. Little Jimmy believed, based on extensive reading, that the world economy was headed for fiscal apocalypse. The Great Recession was only the first pealing of the doomsday bell about to toll.

“Get out of the stock market now,” he advised, bolstered by two gin and tonics. “Get gold and silver. Credit cards are a joke. Banks won’t open, nothing’s good but cold hard cash.”

Little Jimmy most likely had a stash buried someplace. “God help him if Alzheimers hits first,”Ralph said loud enough for Jimmy to hear. “Go ahead and laugh. It’ll be dog eat dog when the Crash comes.”

I got neighbors who believe – who hope, actually – Armageddon is coming. I got some who stockpile guns and ammo. In case Anything is coming. I got friends who keep pantries full of food and water. For the Pandemic. Or the earthquake. Or the attack of the zombies. Hell, I don’t know what to make of this spreading anxiety, but it’s floating up from the swamps down here. Jimmy says that’s one of the Signs, public unease.

When I was 10 years old a friend of the family built a fallout shelter in his basement. For after the Atomic War, he told me. Radiation everywhere, chaos, panic —- only those who planned ahead would survive. “Can we stay with you, Malcolm,” I asked, figuring, sure…. “Your dad didn’t plan for this,” he said sternly. “You see that rifle in the corner?” I noticed the gun propped next to a 55 gallon drum of water. “That’s to keep folks OUT. They’ll realize too late what’s what and I have to take care of my own. See?”

“You’d shoot us?” I asked incredulously. He said he’d have no choice. That night I mentioned this to my father, the father who hadn’t done much planning for the end of the world. His face darkened. All he said was, “Malcolm’s got too big a mouth. You have to learn not to listen to him.”

“What if he’s right?” I asked. My old man shook his head. “That would be a world you and me wouldn’t care much to live in. Malcolm would be welcome to it. Now go to bed and don’t listen to damn fools anymore.”

Little Jimmy was on to the collapse of the E.U. Then all the dominoes would go next, world wide panic. The North Koreans had just launched an ICBM missile. Fallout shelters will be back in vogue soon. I left a tip for Cindy, our waitress, and a half finished beer. I wonder sometimes if Malcolm was disappointed nuclear war never came. Little Jimmy sure would be.

Rowing Into the Past

A friend of mine about a month ago took me down into his basement/garage to show me ‘something I might be interested in’. We’d been knocking down some adult beverages and so I deduced that the ‘something’ would be maybe not as interesting as Chris thought I might think. When we got the lights turned on and half a dozen stray power tools moved out of our way, there sat a 12 or 14 foot wood rowboat, old style, bent ribs on the floor and cedar hull fastened to those. Old paint and varnish were flaking and some of the seat wood was missing. The bowstem had rotted up top, but for the most part the boat was intact.

My buddy said he’d had that for a couple of decades, figured he’d fix it up, put it back in seaworthy shape, but you know, time slips by and now the ‘something I’d be interested in’ is jamming up his shop and garage. He avowed as how I might be just the person to finish that unfinished task. After all, I’d built boats with his brother back when we were a tad younger, about 25 years ago. “What do you want to give me?” Chris asked. I set my beer on the bandsaw table and took a little harder look at the boat.

Finally I said, “How much you give me to haul it out of here for ya?” He snorted wine out his nose. We’ve known each other about 30 years. “Okay” he finally shrugged, “it’s yours if you want it.” Yesterday I drove up north to pick it up, shoved it in the bed of my pickup and drove it home. The mizzus is gone this week and you can be sure she’ll be excited when she sees this ‘project boat’ on its sawhorses by the garden soon as she gets back. I figure she needs something to do in her retirement years.

Turns out the boat is a classic rowboat built by the Davis family up on some island in southeast Alaska. Probably about 80-90 years old, all Alaska yellow cedar and supposedly a very fine boat. One just got restored at the Wooden Boat Center here on the island and donated to the Alaska State Museum. So since the mizzus is a historian, I figure …. Well, you know what I figure.

So now I’m going to have to learn how to steam bend wood to replace the worst part of the boat, its bent interior ribs which are rotted or are already broken. I always say we should keep learning, but damn, I have avoided steaming wood for a long time. Not that it’s really all that hard, but it takes setting up all kinds of rigamarole, lighting fires, making steam boxes, experimenting, starting over. But this is a nice old boat. And if you’d ever rowed my aluminum one, you’d maybe understand why I’d prefer a more handsome ride over some crusted aluminum can. Trouble is, I have a 12 foot aluminum boat coming in this week soon as I pick it up. Boy howdy, will the mizzus love our new boatyard.

I’m taking care of the neighbor’s chickens while they’re vacationing in Europe. Actually, I’m taking care of their hens while their usual chicken babysitters are vacationing in Oregon. The chicken coop, a veritable Trump Tower of a coop/aviary, sits right beside our joint property line so it’s no big deal to wander over and check the water, toss some chicken feed, gather up the eggs and cross back into my woods. The boys who usually handle this asked if I would check the house too, see if burglars had been prowling or were living in the mansion.

Some years back, shortly after the house was finished, the new owner was sunbathing in the privacy of her back yard and someone caught her sans swimsuit out on the lawn. That trespasser, she figured, being an amateur Sherlock Holmes, must be me since I live right next door. This created a bad start for our neighborliness as you might suspect. Nobody really wants to be accused of being a peeping Tom, but my neighbor kept asking friends of mine if they thought I was capable of this. Hell if I know what my friends probably told her, maybe worse than that. But she wouldn’t let it go and that dark cloud hangs over our mutual backyards like a constant threat of rain.

So I said no, I wouldn’t be caught dead or on video surveillance camera snooping around their house, just wasn’t worth the potential trouble to play security guard for them while they were vacationing on the Oregon coast. Michael mentioned that the owner had recently asked about me, whether I was a liberal or a redneck, a libertarian or a banjo whacker, a …. whatever? ‘What did you tell her?’ I asked. I’ve only lived next door to them for, oh, 15 years or so, how would they know what I was like, right? Admittedly they’re absentee chicken ranchers mostly, come up on holidays or a few special occasions, probably check on the trophy house, see if my buddies mowed and trimmed and pruned their fruit trees correctly. Rich folks. The kind of neighbors I love the most, especially the absentee part.

‘I told her you were a story teller,’ Michael said. We were next to the coop, chickens hopping up and down the escalator to the pen from the motel room style appointed laying bins. They were doing their cackle thing. A story teller, I repeated. What the hell does that tell her? A story teller is like, for her probably, a congenital liar, faux facts, Trump supporter, who knows what would run through her suspicious head?

I don’t know either what that means. A story teller? Well, okay, let’s roll with it. Stay tuned, is all I can suggest. If my chicken ranching neighbors have video cameras tuned to that chicken coop and find me prowling around their pen, I suspect we’ll have a sequel to this little story. If not, I get some free eggs and chicken shit on my boots. Life on the South End in these modern times … it’s never what I expect.