The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The mansion down the street burned the other night. This thing was 8 or 10 thousand square feet, large compared to even the McMansions going up around us, a behemoth that has been in progress the last couple years after the owner leveled the old house and began construction on the bluff. Not a bad house, the one they tore down, but hey, why buy a vacant piece of real estate, same as the folks who build next to old firs and cedars, then saw them down. Probably couldn’t find a place already clearcut, I guess. But if you were to ask them, they would all say they moved here for the beautiful trees and forests, just don’t want them anywhere too near.

We don’t get a lot of house fires around here anymore now that most people quit heating with wood stoves so naturally a mansion fire rises right to the top of the gossip grapevine. Did the owner run out of money, couldn’t pay the bills, maybe decide …? But naw, they owned other homes in high priced areas, probably money wasn’t an issue. Did the painters on a Friday night toss rags in a corner and head early down to Happy Hour? Could some environmentalist have taken issue with the Gatsby excess of tearing down one house to build a castle big enough for ten South Enders? Should the Mabana fire station have been manned at night? All these rumors flying around probably could spark another inferno of innuendo and fear mongering. Is there an arsonist among us?

The castle on the north end torched a few years back had a sheet with ELF hand written on it for the fire inspectors to find. Earth Liberation Front, eco terrorists, bad actors wreaking vengeance on those who use too much of the earth’s resources, the price to pay for unmitigated greed. But the investigators ruled that out right away, not ELF’s modus operandi. Probably some unpaid subcontractor, one rumor had it, but in the end, nobody was arrested. And, until now, no other houses were set ablaze.

We may never know what set off that blaze up the road. The burnt out hulk of the mansion stands eerily out in its field, partial walls charred, fireplace still standing, a dystopian vision of things to come? or just a dream deferred? We all hope it wasn’t arson, but we all know too that bad luck can stalk us all. The ruins of that neighbor’s house are stark reminders of our own fragility, that even the rich will not be spared. Course, after the smoke settles and the insurance claims too, we got another few years of hammering and sawing next door.

The South End has never had a tavern or a bar, at least not a legal one. You might think the Temperance Union was strong down here, righteous keg-busting zealots opposed to strong drink, hoping to keep Beelzebub at arms length across the Camano bridge since the north end didn’t have a tavern or a bar either. Nowadays real estate contracts would require that fact listed on disclosure forms. No Alcohol Within X Miles. For us South Enders, that might be as much as 20 miles. Probably more on the inebriated drive back from Stanwoodopolis or La Conner, missed turns and all.

I suppose Utah has those kind of long distance dry stretches and I’ve been in contiguous counties down in the Deep South that ban sales of spritis. Moonshine thrives in those arid regions. That, or religion. We islanders — at least us bibulous ones — could purchase beer and wine at the original Plaza Grocery and the four other mom and pops, Tyee, Huntington, Elger Bay and Utsalady Stores. Pricey, but factor in the gas expense to get off island, we complained quietly.

The Nestor Brothers brought in the first actual bar around 1990, a restaurant about a mile on the mainline once you crossed the bridge, aptly called the Shipwreck. Which in no time flat became the Hot Spot for diners and drinkers, dancers and drunks, plus cops and DUI’s. The sheriff’s deputies could wait down the road for Last Call, just pick em off one by one. Course back then they had to haul their catch to Coupeville, book em in and drive clear back. You learned to let a few others leave first before exiting that juke joint. Or, like myself, avoid the place at all costs. I’m sure the cops are swell fellows but we don’t need to be on a first name basis.

Another of our neighbors is selling out, pulling up stakes and heading somewhere more hospitable. Had enough of the Homeowner Association’s prolonged battles, I figure, or maybe just the upcoming water fees, bulkhead repairs and endless surprise expenditures, sort of the trouble with Paradise. The Garden of Eden needs maintenance, the No Trespassing signs need upkeep along with the fences and the barb wire, plus all the weed mitigation, blackberry removal and trail improvements. It isn’t just Adam and Eve, it’s a whole passel of folks with different socio-economic backgrounds, some who think money is water and others who bleed it.

