The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Down here at the cell tower challenged South End, we get our news the old fashioned way:  via gossip.  You want to know what’s happening in real time, you don’t try to adjust the rabbit ears to bring in Fox News on the new improved digital airwaves that dropped our reception by half, you go down to the Diner for breakfast or stop by Tyee Store for a cuppa or sit a spell at Jolene’s Beauty Salon and Spa.  Their antenna pick up more than snow and weak signals.

Word of mouth always spreads faster than bird flu, especially in confined areas where ricocheting rumors hail in like birdshot off aluminum trailer siding.  We got a little crime wave going on right now, mailboxes getting stripped by some meth heads looking for bank account numbers or credit card info or just some reading material on the cheap to save em from applying for their own library card.  Sammy the Skillet, head cook and chief dishwasher at the Diner, had his box rifled and by noon, half the South End was on full vigilante alert.  The newcomers got tamper-proof boxes that are basically safes on poles cemented into the ground, that, or they got post office boxes in town, but for us old-schoolers, we got slightly  more exposure to identity thieves.

Personally I figure a few of these java sippers hanging over their chipped porcelain mugs most of a promising morning could use a new identity and if having the old one stolen proved a useful catalyst, well, maybe these meth head robbers serve a useful function.  Now that the Barefoot Bandit is cooling his heels in a federal pen and we’ve lost our favorite Jesse James, the Postal Pirates offer up some pretty good opportunity for dryer time observations at Jolene’s, mostly surmises on whose no-account delinquent kid is probably behind the current crime spree.

I suspect if the Postal Pirates go viral the way the Barefoot Burglar did, Jolene will get her own segment on Fox News.  Course, it’ll be old news by the time it airs for the fair and balanced crowd by then.  You want breaking news, you best stay tuned down here.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/audio-.mp3[/podcast]audio —

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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.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/audio-around-the-corner.mp3[/podcast]audio — around the corner

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The talk lately around the grease pit at the Tyee Service and Lube these days invariably comes around to Medical Marijuana.  Or what most of the boys call Marital Marijuana.  Gary, the head mechanic, flat out opposes legalizing pot.  He says that’s all he needs, a bunch of dopeheads along with all the artists down here on the South End.  “We might as well call ourselves the People’s Republic of Camano, put everybody on welfare and keep em high as Katmandu kites all day long.’

Ralph works the pumps and does the oil changes.  He wonders if the Stanwoodopolis city council will let dispensaries sell marijuana.  ‘They’d make a fortune off taxes,’ he declares and Gary throws down a grease rag in disgust and twirls his socket wrench like a six-shooter.  ‘Cost em twice as much to take care of all the addicts.’

Two Toke Tom usually doesn’t weigh in on these panel discussions, at least not around Gary, but he opines that nothing much would change except now there’d be some quality control instead of the hit and miss of today’s marketplace.  ‘Sort of like bad moonshine,’ he says and Gary gives him the evil eye like maybe he’s considering urine testing for all future fellow employees.  Pretty quick Two Toke slips over to the pop machine for another jolt of high fructose and caffeine to get him through what looks like a long morning.

‘And WHY do they call it Medical Marijuana anyway??’ Gary bellows.  ‘How many potheads got diseases only dope can cure?  What’s next, you can buy meth instead of coffee? What’s going on here?’  Now it’s Ralph’s turn to shrink away, reflexively aiming at the Mr. Coffee boiling down to pure caffeine.  Ralph has plans to grow legally if laws get lenient.  Course, Ralph grows already, but it would sure make life easier if he could sell to his ‘patients’ without looking over his shoulder for the Island County Sheriff.

Times change, that’s for sure.  Not too much on the South End, although Ralph is daydreaming about using part of the Service and Lube as Dispensary.  Something to think about between oil changes.  Maybe buy the station from Gary when he retires or drops dead of a heart attack.  You never know, he thinks….. You just never know what’s around the corner.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/audio-jimmy-the-gyppo.mp3[/podcast]audio — jimmy the gyppo

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

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

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

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

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

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