The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

We had a major crime wave down here recently. Naw….. I don’t mean the Barefoot Bandit. He’s cooling his heels down at the Federal Pen South of Seattle. Probably learning new techniques at our prison —- that, or he’s teaching his fellow students, tuition, night classes, gov’t. grants, GI Bill money. Phoenix School of Federal Way. “Come Fly With Me” as a slogan.

Naw, we had some home invasions, front doors broken down, valuables stolen, safes hauled out — all in the broad daylight down by the end of the island. A good forensic detective could put pins on the map and just about trace em right back to the first break-in, about where the mailboxes were being hit and letters strewn beside the road. Got a couple of guys down there, both in the habit of rolling their cars, nodding off at the wheel. The Oxycontin Kids. I’m sure most of us and the sheriff’s deputies too knew who was responsible — and why.

Naw, not society. Not the Stanwoodopolis School System. These two yahoos needing money to buy heroin. Oh, I spoze we could blame the heroin dealers for price gouging. Or the job creators for paying too little, forcing our culprits to quit the job market and seek more lucrative compensation elsewhere. Like from us….

Now, understand, I majored in sociology in college. Which, of course, is why I’m a starving artist now. But that’s another lecture for another day. So I know the Root Causes, the societal ills, the entire panoply of excuses…. the ones that get thrown right out the window when it’s your shack that’s burglarized and your TV set and laptop computer that get stolen and pawned for nickels on the dollar.

Most of us would probably give these punks a buck or two, about the same as the pawnshop or the fence is gonna give em just to NOT break a door down. Call it insurance, call it bleeding heart liberalism, call it charity. It’s that or we could just do like Halloween and leave a basket of methadone on the doorstep, a treat instead of a theft. Save us all the money wasted on security systems and the extra ammo.

The Saratoga Landscaping and Lawn Service used to be Don’s Lawn and Brawn. Don had a couple of used Sears 22 inch cut rear-baggers, an overhauled Stihl weedeater for the hard to reach places and the ditches, plus a little edger that a few of his fussier clients required. He hauled all the tools of his trade in a 1978 Datsun flatbed pickup with a handlettered sign on each door DON’S LAWN & BRAWN 387-LAWN.

Don worked six, sometimes seven days a week, rain, shine or fog, but he invariably fell behind when the monsoons came in the late spring, early summer, and never really caught up until the droughts of August. Shortly after, his workload dropped in the opposite direction as the barometer that usually stayed high until October.

When his knees started to go, about 1996, he bought his first rider. 4 speed, 40 inch cut, headlights, battery start. And he hired his next door neighbor’s dropout kid to mow half the clients with a self-propelled Honda model, figuring he’d upgrade to another tractor if everything worked out. New folks were retiring here by the droves, folks who wanted their postage stamp lots immaculately manicured … by someone other than themselves. Retirement meant just that — retire the damn mower.

Bizness picked up, his neighbor’s punk kid absconded with his new self-propelled and the other tools and Don went through a series of similar help, young guys with poor work ethics and low ambition coupled with various substance abuse issues. Clients were irate and business, being mostly word-of-mouth references, suffered. And Don sure didn’t want to go solo any more. Retirement looked further away the more he yearned for it.

Fortunately he hired Miguel, a 35 year old ‘immigrant’ from Ensenada. Worked hard, didn’t complain about the poor wages and didn’t steal Don’s tools, didn’t do drugs on the job and spoke enough English to communicate with the clients. Before long Miguel’s uncle Juan signed on, then most of his extended family entered the U.S. Labor Force through the backdoor of the South End.

Don retired a year ago, sold the business to Uncle Juan and now most of the lawn services up and down the island are done by a lawnmowing cartel in fleets of shiny red Ford 150’s with professional lettering on the side DON JUAN’S LAWNS. They’re reliable, they’re honest, they’re industrious, they’re the new Americans, documented or not, simmering nicely in the South End melting pot.

