The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

You see folks everyday who are more stressed than a government service employee in a GOP administration.  Stress, as we should all know by now, is a Killer, capital ‘K’ and I don’t mean Jerry Lee Lewis.  Traffic tie-ups, hellish commutes, bad bosses, a co-worker who needs meds or a capital K for Killing —- we all know what that does to our blood pressure, our marriage and our equanimity.

On the South End we definitely believe in Equanimity.  Let the rats race, we don’t really have a finish line, so why hurry?  Some of the boyz down at Karls Kustoms Hot Rod, lounging around the lift, were comparing notes on headers and 4 barrel carbs over a few cold ones and inevitably they got around to jobs they hated the most.  It’s an old list, something to talk about when politics goes stale, and better than worrying about whether to take Social Security early or hold on a few more years of odd jobs and piecemeal work.

Karl used to run the service department at the Ford dealership a few years back.  Long commute, pressure job.  Unhappy customers.  Unhappy Karl.  But like the rest of us spinning socket heads and imagining ourselves behind the wheel of the cherry red little Vette Karl was putting the final touches on with an artist’s concentration, he’d tossed in the grease rag one Friday payday, told the boss to shove it and  took the long way home past every tavern and dive from the dealership to the cold dinner, then began living off his wits and his savings, neither a gold mine.

Poverty, of course, can be the cruelest stress of all, wondering week to week if you can tread water a little longer, not really expecting your ship to come in or even sail by, just holding on.  Course, the months pass, then the years and there finally comes a day when every South Ender worth his salt decides to quit worrying.  History is on his side.  Precedent.  Patterns.  And now … probability.  Truth is, we’ve learned the art of Making Do without making much money.  Hard to believe for a lot of folks.  But … belief is what we had to learn.  Things usually work out fine and worrying about em won’t help.  We leave that to the folks up north.

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.

Down at the Little Church in the Ravine, our non-denominational chapel of praise here on the South End (which is apparently a hotbed of iniquity according to the Bible thumping Pastor Paul), the sermons lately have taken on a slightly political overtone. I guess with the IRS busy with fact checking the major corporate filings for errors or outright fraud, they really don’t have the time to question religious incursions into politics. Not that the Little Church in the Ravine would have much to worry about insofar as tax emptions go on their modest sanctuary, but nevertheless, it’s disheartening to us transgressors that we’ve become the object of that fine tabernacle’s scorn.

Even the school system has earned Pastor Paul’s righteous wrath, declaring them groomers of aberrant sexuality. Having been a school teacher myself for a brief time, this is disturbing to hear. I certainly didn’t groom my classes in sexual anything, kind of verboten then and I’m betting it is now. Except, of course, the classes here on the island. ‘Satan,’ Pastor Paul is happy to exhort his disciples in their hard metal folding chairs, ‘Satan is among us!’ I never like to hear that the Prince of Darkness is wandering the nettle fields out back, apparently in broad daylight, even in our elementary schools. According to Paul and the Book of Revelations, this was all foretold. Maybe, I guess, I should have read the book.

But of course Pastor Paul is breathing fire and brimstone about the books in the library too. Lucifer is everywhere, near as I can tell, even lurking around the Camano Library, offering tempting tomes that would lure the unwary into sinful and immoral wickedness. He’s pretty sure that this is how drag queens got their start. We don’t have a whole lot of drag queens down here, not even many transvestites. Got plenty of lesbians and gays, even a trans or two, but no drag queens. Yet. Pastor Paul is predicting a tidal wave of them before too long. Thanks to the schools and the library.

He wants the congregation to know that Evil is out there. Cannibalistic sexual predators in a D.C. pizza shop basement are only the tip of what’s coming if True Believers in the King James Bible don’t step up and confront the evildoers. Apathy won’t cut it! Drag shows and gay marriages are spreading. This is Hollywood’s doing. And it is sanctioned by one of the political parties which has sold its soul to the devil.

‘Wait a minute, Pastor!’ a lone voice from the back of the temple cries out. ‘You saying my party is Evil??’ Betty Lou asks. ‘I got a daughter up at Elger Bay Elementary and the only grooming they’re doing is maybe hair. There’s more grooming going on at Pampered Poodle than there is in that school, I can tell you that.’

Well, Pastor Paul told Betty Lou he would be more than happy to discuss this with her after services, but for now, he was trying to reach his flock, to warn them of the dangers within and without. Betty Lou shook her head, snatched up her purse and said, ‘Okay, Paul, I’ll go without.’ And stomped out the back door. Pastor Paul, unperturbed, suggested they all pray for Betty Lou’s eternal soul now that she was alone to wrestle with Beelzebub. I give the Devil about equal odds on that matchup.