Story of the neighborhood near the end of the half century we’ve lived here. Houses by us run about a million dollars minimum. The one next to us across the ravine fetched a cool 2.1 million, sold in one hour, cash on the barrelhead. I’ve thought about cashing in, take the money and run, go where land is cheap, live the life of Riley somewhere less crowded, no HOA’s, way fewer neighbors, greener grass. Or no grass at all.

Adam and Eve might’ve had that same itch. Tired of all the covenants, the rules and regs, the don’t eat this don’t eat that, do what you’re told and you’ll get along just fine with the landlord. Course they couldn’t just throw up a For Sale by Owner sign, cash in and parlay the loot for another parcel up the road. Paradise is hard to replace for the same price, much less leave without even the clothes on your back. Folks used to do it though, call it the American Myth. Tell the boss, the landlord, the government or the King of England to go to hell, hit the road and don’t look back. You can only take so much.

My neighbor’s had enough. I know he didn’t want to leave. He’d set roots, landscaped his place, remodeled his castle and fell in love with the island. Personally I’m going to miss him. I hope he finds another South End. Hopefully there are still a few left.

The Camwood Mobile Home Park, long gone now in this era of gated communities and exclusive developments, once offered modest living on beachfront tracts destined for future high taxation. When the hammer finally fell, there must have been 20 single wides all lined up in angles that gave each tenant a peekaboo view to the Sound and the Olympic Mountains beyond, and although the lease was a bit high and the power and water levy exorbitant, folks with limited means could enjoy a small piece of the good life at a reduced price. Most of the island back then, really, was affordable.

Sure, there was no work and the drive to the nearest town was hellishly long, but there are always folks who prefer the edge of poverty to the sacrifice of 8-5, a sadistic boss, a crap job. I should know, I was the same way. My good luck, however, was having a small savings account, enough to buy a shack, not rent a trailer at the Camwood. Some folks there owned their single wide but most rented from Elmer Havelot, the slumlord/slash proprietor of the place who rarely made any appearances, just let Sue Novinsky manage the properties in exchange for free rent in Unit #6, the one with a fine view of the road down from the west side highway.

Sue was divorced. Twice. From the same guy, Phil Novinsky, a charmer but a mean drunk. The second divorce she needed a restraining order the Island County sheriff wouldn’t enforce so she left the island for a year and came back when Phil had died in a head-on, killing his drunken self and a teenage girl when he crossed the centerline just south of the Plaza Grocery. So Sue came back, managed the trailer park for Elmer, worked part time at the Tyee Grocery and decided the single life in a single wide was the life for her, what easily could have been a chart buster single on the country western station she listened to most days. If she’d been a song writer. Or played honkytonk guitar.

When Elmer gave the residents 30 days notice, her life threatened to become that country western song, heartbreak #3. But she worked a deal with Elmer, bought trailer #9, a reasonably intact 1953 Silver Star for peanuts and used what savings she had left for a half acre parcel behind Tyee Store, moved the trailer and cut her commute to walking distance. A few years later Tyee went under and Sue took a job at Twin City Foods, long commute, at least until TCF closed down. Last time I sat with Sue, drinking coffee with a shot of Jack, she said she was ready for retirement and Social Security. “If I learned anything in this place,” she told me, “it was how to live poor.”

The South End, if you give it a chance, I might’ve said back, will teach you that, all right. What I did say was what old Ted Snowden, the guy who built Tyee Store back in the ‘70’s, told me once: “It’s a poor man’s paradise.”

“A woman’s too,” Sue said, “once you get past the drunk husband.” We drank to that….

Gone are the days when mobs of us kids, festooned with sheets of scissor-cut eyeholes or bandanas and eyepatches carrying wooden pirate swords, out in the neighborhood with our beggar bags, hollering Trick or Treat, armies of zombies and skeletons and ghosts collecting enough candy to make a dentist smile for months on the wages from future cavities. Our parents back then didn’t drive behind us as we slipped through the darkness waiting fearfully in their station wagons idling at the curb — no, they enjoyed a night without us munchkins, that was their treat! Mine sometimes dressed up too, going door-to-door to their friends’ houses, holding out a shot glass, not a pillowcase. Halloween was fun for all ages back before we scared the bejabbers out of all the parents.

