The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I was following a Cadillac SUV with a bumper sticker that read: YOU’RE THE REASON YOU’RE SUFFERING. This is bad news indeed for most of us down here on the South End, but at least now we know who to blame for our misfortunes. Although … I don’t think I care for the Winners in the Game of Life telling us Losers we deserve what we got. Some of us sure do. And I’m one. But I don’t ask for favors … or sympathy … or welfare either. I’m not going to make it to the 1% and I’m not gonna work myself to death trying.

But there are folks like Janet down the road, two kids in preschool and daycare, a husband John back from the Oil Wars with one leg and a head bounced too many times in IED explosions who’s pretty much a permanent casualty. She’s trying to hold a job and hold things together too. She’s 24 going on 60 and I seriously doubt she thinks her suffering is on account of her.

Joe the Plumber — and no, not that Joe the Plumber — has meliosomethingorother, the cancer from breathing asbestos when he unknowingly worked with the stuff in his youth. I doubt he’s going to take kindly to a Cadillac bumper sticker that thinks his Attitude must be to blame for his disease.

The rich think the rest of us are lazy, I guess. The 1% think the losers are takers. The corporate boyz think they made it on their own, no help from the education system, no assistance from the government that built the infrastructure, no subsidies or tax credits or loopholes in the law. They got theirs and if it happens to suck up most of yours, well, tough. You coulda done it too. Course, you might have been born black or Hispanic, you might be autistic or handicapped, you might be a single mom or a laid-off worker, you might get sick, you might be discriminated against, you might have been born on the South End.

We all want to believe we’re the captains of our destiny. But the waters we sail are more treacherous for some. It doesn’t take much compassion to pick up survivors in the water from the lifeboat off your yacht. Course, when the time comes we take the yacht away from you, I hope you’ll understand, it’s going to be your fault.

Once again our intrepid entrepreneurial spirit has raised its banner on the globally connected South End. In the face of a newly invigorated craft distilling industry across the state, our own liquor suppliers have risen to the challenge. Admittedly hobbled by government laws and regulations set by the State Liquor Board and unable to advertise for fear of police intervention, they have been forced to raise the bar once more in order to compete with their well-funded and legitimate adversaries.

Just last evening I was huddled at my kitchen table with Whisky Bob, a moonshiner of some repute down here for his double distilled mashes, a white lightning so powerful Bob enforces his No Smoking ordinance with serious vigilance. If a ‘client’ ignores the admonition, Bob tells them the story of old man Jeffries who tried lighting his cigarette with a mason jar of High Octane Hooch open in his lap driving home to his doublewide in O-Zi-Ya. He survived, but his eyebrows never grew back and without going into gory graphics, let’s just say the miracle drug Viagra was of little use thereafter. For years he would relive the explosion every time he struck a match. The Post Stress became so severe he gave up smoking altogether.

Whisky Bob tells me he’s ready for the Next Stage of distilling, gonna dial back the alcohol a mite and go for the niche market in boutique boozes. I said it sounded like a great business plan, and Bob leaned in conspiratorially, afraid, I guess, Cost-Co might have the place bugged.

“Nettles,” he said. “Nettles?” I asked. “Nettles,” he repeated, louder, maybe thinking I needed hearing aids. Nettles. I pondered it a moment. Bob said he remembered that Heavy Nettle Ale I’d made two years ago, a fine year for the green crop, good crisp bite, a telltale aftertaste that tickled the tongue. Nettles, I finally agreed. Slow Food Movement, utilize the area agriculture, stop global warming, drink Local, save the planet. “Bob,” I said, tilting a glass of his double distilled, “it sounds like a winner! And I don’t think it’s the Everclear talking.”

This week Whisky Bob will begin the harvest. I told him my own organic nettles were available if he needed more than his backyard yield. By the end of summer Bob should have his flagship mash aged to perfection. Jack Daniels, good luck to ya….

