The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

So okay … admittedly I’m a Slow Learner, one of those yahoos who apparently makes the same mistake repeatedly and goes ahead one more time, hoping, I guess, the previous mistakes were all flukes. I’m building my 4th or 5th banjo, not sure exactly but somewhere in that ballpark, hard to say since some were taken apart and cannibalized for the next attempt at 5 string luthiery. I know what you’re thinking because my folks ask it every time the subject comes up: how many damn banjos do you need? Give me a year or seven and I’ll get back to you on this, right after my doctoral thesis is accepted on the Quantification of Drone Stringed Instrumentation.

I’m actually taking a bit of a break right this minute on the current banjovarius. I’m trying to fit the neck to its body for good playability. I won’t bore you with details — so let’s just say it’s really difficult and I’m fairly frustrated. The thing is beautiful, I’ll tell you that flat out. Laminated hardwoods, walnut and Honduran mahogany and bubinga, a neck carved by a sculptress up the road, gold hardware, a work of wood art I could hang on the wall with all the others. But! It’s a musical instrument, not a sculpture. It needs to play well and sound good. Fitting that neck is really a big part of the Key.

I read today that they blindfolded a pack of violinists, professional fiddlers, and gave them a Stradivarius … plus an inexpensive newly built violin … and asked them which sounded the best, the multi-million dollar Strad or the $30,000 newly crafted one. If you own a multi-million dollar Stradivarius, stop reading right now and get your butt down to the nearest pawn shop ASAP and salvage what you can.

A banjo — well, a banjo pretty much sounds like a banjo. At least mine do. Every last one. But for the connoisseur, for the orchestral banjo aficionado, for the fine tuned elite whose sensibilities are measured in harmonic undertones and percussive rhythmics, let’s assume we merely have to blindfold them to dazzle them with the Yankee Daddle 5 String Deluxe. Beauty, after all, is in the ear of the Bewildered.

I don’t have kids.   So I watch my friends raise theirs with no real experience on my part, or prejudice or preconceived notions of how I would go about it.  Child rearing for me is like sex is to a eunuch.  Course, I don’t know a whole lot about eunuching either.

Billy Jean lived a couple houses south of us.  Her husband Robert and her were wild kids, even when they got married.  Small town wild.  Drugs, sex, drinking, penny-ante thefts, racing in the streets — they pretty much had it covered.  But when Billy Jean got pregnant, well, she knew it was time to slow down some, take a little responsibility, maybe gear up for adulthood.  By the second kid she was sure it was time and hey, Robbie too!  So by the time Peggy Sue Star was born, Robert had a full time job at Twin City Foods driving lift truck, they’d quit drinking and smoking herb, they joined the Little Chapel in the Ravine and received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior … and they avoided me as best they could.

Billy Jean had some definite ideas how to raise her children.  She never let them out of her sight and she never let them play with other kids would no doubt contaminate them with bad habits.  When it came time for school, she home schooled them, which was hard, considering she and Robbie had pretty much partied past learning anything in high school themselves, but for the first 6 grades, she could manage to study up.

Like all child rearing, I guess, it was an interesting experiment.  Very hands ON.  Versus, oh, my own kidhood where we’d roam the woods and the neighborhood with other kids, fight, play baseball, shoot marbles, build treehouses, ride bikes, all pretty much unsupervised.  “Be home by ….” Mom would command and vhrooom, we were gone til then.

Billy Jean and Robert broke up awhile back.  For the third time.  This one’s for good, I suspect.  Peggy Sue Star married an army guy, got pregnant, divorced, and now lives with her two kids with Billy Jean.  Randall, the son, quit speaking to his father years ago and he moved away to Utah.  Robbie’s a mess.  Quit Jesus and decided to try his hand at casino gambling.  Last I heard he was dead broke, deep in debt, drinking again and living in a trailer up river.

If you thought I’d wrap this up with a ribbon and a bow, maybe pontificate on how to raise kids the proper way, you’d be optimistic.  I do think kids ought to play with other kids, go to school with other kids, live a little dangerously so they’ll grow up before they’re 35 or 40.  I’m not sure you can really protect them the way Billy Jean tried.  But I suspect you can OVER-protect them.  Then again, I think eunuchs are a misunderstood minority.

