The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

One of the hazards of scribbling nonsense in these 21st Century blog sites along with about one billion other yahoos is that there are folks out there who really – and I don’t mean maybe – REALLY don’t like what they read in Skeeter’s pantheon of purpled prose.  Maybe some search engine sends em by mistake, hooks on a key word, next thing you know, instead of a self-help forum, they got some chucklenut waxing profane about a subject they couldn’t care less about.  And now, instead of Helpful Tips from Tom on how to turn their unhappy life into something swallowable, they got precious time wasted scrolling down South End Babble and boy howdy, somebody needs to reimburse them!

So they write to me in the anonymity of the internet.  Which is the digital highway equivalent of road rage on the interstate.  Flip me off, swerve into my lane,  jam the brakes.  They’ll show me who’s who and what’s what.  And the best part: they’re untrackable, anonymous as drive-by shooters.  Splatter my windshield with shotgun pellets and don’t look back, just speed away to the next unlucky target.

These are some very Very ANGRY! people out there with us.  More than you think.  Way more.  I suppose we’re lucky they shoot from the lip, not the hip, but if you ever made the mistake of commenting on a forum or some issue that meant enough to you that you weighed in, then you probably learned firsthand what I’m talking about.  Civility is most definitely not a valued trait in Cyberville.

I’d like to see the volume and vitriol dialed back a bit.  I know, probably won’t happen, probably get ratcheted UP even more if anything,  But personally, I’m weary of the ranting, the hysteria, the apoplexy.  And hey, you, the guy who sells antiques and read the blog by mistake on cleaning out my storage shacks, maybe hoping for bargains:  I’m sorry you thought this offered no insights for living your life.  And I’m doubly sorry if you thought I was so self- centered I used the blog to make myself look attractive.  I guess we won’t be dating.

I don’t have anything to sell, pal.  Not the junk I cleaned out, not the ideas in my head.  And .. .sadly…. it sounds like we’re all a little late to offer you tips on living.  Let’s both just figure it out on our own.

Here’s a newsflash:  most of us are addicts now.  To our TV’s, to our cellphones, to our computer, to social networks, to everything Digital.  If the medium is the message, here’s the message — we got a syringe in our heads with a permanent IV drip.

My mom used to catch us kids laying around, doing pretty much nothing, complaining how we were bored.  Nothing to do, we’d whine.  She wasn’t buying it, no way, no sir.  She’d shoo our sorry butts off the couch and out the door, where, presumably, the world was waiting for us to get busy, make something of a new day, summon up the neighborhood cronies, go bike riding or play whiffleball.

Watch a friend who’s visiting and notice how frequently they check their phone for a text message.  These are people OUR age.  The kids never stop checking.  It’s like having video games and Netflix and the high school prom and phone gossip and Google all wrapped up in a candy wrapper.  The heroin isn’t listed as an ingredient but believe me, it’s there.  We’ve hooked the kids, we’ve hooked ourselves.  Our attention spans are shorter than a commercial now.  And everything in America is a commercial.  Don’t ask me what the answer is.  There’s no methadone for this, no 12 step program, no Going Back.  Every 30 seconds we need a Google fix, a text message, a Facebook update, a digital affirmation that we’re still on-line, still worthy, still connected.

Walden Pond now isn’t some remote back-to-the-land escape from the oppression of the Industrial Age, it’s a wilderness where cellphone towers are spotty and cable doesn’t reach and high-speed internet isn’t available.  It’s a place where Hi-Fi exists, but Wi-Fi doesn’t.  It’s a primitive world where the pace of life is measured, not in Twitters, but in the entire day, in the seasons, in lives moving slowly with time to pause and contemplate.  It’s a world that, sadly, no longer exists.  Not even down here on the halcyon South End.  You don’t believe me, Google it…..

I’m like a lot of South Enders, I have to drive into Stanwoodopolis to do my weekly grocery shopping.  I used to get the essentials down at Tyee Grocery before it closed, but when I needed milk that wouldn’t spoil in two days or vegetables that weren’t hairy, I moseyed down to the big stores, you know, the chains, QFC, Haggens, Thrifty.  I used to like Thrifty myself.  Aisles looked like bowling alleys there were so few shoppers there by the end of its slow death spiral into grocery oblivion.  No amenities, no cute historical photos, no signs pointing to the restrooms where a bouquet of flowers might beckon a sensitive male shopper like myself.

No, it was spartan.  Sparse.  Practically primitive.  I didn’t waste time talking to other shoppers like I do in the other stores.  There weren’t any other shoppers.  Just me.  It was almost like they’d set out this smorgasbord of lefse and lutefisk and canned entrails just for my perusal.  I appreciated it.  Even if I didn’t buy it.

