The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Someone broke into my shack two weeks ago while I was taking the mizzus to the airport. Broke in is maybe too strong a phrase since the door was open, never locked. I came in that next morning and an electric guitar was gone off its stand. At first I thought maybe I’d moved it. But no, it was missing. So was the acoustic guitar downstairs. I looked around for What Else was purloined, but … apparently my burglar was a musician, not an art lover. Dozens of framed stained glass pieces sat right where I left them, piled up throughout the studio. Tools were left untouched too and most everything else, mostly no value except to me.

My neighbor behind me, nice woman except for poor judgement in men, has a restraining order on her junkie boyfriend. The sheriff has picked him up more than once with stolen property, including my neighbor’s credit cards despite the restraining order. He’s still around. Our sheriff apparently has bigger fish to fry than a heroin addict burglar. This is bad news for me and the rest of the South End.

I just bought a set of locks and a hasp to bolt onto the shack’s not very secure front door. Someone wants to break in, they wouldn’t have any problem — I just want to take off the Welcome sign.

I had hoped — now that the Barefoot Bandit is securely cooling his heels in a federal pen for a few years — we could return to a pastoral innocence lost when the Kid terrorized the South End. I guess not. I doubt the locks will make much difference. Maybe with some luck, the new burglar will realize there isn’t much worth stealing. That, or he’ll take up a career as a lead guitarist, make his fortune, regret the error of his ways and some day return not only my stolen guitars but throw in some classic signed by his new buddy Eric Clapton. Meanwhile I hope he appreciates the loan….

You maybe have had this happen. Your spouse goes tweety on you and nothing will settle him or her down. Not the usual pharmacology, not the soothing words, not a few days of rest. Nothing. And the time finally comes when you throw up your hands, throw in the towel and toss her or him into the truck and drop them off at the emergency room of the nearest pain motel and let the psychiatrists have a Go. Sedate em, give em a chance to sleep soundly, see what things look like when the meds wear off.

My neighbor Phil had just taken Sheila to the Skagit Hospital. Put her — in his words — in the rubber room. He had his two year old son with him and he was in a sad frame of mind. He’d come down for a little comfort, maybe some advice, and plenty of beer, three of which I had in abundance. We started with the beer, then got around to the comfort and finally reached the advice as we were walking down the road, his boy in hand and his dog Kona running to and fro. These were the days we had virtually NO traffic, but still … you needed to pay attention.

I had just finished saying, “Keep a good attitude, man, it can’t get any worse,” or some banal horseshit platitude to cheer him up when we hear the car zooming around the curve behind us and Phil, without thinking, calls to Kona roaming the woods across the highway. I say No! but it’s too late. Kona comes running and the car comes hurtling and we watch, as if in slow motion, the car hit Kona at 50 mph and send him flying down the road and hit the pavement dead as a doornail. Phil’s boy claps his hands and laughs because he’s never seen Kona do any flying before. The woman driving the car is crying and I’m telling her it’s not her fault, just drive away. We’re sorry, just drive on, we’ll take care of this.

I buried Kona while Phil dropped his son with his wife’s parents for the night. Then we headed into town for some serious drinking. Forgetting, as always, it not only can get worse, there’s a likelihood it will….

So I’m down at the hardware store with my one item in hand. The guy in front of me at the register is transacting some sort of complicated purchase for his 3 plastic bucket lids that involves multiple credit cards, a void, new start, phone numbers (multiple), background checks, everything but a full body scan. After 10 minutes the cashier calls for backup. The new cashier takes the guy behind me … who wants keys made which will, believe me, take awhile. Doesn’t bother him to jump to the front of the line.

But unbelievably, the new cashier makes those keys before the 3 bucket lid transaction is completed. And then he takes the woman behind me again, although this time he says, “I’ll take the next one in line.” The woman who hustles over PDQ eyeballs me sheepishly but hey, it’s a jungle here on the South End and she looks like she’d eat her young if need be to get to that register first.

