The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Hits: 40

I was in kind of a hurry the other day because I was late for band practice and I still had to make a stop at the big hardware store up north to pick up a pressure regulator for a well pump that was giving us trouble. I had my banjo in the cab of the truck and I figured if I hurried up, I could get my plumbing part quick and only be late by a quarter of an hour. Right.

Anyway, I got inside and was surprised how many options I had for making the wrong choice, meaning … course I was going to make the wrong choice. About the fifth package I was reading, it hit me I forgot to lock the truck. And my banjo was sitting there in full view. I might be the only one, but I love that banjo. I’ve had it for 35 years and I’ve rebuilt it multiple times and even though I’ve built homemade ones that are pretty nice, this is the one I play at concerts. And now I’ve left it sitting in my truck with the doors unlocked.

I finally grabbed a regulator, any regulator, and figured take a chance, you might get lucky, and headed for the register. I tried to see my truck out in the lot, but it was cut off from view. Course, I had to get behind the guy who had a coupon and couldn’t find his credit card, who searched awhile, then said he’d pay cash, but didn’t have enuff, then finally found his card but had to argue about the price of some do-dad he thought should’ve been 10 cents less and I’m going half crazy worrying about my banjo out there up for grabs for anyone walking by who sees it sitting there on the seat. I’m breaking out in hives. I offer to give him the damn ten cents and in return I get a glare from this yahoo who’s digging into his wallet for the receipt to doublecheck and finally I can’t stand it one second longer so I ditch the pressure regulator on the counter and head for my truck.

I’m nervous now, heart beating like a rabbit, blood pressure singing in my ears when I get up to the truck and see my worst fears realized. There, sitting on the seat in the unlocked cab of the truck, was a second banjo.

Hits: 46

Hits: 24

I bought my shellfish/seaweed license yesterday. $25. Us old timers can remember when there was no license and no fee. True of lots of things, I guess. Parks were free once. I still don’t need a bicycle license — but I bet you the cost of my boat trailer tabs I will soon. A nickel here, a dime there — you can run a government on it. You just can’t run it well. And the worse it runs, the louder the clamor to get rid of more of it.

I didn’t mind paying 25 bucks, but I remember when that 25 bucks would have been hard to come up with. Poor folks pay the same as rich folks. Some people see this as fair, almost a Natural Law: we all pay the same. Sales tax, same for Bill Gates as you. Property taxes, same for Jeff Bezos as me.  Federal income tax, I bet a whole lot of rich folks pay less than us. That’s the trouble with laws made by rich people — they make the rules skew in their favor. But they do it so we won’t notice. I suppose we might do the same thing in their place. That’s the real Natural Law.

The older I get, and the more well off I get, the less angry I feel about this. But when I remember what it was like trying to make a Go of it on the economically challenged South End, the more empathy I have for those who don’t have money … or power … or a voice in a country that equates the poor with losers and slackards and illegal aliens. A lot of folks lack much sympathy, it seems obvious, and you can’t legislate Compassion.

Angry folks are making laws now. After 9-11 angry folks were most of us and look where that took us. In the middle of two expensive wars we lost we had a recession that rivalled the Great Depression. And when the dust cleared we blamed the damn government. And we blamed the poor and the immigrants and the folks who can’t find work for the deficits. Like maybe they got the weapons of mass destruction. Like they’re responsible for the World Trade Center bombings. I guess we got to blame somebody. And punish them. And to hell if they’re the innocent ones. Somebody’s gotta pay. And it sure won’t be ourselves.

Hits: 41

Hits: 20

Hits: 20

I’m the ranger at the only park on the South End, a little 5 acre chunk of paradise hidden in plain view on the highway. A few folks use it to walk their dogs or drink a late night beer or have sex in the parking lot. Sometimes they use it to dump their garbage or bash in the fences that now look like hillbilly dentures. There’s no toilet or even a port-a-potty so you can guess what I find in the woods, but it wasn’t left by a bear.

Mostly I mow the lawn and the strip along the road. I plant trees and shrubs, but the soil is poor ‘fill’ of mostly hardpacked gravel. A few survive, but barely, and when the summer drought comes, they suffer mightily because there’s no water at the park. I put some sculpture in at first but someone stole three of them, plus a grill, probably to sell the metal for meth, so the ‘Art Park’ got put on the back burner for my retirement years. Meaning, when my own lawn is crammed and I need to move the overflow to the park.

I’m actually in an organization (Friends of Camano Island Parks) that cares for all the county parks on the island and some of the State Park’s trails so government doesn’t have to hire real workers and so the taxpayers can mistake me for a county worker and yell at me. When they learn I’m working for free, they tell me we should get rid of the park, sell it maybe and use the money more wisely. You know, lower their taxes…. They think all taxes are really a form of theft. I guess they moved here recently from the jungle.

My organization knows I’m down here because they make me sign a waiver if I get hurt I won’t sue their pants off. The county doesn’t have any money and neither do the Friends so good luck suing them for an accident anyway, but once a year I sign the form and go back to my rangering without insurance or pay or any apparent notice, sort of the farthest outpost that Rome has forgotten there’s someone stationed down here. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Just the last vestige of a far-flung civilization, its flickering flame watched over by goofs and fools who still think it’s worth preserving.

Hits: 106

Hits: 18

Hits: 43

Just up the road from where I buy my homegrown eggs, being too lazy to raise chickens anymore, there’s a sign that says: URIGANDA. I suspect it’s Hindu, roughly translated: Dead End. You wouldn’t know it was there except there’s a constant stream of traffic in and out and it IS the last place on the dirt dead end road. I figured at first just another house going up, tradesmen going in. But I was wrong. It is, in actuality, a commune.

More factually, it’s a chain commune. They have franchises down near Seattle and Gomorrah, but rumor on the dirt street is that they’re hoping to feed the flock with what they grow up here on the South End. Their neighbor, a goatherder and cheesemaker met them and offered her expertise, but they’ve retreated back into the nettles for now, no doubt googling info on Nubians and Alpines and hybrid goats with milk yields in gallons, not quarts. Today’s communes, I’m fairly certain, aren’t consulting Whole Earth Catalogue or Mother Earth News for hippie bargains or tips on how to build a greenhouse out of discarded shower curtains from the local thrift stores.

I don’t know one small thing about them to pass on as juicy gossip. They haven’t taken over the county government like the Bhagwan down in Antelope, Oregon back in the ‘80’s. They don’t patrol the perimeter with armed paranoid zombie members. They don’t poke their heads up much at all. Seems to me they came to the exact right place for the exact same reasons as the rest of us refugees from corporate America. They just like to flock up more than us apparently.

I say welcome to the party! And good luck to you folks no matter what flavor Kool-Aid you prefer. Life’s a winding road and I guess we’ve all looked for a good roadmap or an intuitive GPS to help us navigate the shifting terrains and the dirt road potholes. Like us, you’ve found a detour. Hopefully the South End will prove more a destination than a wayside, but remember, there’s always another Path if this one proves too difficult. Worst case, you can do like a lot of us who arrived with starcharts in our heads and dreams of spirits guiding us. You can always become an artist. And if that doesn’t cut it, Windy Rear has plenty of room for another real estate agent.

Hits: 154