The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

There’s a truism among us park rangers: a neglected park invites vandalism. I’ve been taking care of the only county park on the South End for about 15 years. It’s not much, five acres, couple of picnic tables, BBQ grill, trails, just a small place of respite from the woes of the world. I mow, plant flowers and shrubs and trees, clear trail, pick up litter, stock the 60’s phone booth Little Library, add sculpture and art where I can, all to help the county for nada, another Friends of Camano Island Parks volunteer.

For the past five years or more the chain link fence around the parking lot perimeter has been smashed, knocked down completely in places and stood sagging so that it looked like the dental work of a bad prizefighter. This year the county finally got around to replacing the sections that were bad. A little late, but better than nothing. For the past couple of years I’ve asked the county to regravel the parking lot which is, after any rain and always throughout the fall and winter and spring, a mudhole with deep craters. I’ve been told this is Top Priority for the county parks. I hate to think what qualifies as Low Priority.

I could write an entire humor column on the excuses I’ve been given why our Top Priority mudhole never gets graded and graveled. Broken tractor, busted pickup truck, leg problems of the park guy, misjudged gravel estimate (twice), budget shortfall, backlogged blackberry cleanup, forced sick leave if not taken in this fiscal year, you name it, I’ve heard it.

The place with its tarpit parking lot looks like hell, a great invitation for vandals and yeah, we’ve got plenty of vandals. Strewn garbage, broken library windows, burned books, stolen grill, stolen art, new fence smashing, tossed condoms, plants dug up, paintball splatter on the trees. Do I blame the county for all that? You bet I do. The volunteers on these parks, working years for nothing, donating gas and mowers and landscaping, we deserve better than a shrug of the shoulders or a litany of lame excuses from the county. Am I pissed off? You’re damn right I’m pissed off.

But …to be fair, I’ve forever been the one who rejoiced in living far from the reach of Rome. The County of Island has always been a moat away, a Saratoga Passage away or worst case, a long slog by road up through Stanwoodopolis, through Snohomish County, Skagit County, Fidalgo Island then across the Deception Pass bridge and down to Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island. From my little park, about most of a day round trip. So if the bureaucracy of the county seems to have forgotten about us, well, maybe they’ll understand if I skip my property taxes this year. You know, my truck isn’t running well, my foot has been hurting me lately, I’ve got my own blackberry cleanup, I’m saving for a tractor, I misjudged the tax payment, my personal budget is a little thin this fiscal year, I need to take sick leave or at least a few mental health days, don’t forget Covid but hey, that property tax is Priority One for me, trust me on that. Oh, and thanks for your patience!

When I was the ripe old age of 20, I decided to get a vasectomy. The world sure didn’t need any more Skeeters, I decided, and furthermore, I knew I wouldn’t be much of a dad. Maybe too selfish, maybe knew I’d be broke and out of work, maybe just wasn’t in my life’s job description. Looking back 50 years later, I don’t have any regrets whatsoever even though I suspect I might have been an okay father but hey, the world has plenty of okay fathers and way plenty kids without me adding to the glut. Deciding to be childless was one thing, finding a doc who would perform the vasectomy on a 20 year old was a lot more daunting. The first few I went to quizzed me about my decision, told me they wouldn’t perform it, figured I might change my mind down the road. I assured them I wouldn’t be changing my mind. They assured me they wouldn’t have any part of my plans.

I will say, at least I didn’t have picketers outside the clinics and doctors’ offices, shouting at me, screaming Bible verses, telling me I would go to hell if I prevented a life from coming into this world. But what I took away from all this was that it was my body all right, but there were those who thought maybe it wasn’t. They knew better than me and they had the scalpel hand. They had the law on their side. They had the Power and I had, well, I had pretty much nothing. Way of the world, I guess.

I could have used birth control the rest of my life. Could have abstained. Could have been a priest. There would still be those self-righteous folks who would object to the pill, to the day-after drug, to condoms, to … well, you name it, they would pass a law if they could. And they do. They prevent Planned Parent clinics from operating in a lot of states, they ban the morning after pill, they want government out of everything BUT your sexuality. And today they’re arguing at the Supreme Court that abortions be made illegal, essentially. They’ve decided when life begins and they have the Bible on their side. If you don’t believe in the Bible, if you think life begins at birth, if you don’t happen to believe that abortion is baby killing, well, get ready, things are about to change. And not to your liking.

