The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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When I was a kid struggling to come to grips with the funhouse of high school cruelties, my parents made it clear to us boys that when we reached the ripe old age of 18, they were cutting us loose. They really didn’t need to bother. All us brothers were planning our escapes from the Northern Wisconsin hellhole they’d landed us smack into. Some folks complain about the mosquitoes up there but not me. It was the blood suckers who were human that annoyed me more and I intended to leave first chance I got.

Which I did. Went to college and got a 30 hour a week job. I would come home for a holiday or two, but basically I was out of the nest for good. Thanks Mom, thanks Dad, appreciated the raising. Nowadays we got kids living in their old bedrooms until they’re 30. Rents are crazy high, spouses are put on hold, jobs are minimum wage. This seems to me, a guy who couldn’t wait to get on with my life outside the confinement of my parents’ walls and rules and thumbs, a sorry state of affairs.

A couple years ago an eagle’s nest down at the state park was easily watched from a trail above. The two fledglings reached the point where it was time to literally leave the nest, but for some reason one of the kids didn’t want to leave. Probably got used to cheap rent and free meals. Or just couldn’t face the world on its own, who knows. The parents tired of it and one day tore the nest to pieces. Stay if you want, but there’s no home here anymore.

Now, I don’t think human parents ought to burn down the house when Sally or Jimmy are barhopping with their friends, let them come home to a smoldering childhood, see if that doesn’t give them reason to leave, but I can’t see how extending dependence a decade is going to help them become independent, self-sufficient adults. Call me cruel, but life is hard enough without pampering the little beggars. They need to face the world, live with crummy roommates, take a crappy job, eat top ramen and macaroni and cheese the way I did, live in bad apartments, all that young adult learning. So that in the end, if nothing else, they’ll be sympathetic with the underprivileged, the poor and the homeless. That, or they’ll give up and become artists. Not that we need a lot more artists….

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Yesterday we had a shootout at the freeway park and ride. Most of these are drive-by shootings, but this one, no siree, this one was a genuine wild wild west pull-your-six-shooters and blast away from close range in true vigilante justice, see who’s standing when the cylinders are empty. After this hail of bullets ended, one guy was shot four times and carried away to the nearest hospital where he’ll most likely live. The others, well, they had some serious explaining to do.

It seems one of these yahoos had his chainsaws stolen, so when he ran across an ad in Craigslist featuring the exact same saws, well, he decided to call the thief up and arrange a meeting to buy them. He got his son and a couple of buddies to come along to the meetup at the park and ride and then, just to be on the safe side, he called the sheriff’s department to meet them there too. So now we got the Earps, we got a posse, we got plenty of guns and we got a nice public spot.

The seller must not have suspected too much or else he never watched the Gunfight at the OK Corral, but he came alone, no gang, no family members, just him and a couple of chainsaws. When the Earps got tired of waiting for the Law, the buddies of the aggrieved theft victims decided to approached this guy’s truck, no doubt pretending to be the interested buyers of the saw, but in true comic fashion, they came with guns too. Drawn. And the seller, realizing something bad was afoot, produced his own weapon and commenced to firing. Chaos, of course, ensued.

These things get out of hand sometimes. Sure, they should’ve waited for the sheriff. Maybe they could’ve left the guns at home. All easy to imagine in hindsight. But a man’s chainsaw is his chainsaw and a rope is too good for the mangy dog that stole it. Or so it seemed. Until the purported thief, in interviews with the police, claimed he’d owned those saws for years and even identified marks and features that seemed to validate that claim. And the attackers did mention that they’d really only seen the photo in the ads and that, yeah, it might not have been their saws. Saws tend to look a lot alike since they do look a lot alike. And yeah, it might’ve been smart to wait for the sheriff.

No doubt there are some lessons to be learned here. But probably none gleaned by us South Enders. Me, I’ve started locking up my two chainsaws. I don’t want to have to duel it out for the time I have to get them back from a thief. Probably better just to bargain him down rather than shoot him. Especially if I found out later they weren’t my saws….

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What is it about real estate sales that they feel compelled to include mug shots of the agents? I notice that Reflux Realty, Windy-Rear, all of em down here on the island, they run ads with photos of dozens of these salespeople. Half our ads in the local papers are pictures of these piranhas. Looks like a geezer version of a high school yearbook.

