The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I got a pile of friends who claim to be envious of my so-called Lifestyle. Get up when I want, work for myself, do what I feel like doing, live off the calendar and my wits and off the beaten path. Who wouldn’t like that? Unless we factor in the poverty, the hand-to-mouth, the lack of pensions or retirement. There’s a reason hippies became extinct and it has nothing to do with an asteroid slamming Earth.

As the mizzus will gladly attest, I took this road — this choice? — because I don’t play well with others. And certainly not managers, supervisors or most any other bosses. I didn’t like the city. I didn’t like most jobs. Okay, all jobs, any jobs. And since poverty never scared me, the Path of Least Resistance led to here, a place remote and cheap, and not surprisingly, a backwash without much opportunity for employment.

Perfect! All I had to do was learn a few skills. Carpentry, plumbing, electrical, truck repair, subsistence living. Education — it never really ends. Something they neglect to teach most of us in school. The School of Hard Knocks doesn’t need a post-graduate program. Tuition’s not exactly free, but it’s reasonable.

Folks who claim to be envious of my lifestyle really aren’t. They didn’t have the appropriate skill sets. If they did, retirement would be easy for them, a hippie vibe with a fat income guaranteed. Who could ask for more? But … like I always say, it takes more than a little while to learn bohemianism. And if you’ve spent most of your life paying for insurance policies to protect yourself from the vagaries of existence, chances are it’s too late to become a latter day beatnik. Don’t feel bad, you’re probably the Lucky Ones.

Johnny Fever’s got a cigarillo dangling from his lips, one arm out the window, one hand fiddling with the radio dial. He’s listening for clues in the song lyrics, he’s watching for numerological signs on license plates, he’s motormouthing a mile a minute flying down the interstate at 105 miles per hour, dodging semis as he weaves wildly, lane to lane. “There you go,” he shouts over the windnoise, flicking ash out the open window. “Two threes and a one, adds up to seven! Seven’s my number, man, seven’s my combination!”

I’m tightening my seatbelt, wishing I’d made my will, but it’s too late now and my only hope at survival is probably a state trooper with radar. “Hey, John, how ‘bout we slow down 50 miles an hour or so?” I say, not that I think he hears one word I say over the radio squawk. “Hear that?” he howls, hammering on the dash. “Van Morrison, man. Van the damn Man!”

Apparently this is a Good Sign. He’s smiling, hums to the words, flicks an ash and squirts between two behemoth diesels as if they were stopped, not doing their actual 65mph. They disappear behind us in the blink of a bloodshot eye. I’m white knuckling my armrest, saying between clenched teeth if I live through this I’m going to get my will in order first thing.

Johnny Fever is on a bender. He stopped taking his meds a week ago and now he’s untethered, a rocket moving into the stratosphere of his skull, homing in on Seattle, me as co-pilot. If I thought I might protect him from himself, I was sadly mistaken. I will be the victim of his unintentional suicide, more than likely.

“There!!” he bellows. “Right there!” I look to where his cigarillo is pointed, a truck license that has two sevens, a three and a four. “Triple sevens, man!! Whaddaya think of that?!”

What do I think of that? I think I’m not feeling too lucky today, is what I’m thinking … as we cut suddenly between a delivery truck and a BMW. Johnny Fever slaps the dash and dials the radio for another sign. “Gonna be a good day, Skeeter,” he yells, grinning happily. Where the hell are the State Patrol when you need em?

The head honcho of Iran flew into Italy this week. Now that all the sanctions are dropped, he’s there to make a few deals. Lots of oil money flowing finally and everybody is rubbing hands in anticipation of some serious profits. This, in case you haven’t been paying attention, is the way the world works. All well and good. The rich can get a bit richer and the rest of us can get trickled on.

I stopped throwing myself in the gears of capitalism long ago. In fact, I am a businessman myself, registered with the state of Washington, and paying taxes just like Microsoft and Boeing. You know, without some of the breaks they got. No, my beef isn’t with the profit motive, mine is with the folks in Italy who decided they needed to cover up their art with fig leaves so that the Iranian prez wouldn’t be so offended he might turn tail and tear up future contracts. These statues from antiquity were bare ass naked. I mean, really offensive stuff. Penises and breasts, genitalia, all those body parts the Italians are worried would be viewed as a sick porn party.