We were down at the Columbia Gorge trailhead last year, emptying bladders and filling water bottles. A woman emerged from the restroom and whispered to her companion in a conspiratorial voice, “There’s no flush.” Her friend shook her head in incomprehension. “Not working?” she asked. “No, there’s nothing but a hole.” “A hole?” her friend asked incredulously. “Just a hole in the ground and no flush.”

I felt like a Cro Magnon listening in on aliens from some advanced galaxy. How could they possibly understand my dependence on a polluting gas engine? Or something as totally primitive as a cellphone? These two debutantes had missed their exit, apparently, on the way to the Ritz. A pit toilet was incomprehensible and if it weren’t such a sordid subject matter, it would have made for the nucleus of many a future discussion over bridge and tea at the Country Club. “But where, Charlotte? where does it Go???”

Indeed. Not that our two ladies could answer that question in regard to the plumbing matrix from their Beverly Hills manse to the sewer system it connects to. What matters is that it be whisked away, out of sight, out of smell. We don’t know how things work anymore — but so long as they do, we don’t need to care. The world is less and less natural to us; it’s electrons and silicon, computerized and digitized, all packaged in Black Boxes that create the new universe.

The trouble is, Charlotte, we’re still of the natural world. Body functions, pheromones, appetites, all that genetic coding of mammalian evolution in a world that’s more and more alien to us. We’ll fix that eventually. We’ll adapt to the virtual world, the one we make not so much in our own image as a clever cyber image. The natural stuff will be obsolete soon and we’ll replace the old ‘parts’ with new and improved engineered ones. The robots aren’t going to take over us humans. Us humans are going to become cyborgs.

And Charlotte, the best part is you won’t need a flush. Or a toilet either.

Back around 1980 a couple of cub reporters and would-be Hearsts decided to publish a Camano newspaper. They figured the Stanwoodopolis Gazette never printed much of anything on island news so somebody ought to. Radical notion back then. Radical notion now, judging by the one, maybe two articles devoted to Camano even today.

Carolyn and Gary, the stalwart publishers, reporters and photographers of the Camano Sun, dug into their bank accounts and began printing news and articles about, and for, us islanders. Not really much of a paper, sort of one or two notches above gossip. But it was about the island, written by islanders, read by islanders. Meaning, the circulation of the Gazette was in imminent danger of losing half its readership. And more importantly half its advertisers. Red flags went up faster than small craft warnings before a winter gale.

I spoze a newspaper facing competition, even limited competition, might step it up a notch, might hire crack cub reporters and do some investigative journalism. After all, what we learned as 5th graders in American History class is competition drives us to strive harder, it’s what makes us better, it’s what powers the capitalistic system. There’s a reason we teach this in grade school.

The Gazette took a different route, but one, I think, just as American and maybe more so, although we don’t teach it in social studies classes. Rather than up their quality, they just bought up the little paper. And without the slightest embarrassment, called the new hybrid the Stanwood/Camano Gazette. Last week there were two articles related to the island. And one was a fluff piece. Two … in a weekly newspaper.

So obviously we’re back to pre-Reagan reportage for the South End and its suburbs to the north: gossip. Probably more accurate than Fox News or MSNBC, but journalism should be held to higher standards than this blogsite you’re reading now, I’m sure you’d agree. But sadly, you’re stuck with this. And hardbreaking stories of South End artists and their meteoric careers in the Gazette. All the news fit to print? Or stuff that fits around the advertising? There’s a reason newspapers are in trouble and some of it isn’t fiscal.

Walter walked into the South End Diner last Friday morning carrying his Winchester 30-30 under his arm, a rifle meant primarily for hunting deer. He’s a card carrying NRA member and he takes his membership as seriously as a truck driving Teamster or an artist in the Camano Arts Association. Walter thinks the government wants to take his arsenal away from him and apparently, to protect his right to bear arms, he intends to bear them in the Diner.

