The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

For the past 25 years or so the mizzus and me throw a big New Year’s Party here on the South End, partly so we don’t get to know the sheriff’s deputies any better than we do now, which is what we tell the neighbors, but the real reason is a bit more shrouded in the mists of lost memories.  I got a call today from Brent, an old friend now in Alaska,  and it triggered a couple of neurons into firing spasmodically  once more and voila, I was back in, oh, 1985 down at the shack with just a few of us struggling mightily to make it to midnight so we could toast the new year and pass out in our bunks.
    My brother was here with his wife and we had Brent and Liz visiting from Portland.   My brother is what you’d call a spark plug for party stuff.  Meaning, when conversations lag, he springs into instant action.  ‘Let’s go around the room,’ he says, ‘and tell what the best day of the year was for each of us.’  So Brent goes first and he relates a warm summer day when he and his collie were at the park and the sun was shining and the Frisbees were sailing and it was just a golden day,  a boy and his pooch, fetching the Frisbee.  Not maybe what my brother had in mind, I bet, but just a hippie dippy zen day that stood out for Brent more than some birthday or Christmas or the day he got a raise or the usual dopey stuff  we trot out when you play Name Your Best Day.
    I don’t remember what my favorite day was.  I don’t remember Karen’s or my brother’s or Judy,my brother’s wife’s, favorite day.  But I remember Liz’s turn, Brent’s girlfriend who I’d know a long time.  A real long time.  A way too long a time.   And as the clock ticked glacially toward 1986, gears needing oil, glasses waiting for that toast and then goodnight everybody, my brother sez, ‘Okay, Liz, what was your favorite day?’  And to this day I can remember Liz turning to Brent who was rubbing his collie’s head, probably still warm in his remembrance of a summer day in the park, and the clock’s hands stopping forever, the wood stove throwing a heat nothing like what Liz was focusing on poor Brent with a laser look that would burn through titanium like it was cheap plastic, and our glasses with champagne broke in the sudden stillness before she said, ‘My favorite day …. (and the ‘my’ was a small caliber bullet)  My favorite day was the day we got back together, Brent.’
    Maybe you’ve had a New Year’s ‘Party’ like that.  The room emptying of air and sound and mirth, as if a stopper had been pulled from the tub of our happiness and no matter how hard you try, and Brent desperately tried, that stopper won’t go back in and all the merriment drains out by your feet and deep down in your cold curling guts you know, you know absolutely this is not the way you wanted to ring in the next year.  You know what they mean by ill-omened now and all the months to come you will dread the next New Years’ Eve the way you would dread death itself.   And of course Liz and Brent broke up and Brent moved to the furthest corner of the earth and my brother admitted maybe that wasn’t the best holiday icebreaker of all time and we decided either to forsake New Year’s altogether or bring so many people in we couldn’t possibly go around the room and play parlor games like Stab Your Lover.
    And that is how the South End got its gala New Year’s Extravaganza Potluck and BYOB Party.  And of course, you’re invited!  Unless you got some serious issues with your girlfriend or boyfriend, lover or husband, wife or mistress.  Then I think you should get a new parlor game for you and a few select friends.  Happy New Year anyway.

 Some of the boys down here on the South End were deep into a night of nog over at the Tyee Store and Saloon when the subject of New Year’s Resolutions reared its ugly head.  We’d pretty much solved most of the burning issues of the day that Congress can’t or won’t address, and with world peace close at hand and a solution for global economic recovery looming in our fevered LED’s, we naturally turned to self-improvement, the final obstacle to Nirvana.