David and Venus de Milo, all that degenerate art Western Culture ordinarily celebrates unless it interferes with business deals, needed to be covered. Sure don’t want to offend the mullahs and their entourage, not when multi-billion lira deals are on the line. I assume most TV stations were told to stand down as well, movie theaters closed for the week and book stores asked to censor their shelves. Been awhile, I guess, since the Iranians got out for a spin around the globe, no need to shock sheltered sensibilities.

In full disclosure, my so-called business is art. Hopefully not too degenerate, but hey, filth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Like most of my artist cronies, I get my fair share of criticism, not primarily from the mullahs but from the neighbors who have their own standards regarding art and culture. Censorship can be subtle or it can be harsh, but usually it’s honest. Censoring what you claim to love, what you say is the cornerstone of your culture, well, god forbid we offer up our own tolerance as an aesthetic. When in Rome now, apparently, they’re ashamed of what the Romans do. As they should be….

So I’m at the little park I take care of over on the east side of the South End, loading up a wood ‘sculpture’ the wind had knocked down. I hear a truck roll in to the parking lot, but I’m lugging my wreckage, not paying much attention to bystanders when … geez, here’s the heroin addict who stole my guitars a few months ago walking right up to me. You can imagine, a thousand thoughts are ricocheting off my cranium.

My boy walks right up to me and says he’s been hearing how I think he stole my banjos. I said you heard right, amigo, I think you stole my instruments. Course, my instruments were guitars, not banjos, but okay, let’s hear the man out…. “I didn’t steal from you, Skeeter. I mean, I am a thief and all. I’ve stolen from lots of people, but I wouldn’t steal from you. No way, I have too much respect, man.”

Well, if you think someone has ‘too much respect’ for me, you maybe never met me. My boy has met me and I’ve met him. It’s not that I think a junkie would lie, it’s not that I believe an addict would say what he has to say to wiggle out of a bad situation, it’s not that I didn’t believe him. But … he did walk right up to me and maybe he’s clever enough to mention my banjos when the thief really stole my guitars … or, okay, maybe I’m a naïve sucker. But … I was mouthing off without real solid proof, asking around about his whereabouts, all that, and yeah, I guess I am, deep down, a bleeding heart liberal, what can I say?

What I said was this: “I am going to accept your version here, man. And I’m going to apologize to you for making what you say are false accusations. I appreciate you talking to me face to face about it and okay, I will assume you are not my thief.” He said again he’d stolen plenty in the neighborhood, but he was in rehab, trying to kick the monkey on his back, going straight. I said that’s great, good luck to ya. We shook hands, just two South Enders trying to make their way in this hard hard world. I said I got to get back to work here and he said yeah, he did too, he’d left some clothes in the woods the other day he needed to pick up.

I watched him hike into the woods at dusk, a slow drizzle starting up again, but I lost him in the firs and so I went back to my little park ranger task. I was about to drive out, near dark now, when he emerged through the ferns lugging a box. He placed it in the back end of his buddy’s truck and we waved adios.

The box was too small to hold my guitars, but I wondered whose stuff it did hold. NOT that I’m accusing my new buddy of theft. Sure don’t have any solid evidence for that …. I’m fairly certain he stores his clothes in the woods until he needs a clean wardrobe. Don’t you?

You might find it hard to believe, but the South End used to be a Destination Spot. The whole island did. The island you could drive to, one developer in the 80’s called it, but 50 years before that, the resorts promoted it the same way.

Camp Grande, Diane, Tyee, Cama, Madrona, Indian Beach, Camp Lagoon, Sunset Beach, Utsalady Beach, Camp Comfort. The poor miserable sweltering city folks could escape their sizzling apartments and rent a cabin for the week. All day long the menfolk would do what menfolk have done since Cro-Magnon dropped their tails and descended from the branches of the nut-trees. They’d sit on their butts and drink. Course we modernists call it FISHING. Which is really a euphemism for Drinking.

When the boat was full of empties and dead salmon, the boys would pull up on the beach and wobble up to the mizzus with their trophy salmons and do what menfolk have done since the 2nd day they hit the ground. Order the womenfolk to cook up the catch.

