The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

You can tell you’ve left Kansas, Dorothy, when the road signs mark caribou crossings, moose crash zones or Watch for Bison markers.  We’ve seen bear and moose and buffalo and mountain goats up here in the Yukon and Alaska interiors.  Mountains taller than Mt. Rainier aren’t even given mention on the roadside markers — instead we get prose on the heroic efforts of road builders with no identification of Mt. Logan dominating the background just shy of 20,000 feet and only 700 feet short of being the tallest mountain in North America.  I guess there’s so many, another Big One just doesn’t pique their interest, probably the way Minnesotans yawn over that 9767^th lake.

One in 60 Alaskans owns a bush plane.  Not surprising when you see the mountain ranges on every side and glaciers carving huge valleys toward vast river basins.  There are three — count em — highways basically that traverse the state.  To reach the capital, Juneau, you have to come in by boat or by plane.  Now add a little snow, arctic fronts, temperatures far below zero, 40 or 50 degrees below, plunge the state into seasonal darkness, what I might call eternal night, and you have a world almost lunar if we ever build the Sea of Tranquillity Highway.  Think frontier.  Vast spaces of wilderness so remote no one goes there, not even the Inuits, not even the bush pilots, not even the gas and oil conglomerates.  Superimpose Alaska on a map of the continental United States and it covers all of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska and half of North and South Dakota plus Oklahoma.  It would stretch from South Carolina at the Panhandle to the Pacific at the end of the Aleutians.  The bugger is big!!

Me and Larry are going to drive all the highways before we leave.  Thousands of miles from the southern Kenai Peninsula to the Arctic Ocean up at Prudeau Bay.  Like the South End, history’s pretty much gone to rot and ruin.  Nature’s a little too harsh to afford saving old cabins and frontier stores for future tourists.  Alaska’s a wilderness.  Maybe in a hundred years the historic motels and gift shops on the Al/Can, preserved and restored, will serve as vicarious treks for stalwart sightseers on their virtual internet travelogues.  If nothing else, they’ll burn a lot less fuel than we’re burning.

Well, here we go again!  The good news/bad news dichotomy.  The good news is we made it back in one piece from the wilds of Alaska.  The bad news is it’s blog time again.  I assume you’ve learned the Aeolian harp and are now fluent in 2 or 3 languages.  Probably got the Chinese poetry translations down pat too.  Maybe even — no, probably — you got more erudite interests than reading South End Scripture or Skeeter soliloquys.  That’s what withdrawal is all about.  Learning that when the monkey is off your back, life is fine.  You didn’t need that fix after all.

Take me, for instance.  I hauled up to Alaska with my buddy and chauffeur, Sky Pilot Larry, through B.C., the Yukon, the interior of the North Star state and, just to synchronize with all of you in sympathetic Cold Turkey, I decided to deprive myself of one of my fav-o-rite indulgences.  Drinking.  I didn’t even drink Lite Beer.  Sure, the spiders and bugs came off the walls of my tent.  Course I had the shakes and tremors.  All that delirium stuff….!

And that was only the first hour before we hit the border at the Blaine truck crossing for customs inspection of the glass crates at the impound yard.  I think they sensed my anguish and took pity so they never did anything but lock Larry’s trailer and send us north where I could howl to my heart’s content with the grizzlies and the coyotes, the moose and the mosquitoes.  The buffalo may have been hairy figments but … they blocked the road in the Yukon.  And the muskox up by Prudeau Bay, hell if I know if they were real or not, but they sure seemed like it coming up off the Sag River delta.

Long days indeed up there in the Midnight Sun!  Try it dead ass sober and see how long they are.