Anita rolls her eyes from behind the cash register when he walks in with his unintentionally comic John Wayne swagger. “Whatcha got there, Pilgrim?” she asks. As owner of the café, she’s basically the sheriff, judge and jury in this one horse town. She makes the laws here and Walter, well … Walter’s not sure if the 2nd Amendment actually applies in the Diner with Anita at the City Limits, but by God, he intends to make a point and the Constitution should back him up and all the other Gun Toters in America and Anita, well, Anita can just shove it, he figures.

Like usual, Walter figures wrong. Anita holds a hand up like a traffic cop stopping cars. “We already killed the meat, Walter. Bacon, burgers, chicken, they’re dead. You want to be sure, order em well done. But … you aren’t hauling that gun in my restaurant, I don’t care if it’s loaded, empty or stuck up your keester, no way, no how. Comprende?”

Walter starts into quoting the Amendment but Anita’s out from behind the counter before he can hit the ‘right to’ and she’s got him by a twist of hair, turning him like a rusty screw toward the door and he’s yowling in pain so much she lets go. “Dammit, Walt, you give me indigestion, you really do. Give me the rifle and you can have it when you’ve finished your breakfast. But I can’t have the Wild West here with families and tourists. Take your protest to Stanwoodopolis, if you need to demonstrate. I got a business to run, probably into the ground, but I sure don’t need your help.”

In the end Walter’s politics took 2nd fiddle to eggs and bacon and his usual chicken fried steak. And Walter never brought his Winchester in the Diner again. But I don’t know about the Starbucks in town. Altho …there’s probably some enterprising entrepreneur who’s opened up a Barista Balllistic just to cater to the Walters of the world.

My pal Joey who’s been laid off now, oh, about 5 years ever since the recession hit back in Ought Eight, has turned from cynical to bitter. Used to be he hated his employer for poor wages and lousy benefits, now he hates the government for no wages, no benefits and no jobs, not even ones he hates. He spends a lot of his day e-mailing buddies, myself unfortunately included, screeds against the President and Congress (mostly the Democratic side, what he calls socialists and traitors and worse) rather than look for work.

I always wonder why he doesn’t spend his bile on Wall Street and the banks who sent the economy on a wild ride of greed, which finally plummeted to terra firma, crashed and burned and pulled the economy into the smoldering crater with them, but I guess you got to blame somebody.

“Joey,” I say. “Now that you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, how come you don’t become a Job Creator? Be the capitalist you dreamed of being? Start a bizness?” Joey looks at me with pity and shakes his head in disgust. “You and this damn government, Skeeter. You’ve set up regulations and roadblocks. Too many taxes. How’s a Little Guy like me gonna get off the ground? It’s like running a race carrying a 50 pound concrete block. Guaranteed to fail.”

“Too small to succeed, that it?” I can’t help saying. “They all started out small, Joey.”

Joey’s exhausted a long stretch of unemployment compensation. He’s pulling 401-K retirement money too early to live on and that ticks him off, all those penalties. Michelle, his wife, works part time at Jolene’s Beauty Salon, but even with tips, she’s barely clearing minimum wage. Course, Joey’s against raising minimum wage because if he ever did start being a Job Creator, that 50 pound block holding him back would be 60 pounds.

Joey’s never going to work again everybody but Joey knows. He’s retired at 55, another casualty of the Recession, and for his remaining years he can aim his wrath at the illegal immigrants who take the jobs he might have wanted, at the government which ended his unemployment compensation with only two extensions, at the IRS for taxing his 401-K withdrawals, at his old employer for sending jobs overseas, at the people on welfare who’d rather take a handout than look for work, at the women who’ve joined the labor market….

The American Dream withered on the vine for Joey and his fellow victims. He doesn’t have Clue One why it all went wrong, but he’s angry and he’s scared. I don’t know how many Joeys are out there, but too many, that’s for sure. The party’s over for them. Now all they got is the Tea Party and that one doesn’t look like much fun, not for Joey and certainly not for the rest of us. Even on the South End, anger is contagious.