One of the rules of a little local string band, especially one starting up, desperate for gigs, hungry for monetary applause, is that you take most everything that comes ambling down the musical highway. The South End String Band is no different. Maybe it’s even more so…. We’ve played Tyee and Elger Bay Stores’ parking lots in the exhaust of cars left idling so their owners can run inside for that pack of Marlboros or the six pack of 16 oz ice beer. We ‘ve played next to the ATM machine at Haggen’s, for reasons lost in the fog of memory now, as vulnerable as a child between the food sampling booths of CostCo and 300 pound hippo shoppers salivating toward free snacks. We’ve performed for Senile Centers and we’ve played for American Legion dinners. Weddings. Father’s Day events. Anniversaries. Performing Arts Centers. You name it, we’ve blasted it with banjos. Pride is an expendable virtue in the music biz….

Every year for the last seven or so we played a couple of nights for Lights of Christmas. Snow, sleet, ice, rain and bad gravy, we put on a half hour show five times a night with half an hour in between, a brutally prolonged evening of music while clean-cut families crowded in out of the weather and the psychedelic light displays, a hometown Disneyland out on the outskirts of Stanwoodopolis. Every year we hauled out our gnarly South End Christmas carols, all our drinking songs and gambling ditties and whoring tunes and murder ballads, then entertained the Disney besotted masses while they gnawed on ribs or slurped clam chowder, hungry for clean wholesome entertainment and hearty unhealthy food.

About the 7th year, last year, the director sat down with us before the 4th night’s first set. “We’ve never gotten complaints about a band before,” he stated sadly, shaking his head, obviously not happy to spoil the holiday cheer of the evening. “Couldn’t be us, could it?” I asked, glad I’d left my beer in the truck rather than in the go-cups we usually kept full through the long evenings.

He said we’d signed a contract to do 10% Christmas songs and we hadn’t done any. And worse, our songs were, oh …. He searched for the right words. Gnarly? I helped. Then I mentioned in our defense that we really hadn’t read the contract, kind of a habit the band doesn’t want to fall into. He said –no, he demanded –we play some damn Christmas songs.

Sadly, we didn’t know any. But, I said cheerfully, how about we maybe leave off Whisky Before Breakfast and Won’t Get Drunk No More and a couple of murder songs and we’ll call it good, finish out the night, maybe assume we won’t be coming back next year. Wearily, eyes rolling, shoulders hunched, he said okay. And that’s how we were branded as the first band to be 86’d out of the Lights of Christmas. Bad to the bone, baby, bad to those crummy rib bones that we’ll never have to eat again so help me Jingle Bells.

Now as you might’ve guessed, I’m almost always in favor of any and all new technologies, unproven or not. Get those government regulations out of the launch path and let the good old profit motive dictate the future. As we well know in this Job Creating culture we love, let the marketplace rule. If you can’t trust a capitalist, who CAN you trust?

I just read they got a new 3-D printer for creating new life forms. Program in a funky DNA sequence , load up the amino acid mix and hit a button. Pretty quick you got an iridescent houseplant or a 6 legged, 4 eared puppy, whatever you want. Experiments are fine. A few new viruses introduced out among the billions we got already the old fashioned way, well, what’s the harm? Might be some human-friendly ones in there and that hobby lab you got turns into the next venture-capitalized pharma farm. The possibilities are endless. The profit potential immense! Sure, the naysayers will worry about some 3-D printout creating the next pandemic, but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. You think God didn’t roll the dice?? Check out some of these South Enders we got down here ….

I heard this week Amazon wants to use drones to deliver their goods. The Star Trek teleporter isn’t on-line yet, I guess, so this is their fallback. Oh, I suppose the Luddites will fight this. Skies filled with more drones than starlings. Collisions in congested areas. Free gifts for the earthbound after the crashes, if nothing else. Put some armaments on these birds and UPS package theft on unguarded porches ought to drop significantly.

