The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I keep hearing how what us South Enders want fom our health care is more choices. Me and the mizzus, both past Medicare age now, started shopping for supplemental insurance. If we wanted choices, whoo-ee, we got em!! Well , not so much in different companies offering competitive prices so much as the two companies offering plans with plenty of their choices.

Maybe you want Plan X, pays 80% of Medicare A’s deductible, 100% of Med B’s. For $50 more a month you can get 100% pay on A & B. Want to save $$$’s, go for Plan D, you pay $3200 out of pocket before D kicks in, maxes out at $50K or Death, why they call it Plan D, you will opt for death before bankruptcy. Plan Z you can get some nursing home care, but not on Plan Y. Out of country coverage? Some yes, some no. Want co-pay or Medicare D, check out plan C? Need dental or glasses, Plans X and G and maybe N, but see if it covers contacts, bifocals or Lasix.

The list goes on. And on. And on some more. If you got a month or so, download the prosepectus of 43 pages or so per plan. Price per month is pretty prominent, you won’t need bifocals, but try to compare those prices with the juggling options, you’ll need something for your vertigo, check if it’s covered on your Medicare D, the pharmaceutical part. And if you’re not like ma and me, you’re searching for the equivalent of Medicares A and B in those health plans, god help you.

Call me cynical but if I didn’t know better with all this accumulated Wisdom old age is supposed to accrue along with arthritis and prostate problems, I’d say the health care industry makes this purposely obfuscated, a labyrinth of impossible to calculate connections between the fees and options, throw the dice, pay the price, take two aspirin, hope you make it til morning….

So … do I want more options? I don’t know. It seems like that stupid beer ad for the most popular beer in America: More Taste, Less Filling. It doesn’t have any taste whatsoever and it’s less filling because it’s mostly water. Still costs plenty, that’s for sure. Health care: more options, less expensive? We’re all being sold a bottle of snake oil, just 25 different labels on the same bottle. Glad we got those choices, though! Well, maybe if you’re wealthy….

Down by our Garbage Free end of the island we got about 16 trucks a week from Waste Management plying our neighborhood. Big green plastic bins get rolled out to the end of the driveway and the big green trucks stop, drop their metal arms, lift the bin up and into the maw of the trucks’ rear ends then move on to the next. The mizzus asked if maybe we shouldn’t sign up for curbside pickup, save me that awful trip to the dump.

The trip I make about every 3 months. When I arrived at the primitive South End, the dump was actually that, a dump. Roll up, toss our garbage into a pit. Frank ran the dump back then and about half what we tossed he took home. Old TV’s, busted toasters, dead lawnmowers, Frank figured they were worth keeping. Sort of recycling before recycling was cool.

Admittedly there weren’t many of us living on the island back then, but when the population grew, the county installed coin-op dumpsters. For 50 cents we could load the bin and a compactor crushed it all down. A decade later they added barrels for glass and plastics and paper. We had to sort the glass — clear, green and brown — and most weeks the barrels were full so folks dropped the stuff on the ground. The dump was a dump once again.

Now we toss all the recyclables into one place. Easy. Real easy. I don’t know why either folks still use the highway to toss their bottles and cans, maybe just the irrepressible urge to dump as soon as the container is empty. But a lot of us evidently think the roadside is their personal dump. If I thought too long about it, I’d become more cynical than I already am and none of us needs that. Litter’s bad enough.

So when folks drop their garbage in the middle of the parking lot at the park I maintain, I’ve stopped sorting through it to find a letter with their address or a magazine with their name on the label. I have to live near these folks, but I sure don’t want to get to know them. I got enough enemies as it is … so I’m real glad most of the newcomers can afford curbside pickup.

When I first moved to the Left Coast, I had a yearning to get myself a motorcycle, learn to ride, then set myself free on the byways of the Cascades. Being poor, I bought a used Honda 350 that hadn’t run in years, wouldn’t start and looked like it was ready for the crusher. I paid $100 for the piece of junk, hauled it back to my house in the ghetto and pushed it down the basement stairs where I could spend some quality time diagnosing why it wouldn’t start over the winter months.

