The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

A few years back we came home from a vacation to find a tree had blown down and made a direct hit on my boathouse, limbs punched through the metal roof, rafters broken in half, support poles leaning at precarious angles, nothing you want to find after a relaxing trip to get away from the problems of your world. Fortunately the little sailboat I’d built back in 1990 hadn’t been crushed but it was a close call with the collapsed roof a few inches from smashing it. I don’t sail it much anymore but it’s a much beloved possession.

With some winches and a few fresh poles I managed to jerk the building back upright, sistered up the broken rafters, bandaged up some holes in the roof and figured, well, sure, it was kind of ugly now but worth saving rather than rebuild from scratch. Year after year it kept leaning more and more, but I would shove timbers in front of it to slow it down. This week I emptied the side shed of rough cut lumber, planed the whole she-bang, took out the aluminum I’d stored for glass installations over the years and decided maybe it was time to do a little upgrade on the building so with the sun at my back, a house jack at the ready, couple of new beams and a maul for beating the old ones upright, I went at it optimistically.

But when I would get one corner upright more or less the opposite side would lean worse. I tried shoving poles and beams against that side to keep it from falling over but nothing I did seemed to work. Being an impatient sort, I finally tried to just force the bastard up and into place, got the tall corner sort of squared away before a beam let go and I found myself shouldering the weight of the entire building as it started to fall on me before frantically pulling the support pole into a precarious angle that stabilized things. Momentarily. Back in the rear I latched onto that pole, gave it a little encouragement with my 8 pound maul … and watched the whole she-bang let go, pulling the back support of the boatshed down too.

Lucky for me I wasn’t on the inside with that last tap. Unlucky for me the boatshed let loose too. I could see my little sailboat, the SS Pterodactyl, with part of the roof seemingly resting on its rear transom, a sad sight for this Popeye, just another idiot who sailed into treacherous waters without proper training, no life jacket and no one near to come to the rescue. Some of us never learn….

Back 40 years ago the tulip fields of Skagit Valley looked like a Mondrian abstract, geometrically colorful grids laid out with Mt. Baker in the background, a photographer’s wetdream. A few folks rolled up from the cities, braving the weather and us locals, but not so many the farmers took notice. Like a lot of innocent beauty in this world, the Chamber of Commerce decided to, well, what we refer to today as ‘monetize’ those candy colored flowers. Organize, advertise, centralize — monetize! The town’s surrounding the fertile fields in the Skagit floodplain joined forces, hoping the next flood would be human.

Fast forward a few years and picture rural roads gridlocked with urbanites in cars, tour buses, on bicycles, all stopping to take foolproof colorful photos of glorious fields of tulips in perfect rows of reds and yellows, purples and pinks, with weathered barns leaning toward the Cascades. Traffic came to a halt, the highway off the interstate would be backed up like a concert crowd in an amphitheater or a football game downtown. The farmers couldn’t get a tractor or a truck through, residents couldn’t get out of their driveway, schoolbuses became prisons of trapped kids who wouldn’t get home until dark.

Success! Well, for the Chambers of Commerce and the restaurants and the art galleries and the nurseries. I drove through the fields yesterday thinking it was too early for the mobs. I got home today. There are a few fields glowing in technicolor but mostly the Big Growers have consolidated the fields near their gift/retail/tourist shops. The sightseers, searching desperately for a potty stop, mob the towns of La Conner, Conway and Mt. Vernon. You can buy 3 tulips for $10 there. You can eat at a café or a restaurant with a life-saving bathroom. You can spend the day in our very own Holland complete with faux windmills.

What you can’t do is see those old fields lost to memory where colors stretched for acres between the 20 foot high dikes that held back the Skagit. Now they only corral the tourists. And the predominant color is green.

I just came across an old photo of our newly remodeled sauna back in about 1983 engulfed in flames from the fire set ablaze when I installed a triple wall stovepipe chimney in it. Course, not having access to the internet and you-tube, I assumed the cedar shake roof could actually touch the stack, you know, since it was insulated and all. The mizzus wanted to call the fire department but I said it’s way too late for the volunteer basement savers now. That was before the adjoining wellhouse began to smoke from the paint reaching combustion point. The wellhouse goes and our adjoining house, without water to fight a blaze, would be history.

A few years back I nearly burned that house down anyway trying to solve some mysterious electrical issues. The panel box was outside wired directly to the street with no cutoff switch, necessitating working on it live with enough voltage to kill an elephant. If an elephant was an electrician. Neither me or the pachyderm were electricians. I shorted out a 60 amp breaker trying to replace it, sent sparks flying out of the prybar like a transformer had been hit by a tree, managed to melt down fat 6 gauge wires in the 100 year old tinder dry walls and of course this time decided to call the fire department. Except I don’t own a cellphone and don’t have a landline in the shack.

