The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Most start-up businesses on the notoriously bankrupt-prone South End fail within the first 6 months, victims of over optimistic entrepreneurs who grew tired of dead end careers and overbearing bosses.  They thought what they needed was a new start and a new boss.  Themselves.  Trouble was, the new boss was pretty much the same as the old boss.  Plus he didn’t pay as well.  If at all.

The South End Storage and Moving company was different.  Ralph Monroe had acquired properties from the Mountain/Dixon line to the Head back when land was cheap and he was looking for tax write-offs for his large profits on Raging Ralph’s Appliance Centers down in Smokey Point.  Ralph was one of those hucksters who appeared in his own TV ads as a fast talking Freddy, smoking hot deals, c’mon down, c’mon down, our prices can’t be beat, guaranteed!!, a slightly overweight balding carnival barker with a bad comb-over, apparently the keys to Success with a capital dollar sign.

A few years back small clusters of storage sheds began to pop up in cleared off acreage, one near the Diner, another down by the abandoned Tyee Store, a third nearly to the end of the island barely visible from the road.  Ralph didn’t advertise them, probably because they sat in residentially zoned land, not commercial, but Rome was a long haul away still over on Whidbey Island and the South End barely hit their radar.

For a time Ralph stored his overstock in the sheds, but back when Tyee Store was the economic center of the South End, he hit on the idea of hauling used appliances out beside the highway with For Sale signs on them.  Jenny Wainright, recently let go when the Bikini Barista expresso stand was forced out of Stanwoodopolis by the morally upright citizenry and its town council up there, kept an office by the sheds where Ralph hoped the surging sales of used stoves and refrigerators might keep her busy and him even more profitable.

I took a photo of the roadside super sale and made one of my South End posters for the WHITE TRASH WHITE SALE and hung it in the Tyee Store back in the days when the store didn’t take itself too seriously.  Ralph was having coffee at one of the tables with a couple of other caffeine addicts when he caught sight of his appliances over the ice cream coolers.  ‘What the??’ he sputtered to Don, the manager who let me hang these.  ‘What does it mean?’

Don allowed as how Skeeter was probably making fun of him.  ‘Kind of trashes up the highway, Ralph,’ Randy G. chimed in, which only set Ralph on a rant.  ‘We’ll see about this!’ he hollered, citing his constitutional rights to make a buck and asking just where the hell this Skeeter guy lived.  At least until Chris, our local sheriff’s deppity, quietly said, ‘Ya know, Ralph, some kid crawls into one of your frigidaires and suffocates, you’ll be liable, probably criminal offense on top of the lawsuits.  You might want to think about that.’

And so the appliances got wheeled in off the road, the storage sheds got slowly rented to the newcomers who needed someplace to park their boats and couches and antique cars and Jenny left for a part time expresso gig on the north end.  One that she could wear clothes for.  Even if the tips weren’t as good.  And life down here returned to normal.  Whatever that is….

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Last week at our Small Craft Advisory craft show in Stanwoodopolis, I met the Director emeritus of the world famous Pilchuck Glass School who was instrumental in bringing Dale Chihuly’s vision of promoting all things glass.  Pilchuck Glass School sits in the foothills just above town and started back in 1971 with a couple of instructors and 18 students who lived in tents and makeshift huts overlooking the Skagit delta and Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains.  If you’re ever wondering why the area has a glass blower behind every fir tree, the folks who studied at the school fell in love with the place and stuck around the Pacific Northwest.

When the school was small, we locals were invited up once a year for a free tour of the facilities.  Bring a picnic lunch, bottle of wine, watch the glass blowing, wander the grounds.  They were a welcoming bunch back then.  Course, like most successful enterprises, they changed, started charging $25 for a visit, copped an attitude of artistic superiority and pretty much ruined the sweet ambiance of the earlier years.  Fame will do that in case you’ve lived on the South End too long.

I was up there with Smoker Bill, one of my cronies, in the early ‘90’s to visit his friend who was in charge of maintenance.  Bill was probably the best and most creative woodworker I’d ever met.  Might still be.  He could do things with wood most folks couldn’t begin to imagine.  His buddy Richard the maintenance man was no slouch either.  We drove through all the signs prohibiting entrance to unauthorized personnel and met up with Richard who gave us a tour of the new and old facilities, then we found seats in the open air glass blowing arena to watch two women work the furnace in a choreographed dance of glass gathers on the end of a pipe back into the furnace, blow a bubble of molten silica, another pass in the blast furnace, add an outer layer of glass, etc., etc.  These women were known for their giant fruits.  Apples, pears, big lemons.