By summer I had the problem solved and so, with the help of my roommates, I hauled it back up and out to the backyard, kick started it into an oily smoke idle and admired the thing in the full light of a Seattle sunny day. Now all I had to do was figure out how to ride it. I called the police and asked what kind of temporary license I would need to take it for some learning spins on their city streets and was told it was illegal, no temporary licenses were to be had. I said how am I spozed to learn how to ride. The sergeant said it wasn’t his problem.

So right from the start I became an outlaw biker, stalling my crappy bike on half the shifts, careening down the mean streets of my neighborhood, searching for large empty parking lots to practice sharp turns and fast starts. Trouble was, my clutch didn’t shift right and every so often the engine would shut off in mid-travel for no apparent reason that I could diagnose. On one of my ventures I came across a fellow biker working on his Harley at Seward Park, tools spread on the parking lot and so I thought why not ask an expert about my clutch problem. He was hard at it in his Joker leathers with his tattoos bulging as he strained to his work, a fellow outlaw. I interrupted him to ask about my clutch dilemma. He looked at my battered scooter and said — I can remember it clearly to this day 40 years later — ‘Get the fuck away from me, man.’ I took it to mean us real bikers fix our own bikes without outside help.

On the way back to my ghetto house I was idling at the red light on Jackson and 23rd when a menacing group of black gangbangers roared up beside me on both sides, about 15 or so, all revving their Harleys as we waited for the green so that I thought I was inside a Boeing 747 engine. I didn’t think this was an initiation test. And I didn’t think it would end well either. The light, after what seemed like an hour, turned green and we all popped our clutches, ready for a tire burning, wheel skidding jackrabbit start … and my bike died right then.

I suppose a lesser man, a man not accustomed to the outlaw biker life, might have been embarrassed. A lesser man might have thought the laughter and catcalls from the black Banditos was too much endure. A lesser man might have junked his prized Honda 350 and succumbed to the temptation to buy a Vincent Black Shadow and show these hooligans who really ruled these mean urban streets. But me, I pushed my spray painted motorcycle ten blocks back to the basement and sold it a month later. For $100. My easy riding days had come to an end. There was nothing more to prove, I guess.

Researchers have recently discovered that cows have the capability to use tools. Until now, the bovine beasts were considered dumb cud-chewing know-nothings, content to graze a field or stand in their crowded stanchions munching on antibiotic-adulterated hay and feed, happy probably to serve their masters as Big Macs, Whoppers and various other hamburger patties. Apparently they’re not as stupid as we thought.

What tipped our astute researchers off was a farmer with a pet cow he never intended as fodder for the meat packing plant up the road. The Swiss bovine, Veronika, had more than the usual two years to develop her IQ skills and one day farmer Clyde noticed her using a deck brush to scratch a backside itch. Veronika, the farmer said, prefers the bristly side. Tool usage! Even with hooves instead of opposing thumbs, just gripped that handle in her teeth and scratched with the other end. Scientists were gobsmacked.

Me, not so much. I don’t judge animal intelligence on computer skills or essay writing, blogging or banjo playing. Might just be they have a different set of intellectual skills we verbal monkeys don’t appreciate. But pick up a stick — even with your teeth — hoo boy, there’s evidence of mammalian intelligence. Might even be enough, but I seriously doubt it, to give us primates pause next cheeseburger we gobble at the neighborhood barbecue.

Nevertheless, this is newsworthy stuff in the world of Yahoo News. Over at Fox News I’m betting the talking heads are dissecting the data and alerting their own cud-chewing audience to the dangers of cattle with sticks. Time to call our GOP Representatives to pass legislation keeping guns out of the hands of cows, the 2nd amendment be damned. Worst case scenario we got bovine militias unleashed on rural red state Americans with revenge on their minds. Smart minds, we know now. Might be we need a constitutional amendment.

