The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Barney, my barber, is about to take down his red white and blue rotating tubular pole for good. He’s been cutting hair since back in the day when South Enders either opted for a butch or let it grow their arses, as Barney puts it. You could tell a man’s politics by his hair back then. Needless to say, I didn’t require Barney’s services back in my radical days. And Barney probably would’ve refused to let me sit in his leather chair. “Go to a stylist, someone who’ll cut a woman’s hair.”

His shop has sat at the same spot for about 45 years, open for business and gossip both behind the mini-storage just north of the Diner. He owns the mini-storage which is why it’s there. In fact, Barney owns a lot of the land around him, mostly good business acumen … and tips from his customers on who’s selling out cheap and moving lock stock and rainbarrel to someplace where the sun shines more than once a month.

Barney himself isn’t much of a talker. He’s mostly a good listener. He isn’t much of a barber either, in most of us customers’ opinion, but he’s reasonable about price and it’s a kick to sit with a few other South Enders in for their 2 week trim on what’s left of their hair and jaw on the politics of the day. Discussions can get pretty lively, especially around election years, but even the weather is open to debate these days.

If anyone asks Barney ‘how’s business?’ he shrugs, grabs a scissor and comb before answering, ‘pretty slow.’ He mentions every time all the funerals, how us customers are dying off faster than replacements roll in. I admit, I only go in every 6 months or so, which doesn’t help his retirement fund. He knows I like to stir the pot when I’m parked, waiting my turn, just rev up the discussion for the hell of it, something I pretty much only do at the barber shop, don’t ask me why.

I’m going to miss Barney’s Barber shop. I can go years without a trim, but I’ll miss that finger on the pulse of what my neighbors really think, no holds barred, no punches pulled. Go down to Super Cuts and see if you can get past banalities about the weather. Although … I could always bring up Global Warming, see where the coiffed crowd stands on that.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/audio-finding-yer-bliss.mp3[/podcast]audio — finding yer bliss

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Awhile back we had a couple move in down at the old schoolhouse when the glass artist who lived there threw in the towel on making a living on the South End and moved her kilns to Portland where she did quite well, thank you.  The new couple were all starry-eyed over the quaintness of the schoolhouse and its adjoining studio.  I certainly know the feeling.  For me, it went away about next day when I could see my shack in the light of day.  For the new kids it took a little longer.  The Volunteer Fire Department’s sirens hurried things along, a 200 decibel scream all hours of the day or night to summon the crew from over a mile or two away.   Later they got beepers, but too late for these neighbors.

A year or so went by and one day they were gone.  No goodbyes, no adioses.  Some folks are like that.  Pack up the conestoga in the middle of the night and don’t look back.  Oddly enough I ran into them up on Orcas.  The little store called itself The Old Schoolhouse Tea Shoppe and I just knew it had to be them.  Sure enough, it was.  After some initial embarrassment, they opined that Camano just wasn’t ‘spiritual’ enough.  Um, no offense….

Now, I’ve never claimed it was and as far as the South End is concerned, ‘spiritual’ never really pops into mind for me.  So okay, no offense taken….  Orcas now, it’s sure got a lot of siritualness, boatloads of tourists, ex-hippies living on trust funds, expatriate writers and nearly as many artists as we got.  It drips spiritual, any fool could see that.  I wished them luck on their new Nirvana and skulked forlornly back home to my hellhole.

About a year later they were back!  Tails between their legs, store gone broke, opportunities a wee scarce in Eden.  I asked what they’d do now.  Try the store here?  Take up watercolors?  Become spiritual advisers?  No, they said, they bought a place south of me and were going to subdivide it to pay for the house they would build on the lot they kept.  So yeah, they were going to get their real estate license and they were going to sell properties.

I didn’t ask what you’re asking, what I wanted to ask:  where is the spirituality in parceling us up and selling us off???  Because I’m a South Ender, you see, and my idea of most folks’ religion is that it pretty much ends at their wallets.  Do unto others what you can get away with.  I suspect they found a hybrid form of spirituality here finally.  I know this:  they’re doing real well selling real estate.  Allah be praised.  Even if Gaia cries a little tear.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/audio-rotgut-billys-blind-pig.mp3[/podcast]audio — rotgut billy’s blind pig

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Some of you Geezers out there might know what a Blind Pig is … and no, it’s not a myopic hog.  Since there’s no bar or tavern licensed by the State down here, the South End has had to revert to the lessons of Prohibition once more.  Meaning, we keep our drinking establishments underground, what the dry gulchers called in 1920, a Blind Pig.  Knock on the door — if they recognize you or you’re with a pal they do, you can belly up to Rotgut Billy’s Basement Bar.

Course, Billy doesn’t have it in his basement — it’s his barn, once the home of Herefords and a couple of draft horses.  Probably no pigs, 20/20 vision or otherwise.  It sits back behind his house and his house is back along a rutted lane off the highway, down a dirt road dead end.  Nobody goes down that road without an inkling and a thirst.

It’s not like Billy’s making money — he hasn’t got enough customers.  And he mostly just covers his costs.  The jukebox is his old Radio Shack stereo.  The neon isn’t a beer sign, it’s a pink flamingo from a motel in Utah he picked up at a second hand store.  He’s got a pool table you need an alitmeter to calculate the warpage and there’s a battered steel dart board in the back corner where wayward projectiles land harmlessly against the walls.

