The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I been making lately, down at the Diner’s restroom, a sociological study of commode values. Oh, I know, you’re thinking my god, can’t we just leave well enough alone? But I’m an Observer of all things South End and I don’t intend to leave a stone unturned or a bathroom unscrutinized. What I been noticing is this: a lot of the boyz won’t touch a seat or a flush handle. They’d rather leave their offerings for the next occupant than risk some ugly herd of germs jumping onto their ungloved hand, apparently because they either won’t wash them or they don’t think there’s enough anti-bacterial power in the washroom handsoap.

I used to think South Enders were pretty salty fellows, tough as galvanized roofing nails, but apparently not. Maybe all this chatter about Bird Flu Pandemics has created a backlash response: CHICKENITIS. I think it’s got to stop, men. I think you got to step up to the plate — or the bowl — and put your Big Girl Panties on and just be as courageous as you can be. If the seat is in the Down position, for Pete’s sake, wrap your little hand in toilet paper and put it in the Up mode – don’t whiz through the hole and leave the next Sitter a splattered seat. It’s unworthy and it’s Piggish, not to mention Priggish. Jeez, fella, were you born in a damn outhouse?

And when you’re done, flush yer mess!! I KNOW your mama trained you better than this. Even a dog kicks a little dirt over his scat so Man Up, you little wooses. You’re giving us South Enders an odorous reputation. Although … I will say, the womenfolk might start appreciating a seat that’s left Up instead of one defiled and Down.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/audio-artistic-real-estate-signs.mp3[/podcast]audio — artistic real estate signs

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The wag who said the only certainties in life are taxes and death never dropped into the many real estate offices on the South End for a ‘free’ map. An earthquake could separate us from the rest of the Civilized World and no matter the land values, real estate would be the Real Show. If a nuclear explosion ended most life as we know it, there’d still be cockroaches and realtors, both equally adaptable to any environment.

Not that I’m suggesting they’re equally unsavory. I can list a whole lot of professions more detestable than a land and home salesman. But most of those are SOME kind of salesman, from snake oil to stocks and bonds. And it’s not that I think they’re inherently dishonest or greedy. Most are good folks and most are poor as me. It’s just that there are so damn many of them. They’re more prolific than us artists who apparently breed up every holler and down every ravine. So many …. none can make a decent living competing with one another. The folks who moved here either become artists or realtors because there’s no other employment available within a tank of $4 a gallon gas.

So now we got 17 flavors of real estate, everything from ReFlux Realty to Windy Rear, all vying for the same properties. Which, if you’ve lived here more than the time it takes to close a mortgage, means about a third of us are selling, a third are buying and about half must be the realtors. Drive down the island and it looks like more For Sale signs than mailboxes some years. It’s too bad the signs aren’t painted by the artists — we’d become the Art Island practically overnight, famous up and down the Sound.

But don’t tell the realtors – it would only draw more Art Lovers hoping to buy a small studio. And in a year or two, they’d become real estate agents themselves. It’s a vicious circle and we need to break the cycle. Although … I’ll worry more when the realtors start painting tourist art.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/audio-help-from-the-government.mp3[/podcast]audio — help from the government

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Ma and me got this notion back when she first arrived by mail order – hoping for a new start, a New Land, an employed suitor, only to find herself at the tail end of an island where jobs and work were non-existent – to start our own little business. Being a librarian, well, an unemployable librarian unless she wanted to commute to hell and gone, she considered a used book store. We dug around a little, looked into renting a space above some shops in downtown Stanwoodopolis and made inquiries. They wanted a three year lease, no escape clause. We worried the elderly would never make it up the stairs. Or the lazy either. And we fretted that the illiteracy rate of Stanwoodopolis might spell our doom the first year and we’d owe two more years of rental on the dust bunnies.

Our next entrepreneurial investigation was to start a nursery, maybe buy some land, plant a few botanicals, grow the business organically. Meaning, it would be a slow return on our investment. But hell, we weren’t hedge fund managers, we were managers of hedges. We’d do it the old fashioned way, work hard, be frugal, build the business step by step.

We needed a few acres and a water source. Down on the South End there was plenty of acres, not much water. We didn’t have the money to buy a parcel AND dig a well so we looked for land with springs, something we could dam up a little stream maybe and use it to irrigate in the drought months, and sure enough, we found a place a mile south, got the asking price – about $15,000 for five acres – then called the County to make certain we could operate a nursery.

The nice folks at the County said they didn’t know. We could if we lived on that five acres, not sure if we didn’t. I said we sort of need to know if we were going to buy the land and get a loan to start up operations. They said they just couldn’t say yes but they didn’t want to discourage us by saying no either.