Gotta say, not my idea of great art.  Not even good art.  Big ass fruits, c’mon….  But part way through an apple the size of a small poodle, one of the artists spoke to an assistant, pointed in our direction and next thing you know we were unceremoniously being escorted out of the premises.   Richard apologized but we said it was okay, rules are rules.  Although, to be honest, when I hear someone say how bohemian the lifestyle is at the School, how free and untethered, just let their imaginations soar without earthbound restrictions, I mostly think of a long row of mutant apples and pears lined up, price tags affixed, ready for shipping to adoring buyers across the nation.   So it really doesn’t bother me … and actually makes me say with some unwarranted pride , as I did with the former Director, yeah, I was kicked out of Pilchuck Glass School.

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I had the honor this morning of emceeing the Stanwoodopolis/Camano Food Bank Fundraiser, an event to help kickstart and support the new grocery store style food bank in town.  When I mentioned to a buddy last weekend that I would be doing this shindig, he wanted to know why they needed more money.   Now understand, we’re talking about donations from biznesses and the public, you and me and the shops on the island and in town.  What I never understand and never will are the folks who begrudge the homeless, the hungry, the deprived, the single mom trying to raise a kid or two, the people who lost their job, the downtrodden begrudge just giving them a helping hand.  They think, I guess, that these folks are losers or drug addicts or alcoholics or they’re just lazy good-for-nothings.

Life can be cruel for a lot of us.  Society has a game that’s rigged for the privileged, the white, especially us males, for those whose parents could live in the right places, send their kids to the right colleges, feed them well, love them, educate them.

But … for a lot of us we might have been created equal, that doesn’t mean we have equal opportunities for life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Don’t kid ourselves.  And don’t listen to the hard hearted who had an easier time navigating the American system.  Folks get left behind, folks become homeless and hungry thru no fault of their own.  We don’t have to blame anyone, not them or the government or the American Way of Life.  We just have to find it in our hearts to help the folks who never had the same advantages, who fell on hard times, who ran into a streak of bad luck.  We just have to be part of the safety net.  We have to help these people who, after all, are part of the family.

This is what I said to the assemblage this morning.  But ya know, I’m preaching to the choir.  My buddy wouldn’t have ears for this.  He’d tell me the government gives the foodbank subsidies and grants, why should he be obligated to spend his taxes or make a donation.  Why should anyone get what my buddy thinks is a free ride.  He made his, they could have too.  Like I said, I’ll never understand this kind of thinking.  And he’ll probably never have to walk a mile in their shoes.  Or even a few yards.

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So the World Health Organization just declared a new psychopathology, Gaming Disorder, the addictive propensity to sit for hour after hour with an X-box, disdaining sleep and food and exercise.  Good diagnosis, guyz!  But you forgot to include Facebook, You-Tube, computer addictions, porn and cellphone.  Maybe, just maybe, they’re really all one disease.  Ya think?

I guess the Facebook zombies actually stop to eat.  And it could even be argued that this social media is really social.  A new social, I guess, no face to face necessary, just tweets and instagrams, nothing too up-close and personal.  Tim Cook, the new warden at Apple, recently declared sitting at a computer terminal to be the new cancer.  Thanks, Tim, for asking the troops to stand up.  How about asking them to go outdoors and exercise?  Or quit their carcinogenic jobs?  Or get a life?

We’re rewiring our brains, no doubt about it.  B.F. Skinner and the Pavlovian dogs, peck a button and the bait, I mean the reward, comes tumbling out, time after time, predictable as an IV of opiods.  Try this experiment if you’re a doubter:  put away your cellphone, turn off your computer, unplug the TV and peripherals and devices, see how long you can last before the shakes and the fevers start.  I bet about an hour.  We might be missing important stuff.  You know, Trump, Beyonce, Oprah, the photo from a friend you rarely see, Trump, the latest movie star scandal, did I mention Trump?  If I did, let me add Trump again anyway.

This is our reality now.  We even made a reality show huckster our Leader.  We get what we deserve, the old adage goes in regard to a country and its rulers.  Times certainly change and now they’re changing in hyper-drive.  If anyone thinks, myself included, that there will be a cure for this disorder, we got another think coming.  In about two tweets.

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