Now that I think about it, the insurance agents pretty much do the same thing. Is this a sales thing? They think if we see their faces we’ll trust them more? I always considered myself a pretty trusting sort. I take checks from clients. I never ask for money up front, just at the end when the job is done, that kind of bad bizness practice. Call me naïve. Call me stupid. Call me an artist. But … in the end I’m a salesperson too. Maybe I can blame my lack of business on not advertising with a photo of myself. Or just on not advertising. Duh.

Something, though, troubles me about these photos in the paper all the time. Maybe the sheer numbers. There’s dozens of agents under each office. Even the post office doesn’t have this many photographs in their lobby with wanted felons. I wonder if the point isn’t to brag on the hordes of agents they have, a hungry sales force in the market, desperate to serve me, ready to kill if necessary to make a sale, to put food on their tables no matter what the cost, no matter what price it takes. Darwinian real estate. Only the strong survive. Only the ones with the best photograph. The ones with honest eyes, beautiful features, reliable visage. If you look like a terrorist, don’t bother applying. If you’re old or ugly, get a different career. If your teeth are crooked, get em fixed. Who’s going to spend $300,000 on a fixer-upper bluff cabin if they think their agent never flossed?

I admit, I might be biased. Wouldn’t be the first time. I’ve only had a couple of real estate agents in all my life. My last one, old Bob whose last name I’ll withhold out of respect for the dead, cheated me out of a wood stove that was part of our original deal. Said he couldn’t remember if we’d agreed that would stay with the shack. I said that’s kind of your job, Bob, really, to remember things like that. Course, being the trusting sort, I didn’t have it in writing.

Bob, it turned out, lived a few doors down from my newly purchased palace. Needless to say we weren’t real good friends and not much for neighborliness. Bob passed on a few years later. I guess I should be more thankful he helped me find a place to live here on the South End. Maybe keep a photo for memory sake. Back then, though, the realtors weren’t so photogenic.

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The ‘Make My Day Guns & Ammo” shop does a brisk business these days on the heavily defended South End. Earl and his brother Biker Billy watched their revenues double in the 2008 election, then double again in 2012, most buyers convinced the government was going to confiscate all the firearms in America. Earl and Billy could keep up with their gun inventory, but ammo was rationed and frightened homeowners were put on a waiting list. Ralph Hansen wanted to know if he’d need to ask his ‘intruders’ if they’d mind waiting before they broke into his house, raped his wife and daughters, then killed him. In the end, Earl sold him a Browning over and under and a box of 12 gauge slugs he said would stop a rabid rhinoceros. Billy shook his head when Ralph walked out with the shotgun in its tooled leather case proud as Hemingway. “How many shotguns does he have?” he asked his brother. And Earl smiled as he put Ralph’s check under the cash drawer in the register. “Probably one shy of enough.”

Down my well armed end of the Alamo I hear plenty of gunfire. The mizzus took years to get used to the sudden bark of semi-automatic practice sessions of the local militia excercising not only their right to bear arms, but their obligation to shoot them as often as possible. She’d ask, alarmed, what is THAT?? Gunfire, I’d say nonchalantly, and she’d grow more alarmed, her fears realized and then want to call the police. It’s America, I’d explain patiently, figuring that was explanation plenty, all Clint Eastwood would bother with, why waste words OR ammo?

A few years back we had a bad hombre stroll down Bernie Road when it was a one lane dirt cutoff to Tyee Store, occasionally letting loose with an automatic assault rifle beside the cow pastures up there, alarming more than just the mizzus. Turns out he was wanted on felony warrants and the local gendarme treated him like Machine Gun Kelly on meth, waited until he’d gone to bed at his moll’s place off Dallman, then dropped a stun blast through the window and shot him to pieces reaching for either his trousers or his gun. The sheriffs around these parts don’t much cotton to automatic weapons being practiced on the roadways. Especially by hardass criminals.

I won’t say the mizzus has gotten used to country livin’, but she doesn’t race to the phone to call 911 every artillery session or the opening of hunting season. I guess she just figures it’s slightly better than moving to Beirut or Baghdad or the wrong side of Everett. At least the casualties are somewhat less. Even if supposedly we’re not at war.

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