The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Most of us red blooded freedom loving Americans hate to take a vacation, not because we are fun-averse, but because when we come back to the Job, we have to work doubly hard to catch up with all the unfinished bizness we left behind.  I should know, having just returned from a three week road trip cross country to find all the backlog waiting open jawed.  For the purpose of this lament, I’m going to skip the saga of the broken drain in the kitchen sink I’m still trying to repair.  You’ve heard enough plumbing nightmares from me to last a Maytag repairman’s lifetime.  Instead I’m going to focus on my little park across the island and the mudhole I left behind.

If you’ve missed the previous bitching about my county park guy telling me he was going to put my request at the bottom of his To-Do list because I’d complained that after two or more years I was sick and tired of my parking lot that was a complete mudhole hell after any rains, well, count yourself lucky.  Me, I just pretty much figured that car swallowing tarpit would have to stay the same, an invitation to vandals that nobody cared about this little pocket park so go ahead and trash the place.  But … to my surprise, I got a photo on the trip from a neighbor showing gravel had been spread over the parking lot, not really evenly or tamped down, but hellfire, better than tire-sucking mud any day of the week.

Turns out, though, someone, probably the county, had dumped the gravel and a good Samaritan neighbor got tired of looking at the little mountain of it so he drove his tractor down and spread the stuff.  All fine and dandy, you might think, but I think maybe the county might have planned to even out the craters, spread the thicker gravel next, then add the 5/8ths minus stuff on top, kind of a professional job.  Oh well, another South End attempt at do-it-yourself gone awry, which reminds me, I got that drain to fix later today.

Needless to say I’m waiting for the county to contact me now that I’m back, tanned and rested from our trip back east.  I’m expecting a pretty pissed off county guy to call any day now.  Course, I’m not answering phones.  And in the future I expect I won’t just get put at the bottom of the To-Do list, I’ll be on my own from here on out.  Sometimes you just can’t catch a break.  And you probably shouldn’t take vacations….

Starving Artist

When I was really poor and competing for public art projects, I would have to go to various states for finalist presentations, usually competing with 3-5 other poor saps hoping for the same lousy commission.  Once, on a project in Portland, Oregon, my arts commissioner recommended a ‘reasonable’ downtown hotel for me to stay at, probably 3 times what I’d ever spent on accommodations.  I told her, gee thanks, but I’ll find something more in my price range and she replied, “I don’t want you sleeping in your truck.”  I assured her I wouldn’t.

What I found, 20 or 30 miles outside Portland, was a $23 a night hellhole in Vancouver, Washington, a motel where, if you wanted a TV was $5 more.  If you wanted a shower, $5 more.  If you wanted a key, yeah, you guessed it.  I chose the basic plan, slid 23 bucks under the bullet proof glass in the stainless steel bowl below and took occupancy of my suite.  My neighbors, judging by the water bowls and dog dishes outside their doors, were long termers, Lifers, I’d have to say, one step away from homeless or sleeping in their cars, running or not.  The residents I met weren’t looking for hellos or companionship or even a drinking buddy.  They were folks who wanted to be left the hell alone.  Misery, by the way, does NOT love company.

I have stayed in plenty of fleabag flophouses in my day, none as cheap as this dive, but unlike the others, my life wasn’t threatened by surly neighbors on the great escalator down at this one the way it has been at some of the others.  When folks reach rock bottom, I guess aggression is one of those virtues they abandon along with hope.

In case you’re interested, I did not win the commission for the Portland Health Clinic even though I offered them a serious amount of glass for the project.  I lost to a person even my art liaison at the Washington Art Commission disdainfully characterized as ‘no artist.’  So I was out 23 smackers plus tax.  Gas, food and a helluva lot of pride.  I swore next finalist presentation, no matter what state, what country, whatever, I would just sleep in my truck at the nearest rest area.  You want to be an artist, forget about the Ritz.  Or even Motel 6 ….

So three of us yahoos decided it was High Time to go over to Pt. Townsend on the Peninsula and attend the Wooden Boat Festival there, us being South End boat builders and all. We had a 12 foot Pelican sailboat, plenty sound enough for the shipping channels of the Straits, we figured, so provisioned with a box of donuts, we set off in the fog. We could hear the container ships booming past but couldn’t see them — and worse, I’m sure they couldn’t see us either, even with radar. The Trident nuclear sub surfaced close by, way close enough to see, an evil black fish that no doubt hadn’t picked us up as anything more than flotsam.