The world is a mysterious place to most of us. Last week some astronomists holed up in Antarctica for three years with a small telescope pointed in one spot discovered a gravitational wave generated by the Big Bang 380,000 years after the explosion. They’ll win a Nobel Prize in physics for this, most definitely. Sure makes the universe easier for me to understand …. unless I start thinking about how it proves the potential for multi-verses with entirely different physics, then my head starts to expand, my eyeballs hurt and I get worried there’s going to be a Big Pop soon above my shoulders.

Tarot Tracy works on a different astral plane. She opened what I guess you’d call a ‘storefront service’ in the old Bucklin gas station just down the road here. It’s been a residence off and on for years, mostly off, but Tarot Tracy bought it, fixed it up with a ‘consulting room’ out front and living quarters in back, hung a shingle with the High Priestess card off the porch and opened up for business. Figuring that curiosity doesn’t kill a cat with 9 lives necessarily, I hoofed it down last week for a ‘reading’.

“Tarot or astrological chart or I-Ching,” Tracy queried. “Which is more accurate?” I asked with some smarm. “Depends on you,” she replied with a Cheshire smile. So I threw the yarrow sticks and Tracy interpreted after asking what the nature of my inquiry was. Half an hour later she’d determined my future. Not precisely, exactly. Just sort of suggestions, open to my own interpretation. I paid her an exact fee, however, that was not open to much interpretation.

I have a prediction of my own: Tarot Tracy will be branching out soon — and I don’t mean franchising. Like a lot of us down here, she’ll need to supplement the income from her dream profession. Right now it’s an expansionary universe, but I foresee a time when gravity pulls Tracy back toward South End reality …. like the rest of us trying desperately to avoid our private Big Bang.

I got a junkie neighbor up behind me.  I know what you’re thinking:  I got lots of neighbors with trash accumulating faster than that mudslide up at Oso.  I don’t mean a junk collector.  I mean a junkie.  Addict.  Needles.  Heroin.  He tried committing himself to a rehab joint, but … well, our society doesn’t have the money to run many of those these days.  Too busy, I guess, giving tax breaks to the hedge fund managers and the corporations to find a few pennies for programs a little closer to the ground here.  He could get on a waiting list, go to the back of the line, continue shooting up until he could receive treatment.

So that’s what he did.  Course, he also makes a habit of criminal behavior other than drug abuse.  For one, he’s a thief.  Down the road a nursery was missing a lot of plants and our boy, let’s call him Junkie Jim but it’s not his real name, Junkie Jim was seen carting a truckload of plants down the road back to his property where he did a Martha Stewart landscaping job.  Now, I appreciate the urge to tidy up the place.  Join the suburb.  Maybe have us neighbors in for tea and crumpets.  Join the Welcome Wagon for some meet and greet.  But … he probably shouldn’t have stolen the shrubbery and the ornamentals.

The deputies came after they were tipped off by the old timer who’d seen Jim transporting his booty home.  They questioned him and Jim, being a laid back sort of stoner dude, said, yeah, he stole the plants.  Confession, case closed, fine example of police work and citizen involvement, almost a model for the rest of the nation.  Maybe the court would be lenient since he was cooperative.

Except for one small thing.  The cops never charged him, the case never went to the prosecutor’s office and the court never convened.  Junkie Jim has the purloined plants budding out nicely this spring and everybody but the nursery seems happy about this.  Well, maybe not me.  I know an open and shut case when I see one, but I hate the open and shut mouth on this one.  What the hey??  I was just at an event where the Sheriff spoke ad infinitum on the need for more money for deputies, more taxes for his department, more more more.  What sheriff in what county in what country doesn’t sing the same song?????  But I got a question and I bet you know what it is.  Why would I give the cops one more dime when they won’t arrest a thief they took the time to come and question and who confesses on the spot?  Give me a toy badge and let me play deputy for a year.  I’ll give the taxpayer the same quality crimefighting and it won’t cost you one penny.

I know it’s the South End, but it worries me when the police catch a thief and figure why spend money prosecuting.  Just a bunch of plants to them, I guess.  Me and the neighbors are chaining down our rhodies.  And we won’t be bothering to call 911 in the future.  Why waste their time or our time?

I go into Stanwood and Gomorrah occasionally for supplies I’m not willing to pay the island surcharge on. Hardware, groceries, gas. Necessities. I must not have been paying attention, I guess, cause a lot of biznesses down on the flood plain closed down awhile back. Looked about as prosperous as an Oklahoma dust bowl implement dealer specializing in irrigation systems. Half the storefronts looked dark or boarded up.