     Self-improvement, in case you’ve never met a dyed-in-the-alpaca-wool South Ender, isn’t high on his Honey-Do List.  If it’s on the list at all…..  I’m not saying we don’t think we could use some polishing, but all those so-called vices other folks resolve every January One to curb or cut back on or eradicate completely, are those very traits we hold in high esteem.  We sure aren’t in any hurry to canonize ourselves.  We aren’t aiming for perfection.  Okay, maybe we could stand a bit of sprucing up, but we all know what a slippery slope that is.  Mabana Mike quit the bottle for 13 weeks two New Years ago and by the 3rd week he was an insufferable convert not only to Sobriety but worse, Piety.  Every day was like an AA meeting with Mike and he might as well have started his own church, passed out nicotine patches and offered  up 3 more cups of decaf coffee to the gods of abstinence.

     No, we decided long ago it’s better to accept our little blemishes and move on the best we can.  You live in a Shangri-La-La like we do, you don’t want many more monks claiming blissful enlightenment.  Next thing you know hordes of tourists seeking Truth, Wisdom and the South End Way will be clogging our backwash blacktop.  Plus, Tyee Store isn’t legally zoned for monasteries or temples.  We’ll probably just save everyone the grief and skip the resolutions again this New Year.  Good luck, though, to the rest of you….

Christmas was always a Big Deal in our family.  Store bought tree.  Tons of aluminum icicle  stuff that we had to pick off bit by crinkly bit and put away for next year.  A mile of colored lights.  Thousands of ornaments.  Plenty of presents.  Enough  for a whole village somewhere in a 3rd world country.       Us kids wouldn’t sleep much the night before.  And before dawn we’d be prowling the tree, shaking packages, going half crazy til the folks finally got up.  Oh man, Christmas was Something.  Like a birthday and Thanksgiving  and 4th of July all thrown together in one granddaddy of a day.

     We’d have a giant dinner later.  A turkey the size of a pterodactyl.  A table jammed with stuff.  We could’ve fed all of Stanwood and still had leftovers.  The old man always started it off with something HIS mother said every year.  He’d look over an acre of food, rivers of gravy, mountains of dressing, pies in the distance, presents strewn from here to the back 40,  and we’d all get quiet and then he’d say what we always knew was coming:  he’d say:  I wonder what the poor folks are doing today?

     Sorta took the wind right out of our sails, that’s for sure.  Gave us pause….   And then we’d hoist a shovel and commence to eating.  So while we’re all celebrating, I think it’s important to think about the rest of the world who aren’t as blessed as us on the South End.  You know, Smokey Point.  Say a prayer for them too and wish for Peace on Earth.  Happy New Year, Everybody!!

I know Xmas is a big deal in this country.  Starts before Halloween and ends ….  Well, if the retailers and the folks who never take down their twinkle lights are right, it never really ends.   Fa La La La….  But I want to say a word for those folks Xmas leaves behind in the hustle and bustle of consumerism.  The forgotten folks for who Xmas is out of reach.  The unemployed, the infirm, the senile, the demented, all life’s reluctant losers.  Yeah, I’m talking about the South End.

   So as you enjoy the festive moments of the holiday, occasionally give pause to remember us huddled masses down below the Mountain View/Dixon Line, so far from CostCo and Wal Mart and the Camano Plaza Mega Mall.  We’ll be celebrating in our own way.  Probably no power if there’s a wind stronger than 15 mph.  No TV specials cause we don’t get cable.  No friends dropping by for an egg nog or six.  Right …. Cause we don’t have friends.

     But don’t pity us.  We’ll be fine.  We’ll be okay.   Our shacks aren’t mortgaged to the rafters with subprime loan money.  Our investments aren’t dropping with the price of oil going up and the Dow Jones on a roller coaster run by Mr. Grinch.  Our cars aren’t being repossessed — hell, they don’t even run.  Our health care insurance isn’t sky high  — we don’t have any.