The future is in the rearview now, closer than it appears maybe, but we’re accelerating fast and there’s no time in this multi-tasked, info-deluged world to start worrying about the dearth of deep analysis. Fasten your seatbelt, download a program for an experimental lunch and keep your twitter feed on 24/7. It’s a brave new world and you don’t have the luxury of fear. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

1. START THE DAY BEFORE NOON

At least on work days. The other five days, sleep in. You earned it.

2. LEARN HOW TO READ
Writing is no longer essential, but … the successful South Ender can tweet, twitter and text, even if spelling is marginal.

3. LISTEN TO OTHERS
Especially on Facebook and other social media. Keeping track of friends’ and enemies’ likes and dislikes is an invaluable tool in the South End toolbox. Decision making is easy, just see what the herd is doing.

4. WORK AT LEAST ONE HOUR A DAY.

No matter how severe the hangover, the lethargy, the ennui or excess hedonistic activities. Work isn’t ALL bad.

5. WORK OFF THE GRID

No South Ender worth his or her salt works in order to pay half his or her income to the IRS. Barter heavily with your neighbors and friends. Crab, clam, trap, fish, hunt or grow it! Food is free and food is fun! If you buy your dinners, food is neither.

6. LEARN TO REPAIR

Your own car, truck, toaster, wellpump, toilets, etc. You can’t barter or sell busted stuff and repairmen cost an arm and a leg per hour PLUS that service fee to drive half a day to and from your hell-and-gone address. Knowing a few handyman tricks can save you another part-time job at the fast food joints 50 miles away.

7. MARRY UP!

Chances are you’ve embraced an aesthetic lifestyle. You artists and musicians need supplemental income and unless you plan to work full time low paid minimum hour jobs, a second salary is essential. Marry one.

I drove by the old Visitor Center this last week, the one we built for the Chamber of Commerce ten years ago. Mostly a bunch of us artists who thought a sculpture park and murals and architecture would be a great gateway onto the island. Later we got 3 more acres for what became Freedom Park and a couple of years ago a playground went in. It makes a nice story about volunteerism and local pride.

I had to join the Chamber in order to get that Center finished. Didn’t want to, trust me. They don’t call it the Chamber of Commerce because they’re philanthropic. They want money. Revenue. Bizness. Profits. Art and architecture, parks and sculpture — not so much. Awhile back they offered me a Lifetime Membership for my part in building that Center. All I need now is an NRA badge, good for perpetuity, I’ll be set until the ammo’s used up.

This year they moved the Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center out of the building we built, the one that won awards from the American Institute of Architecture, and put it in a trailer down the road past Freedom Park. Okay by me. Sort of fits their vision nicely. But now I see the old Center has a vinyl banner on the side facing the traffic, big THANK YOU FOR VISITING CAMANO ISLAND under the giant RE-FLUX REALTY.

When we were almost done building the Center and the Sculpture Park, the president at the time decided to magnanimously set up her store in it, charge herself some cheap rent in return for having her staff greet visitors. No one on the Board was troubled by this, not even the artists. Chamber of COMMERCE, remember?? Course, I was a little troubled by this, but hey, I was just a lone voice in the impoverished, morally burdened wilderness. But … sometimes you hold the hammer, literally in this case, and the Board did want to see the Center finished and I was the only boy left working on it by then.

If there’s a moral here, damnation if I know what it is. Like the fable of the woman who kindly takes pity on the snake, feeds it, gives it a place to sleep, then has it bite her next day. “Why’d you bite me?” the poor lady asks, incredulous that her kindness was repaid so viciously. “Because I’m a snake,” the serpent replies.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see a strip mall down there next, the very thing we fought so hard to prevent in the first place. You know … if they had some poor dumb volunteer to build it for them with donations from the community ….

The first book I ever published, the mega-selling ‘Skeeter Daddle Diaries’, I got some advice from a friend who convinced me, against my better judgement, I needed to Step Up my promotional skills and get myself an account with Amazon. Not being real tuned into what Amazon was, I hemmed and I hawed, but eventually my buddy convinced me to at least try it, see what it would do for me and my budding literary career.