Back then they had these cute pioneer woodstoves in every cabin. Women must’ve really liked this. Their menfolk, being he-men, could split up the firewood with an axe, probably whacking off a couple of fingers and toes, and she could stand over a 500 degree stove in a cabin with all the doors and windows open and the kitchen about 400 degrees, and she could fry up some smelly fish for the whole squalling family. Later she could wash the burnt-on skillets and the rest in water boiled on the stove. She probably had the time of her life playing pioneer mizzus.

The resorts are all gone now, end of an era on the South End. Some say the fishing dried up. I say the women finally got fed up.

I was watching an IBM ad the other night. They were touting their genius machine WATSON as an example of how we humans were going to succeed in the future. By out-thinking our competition. WATSON can beat any human in chess. WATSON can whip anybody in Jeopardy. WATSON is as smart as we are and getting smarter every day. We just need to make smarter WATSONS if we want to get anywhere in this brave new world. Down here on the South End we aren’t likely to cobble together an artificial intelligence. Or even much of a natural one, judging by our track record so far.

IBM is creating machine intelligence. WATSON is a machine, built by us, programmed by us, in service to us. In a couple years WATSON will build itself, program itself, improve itself and surpass its original creators in no time flat. The mega corporations and the defense departments of the world think this is the leg up for their profits and their success. WATSON and his brethren will simply out-think their competition. Trouble is, we’ll be the machines’ competition. Well, not much competition, judging by the South End, but hey, even MIT, Stanford, NASA, you name it, they’ll be left in the silicon dust too.

We live in a world of machines now. Already machines run machines. Computers run factories, control the banking, game the stock markets, kill the enemy with their drones. They live in our office, control our entertainment, answer questions on our phone, connect us to other humans who have them too. We’re dependent already even though we think we’re boss. We even got em down here on the South End. Okay, we’re mostly using them for e-mail and Google. But we take them for granted already, just a couple decades since Bill Gates put the pods under everyone’s bed.

You think maybe I’m a Luddite. You think I’m paranoid. You think I don’t trust IBM or Microsoft or Apple to make the future a very comfortable place for me. You think we should just let them be smarter. Out-think the competition! You think maybe this is just another tool, like a hammer or a sewing machine or a spinning jenny, something we use to better our lives.

But I’ll tell you something: a hammer doesn’t get smarter. A hammer doesn’t figure out it could make next-generation hammers that self-feed, that replicates those with built-in mobility, that deduces new uses for nails, that realizes its potential as a weapon and identifies the new enemy. A hammer isn’t going to out-think even South Enders. Okay, maybe a couple of us. WATSON isn’t your friend, all I’m saying … and he won’t be your servant much longer.

There are islands and then there are islands. Manhattan’s an island, but the real estate agents bulldozed down its palm trees long ago. A lot of islands are isolated, a bump in the sea. Some islands hang out together. Geologists call them an archipelago. The islands by us didn’t get invited into the San Juan Archipelago Club. I think they knew we’d put bridges up and drive right on like we weren’t proud to BE an island. Naw, we wanted an umbilical to the mainland.

A Real Island sneers at the idea of the Mainland. A real islander doesn’t commute to a job back on the Mainland. A real archipelagist doesn’t shop at the QFC on the Mainland. An honest-to-God rock huggin, brine snorting, bent back barnacle covered island hermit doesn’t jump on a ferry every chance he gets so he can stand on Terra Firma in the Wal Mart parking lot.

A Real Islander is hoping deep down in his seaweed filled boots that the Tectonic Plates are moving him OUT past the Straits, out past Dungeness Spit, out past Neah Bay, out past the 3 mile territorial limits. A Real Islander came, not so much to Come to an Island, as to LEAVE the Mainland, physically, spiritually and meta-damn-phorically. They’re Escapists. They’re refugees from Real Life.

Our island hedges its bets. Way up at the cold north end, folks hardly know they’re ON an island. Down at the equatorial jungles of the South End, we’re unemployed, the drive just to the bridge is too horrible to contemplate, the only fast food we got is growing in our gardens and TV reception’s poor.

When the earthquake knocks down Camano’s puny little bridge, we’re gonna have some folks real surprised to learn they’re gonna have to make a choice finally. Course, when they build the South End Bridge to Everett, we will too.

