The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

SOUTH END COMMISSIONER CANDIDATE POSITION STATEMENTS

Bubba Frisk Jr. JOB CREATION  PARTY

Our current tourism ad slogan might as well be ‘the place to do nothing’ .  Sadly, it’s not just for tourists; it’s for all the unemployed we have down at the South End.  If I’m elected, my first executive order will be to jumpstart the Mother of All Tourist Promotions centered around our own HomeBoy:  the Barefoot Burglar, the Camano Kid, the Flying Filcher, our very own international anti-hero.  The movies are being shot, the books are being written, the documentaries are being edited, the mom has hired an entertainment lawyer, the deals are being made!  Rolling Stone has declared Camano officially the Cape Cod of the Pacific Northwest.  And we still want to be the place that does nada?  Maybe the Chamber  …. But the rest of us are ready to roll!  Tour buses, T-shirts, coffee mugs, souvenir shops:  we’re ready to cash in.  Camano, the island to do nothing?  We don’t need a new slogan, we need a new NAME.  Colton Island.  Nice ring to it.  And how do you get to Colton Island? Bingo!  Get off the hammock and call your commissioner today!

[Paid for by the Colton Harris- Moore Bridge Committee]

Tweeter Daddle  47% PARTY

My father Skeeter Daddle was the perennial candidate for the position of South End Commissioner.  I know there will be folks who accuse me of riding his infamous coat-tails.  Course, Dad never won a single election so only a damn fool would ride those tails.  And believe me, I’m nobody’s fool but my own.

If elected, I promise my fellow 47%’ers that we will grow the county government until WE become the 53%.  Once we have the majority vote we’ll give our disadvantaged business sector a fiscal injection of county corporate welfare, B&O tax breaks and nettle subsidies so that we can compete against Whidbey markets.  Together we’ll make Government work FOR us …. so we won’t have to!!  Thank you for your vote.  “Two chickens in every pot, a little pot in every chicken.”

Sarah Doolittle DO NOTHING PARTY

We all know County Government has done nothing to bring jobs to the South End.  Instead it has encouraged a debilitating, work-sapping ethic of entitlement to the region, one where able-bodied people prefer the sad sack life of a Lay-About over good minimum wage jobs.

When I take office, I will raise cable TV fees so that the indolent will be forced to work to pay for their government induced slothfulness.  And that includes the retirees as well!  We need to put the South End back to work.

We all know Government is the real problem.  Not just Big government, but Little government too.  That’s why I’m running for a government position.  As your next South End Commissioner I will WORK to eliminate unnecessary programs and agencies.  Government jobs are phony jobs.  Let’s get back to the Business of Island County.  Government should not be Job Creators.  I promise to be a Job Killer where county jobs are concerned.  You have my promise…

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/audio-you-cant-always-get-what-you-want-but-you-get-what-you-knead.mp3[/podcast]audio — you can’t always get what you want, but you get what you knead

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A lot of us chainsaw-wielding menfolk around here are engaged in role reversals with the missus.  Probably says more about rampant unemployment on the South End than it does gender bending, but when the women work to pay the mortgage on the shack, most of us lay-abouts realize a healthy marriage — not to mention physical well being — depends on us pitching in around the house.  Cooking, laundry, dishwashing duty, basic cleaning chores go hand in hand with our more manly obligations now.

The reverse is true too.  A lot of lady friends chop wood or repair their plumbing or push a lawnmower or throw a mean hammer.  Part and parcel of living with one foot in poverty and the other in the 19th century.  Gender roles get pretty blurry.

So it always surprises me when I take a savory potato salad or a loaf of fresh homemade bread to a potluck and the hosts compliment, without fail, the missus.  I only been baking bread now, continuously, for 4o plus years.  Got a grain grinder older than me attached to a curly maple butcher block table I made when I built the house designed just for that purpose.  I grind wheat berries, rye, barley, oats, corn, quinoa, flax, amaranth, buckwheat, spelt and soybeans.  It doesn’t get much fresher.  Add some salt, some olive oil, plenty of molasses or brown sugar and let the yeast froth it up to something alive and kicking.  Knead it, roll it, put it in a buttered pan, bake it for half an hour.  Used to bake it in the wood cook stove and still do occasionally, but we got a gas one we use most of the time now.

A lot of the womenfolk ask if I use a breadmaker.  Actually, they all ask.  Just assume, I suppose, a He-Man like myself wouldn’t strap on an apron and grab a rolling pin.  (Next thing they’ll have to imagine my thinning locks up in curlers.)  Most of em sigh and say they always wanted to learn, maybe they could drop by for a hands-on lesson or two next time I’m in full knead mode.  I say sure, but I know they won’t.  Working women really don’t have enough free time.  Maybe when they’re semi- retired  …. like me.  Besides, breadmaking is a little like magic.  A good magician doesn’t give away the trick.  And anyway, if they all started baking, what would I bring to the next potluck?