Amid rumors that our commissioners have decided to divest the county of its parks, the South End Environmental Koalition (SEEK) has begun a campaign to Save Our Parks (SOP). Ginny Davis, the newly appointed president, spoke at the South End Chamber of Commerce, arguing that parks mean tourism and tourism means dollars. Ralph Hinshaw asked if she thought our little 5 acre park —Hutchison Park — really brought tourists into our ‘economic sphere’.

“Seriously, Ginny,” he asked, “who the hell comes to that park except teenagers doing drugs and having sex? You think they’re going to fuel the economy down here?” Ginny realized she’d maybe gone down the wrong cul-de-sac, citing economic growth where economics barely existed, but Harry Walton, owner of Tyee Megastore, stood up and declared he sold a lot of ice cream bars to the bicyclists who stopped at the store and he’d seen more than a few eating popsicles at the picnic tables down at the park an eighth of a mile north.

Ralph avowed how he’d never seen a soul down there much less a motorcycle gang with sweet tooths. Ginny, who didn’t catch the humor in that, asked, “What do you think, Ralph? Sell the park for a building lot? Not much revenue in a single house on a lot zoned for 5 acre rural residential.”

The South End only has this one park. Course it only has one store. One diner. One hair salon. And two art galleries. Which are extraordinary if you’ll allow me to play art critic. We got plenty of art studios, some good, some not, but they all add to the mythology of the fabled South End, if not, admittedly, to the tax base.

Personally, I think the park should stay. I don’t give a fig or a fart if folks throng to its short trails and its unused BBQ grills or notice the flowers or idiosyncratic sculpture. Some day when this is an art mecca for weary urbanites, they’ll have a place to pull in and check the GPS for how to get home. Meanwhile the teenagers got a place for backroad sex.

Maybe you’ve heard about the AI painting that took first prize in a national art contest. Or the AI song that went high up on the pop charts. If not, don’t worry, you will. For awhile — a short time, trust me — us artists, musicians and writers will use AI as an assistant only. That’s what we’ll tell ourselves. Just eliminating some of the drudgery to give us more time for serious creativity. You betcha.

Creativity, we tell ourselves, is the sole domain of us talented humans, nothing that a bundle of circuits and chips could manage, no doubt a gift from the gods. Oh sure, the droid helper might be able to emulate, monkey see monkey do, but no way, NO WAY, could these silicon toys manage to create new original great art. Like us humans, the crown of creation, the Rembrandts and da Vinci’s, the Mozarts and Chuck Berrys, the Picasso and Warhols, the Tolstoys and Stephen Kings.

Sure, maybe they borrowed a bit from their predecessors, might even have stolen whole cloth, but that’s how art, capital A, evolves. C’mon, it’s a synthesis, leaping forward and upward on the backs of those who came before, from cave drawings of mastodons to the masterpieces of Pollock’s splattered paint, from the humble notes of a pan pipe to the eloquent silences of Philip Glass, from the first scribbles of verse to the Burger King jingle, just a steady progression toward our own enlightened era.

How could a bunch of wires and circuit boards possibly do more than merely emulate what homo sapiens do so naturally? So what if the cyborgs can write a decent opera in a nano-second or design a painting that looks wildly futuristic or carve a sculpture with laser cutters in the time it takes to say Michelangelo. Still doesn’t make it human art. That’s why we call it Artificial Intelligence. Then again … art is sort of Artifice, isn’t it? Nothing we real artists should worry about. Worst case, we can let AI do a little more of the creating. Not too much. Just a tool, after all. Like using a paint brush or a keyboard. Just a tool. Keep saying that. We might learn to believe it. Course by then it’ll be too damn late.

When I first learned how to make stained glass at a night class up at the high school in Stanwoodopolis, my sole goal was to learn enough to make replacement windows for a couple of nailed on plastic sheets in my drafty shack on the South End. At the time I didn’t know how to reframe a window for maybe a salvage yard replacement … and judging by the plastic ones, neither did my predecessor who I’d bought the place from. Ignorance, of course, isn’t always bliss.

