The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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.

A lot of the newcomers to the fabled South End build their mega-mansions with their yards left menaced by 100 year old 2nd growth nettle forests.  The first windstorm slamming them with 80 mph hurricane force winds triggers frantic calls to their insurance agent … when the power and phone service return.

It’s only a matter of time before they realize their woodland retreat is a potential deathtrap and, better safe than sorry, they decide to clearcut the property.  Worst case, they can put in a 9 hole golf course with sand and water traps and never miss the forests that brought them here in the first place.  The eagles and deer can migrate back inland a ways among us poorer residents, the ones with handicaps too high for golf.

Course now they need a tree expert.  Or at least some logger bonded and insured with references a long resume in the woods industry.  Trouble is, the logging era on the South End is pretty far back, mostly black and white photos down at the Historical Society and Tourist Information.  So … after some futile internet searching, they invariably get to Jimmy the Gyppo.

Jimmy’s been topping trees for suburban worriers ever since the log market went to pot, medical and otherwise, and the price of a board foot of timber nettle plummeted to less than the cost of hauling it to the mill over in Arlington.   He figured out the real money was in One-Offs, either before or after they were on a roof, didn’t matter to him either way.  When clients asked if he was bonded and insured, he’d just laugh.  That’s why you got the home insurance, he’d say, knowing full well their options were fairly constricted.

Jimmy the Gyppo didn’t come cheap and he even charged to haul the downed trees away.  Then he sold the firewood off a flatbed down by Tyee Store, what he called a Two-fer.  The rich folks didn’t mind.  The whoppers Jimmy regaled them with, spitting tobacco plugs across a pansy garden, made them feel a little like pioneers, breaking soil for the next expansion of the American West, bringing civilization to the wild old South End before finally deciding to move on to the sunny southwest where the winters were dry and there were no forests left to threaten their vacation homes.

The South End Senior Center —what the wags at the Marina and Bait call the Senile Center— is basically a pole building down by the Camano Cut and Curl, about a stone’s throw from the now defunct Tyee MegaStore.  A pole building, for those unfamiliar with architectural stylings, is a metal sided structure constructed with beams instead of stud framing.  Barns and shops are often built this way.  So is our Senior Center.  Cheap and stout enough.

The Center has a Board and it has a small staff — which is Jenny Hancock and various volunteers who man (well, okay, woman) the desk and phones.  Jenny has the only room, other than the unisex toilet in back, that has its own door.  This makes it perfect for the occasional dance and their annual fashion show, the flea market fundraiser and their gala auction, capital G, that brings in most of their yearly funding.

The auction used to be held at the close of the flea market, sort of an afterthought.  Year after sorry year, the stragglers would bid on bad local art the artists couldn’t sell or give away on the Mother’s Day Studio Tour, plus the usual items from South End biznesses.  A day of fishing Jesse’s Deep Sea Charters.  Believe me, an hour would be plenty.  Or a perm at the Cut and Curl.  An hour of acupuncture down at Pins and Needle Therapy.  Whoa, Nelly, you can imagine the bidding wars!

Just before they decided to throw in the towel on the auction, Jenny convinced the board to go Gala.  Meaning, basically, play dress-up and serve wine and beer, charge an entry and serve coldcuts and cheese with crackers.  The first year the Center made 5 times what they HAD been making.  The second year they doubled that and on the third they served hard liquor.  And made even more.  Two Toke Tom is lobbying for medical marijuana sampling, but he’s not on the Board.

The Center is raising money now for a new building.  The toxic mold is starting to be an issue and anyway we’re feeling growing pains, not so much from all the new immigrants as that demographically we’re inexorably moving into our senile years.  If the auction keeps on improving, we might just make it.  Believe me, 3 martinis and even the Bait Shop Boyz bid a day’s wages for an hour with Janice, head dominatrix at the Pins and Needles.

Times are tough these days down at the South End Marina and Bait Shop.  A lot of barnacle-bottomed boats moored idle at the docks, their glory days of fishing now just a dry-rotted memory.  Occasionally you’ll see one of the skippers doing a little brightwork on some faded trim or turning over an engine just to clear the cobwebs from the lines and the tanks, but time and overfishing have taken heavy tolls.

Used to be the fleet was the pride of the island, running from Mabana to Bristol Bay in search of salmon openings and halitbut catches.  We maybe didn’t have the widows’ walks the Narragansett boys had for their lonely wives to gaze forlornly out to sea scanning horizons for men returned from hunting whale, but it was an event nonetheless when captains sailed into view with full cargo holds and tales of Alaskan storms.

Sadly, those catches dwindled and the fleet turned to lesser dreams.  For a time they chartered for the tourist fishermen,  CEO’s up from San Diego and Frisko, Portland and Seattle, in search of trophy gooeyducks and the elusive free range oyster, but even those became uncommon, then finally rare.  One by one the Captains Courageous were forced to sit idle, swapping tongue-worn tales of the Big Catch of ’78 or the killer storm of ’82, mostly lies now, but better than constant complaining.   And far better than hanging out in the unemployment office.

Some of the skippers sold their boats for what they could get, just pesos on the dollar.  Hazy Jake ran Canadian Bud for awhile through the islands until the borders tightened and his nerves frayed worse than his lines.  You see the last of them down at the bait shop most days, those Ahabs whose Mobys disappeared, hunkered down  over big chipped mugs of thick coffee from the self serve pot, predicting tide and weather, predicting  everything except the future, a place they rarely visit now.

Lately I’ve been noticing a new drumbeat from the far right, the Red States, the Christian jihad and yellers at PTA meetings across this great land. They want books banned. They don’t want our kids exposed to the woke culture, nothing about sex or sexual preferences, nothing about systemic racism or sexism, nothing that would make them feel uncomfortable knowing certain truths, even the ones self-evident. They would close down the libraries and in some places they’re working on that. They want to shut down the Department of Education. If they could, they’d burn books and maybe even the librarians who dare to allow material these parents object to placed on the shelves.

What I don’t understand is how these people think the real danger to their offspring is in the library. Go ahead, shut down the library, lock the librarians up, burn the objectionable books, that should protect Johnny and Brittany, shouldn’t it? Nearly every kid has a smart phone, nearly every kid has access to the same social media as their folks, nearly every kid can watch violence and porn at the earliest possible age. But hey, the parents think banning a couple of books in their local or school library will buffer their darlings from left wing woke propaganda? The unwoke need to wake the hell up. Their kids’ brains are being groomed all right, but not from some novel about growing up gay in America.

Social media and the internet provide them with creepy bullies, trolls that destroy their developing self-esteem, conspiracy theories, whacked politics, a world of Likes and Unfriending, all guaranteed to warp their childhoods in favor of an immature and puerile adulthood. Parents worry about critical race theory and prefer that to critical thinking. They think their kids, protected from the bogeyman of Hollywood or Disney or Bud Light, will grow up with their values, as if they were Amish and driving the horse and buggy would save them from being assimilated into a decadent culture, the one that surrounds them completely.

Too late, too damn late to ban the books and prosecute the librarians, the Pied Piper of the internet has already stolen their children.