So I went Online with Amazon, filled out their complicated forms, signed their many contractual arrangements, sold off paternity rights to my firstborn children and got ready for some serious BookSelling. A couple e-mails down the road, I was informed my book was in their index, photo of the cover was up and running, even had a pithy description I’d been kind enough to offer. A day later they informed me I could send a copy to their warehouse, across the country, West Virginia maybe. One copy………..

I guessed they maybe were hedging their bets on a blockbuster best seller right off the Get-Go. That, or they were shuffling the shelves of the warehouse to make room for the Skeeter Daddle Diaries, you know, downsize the number of Da Vinci Codes and the biographies of the Kardashians and maybe the 6 week Ethiopian Weight Loss Diet books, then have me start shipping crates soon as possible.

A single book cost me about $5 to ship first class with a box, plenty of handling. With Amazon’s generous commission, minus my printing costs, I figured I would only lose 2 bucks per book. My guru buddy said once sales started up, I’d be able to send more books at a time. I figured great, maybe only lose a dollar each sale…

Show you how smart Skeeter is, I did this about half a dozen times. One book at a time. Tax write-offs every sale! Losing money isn’t all that unusual for me, being an artist and all, but what finally frosted my B-hind was when I discovered my books on their used book list, SIGNED by the author, in like new condition, for less than half my cover price even WITH shipping and handling. It was like competing with myself in a knife fight and both of us had one arm tied behind our necks.

They don’t call Amazon Amazon cause they want to be the pygmies of the corporate world. The Amazon is the biggest river on the planet and it’s filled with piranhas. They want total world domination. All these companies, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, they want dominion over the plants and the animals, the moon and the stars. They’re flesh-eating viruses and you better believe, they’re probably going to win.

But!! There are still those brave small furry mammals hiding under the foliage of nettles and ferns, under the radar of Amazon T-Rex and its razor-toothed velocipede companions, and who knows, maybe corporate evolution will favor those with pure hearts and good intentions….

Naw…. It’ll be like Bambi vs. Godzilla, venison toejam. Nevertheless, tonight let’s root for Bambi. And let’s give a round of applause for Kristine and Tom for inviting us all here and especially for waging the Good Fight against overwhelming odds.

Well, Christmas on the overcast South End is gonna be a little less jolly this year. Naw, not because most of us can’t afford presents for our loved ones, what with this half decade recession keeping us in the ranks of the chrononically unemployed, but because of the news that Santa was being investigated by a grand jury on insider trading charges with MasterCard, Visa, Capitol One and American Express. Turns out old St. Nick was nicking all of us all along.

Tis the season, I guess. The media blitz for total consumer obedience is cranking up earlier than Thanksgiving now, urging us to buy buy buy whether we can afford it or not. Personally I like the car company ad that has the kids on Santa’s lap explaining to the bewildered old poop in his droopy cap and fat guy velvet suit how they want a full size pick-up truck or a fully equipped sedan. Captures perfectly the true spirit of the holiday, you ask me. Cash or credit on that? Hmm, Santa probably figured out which side his toast was buttered either right then and there or else it was the umpteenth millionth kid with the minimum wage parents wanting an X-box and a few thousand dollars of video games.

Even worse news for the soon-to-be indicted Mr. Claus and his sweatshop up in the Arctic Circle is the rumor of a class action lawsuit by his undocumented elves for withholding overtime pay and denying them sick leave. He may ultimately avoid legal sanctions and some frigid prison time if he’s got a good attorney, and you can bet he does, but the brutal publicity may take some of the shine off his squeaky clean grandfatherly image. The wolves are circling up there at the Circle and there’s little doubt the Justice Dep’t. will soon start investigating that offshore account of his, North Pole Equities, to see where the money leads. Even if it’s all perfectly legal, the spokesman for Christmas Past and Christmas Present may not get the nod come Christmas Future. The Powers That Be don’t need a cloud of guilt hanging over their pitchman and potential sales threatened by scandal.