Apparently I’m my own arsonist. A slow learning arsonist to boot. Last week I was up at the rental house trying to install a 240 volt in-wall heater, replacing the 120 volt one I’d installed a month earlier, moving that one to the bedroom to replace the old 240 volt one. The panel box is outside but the power from the street can be cut off. No need this time to stand on two rubber tires for what I hoped back then would be somewhat adequate insulation from electrocution. Right. I got the first heater replaced okay. The bedroom one was a rat’s nest of strange wiring but undaunted I proceeded to screw things up, rewired hot wires to grounds, white grounds back to hot, you name it, I couldn’t make the thing work. When I finally hit on one wiring scheme that did, the bathroom heater quit working. Somehow they’re connected in ways that I never figured out.
But persistence is the enemy of safety, let me assure you. I kept at it and finally melted down a couple of wire nuts which, needless to say, alarmed even me. At some point I got the bathroom heater back but not the bedroom and so, ever the prudent do-it-yourselfer, I decided to live with it. Last night we were up there having a dinner away from home and lo and behold the bedroom heater worked and so did the bathroom. For an hour. Now neither work. You tell me and the elephant I rode in on. Today I’m screwing up my courage to try it one more time. I look at that photo of the sauna engulfed in flames and I may have to reconsider things.

Down here on the outlaw end of the island, you won’t hear us tossing hot air about defunding the police. What police we have are already pretty much defunded judging by the complaints coming in from the deputies. Nobody here wants to pay more taxes to increase our percentage of speeding tickets. But out there in Washington, not the state, the District of Columbia, the GOP is growing increasingly heated over the coming indictments of their Fearless Tweeter, Tiny Trump, so much so that they’re floating desperate last ditch strategies to derail the NY Southern District’s investigation over porn star hush money and hidden campaign contributions. There’s talk of cutting off federal funding for the office, subpoenas for the District Attorney heading up the case as well as investigations into Attorney General Bragg himself.

Whoo hoo, talk about weaponizing the Justice Department and Congress. The Jordans and McCarthys who have run to Tiny’s defense with questionable and desperate countermeasures to their man’s impending court appearances, depositions, trials and fairly probable convictions run a little at variance with our legal system. They seem to think that George Soros, their billionaire bugaboo, might be pulling the strings for NY state’s investigation since they claim Bragg’s appointment was bought and paid for. Not as if the Trump nominees for the Supreme Court were apolitical appointees. And last time I looked, political contributions are legal even if the receiver is a Democrat. And even if the donor is rich. Go talk to the Koch Brothers if you don’t believe it.

Pretty soon the Georgia Attorney General is going to wrap up her grand jury inquiry. No doubt the Tiny apologists will want an investigation there too and another withdrawal of federal funds. It might be mentioned that these are states, the ones the GOP claims have their own states’ rights, that are not under federal jurisdiction. Although maybe we’ll need to rewrite some laws to accommodate these sychophants in their quest to protect the guy who called for the taking of the Capitol. Two impeachments without convictions, maybe they’re hoping for a few indictments that get derailed. All I ask is this party quit calling itself the party of law and order. Nothing could be further from the truth. Which might make a great slogan.

First it was Disney, that woke Florida Goliath of a corporation. You know the brand from watching Walt and Mickey and Goofy most of your lives. Sure, they seemed all American back then, good corporate citizens, the poster child for culture and capitalism in this country, led by Uncle Walt. But because they endorse diversity, meaning, of course, saying it’s okay in the Land of the Free to be gay or bi or trans or Republican or Democrat, okay to be born in another country, even Idaho, they’re now woke and as you know, woke is not acceptable in many parts of this country. So Florida’s governor is weaponizing the state government to attack Uncle Walt where it hurts, in his citizen’s pocketbook.

Crazy? A little too Unwoke? You tell me. Now we got the unwoke wanting to boycott the best-selling brand of beer in America, Bud Lite, for daring to use a trans in one of their advertisements. Probably Bud figured to cash in on the transgender beer drinking community, forget the backlash. The Black Lists are coming back, looks like from my perch on the first quarter of the 21st Century. Boycott the companies who are supportive of gays and lesbians, bi and trans, see if a little economic pressure won’t squeeze the toothpaste back into the tube. Don’t buy M&M’s, they’re sexualizing our kids, ban books that legitimize lifestyles we don’t like from our libraries, stop drinking Bud Lite!