By afternoon the sun had broken through and we found ourselves near the lighthouse of what we thought was Fort Worden, just outside Pt. Townsend, so we sailed south and came upon another lighthouse and now we realized we’d mistaken our location so we continued sailing around Indian and Marrowstone Islands well into the afternoon and finally arrived at Pt. Townsend way late. With a return trip yet to come …. And the fog threatening to descend again.

We ditched the boat on the beach and hoofed into the marina. Whereupon we come upon a Pelican in the show, the homeliest boat moored up, so naturally I asked what the hell kind of duck is this thing you got berthed?? Which prompted a lively response from its proud owners and after they’d settled down a bit, I asked what was it they liked about an ugly scow like this? The water was frothing at near boil but one of the sailorboys said, “I’ll tell you what’s great about a Pelican. It can’t be sunk!”

“Can’t be sunk?” I howled. “Can’t be sunk?? Really?” And he proceeded to tell the tale of a Pelican that had capsized the last summer off the coast of Lummi Island in a storm and when help arrived, two men were rowing it while it was completely full of water! Captain Larry was practically dancing a jig on the dock pointing at me and smirking. “That was him! He flipped his boat up there last year. It’s him. It’s him!!”

“Will you pipe down a minute,” I commanded, realizing my fun with these buccaneers was over and we were embarked on different seas of mirth. “What color was the boat? Where exactly? How’d they get to shore?” To which they pretty accurately recounted my sad little nautical escape that previous summer and so I fessed up. “But,” I said, “we basically sunk. We were completely under water. More flotation under the decks,” I advised. “And a motor that won’t drag the transom down like mine did.”

Well, it’s a small world apparently, and we might have stayed for some partying and sea shanties and late night sailor lies, but the fog had returned and we still had to head back out into the shipping lanes. We went to the marina store for supplies, ascertained we had $8 between all three of us and now, a Hard Decision needed to be made. Should we buy a navigational chart? A compass? Something to eat? $8 leaves not a whole lot of options.

Being the Salty Dogs we were, we made the Hard Choice, the one a less experienced crew might eschew, the one not in the Sailor’s Manual. We grabbed a 6 pack of beer and sailed into the sunset — well, if the fog hadn’t blotted it out —three mariners moving darkly into wooden boat mythology, fearless as idiots in a dangerous dream, never to be seen in Pt. Townsend again. No doubt they recount that voyage yearly at the Festival. “Aye, the lads are out there still,” they whisper in hushed voices around the beach campfires, “ sailing in the boat that cannot sink. God rest their souls….”

This month the South End is opening its first pot shops since we legalized marijuana last year. It’s been the Hot Topic at the Diner, almost as polarizing as global warming and Affordable Health Care, two topics Anita, the current owner, has turned into gold by changing her menu to include Obama Omelettes and Polar Bear Burgers. No doubt we’ll be seeing Killer Kannabis Hot Wings and other items shortly. The Diner is a regular debating society most breakfasts and lunches. At least indigestion isn’t blamed on Big Larry’s cooking.

Marijuana hasn’t exactly been a scarce commodity down here, legal or not, although if you listened to Charlie Griper’s apoplectic rants that legalizing the stuff will lead society inexorably down the toilet, you’d think liberals had just cloned a few plants from terrorist pals in Afghanistan and smuggled them onto the island. “How you gonna keep it out of the kids’ hands when we let dopeheads sell the stuff right up north? Might as well hand it out in the high school cafeteria!”

Harley Bob laughs. “Charlie, trust me, they won’t buy it at the Bud Hut — they’ll get if for half the price where they get it now. It’s not like buying rotgut moonshine when you can pay more for something that doesn’t blind you and tastes like turpentine strained through a dirty sock.”

“What are you talking about, Bob? We just told em it’s okay to fry their heads when we legalized it. We classified it as one of the most dangerous drugs out there as long as I lived. Now we’re spozed to think it’s okay. Like taking an aspirin. Jeez, gimme a break.”

“I guess you put too much trust in the government, Charles,” Bob laughs, knowing Charlie’s a card carrying anti-government Tea Party member. Charlie practically gags on his cheese Glacier Melt, a meal vaguely reminiscent of those Here’s your brain on drugs commercials a few years back.

“Laugh all you want, Bob. You’d laugh if they legalized heroin.” Bob taps his empty coffee cup for a refill. “Hit me again, Brenda,” he calls over to our morning waitress. “And hold the meth this time.”

