The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

You wait long enough, everything comes full circle. When I first got off the boat at the Mabana Wharf, the Snowdens ran the Tyee Store. The store was part gas station, park wrecking truck tow services, well drilling, groceries, beer and wine, a garage and a two acre junkyard out back next to the trout pond. They didn’t have what you needed, you probably didn’t really need it. And if they did have it, well, you can bet it cost a little more.

Being a tow service, they ended up with a lot of the vehicles they dragged into the back field. When the towee failed to pay the tow-ers, the cars or trucks became Tyee property. Mostly they settled into the mud and grass. But if you needed, say, a Chevy 350 engine block or a Ford transmission, well sir, you were welcome to haul your tools out into the swamp and dismantle what you needed. And occasionally you could negotiate for the whole rig.

The store’s gone now, the salvage yard has been pretty much cleaned out and hauled away, the garage is an art gallery and the pond is probably more toxic from leaching heavy metals and battery acids than most lakes in Russia other than the ones they dumped nuclear subs into.

But … Honest Al Yankafist has opened up the Tyee Auto Emporium. Your half ton craps out down by the Diner, you can be driving into town with a fine pre-owned rig from Honest Al’s lot. Al doesn’t deal in high end or late model. You won’t get a used Prius or a low mileage Hyundai. You’ll get something pretty close to what died in the Diner parking lot. Down on the South End we don’t expect a divorce to yield a nubile underwear model for our next marriage and we aren’t figuring on a BMW in exchange for that rustbucket Nissan with the missing front quarter panel and the busted out taillights the deputies kept citing us for. We might play the Lottery, but we’re not Total Fools. You want a nice ride, you need a decent job. We’ve learned to accept the necessary compromises.

Al has a slogan for all of us: My handshake is my word. That’s why he calls himself Honest Al. Al, who you only need to know for 15 minutes, is neither honest nor much of a handshaker. He’s a car salesman. But even if he was honest, what would you expect? He gonna tell you the car you’re buying, the one with 250,000 miles and the blown suspension, its muffler full of holes and the speedometer that doesn’t work anymore, with the two bald tires and the missing rearview mirror, it’s going to be your last car, the vehicular love of your life?

Naw, he’s selling you your next automotive tragedy. If life is good and the gods are smiling, you’ll buy your next one at the lot in town or from a private seller who’s slightly more honest than Honest Al. If he isn’t, well, Tyee Auto Emporium will have a lot of your neighbors’ cast-offs to choose from. WITH a warranty that Al intones as the cash leaves your hand —“good until I see your tail lights leaving the lot.”

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/siesta-motel-de-la-sur.mp3[/podcast]siesta motel de la sur

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Given that there’s a dearth of tourism down at the South End, it was a gobsmack and a half when Bert and Betty Amundsen opened up their retro auto court two miles north of the Head, not very far from the Diner, but not far enough to escape the patrons’ sneering gossip. The Siesta Motel de La Sur opened for business the year of the gas shortages when Jimmy Carter advised wearing sweaters and turning down thermostats. Tyee Store only sold gas to its regular petrol customers and even us locals were told to take a hike. Good luck to the auto court crowd…..

Course, the auto court never got a crowd. The Flathead Vintage Car Boyz howled among themselves over black coffee and chicken fried steaks and eggs. “Shoulda opened a B&B,” Cadillac Fred would say and Studebaker Ralph would fire back “Sunset Motel de Muerto”.

The Diner could’ve used the extra business. Big Larry, the grillman, had been here long enough to remember the days of Cama Beach Resort, Camp Diane, Indian Beach and a lot of others further north, folks pouring in to fish big Chinooks and escape the fumes of city living. “Might be a shot,” he said. “Nothing else, we can put up the shirt-tail relatives who visit…”

Bert and Betty lacked what you call marketing skills in the dark days pre-internet. They put a listing in the Stanwoodopolis Yellowed Pages and tacked signs on trees all the way down the island. SIESTA MOTEL DE LA SUR 15 MILES. TEN. FIVE. ONE MILE TO SIESTA DE LA SUR! If you know where to look you can still see a weathered plywood board being digested by fir bark, maybe a ‘ESTA MO’, or a ‘SI TEL’, of just a mysterioso ‘5’. The four done bedroom cottages fell into disrepair and Bert and Betty fell into heavy drinking and serious debt. They lost the place to the bank and moved away without so much as an adios. Last I heard the old motel was being converted to rent to artists as studios. Most of us already got studios in various stages of disrepair. Still, hope springs eternal down here. Everywhere maybe but the Diner where comedy trumps optimism.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/audio-crime-fighting.mp3[/podcast]audio —crime fighting

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Someone knocked my two mailboxes off their posts today.  Now … I don’t want to make a federal case out of this — but it IS.  Although I probably won’t call the FBI or even the sheriff’s office.  My last episode with the deputies convinced me Rome keeps these centurions down at our outpost primarily as slim proof Island County is still in charge.  Until you need them to solve crimes more heinous than speeding violations.  Mass mailbox destruction is pretty low on their priority.

Like most crime here, we’re pretty much on our own, okay by me, judging from the lack of crime waves.  The Barefoot Bandit ran amok for awhile and we got our first good look at Rome’s puny presence.  The Kid even stole their assault rifles and laptops right out of their squad cars.  Now that Rome’s running budget deficits, the sheriff is threatening to make cutbacks that will leave the South End without a single deputy most nights.  Exactly what we had when I moved here.  Pretty much what we got now.  I listened to my neighbor’s high decibel burglar alarm going non-stop for half an hour two nights ago.  If it had been an actual robbery, a moving van would’ve had time to empty the place.  You know, IF the burglars wore hearing protection.

We’re still small enough, still closed-knit enough, that when a break-in or vandalism occurs, we got a pretty good notion who the culprit was.  Been awhile since the last lynching, but a phone call to the miscreant’s parents usually does it.  Not always.  I had the mom of the kid who’d broken into my rootcellar and emptied my wine and homebrew stash bring said kid and herself over Right Now or I’d call the Law.  She sat in her idling car smoking her cigarette and denied denied denied.  I said her daughter’s step-dad had told me she had a winebottle with one of my labels on it for Roadspray Blackberry.  “What did you do with the bottle, honey?” she asked her punk progeny.  “I did what you told me, Mom, I got rid of the evidence.”

Now, I know blood is thicker than blackberry wine, but I also believe in good parenting.  So, reluctantly, I called the Law.  When they showed up a couple days later at my thief’s door, they took the step-dad aside and questioned him for half an hour about guns he supposedly had in his possession, then left.  Later I got a call from Deppity Dash wanting to see my rootcellar crime scene.

Deppity Dash, newly arrived from the Los Angeles police force, drove over in his squad car and I showed him my hand dug cellar behind the shack.  He just shook his head and said, “Damn, I thought those were just something you read about in books.  I didn’t think they actually existed.”  I didn’t tell him I thought the same about law enforcement on the island….  Turns out one of us was right.

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