     No, we’ll be all right.  Pop a prozak and slam a celebratory beer.  Maybe skip the 100th rerun of It’s a Wonderful Life or Miracle on Mountain View Road.  Maybe just have some neighbors in, play Jingle Bells on the banjo, cook up a potluck, drink last year’s blackberry wine that wasn’t county roadsprayed, and like always, hope for a better year next one, no wars, peace on earth.  Don’t you worry about us — one thing we know, it’s how to celebrate Xmas

  Back in the less consumer-driven days of early Christmas, we South Enders would hang our stockings by the chimney with great care. Mostly so they wouldn’t catch fire…I mean, we used that chimney for heat.  How Santa was going to get down the brick chute without scorching those red pajamas of his, us young’uns didn’t have a clue.  So we worried about St. Nick.  Well, mostly we worried he wouldn’t leave us anything at all while he was hustled off to the nearest burn unit.   Our parents told us not to lose any sleep over it – Santa probably had fire retardant uniforms.  Oh, right, like Kris Kringle moonlighted as a chemist half the year.       

    But Santa always did seem to find the South End on Christmas …  which didn’t help to explain the half empty stockings and the paucity of presents under the tree every year at our house.  We kids just figured Santa had checked his stupid list, probably twice, and we were blacklisted on the NAUGHTY side once again.  We even used to leave cookie bribes and a jug of something savory to drink when he showed up.  It was odd how the jug was always empty and still, the stockings were sadly deficient.  Pa always said the reindeer must’ve been thirsty and we’d say, hey, if Donder and Blitzen could find their way here and down a burning chimney with a 6 inch hole to the woodstove, how come St. Nick couldn’t find us?  And Ma would give Pa a dirty look and say, something was Blitzen all right, but it wasn’t the reindeer….

     Santa finds the South End pretty easily now, I’m telling you.  Come Christmas morning it looks like a China R Us down the middle of the living room, barely room to squeeze near the tree.  Nowadays we don’t leave Santa a plate of cookies.  He expects an ATM machine and a Visa Card.  Christmas down on the South End lasts and lasts – about 12 easy payments, then it starts all over ….

I’ve been ensconced the past few days in one of the posh old hotels of Anchorage, Alaska, the Captain Cook,  a brass and wood accommodation with multiple restaurants, jewelry shops in case I forgot my tiara, boutiques, art galleries, shoeshine and salon, virtually a town within a city.  The doormen are cordial, the desk reserved, my fellow clientele seldom return a hello or good day.  The Triple A restaurant on the 20th floor requires ‘smart casual’ dinner attire.  My own wardrobe seemed casual but maybe not bright enough for Alaskan gentility.
An art project through the University set this up — government rate — and so I opted for something more upscale than my usual ‘we’ll leave a 40 watt light on’ Spartan hellhole with peeling wallpaper, stained rugs and mildewed tile.  My bed has 6 large pillows.  5 are stacked on the floor now, a cushy mountain.  A few blocks down the street is a single forlorn tent in the downtown park with a sign that reads:  OCCUPY ANCHORAGE.   It was 12 degrees last night.  I thought about asking the concierge if I might have my unused pillows loaned during my stay.  Our occupier could use them as feather bedding.
You may have inferred that I am uncomfortable with the trappings of wealth, which I guess I am.  I don’t like royalty.  Or privilege.  I don’t even like the idea of 1st class seating on airlines.  I want people to rub shoulders with each other, not segregate themselves.  I want to feel like we’re together in this country, not gated off in walled neighborhoods.  I don’t want a doorman opening my door for me, I want the fellow in front of me offering — and I’ll hold it for the next.
I’m hearing a lot of handwringing these days about sparking class warfare come this next election.  The 99%ers vs. the 1%ers.  I’m not too fearful.  It’ll be fairly bloodless if I know America.  In the end we won’t redistribute much wealth.  We won’t tax the rich very much.  We won’t curb greed or help the poor.  We may never open doors for one another or say hello on the elevator.  And no, I don’t think it’s immoral to have 6 pillows on my bed.  It’s a free country.  But it is immoral some people don’t even have a bed.  And more immoral yet that we blame them instead of getting them a bed.  That, I think, is true class warfare.