But a funny thing happened on my way to an Architectural Digest feature. I got hooked on stained glass. Those couple of windows fueled some sort of heretofore unknown passion and in the course of a few fevered months that curiosity into the backwaters of art design sunk its hooks completely. For a time I built panels on the floor of my bedroom in the attic but after stepping on half-built glass designs going to the bathroom for midnight pisses, it became apparent I needed a more formal studio. Or at least an addition to the shack. Which necessitated learning basic construction and carpentry. A small detour that led to a career in glass and a love of building, additions, outbuildings, furniture and eventually a two story house up on the hill above the shack. Life is full of surprises….

The glass addiction created a conundrum for me back then. It was expensive, this stained glass stuff. My panels got smaller and smaller trying to keep going without going broke. And so, ultimately I had to decide whether to try to sell some of these little windows or just quit outright, call it a day and be glad those plastic windows were closed in against the wind and the weather. Reluctantly, I became a salesman. Of sorts. And a capitalist. Of sorts.

The last few years I got entangled in a similar passion. It started when I remodeled a favorite banjo, upgrading parts, then decided to build one from scratch. Everybody, of course, needs more than one banjo. Maybe not five, which is what I ended up with after building a few more. And if that weren’t bad enough, I tried my hand at building acoustic guitars. I just finished the fifth one of those, a nice little maple body job with an unusual sycamore top, what I swear is my last one.

The thing is, I don’t really want to be a guitar/banjo salesman. For one thing, they’re not really that professionally made. Maybe half a dozen more and they might be. But I doubt it. Maybe if I was back in my starving artist mode I’d take the leap. But I doubt it. Poverty might just be the true mother of invention. And I’m no longer starving. Anyone out there needs a few banjos to make their neighbors miserable, you know where to find me.

We’re encamped on the beachfront community of 3 Crabs Road, a strip of land hosting million plus dollar homes, mostly vacant between Dungeness Spit in front and a half mile of marsh behind. A few owners are in residence but not many, no doubt safely ensconced in their homes for the holiday in Seattle or Tacoma. These are their summer vacation villas, one of which we’re staying at between Christmas and New Year to watch the storms coming up the Straits or over the Olympics and avoid the Christmas besotted masses of our consumer citizenry. Fa la la, y’all.

Beyond the marshes are the landed poor, primarily rusting single and doublewides braving the mud and tidal seep, a few festooned with fading Santas and trees draped in colored lights, but nary a creature was stirring other than the ducks, geese, gulls and eagles who seem to be the primary residents here. Wealth and poverty lean comfortably into one another … or so it would seem to this itinerant guest. Although … no place I’ve ever seen outside military bases are there as many NO TRESPASSING, PRIVATE PROPERTY, KEEP OUT signs as this mile long area.

My old man nearly every visit to our island shack would ask why it was people would choose to live in the interior rather than on the shoreline. Gee, Dad, I don’t know. You spoze it had anything to do with the high cost of beachfront property?? But he invariably would shake his head and declare he himself would choose the beach.

Ah yes, and we would all choose palaces over dilapidated trailer homes. Maybe in the widening chasm between the wealthy and the poor, the poor are just glad to have a roof when more and more are living on the street or in their car. Maybe their dream isn’t to be Mark Zukerberg who’s building a Versailles in his tony neighborhood and passing out noise-canceling headphones to shut up the chronic complainers this Christmas.

In the current America, Scrooge is very much unrepentant. The rich not only get richer, they get harder hearts. Hopefully they get a visit from Marley’s ghost.

Mama said there’d be days like this. You get up on a sunny hopeful morn, you take your shower, brush your teeth, wash the breakfast dishes, toss in a load of laundry, help yourself to another cup of joe. You’re psyched for another day in the mine, just glad to be alive. You go back in the bathroom, get rid of those first two cups of caffeine … and hear the sink gurgling like a bad gargle. Odd, you think. The kitchen sink chimes in, a drain duet. Then you noticed the toilet water isn’t going down, it’s coming up!