I won’t say we had a real firm business plan developed, just some seedlings of ideas really, mostly like the kind that die off for lack of money. Or water. Or a county closing us down when word got out we were operating an Illegal Flower Operation. In the end we didn’t buy the land and we didn’t go into debt and we didn’t corner the nettle market on the South End. We did manage to make a Go of it here, we worked various jobs, we stayed together. I’m kinda glad the County wasn’t more helpful. I’m real glad we never asked about a marriage license.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/audio-fiscal-fitness.mp3[/podcast]audio — fiscal fitness

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On the capitalistic South End there’s no end to entrepreneurial recklessness. Folks move here for what once was cheap digs only to discover this is the Outback for employment where only the strong survive. Or retirees with strong pensions. The rest? They start their own bizness. Or become artists who naturally disdain business — and of course become what we recognize from time immemorial as Starving Artists.

Jimmy’s Fitness Center opened last year next to the O-Zi-Ya Auto Body Shop. Jimmy figured, according to wags down at the Diner, that this would give us South Enders complete Body Works. Like a lot of our start-up enterprises, Jimmy’s Fitness Center was, oh, a tad undercapitalized. The Bank of Stanwoodopolis, burnt too many times by wild-eyed, far-fetched business plans from south of the Mt. View/Dixon Line, looked askance at Jimmy’s loan application before turning him down flat. Jimmy turned to his friends and family for fiduciary assistance, a primitive form of venture capitalism, and decided to go ahead and throw the dice.
He figured if he could last six months, get some monthly memberships going, he’d be okay. Course, he bought some pretty well used equipment from dreamers before him, mostly stationary bikes that pedaled like rusty 3 speeds up a dirt road hill, a couple of stairmasters and for good measure hung a punching bag up, I guess to let customers vent on the speedbag rather than Jimmy. Country music provided the ambiance Jimmy thought we would appreciate … or Brenda did, Jimmy’s shapely receptionist and fitness instructor. Better maybe than religious ministry, but sadly off the mark by a country mile or two when it came to judging our musical inclinations.

A few clientele came the first introductory month, half off. But no one really liked waiting their turn for the one shower and rumors of Brenda and Jimmy’s extended shared water escapades sure didn’t bring new business in and actually provoked an outcry from the Mabana Church of the Ravine. Not to mention Jimmy’s wife Lisa.

None of us were unduly surprised when the Fitness Center quietly closed. Last any of us heard, Jimmy and Brenda were off to Colorado to raise golden retrievers at the J&B Puppy Farm outside Ft. Collins. On the South End, entrepreneurs never die, they just recapitalize.

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Not many people realize it, but the old schoolhouse now serves as the Museum of the South End. Sure, it’s a little oxymoronic, a museum for a place that barely exists now much less Back When, but like most places big and small, we wanted to preserve the Past even though apparently we still live it. For awhile the Tourism Board thought it would serve as a sort of Visitor Center, but when even the locals never visited, that idea was shelved faster than grandpa’s shaving artifacts.

They put a big old growth log section out in the front yard which now is pretty much rotted, the pins showing where Columbus landed or Jesus was born are rusted and the labels gone. The old manure spreader is half hidden in the unmowed grass and kids passing by have used it for decades as a Dumpster. Every now and then Emily Watkins, the old schoolma’arm’s granddaughter, hauls out the OPEN sign by the highway and spends a day sweeping and dusting and clearing out the cobwebs. Occasionally a visitor wanders in and Mrs. Watkins stops her chores and has them sign and date the guest book by the front door, which, after all these years, is open to page four. Then she points out the various exhibits, mostly rusty logging tools, crosscut saws, peaveys, giant sawblades from the Mabana Mill, foxtailed fphotos of men on stumps or picnics at the Grange, the struff every museum from Alaska to California has on display.

There’s a little canning jar for donations as empty as the backroom which Emily uses as her ‘office’. The restroom is the outhouse leaning into a cedar out back, too perilous for use except in an emergency. The toilet paper has to be kept in an old coffee can to keep the squirrels from using it for nest building.

Occasionally Emily finds a scythe or a sewing machine left on the front porch by someone cleaning out an attic with a scrawled note: “Aunt Mary’s cherry pitter” or “Grampy Murray’s homemade cigar box banjo.” She makes a card for each and every one and files it into a recipe box which itself has a card: “Betty Cox’s Mother’s Recipe Box — donated June 7, 1978”. Who Betty Cox is or if her heirs still live here is unknown.

When she leaves, Emily always puts the CLOSED sign on the window of the front door. It’s been there now more than a year. Someone should probably check on Emily…..

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Art-Bubble.mp3[/podcast]Art Bubble

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