Yes, it’s a New Day down at the South End.

Recreational Crabbing in the 21st Century

It’s crabbing season once more, diminished now to a two month opening, five days a week. Ordinarily I walk the eelgrass jungles for the vicious beasts, but when the tides aren’t low, I do what the rest of us down here on the South End do, I use a boat and set pots baited with delicacies from Trader Joe or catered in by Brenda’s Catering and Chow. Everyone these days uses motorboats, but I’m still rowing my little aluminum scow, the one with my homemade oars. Because the State, in its scientific wisdom, requires pots to be pulled the fifth day, I had to row out for mine in whitecaps. Believe me, you pay attention to every stroke when waves are bashing the sides of your tiny tub.

I did okay going out, then managed to pull both pots without flipping the boat. I should maybe mention I’m about 400 yards, call it a quarter mile, out from shore in 75 feet of water. Nobody’s around and nobody’s going to call 911 if I go overboard. I have a lifejacket worst case…. I should probably carry life insurance too.

Going back, though, was harder. The wind had picked up and I was taking worse waves on the sides. My pots were cramping me up for rowing and the direction of the wind was anything but where I wanted to go. Sure, I thought to myself, a smarter man would’ve never come out today. A man with minimal brains would’ve turned around halfway out when the rowing became hard and the danger apparent. Even a dummy might’ve figured leave the damn pots and get his sorry butt back to shore. But … I’m a South Ender and by god, I was going to get those pots and whatever crabs they held even if it meant I had to risk life and limb. This is what differentiates a salty dog from a landlubber professor of economics, in case you were wondering.

Halfway back my left oar caught a wave and hung up a moment. When I got straightened out, I noticed a nut had fallen off the oarlock and next thing I knew the whole gizmo that attached to the oar was coming apart and sure enough, it did. I tried to find the nut down in the crab blood and bait water, but it was nowhere to be seen and last thing I wanted to do was get down and start a panicked search so a rogue wave could swamp me. Gordon Lightfoot said it maybe best in the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald: Where in the world does the love of God go, when the minutes turn to hours?

All I know is I cursed myself for not tightening those bolts up good and tight. Nobody to blame but one sad sorry soon-to-be-saltier dog. Worst case, I’d be blown up to the state park at the point, five miles north, not drowned at least. I had crab so I had food. Raw, but survival skills demand a bit of compromise. Sure, I was a little wet, but not hypothermic. And … I still had that oar.

So I paddled one side, rowed the other. I don’t recommend this method, but in a pinch, I can testify, it works. From shore I’m sure it looks like a drunk with one bad arm, every stroke turning the boat about 45 degrees, the waves smacking it, then a paddle turning it back the other way. I finally washed up on the beach not too far from my original launch site.

Some call this recreational crabbing. Even on the South End, this hardly qualifies for recreation. All I know, those crabs are going to taste real good tonight.

Private Daddle Meets the General

Awhile back I ran into one of my new neighbors out taking the air. I introduced myself as the guy across the road and he told me his name. “So, Bernie,” I asked, figuring this was his retirement house after years in a career, what he’d been saving that nest egg for and whoopee, the Golden Years had finally arrived, “how do you like retirement?”

Bernie looked a bit bemused over the spectacles he peered over to take ‘the full measure of me’, some impertinent upstart probing too deeply on first contact. “If you don’t mind me asking,” I added a little impishly. He took a little while, either pondering the question or wondering whether to dignify it with an answer.

“Not much,” he said finally. “It’s harder to accustom to than I thought it would be.” I asked why he felt that way and he said he’d had some prestige in his former career that was now suddenly missing. “I demanded respect,” he said sternly, “and I got it.”

“Well, Bernie,” I grinned, “I’d get over THAT. Nobody down here gives a hoot or holler what you did before. You get to start brand new. Nobody’s gonna salute the old generals now and anyway, the war’s over. Take a load off. Enjoy the sunsets. Walk the beach. It’s why we call it retirement.”

I don’t know if Bernie ever did get over it. Some folks hang their awards and medals on the wall, hoping, I guess, to just keep on re-living their Glory Days. Me, I say high school’s come and gone, good riddance. The South End’s a funny melting pot, mostly us yahoo retirees bent on figuring out how to make the rest of life interesting without hauling along the weight of the past. Retirement’s hard enough starting from scratch and not driving the mizzus insane being underfoot. And I know for a steel-hard, take-it-to-the-bank fact, the mizzus isn’t going to salute either. Down here, we’re all privates in this woman’s army.

