The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

It’s hard, ya know, living in these hyper-polarized times. I feel like Shi-ites are taking on the Republicans and the Sunnis are tackling the Democrats. It all feels like Jihad to me, tribal warfare gone viral. Better to fight to the last TV commercial and leave the country nothing but ash. We denigrate the Taliban, but hellfire, we’re becoming just like them. OUR way or a highway riddled with IED’s.

I believe in arguing my beliefs — I’m just not sure I want to fight for them. Last I heard we were a democracy. I even heard we were a Paragon of that form of government. Down on the South End we’re split about 50/50. Half are card carrying GOP and the other half are cannabis smoking commie leftists. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. That other half isn’t all artists.

But here’s the point. We live down her on this skinny-ass end of the island and life is way easier when we get along rather than take up arms against the folks we disagree with. Hellfire, I disagree with most everybody, even my friends. Doesn’t mean I want to wage war. I got a pen, not a gun … and like they say, at least those of us not in the NRA, it’s mightier than the sword. An AK-47, maybe not.

I say potato, you say tomahto. Let’s make a salad and call a truce. I’ve fought a few battles with the folks across the street. But … we just put in a davit together down at the bulkhead and we use it to launch our boats for crabbing and fishing. I admit, I had to compromise a lot to pay to use their trail, the one I had originally been granted beach rights for when the developer cleared the woods for 23 lots back in 1980. But the value of peace in the neighborhood is far more than my yearly dues.

They’re good folks, really, and I’m probably so-so. Still, I like getting along. I don’t have to agree with them. I don’t have to join their political party. All I have to do is go to the neighborhood picnic they’re kind enough to invite us to. Or they can come to our parties. Whatever we pay in dues is way cheaper than ammunition would cost these days. Plus, it feels like a neighborhood, not a warzone. Something to be said for that…..

The mizzus said to me the other night, fed up and frustrated by folks’ disinterest in History, she was thinking of taking up pottery. She’s invested 30 years down at the Stanwoodopolis Hysterical Society and she feels like she’s swimming against an outgoing tide and no longer seeing shore. I know the feeling, but instead of helpful advice, consoling warbles or another pep talk, I said ‘Pottery? You think art will be any easier??”

I spoze she could make useful items. Make them aesthetically pleasing and add another cultural layer to the nettle farm here. Maybe sell a few downtown when the house and gardens are cluttered, barter with the neighbors, eventually market to the nurseries and galleries, set up the website and the advertising strategies, sell local and then watch Chinese imports undercut her beyond even paying for her clay.

Most folks don’t value what she does or what she might want to do. They don’t value artists or their art, history or historians, writers or literature, musicians or their songs. Folks who hope to make a living that way won’t. Nine times out of ten. Maybe 99 times out of 100. I could bitch and moan — and oh, baby, I do! — but to what avail?

The trick in life is to do what you love. If you need to make money too, good luck to ya. This society values money. Winners. American Idol or the NBA. You love history, you are one of the lucky few, however. Most people never find one damn thing they can be passionate about. That’s why we invented television and You-Tube. They don’t have anything better to do, nothing that fills their void with passion or joy or the sheer love of that thing that possesses them.

But the people who make music, who write poetry, who tell our histories, who make art, who dance and sing and celebrate, ask them if they needed to be paid to do it. Ask them if money was the reason. They do it to sing, to dance, to paint, to tell stories, to remember history. They are, without a doubt, the richest people on the planet. Starving artists? I don’t think so — they breathe the very air for food.

You’d probably think we call Budweiser Bob Budweiser Bob because the beer he likes to drink is Budweiser. But you’d be wrong. We call him that because he wouldn’t be caught dead with a Bud even if he were crawling across the Mojave Desert in August, out of water on a 120 degree day. He’s a microbrewer and he sees the big national breweries as bullies who have brainwashed or beerwashed the masses into buying a pale substitute for real malt beverages.

Actually, Bob’s name isn’t Bob either, it’s Ron. Which, at least to me, makes the joke more humorous by a factor of three and a half. Especially when you consider we got Alaska Bob and Guitar Bob and Biker Bob and Indian Bobm plus a few other Bobs we haven’t prefixed with a handle yet. Lots of possibilities. Be Bob a Loo, he’s my baby. Be Bob a Loo I don’t mean maybe.

I know — we ought to quit doing it —-they hate it. Guitar Bob plays guitar, but not very well … so when somebody says oh, you’re Guitar Bob, he knows they think he’s a virtual Eric Clapton. Alaska Bob used to work up on the Slope at Prudeau Bay. He doesn’t anymore so he no doubt figures it’s time to drop the 49th state from his name. Retiree Bob would work, except all the Bobs are retired.