Many a closing time at the Pilot House, the cramped little watering hole at the South End Yacht Club, P.T. Barney could be heard over the country western twanging away on the jukebox — “With the right advertising, you could sell anything!” He had variations on this theme. With the right advertising you could sell a cow milk. Or my favorite: With the right advertising you could sell a crab a new set of claws.

The point being, Barney was THE South End huckster, no question about it… and if you know how many hucksters have rolled through, that’s no small brag. P.T. wasn’t all talk either. He put his money where his mouth is and if neither are with us today, well, it wasn’t for lack of effort. If you know where to look, you can still see a half rotted wood sign back by his old place, hung over what once was a small barn but became South End Tourist Trap—Bait Inside! P.T. Barney Prop. Course now most of the letters are flaked off and another potential Wall Drug or Reptile Garden or Lookout Mountain has gone to the snake oil burial ground of roadside attractions.

I guess maybe Barney was a bit ahead of his time… or the curve … or himself. He hung Burma Shave style signs from the freeway exit to the South End. He stocked postcards and doo-dads and Chinese crap, all with South End printed on them. He sold birdhouses that hung upside down. South End Bat House. He had T-shirts and sweats. I Survived the South End. Well, you know what he had. Every trinket shop from L.A. to Boston has it.

But what they didn’t have — and what ultimately ruined Barney’s grandiose plans for World Novelty Hegemony was the labyrinth he constructed behind the aptly named Trap. P.T. thought if the corn farmers could sell a maize maze, by god, he could clean up with the Labyrinth of Stinging Death, a 50 cent per person attraction through a maze of nettles. What seemed a good idea in March that first and only year became a lawsuit in the summer when a tourist family from Iowa, unfamiliar with Urtica Horribilus, found themselves lost in that jungle of carnivorous plants 8 feet high. Once they were stung a few times they panicked like puppies in a hornets’ nest. Poor little Jimmy, the five year old son, tried a shortcut on his hands and knees and was soon swallowed by the prickly predators. An hour later he emerged, covered hairlick to toenail in welts.

P.T., sensing disaster afoot, tried bribery, but a few T-shirts that said I’m With Stupid weren’t a bulwark against the ensuing lawsuits, child psychiatric witnesses on Post Nettle Trauma Syndromes, the entire public flogging that played out in the papers from Portland to B.C. In the end Barney got the last word and true to his creed that he could sell anything, last we heard he was selling custom skateboards to the kids of hi-tech execs after a series of sales positions in used car lots, an RV/trailer outfit and a brief stint in door to door cutlery. Couple more years, P.T. will have sold nearly everything.

I just got back from the coast — sorry if you went into Daddle withdrawals, but like most things addictive, best to keep your fix in moderation. We met up with old college era friends and their kids and their grandkid for the luvva old age! Rented a modest mansion twice the size of our hacienda and only four times as nice, then set up camp on the edge of the Pacific. And discovered razor clam season was open.

My cronies from the Heartland, lubbers all, didn’t understand my excitement over this. 43 years ago I vacationed out to the coast and for a sunny week in June, dug razors until I essentially ‘went native’. The rainforest at Kalaloch was wild and temperate and everything the coast was too — I was totally, absolutely, irrevocably hooked on the Pacific NW. It took me a few years, but I moved out here to live.

The year after the first visit I drove 2500 miles back to dig those clams once again. The beaches were closed! I felt like Adam at the Gates of Eden with its No Trespassing sign up and a This Means You! underneath. Eve and the snake were on the other side making applesauce. I drove back to Wisconsin a day later. Dumb, I know, but I came, even if symbolically, for the razor clams.

Since then I’ve never been out there on the coast when the digging season was open. 43 years. But this week it was digging tides once again, the weather was perfect and I was back in 1971, shovel in hand, a 21 year old kid who had no clue where life would lead, down in the sand looking for telltale dimples, clues, it turned out, to the future.