What the …? And then you find the bathtub filling up … with … omigod! With what should never be in your bathtub.

Who ya gonna call? Crapbusters? Being a modern South Ender, I postpone my optimism and pull the shades down on the mocking sun. Ain’t no sunshine when the sewage comes home to roost, trust me. Then I go to my computer and google up Invasion of the Turds, pass up the first ads and go to the How-To and You-Tube and the Suicide Hotline. I pick the How-To. The Hotline will come later, I’m half certain, but it’s a last resort. I have the internet — I have a global support team.

I’m no novice to this plumbing paradox, I pretty much know the bad news that’s coming. I’m just hoping to find a glimmer of hope, some yahoo who sez check the toilet float, jiggle it, you’ll be good to go. My ‘team’ focuses instead on more likely and infinitely worse diagnoses: a plugged sewer line, a ruined drainfield or a full septic tank. Pick yer poison! The tank was pumped recently so I’m down to 2 options. I choose the only one I can fix myself — the line.

That was yesterday. I started at the tank and dug down, found the line a few feet down, then trenched back toward the house. An old growth forsythia thwarted my forward progress. I sawed it off, whacked at its roots, chained it to my truck and jerked it out like a bad wisdom tooth. Sure I felt bad. For me! Its roots were what had clogged my line where the pipes had broken. Iron to clay to PVC. It was like an archeological dig through plumbing eras, Roman to modern.

Today I joined the new pipes, ran some serious water as a test then filled the grave. I tell you, there’s a damn good reason to keep the old outhouse!

Bob the Baptist lives up the hollow where the dirt road south of me dead ends in a swampy cul-de-sac. You look hard you can see past the abandoned cars, rotted boats, rusty appliances, kids’ toys, broken furniture and busted machinery to where Bob’s shack leans into the last century. Just to be sure nobody will steal this stockpile of valuable rusty corroded parts from his junkyard covered with leaf mulch and blackberry vines, Bob has nailed handwritten signs every few hundred feet: NO TRESSPASING POSTED KEEP OUT!! PRIVIT PROPPERTY, like anyone would venture into his place. By the driveway or entrance or whatever it is that isn’t maintained and is overgrown to the point any vehicle trying to drive in would be scratched to bare metal by berry thorns and cedar limbs and lost equipment, he’s nailed a plywood plank painted black with white words: JESUS IS COMMING SOON!!

These are the End Times, Bob tells us neighbors. South End Times, anyway, if Bob’s place comes under scrutiny. It looks like Armageddon hit yesterday. Windows are broken out and covered with plastic that’s now tattered. Doors hang off their hinges, usually open winter or spring. The first time I went back there looking for my dog who’d wandered off, I walked through an open door with books and magazines strewn everywhere, thinking it was an anteway or a porch … until I realized to my horror I was deep into his house. Believe me, I backed out of there fast as anything, expecting a shotgun blast from Bob the Baptist. He walked up a minute after I’d exited his home sweet hovel and demanded to know who I was, what I wanted, why I was there. “Lost dog,” I mumbled.

“We’re ALL lost,” he fairly howled. “We’re all lost and we don’t even know it!!” Tobacco stains ran down his matted beard and his eyes bulged like King Lear in a room full of psychiatrists.

Bob’s okay, actually, reasonably harmless and even sociable occasionally. The neighbors hear him once in awhile, exhorting whatever demons drive him day in and day out. Apparently the demons aren’t listening. Awhile back we heard he used to be a minister over the other side of the mountains. Heard it from one of his flock. Bob had had an affair with the local TV station’s weathergirl and his wife had run off with the church’s deacon. The weather lady moved up to a megawatt Atlanta station and Bob was banished to the wilderness. I guess it makes some sense he ended up down here. Although … Bob still hasn’t figured out most of us don’t think of this as punishment or penance. Hell, I guess, is in the eye of the beholder too.