“Moderation,” I heard espoused recently, ” is for cowards.”  Well, perhaps.  But abstinence, I submit, is for the birds.  The real trick of living is to maintain your balance.  It’s different for each of us.  Maybe a small dose of Skeeter here and there, you can manage it without undue personal harm.  Sure, there’s going to be a reader or two who take it too seriously, too far, who lose their way, who actually believe half this stuff.  Junkie mentality.  Comic addicts.  I don’t know.  Sure, we should help them if we can, same as the gamblers, the alcoholics, the crack users, the dope fiends.  But the rest of us?  Just proceed with caution.  Most of us will be okay.  In the end all I can say is: Read Responsibly.

I got some good news and I got some bad news. The bad news is I gotta go back to work. I’m taking a trailer full of glass up the notoriously pot-holed Al/Can Highway to install two murals in Anchorage, one at a fire station, the other at the U of A’s Science Building. I will be pretty much incommunicado except for some limited conversations with moose and long haul truckers. Meaning, this blogsite’s going to sit stagnant as a muskeg mosquito hole until I get back.

The good news is you get to take some time to pursue more spiritual goals than reading on the internet some yahoo’s scribblings on the cave walls of his inner psyche. Chances are when I get back stateside, you’ll have taken up the Aeolian harp or tackled War and Peace in the original Russian or are translating 5th century Chinese poetry into Spanish. You’ll find you have the time to practice calligraphy or hot yoga or yodeling. Maybe volunteer down at the South End Historical Society or take lessons in Tai-Chi. Or worst case, you’ll do like the rest of us ne-er-do-wells down here and synchronize to the tides and the moon, the long days of summer.

I envy you, I really do. I’m the Maynard G, Krebs of this island. Work is a 4 letter word hurled in shock and disbelief. Some folks subscribe to the notion of work as what gives meaning to life. Trust me, I’m not one of them. Still, a ‘living’ has to be made, they tell me, as if ‘living’ is equivalent to a paycheck. We know better down here, but … a paycheck is still important. Just not as important as ‘living’.

Be glad you won’t receive epistles from the tundra where I whine and cry, bitch and moan, throw myself on the permafrost with a whimper and a strangled curse. I’ll spare you that, at least. Meanwhile, good luck on the harp. Keep tabs on the tide. Grow your gardens and listen to good music. Think of me up there in Mosquitoville but don’t pity me too much. Chances are pretty good I’ll have a helluva good time too.

My neighbor Roy was down at the new watering hole the other day trying to decide between the 3 dozen microbeers they have going stale on tap. So many choices, so little time …. Finally, after inquiring about a couple of their options with the bartendress who really didn’t know much of anything about any of them other than reading the name off the tap, Roy asked her what she preferred. Roy is single and probably thought it would give him a leg up on a possible dating opportunity if he ordered same as her.

So what if she’s 20 years younger, drinking the same beer is one rung up the ladder of shared ‘likes’. Now, if she liked to fall asleep on the couch watching ESPN after a hearty dinner of peanuts, Doritos and vodka tonics, Roy was in like Flint, a match made, if not in Heaven, somewhere this side of internet dating.

“Bud Lite,” she told him, beer of choice. “Bud Lite?” he repeated, sorely disappointed. It was as if he’d gone to a white linen restaurant, asked his waitress what was good this evening, and been told Big Macs. With fries. Roy told me he actually considered ordering a Bud Lite so as not to hurt her feelings. Roy — as you can see — is a Sensitive Man. Although his first wife, and second one too, might disagree. He met them both in bars late at night in Stanwoodopolis. Poor lighting, I guess, or lack of competition. A relationship probably lasts longer built on more than a shared thirst, but then, I’m not a marriage counselor.

Roy finally decided he’d just go somewhere else to find a beer. Maybe he noticed her wedding ring or maybe it was just too many unknowns on all those taps. Down at the South End we like to keep it simple, but not too simple.

Quite a few islanders ask me if they’re South Enders or not, thinking, I guess, there’s a geographical demarcation, a Mountain View/Dixon Line. I usually tell them it’s more a psychological barrier, but then they think I mean psychotic and before you know it, misunderstandings turn into subtle hostilities and they decide they don’t want to be one of us after all. It’s not exactly a social club. Most of us down here didn’t choose to be South Enders. These things just happen.

