The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Some folks down by me in these Southern Latitudes have been, what we scofflaws call, ‘Living off the Grid’. They work when they have to, get paid under the table (in the local parlance, meaning, they take only cash) and they don’t report wages to the IRS or the State. I run into wealthy folks up north who do the same thing when the opportunity presents itself. Some people call this tax evasion — and it is — but these folks see it more as what any sensible yahoo would do if he had the chance. Me and my professorial pals call this Cognitive Dissonance, a fancy five buck word for jamming the square peg into the round hole, then proclaiming it a pretty good fit.

My neighbor Gyppo John hit 65 the other day. He’s never paid one dime in taxes, federal state or local other than sin and sales tax on his necessities. He always works under the table, takes only cash or barter and lives pretty much hand to mouth. As far as the government is concerned, John pretty much doesn’t exist. Well, at least til he showed up to sign on for Medicare. I figure what the hell, we’re gonna pay for John’s healthcare anyway, might as well do it through Medicare as all those unpaid ER visits he has after his logging accidents. Dangerous work, logging. Probably exactly the kind of work insurance companies hate to cover. That, and radio antenna repairmen and kamikaze pilots.

John and I were quaffing a cold one when he got to wondering, about two of my beers into the evening, if maybe he could get Social Security benefits too as long as the Government was making him more comfortable in his Golden Years. Imagine his surprise when I sadly informed him Social Security was kind of a pension fund. Your money in, your money out. “Sorta based on your taxes, John,” I said, popping a third can and handing it over, something I guess John was getting too accustomed to.

“You mean I can’t get Social Security?? What the hell kind of security is THAT????” he practically shouted, his can foaming. My can, I mean. “I can’t keep logging til I’m 90!”

Probably true, I agreed, but what I thought to myself was Karma’s gonna be a hard road for some of us South Enders too smart for our own good by a country mile. No doubt it would cost me plenty in additional beer to help John get through those grasshopper winters. But mostly for me to listen to the sob stories.

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Some of you crusty old timers out here tonight might remember when Camano was such a sleepy little backwash, we didn’t have deputies on patrol after midnight. Crime was pretty much limited to marijuana growing —- you know, BEFORE it became a medicinal herb — and a few break-ins down at unoccupied beach cabins, probably OFF-islanders sneaking in by boat. Any criminals that were caught, well the sheriff’s department had to haul them over to the hoosegow in Coupeville, kind of a long drive, deliver the miscreant, then drive back here. In the meantime we were left vulnerable, defenseless and unprotected. To be honest, most of us never noticed….

Somewhere in the 1980’s some entrepreneurial South Enders … well, okay, some desperately unemployed South Enders thought the time was ripe for a Private Security Agency, sign up the absentee landowners and go check on their unattended dwellings. You know, cruise by and see if the front door was still on its jambs and lights weren’t on when they were supposed to be off, maybe get out and check the locks, walk around with a flashlight, wear a special agent badge South End Safeguard, something catchy, something official looking in case the neighbors wondered about us prowling the back yard late at night. Admittedly, we looked a little rough. Okay, we looked like the guys we were supposed to protect folks against. But hellfire, man, this was the South End and back then we all looked a little ragged around the edges. Remember, this was BEFORE the great migration, the one where the Dot.com’ers took their suitcases of cash and bought up the bluffs and hauled in stuff WORTH stealing.

That’s the trouble with rich people, you see. They bring valuables. They bring expensive toys. They bring, if you follow my reasoning here, CRIME. Simple as that. When we were all poor, why would we steal from each other? We left our doors unlocked, the keys to the truck in the ignition. You wanted to steal MY truck, chances are I’d find you broke down about half a mile north of me. I’d probably have to apologize to YOU for loaning you a beat up rig you’d have to repair three times to town.

Well, the South End Security and Surveillance Agency was a little ahead of the curve. So they finally called it quits. Before the incoming tsunami of wealthy neighbors brought their big suburb crime to our pastoral paradise of poverty . We got 24/7 deputies from Island County finally and for awhile we could drop off captured criminals, alleged captured criminals, with the Stanwoodopolis Police, save them hours of scenic transportation and get right back to the scene of our crimes.

And then, before we could regroup our patrol cars and security agents, along came the Civilian Patrol. Free of charge. Official. Nice lettering on the side of the vehicles instead of that ratty plastic sign we had that fell off more than a few times and even got Two Toke Tom pulled over for littering. He got off with a warning, but it rattled him so much he resigned and turned in his patrol badge, worried, I think, littering might lead to some sniffing around his grow sheds up by the South End Diner. And that was his sole livelihood, so he didn’t want to jeapordize that.

Well, anyway, I’m sort of rambling along here about the history of crime-fighting on Camano and I haven’t even gotten to Colton yet, but …. I think maybe I better just wrap this up and move on to subjects that won’t interfere with dessert digestion. But I do want to say to you crimefighters, thank you! Not so much for ending crime down by me as for saving me that job in my truck patrolling the rich folks’ houses. If I’d really seen how they lived, how much they had, how nice they had it, who knows, I mighta turned to a life of crime myself with all that temptation. Lucky for me I stayed stupid and poor.