There are a dozen annoyances in any given day, is what I think, and I suppose I could blow them up to something BIG and ruin the mood of an Indian summer afternoon. My old pard, Guitar Bob and I, being of similar dispositions, meaning we’re a tooth or two on the gnarly side, often talk about why we let this stuff bug us. It’s not like we’re Zen Buddhist priests, but we are a couple of old codgers on the sunny side of life’s sidewalk in a country that’s rich, living on the paradisical South End. What, we ask ourselves, have we got to bitch about? And wouldn’t a sense of humor in these situations be the more appropriate response?

Well, Bob and I agree, life would be better if, instead of getting pissed off at these minor annoyances, we leaned back and found the humor in these situations. Trouble is, we apparently aren’t ready for the Monastery of Mirth.

Today two gentlemen in suits and ties jaywalked in front of me at the airport parking garage, popped open the door of their car next to the only open stall I’d found down 2 or 3 aisles, then opened their trunk, fiddled around, looked at me stopped exactly where their jaywalking had left me, glanced at the open door preventing me parking, then went back to their trunk reorganization. I waited a couple of minutes, then decided I would run out of gas waiting for these yahoos and drove on down the line … but NOT before I flipped them off. The mizzus, always a proponent of pacifism, asked if I was angry. What, me, angry?

“No, “ I said, pulling into the next available stall, “can’t I just give the finger to a couple of arrogant, discourteous suits?”

Needless to say, my funny bone may be too arthritic for remedial help.

The South End Suds and Duds, our local laundromat and gossip center, advertises as OPEN 24/7, but for us Maytagless residents, we know it’s open maybe only 5 or 6 days, the other two they’re closed for repairs and plumbing catastrophes now that Wanda , the current owner, lost her husband/repair guy to Cindy, one of the regulars, at least until she ran off for a new life in Phoenix. Wanda took Fred’s betrayal hard, especially considering Cindy was young enough to be their daughter. If she was a bitter chainsmoking woman before, she doubled down after. And consequently lost interest in the Suds and Duds.

I happened to be washing a week’s worth of dirty clothes and sheets when our washer refused to drain. Wanda was interviewing Tommy Wilson for the position of Head Roto-Rooter. Tommy barely knows which end is the working end of a toilet plunger, but Wanda obviously was short on applicants. “I got a guy yesterday,” she said through a haze of Pall Mall smoke, “probably illegal. I said I’d need to see a green card. He could barely speak English. Said he had a family to feed. I told him I was hiring him, not his whole damn family.”

Tommy swore. “Takin our jobs. They’ll own America before long.” Tommy’s jobs disappeared a long time ago. If Wanda hired him, it would break a streak of decades. “We need to deport these people,” he growled darkly. “Just leeches on the rest of us.” Wanda shot him a long exclamation point of smoke. For once I kept my mouth shut. It’s hellish enough doing the laundry here without debating the owners and clientele. I vowed to get my washer fixed ASAP or die trying.

Tommy lasted about half a week, near as I could tell, probably until the first breakdown. Wanda hired an hombre named Carlos to replace him. They say he can fix about anything. Except maybe Wanda’s broke heart and bitter life. I bought a used washer at the 2nd hand appliance place up north. A very polite Hispanic kid helped me load it into my truck. I noticed he spoke perfect English.

I was hitting the local pawnshops today, everyone within about 50 miles, looking for two of my guitars our favorite drug addict down the road stole from me. The island cops know who stole them, I know who stole them …. And apparently that’s enough for them. But it doesn’t really work for me.

The pawnshop I went to first knew my thief — even went to school with him. And yeah, he comes in fairly frequently, no doubt with half my neighbors’ goods. Looking around the shop, I realized that what we have here is a legal ‘fencing’ operation. You don’t have a serial number on that stereo or television set or rifle or jewelry, well, it’s just not possible to say definitively that item is yours, sir. You see our predicament.