Sometimes there WERE other people in the store.  It was like a 24 hour store, really, and we were in there on break from our graveyard shift,  zombies on parade.   We’d drift by the macaroni and meet again by the fruit stand.  The fluorescent glare gave a wonderful green patina to everyone.  Ghoulish.  Night of the Living Zucchini.  My fellow shoppers at Thrifty were like myself: shopping challenged.  Xenophobes in search of an empty aisle.  It was a little like a suspense movie.  You know, you know as sure as Alfred Hitchcock is going to shock you,  that we were all going to meet at the checkout stand.  The ONE checkout stand.  No express.  No 10 items or less.  No Other Way Out.

Our carts bumped ominously.  The tabloids were chock-a-block with the latest on movie stars and their sorry sex lives.  Little books told me my astrological future.  My astrological future was this:  I will die in a checkout line waiting for the nice but senile lady in front of me to find all her coupons.  She won’t remember to get them out first.  No, she’ll remember them when the final amount has been tabulated.  She’ll want a lottery ticket.  A pack of cigarettes from the lockup six aisles away.  She wants a price check on the cereal she thought was 52 cents, but was really $5.20.  She’ll mention the spoiled milk she wants a refund on.  And finally she’ll change her mind from plastic to paper.

I don’t want to sound misogynistic, but it was always a lady.  Guys don’t care.  They would do anything to get out of here, not delay their departure.  This is hell to us.  Eternity.  No escape.  We would sell our worthless souls if we could just slip by this sweet senile lady in the fuzzy slippers and move on out to the sunlit parking lot with our pathetic bag of groceries. Pop that first beer right there in front of all the moms with their wide-eyed kids in tow and toss the empty through the rolled down window when we’re done.

It’s going to take awhile…..  I know that.  I’m prepared usually.  Mentally, physically, psychically.  I never learned, you see. Why is it people can’t have their checks ready?  Half filled out?  Why can’t they have their purses open?  Why do they have to search for the 3 pennies in the bottom somewhere so they won’t have to break a buck?  Why don’t they know about the debit/credit thing?  Why isn’t paper and plastic automatic, not a life or death quiz question? Why isn’t God doing something about this????

I remember reading in the 70’s about the Russians lining up to buy bread, lining up to buy meat, lining up to buy this, lining up to buy that, always another line at another store.  I remember thinking, those goofy communists, they must be the most stupid peasants on earth.  Can’t figure out the simplest things….

Some day soon the line would move again there in the DMZ of Thrifty.   And I would wonder who really won the Cold War….

Every blue moon a good idea comes rolling down to the South End. Or at least a crazy idea so goofus, it catches the air on fire around it. Viagra Falls exploded on the scene right before oil prices shot through the roof in Jimmy Carter’s reign. Ernie Crandall bought up the old Camp Camano cabins, all 12 of the dilapidated clapboard units, tore the worst two down, then restored the remaining 10 to like-new condition. Each had its own bathroom, unlike the shared bathhouse of the 1920’s, and each got a fully equipped kitchenette, a TV set with adult VCR movies, and a queen sized bed.

Ernie gave each cabin its uniquely distinct ‘theme’. Suite #7, for instance, was advertised as the “The Caveman: for the Primitive in all of us.” The Rancho Deluxe was touted as “a cross between rawhide and satin.” It sported cowhoof lamps and a table supported by three sets of longhorns. The Casanova had a “heart shaped bed, red boudoir and a shower curtain to make a sheik blush.” Ever the P.R. specialist, Ernie provided local reporters and their editor with free introductory accomodations. Needless to say, Viagra Falls received lavish praise and exceptional press coverage. The South End, to most Seattleites soon became the Sodom and Gomorrah of the island archipelago, a playground for bacchanalian delights and salacious get-aways. Ernie was booked for six months in advance and the Falls, despite a cascade of water of any sort, was brimming to overflow.

All this notoriety brought not only customers, but the wrath of the Little Church of the Ravine, one of whose members was a County Health inspector. Septic violations became frequent and building code violations were uncovered. Not coincidentally #4 was renamed the Pastor’s Hostage Wife cabin, a romper room for Sado-Masochists. Ernie held the hounds at bay for a time, but finally decided he might prosper financially better in a less morally upright area closer to the urban areas of Sin City. And so the South End narrowly escaped becoming Las Vegas North and a magnet for lovers. Some of us, of course, mourn the loss.

Of course it had to happen! What did you think: the South End would be immune? The South End is quarantined from the cultural diseases of the Outside World?? That the contamination couldn’t spread down to here??? Get a grip! Look around. The world has grown real small since you last took off your Google Glass, man. Or since you put em on….