The other day I drove through the East Side and on through the DMZ and over to the West End. Only to discover my old Stanwood is gone. In its place was an Antique Mall. Store after store of vintage stuff I got too much of at home. It looked like Snohomish on the Skids. I’m not on the Economic Development Council, but nevertheless, I found this alarming. Better than a ghost town, I suppose, but there’s something parasitic about antique stores in decaying villages — they suck the nutrients out of their host without giving much back.

Now, honestly, I like antique stores okay. I just don’t want the whole damn town to be one. Somehow it doesn’t make for a vibrant city, all this old junk for sale everywhere you look. If there’s a symptom for the Final Days, one that portends the death throes of Small Town America, it’s a street cluttered curb to railroad track, gutter to dike with goofy little businesses shoe-horned into old houses and soon to be replaced by another second hand shop or Junque Parlor. A healthy town needs a good mix of merchants. Stanwoodopolis seems to have a penchant for failed taverns, ruined restaurants, rotating beauty salons, closing barbershops and shuttered clothing stores. The void is being filled by hypno-aromacists, paint ball franchises, toenail painters, Chinese chiropracters, storefront religions, struggling cookie mills, gift boutiques, satellite real estate offices and smoke shops. And now we got this tsunami of antique stores….

Maybe this is the death rattle of all backwash towns, no longer viable, just quaint little burgs tourists pass by on their way to the La Conners or the Anacorteses, nothing there but gas and groceries, let’s move along folks, nothing to see here …. Just another casualty on the American Interstate System when the road bypasses your cute village, no need to exit. 7 miles too far.

When I need another vintage piece to bring the livingroom roaring to life, well, I don’t have far to go. If I need anything else, besides gas and grocery, I’ll have to drive a lot further. Nothing much new there near as I can tell

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 summer Bob should have his flagship mash aged to perfection. Jack Daniels, good luck to ya….

Every year the editorial staff of the Crab Cracker comes to me and asks why don’t we run a South End Man and Woman of the Year? Mary Jo Permkowski begs them to run that contest so she can win South End Businesswoman of the Year for her Pedicure Salon, Mo-Toe Mojo. She figures she’s practically the only business left on the South End, a virtual shoe-in, she thinks, assuming South End Greenworks, Two Toke Tom’s semi-legal cannabis dispensary isn’t considered a legitimate candidate. Mary Jo’s kidding herself — Two Toke probably would win Man AND Business of the Year both.

I tell them let Stanwoodopolis run their little contest. High School’s over down here. We don’t elect Prom King and Queen — none of us were the captain of the football team or the most sexually active cheerleader. We know how the Game is rigged. And not just Yokel of the Year —- I mean the Big Game. Why do you think we live down here? To win popularity contests? Or to escape em …?

Oh, I suppose we could run our own easy enough. Best Moonshiner. Best Gyppo. Best Nettle Farmer. Best Hydroponic Cannabis Cultivator. Best Trailer Court. Best Old Hippie. Best Dandelion Show Garden. Best Poacher. Best Meth Lab. Best Rehabbed Felon. Best E-Bay saleswoman. Best Illegal Crabber. Best Friend of Colton Harris Moore. Best Glass Artist Who Plays Banjo and Writes Articles for the Crab Cracker.

But NO! we’re not gonna stoop to that. If all we wanted were a pack of sycophantic friends to vote us their favorite yokel or their best underground business, we’d sign up for Facebook and get all our neighbors to “Like” us. Probably mostly end up with hits from the FBI or the IRS anyway. No sir, let the popularity voting go on without us another year. We may not be the cutest or the most athletic or the smartest or the friendliest, we may not have a South End Fan Club or 2 zillion connections on Linked-In, we may not get invited to those catered North End soirees for the rich and famous winners of last year’s People of the Year, but we’ll just struggle on. And Betty Jo — you didn’t have an atheist’s prayer against Two Toke anyway, I don’t care how promiscuous you are.

Up river from Stanwoodopolis maybe 30 miles or so, a mountain of mud slipped … and in 3 seconds covered up the roadway, 30 houses and the entire flow of the North Fork of the Stilly River. As of today 14 people are dead, but over 100 are missing. Flashflood warnings are up and the towns of Oso, Arlington, Silvana and Stanwoodopolis are on evacuation alert. If the backed up Stillaguamish lets loose suddenly, a deluge will descend downstream like the Johnstown Flood.