Okay, I see someone’s predicament. I got cops who have caught my thief with stolen goods more than once, but don’t haul him in. I got pawnshops taking in those goods and reselling them. I got a guy in my neighborhood who needs money for heroin. I guess the predicament is all mine.

Two Toke Tom tells me I’m too materialistic, too hung up on my possessions. “You got nothing, you got nothing to lose,” he intones, smiling his Cheshire Cat grin.

“Won’t be long at this rate,” I reply, knowing I don’t have a whole lot worth stealing. Old TV, 50 year old stereo, lawnmower on its last legs, camera maybe, computer. Maybe I should just have a garage sale and save my burglar any further effort.

We’ve had more than a couple of addicts on the South End lately. 90% of the crime. I say give them their fix. Make it legal, dispense it at the clinic, provide clean syringes. The war on drugs? We lost it long ago. I’m running the white flag up the chimney. The cops already have. And yeah, sure, I’ll feel sorry for the pawn boys. But … you can see my predicament, can’t you?

Cold Turkey

Sad to say, I gotta take a leave of absence from the blogosphere. Gonna head down to Hood River on the Columbia for some R&R.  The R&R is for you readers.  Give you a break.  If you need a fix, go back in the archives and pull up an old rant from a year or two ago.  If that doesn’t work, turn on Fox News or try methadone.  Me, I’m hoping to unplug from the 24/7 Trump tweets and the Benghazi revelations.  Should do us all a world of good….

Buried in today’s obituary column was the profoundly sad news that the Playboy centerfold is dead. Or at least a completely nude body has been sent to the graveyard of pornographic history. Airbrushed, lipsticked, coiffed and embalmed. Teenage boys of the 50’s and 60’s went into deep mourning, their dreams of one day living in silk pajamas and a smoking jacket all day, every day, surrounded by a bevy of heaving bosoms by the pools and the hot tubs of their own mansions, dashed forever.

Hugh Hefner, with his stockpiles of Viagra and Cialis, has thrown in the towel. The bunnies will use it to cover themselves now, relegated to the status of pin-up girls, coquettish and demure. Maybe it’s the old raconteur’s way of atoning for bringing the world non-stop hardcore internet porn, sex stripped of elegance and glamour, returned to the raw basics of grunt and rut. Or maybe he knew he couldn’t compete with global orgiastic excess.

Old Hef brought sex out of the closet back in those prudish, frigid years of Ike and Nixon, surrounded it with literature and essays, packaged it in glitter and sold it on the newsstand next to Life and Good Housekeeping and National Geographic. Even the women’s right movement couldn’t shame Hugh from making them a toy, an object, a living sexdoll.

It’s a dark day when sex can no longer sell a sex magazine. If we’re not careful, violence won’t monetize movies and video games either. Political correctness will once again rule the land of the bland, home of the fleeced, and the preachers of purity will return again to their pious pulpits. And, of course, worst of all, us adolescent boys might finally have to grow up.

Taking the First Bite

It has come to the Crab Cracker’s attention that a petition to boycott Halloween this year has been circulating since summer. Supported by Pastor Paul of the Little Church of the Stingless Nettles, it decries demon worship, gross-out costumes, sugar gluttony, crass commercialization and yoga, particularly Hot Yoga, what the Reverend calls Satan’s Sauna. The anti-goblin signatures numbered in the many dozens.

The Mabana Institute, the South End’s not quite non-partisan think tank, has been conducting its own polls regarding Halloween this past month, according to Prof. Lawrence Glewkose, former director of the American Candy Lobby and now a permanent board member of the Institute. Prof. Glewkose reported that in their admittedly non-scientific poll of children at South End Elementary, 69% were in favor of Halloween as a national holiday while 11% supported having 2 or more Halloweens a year. 11% of the survey responders believed Halloween was already an ongoing event 365 days a year, judging by the proliferation of zombie movies and candy machines and their siblings’ Goth wardrobes. 9% couldn’t read the survey.

