The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The Umpcrickomish live in government housing in the valley they once had a name for but don’t anymore. All of us in UpCreek would live there if we could imagine a reservation or remember our elders or if television wasn’t invented because we’re all part of the same tribe, we just don’t know it. Charlie Johnson, who owns the Otter Creek Trading Post, who sells us our cigarettes and canned meat and our 24 ounce high alcohol beer, he knows we’re all kin whether we’re great grandsons of immigrant loggers or the grandparents of native babies left in our care by drug addict parents. We all would dream the Ghost Dance but the ghosts are all us now and the drums long ago stopped beating. Charlie, just like the rest of us, stopped Spirit Chasing and went after the money.

There’s a playground in the center of the dilapidated government houses, mostly rusty chainswings and a slide that’s tilted toward Whitehorse Mountain where the concrete beneath it heaved over and cracked. Walking by the other evening, I watched Jimmy Walks-the-Talk sitting on the rotted seat of one of the swings, head bent forward, pushing himself slowly back and forth in the fading winter light which looked to him like his future. Laughter left this playground a long time ago and took its friend Hope with it.

Maybe if the reservation had been nearer the freeway, we could’ve built a casino, sold cheap gas and untaxed cigarettes. But we’re a world away from an interstate teeming with gamblers and chainsmokers. No one would come to our Las Vegas. But those are the dreams we dream now, not the ones we’ve forgotten. The kids have computers now and their own cellphones. They live where the river has dried up and the mountains have crumbled and the skies are grey with microwave grids. So do we. The real world is dissolving into the past. We don’t see it yet, but so are we.

Jimmy, I know without seeing him now, is swinging in the dark, eyes closed, sightless as the windows across the unmowed football field with no curtains and the flickering blue electronic lights. He should go home. I should go home too. We’ve just forgotten where it is, is all.

After an hour in the South End Dental Clinic chair, I’m slowly starting to feel my face again. It’s been years since the last road construction in my mouth and I’d forgotten — or repressed — the uniqueness of the dental experience. Mouth dams, jackhammers, sump pumps, interrogation lighting and full disclosure on finances, assets and lienholders.

Like I said, it’s been awhile in between visits, something to do with the lack of dental insurance. You want to see the face of poverty, look at a person’s teeth, at least the ones that aren’t missing. I’m trying the best I can to keep mine. But … when the good doctor shows me the estimate for filling a cavity, $250 (not counting x-rays,etc.) versus what the bill will be if this is a root canal, $2200 —which is what he expects it to be — you can maybe understand why the frugal shopper might opt to have the damn tooth pulled right out of his head for good, skip the anaesthetic.

My last root canal and crown cost $1100. The dentist in Stanwoodopolis drilled twice and didn’t get the infected nerve cleaned out. The last visit he asked if I wanted to give it a 3rd go or have him refer me to a specialist. I said, gee Bob,I didn’t get a dental degree but since you need to ask, let’s go with someone who knows what they’re doing, which is obviously neither of us.

You want to spoil a doctor/client relationship, this is pretty direct. Course when I had to have the specialist’s temporary crown replaced with a permanent one, something beneath him apparently, I went to a new dentist. News travels fast in Podunk and I got a pretty cold shoulder from my new guy. Another last visit. Which is why, after 15 years, I’m at the newly opened South End Pain Clinic, no records transferred, no toxic gossip exchanged. Just money. The way I remember dentistry in the good old days….

I don’t need to tell you Christmas started a little early this year. I know, it does every year. Apparently there’s no need to wait til we’ve digested half a ton of turkey to move on to the next holiday, just step right off from overeating to overconsuming. If you’re worried about a so-called war on Christmas, I got some real good news for you: Santa is winning! And so, apparently, are the retailers and so are the Chinese.

Even on the Scroogish South End the muzak droning Bing Crosby chestnuts has become a tinselly tinnitus. Folks leave their Christmas lights up 365 days now, why bother crawling up a precarious ladder to pull the shack decoration down for the one month we aren’t counting down the day til the credit card bills hit JACKPOT?

Call me a curmeudgeon, label me a Grinch and hit me on the head with Aunt Pearl’s fruitcake, but our holiday strategy is we hightail it off the South End when Christmas gets close. Nowadays we grab a few friends who don’t have kids or family that necessitate a 2nd mortgage to fill a tree with presents and we head to places so bleak, so impoverished, so beaten down that they don’t bother with lights or tinsel or commercial trappings. Used to be we could escape the hoopla down here, but not anymore. Naw, you have to be farther off the beaten path to escape the holiday onslaught than Camano Island, even the South End.

I’d tell you where we exile ourselves, but then half of you would follow us off to serenity and a quiet holiday devoid of WalMarts and strip mall outlets. No offense, we’re sure not trying to wage war on Christmas. And we sure don’t want to collapse the economy. We only want to celebrate Christmas the way it once was, with friends and good cheer. Just not all year long.