Billy has a few of us who make homebrew so sometimes the storebought bottles get upgraded to high gravity heavy nettle, jalapena ales, chocolate stouts and any other experiments we care to inflict on the patrons.  Occasionally we’ll bring in pizzas and cheesy nachos Billy heats up in  a little toaster over behind the bar.  The bar’s a nice hunk of old growth he slabbed off a 300 year old fir that fell in the storm of ’79 that knocked out the Hood Canal floating bridge and raised hell on the island here.

Folks ask me all the time  if Rotgut Billy’s really exists.  I tell em if it didn’t, we’d have to open it up anyway, but yeah, Billy’s is an institution, a beacon of entrepreneurial panache without the profit motive, half drinking establishment and half social club.  For Billy, since his wife died, it’s pretty much his life.  He doesn’t serve us when we’ve started to slip over the line.  We’re family and he looks after his family.  Those same folks shake their heads and wonder why the County sheriff hasn’t closed his operation down.

It’s a fair question, one we boyz have debated for years.  The only answer we got is the deputies let it go even though they’re pretty sure what transpires at the barn, figuring, I suppose, it’s better to get sloshed close to home than drive drunk miles to the closest tavern.  Maybe they just see Billy as the lesser of two evils.  I guess a lot of things are like that down here….

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/audio-drinking-responsibly-and-cheaply.mp3[/podcast]audio — drinking responsibly —- and cheaply

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Some of the bootleggers down here just realized Prohibition is definitely over.  That, or the Great Recession made bathtub hooch an economically viable commodity.  Liquor may have gotten re-legalized back in the Depression, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be cheap.  Which, sad to say, the cannabis growers and users are going to realize soon as the state puts a tax on it.  Then the local municipalities and unless my guess is wrong and I was born under a rock, the Feds will up the ante AND the price.

Sin taxes.  Most of us down here on the South End don’t actually subscribe to the notion that mind-altering remedies for the Hard Life are sins, but it’s always comforting to know the folks Without are willing to cast the first stone at those of us With.  My fellow rumrunners have definitely seen the advantage of home brew and home grown.  The government’s got enough to do without worrying about our little enterprises and we’re happy to help.

Nevertheless, I have been gobsmacked lately over the sudden proliferation of entrepreneurial spirits, pun probably intended.  Walnut Court Brewery has beers ranging from Dreamliner Lager to Silvana Suds.  Buzz Beer down south of me runs the gamut from a honey mead to a whisky stout he ages in burnt whisky barrels.  Our fiddler in the bibulous South End String Band makes enough moonshine merlot in French oak barrels to supply all the restaurants in Stanwoodopolis.  You know, IF he had any to spare after quenching our own needs.  Kirby Cellars makes a healthful tonic of herbal nettles and mango and a few potions I have been sworn to secrecy over.

Which explains my obvious spiritual vitality, in case anyone wondered  where the glow originated….  Course, so far, no one has.

And of course I have my own bathtub homebrews.  Clawfoot Jalapeno Ale and Heavy Nettle IPA, just to name a couple.  So when folks ask if it’s true we’re self-sufficient down these parts, I guess I have to say, pretty near.  And getting closer all the time.  Store bought’s okay too, just so you don’t think we’re uppity, us South Enders.  We’re just trying to cut out the Middle Man, the trucking costs and especially those burdensome sin taxes.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/audio-lets-give-the-gullible-a-break-this-april-fools-day.mp3[/podcast]audio —let’s give the gullible a break this april fool’s day

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The Crab Cracker asked if I could maybe whip up an April Fool’s sketch again this year.  You know, something in the line of Tyee Store’s Grand Opening for South End Greenworks, the new recreational marijuana outlet for our own hybridized blend:  Camano Cannabis.

Course, we already did something on this order.  The editors got calls that some of their readers had driven clear down to our remote regions here only to find … well, an empty storefront half lost to encroaching blackberry vines.  Half of em ran out of gas before they could find their way back to the Colton Harris-Moore Memorial Bridge.  I seriously doubt they’ll be back to this sunny end of the island, I don’t care how many of those glass balls we hide down here in the nettle labyrinths we’re making for our Spring Festival.

Folks apparently believe what they read.  When the Cracker ran the issue on the new Alpaca Hunting season regulations, holy moly, you might suppose it would be fairly obvious only a Fiend of the Worst Sort (or the figment of a very sick writer’s imagination) would purchase a license down at Elger Bay Store, dress up in llama camouflage and crawl on his beer belly across blackberry razor wire to sneak up on these poor cute defenseless little critters, I don’t care HOW good they taste on the grill.

The Cracker  could photoshop Big Foot behind the plaza, Colton in a Cessna over Mabana, Bin Laden quaffing a pint of Industrial IPA at Diamond Knot, the South End String Band playing Benaroya — and folks would just naturally believe their eyes.  Not simply because the Cracker is a bastion of journalistic professionalism with all their sources checked and double checked, but we’ve just become folks who either believe everything or believe nothing.

On the internet April Fool is everyday.  The political e-mails and pundits’  blogs that spread faster than bird flu pandemic rumors are more and more outrageous, most of them outright lies if anyone bothered to fact-check.  You either buy it hook line and stinker or you walk away shaking your fist vowing never to believe ANY of this stuff.

So in all honesty I just can’t be a party anymore to the Crab Cracker’s misguided (even if humorously intended) attempt at public deception this last issue before their sale to the Stanwood/Camano News.  And when the new owners vow complete journalistic integrity, I hope you know Skeeter’s going to be 100% honest in his reporting.  And it won’t have one iota to do with my new raise from these really great new editors.  You have my word.  As any who know me can attest, my word is my bond.  And I’m not talking bail.

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