Now in full disclosure, I don’t consider Bud Lite real beer, more of a carbonated water product that I’ve never bought in my life. Then again, I’ve never been to Disneyland and would rather have a root canal than go now. But I have to tip my battered hat to these folks for standing up to the Unwoke. Even if I don’t recommend you fly into Disneyland or buy Bud Lite.

Well, sir, now we know how the GOP intends to deal with gun control. Not by banning assault rifles, not by demanding background checks, not by instituting ‘red flag’ alerts, not by even the most modest of proposals in the face of repeated mass murders, 130 before the third month of the year was ended. No, they plan to go after the trans community. One killer in the last 130, so you bet, here’s your problem. Demonize the gender benders, call them a menace to Christianity, make sure the bathrooms are safe for your sons and daughters, ban drag shows, that should end the carnage.

Let’s face it, the NRA and the gun lobby have won, the Republicans will never make a concession on gun control, Charston Heston probably was buried with a rifle in his cold dead hand. You think hundreds of dead are going to change their minds, I got some swamp down here you might consider purchasing. America loves its guns, the more the merrier, the more automatic the better. Mass killings? Blame it on the Democrats who they claim are weak on law and order. So say the folks who want to defund the FBI and who refused to honor the Capitol police after the insurrection. So say the legislators who attack the District Attorney of the Southern New York District for looking into Trump’s hush money. Law and Order? Law and Order?? You couldn’t handle Law and Order!!!

Let’s be honest will ourselves. More kids die from bullets than they do car accidents. Our schools run active shooter drills, bomb drills, duck and cover drills. This, apparently, is our new normal. Okay by the 2nd amendment folks who fear that banning assault rifles will lead to confiscation of their BB guns. We aren’t going to change their minds. It’s a lost cause. For years we couldn’t get statistics kept on the murder rate with guns, how you going to convince these folks there’s a pandemic of violence that might ought to be addressed. Seriously, they don’t want to know the numbers much less the solution.

You might think that the same people who were cowering in the Congress on January 6th might be willing to acknowledge that violence is smoldering right under their noses. That right wing militias are the greatest terrorist threat we face. But you’d be wrong. Trans. Trans with guns! God help us when they get organized….

80% of Republicans think the investigations into Donald Tiny Trump are nothing more than a witch hunt. Ya think? C’mon people, put that little thinking cap on and try to imagine you’re on any one of the ongoing grand juries, whadja think, the boy paid Stormy for services rendered, just wanted to keep mum with Melania? Or he thought maybe 11,000 odd votes were under the voting machine there in Atlanta, just take a look, okay? Or those top secret files were moved repeatedly in Muddy Lago unbeknownst to m’lord who was too busy cheating at his golf game. Maybe you figured January 6th when he wanted the Secret Service to take him to the Capitol wasn’t part of his game plan to keep himself in office after losing the election. Really?

Go ahead and vote for the creep, fine by me. But be honest with yerselves, the guy is guilty and if two impeachments don’t budge your belief in the boy, at least don’t demean your intelligence by crying Wolf and witch hunt. It’s okay if you want to vote for a felon, nothing says you can’t. And nothing says he can’t run for President again. Just admit you like the man and you don’t give a damn what he’s done that’s illegal or immoral or just plain Wrong. Forgive him his sins, if you happen to be a religious sort.

Yesterday the grand jury in New York handed down the first of probably a few indictments. You think George Soros bought off the District Attorney so the guy would bring charges against the Prez-in-Exile? Then listen to Lindsay Graham who suggested you send money to help the poor billionaire with his attorney bills, why don’tcha? And plenty of you will. The GOP is in full howl that this is a travesty of justice. Go ahead and beat your fists too. Attack the courts, the justice departments, the media, Hollywood, Disney, the college elite, all those crooked anti-American institutions for insinuating that no one is above the law, not even the crook you love.

But don’t tell yourself this is the new Robin Hood, the Jesse James of the 21st Century, the Stormy and Clyde folk tale. This is Al Capone, a gangster who got rich off you and still wants more. Send money. You can use a year’s supply of snake oil.

The recent news that the Whidbey Naval Air Station was applying for permits to convert Camano’s north end air strip for its Growler fleet to practice ‘touch and go’ came as a complete surprise at the last Commissioner hearing this week. At that meeting a Col. Thackeray stressed the importance of alternative practice strips necessary to assure flight readiness. His announcement that federal permits had already been approved, a matter the Colonel insisted was fast tracked as a national priority, caused considerable commotion. County permits and EPA certification were the final steps prior to initiating improvements to runways and tarmac as well as construction of a small control tower and the upgrade of current facilities.