Course that was before the urban myths of apples with razor blades imbedded. Or lurking pederasts. Or 8 year olds showing up days later on the back of milk cartons. Have You Seen Me? Moms and dads listened to the evening news and heard the monstrous rumors Loud and Clear. Danger waited on every street corner, up every dark driveway, down the alley and behind the trees. No way they were letting their precious out of sight for one Stanwoodopolis minute!

My remembrance, murky as it is, was that the real danger was us marauding kids. Lawnmowers hoisted onto car roofs, outhouses moved back a crucial yard, paper bags with dog poop set on fire out in the driveway, all the stunts that gave credence to the Trick half of the entreaty. Give us sugar or else! We were candy terrorists. Children without supervision, unleashed on our neighbors, hidden behind masks and makeup and cheezy costumes.

We didn’t have helicopter parents. We accepted homemade cookies and home grown apples, all us little Huck Finns, out under a cloud covered moon, free at last, free at last, way before the Pied Piper Parents of the internet tethered their kids and bought them expensive costumes and drove them in broad daylight to some supposed safe suburb of town or to the merchants who offered treats as bait on the crowded sidewalk in front of their stores.

There’s a trick being played all right. But not by the kids….

Some billionaire recently argued that our leftist cities are struggling financially because of their woke politics, semi-plausible I guess, so it got me wondering if this was the reason why the South End is fiscally handicapped, all us artists and anarchists tossing grenades into every Chamber of Commerce attempt to haul us out of our financial torpor. Tyee Store threw in the towel a few years back, blamed it partially on me for some of the whoppers I used to tell about their E-coli superstrain from the 24/7 rotisserie hot dog rotator, and yeah, I realize some folks have no vestigial funny bone whatsoever and believe everything they read, so sue me. Geez.

Truth is, outside of real estate sales and VRBO vacation rentals, the South End economy has atrophied from the roaring days of chicken farms at Mabana when the Mosquito Fleet could dock at the pier that only lasted a few years before storms sent it to Davy Jones’ I-cloud. Supplies, mail, passengers, investors!, all disembarking to rake in the riches of South Camano. Old growth nettles and firs were logged and skidded out to the booms offshore before the sailing ships hauled them to San Francisco and Japan. No doubt the woke crowd at the turn of the century ended that booming era. Probably pre-PETA activists ruined the chicken trade and pre-ecological tree huggers ended the logging craze.

Trade back then plied the water. Roads were nearly non-existent and what had been built were muddy and potholed, nothing useful for commerce. Oh sure, a few enterprising folks attempted entrepreneurial miracles but customers were scarce as those chickens’ teeth and many a scheme ended in financial ruin, leaving a legacy of broken dreams and bankrupt pioneers, a legacy that endures to this day. Some left for the cities and more favorable economic possibilities, but many stayed to live a life without the stress of bleak business dealings, content to accept defeat but happy to manage the poverty as best they could. Not everyone wanted to be a millionaire back then the way we do now. And so they found time on their hands. Time to build homes, furniture, art, lives. Some might say they were woke, if woke meant anything back then. If it means squat today.

So maybe our billionaire sociologist is right. Go woke, go broke. Just don’t tell us down here on the South End that’s a bad thing.

I was cruising through the South End Pawn Shop the other day, scratching for musical gear the kids bought new and then had to sell to Jesse, the owner, for pennies on their dollar.  The days of finding a vintage Gibson Mastertone pre-war banjo are so far back in the rearview, even the memory looks like week old roadkill, thanks to the internet and Antiques Roadshow.  Takes about ten seconds to determine anything’s value.  Jesse’s prices, though, are wildly inflated, but if you’re a good haggler, he’ll come down a long ways.

