The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Fat Jack’s was the Second Hand shop half a mile down from South End Realty. Jack wasn’t fat and the second hand furniture and tools were mostly 9th or 10th hand. You wanted a kitchen chair all the glue had dried up, Jack had a couple. Dull chisels, hammers with half a claw broke off, screwdrivers with a broken handle, saws missing teeth, power tools without a cord, Jack had the tool for you. “Better’n that crap you buy new nowadays,” he’d say if you mentioned the defect, hoping to get a better price. You never — and I mean Never — got a good price at Fat Jack’s.

Fat Jack’s was a garage with the sliding door seized in the overhead position, a shed off the side and a small barn leaning precariously into a predictable future. Jack lived alone in the house where a few rooms were filled with artifacts, clothes, antiques and nondescript items he apparently thought enough to haul inside with him. Us customers could look past shelves of unpriced housewares, knickknacks and baby toys right into the dirty pots and pans breeding in the sink and on the filthy peeling countertops. Only the insane or the hideously desperate, would ask to use the public restroom. It was rumored even Jack used the woods behind the barn.

The year Jack called it quits, he had his Going Out of Business Sale. Three quarters of the South End showed up on a rainy windy December weekend and by Saturday Miller Time, most of the barn was empty, the shed bare to its dirt floors and the garage was ready for a couple of cars to come home. What he didn’t sell, he burned Sunday out back in the tall wet grass of the field. What didn’t burn, well, it’s still there, waiting for the 30th Century archeologists.

Fat Jack was the last of a breed, although we didn’t know that then. He was a salter of mines, a bait and switcher, a snake oil salesman, a Tennessee horse trader. He lived for the deal and he rarely wound up on the thin side of one. E-Bay and the internet pretty much ended services like his, relegating him and his con artistry to rural backwashes far from the nearest pawnshops and the perforated memories of geezers like myself.

Woodworker Bill had a shop across the island from my place where the trail I built and maintained through the interior popped out. Where it still does. The property was once the Snowdens, the folks who built Tyee Store in the 70’s, and it was one of the few places on the South End zoned commercial. For that matter, one of the few on the whole damn island. Not that Bill’s was exactly what you would call a commercial operation. He had a commercial quality shop in a huge pole building wired for power tools and set up for serious production.

The shop was set up for serious production but Bill wasn’t. Oh, he’d tackle an odd job here and there. Maybe build Jack Gunter, the gallery owner just down the road, an angular cabinet piece for one of his wild ideas like the Siberian series, something he’d later paint and gilt with gold flakes. The cabinet was the real work of art, nothing 90 degrees, everything skewed and slightly akilter, as if Escher had taken up woodworking. That cabinet took months, maybe a year. One thing about Bill, he was not in any hurry. Another thing, you couldn’t tell him how you wanted anything done — he’d fly off the handle and probably quit right then and there. And he wouldn’t give you a quote. Just an hourly. He sure didn’t want to be trapped in a bid.

His few customers, of course, were trapped in the math of multiplying hours. All of which explains why most days you could find Bill down at the Viking Café or Helen’s Kitchen drinking coffee refills all morning and late into the afternoon, slowly working his way through the paper or chatting it up with the waitresses and regulars.

Bill’s first wife had died young and suddenly of a brain aneurysm. His second died of cancer back in ’92 or so. He bought a Cortez, an industrial version of a travel trailer, and began living in it in the shop while he refitted it. A year later he motored down to Moab, Utah, drifted over to the aptly named Blanding, then after an incident with the trailer park owner, set off for Arizona where the Cortez broke down once and for all. He had it towed to a ramshackle park in Big Puddle or some hellhole of 50 people of similar xenophobic disposition, sort of a South End but without any north or east or west, just the end of the line for another hermit lost and broke in a heatbuckled highway of the 21st Century.