It’s December here in Alaska.  For you 48’ers, that means snow and ice, bitter wind chills and extremely short dark days.  Unless you’re training for the Iditarod, you bolt shut the cabin doors, reach for the whisky bottle and settle in for the Yukon equivalent of hibernation:TV.
I’ve been here now, what seems an eternity, but is only four days.  I left with the flu my aging mother warned me 50 times to inoculate myself against and I’m only now beginning to eat once again.  Attempts at sightseeing or aimless hiking were usually shortcircuited with gastro-intenstinal rumblings that would have scared anything in the vicinity but moose.  Moose walk the streets here, grazing in cemeteries.  In my delirium, I never questioned it.  More cities should encourage moose.

Mostly, though, I missed travelogue Alaska.  What I did get a dose of was cable TV.  Maybe you have cable or Dish already.  I have an antenna on the roof, an upgrade from the old rabbit ear one we used for decades.  I see cable ads for, oh, $30 a month or so, which, I assumed, brought the viewer nearly unlimited viewing options.  After a couple of evenings with my hotel’s cable, I don’t understand why folks fork out anything, unless they (A) don’t have an antenna at all or (B) don’t have a roof to attach one to.

I had 40 channels of television freedom.  40!  By Hour Two I’d pretty much narrowed the 40 down to, oh, let’s be fair:  the comedy channel, two movie channels (that repeated the same films every day I watched), PBS-CNN-Fox-MSNBC just for my ‘news’ addiction (which it cured completely now that I will avoid all video news for the forseeable future or until I’m bedridden once again with something like terminal cancer).  The rest, well…..  maybe Extreme Pawn appeals to someone.  Or Chopper Sr. vs Jr perks up the Harley crowd.  Or Lick’s Towing, some backwash redneck clan of hillbilly repo men forever towing pickup trucks back from poor white trash meth cookers and their sorry ilk.  I could go on …. 30 more times.

But I’m at the airport now.  Frozen tarmac, snow bellying down from the Wrangell range.  It looks like a wasteland as far as the eye can see.  But … far far better than my last few nights in front of that hotel TV.

Recently I was holed up in a hotel room in Anchorage waiting either for winter ice to break or the fever from the flu I brought up from the Lower 48.  Occasionally I’d pull back the covers from over my head and turn on the cable TV that filled half my room.  Forty odd channels and I do mean odd.  But eventually I narrowed the realistic choices down to a couple of old movie stations, one comedy channel and two so-called news programs.  Let’s just say, when I recover from the flu and winter and far too much television, I won’t be subscribing to cable or Dish.
The ‘news’ programs were a definite challenge.  Granted that I was feverish, headachy and wasted, but it was a chore to watch a screen split between the commentator and the interviewed with moving identifiers replaced by captions moving constantly, the Dow Jones ticker running on top next to the channel logo with a news crawl plus a text message site and folks tweeting or texting or some damn thing incessantly creeping into consciousness at the bottom of the screen.  This is certainly news for the seriously delirious  — a never ending stream of competing images, verbiage and numbers that interrupt any possibility of focus or concentration.  Stories blurred into each other, jostled for my attention before suddenly veering into a ‘breaking’ story, then swung suddenly into a preview for an upcoming talking head, usually two heads with still more identifiers and in case I was curious, who won the football games NFL Sunday.
I have admitted I was sick.  But is this really the way we want to get our information, us healthy citizens of the 21st digital century?  By jamming it all on to an LCD screen willy nilly and mixing it with the Waring Blender to a digestible pablum that gives us a 30 minute FDA approved daily requirement of news, sports and weather in one delicious gulp?
If Marshall McLuhan was right and the medium, not the content, is the message, better buy stock in pharmaceuticals, the ones searching for a cure for attention deficit disorder.  We’re all, I think, a little fevered these days….

