The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Well, it’s a sad day down here on the South End for many of the faithful congregation who worshipped every Sunday with the man we called Father Freddy. Father Freddy was summoned home far too early to the Halls of Heaven this week and his sudden departure was a terrible shock to his many followers, many of whom have held vigil at the make-shift church that once was the Tyee Grocery. Candles flickered in the old concrete block store, giving a mournful reminder to traffic out on the highway that one of our own has passed.

Father Freddy died the way he lived, doing what he loved. He was what the press called — with so little real understanding — a Nettle Handler, one of those men who believed that the Word of God could be divined through manipulation of the dangerous weed. Every Sunday, as his congregation held their collective breaths, Father Freddy would grab those eight foot stalks of Itching Torment and squeeze Testimony from each and every one as the congregation moaned and swayed and sang and prayed. Every Sunday, until this last, Father Freddy would wrassle those stinging stalks to their Rightful Place, prone against the homemade pulpit of stacked Coca-Cola crates left over from Tyee Grocery’s halcyon days.

“Get thee BACK, you poisonous serpents,” he’d yell, wrapped in their toxic embrace. “You hold no fear for those assembled here!” he’d holler, soon to be victorious. And as One, the entire flock, exhausted from exhortation, would wail their Hosannahs on High, their faith once more confirmed and restored.

Last Sunday, Father Freddy succumbed to the hideous stings of a 10 foot monster he’d grown under halogens in the nettlearium behind his trailer, a greenhouse filled with stingers of every size and variety. Parishioners wanted to call 911, but Fred avowed that his faith would sustain him. Horrified, they watched him slowly scratch himself to death. Services will be held this coming Saturday in Father Fred’s special grove of wild nettles back in the ravine behind the church. Gloves are recommended. Donations can be made to the Nettle Survivor Network in the name of the Nettlecostal Church. Father Fred, I know, will be Sorely missed!!

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Most of our crime on the South End is local. You got basically one way off the island, even most criminals can figure out how easy it is to put up a Roadblock by the bridge. But occasionally we get Outside Trouble. Rare, but it happens. Last year one of my old band members, who rents his castle a little to the south of us, dropped by his tenant where he planned to meet his realtor so he could discuss why his house hadn’t sold in, oh, four or five years.

His tenant, when he kocked on the door and finally shouted inside, came down the stairs in a state of disrepair, having been tied up, pistol whipped and shot in the shoulder by two ‘friends’ from Seattle who’d purportedly come by at 7 or 8 in the morning to, what she claimed!, give her some money they owed. Instead, I guess they decided to keep the money and take hers. Happens all the time …. Just not a whole lot on the South End. Did I mention our victim denied being shot?

It’s probably lucky for us that most criminals think the police are as dumb as they are. If not decidedly dumber….

My ex-band member — I did mention EX band member, didn’t I? — believed every word, even if the deputies who arrived later were somewhat more suspicious. Still believes she wasn’t shot, last time I talked to him, even when I asked about the hole in her shoulder, entry and exit. Probably doesn’t believe the Band 86’d him either. So when she gets released from the hospital, he takes pity on her and lets her stay rent-free until she can get back on her feet.

About two days later he gets a call from another ex-band member, neighbor Jim, who informs him there’s a box truck loading up in the driveway and maybe he ought to come on down and see what’s what. Which he does. Only to find two guys busy loading his artwork and furniture into the truck. He politely tells them this stuff belongs to him and they apologize and say they’re helping his tenant load her stuff and didn’t realize. All a misunderstand, an honest mistake, see? He puts his stuff in the garage so they won’t misidentify it from hers, goes home satisfied that things worked out, and of course, they load up all his paintings and furniture and hit the road, where, since he’s a trusting sort, no roadblock awaits them at the bridge off the island.

If there’s a moral to this story, hell if I know what it is. Other than to say, if you’re ever starting your own Band, be sure you audition your prospective musicians.

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I went up with a couple of friends to see a sawmill up in the middle of the island. We’d heard it was a one man operation, but it could handle logs bigger than a baseball bat at least. Truth be told — and you know me by now, I always do — I expected some giant skilsaw on steroids, maybe a rusty old blade wobbling on a warped arbor, chewing up 2×4’s into pickets for fences. The days of sawmills on the island, I figured, are pretty much relegated to photos in the South End Historical Society.

But I needed a ‘playday’ so I tagged along. We drove up north, took one of those cross roads no commuter has ever visited, then cut back into the interior where it felt like when I first arrived here off the turnip truck. We drove down a winding drive and there, barely visible through a heavy fog or a dense dew, was a homemade 3 story house right of the hippie-dippie 60’s. Time had turned backwards.

Still, I figured okay, so we got an old hippie hiding out up here. Cool house and worth the drive, but we came to see the mill, man. And Jack came out to do just that….

Up above the house, overlooking the pond, sat the mill. Open sides, lumber ricked and stickered, machinery everywhere. Forget the 60’s. We’d turned the clock back further than that. Cables ran through pulleys, chains ran through gear teeth, belts ran through reducers, a slant 6 Dodge engine powered the whole she-bang. Jack fired her up and peaveyed up a 2 foot diameter log section on a moveable track, hit a lever and down the conveyor came the log through a 52 inch blade, snickerty-snack and a 2x section fell off to the side. Back came the trolley and another 2x piled beside the first. And a third and a fourth…. Until the log was lumber.

I stopped thinking Big Skilsaw. My jaw had dropped too far for thinking anyway. Up in the hills sits a sawmill assembled by one man, run by one man, that is so far beyond my meager capabilities, it was staggering. When I started writing these stories, I wanted to remember the places like this as they disappeared. Remind folks what it was like …. you know, Back When. It’s a joy, a total joy, to find that these places not only exist, they’re still running full bore. Hat’s off, Jack!

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Coming home the other day, I was listening to National Public Radio — mostly for further education credits — and they were talking about somebody working in the Inner City who went around to the homeless to offer them free health checkups. These folks were, as our reporter tactfully put it, probably on drugs or booze or were mentally ill or any combination thereof. Probably all three.

We always talk about the street folks this way. Poor sad souls who fell through the societal cracks, who might have, if not for drugs or booze or rock and roll or psychiatric reasons, might have been happy productive members of society. Almost exactly the prognosis for me and my neighbors here on the South End!! I mean, who wouldn’t want to work at Twin City Foods on the ‘line’, who wouldn’t rather drive to McDonalds and flip burgers for minimum wage, no benefits, no health insurance, no kidding???? Who wouldn’t want to go back to school, get that GED or a PhD. and become a 6 figure a year attorney?? You’d have to be CRAZY not to!!!!!!!!!! You’d maybe have gotten so dependent on drugs and alcohol this wouldn’t APPEAL to you! whatsoever, not at all!?

Holy Cowpie. Maybe our reporter never worked in a factory dawn to dark, 6 days a week. Maybe our Good Samaritan never thought of the American Dream as a rat race through the labyrinth of Hell in search of moldy cheese. Maybe our sociologists, who work for the universities, have full tenure and pensions and fat salaries, maybe they see unemployment or poor health care or an Insecure Future, as something, oh, I don’t know, something WORSE than a dead end job, a horrible boss, a joy-draining life on the assembly line of ‘respectability’.

Send those researchers, those professors, those academicians down here! Give me a couple of days, that’s all. After that, they’ll be on drugs or booze or sudden retirement. Probably all three….

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