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I got on board an airplane this week. You know the drill as well as me: strip down, belts off, liquids out, pockets emptied, wait your turn, hands up at the X-ray machine, a pat down at the end. Hundreds of TSA security folks. When I got to my terminal after running this gauntlet, two more TSA wanted to see our ID’s and boarding passes once more. Most us comply complacently, but if you ask us sheep if the money and inconvenience is worth it, post Nine One One, I bet 95% would say you betcha!

I’m not one of those 95%. It’s not so much a violation of my personal privacy, all these inspections. It’s just incredible overkill on our response to perceived threats. Kids are shot up every week in our schools and I don’t see us locking down schools, setting up checkpoints and x-ray machines, maybe confiscating assault rifles. In fact, the 2nd Amendment folks resist any and all gun regulation now. I know we can’t carry penknives on a plane, but I’m amazed the ammo boyz sit still for a gun ban on airplanes. Better to have high altitude shootouts with terrorists than fly unarmed, they’d argue. Same argument for arming teachers, I guess.

The first shopping mall that’s bombed and shoppers taken hostage, you’ll see where this can lead. A full frontal assault on the bastions of capitalism, you’ll have us consumers in mega-counter response. Strip searches at Macy’s, x-ray machines at Victoria’s Secret, lie detectors at Sears, loyalty oaths at Spencer’s Gifts, proof of citizenship and credit card viability at the front entrances, language proficiency at the restrooms, profiling in the mall corridors.

It’s one thing to murder innocent schoolkids and destroy the Trade Centers — it’s quite another to kindle fear in the average shopper. Expense be damned! The bastions of commerce will be cleansed of the unholy! The deranged can shoot up our schools, but trespass on the Halls of Profit, there’s going to be some serious hell to pay — and we’ll be more than willing to pay it.

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Awhile back I ran into one of my new neighbors out taking the air. I introduced myself as the guy across the road and he told me his name. “So, Bernie,” I asked, figuring this was his retirement house after years in a career, what he’d been saving that nest egg for and whoopee, the Golden Years had finally arrived, “how do you like retirement?”

Bernie looked a bit bemused over the spectacles he peered over to take ‘the full measure of me’, some impertinent upstart probing too deeply on first contact. “If you don’t mind me asking,” I added a little impishly. He took a little while, either pondering the question or wondering whether to dignify it with an answer.

“Not much,” he said finally. “It’s harder to accustom to than I thought it would be.” I asked why he felt that way and he said he’d had some prestige in his former career that was now suddenly missing. “I demanded respect,” he said sternly, “and I got it.”

“Well, Bernie,” I grinned, “I’d get over THAT. Nobody down here gives a hoot or holler what you did before. You get to start brand new. Nobody’s gonna salute the old generals now and anyway, the war’s over. Take a load off. Enjoy the sunsets. Walk the beach. It’s why we call it retirement.”

I don’t know if Bernie ever did get over it. Some folks hang their awards and medals on the wall, hoping, I guess, to just keep on re-living their Glory Days. Me, I say high school’s come and gone, good riddance. The South End’s a funny melting pot, mostly us yahoo retirees bent on figuring out how to make the rest of life interesting without hauling along the weight of the past. Retirement’s hard enough starting from scratch and not driving the mizzus insane being underfoot. And I know for a steel hard, take-it-to-the-bank fact, the mizzus isn’t going to salute either. Down here, we’re all privates in this woman’s army.

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Back in the day … the Navy base on Whidbey created a sign on the highway that stated PARDON OUR NOISE — IT’S THE SOUND OF FREEDOM. Kind of an apology for those Growler jets doing touch and go’s off at landing fields up and down the island. Now the sign reads THE SOUND OF FREEDOM. Forget the pardon part. You get the picture. Apologies are for weaklings.

On our weak sister island we get a little of that jet spillover, particularly up north. No problem, just crank up the TV a decibel or thirty, close the windows, try not to think of where the next aerial bombardment might be. Syria, Libya, China South Seas, Illinois. Hey, it’s the sound of freedom, okay? You got a problem with that???

Freedom means a lot of things to a lot of people. I guess if the U.S. Navy wants to keep a jet base on a now populated piece of prime real estate, well, good luck moving it to the Mojave. You might as well vote for slavery….. Me, I like peace and quiet, even if the two seem contradictory these days. And now Amazon wants to send drones to deliver their packages. That jet noise is going to seem like the quiet good old days soon. PARDON OUR DRONE — IT’S THE SOUND OF PROFITS.

Neighborhoods like the one across the street from me will sound like a hornets’ nest clobbered by a brick. You order that bigscreen 72 inch TV bad boy, you better build a landing pad on the roof for that delivery drone the size of Chinook copter to land without chopping the head off your Prius. Actually, I don’t expect Amazon to apologize any more than the Navy base. It’s a noisier world with hardly a nook to escape it, TV’s in the gas station pumps, muzak piped in 24/7, Fox News yammering and MSNBC trying to keep up, the whole world wired and amped.

And of course now the airlines are considering allowing cellphone usage in flight. So much for the Friendly Skies. PARDON MY STUPID PHONE CALL — IT’S THE SOUND OF BOREDOM. But hey, no need to apologize to your seatmates. Not anymore.

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