Bob #1? Bob #2? Bob A or Bob B? I couldn’t ask their moms why they couldn’t have been a little more original when they had these guys. Bob!? Jeez. It’s like the people who name their dog Pooch or Mutt. Or their cat Kitty. Nothing wrong with it, I spoze. Other than too damn many Bobs and Toms and Bills. I’m just trying to clarify the classification system, de-obfuscate the taxonomy, bring some modicum of order to the confusion of anarchic appellation. Okay, except for Budweiser Bob…

Right after college I decided to be a bum. Worked awhile at a dog pound, drove city buses, did a stint as manager of a restaurant, then went into a slow retirement. One of my gigs was as an inventory specialist. Roll into a grocery store with my team of fellow specialists, count the cereal boxes and aspirin bottles, pretend it’s accurate, give an accounting to the manager who, half the time, asked us to ‘fudge’ the numbers anyway.

One Friday night we headed to Rockford, Illinois from our home base in Madison, Wisconsin. Chico drove, for which he got a dime a mile extra. Six of us piled into his rat-trap jalopy, no seatbelts, no radio, no working speedometer and by dark we rolled into Rockford. Chico took a sharp left, my passenger door flew open and I was hanging onto it for dear life before the guy next to me hauled me back in. Chico said, “Forgot to mention it, but that door’s broke.”

We finished up our inventory at a small chain grocery, adjusted the number for the manager and piled back in Chico’s Cadillac. About half an hour later an Illinois State Trooper had us pulled over, who knows for what of many possible violations, and Chico got out to deal with the cop while the rest of us sat quietly like Guatemalan immigrants. Chico came back, handed me a yellow ticket and pointed at the glovebox. I put it in with about two or three dozen others. “Chickenshit,” was all he said.

At the last tollbooth about 2 in the morning he pulled up to the toll taker and handed him a buck. The guy in the booth surveyed the six of us long-haired motley losers before handing Chico his change. “You look like smart fellas,” he said with a smirk. “What’s a six letter word for skirt. Ends in G.” He tapped his pencil against his yellowed teeth.

Chico tossed the change in an ashtray with cigarette butts and joint roaches. “Sarong,” he said and put the car in gear. The toll taker looked at his crossword, looked back at Chico and us, the only car that time of night, shook his head in disbelief and said, “Thanks.”

We drove off across the farmlands where everyone but us slept their dreamfilled nights away. I quit the next day, never worked a crossword puzzle or a full time job again my whole life. Chico, who knows…? Probably a CEO now.

I was in kind of a hurry the other day because I was late for band practice and I still had to make a stop at the big hardware store up north to pick up a pressure regulator for a well pump that was giving us trouble. I had my banjo in the cab of the truck and I figured if I hurried up, I could get my plumbing part quick and only be late by a quarter of an hour. Right.

Anyway, I got inside and was surprised how many options I had for making the wrong choice, meaning … course I was going to make the wrong choice. About the fifth package I was reading, it hit me I forgot to lock the truck. And my banjo was sitting there in full view. I might be the only one, but I love that banjo. I’ve had it for 35 years and I’ve rebuilt it multiple times and even though I’ve built homemade ones that are pretty nice, this is the one I play at concerts. And now I’ve left it sitting in my truck with the doors unlocked.

I finally grabbed a regulator, any regulator, and figured take a chance, you might get lucky, and headed for the register. I tried to see my truck out in the lot, but it was cut off from view. Course, I had to get behind the guy who had a coupon and couldn’t find his credit card, who searched awhile, then said he’d pay cash, but didn’t have enuff, then finally found his card but had to argue about the price of some do-dad he thought should’ve been 10 cents less and I’m going half crazy worrying about my banjo out there up for grabs for anyone walking by who sees it sitting there on the seat. I’m breaking out in hives. I offer to give him the damn ten cents and in return I get a glare from this yahoo who’s digging into his wallet for the receipt to doublecheck and finally I can’t stand it one second longer so I ditch the pressure regulator on the counter and head for my truck.

I’m nervous now, heart beating like a rabbit, blood pressure singing in my ears when I get up to the truck and see my worst fears realized. There, sitting on the seat in the unlocked cab of the truck, was a second banjo.

