The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Woodworker Bill had a shop across the island from my place where the trail I built and maintained through the interior popped out. Where it still does. The property was once the Snowdens, the folks who built Tyee Store in the 70’s, and it was one of the few places on the South End zoned commercial. For that matter, one of the few on the whole damn island. Not that Bill’s was exactly what you would call a commercial operation. He had a commercial quality shop in a huge pole building wired for power tools and set up for serious production.

The shop was set up for serious production but Bill wasn’t. Oh, he’d tackle an odd job here and there. Maybe build Jack Gunter, the gallery owner just down the road, an angular cabinet piece for one of his wild ideas like the Siberian series, something he’d later paint and gilt with gold flakes. The cabinet was the real work of art, nothing 90 degrees, everything skewed and slightly akilter, as if Escher had taken up woodworking. That cabinet took months, maybe a year. One thing about Bill, he was not in any hurry. Another thing, you couldn’t tell him how you wanted anything done — he’d fly off the handle and probably quit right then and there. And he wouldn’t give you a quote. Just an hourly. He sure didn’t want to be trapped in a bid.

His few customers, of course, were trapped in the math of multiplying hours. All of which explains why most days you could find Bill down at the Viking Café or Helen’s Kitchen drinking coffee refills all morning and late into the afternoon, slowly working his way through the paper or chatting it up with the waitresses and regulars.

Bill’s first wife had died young and suddenly of a brain aneurysm. His second died of cancer back in ’92 or so. He bought a Cortez, an industrial version of a travel trailer, and began living in it in the shop while he refitted it. A year later he motored down to Moab, Utah, drifted over to the aptly named Blanding, then after an incident with the trailer park owner, set off for Arizona where the Cortez broke down once and for all. He had it towed to a ramshackle park in Big Puddle or some hellhole of 50 people of similar xenophobic disposition, sort of a South End but without any north or east or west, just the end of the line for another hermit lost and broke in a heatbuckled highway of the 21st Century.

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Living here on the ‘Island You Can Drive To’, most of us only drive to the House You Live In. Kind of understandable, considering there’s no outlet malls or fast food franchises beyond our mailbox. Further on, there’s just more blacktop, identical mailboxes and, well, more of the same. Which I guess explains why most of our northern neighbors have essentially no idea whatsoever of what lies beyond their driveways to the south. You might think that commute to Stanwoodopolis and beyond would grow tiresome. You might think idle curiosity would kick in after the 1000th commute to I-5. What the hell IS down at the end of their island? Where do those other roads GO??

But no! We are creatures of habit, apparently. Whatever pioneer spirit led us to the end of America, we’re no Lewis and no Clark either. We’re like the Conestoga family headed west that took one glimpse of the fierce gauntlet of the upcoming Rockies and decided Kansas was plenty far enough. Better to take the easy way out than risk it for the improbability of a promised Paradise the brochures probably exaggerated.

A few years back we had some serious construction on the mainline down the gut of the island. Months of detours that forced the complacent shortest-distance-between-two-points-is-a-straight-line crowd to shunt over to the picturesque and historic west side. Believe me, to listen to the outraged outcry or read the vitriol in the letters to the editor, you’d have thought we’d routed them through the alleys of Hell or the horrors of Smokey Point. They wanted a detour on a blacktop nearby that was definitely not designed for heavy traffic and they wanted it NOW. Our commissioner, Bill Thorn, god bless his decisiveness, said no, it’s a temporary inconvenience and we won’t destroy a perfectly good road to make the GPS-averse electorate shut up their weeping and lamentations. Grow up, fer cryin out loud!

Next election, of course, the crybabies exacted revenge. Bye bye Bill. You can lead a horse to the South End, but he’ll thank you by kicking you half to death. Better, we’ve learned, just to tell em what they’re missing. No need to drive any further than necessary. Curiosity, after all, kills.

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Being self-employed, a lot of us artists go without health insurance. No doubt this bohemian lifestyle breeds in us a belief in our own invincibility. That, or our enlarged egos refuse to harbor doubts about prolonged longevity. Personally I think of insurance, any insurance, as the bane of my existence, basically an extortion scheme by private enterprise to shake me down through fear and intimidation. We got car insurance, we got house insurance, I got business insurance and yeah, we pay through the ring in our nose for what we’ll euphemistically call health insurance.

We got a ‘catastrophic’ plan. Meaning the insurer won’t cover anything short of a catastrophe. Huge deductible. No need for co-pay. Fat chance they’d cover anything this side of cremation. For only $9000 a year. Half my life I didn’t make $9000 a year. At least that’s what the Social Security folks tell me in calculating my projected retirement. I think they just like to rub it in ….

So naturally the mizzus and me were real interested in the opening of ObamaCare. The U.S. government shut down over yet another last ditch effort to kill it, cripple it or hamstring it. Some folks in Congress are in the final throes of apoplectic desperation. Gonna cost jobs, gonna cost a fortune, not gonna save me a dime and maybe way worse. I didn’t know WHAT we’d find but I figured it wouldn’t be worse than what we had now.

