The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

SKEETER DADDLE BLUES: Confessions of a South End Banjo Whacker will be read, in part, by its xenophobic author at the Snow Goose Bookstore on Friday, Dec. 13th at 7 pm. Book signing and South End revelry will follow. Bad luck too, probably.

Jack Archibald continues his rants and ravings in this sequel to his Skeeter Daddle Diaries: Reflections of a South End Nettle Farmer. These are the further memoirs of Skeeter Daddle, a latter day Huck Finn tromping Camano Island’s backwash in search of an America long thought lost, a banjo on his knee and a grudge against Mark Twain for marooning him in a childhood that’s no longer a sanctuary. Older now, but certainly no wiser, the Curmudgeon of Mabana lobs wet sack sarcasm and moonshine philosophy from the bunkered safety of his sagging old shack.

These are stories of his life on the South End, where he went to discover if frontiers still existed and if there might be a pioneer inside himself. In the end he had to reinvent himself. More than a few times. Who the hell IS Skeeter Daddle? Is he fictional? Is he an alter ego? Is he prowling the old growth nettle forests in search of Life’s Ultimate Meaning or just whistling Dixie on a rocker with a homemade 5-string?

Who knows …? Skeeter thinks we all create ourselves, more or less. He thinks we fashion our lives the way an artist creates art. And then the art changes the artist. Fiction? Oh, yeah, he’s made up. Just like the rest of us…

Sit a spell with him. He’s got some stories to tell.

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Back when I first got off the Mayflower south of Utsalady, I hitched my fortune to an unlikely looking piece of bottomland which had a shack, a large shed (or small barn depending on your agricultural perspective), a chicken coop, doghouse and a pen for some rabbits. Better than raw land, I figured. But not by much ….

Those early years I mostly hunkered down and tried to stay warm. Some folks would just look at this and shake their heads. Can’t say I blame them, but looking back now 35 years, I’m glad I bit it off. Occasionally I’d get friends coming up to see the estate. We were all pretty much layabouts from our days driving school buses in the Big City, not big dreamers, just slackers getting high on getting by, or so the song goes…. We were an aimless bunch, lacking in ambition and drive, plenty short on cash, but optimistic the future would play out all right for us. Why? I couldn’t say, just that a good positive attitude might, in the end, carry the day. I guess we drank the Kool-Aid —- or if we hadn’t, we were more than willing.

Some of those weekends, come nightfall, we’d load up the VW bus and motor into town, figuring to catch some Stanwoodopolis night life. Rudy the Banjo King played every Saturday night at the Hotel, but once was plenty and so we went to the other side of town to see what the Sportsman and the Sundance and the East Side had to offer a half dozen of us thirsty revelers. First tavern up, the Sportsman, we ordered schooners of tap beer. A minute later every barstool was empty and we were alone with the scowling bartender. Couple of beers, some pool, we moved next door. Our absentee barstool pals were all there, waiting, I guess, for us to bring the party.

We bellied up to the bar, ordered pitchers and watched our fellow revelers finish their beers and head for the door, about half a dozen fellas exiting. Was it something we said? The bartender took our money, but offered no clues. An hour later we were at the East Side, little shotgun of a place, shuffle board half its width. The locals kindly gave us their stools, tipped their hats and left. Once again.

Some places the drinking establishments are lively, a democratic conviviality. Alcohol has its negatives, but for loosening up inhibitions, it’s tried and true. I’ve lived here now 35 years. I’ve been to every drinking establishment that’s come and gone, lived and died. The mizzus says you can’t judge a town by its saloons … and she’s a historian … but I say you can. I could live here longer than Methuselah on scotch and soda and I tell you what, it’s way more fun to drink alone. Which is what we got in spades down here on the South End.

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You got an island like ours, not much here, you need major creative minds in the Chamber of Commerce to promote its possibilities for tourism. We don’t have a charming little seaport town. We don’t have cute little gift shops or seafood restaurants. We don’t even have, on 60 or 70 miles of waterfront, a public wharf or a dock or a marina. No, you pretty much need to drive to this island. Our old motto ‘The Island You Can Drive To’ was really a real estate pitch. More truthfully, it should’ve been ‘The Island You Have To Drive To’.

We have two really nice state parks side by side on the west coast. Only about twenty miles from the freeway. One is the old Cama Beach Resort, restored now and its cabins usually rented, making it one of the few state parks that runs a profit, which, in these fiscally challenged days, is pretty amazing.

When folks ask what there is to do on Camano Island, I say Not Much, Just Living. I’m happy as a free range clam, but I’ve got a beach to walk and a woods to hike and plenty to keep me busy. A visitor to our fair island, well, a couple of rainy days and the suburbs they left behind start looking mighty inviting.

No malls, no movie theaters, no taverns, no night life, not much of anything but inaccessible beaches and summer houses and us year rounders. Probably seems like a vacation in a desert, only one with water, not sand. No, it’s a hard sell when the San Juans beckon and Whidbey next door has quaint 150 year old villages and tourist trap and ferries going hither and yon. We got a few Mom and Pop grocery stores, plenty of real estate offices, speed traps and miles with nothing but scenery. People don’t yearn for that anymore, I guess. It’s why they carry phones and I-pads and laptops wherever they go. ‘The Place To Do Nothing’, our now abandoned ad slogan, just isn’t going to draw a crowd. Okay by most all of us. Except maybe the realtors….

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I’m building an apple cider press. Simple enough, you might think, a little wood stand, grind up some apples, squeeze the juice, put it in gallon jugs and voila, apple jack! Drink it now, ferment it, freeze it, nothing to it.

I have an old 1890’s 2 barrel, double geared, high volume press that’s long ago rusted and rotted. Twice, actually, since I rebuilt it once, then left it outside. I’m using the old yoke from that that carries the wormscrew to make the press. I got a more modern ‘grinder’ from a 1920’s cider mill, turns a set of metal teeth through an opposing metal mesh and is housed by its original hopper. The catch barrels are finished now, cedar strips screwed to steel bands up and down, one for catching the crushed apples while the other holds the squeezins. Move one forward and replace it with the other: a 2 barrel operation.

I’m constructing the 4×4 cedar framework, building a body to secure the grinder and hold the press, then adding a ‘floor’ to catch and drain the juice, probably plywood and maybe clad it in metal so we can clean it. E-coli apple juice doesn’t seem too appealing … although I suspect not too many orchardists died of apple jack poisoning before the advent of ubiquitous antibiotics and anti-bacterials in every cleansing agent known to man and industry.

I suppose we could juice with a household blender for all the cider we’ll probably make. But dammit, that’s not the South End Way … and sometimes traditions, sensible or not, are worth saving. Besides, you build it, you’ll go out and find neighbors who want to press their fruit, maybe turn it into an annual event. We still grow apple trees — doesn’t seem too great a stretch to utilize the harvest. If nothing else, I can always donate it to the museum, a cider press spanning 125 years, cannibalized , hybridized and worth nothing on Antiques Roadshow. Sort of like most everything else we still use around this place…..

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