On the news I hear folks starting to point fingers. At the state. At geologists. At the timber company who clearcut above this slide. At the County Planning Department. At the folks who allowed citizens to build under a known danger. At the Fire Department for not doing enough. At Emergency Management for not allowing volunteers to wade into the square mile of muck and mud that is more like quicksand than not, making volunteers more like victims than not. It is, to say the obvious, a mess.

We hate government these days. We hate it regulating us. We hate it enforcing their rules. Then we blame it for not doing enough. One of the dead is the leader of Freedom County who railed for years about government intrusion in his life. I wonder what he’d have to say now? We blame government for not saving more lives, we blame it for not preventing those deaths. But we’re glad hundreds of firefighters, state troopers, medics, cops and engineers are up there working 24/7. No doubt we’ll sue some of them soon enough….

It only took two days before the fault-finding started, no pun really intended. We don’t even have the bodies recovered, the road cleared or the river undammed. I was out fishing along the coast of the South End yesterday. I couldn’t help but wonder how the folks in the bluff houses were sleeping. Or the ones below the bluff. Were they cursing the Island County Building Department for issuing a building permit? Were they calling their insurance agent? Were they eyeballing the banks beneath their precipice and noticing the previous slides? Were they already on the phone to their attorneys just in case the worst happens???

I don’t know … but I’d be wearing a seat belt to bed. And I would not be sleeping soundly. Pun intended.

I know a lot of South Enders who fight with the Tax Assessor. Fighting with the Tax Assessor is akin to fighting with a cop. You might get a few curses out or even land a punch, but it’s a Loser’s War. They’re gonna win, guaranteed, end of argument. But no, when the TaxMan comes around, they abuse them or they threaten them, they videotape them or they cry No Trespassing! They end up going down to the courthouse to protest their assessment with the Equalization Board. I won’t say they never get a reduction, but the couple who did saw it go back up the very next year.

I got a buddy, cheats on his taxes, wheels and deals on every purchase, builds the South End Way, meaning, he skips the permits then when he’s done, boards it up so the Assessor can’t look in. Or, actually, makes the Assessor all that much more curious. When I first came, I noticed the Assessor found everything I’d done, from plumbing a hot water heater to building a crummy porch — he was like a precursor to the NSA. I might not have to get a permit, but you better believe I was going to be taxed. I decided this was an okay bargain.

So when Fred found me busting knuckles behind the shed on an antique  5 horse boat motor, he introduced himself at the Tax Assessor and said he used to repair motors down in Florida, what was the problem? Good guy, Fred. Didn’t fix my 1950 Johnson, but he had some good advice: Junk It and buy a decent motor. I said, Fred, if I could, I would.

Years later I had built our palace up on the hill, million dollar view, permitted even on the owner builder permit plan, and Fred found me down at the shack working. “Got some bad news for you, Skeeter,” he said. “Well, sir, hold on then, I’ll get us a couple of homebrews, take the sting off the wound….” We shot the breeze awhile, drank our beers, then I said, go ahead, hit me. He said the neighbor’s new house across the ravine was assessed as of an hour ago at over one million dollars. I said, “So?” Fred rolled his eyes and I asked, “You mean that affects my piddly little house? Fred could see he was dealing with a real yokel.

“And that’s not all,” he started. “Wait!” I said, “there’s more?” And when he said, oh yeah, I got us another 12 ounce anesthesia. We swapped a few war stories, compared notes on the neighbors who hated him, had a few laughs, then I cut to it —- “So what’s the other shoe?”

“Bet you thought you had a final on your house, didn’t you?”

My heart skipped three beats. Yes, I did. My taxes had gone up, but not near what I’d feared. Now he was telling me why they hadn’t. “Well,” I said, “if I’m gonna live with millionaires, I guess I better pay my fair share.”

Fred commiserated with me over the gentrification of the South End, we had another cold one, shook hands and that was the last time I saw Fred before he retired. Our property valuation came in the mail a month or so later and I opened it with serious trepidation. It had barely budged. I won’t tell you a little courtesy, a welcoming smile and a couple of beers makes a difference to a Tax Assessor — they are, after all, paid professionals doing a miserably hard job — but I suspect Fred cut us some serious slack. And Fred, wherever you are, Thanks from a poor nettle farmer!