I was right. It wasn’t worse. It was vastly better. We don’t have to buy ‘catastrophic’ anymore. We won’t get the Cadillac hedge fund manager program, but we won’t get the cheapest ones either, just something in the middle. You maybe are wondering what it costs, bottom line. We were too. Try about $1500 a year after deductions for income. Sort of progressive health insurance, not regressive. You heard correcto. $1500 vs $9000. And, by the way, that ‘catastrophic’ plan. It would cost us zero, zip, nada. Nothing.

Now … I know this is anecdotal stuff, one household, maybe atypical. The TeaParty folks who think once we’ve tasted this candy, we’ll be so addicted, they’ll never be able to get rid of it — well, correcto again!! They can call it ObamaCare or DramaCare or whatever. For us it’s Affordable Health Care. The only thing that would make me more pleased is if the insurance company gave us back what we’ve obviously been overpaying all these years. But, let’s not kid ourselves. Folks can call this socialism or communism, but I bet in Russia the insurance companies aren’t still making big profits like they are here. Just a guess….

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The ‘Make My Day Guns & Ammo” shop does a brisk business these days on the heavily defended South End. Earl and his brother Biker Billy watched their revenues double in the 2008 election, then double again in 2012, most buyers convinced the government was going to confiscate all the firearms in America. Earl and Billy could keep up with their gun inventory, but ammo was rationed and frightened homeowners were put on a waiting list. Ralph Hansen wanted to know if he’d need to ask his ‘intruders’ if they’d mind waiting before they broke into his house, raped his wife and daughters, then killed him. In the end, Earl sold him a Browning over and under and a box of 12 gauge slugs he said would stop a rabid rhinoceros. Billy shook his head when Ralph walked out with the shotgun in its tooled leather case proud as Hemingway. “How many shotguns does he have?” he asked his brother. And Earl smiled as he put Ralph’s check under the cash drawer in the register. “Probably one shy of enough.”

Down my well armed end of the Alamo I hear plenty of gunfire. The mizzus took years to get used to the sudden bark of semi-automatic practice sessions of the local militia excercising not only their right to bear arms, but their obligation to shoot them as often as possible. She’d ask, alarmed, what is THAT?? Gunfire, I’d say nonchalantly, and she’d grow more alarmed, her fears realized and then want to call the police. It’s America, I’d explain patiently, figuring that was explanation plenty, all Clint Eastwood would bother with, why waste words OR ammo?

A few years back we had a bad hombre stroll down Bernie Road when it was a one lane dirt cutoff to Tyee Store, occasionally letting loose with an automatic assault rifle beside the cow pastures up there, alarming more than just the mizzus. Turns out he was wanted on felony warrants and the local gendarme treated him like Machine Gun Kelly on meth, waited until he’d gone to bed at his moll’s place off Dallman, then dropped a stun blast through the window and shot him to pieces reaching for either his trousers or his gun. The sheriffs around these parts don’t much cotton to automatic weapons being practiced on the roadways. Especially by hardass criminals.

I won’t say the mizzus has gotten used to country livin’, but she doesn’t race to the phone to call 911 every artillery session or the opening of hunting season. I guess she just figures it’s slightly better than moving to Beirut or Baghdad or the wrong side of Everett. At least the casualties are somewhat less. Even if supposedly we’re not at war.

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The topic up for the debating societies down at the Diner this week was Obamacare, what nobody calls by its official name, the Affordable Health Care Act. The House of Representatives wants to delay or modify or hopefully kill the bill so two days ago the government shut down over the impasse and in two weeks we may default on our debt obligations. For about half the patrons, this was worth cheering. “Last chance to stop this before we become a socialist state,” Harold cried, raising his coffee mug in salute, we thought, but actually signaling Anita for his 3rd refill, no doubt on his way to politico-caffeine overdose.

Down the counter, hunkered over his biscuits and gravy, Ozone Davy took up the gauntlet. “The train’s left the station, Harold. Yesterday I signed up for a new health plan. You boys are a little behind the curve….!” Anita put her head down and worked the room, figuring here we go. Sure enough a voice from the back booth she recognized as Walter, usually only spokesman for NRA issues, jumped into the fray. “They shut the damn government down and I say that’s a good start — KEEP it shut down, I say.” Anita thought if only Walter would keep his big mouth shut, now THAT would be a good start.

“Easy for you two,” Davy replied, pointing a biscuit speared on a fork at Harold that dripped grease and bitterness. “You old farts got MediCare, what do you have to worry about? Me, I got a wife, kids, and I couldn’t afford insurance being out of work. But I can now. How about that?”

“Maybe you should’ve kept a job, Dave,” Harold said cruelly, grinning over his chicken fried steak covered in milk gravy. “I worked for mine and I sure didn’t expect Obama to pay my way.”

“He’s probably paying for breakfast with food stamps,” Walter hollered from across the room. “Free food, unemployment compensation, now free health care. Paid for by all the rest of us.!”

Anita groaned audibly when a table near the door erupted in applause. Tips always went south after these debates. Nobody won, not outright, but once again she’d be the loser. “More coffee, honey,” Harold summoned. “I’m paying hard earned cash.” She knew Harold was collecting disability, but she also knew to keep her lip buttoned. Maybe, she thought, she’d look at this health care stuff when she got off shift tonight. No point giving up all her tips.

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