The Zombies are here. That’s right, here on the South End. They’re everywhere else, right? They’ve long overstayed even a teenager’s infatuation and now they’re in the same category as skateboarding or Dungeons and Dragons, passing fads that never pass, they just lobotomize the immature brains of their adolescent hosts, then stick around into what we euphemistically call adulthood. Science can’t explain it. Science doesn’t even try. The Johnson boys have been slinking around the Diner’s nicely sloped blacktop parking lot since about 1995. Big Larry put a stop to their truck surfing where they’d grab a tailgate, crouch down behind the bed out of sight, then ‘surf’ their way onto the highway. He assured them he’d drag their crazy asses clear to Stanwoodopolis if he caught them at it one more time. Nobody doubts Big Larry’s follow-through on threats.

Except the zombies. They came in one Friday night, all goobered up in whiteface make-up and blackened eyes, smeared Hunts ketchup all over their mouths and giggled over their French fries at the customers’ reactions, mostly boredom, but a little bothered the teens couldn’t take their antics into town ‘where they belonged’. “Wuz up?!” Big Larry asked when he stepped out from back behind the grill, looming over the table of kids like Godzilla over Tokyo. All he got back was snorts and chortles from the guys, averted black sunken eyes from their dates. “Halloween early this summer?” he tried again.

Zombies, as every yahoo in America knows after years of movies and books and cable programming, don’t communicate verbally much. They make guttural sounds, they smack their lips on the bloody meat of their victims, they just don’t remember English. Larry said menacingly, “You ghouls better clean that ketchup slop up before you go, otherwise I’ll be cleaning YOU up, comprende?” The zombies suppressed their laughter, the zombies left a mess the way zombies always do. So yeah, the zombies are among us, even down here. When they learn to skateboard, we’re all in serious trouble. Even Big Larry.

Like a lot of places, the South End is far more discerning of the oddities of others than themselves. The Avant-Gardeners’ hippie commune was the most prevalent gossip for years down here. Were they communists? Were they polygamists? Were they drug addicts? Were they pagans? There was no end to the rumors, no matter how fantastic — and, of course, the Gardeners themselves fed the flames with their fantastic behavior. Not just their colorful gypsy attire or their unorthodox social behavior, but Grand Experiments involving ship building and dome construction, all gone horribly awry, yet never diminishing their unbounded optimism or their total lack of fear of failure. They were pioneers, not just in breaking ground for their greenhouses and their livestock sheds, but in how they viewed the world. And the rest of us South Enders.

So we shunned them, most of us. Made them Outsiders in a place already Outside. Oh, a few of us bought their eggs and raw goat milk. I traded bread for those and vegetables, even got to know a few of the menfolk. The women mostly held back, kids peeking from behind their long granny dresses. Although I did teach Betsy, the most gregarious of the whole troupe, how to make stained glass. She would walk to my shack and glean scraps from the throwaway pile, then make the most beautiful suncatchers and small windows, far surpassing her teacher in no time flat.

After a few seasons I showed them where the wily Dungeness could be caught by hand and where to dig for free range clams. I took a few of the boys out in the S.S. Pterodactyl, my little sailboat, and we fished for true cod and bottomfish before they were gone, both the fish and the boys. Because one day the FOR SALE signs went up and the farm was abandoned as fast as it had arrived.

I bought a couple of their goats and some laying hens, took some greenhouse glass panels, accepted some macramé and pottery gifts, then waved adios as their gypsy caravan exited the South End one misty, fog filled autumn day. I guess they were as mysterious to me as they were to my neighbors, the only difference being I never minded. But I still remember that day when the Flower Children headed off island, north into the cruel ‘70’s, waving goodbye as I stood by my blue mailbox in a slow drizzle, wishing they would never leave. For me at least, that was the day, looking back, the 60’s really ended.

About 50 years ago Karen and I made our first foray into Mexico along with my brother and his buddy in a ’62 Chevy Impala we weren’t sure would get us back. Gringos on a road trip, drinking too much cervezas, slept on the side of a road in sleeping bags hastily thrown down near the car and the gila monsters, then woke to find we were camping on the streets of Tijuana.

We didn’t last long in old Mejico. Even though we were young and poor, we encountered real poverty. Made us feel like Ugly Americans, larking around while the folks who lived there saw us as privileged and rich. Which we were —comparatively — and we didn’t much relish the comparison.

I know folks who go to Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, Vera Cruz, Acapulco and stay at the gated resorts, venturing out to see the temples or the ocean, maybe buy some trinkets in the local ciudads, but mostly hang out poolside and dine at the restaurants inside the compound. The weather is nice, the staff impeccably polite, the narco-trafficers not an immediate threat, a perfect colonial vacation.