Living here on the ‘Island You Can Drive To’, most of us only drive to the House You Live In. Kind of understandable, considering there’s no outlet malls or fast food franchises beyond our mailbox. Further on, there’s just more blacktop, identical mailboxes and, well, more of the same. Which I guess explains why most of our northern neighbors have essentially no idea whatsoever of what lies beyond their driveways to the south. You might think that commute to Stanwoodopolis and beyond would grow tiresome. You might think idle curiosity would kick in after the 1000th commute to I-5. What the hell IS down at the end of their island? Where do those other roads GO??

But no! We are creatures of habit, apparently. Whatever pioneer spirit led us to the end of America, we’re no Lewis and no Clark either. We’re like the Conestoga family headed west that took one glimpse of the fierce gauntlet of the upcoming Rockies and decided Kansas was plenty far enough. Better to take the easy way out than risk it for the improbability of a promised Paradise the brochures probably exaggerated.

A few years back we had some serious construction on the mainline down the gut of the island. Months of detours that forced the complacent shortest-distance-between-two-points-is-a-straight-line crowd to shunt over to the picturesque and historic west side. Believe me, to listen to the outraged outcry or read the vitriol in the letters to the editor, you’d have thought we’d routed them through the alleys of Hell or the horrors of Smokey Point. They wanted a detour on a blacktop nearby that was definitely not designed for heavy traffic and they wanted it NOW. Our commissioner, Bill Thorn, god bless his decisiveness, said no, it’s a temporary inconvenience and we won’t destroy a perfectly good road to make the GPS-averse electorate shut up their weeping and lamentations. Grow up, fer cryin out loud!

Next election, of course, the crybabies exacted revenge. Bye bye Bill. You can lead a horse to the South End, but he’ll thank you by kicking you half to death. Better, we’ve learned, just to tell em what they’re missing. No need to drive any further than necessary. Curiosity, after all, kills.

Being self-employed, a lot of us artists go without health insurance. No doubt this bohemian lifestyle breeds in us a belief in our own invincibility. That, or our enlarged egos refuse to harbor doubts about prolonged longevity. Personally I think of insurance, any insurance, as the bane of my existence, basically an extortion scheme by private enterprise to shake me down through fear and intimidation. We got car insurance, we got house insurance, I got business insurance and yeah, we pay through the ring in our nose for what we’ll euphemistically call health insurance.

We got a ‘catastrophic’ plan. Meaning the insurer won’t cover anything short of a catastrophe. Huge deductible. No need for co-pay. Fat chance they’d cover anything this side of cremation. For only $9000 a year. Half my life I didn’t make $9000 a year. At least that’s what the Social Security folks tell me in calculating my projected retirement. I think they just like to rub it in ….

So naturally the mizzus and me were real interested in the opening of ObamaCare. The U.S. government shut down over yet another last ditch effort to kill it, cripple it or hamstring it. Some folks in Congress are in the final throes of apoplectic desperation. Gonna cost jobs, gonna cost a fortune, not gonna save me a dime and maybe way worse. I didn’t know WHAT we’d find but I figured it wouldn’t be worse than what we had now.

I was right. It wasn’t worse. It was vastly better. We don’t have to buy ‘catastrophic’ anymore. We won’t get the Cadillac hedge fund manager program, but we won’t get the cheapest ones either, just something in the middle. You maybe are wondering what it costs, bottom line. We were too. Try about $1500 a year after deductions for income. Sort of progressive health insurance, not regressive. You heard correcto. $1500 vs $9000. And, by the way, that ‘catastrophic’ plan. It would cost us zero, zip, nada. Nothing.

Now … I know this is anecdotal stuff, one household, maybe atypical. The TeaParty folks who think once we’ve tasted this candy, we’ll be so addicted, they’ll never be able to get rid of it — well, correcto again!! They can call it ObamaCare or DramaCare or whatever. For us it’s Affordable Health Care. The only thing that would make me more pleased is if the insurance company gave us back what we’ve obviously been overpaying all these years. But, let’s not kid ourselves. Folks can call this socialism or communism, but I bet in Russia the insurance companies aren’t still making big profits like they are here. Just a guess….