A woman sitting next table to me at the newly remodeled Island Café said, “You’re lucky my husband isn’t here.” Since I hadn’t made a pass at her, I asked why was that and she said he used to wear a battered, beat up, half composted hat a lot like mine. “He called it his ‘Go to Hell ‘ hat.”

It’s amazing how this old fedora of mine elicits continuous comments and sometimes physical interventions. I was accosted by the Safeway security guard up north awhile back who demanded I stop. “Stop? Who, me?” I asked and she insisted I produce a receipt of purchase after accusing me of stealing the two half racks of beer I was loading into my truck. Not that my hat made me a Prime Suspect. Safeway, let it be known far and wide, is a Profiler. And apparently my sombrero fit their profile.

Sitting in an airport lounge a few years ago, an attractive stewardess sat herself down next to me to ask which I was, a writer or a musician? She at least didn’t ask if I was an artist or a bum. Or an old geezer with a Go to Hell hat or a shoplifter.

I’ve worn hats since I was a kid in high school, mostly the ones my grandpa gave me when he’d updated to a new one. Me, I don’t update. And anyway, I don’t have an impressionable grandkid to lead down some non-conformist primrose path. A hat makes a good umbrella. It keeps my head warm and it hides my uncut hair, saving me hundreds of dollars in bad haircuts. I don’t go anywhere without one, sort of like a credit card only the truth is, it makes getting credit harder, more profiling, I guess. So I wear mine until it falls pretty much to pieces, then, worst case, I’ll put em on my garden scarecrow to give the crows and the deer a good laugh.

I hear a lot of Muslim bashing these days. Get a ton of e-mail that’s basically hate mail. The Muslims are all terrorists, the Muslims are all bent on world domination, the Muslims are all Christian haters and they’re not to be trusted. I didn’t live during World War 2 but I bet the Japanese were reviled exactly like this. We eventually interned them in prison camps, took away their property and lately we’ve belatedly apologized. Judging by my e-mails, history wasn’t a favorite subject for the Muslim bashers.

I had a very good Iranian friend back in the years Iran held our embassy hostage. When he married Diana, he neglected to reserve a honeymoon suite somewhere so I gave him my shack and its big brass bed as a Plan B. Course he had to drive from Seattle to the South End, but for the two newlyweds that night, no big deal. Probably the first and last Iranian honeymoon down here.

We were at a bucket-of-blood tavern in Seattle and Gomorrah one night quaffing a few pints when a gentleman in a wheelchair parked in front of Hassan and asked — demanded, really — where he was from. A couple of ne-er-do-well buddies stood behind our handicapped inquisitor. I prayed silently Hassan would say Turkey or Whackistan or anywhere other than Iran, but Hassan, who was one of the most open, honest people I ever met, told him he was Iranian.

Swell. Great. The next imagined scene filled my Cinemascope brain like a drive-in theater or a drive by shooting. Or both. “Whoa,” I interjected. “Me and my friends here, we’re having a quiet little drink. We’re not looking for trouble. But if you are, let’s stop right now.”

One of the wheelchair guy’s pals said, “I don’t care much for Iranians, you want to know.” I said really, I didn’t. He said we’re talking to the Iranian guy, man. I said, no, you’re talking to me now — he answered your question, that’s enough. We’re not looking for a bigger party.

The bartender tuned in to our circle of growing agitation. At some point he called the man in the chair’s name, shook his head in warning and that seemed to defuse the situation. When I went for refills he suggested we move along. I considered it good advice.

These days it doesn’t much matter if you’re Iranian or Syrian or Smackistani, folks here need someone to scapegoat. I imagine lending comfort and bed to a Muslim honeymooner, well … let’s keep this between just us. No point in riling the natives any further.

So three of us yahoos decided it was High Time to go over to Pt. Townsend on the Peninsula and attend the Wooden Boat Festival there, us being South End boat builders and all. We had a 12 foot Pelican sailboat, plenty sound enough for the shipping channels of the Straits, we figured, so provisioned with a box of donuts, we set off in the fog. We could hear the container ships booming past but couldn’t see them — and worse, I’m sure they couldn’t see us either, even with radar. The Trident nuclear sub surfaced close by, way close enough to see, an evil black fish that no doubt hadn’t picked us up as anything more than flotsam.

