The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I been making lately, down at the Diner’s restroom, a sociological study of commode values. Oh, I know, you’re thinking my god, can’t we just leave well enough alone? But I’m an Observer of all things South End and I don’t intend to leave a stone unturned or a bathroom unscrutinized. What I been noticing is this: a lot of the boyz won’t touch a seat or a flush handle. They’d rather leave their offerings for the next occupant than risk some ugly herd of germs jumping onto their ungloved hand, apparently because they either won’t wash them or they don’t think there’s enough anti-bacterial power in the washroom hand soap.

I used to think South Enders were pretty salty fellows, tough as galvanized roofing nails, but apparently not. Maybe all this chatter about Bird Flu Pandemics has created a backlash response: CHICKENITIS. I think it’s got to stop, men. I think you got to step up to the plate — or the bowl — and put your Big Girl Panties on and just be as courageous as you can be. If the seat is in the Down position, for Pete’s sake, wrap your little hand in toilet paper and put it in the Up mode – don’t whiz through the hole and leave the next Sitter a splattered seat. It’s unworthy and it’s Piggish, not to mention Priggish. Jeez, fella, were you born in a damn outhouse?

And when you’re done, flush yer mess!! I KNOW your mama trained you better than this. Even a dog kicks a little dirt over his scat so Man Up, you little wusses. You’re giving us South Enders an odorous reputation. Although … I will say, the womenfolk might start appreciating a seat that’s left Up instead of one defiled and Down.

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Every year we have folks who say they didn’t get an invitation to our little she-bang party, wring out the old, ring in the new. The truth is it’s an open invitation. We don’t much go out of our way to send out invites, we just assume if you have heard about it, you got the word. Anyway, this year you folks who need a notarized letter from us, well, this is it. By all means haul down here and help us and a few other South Enders drown our griefs and hope for a better Nuevo Ano.

Here is your New Year 2020 Invitation

So you’ve been wandering in the Wilderness these past couple of years, cast out from civilized norms, wondering where your country went, asking yourself if there was something more you could’ve done. And the answer is Of course there’s something more you could do. You could come to the annual South End New Year’s Party at Karen and Jack’s, a refuge from the storm and Stormy, a balm for self-imposed exiles waiting for the opportune time to return without asking for asylum. You been in the Asylum. Two years. It’s time to take back the Next Year. It’s time to breathe the free air of the South End. It’s time to be Optimistic once again. It’s time to Occupy America.
So haul on down to Karen and Skeeter’s annual New Year Bash, bring a dish, bring a bottle of cheer, bring a friend or two. You know the drill. 4015 S. Camano Drive. 2019 starts here.

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The wag who said the only certainties in life are taxes and death never dropped into the many real estate offices on the South End for a ‘free’ map. An earthquake could separate us from the rest of the Civilized World and no matter the land values, real estate would be the Real Show. If a nuclear explosion ended most life as we know it, there’d still be cockroaches and realtors, both equally adaptable to any environment.

Not that I’m suggesting they’re equally unsavory. I can list a whole lot of professions more detestable than a land and home salesman. But most of those are SOME kind of salesman, from snake oil to stocks and bonds. And it’s not that I think they’re inherently dishonest or greedy. Most are good folks and most are poor as me. It’s just that there are so damn many of them. They’re more prolific than us artists who apparently breed up every holler and down every ravine. So many …. none can make a decent living competing with one another. The folks who moved here either become artists or realtors because there’s no other employment available within a tank of $4 a gallon gas.

So now we got 17 flavors of real estate, everything from ReFlux Realty to Windy Rear, all vying for the same properties. Which, if you’ve lived here more than the time it takes to close a mortgage, means about a third of us are selling, a third are buying and about half must be the realtors. Drive down the island and it looks like more For Sale signs than mailboxes some years. It’s too bad the signs aren’t painted by the artists — we’d become the Art Island practically overnight, famous up and down the Sound.

But don’t tell the realtors – it would only draw more Art Lovers hoping to buy a small studio. And in a year or two, they’d become real estate agents themselves. It’s a vicious circle and we need to break the cycle. Although … I’ll worry more when the realtors start painting tourist art.

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H&H B&B

Down in the economically distressed hollers of the South End, many a man (and almost as many a woman) has turned to desperate measures to keep from falling into the abyss of full time employment. We’ll try damn near ANYTHING before looking for a job. And essentially, isn’t this what capitalism is all about?? The god-given right NOT to work? Course it is! We’d rather kill ourselves laboring for ourselves, we’d rather go broke and hungry trying some bonehead endeavor, we’d rather jeapordize our mental and physical health before we’d take a job doing something we hate 20 to 40 miles away from hearth and home.

The Hearth and Home B&B was Earl’s idea, but Patti signed on too. It was that or welfare, she figured, so why not humor Earl. She did make it clear, though, she wasn’t going to do all the cooking and cleaning, buster – he’d have to make beds and clean toilets. Earl hemmed, Earl hawed, Earl said he’d have plenty to do setting up the website and handling the reservations that were certain to pour in, that and ‘cuting up’ the place so the old farmhouse would look more quaint than shacky, but in the end, Earl, desperate to escape the horrors of real employment, signed on to bathroom duties and bed making, figuring, if I know Earl, he could wiggle out of those before too long.

Home and Hearth Bed and Breakfast spent a small fortune on web designs, on yellow page ads, on fancy signage, stationary, all the rigamarole of business start-ups not imagined at the outset, took a second mortgage on the property, then waited for the tourists to pour in from the smog-sickened cities. “Charming turn of the Century Farmstead. Spectacular views of orchards and fields and Mt. Baker in the distance.” The orchards were overgrown and played out, the field was impossible to mow, the farm equipment didn’t look rustic, just rusting, and Mt. Baker was barely visible on the best of days. H&H B& B lasted about 6 months before Patti took a job cutting hair at the salon beneath the real estate office. Earl soldiered on, but finally he found work at Boeing 45 miles away. It’s a long commute, but as Earl says, there’s great views of Baker and the Cascade Range on the way. And home is like a vacation at a B& B. Only he doesn’t have to make the bed or clean the toilets anymore. Patti figures it’s a pretty good trade-off.

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