The ‘Make My Day Guns & Ammo” shop does a brisk business these days on the heavily defended South End. Earl and his brother Biker Billy watched their revenues double in the 2008 election, then double again in 2012, most buyers convinced the government was going to confiscate all the firearms in America. Earl and Billy could keep up with their gun inventory, but ammo was rationed and frightened homeowners were put on a waiting list. Ralph Hansen wanted to know if he’d need to ask his ‘intruders’ if they’d mind waiting before they broke into his house, raped his wife and daughters, then killed him. In the end, Earl sold him a Browning over and under and a box of 12 gauge slugs he said would stop a rabid rhinoceros. Billy shook his head when Ralph walked out with the shotgun in its tooled leather case proud as Hemingway. “How many shotguns does he have?” he asked his brother. And Earl smiled as he put Ralph’s check under the cash drawer in the register. “Probably one shy of enough.”

Down my well armed end of the Alamo I hear plenty of gunfire. The mizzus took years to get used to the sudden bark of semi-automatic practice sessions of the local militia excercising not only their right to bear arms, but their obligation to shoot them as often as possible. She’d ask, alarmed, what is THAT?? Gunfire, I’d say nonchalantly, and she’d grow more alarmed, her fears realized and then want to call the police. It’s America, I’d explain patiently, figuring that was explanation plenty, all Clint Eastwood would bother with, why waste words OR ammo?

A few years back we had a bad hombre stroll down Bernie Road when it was a one lane dirt cutoff to Tyee Store, occasionally letting loose with an automatic assault rifle beside the cow pastures up there, alarming more than just the mizzus. Turns out he was wanted on felony warrants and the local gendarme treated him like Machine Gun Kelly on meth, waited until he’d gone to bed at his moll’s place off Dallman, then dropped a stun blast through the window and shot him to pieces reaching for either his trousers or his gun. The sheriffs around these parts don’t much cotton to automatic weapons being practiced on the roadways. Especially by hardass criminals.

I won’t say the mizzus has gotten used to country livin’, but she doesn’t race to the phone to call 911 every artillery session or the opening of hunting season. I guess she just figures it’s slightly better than moving to Beirut or Baghdad or the wrong side of Everett. At least the casualties are somewhat less. Even if supposedly we’re not at war.

The topic up for the debating societies down at the Diner this week was Obamacare, what nobody calls by its official name, the Affordable Health Care Act. The House of Representatives wants to delay or modify or hopefully kill the bill so two days ago the government shut down over the impasse and in two weeks we may default on our debt obligations. For about half the patrons, this was worth cheering. “Last chance to stop this before we become a socialist state,” Harold cried, raising his coffee mug in salute, we thought, but actually signaling Anita for his 3rd refill, no doubt on his way to politico-caffeine overdose.

Down the counter, hunkered over his biscuits and gravy, Ozone Davy took up the gauntlet. “The train’s left the station, Harold. Yesterday I signed up for a new health plan. You boys are a little behind the curve….!” Anita put her head down and worked the room, figuring here we go. Sure enough a voice from the back booth she recognized as Walter, usually only spokesman for NRA issues, jumped into the fray. “They shut the damn government down and I say that’s a good start — KEEP it shut down, I say.” Anita thought if only Walter would keep his big mouth shut, now THAT would be a good start.

“Easy for you two,” Davy replied, pointing a biscuit speared on a fork at Harold that dripped grease and bitterness. “You old farts got MediCare, what do you have to worry about? Me, I got a wife, kids, and I couldn’t afford insurance being out of work. But I can now. How about that?”

“Maybe you should’ve kept a job, Dave,” Harold said cruelly, grinning over his chicken fried steak covered in milk gravy. “I worked for mine and I sure didn’t expect Obama to pay my way.”

“He’s probably paying for breakfast with food stamps,” Walter hollered from across the room. “Free food, unemployment compensation, now free health care. Paid for by all the rest of us.!”

Anita groaned audibly when a table near the door erupted in applause. Tips always went south after these debates. Nobody won, not outright, but once again she’d be the loser. “More coffee, honey,” Harold summoned. “I’m paying hard earned cash.” She knew Harold was collecting disability, but she also knew to keep her lip buttoned. Maybe, she thought, she’d look at this health care stuff when she got off shift tonight. No point giving up all her tips.