By afternoon the sun had broken through and we found ourselves near the lighthouse of what we thought was Fort Worden, just outside Pt. Townsend, so we sailed south and came upon another lighthouse and now we realized we’d mistaken our location so we continued sailing around Indian and Marrowstone Islands well into the afternoon and finally arrived at Pt. Townsend way late. With a return trip yet to come …. And the fog threatening to descend again.
We ditched the boat on the beach and hoofed into the marina. Whereupon we come upon a Pelican in the show, the homeliest boat moored up, so naturally I asked what the hell kind of duck is this thing you got berthed?? Which prompted a lively response from its proud owners and after they’d settled down a bit, I asked what was it they liked about an ugly scow like this? The water was frothing at near boil but one of the sailorboys said, “I’ll tell you what’s great about a Pelican. It can’t be sunk!”

“Can’t be sunk?” I howled. “Can’t be sunk?? Really?” And he proceeded to tell the tale of a Pelican that had capsized the last summer off the coast of Lummi Island in a storm and when help arrived, two men were rowing it while it was completely full of water! Captain Larry was practically dancing a jig on the dock pointing at me and smirking. “That was him! He flipped his boat up there last year. It’s him. It’s him!!”
“Will you pipe down a minute,” I commanded, realizing my fun with these buccaneers was over and we were embarked on different seas of mirth. “What color was the boat? Where exactly? How’d they get to shore?” To which they pretty accurately recounted my sad little nautical escape that previous summer and so I fessed up. “But,” I said, “we basically sunk. We were completely under water. More flotation under the decks,” I advised. “And a motor that won’t drag the transom down like mine did.”

Well, it’s a small world apparently, and we might have stayed for some partying and sea shanties and late night sailor lies, but the fog had returned and we still had to head back out into the shipping lanes. We went to the marina store for supplies, ascertained we had $8 between all three of us and now, a Hard Decision needed to be made. Should we buy a navigational chart? A compass? Something to eat? $8 leaves not a whole lot of options.

Being the Salty Dogs we were, we made the Hard Choice, the one a less experienced crew might eschew, the one not in the Sailor’s Manual. We grabbed a 6 pack of beer and sailed into the sunset — well, if the fog hadn’t blotted it out —three mariners moving darkly into wooden boat mythology, fearless as idiots in a dangerous dream, never to be seen in Pt. Townsend again. No doubt they recount that voyage yearly at the Festival. “Aye, the lads are out there still,” they whisper in hushed voices around the beach campfires, “ sailing in the boat that cannot sink. God rest their souls….”

I been watching – with considerable interest — no pun intended, the subprime loan debacle on the South End. I can understand the mortgage companies’ point of view. And I can understand the bank’s way of looking at it. And, believe it or not, I can see how the realtors might view it. They’ve all been watching the Pay Day Loan folks and the credit card companies and they figured where there’s blood in the water, charge right in. Gotta be dinner in there for them too…..

But I have a harder time with the neighbor who buys into a house twice what he needs at an unbelievably low interest with a 40 year loan and has to put his wife and kids up as collateral. A year later after the adjustable rate adjusts, maybe doubles and … hello…. Our boy can’t meet the nut. Penalties roll into play, collection agencies suddenly come knocking, goons call at midnight, how could this be happening to our boy in the over valued Land of the Free and the Mortgaged Home of the Brave?

I didn’t get it. But awhile back Tyee Store put in an ATM machine. For the same reason casinos put em in. As a service to their valued customers. I watched folks, apparently in full control of their faculties, well, by South End standards, withdraw $20 for their cigarettes and adult beverages and pay the $2 or $3 transaction fee. They’d do it a few times a week, many times a month. I’d say, hey Jimmy my man, what’s your thinking here? That’s 10, 15 %. And Jimmy would say, yeah? couple bucks, so what?

Now Jimbo doesn’t probably own a subprime house, but he’s got a car loan and probably rents his plasma TV and his furniture and he pays the bare minimum on his credit card balance and well, I’m no accountant, but I bet Jimbo is the tip of a very deep iceberg floating next to my little dinghy. I’m not saying we need a Great Depression to teach folks the meaning of a devalued dollar, but short of remedial 3rd grade math, I don’t know what it takes.

Tyee Store took our their ATM money mojo a few months back Couldn’t manage to keep it stocked with cash. I was gonna ask em what their thinking was? But I think we already knew the answer, I guess, and I’m sure not a fella that teaches the predators how to hone their hunting skills…..