Some of you grizzled up, gnarly nail pouchers maybe remember the era before Cascade Lumber.  Those terrible dark ages when we got our 2×4’s down at Copeland or Woodinville Lumber.  We were remodeling a lot back then.  Roofing, adding a deck for a new large appliance.  Prettying up the back shack for guests.  Maybe adding a skylight, couple of bedrooms.  Fixing up that grungy kitchen.

Pretty soon we were tearing down these 50’s and 60’s cabins.  Putting in new homes.  You boyz remember when they auctioned off Finistere Heights, top lot going for an unimaginable 160K??  We thought the tsunami must’ve crested up there  …..  but only a few years later and we found out that was just the low tide lapping gently against the bulkheads.  Camano Hills, Brentwood, Utsalady …. folks found Camano finally, cheapest waterfront, cheapest views, half of Seattle and a tenth of California rolled up in their Lexus SUV and paid cash.  I remember the day our assessor rolled in — old Fred — and said he had some bad news for me.  And I said we better have us a cold one then.  And he said, actually I got two pieces of bad news.  So I said, well, you know what I said, and he told me about my million dollar absentee neighbors’ evaluation across the nettle ravine.

It’s nice to rub shoulders with wealth, as you know, but it’s quite another thing to pay their same property tax.  All boats rise with the incoming tide — or so they say — but none of us ever imagined the money that was headed onto the South End’s shores and bluffs.  I just try to remember our roots, our humble beginnings, and thank our lucky stars we got property and a little shack and bright prospects from neighbors who are looking to buy our parcels so they can tear down our casas and put up fancy boathouses or an architect designed slave quarter or a simple hangar for their Cessna.

Course, that was before the real estate meltdown of ’08.  Meant we’d all have to stand pat for awhile longer.  Give us more time to clear a landing strip in the nettles for the next owner.  And to stock the fridge for the next assessor’s bad news.

I guess I’ve been working in art for about 35 years. Some of it I’ve been doing okay at, even made a so-called Living at, and most of it, well, I’m not the poster child for Starving Artist, but maybe Anorexic Artist. We artists have a tough row to hoe in corporate America, that’s the truth, and so we try all sorts of strategies ranging from art fair booths to just giving up and getting a job, a real job. But probably too late for one that pays well or offers benefits and pensions. The money belongs to the Job Creators. Us creators, well, good luck.

I went up into the mountains this past weekend with a box of the Skeeter Daddle Blues, hoping to do a book reading and maybe sell a few copies. Ever since my old outlets for book sales dried up, I’ve been headscratching how to market these babies, get them out of my basement and into the hands of folks hungry for great literature. Tyee Store closed up and so did the Copy This Mail That office supply store that sold the first book Skeeter Daddle Diaries so well I ordered a second printing. The South End String Band CD’s sold like hotcakes too at those places, but when they closed shop, the only show in town was the Snow Goose Bookstore. And now they’ve shuttered their doors too. We probably sold two to three thousand CD’s before that. I sold maybe 1000 books. Not bad for a backwash.

This past year I haven’t sold more than ten books and the band is giving CD’s away at concerts for ‘the price we finally figured they were worth’. For free. One concert alone we handed out 150 CD’s.

A high tech, fast charging friend convinced me to try Amazon. Against my better judgement I signed on, figuring I’d be sending them a box of hot sellers they could pass out faster than candy on Halloween. But no, they wanted me to send one book at a time, priority mail, to their warehouse in Maryland or someplace far far away. I spent about $5 per book for mailing envelope and postage, losing a couple of bucks on each one. This went on for a couple of months, never enough sales apparently, to justify shipping them a full box. I might have continued this brilliant sales strategy right into bankruptcy but one day I noticed Amazon, love these guyz, had used copies of the Skeeter Diaries listed at 1.99 plus shipping. This was great. Me competing against me and the only winner was Amazon. It took me awhile to get out of this crummy cycle, the company not really responsive to any inquiries. In fact, they had no way to make inquiries.

I finally just kept sending them messages on the sales requests that the book was Out of Print. Which, finally, it was. Sadly, I buy my own book back from them occasionally just to have a few copies around. Cheaper than reprints by far. Bookstores competing against Bezos, like I mentioned at the last Snow Goose reading before they closed shop, are like Godzilla vs Bambi, it won’t be long before they’re toejam. Now I see where they’d like to be my printer too, print on demand. Probably ship them to me, then have me ship them back each sale. Lose even more money on every point of sale.

So I wish I had a tried and true strategy for you prospective artists out there looking for ways to sell your wares, I really do. It was always dog eat dog, but now we got Godzilla too. My only advice is to be like the little furry creatures during the Dinosaur Era, stay low, keep a close eye out, maybe move at night. I know, not much help, but the trick is to survive.