So I’m heading to Alaska — with the flu that dropped me to both knees the day before — and I’m admittedly not at 100% when I go through security at South End International.  Full body X-rays now, bag checks for medium size toothpastes and shampoos.  No underwear packing terrorist is getting through this gauntlet, allah akbar!  There must be at least 10 TSA agents to every passenger.
I unbuckle, empty pockets, unshoe, de-hat, pass the breathalyzer, tell them who won the Series last October and get passed on to my gate terminal.  I’m in a fog and a fever and a funk.  “Good day,” as Chief Joseph or Sitting Bull or some luckless upstart indigenous said, “to fly.”  Alaska.  Winter.  Glacial.  Just what the doctor ordered for a rough bout of the flu.
At my gate I realize I have everything but my winter coat.  It had apparently not come off the scanner conveyor and I hadn’t waited to see if it was being rescanned or donated to the nearest Goodwill.  Alaska.  With no coat.  The flu.  With no coat.
I had time to go back on the train, walk up the stairways, hurry down a few corridors and see what TSA had done with my coat, no problem, I was sure.  Except TSA didn’t have it.  They gave me a Lost and Found slip and said they’d gladly ship it to me if and when it turned up.  They’d even ship to Alaska, they said, no charge.  Can you say hypothermia?  I felt like the trapper who falls through thin ice in subzero weather and no matches for fire.
Although the gift shops sell sweatshirts and matching scarves.  Maybe buy two, layer up, look for a genuine bear fur Inuit eskimo parka up in the Anchorage outfitters’ supply tomorrow morning.  Keep the rental car heater maxed and running, I’d be okay.  The homeless do it every day.  The Occupy crowd up there might scrounge me up a tent and a coat.  I’d be fine.  Really.  Like that kid in “Into the Wild” who just launches off into the tundra, no clues, just learn on the job.
Course he didn’t have the flu.  Or chills and fever to begin with.   In the end he died.  Then again, he was a city kid.  Crazy to boot.   I’ll be just fine.  Don’t worry about me.  Really.

I got some groundbreaking news for all you Camano North Enders:  we found Lost Lake.  Down by us, we don’t lose lakes.  Course, we don’t have any lakes.  Got some ponds that dry up in the summer.  Got some garden features.  Even got a couple of seasonal streams.  We know where they are, although we don’t give em names.  Laziness,  I suppose.  Too damn much trouble to name a creek that dries up every summer drought.  Then it really would make sense if we named it Lost River or Hidden Creek.    For a couple months, anyway…..
I was driving around recently doing my usual Lewis and Clark on Camano, exploring the backroads in case we get another major road improvement detour, maybe come up with a Northwest Passage to Stanwood nobody has discovered yet, and right past Dry Lake Road —- another water feature disappeared — there it was: Lost Lake.  I swerved right in.  About 15 seconds later I was lost.  Which is why it’s probably called Lost Lake.  Not the lake — you!  I found the lake pretty quick.  Getting out of the labyrinth was a couple days of dead end cul-de-sacs, refusing to ask directions until the gas tank hit E.
Lots of places get lost on the “island you can drive to”.  Folks just hit the mainline to the bridge and rarely explore the tributaries.  I meet people all the time who live on Camano and have never been beyond their own blacktop turn-off.  No interest, I guess.  Maybe the high gas prices.  Fear of the unknown.  Who knows?  They started homesteading their 40 acres and left further exploration of the hinterlands to latter day  adventurers such as myself.  Which means reporting back to civilization was spotty, if not outright, rip-roaring, belief-shredding lies and legends.
The South End, while not exactly lost, is very rarely found.  Occasionally I’ll find a car cruising slowly, window rolled down to ask directions.  How far to the Whidbey Island ferry an elderly couple asked recently, obviously shaken from hours of circling the Head.   I pointed across Saratoga Strait.  The lady in the passenger seat began a slow moan.  And, of course, being the bearer of rotten  news, I felt bad too.  But hey, they probably made their way out.  A day late for the wedding they needed to be at in 15 minutes.  A lot of us weren’t that lucky.