Today I took a short road trip up the coast along Chuckanut, our miniature Big Sur, and finally arrived at Bellingham where I wandered downtown, ate a quesadilla at a tequila bar and noticed the alleys crowded with the homeless and the run-aways. Everywhere I go off our little island enclave, this is what I find, makeshift tents, shopping carts with all worldly possessions, food banks lined up with people in need.

There are wealthy people in Mexico. In India. In China. Here too. Who rarely share the plenty. Kids scavenge in the dumps, families live in makeshift shelters, the rich give themselves tax breaks and harden their hearts.

I may never go to Tijuana again so long as I live, but Tijuana is coming here. I’m not that poor young Ugly American anymore. I’m the older version.

We just got back from a little R&R on the Olympic Peninsula, Marrowstone Island to be exact, Mystery Bay to be precise. The island is 7 miles long, roads running east side and west side, pretty much the same as the South End here on Commando Island. Just one store, closed after a fire. No commerce, pretty much the same as here. Paradise. Sometimes you have to leave home to appreciate your own slice of heaven, I guess.

A few days without news or word from the Outside, makes you feel like the world is not a half bad place to hang out. Course we get home and there’s the announcement of the Biden impeachment by the House, the ongoing war in Ukraine, the floods in Libya and the earthquake in Morocco. The debt ceiling is coming up. Again.

It makes a guy like me want to pull up the covers and go back to sleep. Or at least hang the hammock and listen to the breeze and the birds, let the rest of the planet deal with whatever politics or calamities they have this week. What can we do anyway? Volunteer for Doctors without Borders? Send money to the refugees fleeing Sudan by the millions? Or the Syrians? Grab a picket sign and protest in front of the Supreme Court asking the bribe takers to step down? Vote my one measley vote? Put a solar panel or two on our roof and buy an electric car?

We don’t have much say in how the world works. Although judging by some of the rants out there on the internet, plenty of folks think they do. Sometimes I feel as if my own carping and bitching is pretty much the same, just spitting into the wind blowing back at me, not just a waste of time but a face full of my own expectorant. So I don’t know. What I do know is we should be thankful for whatever we got, never take it for granted, maybe pay some attention to the things we can affect and even those we can’t. And try not to let the world make us cynical. Yeah, it’s hard….

We’re parked on Marrowstone Island for a few nights of R&R. Between us and the Olympic Peninsula is Indian Island, an extremely secure Navy base surrounded by fences topped with razor wire, no doubt in my mind bristling with sensors, alarms, attack drones and assault units. Because all Navy ships entering Puget Sound are required to unload their ordinance. Don’t want some ship detonating in the Seattle harbor causing mayhem and widespread destruction.

No, better to concentrate all that firepower here on the sleepy citizenry of this island. When they think about the Big One, it isn’t the next earthquake, it’s that Fireball that scorches every cabin, cottage and beach house facing Indian. No, honey, that wasn’t a meteor, that was Armageddon….

I’m a little surprised the National Rifle Association isn’t, pardon the pun, up in arms over this. All these warships asked to leave their weapons at Puget Sound’s door. Sounds like a commie, left wing, woke plot to me, leaving all these vessels defenseless, sitting ducks in Everett and Bremerton. None of us should sleep well at nights knowing our Navy has disarmed before the first shot has even been fired.

This is quite possibly another conspiracy theory for those attuned to every nuance of government policymakers, and while I hate to be the seed for more Qanon crackpot theorizings, the truth has to be revealed. Even if it means property values plummet here on Marrowstone Island, Ground Zero for the Apocalypse.

The tide’s going out here on Mystery Bay where we’re hunkered down on Marrowstone Island. The coffee table history declares that the first settlers to Indian and Marrowstone Islands — about ten in all — in the late 1800’s were men who just ‘wanted to be left the hell alone’. Good luck, gentlemen, good luck. You want privacy and isolation, don’t live in Paradise, speaking as one who knows.

Marrowstone’s a smaller version of Camano, an island you can drive to so unless you blow the bridge upon arrival, expect company. We’re holed up in a 1914 farmhouse surrounded by the old orchard and various outbuildings that look more worse for wear than most of ours back home. It’s a virtual museum of antiques, add-on rooms over the decades, photos of the cows munching in the backyard, all clues to generations of early islanders long ago passed, a vicarious window into our own aging homestead draining like the Bay into lost history.

Some say if you don’t remember history, you’re doomed to repeat it. But that was before the era we live in now, the Digital Age that creates a chasm between what’s coming and what was. History may be useless to the world of algorithms, AI, cyborgs and drones. All that matters is what’s NEXT. The past will offer no clues, no guideposts, nothing but nostalgia for what is irrevocably lost.

Course maybe this is just the cynical musings of an old geezer watching his world disappear. Maybe the androids will study us, maybe learn from our mistakes. Trouble is, they were our mistakes.