Nevertheless, it does get a person to thinking: maybe we should annex a few acres here and there, suburbanize the backwashes and the bayous, zone them as Free Thinking refuges, then while we’re at it, liberate the gated communities trapped behind remote controlled bars and alarms with their high def TV’s and their BMW’s. Lower their taxes, if nothing else, fair compensation for the loss of their overvalued self esteem. Get em off their High Horse and their high property tax.

Hellfire, sometimes I get grandiose and imagine we could bring our enlightened way of living clear up to the north end, maybe even Stanwoodopolis. A little Shucks and Awe or maybe Aw Shucks and Law, liberate them from their backward ideas on government and philosophy. South End Exceptionalism! The 21st century’s answer to Manifest Destiny. I know, it sounds good to me too.

But then I pause and think: if we break it, we own it. Iraq just went to pieces this week and if we couldn’t bring those folks some good old fashioned American Values, how do we expect Utsaladians and Camalochers to get behind our South End Ideals? They got their tribal ways, entrenched for decades and barely hanging together by a thread. Upset the delicate balance and we’ll reap the whirlwind. Onamac vs. Finistere, grabbing for that northern gas pipeline. Juniper Beach sweeping down on Twin City Food, overtaking its strategic barricades on the river. Terry’s Cornermen capturing Cascade Lumber. It would make Middle East sectarianism look like Wednesday night women’s mud wrestling at the Leatherheads Pub. No, I think to keep the peace we need to keep the boundaries defined. You folks envious of us South Enders, well, you probably need to talk to a realtor down at Windy Rear. Or just wait til you lose your job. You’ll find your way here….

Billy Jean ran the art gallery down here at the aesthetically swollen South End, the only paid employee. The artists who showed their wares could pay extra commission or work 10 hours a week. Since they rarely sold their art, the extra commission was zip so why should they work? The first year the co-op, the South Fork Art Barn, was closed most days when no one was willing to sit in the vacant Second Hand Shoppe they’d leased. Finally, after mounting rental bills, the South End Arts Council voted to hire a staff person to do what they wouldn’t.

Billy Jean interviewed for the minimum wage, no benefits job and was hired the same day, primarily by dint of NOT being an artist herself, the main criterion the Council set for qualifications. Not having been around artists, B.J., who thought the position would mostly be running the store, tracking sales and receipts, closing up at the end of the day, well, she never dreamed the job actually was Ego Masseuse. The first day Sarah Jenkins came in early to demand her watercolors be moved front and center where they would cheerily greet the customers before they decided to leave empty handed. Billy Jean nodded and smiled, but eventually pled ignorance of the rules by virtue of being the New Hire. She would, she vowed, check with the Council and the Co-op Board. Course, it turned out the Board had their art front and center so a rule was made on-the-spot to keep the current display configuration.

The first week various grumpy artists brought forth their complaints, moved paintings or hung new ones, argued their cases with Billy Jean and wished her luck. Meaning, sell my work! By Friday she felt like a vise had scrunched her ears into one auditory pancake of pain. She was, she told her newly unemployed plumber husband Brent, nothing but a glorified Cat Herder. Brent, still in shock over his sudden layoff, told her she’d get the hang of it, just stick with it, Honey, we need the money, a refrain she later could have embroidered in needlepoint and hung front and center by her own front door and called it art or literature or just a motto for the rest of the South End.

Billy Jean lasted two more months. The Gallery lasted three.

Opportunities come and go here faster than county commissioners. Like Shakespeare said, albeit a wee more poetically, You snooze, You lose. A few years back the island had the chance to capitalize on the Barefoot Bandit’s international notoriety. Colton Island. We could’ve been what Forks is to vampires, a major tourist destination for teenagers and their drag-along parents. But no, we let it slip through our fingers and now Colton is just a fading memory cooling his heels in the federal pen south of Seattle and Gomorrah. All that memorabilia us South Enders invested in will no doubt jam the Second Chance Thrift Store for a decade.