Me, I’m the kind who hates to go around on prices.  Just put it on the tag and I’ll take it or leave it.  In the course of my lifetime I’ll probably pay twice what everyone else does.  But for peace of mind — and the lowering of blood pressures — I don’t care.

“How’s biz?” I asked Jesse who was perched predatorially on a stool behind a glass case.  He looked like a hawk on a telephone line.  Patiently waiting for the next mouse.  “Couldn’t be better,” he smirked.  I shrugged and he went on about the boyz hurrying in to sell their guns ‘before Biden takes em away’ and the boyz who wanted to buy guns ‘before Biden outlaws em.’  “I shoulda voted Democrat.  The guy is making me rich!”

I never really paid much attention to Jesse’s arsenal before, but I said show me what you got.  He asked what I was looking for, pistol, semi-automatic, shotgun over and under, military assault rifle …..  “Whoa,”  I said, “Jesse, I’m just an innocent bystander.  Doing some research …”

Half an hour later I’m casually acquainted with enough armaments to take the City of Stanwood, just me and a few NRA pals.  If Jesse has 200 firearms — and apparently my neighbors are stockpiling what he’s selling — the idea of disarming my het-up citizen friends seems more than a bit quixotic.  They’re apparently a gun-totin, pistol packin, shoot from the hip pack of yahoos and by god, good luck talking down the barrel of a Smith and Wesson.  You can probably tell a South Ender easy enough by his gun collection, but you sure can’t tell him much.

I walked out of Jesse’s with a big used tube amp for my electric guitar.  Jesse said it was brought in by a kid from a heavy metal band who was dead broke.  “Democrats’ll probably ban these too before long,” he said as I lugged it to my truck.  “Dial it up full volume, it’s potentially lethal.”

Right, it could kill my marriage, if nothing else.

Nobody seems to like growing old.  Can’t blame em,  I guess when you factor in the aches and pains, the wrinkles and hair loss, the diminished mobility.  Well, almost nobody, cause I don’t mind.  Sure, I got the same ailments, but hellfire, you ought to pay  SOME price for all this accumulated wisdom, for some peace of mind, for a more stable financial grip on this hard world.

My brother’s father-in-law, a dairy farmer in Northern Wisconsin who knew a few things about Hard Living, told him at a ripe young age to quit worrying about money.  Money, he said, takes care of itself.  You’d be better off to tackle the rest.   Love, marriage, family, career, happiness.  My brother, being young, didn’t believe him until he too was older and wiser.

We used to value maturity.  We used to respect the accumulated wisdom of all those years of living.  We used to pay homage to our elders.  Now that I’m an elder, I sure wish we still did.  But we don’t.  We value youth, energy, good looks, clean skin, svelte bodies, shimmering hair.  We’re a bit superficial.  Okay, we’re TOTALLY skin deep.  We’d sell our souls to be beautiful, to be athletic, to be rich.  If I was the devil, boy oh boy, I’d be banking more souls than I’d have rooms to rent in Hell.  I’d be building infrared suburbs, you bet.  Plenty of beauty parlors, fitness centers, spas, sports injury treatment facilities, so many mirrors a 60 watt bulb would heat the place up to full sizzle.

You reach my advanced age, you ought to pat yourself on the back.  You probably figured most things out.  You must’ve learned plenty from all those mistakes.  You should’ve learned to live in your own skin.  When kids ask who your heroes are, tell them YOU are.  It’s not egotistical.  It should be the truth.

The truth is, we got this far.  Meaning, we had a hearty dose of living, our fair share….  We learned a thing or three.  We witnessed the world.  We even changed it a bit, don’t underestimate yourself.  Pass some of it on to the young’uns.  They might listen.  More than you think.  Just don’t wish you were them, young and starting out fresh.  Why go through that twice?

I got an e-mail today with a link to the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ jobs in America.  Gotta tell you, I dreaded opening it up, fully expecting to find Artist probably the worst.  In all honesty, I almost hit the DELETE button, but this had come from a friend and he probably expected a response or a confession or a vow to do better in my next career choice, one from the ‘best’ list.