Darlene’s Antique and Collectibles was once an honest to Abe vintage emporium. One hundred year old oak chests of drawers, apple cider presses newly oiled but still glowing with the patina of fruit juices, rusting resort signs, ornate brass beds lascivious with untold stories, dollhouses from the Victorians, real stuff, not facsimile. Old wood stoves she bought from South Enders converting to heat pumps, wringer washers still able to churn a family’s laundry, coil top refrigerators cooled by sulpher dioxide rather than Freon. The one I bought from Darlene punctured a line a year later and the SO2 in combination with moisture, what we chemists call H20, formed sulfuric acid, what I called when I dragged it outside hissing like Assad’s assassins: Chemical Death. Foliage turned brown Right NOW in an invisible line snaking into the woods.

Darlene was a huge woman. Sitting at her table by the front door where her brass cash register sat like a South Sea icon ready for sacrificial offerings, she was half Cajun voo-doo queen, half posterchild for diabetes and definitely mostly intimidating, especially after you got to know her. She had a network of pickers who scoured the thrift stores and junk shops and garage sales throughout the state. And she had a steady supply of sellers, mostly neighbors broke and desperate, willing to part with the mizzus’ prized china or her mother’s silver, rarely some good tool of their own. She could burn a Tennessee horse trader, sell you a knockoff you’d never learn wasn’t really old, spin you a yarn that was finer than spider thread. You had to be on your toes with Darlene. She had the scruples of a southern politician and the aim for the jugular of a gypsy car salesman.

When E-Bay drove her prices down and she wearied of watching the city slickers – what she called ‘cidiots’ – checking prices on their I-pads and tablets, she began to carry ‘gifts’ too, junky look-alikes of vintage signs, antiques knickknacks and craft items –what she called ‘crap’ items – but her sales plummeted despite watering the trade down and she closed up finally.

Rumor has it she moved down to Sedona or maybe Taos and opened up a high end art gallery for tourists. One of my neighbors told me she’d bought a Georgia O’Keefe signed print from a woman with 6 chins wearing a Navajo blanket shawl and enough silver earrings and turquoise bracelets to start a jewelry store. I’m guessing Darlene is still nicking us South Enders, just a longer drive for us to get fleeced.

I notice lately I’m growing old. Middle age has been a prolonged era for this goofy geezer. I shouldn’t be surprised. Adolescence lasted 2 or 3 decades and Adulthood sometimes still seems as elusive as a job. I never wanted to grow up, much less grow old.

But … I bet even Peter Pan is whiling away his days in an assisted living home with a drool bucket and a big screen TV, wondering when Tinker Bell is coming back to change his adult diaper. Probably got a hearing aid with dead batteries. You better believe when the crocodile with the ticking clock in its stomach comes around, old Pete won’t hear it til he and the clock are part of a belly full. Too late then….

They say Old Age is a state of mind, and to a degree, it is. Nevertheless, whether I keep seeing the world like a kid with zits, my eyes are developing cataracts and I wear bifocals. My knees ache, my rotator cuff is a mess, my teeth are crummy and …. Well, I don’t want to make this a saga. Let’s just say there’s a reason why we die.

I know people who want to live forever. Holy rabbits, I assume they’re figuring on a Whole Body Transplant. No way do I want to live 500 more years in this package, attached to it as I am, and as far as transferring my brain into a fresh vehicle, well, I’m not sure the old engine on my shoulders won’t need a rebuild too. I’m sure I’m not going easy into that Good Night, but hey, there’s only so much room on the planet and I’ve used up more than my fair share in this one lifetime. I say let the kids have their turn. If they get to live 250 years, I’m not gonna feel like I got the short end of a stick.

But I want to warn you, if you’re going to live like Methuselah, pace yourselves! My generation likes to lie and say we never thought we’d make it past 30. You’ll be saying, gee, I never dreamed I’d get past 300. All I can say is I hope science can regrow brain cells. But good luck to ya!