You might find it hard to believe, but the South End used to be a Destination Spot. The whole island did. The island you could drive to, one developer in the 80’s called it, but 50 years before that, the resorts promoted it the same way.

Camp Grande, Diane, Tyee, Cama. Madrona, Indian Beach, Logoon, Sunset Beach Utsalady Beach, Camano Beach, Camp Comfort. The poor miserable sweltering city folks could escape their sizzling apartments and rent a cabin for the week. All day long the menfolk would do what menfolk have done since Cro-Magnon dropped their tails and descended from the branches of the nut-trees. They’d sit on their butts and drink. Course we modernists call it FISHING. Which is really a euphemism for Drinking, stalking the wily six-pack.

When the boat was full of empties and dead salmon, the boys would pull up on the beach and wobble up to the mizzus with their trophy salmons and do what menfolk have done since the 2nd day they hit the ground. Order the womenfolk to cook up the catch.

Back then they had these cute pioneer woodstoves in every cabin. Women must’ve really liked this. Their menfolk, being he-men, could split up the firewood with an axe, probably whacking off a couple of fingers and toes, and she could stand over a 500 degree stove in a cabin with all the doors and windows open and the kitchen about 400 degrees, and she could fry up some smelly fish for the whole squalling family. Later she could wash the burnt-on skillets and the rest in water boiled on the stove. She probably had the time of her life playing pioneer mizzus.

The resorts are all gone now, end of an era on the South End. Some say the fishing dried up. I say the women finally got fed up.

If you’ve lived long enough on the island to experience one commute on Camano, you probably know already Camano was named after Jacinto Caamano, a Spanish explorer who did a drive-by sail about 1792 or so. Course, this is the white folks’ history. They sail a little boat up and down the west coast, thinking they’re in China or Mars, then they give it their name, stick a flag in the sand and voila, it’s theirs.

Well, the Snohomish and Kikalo tribes beg to differ. They lived on the end of Camano from about the turn of the Ice Age and they never called it Camano. Actually, they called it Kal-lut-chin, which means ‘land jutting into a bay.’ The Southendomish, being a breakaway tribe of the Snohomish people, called the island by its Lushootseed language name.
I was just at a Tribal Meeting at the Southendomish Casino last week. Okay, mostly I was there for the blackjack tables and wandered accidentally into the inner sanctum past the men’s room. They were pretty wound up that President Obama had jetted right over them to hightail it up to Alaska where he restored Mt. McKinley to its rightful native name: Denali. They were hoping the South End Historical Society could maybe write to the Great White Chief and ask if he could restore the original name for their homeland. Kicki-Cialis. Roughly translated, it means Clam with Better Blood Flow.

I said I would do what I could. That’s when they asked me to leave…. Okay by me, I really needed that men’s room.

Sally Jenkins got elected President of the Flame-Ons, the women’s auxiliary arm of our volunteer fire department. The South End is the last place on the island with a volunteer station. All three other stations have paid firefighters. Sally and her fellow Flame-Ons have their hair on fire over this slight and they have vowed to take up arms over it with the fire commissioners, all men, all of who live up north where they keep the manned units in case they themselves need mouth to mouth. Or so Sally opines….

When I debarked the turnip truck here on the South End back in 1977, every station was a VFD. I guess us homesteaders were just happy even to have volunteers. The cops went home after midnight and the closest hospital or clinic was 40 miles away. If you moved here expecting CPR in three minutes or less after your heart attack, well, you had a For Sale sign up on your yard PDQ. And believe me, there were plenty who left.

Sally is one of the new breed of immigrants. She figures we’re living in the past and it’s High Time we stepped into dathe 21st Century. And maybe she’s right. We pay the same taxes as our pampered neighbors to the north. And we got the same incidence of medical emergencies. But … I’m still not one of those who’s all that hot and bothered, even though I’m getting old and decrepit and more and more likely to need that CPR.

The Volunteer Fire Department represents rural to me, I guess. Neighbors helping neighbors, not hiring it out. Sally says I won’t feel that way when I need an ambulance some midnight dreary and I know she’s right, but self reliance is one of the last things I went to let go of. Maybe next to my heartbeat.