Nobody, and I mean pretty much nobody, is pro-abortion. Abortion is a hard damn decision and I wouldn’t want to be in the position to have to make it. But …plenty of women, girls really, find themselves deciding if a child is the right choice. The Court is going to help them with that now. For sure some will do okay raising an unwanted kid, some by themselves, some just a kid themselves, some struggling to be a mother and still find a job. But a lot of women are going to discover their body isn’t theirs, their decision isn’t theirs, and their future was determined by five or six people in black robes. Way of the world, maybe, but that doesn’t make it right.

These pesky viruses, they just keep mutating like zombies digging back up out of their hastily filled graves. This latest one, according to frantic news accounts from every network, newspaper, media platform and gossip, appears to be mutated like nothing before, some 60 mutations on its little self. God only knows what it’s capable of, what it might do, who it might infect, where it will show its spiky face next.

And just when you thought you were safe. Two inoculations and a booster plus masks still worn and public avoidance still in effect, what, me worry? Course, back in Wisconsin where I just spent a couple of weeks, they stopped worrying long ago, mostly anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. Covid? Naw, they don’t believe it’s real. So what if their hospitals are filling up again, facts don’t scare them. I rarely saw a mask on anybody in the grocery stores, other than myself. So you can bet the Omicron variation won’t convince them any more than the Delta that vaccines might help. They don’t need your damn help!! And, you know what, I’m not offering to help. Like how? Tell them about Charlie Darwin? Isn’t this the whole point about evolution? You got a brain that feeds on Qanon and Breitbart, well, it’s going to atrophy. Simple as that. Eat a banana and piss up a rope.

Meanwhile, back here on the ground we got scientists working around the clock, monitoring cases, checking out severity, transmission speed, DNA sequencing, all that mumbo jumbo the folks who don’t believe in Covid think is bogus. And who knows, maybe this new variant will be the one that dominates and is less deadly, just a seasonal flu down the road. More Darwin, more evolution when it comes to these replicating bugs. Give me science as a weapon to fight this, maybe stop with the hair-on-fire news media reports and good luck to the folks who think three quarters of a million dead Americans is nothing worse than a cold. Duh.

We live on what the tourism folks like to advertise as the Island You Can Drive To. It’s sort of true, unless you come at rush hour or a busy summer weekend, then it’s more like The Island You Can Crawl To, not quite as appealing but never the less, slightly more accurate.

I read in last week’s Stanwoodopolis Gazette that the city planners were going to propose multiple plans for a bypass around the gridlocked megalopolis, most imagining a beltline out through the farm fields to the north before looping back to the main highway at the edge of town just before the Memorial Bridge leading to the island. Farmers are already upset, downtown businesses are peeved, the City Council doesn’t need another civil war after the deadlock over if what where and how to site a new City Hall, the city administrator just quit and, well, everything’s pretty much normal in our fair city.

Not being a registered voter in the town, I suppose I’m not really welcome to offer my outsider suggestions. Sure, I’ve driven that gauntlet through the sewer lagoons for 44 years, but it doesn’t make the local yokels Velkommen sign any more welcoming now than it did when I first arrived with long hair and no money, no job and no doubt a bad attitude. Times change, I’ll grant you, but some things don’t. The downtown businesses are still as friendly as ever, meaning they want our bizness but not our presence. Shop, but hurry on home now. Here’s your hat, what’s my hurry?

So okay, here’s my two cents, a long time suffering outsider who tried the SHOP LOCAL slogan and never thought reciprocity was part of the deal. Build the Tunnel! Bertha’s done digging Seattle’s, haul it north, set it up by the new high school and dig til you reach the bridge. Now there’s a bypass. Out of sight, out of mind. Stanwoodopolis gets the peace and quiet it has always wanted and we islanders get to bypass the town that never really wanted us in the first place. If the city puts up a Velkommen sign at the island end of town finally, well, I’m saying it’s too damn late. Dig the bypass!