Some folks think these stories are mostly made up, that the wild wild South End disappeared long ago, domesticized under the yoke of cable TV and social networking. They think we all conformed, threw up the white flag of surrender to county government and the gated communities. Oh, a few packed it up and migrated to less populated places where the taxes are cheaper and the neighbors farther away. But the South End, for all its latter-day gentrification, still howls late at night, still barks at strangers. And I don’t just mean me….

Gyppo Paul stopped by this spring. Paul’s what you’d call an outlaw. Pretty much ignores societal rules and fairly regularly breaks the law. I’m not saying he’s a role model, I’m just saying he lives here on his own terms. When Paul drops by, I figure trouble’s coming in the door too, semi-invited. What he wants, when he finally gets to it, is he needs to unload some old growth logs he’s managed to cut off the stump, haul out and section into 27 and 21 foot lengths, winch onto a trailer and move into a side road where the trailer tires are squashed deep into the mud.

He needs money and he’s willing to let these go cheap. In my younger days I lived in a ghetto. You want to see unbridled capitalism, go down to the Mean Streets. Paul would prosper there. Commerce, barter, theft; everything’s fungible. Everything! I figure Paul poached the tree. Dead old growth. Absentee landowner. Who’d care?  I said go talk to Pete, I’m not set up for this action.

Story short: Pete buys the tree. He’s got a place that once was the Benz sawmill. His house was built by Benz and built out of lumber milled on a 4 foot sawblade powered off a chain driven by a 350 horsepower Chevy engine. My shack has cedar lumber milled there too, same blade marks. Most of me and my neighbors don’t have a way to deal with a 27 foot long, 4 foot diameter log, much less two of them, that weigh about the tonnage of two or three of their travel trailers. Those logging days are long gone — or so they think.

But I’m talking about the South End and Pete’s a certified — or certifiable — South Ender. He builds boats, kayaks, cider mills, furniture, you name it, the man isn’t intimidated by any lack of experience. What he needs to learn, he learns. He didn’t come here to retire, that’s for sure. By summer he’s got a portable mill rigged up, a two man operation with 2 chain saws driving a 4 foot bar with a chain that rides on top of the log and slabs off 27 foot lengths two inches thick. It takes him two weeks to whittle down a fir 470 years old.

Scoff if you like at the mythology of the South End, but trust me when I tell you: this is the last old growth that’s gonna be milled on the island, logged by a gyppos after the pioneers first arrived. You think the South End is nothing but Tall Tales, well …. you’d be mostly right.

We seem to have a culinary problem down here on the café depleted South End. Oh, sure, the Diner is as constant as the rains in winter, but otherwise, every restaurant, pub, café or eatery withers on their vines in the inevitable drought of patronage. Could be there’s something in the water the Health Dep’t. hasn’t found, but I suspect it’s something less to do with the food and more to do with our gastronomical idiotsyncracies.

We’ve tried gourmet ‘vanity restaurants’, Bible reading seminaries inside the cafes, vegetarian menus, even a café that served macadamia nut waffles and good coffee before Starbucks addicted the now heavily caffeinated world. Lots of coffee but no bathroom. I guess maybe the waffles were expected to sponge up any bladdery excess. Course when me and my buddies got done with that excess, their parking lot looked like gutters of a Mexico City barrio. We’ve had high end and low end and plenty of hind end, and if there’s one thing they have in common, it’s failure. Usually fairly quick. If I knew why, I’d have my own TV show, Hell’s Bitchin, throw spatulas and obscenities, humiliate the staff, change the food, haul in Porta-Potties, make them a successful profit-churning money machine in the time it takes to yell 2 Burgers! Fries and a Pint of IPA!!

I ran a snack bar/grill in my early careers. Plus a dining hall. They hired me, a guy with a useless degree in English. Right there you can see the warning lights, sirens, a disaster coming down the tracks. We had a rash of food poisioning that got tracked down eventually to the potato salad I put under the warming lights. I like my spud salad warm. How did I know mayo has eggs and spoils PDQ?? You think I studied that stuff in Chaucer 101??

Nobody died. Not that I heard about. Life is a gamble. On the South End, so is the restaurant biz…. Anybody’s interested, I got a killer recipe for potato salad.