But! Fate has dealt our backwash island another Hand, a real 2nd chance. And, as always, we’re here to promote it! Forget that 3rd time is the charm stuff — there won’t be a 3rd time. Jump on the 2nd. Learn from our mistakes. Ride the Gravy Train for a change. It’s coming into a station near you. Call your commissioner. Talk to your priest. Chat with your retirement investment counselor. Take out some loans. Do what needs to be done!

The mom and pop auto parts store on 530 has closed to make room for a cannabis store. A marijuana mercantile. A drug emporium. A regular Dr. Feelgood’s real goods. Down on the South End the Tyee Store has been sold and soon will boast multiple greenhouses and grow operations. That’s correct, Sherlock: Marijuana Pharming. Agribusiness is alive and well once again and the island — cue the Power Point Presentation — is ideally positioned to cash in. Cannabis Island!!! Imagine the tourism. Imagine the potential, the profits, the notoriety. Cannabis Island, the island higher than Mt. Rainier.

Forget Colton. He’ll be out soon and he’ll probably get a white collar job with the FBI teaching them his fugitive tactics. The future is now. The future, if we have sense enough to grab it by the bong handle, is going to pot. Contact the Chamber of Commerce, alert the realtors, listen to the artists: Cannabis Island “where you can take a trip and never leave your seat.” Don’t let this opportunity slip from our grasp! We missed our chance once, don’t let this one be a savage flashback.

Don’t look now, but the long economic drought of the South End is about to come to an end. Tyee Store, long shuttered and overgrown with weeds, has sold! Soon a new era begins down here and prosperity will be ours. Ironically it will be farming that returns us to the cash cows we once were. Or, in this case, Pharming.

Tyee Store is going to grow commercial cannabis. Medical marijuana. Recreational mary jane. This isn’t an April Fool’s joke, folks. This is the South End rising up from the ashes of a nettle industry gone to pot, higher than a Katmandu Kite, on the wings of what we once grew illegally, but now will grow and pay taxes on. Without a doubt this will be the largest employer down here. Probably larger than all the others put together. Growers and trimmers, pruners and baggers, labelers and quality control testers. Half of the neighbors have offered to help, free of charge, although I suspect our worthy volunteerism will be turned down. These are legitimate biznesspeople. These are what the 1% refer to proudly as ‘job creators.’

The South End is embarking on a new entrepreneurial era. Ironically, what once made us criminals, now will make us rich. After all, isn’t this the American Way? Oh, there will be some that cry foul, who will say why reward the criminals, who would rather forego the taxes to see miscreants and scofflaws put in their rightful place. Behind bars. We waged a war on drugs and after decades and billions, we lost. In the end pot was the largest agricultural commodity in the country, more than corn, more than soybeans, more than tobacco. And none of it was taxed. You don’t have to be an MIT math professor to do the calculations.

We’ll leave it for others to debate the morality. Obviously down here, we’ve opted for some fiscal sanity and a return to sound agricultural practices. Soon we’ll be exporting not only our THC but our way of life to markets near you. Watch for our tractor trailers rolling in to a distributor in your locale. The South End will Rise Again!

Ginny, our mail lady a few years back, had the longest postal route on the island, serving half the South End and all the residents near the Head. She drove a car with right side steering. She always said when she retired she wanted to go to England and rent a car where she’d feel right at home behind a passenger-sided steering wheel. With luggage in the back, not a ton of junk mail and magazines. I never heard if she did or not.