After all, Christmas is as American as an ATM machine and the Lotto. For all the bogus controversy about the government clamping down on what might once have been a religious holiday of some sort, let’s be honest with ourselves, it IS about religion. Capitalism. Whatever else it WAS has been swept asunder under a consumer juggernaut that feeds the economy. Keep playing Bing Crosby songs at the mall and haul out the cute reindeer for a few months, most of us are so anesthetized we’d gladly go deeper into debt to shut off the saccharine insanity. This year, put an automobile under the tree. Santa’s getting 1% kickback on every credit card purchase. This year, let’s help the old guy out…. and the economy too. Fa la la la laaaawyer, as we say down here.

I’m visiting my golf-crazed family this winter and so we’re watching the grass grow on manicured greens at the current tournament. I noticed the duffers are attired in caps and shoes, trousers and shirts, all bearing nearly as many endorsements from advertisers as a Ford Mustang at a NASCAR race. These guys are walking, putting billboards for everything from clothing lines to liquors.

What’s next? Politicians with suits endorsing detergents, ties emblazoned with corporate logos? Sure, I could lament the commercialization of the culture, but why? The battle is long lost. From TV to internet, the branding of America is a fact. Indisputable, irrevocable, irreverent and irreversible. Capitalism has won by a landslide. Corporations are legally people, freedom of speech, power of the purse, both unrestricted. I would be a fool to throw myself against this juggernaut.

Which is why I’m throwing in the towel instead and embracing total unbridled entrepreneurial enterprise. Us artists, for too long, have stayed serenely above the fray. But the time has come to … well, let’s not be squeamish any longer … the time has come to CASH IN!!

So … I’d like to announce that as of NOW, any corporations or companies or anybody with money can have their logo or product prominently placed in any and all designs of mine, tastefully of course, but big and bold, colorful or highlighted, in full view within my public glass artworks. My agents can work olut the details with your attorneys, but let the bidding begin. If the culture is indeed a reflection of our deepest aspirations, I would be an idiot not to make product placement the foremost statement of my art. Not to mention being all the poorer for not doing it. Beer logos, car brands, banking names, pop cans, cleaning products, airline slogans, cereal boxes, video gaming devices, all of them sprinkled among abstract designs can only enhance the artistic statement. Act now. I have a couple of projects on the design table, ready for your logo.

I’m learning how to shovel snow again. Only been about 40 years since my brother and I had a client-base in Northern Wisconsin where we’d clear the neighbors’ walkways every storm. We didn’t get rich, but it was a good lesson in entrepreneurial startups, even if we never got to the stage of hiring illegal immigrants, all those frostbitten Ontarians seeking a warmer, richer life in the country where glaciers have receded, willing to work for sub-minimum wages in subzero weather.

Snowblowers are standard equipment in most garages now, as ubiquitous as John Deere lawnmowers back home here or leafblowers in Colorado or pool skimmers in Southern California. Big, loud, clanking metal wormscrews powered to push through a foot or two of fresh wet snow and hurl it up to the mountaintops of all the previous snows where, sometime near summer, the dirty iceball will finally melt into pools perfect for skeeter breeding.

I won’t be here long enough, but if I stuck it out until, oh, March, say, the action moves up, way up, past the gutters and onward to the chimney and roof ridge. Long seasons of snow build up some serious tonnage on the roofs, so yeah, we shovel those too and not just to make Santa deliveries less slippery. Nothing quite as homewrecking or heartwrenching as a cave-in of rafters giving way under a spring avalanche….

By this point you can usually walk right onto the roof, no ladder necessary. Just find the right drift on a windward side of the hacienda and stroll, shovel in hand, right into a winter’s worth of glacial accretion. Good luck, though, figuring out where to shovel it to, Nevertheless, it’s a breathtaking view up there. Ten foot tunnels connect to the street, to the garage, to the neighbors, a beautiful white ant colony of winter dwellers waiting for the Great Thaw or Global Warming or just a retirement in a trailerpark down in Tampa where you might see, in the little metal shed off the porch out back, a battered old snow shovel, scarred and bent, a relic of another era, as odd as a mastodon on a leash off the clothesline pole.