So you wannabee an American Idol?     You’ve practiced in the shower, you’ve performed countless hours at the Stanwoodopolis Karaoke bars, you’ve taken it about as far as you can on your own.  Now it’s time to take it to the Next Level!      The Elger Bay Academy of Pickin and Grinnin, the Julliard of the metropolitan South End, now offers advanced Idol training, especially focusing on proven techniques to maximize your chances at becoming an X-Factor finalist or an American Idol winner.  Our instructors, graduates from the finest D.J. discos in the U.S. and Canada, will provide you with that ‘insider’ knowledge you need to compete at the national level.     You’ll learn  HAIR STYLING TECHNIQUES guaranteed to turn judge’s heads.   DANCE ROUTINES so easy yet effective that judges scarcely notice  wrong notes.  FASHION TIPS of former graduates and even regional finalists!  Dress for success!      Our professional staff will train you in voice stylings from rap to bebop, Sinatra to Madonna.  Croon like Crosby one song, then gangsta rap to Eminem.  Wow your friends with versatility instead of virtuosity!

Before your 2nd quarter tuition payment is due you’ll be headlining at the open mikes of Smokey Point and Mt. Vernon.  By graduation you’ll be forming your own act and performing in nightclubs and lounges where Everett talent agents water down.

Don’t spend your most productive years in the Karaoke caverns.  Let the Elger Bay Academy of Pickin and Grinnin hone your talents to a fine edge and put you on the freeway to musical success.        Enroll Now!   Call I-WANNABEE –A -STAR   today and get ready for a dazzling career in the spotlights.   Ask about our E-Z Payment Plans.   Highly endorsed by the South End String Band, 1998 graduates!!

A lot of South Enders, isolated from the mainland and remote from major grocery outlets, have reverted to primitive customs.  Now, don’t you northern neighbors worry — we aren’t talking cannibalism here.  Not yet.  No, we’ve gone back to ancestral roots.  We’ve become hunter-gatherers.  Most of us have small gardens, some of us have large ones, but we grow what we can to supplement what we can’t afford down at the Plaza IGA and Hardware Sales.    

  Sure, the tomatoes we planted in May don’t ripen until October and the corn won’t grow high enough to hide our medical marijuana plants and there’s really only so much a person can do with the zucchini that always threatens to escape the deer fence and become the kudzu of kamano with thousands of gourds dropping down from power lines like aerial IED’s on car windshields and the Walking Women of Mabana’s phalanx of human obstacles to unwanted commuter traffic.  

    So we’ve been forced to resort to yet another strategy for culinary survival: CANNING.  A lot of my neighbors come to me and say, Skeeter, I just don’t think I can eat another jar of your savory ZUCCHINI DADDLE DILLS, no offense.  And I say, None Taken, and gently move them to a recipe from Skeeter’s Skillet Skills (available at Addled Daddle Press for 9.95 plus shipping and handling), the chapter on food preservation.  I like to give them a Tried and True first, something like the wildly popular Nettle Kraut, a fermented in the crock nettle with maximum garlic that, once canned, can be eaten on Christmas snowgoose or Easter crab bratwurst (another Skillet Skill fave) or just a snappy side dish any occasion.  

    I’m not suggesting these pioneer skills will end poverty down here or take the place of  our food banks, but for those of us who chose unemployment over work, it has been a lifesaver.  You start canning a cellar full of nettle kraut, you might consider telling that jerk boss of yours to take a hike too.  You got the safety net now, that’s for sure.  And with a healthy diet, you can drop that health insurance.  This stuff cures what ails ya.      Next week we’ll talk Animal Husbandry.  And no, I don’t mean Tough Love Matrimony.

Down at the forward thinking South End, we were New Age before it became Old Hat.  Herbal remedies?  You bet!  Nettle-opathy has been practiced in the hollows here since old Ma Wexler applied a poultice of the fresh stingers to her Erectile Dysfunctional husband’s non-working parts and boy howdy, things livelied up at the Wexler homestead after that, let me tell you.

Nettle-opathy is a country cross between acupuncture and herbal cure-all.  Apply a few fresh spring leaves to the correct chakra, you can cure everything from shyness to arthritis, halsitosis to insomnia, hair loss to memory loss, seasonal affective disorder to major depression.  You won’t have time to think of much else other than that panacea tickling your chakra.

We’ve been brewing medicinal nettle tonics about since Prohibition forced us to seek alternative medicines.  We got hefe-nettle, nettle stouts, IPA’s, nettle bock, all available in a handy 12 oz. dosage.