Like all our U.S. Postal carriers, Ginny would drive packages up to the shack if they didn’t fit our mailbox, the one with 10 pounds of goofy add-ons, red star on the ‘flag’, big glass nose on the door like a Christmas present for the insane. That, or a mailbox adulterated by an artist on drugs. Or worse. When parts of this evolving sculpture fell off, Ginny would pick them up and put them in the box with our bills and unsolicited credit card applications, just another small aggravation on a route filled with those. Boxes too high or too low, too far back, too grown over with blackberries or nettles, on wobbly posts with doors that no longer closed. At any given time ours would fit the description.

I hear folks who say the Post Office is a lousy organization, a letter costs too much to send and probably gets lost anyway, that UPS or Fed Ex would do a better job faster and cheaper. I think these people would find fault with Heaven itself and ask for a refund from St. Peter at the gate. I can send a letter across the country for half what it costs for a bottle of pop and it gets there in 2 days, 3 at most. Now, of course, most of us can e-mail it Instantaneously. Still can’t e-mail a package yet. Or a magazine. And anachronistic yahoos like me still send letters. Handwritten even. Even if we never get a letter back.

All my life I’ve appreciated going out to the mailbox, sort of a daily mini-Christmas, a surprise in every Cracker Jack box and yeah, mostly junk, I know. I like that it’s efficient, that it’s been around since Ben Franklin, that it delivered letters sent to soldiers in Europe or cowboys in Amarillo or me at the end of America. To all the Ginny’s driving wrong sided down America’s backroads, through wind and hail, sleet and snow, curmudgeons and naysayers, thanks!!

And Ginny, if you’re touring England, mind the hedges.

We got the last officially sanctioned woodburning sole-heat residence on the island. Back when the county still let us pioneers build our own shacks, we put in a Russian fireplace, 16 tons of brick with two flues and multiple horizontal paths that capture 90% of the heat from the wood we burn once a day. Very efficient burning, but not efficient enough when the burn bans roll in … unless you have a house whose only heat source is wood. Then you can burn wood.

The county stopped issuing owner-builder permits back in the 20th century, probably to protect us hobby carpenters from hurting ourselves with kickbacking hammers. They claimed it was to keep the building codes up to snuff, but I can tell you, they made us shack-whackers meet every one anyway. And then they made us sign affadavits in the event we ever sold our palace that we would disclose to the poor unsuspecting buyer that the house they were thinking of buying was built, not by a professional, but by us, slam-happy amateurs who didn’t care if our handiwork fell on us the first winter storm when the walls collapsed or the roof caved in. Not that my buyers would be very much fooled by the homemade doors or the stained glass transoms or the odd tile designs or the handmade furniture or the beach timbers holding up the beams or the cabinets and bookshelves made with exotic woods or the custom toilet seats that fit one particular butt particularly well.

Nah, I suspect they wanted the permit fees. I know, it sounds cynical on my part. Just a few extra hundred dollars to eliminate a right everyone who ever came to America or the South End has had since we first arrived on the continent. Even King George let the Pilgrims build their igloos without inspections or permit fees and George certainly wasn’t noted for his generosity. Admittedly, the island residents didn’t run out to dump tea in the Saratoga Harbor when the county banned owner-builder permits, but that isn’t really the point, you ask me. I know folks these days would rather just get a fat mortgage, hire a contractor, get the permits and pay the fees, then move in to their drywalled, energy-efficient, tsunami-proofed abode and watch the big screen high def TV in the throne room. Okay for them. But there might just be one more yahoo like myself who thinks it would be a Total Hoot to pick up a hammer and a saw and commence to erecting a house he would take pride in for the rest of his days, who doesn’t give a damn what the next buyer might think and if he doesn’t like it, tear it down and hire another built. We used to be people who prided themselves on their Can-Do attitude, who innovated and created and built from the ground up their ideas and their dreams. That was the America we all grew up in. I’m not sure that’s the America we live in now.

But … down on the South End, like other backwashes across the country, there are still a few of us. Maybe someday our shacks will be the museums of the future. Naw, they’ll get torn down. You know, if they don’t just fall down on their own.