Whales spouted beyond the surfline and the crabbing fleet, old friends gathered for a retelling of stories told too many times, the stars came out at night in numbers beyond fathom. I don’t believe our lives are cyclical … but sometimes we do circle back and it’s almost as if we can begin anew, optimistic, naïve, starry-eyed and willing to follow a path into an uncertain future. I’m home now but it already feels different.

My first banjo was one I traded a semi-automatic Marlin .22 for, a good deal for the guy trading the banjo. Nice gun, pretty poor banjo. But it got me pickin and grinning and for that, it was a great swap for me too. A couple years later I found a nicer one in a Stanwoodopolis 2nd hand shop and even though it was a couple hundred dollars, I jumped right on that deal like a dog on a bone.

Before you know it, I was playing Cripple Creek and Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Shady Grove like ringing a bell. The second banjo was okay, but nothing to write home about. So when I found a used beauty up in Mt. Vernon at the music store on consignment, I knew at first glance it was not only a very nice instrument, it was meant for me. Actually, I figured I could sell the first two and pay for the good one, what we bluegrass yahoos call Zero Sum Pain.

My wife at the time, my Ex, she didn’t live up on the South End with me. She had a boyfriend and a house in Seattle and Gomorrah. We were waltzing toward a breakup, but never quite making it to the end of the dance. A lot of bust-ups are like that, I think, slow motion wrecks any fool could see wasn’t avoidable so why not just get it over with?

When I mentioned my discovery of this sweet little 5 string practically being given away up north, she wondered aloud — as you might have too — why in blue hell did I need another banjo when I barely could play 3 songs on the two I got?? Well, okay, I said, but this was a helluva deal and one I’d sorely HATE to pass up, practically a ticket to Nashville, baby.

We quarrelled a bit as we often did back in those loveless days and finally I said I meant to buy the bugger. I’d sell the first two. Probably make a tidy profit when the smoke cleared. “You buy that thing and I’ll leave you,” she vowed.

Well, I’m sure many a marriage has cracked up on the rocks over a banjo. But usually they bust up over playing them. Leave em in the closet, you have 50/50 chance of making the next anniversary. Buy 3 and play em … all badly … and often … trust me, music doesn’t always soothe the savage breast.

The power went off an hour ago. Computers went dark, afternoon TV blinked and disappeared, washing machines stopped mid-spin, life as we know it came to a complete and abrupt halt, a small reminder that the Digital World is more fragile and vulnerable than we Modernists like to admit.

I was back in the woods splitting and hauling next year’s fuel, 12 cords filling up the sheds. Behind me the Baker Woman has her outdoor oven stoked and filled with today’s loaves. This noon I’m going to visit the Goat Lady who quit her Boeing career to homestead up behind the Barefoot Bandit’s trailer. She’s got milk and eggs and cheeses for sale and I plan to stock up.

A neighbor called yesterday offering mussels she’d gathered. I ate my first salad out of our garden last night. The folks who bought the farm to the north of us plan to open a micro-brewery and maybe a small boutique distillery. We ate oysters from Triangle Bay a couple of friends raised from seed and are cultivating into a fairly large nursery.

When I survey the neighborhood, what I find are folks making furniture, building boats, milling wood from timber, fashioning musical instruments, making art of every conceivable kind, raising livestock, catching seafood, growing gardens, brewing beer, making breads and cheeses, living closer to the land. I don’t see the Past so much as I see our Future.

Like the Irish monks who toiled in the caves during the Dark Ages, us South Enders are keeping the flames of Old Knowledge alive. And when the time arrives, when the power is nearly gone, a sporadic spark along decaying fiber optic grids, we’ll re-emerge, blinking in the newly discovered sunlight of another Dawn, ready to pass along the knowledge once thought obsolete. Meanwhile, we’re not too troubled by power outages. Power, as we all should know, isn’t just electrical.