I bought my shellfish/seaweed license yesterday. $25. Us old timers can remember when there was no license and no fee. True of lots of things, I guess. Parks were free once. I still don’t need a bicycle license — but I bet you the cost of my boat trailer tabs I will soon. A nickel here, a dime there — you can run a government on it. You just can’t run it well. And the worse it runs, the louder the clamor to get rid of more of it.

I didn’t mind paying 25 bucks, but I remember when that 25 bucks would have been hard to come up with. Poor folks pay the same as rich folks. Some people see this as fair, almost a Natural Law: we all pay the same. Sales tax, same for Bill Gates as you. Property taxes, same for Jeff Bezos as me.  Federal income tax, I bet a whole lot of rich folks pay less than us. That’s the trouble with laws made by rich people — they make the rules skew in their favor. But they do it so we won’t notice. I suppose we might do the same thing in their place. That’s the real Natural Law.

The older I get, and the more well off I get, the less angry I feel about this. But when I remember what it was like trying to make a Go of it on the economically challenged South End, the more empathy I have for those who don’t have money … or power … or a voice in a country that equates the poor with losers and slackards and illegal aliens. A lot of folks lack much sympathy, it seems obvious, and you can’t legislate Compassion.

Angry folks are making laws now. After 9-11 angry folks were most of us and look where that took us. In the middle of two expensive wars we lost we had a recession that rivalled the Great Depression. And when the dust cleared we blamed the damn government. And we blamed the poor and the immigrants and the folks who can’t find work for the deficits. Like maybe they got the weapons of mass destruction. Like they’re responsible for the World Trade Center bombings. I guess we got to blame somebody. And punish them. And to hell if they’re the innocent ones. Somebody’s gotta pay. And it sure won’t be ourselves.

I’m the ranger at the only park on the South End, a little 5 acre chunk of paradise hidden in plain view on the highway. A few folks use it to walk their dogs or drink a late night beer or have sex in the parking lot. Sometimes they use it to dump their garbage or bash in the fences that now look like hillbilly dentures. There’s no toilet or even a port-a-potty so you can guess what I find in the woods, but it wasn’t left by a bear.

Mostly I mow the lawn and the strip along the road. I plant trees and shrubs, but the soil is poor ‘fill’ of mostly hardpacked gravel. A few survive, but barely, and when the summer drought comes, they suffer mightily because there’s no water at the park. I put some sculpture in at first but someone stole three of them, plus a grill, probably to sell the metal for meth, so the ‘Art Park’ got put on the back burner for my retirement years. Meaning, when my own lawn is crammed and I need to move the overflow to the park.

I’m actually in an organization (Friends of Camano Island Parks) that cares for all the county parks on the island and some of the State Park’s trails so government doesn’t have to hire real workers and so the taxpayers can mistake me for a county worker and yell at me. When they learn I’m working for free, they tell me we should get rid of the park, sell it maybe and use the money more wisely. You know, lower their taxes…. They think all taxes are really a form of theft. I guess they moved here recently from the jungle.

My organization knows I’m down here because they make me sign a waiver if I get hurt I won’t sue their pants off. The county doesn’t have any money and neither do the Friends so good luck suing them for an accident anyway, but once a year I sign the form and go back to my rangering without insurance or pay or any apparent notice, sort of the farthest outpost that Rome has forgotten there’s someone stationed down here. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Just the last vestige of a far-flung civilization, its flickering flame watched over by goofs and fools who still think it’s worth preserving.

Just up the road from where I buy my homegrown eggs, being too lazy to raise chickens anymore, there’s a sign that says: URIGANDA. I suspect it’s Hindu, roughly translated: Dead End. You wouldn’t know it was there except there’s a constant stream of traffic in and out and it IS the last place on the dirt dead end road. I figured at first just another house going up, tradesmen going in. But I was wrong. It is, in actuality, a commune.

More factually, it’s a chain commune. They have franchises down near Seattle and Gomorrah, but rumor on the dirt street is that they’re hoping to feed the flock with what they grow up here on the South End. Their neighbor, a goatherder and cheesemaker met them and offered her expertise, but they’ve retreated back into the nettles for now, no doubt googling info on Nubians and Alpines and hybrid goats with milk yields in gallons, not quarts. Today’s communes, I’m fairly certain, aren’t consulting Whole Earth Catalogue or Mother Earth News for hippie bargains or tips on how to build a greenhouse out of discarded shower curtains from the local thrift stores.