According to Joan Hypoglyseemly, spokeswoman for the Pro-Diabetes Foundation, anti-Halloween sentiment is based on  superstition and fear of high fructose sugar perpetuated by the ignorant and the dietary obsessed. “What these people need,” she suggested, “is a Paleo diet exorcism followed by the first ten episodes of Walking Dead.

Prof. Glewkose, unmoved by her sense of humor, suggested she might consider removing her witch costume next interview. Needless to say, Halloween started early on the previously zombie-free South End. According to a Stanwood General Hospital nurse, Prof. Glewkose will recover from his bite wounds, but probably not in time to take his kids Trick or Treating this year.

I drove my jalopy down to Bellevue and Babylon this week. They got a new Pay-as-you-Drive lane system now, fast lanes for the folks willing to pay up to $10 for a commute to Microsoft and the high tech cubicles, more if you’re like me, the occasional traveler without a transponder and a special bank account. I thought I’d already paid my gas tax and license fees, maybe now I could drive the same roads as the rich, especially since percentage-wise, I was paying even more than them.

I figured wrong. As usual. I’m used to sitting in the back seats of planes jammed in like a chick in the crate going to the slaughterhouse. I’m growing accustomed to feeling second class. Nobody said life was fair, even in a democracy. You pay to play. College. Jewelry shops. Opera. State parks. National parks too. High speed internet. Politics. You maybe thought your taxes give you a free pass to Yellowstone or equal opportunity at the ballot box, think again. It costs $10 to drive into the State Park and I not only throw more optional money at them on my driver’s license fees, I maintain a county park us Friends of Camano Island Parks maintain so the county can use the saved dollars to enforce boat launch fees when I haul my sailboat down.

Maybe the rich do deserve their own lane for commuting. Maybe they deserve every break we can give them. When the King’s carriage rolled through on the highway to the castle, you better believe us peasants pulled over, doffed our caps and bowed ceremoniously to M’Lord. Call me cantankerous and slap me with a macaroni, but I don’t like it.

Probably won’t be too long, though, the gated communities down here will demand their own lane over the bridge onto the island. That, or they’ll go whole hog and insist the state retrofit a drawbridge, just for them, the rest of us, buy a boat. It is, after all, an island. If the riffraff can’t swim, all the better. A few less of us and the property values will go up. The free ride is over. For now, the boat ride’s fairly cheap.

Little Jimmy was preaching at the South End Marina’s Pilot House Lounge the other night, carrying on about the upcoming elections. “It’s like we got two Halloweens,” he was orating to about 8 of us layabouts who weren’t quite ready to go home and face the music. “One with goblins and then the one we vote for spooks, no treats.”

“Yeah,” Biker Bob threw in, pounding his Bud bottle on the formica table, sending suds onto the pulpit. “And then you got 4 more years of Halloween every damn day.”

Some of the boyz, especially after more than a couple, don’t much believe in the democratic system we got. “Throw em all out, I say,” says Ralph from behind the bar where he’s filling in for Joey, the usual weeknight bartender and referee. Joey never takes a side in a political discussion, wouldn’t say Gerrymander with a mouthful, which explains why the place stays open in these partisan times we live in and the Stanwoodopolis Gazette isn’t half obituaries of patrons shot in the parking lot.

George next to me sits pensively peeling the label off his beer bottle before venturing, “You mean everybody but YOUR guy, don’tcha Ralph?”

“Oh, my guy’s okay,” Ralph agrees, wiping his hands on a dirty apron. “He voted to kill that Gun Bill this year.” Ralph’s a big NRA fan, something he usually espouses this side of the bar most nights until Joey tells him to pipe down. Ralph can get pretty agitated without much counter-argument even. Argue with him and he can get scary as Halloween in an Ebola isolation unit.

Half the place votes for their guy, it turns out. The other half are too disgusted or apathetic to even vote, especially mid-term. They’d vote if they could vote out the president, but nothing’s going to change, why bother? they think. So Ralph’s vote should count double, a fact that makes him happy. And me … I take the point about a prolonged Halloween in the Land of the Brave.