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/audio-lazarus-funeral-home.mp3[/podcast]audio — lazarus’ funeral home

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I guess I’m reaching the age where friends are starting to leave this Mortal Coil.  Last weekend I went to another funeral.  Same church, different deceased.  Same minister, different crowd.  Same platitudes, different Bible quotations.  Most of last week’s mourners were old ourselves.  Watching them hobble down the aisle, you sort of knew we’d all be back here way too soon.

You might’ve guessed.  I’m not a real big fan of funerals.  I can only listen to the 23^rd Psalm so many times.  And I’m not real comforted by the promise of ‘Going Into the Light’  or ‘passing through the Pearly Gates.’  I never was much for Gated Communities and all those covenants and bylaws.  Oh, I know a lot of folks get some reassurance there’ll be a Better Life, but me, I’m not that unhappy here and now.  And the promise of Life Eternal … well, that may sound good to some but I’m not too keen on filling the hours of Eternity with something that’ll hold our interest.  Most folks are bored by afternoon.  Try half past Perpetuity and see how bad daytime TV can get, even a Perfect World.

Death is one of those so-called facts of life we don’t want to believe in.  So we say it’s just a way to go to the ‘after’ life.  Not really dying, just shedding some skin.  If folks really believe this, we’d be partying for the deceased, celebrating their new birthday, the first in a line of them stretching farther than the decimal calculations for Pi.  Dust to dust, is my thinking.  Ashes to ashes.

There will come a time — for all of us —when all these words fail us, when vision is lost and memory has receded back to its source.  We are really spirits who emerge from some unnameable darkness and for an all too brief moment, glow incandescent.   It’s little wonder that what we know of the world is that small circle of light…..  We who share it together can take some comfort that for a fleeting moment we could rise like sparks from that same fragile fire.

In the end we won’t know many others.  Friends and family are few.  All the more remarkable and precious it is to share some of each other’s light and each other’s warmth. When the darkness beckons, some part of us will pass on, but certainly not the totality of what was us.  Each of us who knew the deceased and loved him and were loved by him, we each carry some part of his spark now.  We each carry a piece of him in our hearts and our memories.  Prize it because it’s a very valuable thing.  It is the most valuable thing.  It’s what keeps the circle from being broken.  From here on out, in no small way, we are now their torchbearers.   And always remember:  this is all that holds the darkness back.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/audio-the-flatheads.mp3[/podcast]audio — the flatheads

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Nostalgia seems to be the antidote to cure the Shock of the Future here on the wireless South End.  Just when folks are thinking about that Prius purchase or waiting for a fuel cell Chevy, the old car guyz are intent on something pre-fuel injection, non-hybrid and seriously retro.  The Flatheads, an ad hoc group of antique car aficionados, meet once a week at the Diner for a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs and toast buttered with 30 weight.  Whey they roll in, the Diner looks like a scene out of American Graffiti, gleaming waxed Mercurys and perfectly restored Oldsmobile Rocket 88’s.   For a few hours the South End freeways return to Big Fin glory.

The boyz argue double vs. 4 barrel carburation, rebored cyclinders vs. short block, stock vs. custom.  They trade sandblasting work for decal painting.  They travel to each other’s garages  — which, by my shade tree standards, would qualify for Health Dep’t food prep certification, they’re that immaculate.  Snap-On tools are organized in rolling cabinets, parts are labeled and easily accessed (I bet they even have computer files.  I know they used the internet to locate replacement parts.)  Lifts and grease pits look like a dealer’s repair bay.  The boyz are serious.

One of the drawbacks to their hobby, other than high divorce rates and a serious drain on retirement funding, is something most Flatheads acknowledge but not proudly or loudly:  Car Accumulation Syndrome.  One restoration leads to the next.  They no more than finish that ’57 BelAir than they’ve got a project car hauled in on a flatbed, some must-have, couldn’t pass up Model A or  a ’65 Mustang from their high school glory days.  Garages get enlarged and the missuz’ dream of a kitchen remodel gets deferred once again.

I used to park my beater ‘70’s pickup at the end of the Diner’s showroom, hoping their enthusiasm for vintage vehicles might rub off.  But sadly, my days of busted and bleeding knuckles, recalcitrant bolts seized in the block, hateful stripped threads, all the grime and grease and grunt made that a little unlikely.  I never had a garage.  Just crawled under my broken rigs and worked in the rain, the cold, the private hell that was MY car repair.  I didn’t work on them for fun.  I worked on them because I was too poor to own a decent rig.  So when I drive by the Diner these days, I salute the Flatheads with a toot of the horn and thank my lucky stars I own a truck, a modern, computer modulated, sensor-driven, circuit board-on-wheels truck WAY too complicated for a boy like me to work on.  Nostalgia is nice, but I like to make it to town.

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