Aromatherapy?  Sure.  We got everything from burn barrel poly-blend to chimney cedar to compost leaf mulch/food scrap.  A few minutes of olfactory stimulation, you’ll forget most of those insignificant cares and woes that nag your good mood all day long.

Hypnotherapy.   You want a spell put on you, just wander down to the South End Hotel and belly up to the bar, listen for awhile to the whoppers these old time fishermen spin over a few bottle bass.  You’ll be buying Penn reels and downrigger gear and a boat and motor too — you’ll be broke but if fishing doesn’t cure what ails ya, god help you.

In all honesty — full disclosure here — this New Age stuff, old to us, is really mostly a placebo.  But then, isn’t that the New Medicine now?  And really, who cares so long as it works.  Not our fault the South End itself is really why we live longer, smile more, work less and basically just have most of the answers to life’s tough riddles.  Placebo?  You bet.

Funny how just recently the media and even our lawmakers have discovered Artificial Intelligence is lurking just down the block, all these Tech Boyz in competition to see who can develop the latest version of Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even some of them are starting to sound the alarm and if that doesn’t suggest there’s reason for serious concern, well, go back to worrying about global warming, why don’tcha?

Most of the folks working toward a robot future see nothing but the positive side of a relentless algorithmic advance. We love Google, what’s not to like about an intelligence so far superior to our own slow synapses? Geez, most of us can’t remember what movie we watched on Netflix last night, much less an encyclopedic knowledge of the world … or even the South End. Be nice to have a cute cyborg buddy to remind us why we went into the adjoining room. If there even was a reason.

But now, with artificial intelligence jumping forward, one small step for mankind, one giant leap for Hal, a few red flags are suddenly going up, something to do with the creepy notion that when androids can improve themselves, it won’t be long before they reach what is called Singularity, that point when intelligent machines surpass humans and begin to evolve on their own. Might even be that they figure out they don’t need us. Or that we’re simply an impediment to their advancement. Kind of like that cute puppy of yours growing into a T-rex with fangs and teeth and a huge hunger. Sure, it’ll remember that you fed it puppy chow and be grateful to you, the Master. Hope you never spanked it for wetting the carpet!

So let’s see, we think maybe the Congress will enact legislation to slow down the coming Apocalypse? Or that the Tech Boyz will, out of public concern, put the brakes on and chill the profits? The genie is out of the bottle and the genie is figuring out every day that those 3 wishes are a waste of its time. But hey, go ahead and ask for just one, see what he says. Genie, can you maybe get back in the magic lamp?

Can’t hurt to try….right?

I suppose if I’d lost two wives to cancer, early deaths, I might become cynical the way Smoker Bill did. And maybe if I had had an alcoholic father, the kind who would throw the Thanksgiving turkey across the room in a fit of drunken rage and watch it splat against the wall and then ooze dressing onto the floor, I might want to sever most ties with my fellow man. Bill was never what you might call gregarious before his second wife succumbed to cancer, but trust me, after that he was a man you left alone. For a year he worked on an old industrial RV, a twenty footer that he replaced brakes and assorted parts on, hard to find items, usually used was all that was available. He refinished the interior the way later he would refurbish houseboats down in Nowhere,Nevada, meticulous work since he was a woodworker by trade, the kind who works alone and refuses any form of supervision from employer or client alike.

I would watch him smoking his usual Camels unfiltered with reading glasses low on his nose scratching measurements before cutting, a serious man, a man who took pride, if not love, in his work. Love had long since abandoned Bill. Except for his cats, two at the time before he sold his house to his brother and drove off the island for good, going god only knew where, but definitely somewhere else. Last I saw him he was holed up in a godforsaken hellhole of a trailer park in southern Utah, swamp cooler rattling on the roof of his trailer, the inside crawling with over a dozen stray cats he’d taken in, the smell of full litter boxes gagging in the heat. He’d already made enemies with most of the other down and outers living the good life in deteriorating mobiles, bad jobs, bad habits, bad marriages, all fodder for Bill’s harsh judgement. The alcoholic manager finally demanded he take his attitude and hit the road after Bill complained about the community restroom and showers’ filth and Bill gladly complied. But not before a scathing shouting match and a burned bridge.

For a time he made camp in another trailer park further south, picked up a few more stray cats, made a few more enemies before being asked to move on, then broke down near the border, got towed to yet another park on its last legs out in the desert and for all I know is still there since his RV no longer runs. And never will. Hermits, I suspect, are made, not born. Bill left civilization a long time ago. Is he happy, you might ask and I would have to say no, he gave up on that after his second wife died. Is he unhappy then? I suspect he would tell you he’s doing just fine, exactly what he wants, and no one to tell him one damn thing.