I don’t know one small thing about them to pass on as juicy gossip. They haven’t taken over the county government like the Bhagwan down in Antelope, Oregon back in the ‘80’s. They don’t patrol the perimeter with armed paranoid zombie members. They don’t poke their heads up much at all. Seems to me they came to the exact right place for the exact same reasons as the rest of us refugees from corporate America. They just like to flock up more than us apparently.

I say welcome to the party! And good luck to you folks no matter what flavor Kool-Aid you prefer. Life’s a winding road and I guess we’ve all looked for a good roadmap or an intuitive GPS to help us navigate the shifting terrains and the dirt road potholes. Like us, you’ve found a detour. Hopefully the South End will prove more a destination than a wayside, but remember, there’s always another Path if this one proves too difficult. Worst case, you can do like a lot of us who arrived with starcharts in our heads and dreams of spirits guiding us. You can always become an artist. And if that doesn’t cut it, Windy Rear has plenty of room for another real estate agent.

I went to apply for my State Park Annual Permit yesterday, what used to be free to us citizens, but now costs us taxpayers because the State doesn’t have enough tax dollars for what it used to have enough for so the budget needs to be balanced. Now the poor can pay what the guy launching his 25 foot Bayliner pays for a permit, same way he does at the gas station for the gas tax, same as he does at the drug store, same as he does just about everywhere he buys something. This is what we call Recessive Taxation. No breaks for the indigent. You know, folks we now refer to as Takers.

Big break for the wealthy. Evens the playing field … for somebody. I’m not so poor anymore. Maybe I should harden my heart, take up polo, spend my days investing on the stock market and figure I got mine, those who don’t, well, they probably didn’t work hard or make the right decisions. Plenty of em down here on the South End living on the wrong side of the road. Probably LIKE poverty. Got what they deserved for not going to college or working at Boeing or being born white or male.

So I go online for my permit cause I can afford a computer and DSL. Good website, easy navigation, sign me right up! I notice, though, if I apply online, it costs $5 more. And I remember the same thing happened on my vehicle licenses. They want me to go through a private vendor, see? Job creation. Get rid of that state job which, apparently, isn’t as valuable a job as a private one and now we pay less taxes, right? Sure … Course, I gotta pay it privately now. Kind of like saving money on garbage pickup in the city. Turn it over to Waste Management, your taxes go down. But you gotta pay Waste Management now. Costs more since they don’t have much competition. But at least you’re not paying more in taxes. It’s a little like contract soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Better, I hear, to pay double or triple pay for Blackwater Boyz than to recruit more volunteers or God forbid, draft kids to fight our wars!

I sure don’t want to pay more taxes. Neither does Boeing. Or Amazon. Or Weyerhauser. Or Cabelas. I guess why we give em huge tax breaks. Sure glad taxes aren’t going toward helping out our State Parks. And that extra 15% to give the private sector a piece of the pie, well, at least it won’t raise my taxes. And the poor. Let em eat cake. But I don’t recommend they order their bakery online.

Apparently the rumors reached Rome — folks down here on the South End are crabbing without licenses, without proper or legal equipment, without regard for managing the crustacean resource — so they’ve sent the centurions down to enforce the Law. It came as quite a shock to Poacher Paul on his first trip crabbing this season, not only to his poaching pride but to his wallet.

Martha on the bluff with her binoculars, sick of Paul’s seasonal greed, called the Authorities. In short order the Game Warden pulled up alongside Paul’s Boston Whaler and demanded to see his license. Paul, never at a loss for words, informed the gendarme he didn’t have one, had never had one and by Neptune he didn’t need one now. He’s a South End Old Timer, Paul is, and an honorary member of the Take-All-You-Want Club. There’s a lot of members of that society and most of them aren’t old timers, they’re just folks who have theirs and to hell with those who don’t.

They think government is just a bunch of imbeciles bent on keeping them from what is their God given right to take. More for me, less for you. Actually, less for all of us, but when the crabs are gone, they’ll blame the Department of Natural Resources for mismanagement, proof once again of government incompetence.

Down at the Marina a day later, Paul was still livid at this intrusion on his personal freedom. The warden, what Paul calls the Fish Police, fined him for crabbing without a license, fined him for an unlicensed boat, fined him for a trap without an escape hatch and fined him for 15 crabs either the wrong sex or undersized or both. He confiscated the traps and threw back all of Paul’s catch. It was an expensive day of crabbing, for sure.

Paul, of course, vowed to show that Fish Cop who was boss. No way was he buying a license, no way was he paying those fines, no way was he backing down to the &#@!!* government and its &%#@ stooges.

As the old saying down my way goes, you can lead a horse’s ass to water, but you can’t make him think.