Island County commissioners, blindsided by the news, asked why they had been kept out of the process until now, but were told the plans were on a need-to-know basis. National security, the Colonel said, was paramount and a speedy resolution of the permits would insure NAS Whidbey would have the additional training the Growler force required in these perilous times of international instability.

One commissioner voiced concerns over jet noise, a subject of recent controversy on Whidbey. Col. Thackeray assured them the jets would not fly between midnight and 6 a.m. unless of course a national emergency dictated additional flight times, but hours of operation weren’t completely finalized yet although they would be soon. “Trust your government,” the Colonel declared at the conclusion of the meeting. “We fully understand Camano Island’s concerns and we’ll do our best to be a good neighbor while also maintaining military readiness.”

Down here on the patriotic South End, the Sound of Freedom will no doubt prove too far north to be heard. The old sign on Whidbey, PARDON OUR NOISE, IT’S THE SOUND OF FREEDOM, got replaced years ago by one that omitted the apology. All I can say is freedom is pretty loud but hopefully the North End residents’ patriotism will be a bulwark against the decibels of slow moving reconnaissance jets dropping their property values down to sea level. Me, I’m just glad nobody put an airstrip south of Elger Bay. Yet….

Give the guy some credit, he never quits. He’s the proverbial bad penny, the Grinch who stole America. And if he wasn’t totally pissed off before, he is now. He feels your pain and shares your grievance. Oh boy, he’s going to be the warrior king who seeks revenge on the woke crowd the right wing blame for their grudges and resentments. He’ll be their bully, the righteous dude who kicks sand in the faces of the wimps. He’s their outlaw ruler, the bad boy who beats up on the minorities they hate too. And yesterday he was indicted, first President in our history to receive the honor. You better believe he’s spitting nails down there in Muddy Lago.

You might be wondering if you’re one of the wimps, one of the woke, one of those retribution will be meted out on. Good chance you are. Hitler had a few favorite targets. Jews, gypsies, homosexuals. If you’re going to be the champion of the aggrieved, best to find a scapegoat. Or two. Maybe a lot more. Trans, gays, the press, Hollywood, the educated elite, the coastal folks, blacks, most everyone not white, immigrants, college professors, Democrats, liberals — it’s a wide net. Chances are pretty good you’re on the hit list of those who need swift retaliation and harsh vengeance. Lock em up! Lock em up! He means You, buddy.

Course, if you attack too many groups, you run the risk of losing their support. Sure, we might want revenge on, oh, drag queens, but call for the castigation of dozens of enemy lists, what’s left are the Fox News addicts and I seriously doubt they make up a majority of Americans. Maybe in the South, probably in Idaho, but it’s a big country and most of us wimps aren’t too worried that Hollywood is undermining the nation’s morality. Or what shoes M&M cartoon ads are wearing. Last survey I saw asking if ‘woke’ was derogatory or not, most folks thought it was a positive thing. Most of us would like to believe we’re not dozing off at the wheel, much less aim the car at those who actually are awake. And more to the point, most of us don’t want Donald driving anything more lethal than his golf cart. Anybody in his foursome maybe ought to be careful.

Maybe you’re not like me — and geez, I hope you’re not — but I’m at that juncture in life where reminiscing is a better pastime than daydreaming about the future. I know, I know, Be Here Now, practice Mindfulness, yeah, yeah, but I’m 72 years old and there’s a lot more in the rearview than what’s up ahead and okay, I realize I need to keep my eye on the road for what’s coming up. Nevertheless…

Jimmy Buffet has a nice song called A Pirate Looks Back at 40. Talk to him about Mindfulness, I’m nearly twice that age. Let me drag up memories and regrets, wins and losses, successes and defeats, mistakes and triumphs, I think I earned the right.
My old man is 99. In a month or so he’ll break the century mark. I haven’t got a clue what he thinks about all day long in his small room in the assisted living joint we put him in. I talk to him every day and for the past couple of years his dementia has gotten worse to the point he doesn’t know what day of the week or sometimes what hour of the day. Gotta admit, sometimes I don’t either. Neither of us really cares.

I remember when my boxer, Dr. Gonzo, reached the age where she mostly slept next to the woodstove, maybe dreaming her old dog dreams, maybe not, seemingly content to stay warm, eat, hang around us all day. I suspect it’s us humans who think too much, worry too much, maybe lose sight of the small comforts old age affords us. We can just slow down, sleep a little more, fall into a more natural rhythm finally, one we fought tooth and nail against as obsessive ambitious human beings.

Me, I’m content lately to reminisce.