Turns out the ‘best’ jobs were pretty much judged on the basis of salary.  Actuarials, statisticians, mathematician(!), no kidding: high paying, technical, number crunching corporate gigs.  Boy oh boy, if I’d only know known back when I drummed out of school and began my desperate search for a ‘meaningful’ job.  Nobody told me the best careers were the highest paid ones.  I thought maybe they would be the ones that made me the happiest.The ‘worst’ jobs were the dangerous jobs.  Like Lumberjack.  Probably cut your leg off or be killed by a miscalculated cut in a leaning Doug Fir.  Poor pay, hearing loss, amputations.  And forget health care or vacations or sick leave or a pension.  Not gonna get to pension age anyway….

No mention of Artist in the group.  I guess poor wages, no bennies, no pension, not really the ‘worst’ job if it isn’t dangerous too.  Although I got to thinking how about those glass installations I did back when I was too eager and too stupid, climb up on a skinny ledge two stories above a concrete floor to hoist 30 square foot panels of stained glass into place with barely a few toes on secure footing at 3 a.m., every cell in my body screaming NO NO NO! and the sweat smelling like fear.  Fear, in case you don’t know, that kind of fear at least, smells like excrement.  Truly, unforgettably.

Anyway …. I didn’t find my ‘job’ listed on this link.  I’m just sort of glad I got something I can call a job.  Although, between you and me and the pegleg lumberjack, I never think of what I do as a job.  Someone asked me about retirement two nights ago at an art gallery opening. Would I — could I — just stop?  It’s not like punching a time clock, I guess.  It’s not about making the money.  And it’s not about being afraid of the danger.  My danger was really starvation, poverty, failure and humiliation.  Too late for that now.  The fear now is the creative well drying up, the days growing longer and emptier, the boredom settling in like a slow metastasizing dread.  I don’t know yet, but I bet it still smells the same.

Businesses come and go down here on the South End.  Mostly go…. Folks figure they can just empty out the kids’ piggy bank or sell the old Chevy van that’s been up on blocks 10 years behind the shed and scrape up the cash to hang a shingle out on their new storefront.  Something about working for other people makes em yearn for the entrepreneurial dream.  They figure if they work for themselves, their new boss will treat them a whole lot better.

Starting a business, they suppose, is a snap.  After all, this is a capitalist society and there’s all those consumers up on the North End clamoring for sales and services.  Wanda opened up the El Sol Tanning Solarium last year.  Now you know and I know the sun doesn’t shine much up on the cloud shrouded North End…. And so did Wanda, so she put out the CostCo neon OPEN  sign in a little 700 square foot storefront rental up by the Plaza Market where storefronts are opening up faster than real estate offices can move in, something Wanda mighta shoulda oughta factored in when she developed her business plan that night between dinner and Wheel of Fortune.

She lasted about the time it takes to say melanoma.  I don’t know what tanning beds go for used on CraigsList, but someday the antique value should be right up there with Ozone Generators from the 1920’s.  Wanda did get a nice full body tan herself, better than the burn down at the bank, and now we got another FOR LEASE sign where the neon no longer says OPEN.

When I last chatted with Wanda, she was heartbroken her dream died before it even had a chance to blossom.  ‘People must stay indoors and figure the TV will give them a tan,’ she lamented.  I said they go to Palm Springs or Albuquerque for the sun, not some coffin with full spectrum artificial lighting.  Wanda was in full denial.  More advertising maybe.  A location closer to town.  One free tanning session for every ten.  Now her savings were gone.  ‘I don’t want to go back to driving that school bus again,’ she practically sobbed.  In the land of capitalist dreams where Bill Gates whispers sweet somethings in every aspiring entrepreneur’s ear, failure is hard to accept.  Wanda will be fine.  She’ll dust herself off, take stock and probably launch into the next hot market.  DVD rentals or an umbrella shop.  Dreams don’t really die down here on the South End, they just recycle.  Worst case, she can do like most of the rest of us small businesspeople and become a working artist.  Low pay but huge self esteem.