The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I’ve heard it said that Camano Island is the fourth largest island in America. The continental America anyway. We’re on the biggest island in all of America this week, Hawaii. 13,800 foot volcano – above sea level – taller than Everest if you count the distance to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, the entire island black cinder spewed from the lava still forming the island. The volcanoes divide the island in half, one side dry, the other side with the rainiest city in the United States, Hilo. Right now we’re in Hilo. And yeah, it rains a bit.

If you think of Hawaii as a lush, tropical jungle of a place, you’d be right. But only half the time. Most of it so far is fairly barren, lava fields without much vegetation, volcanic mountains sides devoid of trees, long stretches of semi-arid countryside. Maybe what you’d expect from the top of a huge mountain building up from the ocean.

The Big Island, Hawaii, is the largest island in the chain, but the sense you have here is these islands are small outposts on the planet far far from anything else, pinpoints on a map smack dab in the middle of the Pacific. If you were the type who wanted to escape, this might look like a likely candidate.

Maybe I’ve lived too long on an island with an easy escape route, but living here with volcanoes still active nearby or right underneath, maybe it’s a little too primal, still unformed, altogether too close to the crater’s edge for my comfort level. Sort of like living in Pompeii far out in the Aegean Sea with nothing else close by. Pele looks like an angry god, not a kindly one, breathing all the time right down my neck.

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The End of the Road Tavern isn’t actually where the road ends, but it’s close. A few Forest Service roads branch into the mountains and there are a few cabins up Rainbow Creek, but otherwise most traffic stops at the tavern. Donny Butler owns it, bartends, cooks and breaks up fights. He closes Monday and on Christmas, but otherwise Donny is always open. No one around UpCreek recalls him taking a vacation and if he’s ever been sick, it was on a Monday. His cabin is in the woods behind the bar, but none of us regulars have ever set foot inside. Most of us can’t imagine him in such a domestic setting and the others think the house is just his storage area.

You want to know what’s happening around UpCreek, the End of the Road is where you can find out. Who’s poaching what and where, who’s catching cutthroat and what size, whose wife is cheating with who and whose kid is going to prison for what crime. Two years ago Donny got a license to sell hard stuff, figuring to double his profits like a lot of the taverns downriver. Which he did. A lot of profit in a bottle of Jack, not so much in a keg of beer. Donny noticed even the women started coming around, ordered cocktails he had to learn how to make and these were very profitable, plus the ladies brought a fresh clientele and a new atmosphere. He put some checkered tablecloths on the stained tables, tidied up a bit and added salads to the menu. The End of the Road seemed like the Start of Something.

This hunting season a couple of Seattleites celebrated two buck kills a little too exuberantly. “Double Shots!!” they shouted deep into the night until Trapper Jim, also deep into his cups, took umbrage at the out-of-towners’ good luck and his own lack thereof. Later Donny admitted at the trial, he should have quit serving all three. Hindsight doesn’t need a high magnification scope. Jim was untying a 6 point from the hunters’ Range Rover roof when they stumbled into the parking lot. Words were exchanged, push came to shove and Jim pulled his 30-30 Winchester off his Chevy pickup’s rack and shot one of the men.

Who lived … fortunately. But that’s why the End of the Road no longer serves booze and why women drink downstream. Or quietly at home.

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What I love about a Google search is the way they put the ads at the top of the ‘finds’. They already got a place heading for SHOPPING, but just in case you might’ve missed a hot deal, they’ll park some at the top of the list. Course, they’ll add some more throughout the search results too. Don’t ask me why, but I find this really annoying.

But then again, welcome to Capitalist America. Television has ads to interrupt shows, newspapers have ads, magazines too, highways have billboards, athletes wear endorsements, the internet tracks our every click and offers you a related product. Thanks guyz! Corporations buy elections, corporations are considered citizens by the Supreme Court, corporations run the world. They advertise, they lobby, they own your ass, period.

Now we got Facebook, Instagram, every social media platform, all monetized, all ethical considerations cast aside, well, what’s new? What? You want state sponsored search engines, commercial free? I wonder, do Russia or China have ads on Tik Tok or Google. Are they selling vacation trips to the Black Sea or Outer Mongolia? Black market movies?

It won’t be long and we’ll tattoo NIKE on our foreheads for a monthly stipend. Already you can find folks who ‘wrap’ their cars in logos of various companies for a price. I’ve even heard of corporations wanting to put stratospheric billboards in space. There just doesn’t seem to be anywhere you can go not to be assaulted by advertisements 24/7 your entire life cradle to grave. Although … last time I whistled past a cemetery the plots didn’t carry ads or logos. Rest in Peace … finally!

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A few years ago Guitar Bob’s beater car gave up the ghost so he asked if I would drive him north to the used car lots to buy a replacement jalopy. Reluctantly, I said okay even though I had to go after my graveyard shift with no sleep. He was, after all, a friend. And one without wheels to get to work….

Walking into a used car lot is vaguely similar to driving the streets of Baghdad in an unarmored HumVee. It’s a landmine. You might make it back out, but you’re going to take incoming and there’s going to be casualties. At some point you’ll ask yourselves is this war worth it? Did you have an Exit Strategy? And who, in the end, is really the enemy? Or like General Sherman famously stated as he torched the South: car buying is hell.

Bob started out hoping to buy a vehicle for under $500. Not wanting to bust his bubble, I decided to forego the story of my last expedition into the minefields. He would learn soon enough. The Hard Way. The lot in Stanwoodopolis, just prior to closing its doors forever, showed him a $2500 wreck, bad tires, 175,000 miles on the odometer, a tranny that slipped, burned a little oil. Savvy buyers that we were, we moved on.

At a fly-by-night used lot in Burlington we found a nice little Honda, 200,000 miles, ran good, only $6500. Obviously they could rob you without a gun. Bob offered the nice salesman $5000 and he said wait right here in his office while he conferred with the manager. Bob was concerned the nice salesman would think we were gay. I said you got way more to worry about than some yahoo with a bad toupee’s opinion of your sorry manhood. In a minute, you’re gonna meet the manager.

Which we did. The manager said we seemed like nice boys and he sure wanted to work with us on this deal, put us in that car, ‘but fellas, I have to make a little money too. I can’t just give this away at a loss.’ He showed us paperwork that proved he was rock bottom on that $6500. But seeing’s how we were nice boys, he’d take a couple hundred off and take no profit. Bob said let me think about it and the manager said sure, sure, but don’t take too long, this beauty’s gonna sell today at this price. Outside Bob worried he’d thought we were parnters. I said I’ll sit out the next negotiation.

By late afternoon I’m fading from lack of sleep and food. It’s late, we’ve hit every shyster and crook up and down the pike, nothing is even close to reasonable and the notion Bob is going to shop for a week or two sends me into adrenaline-fueled panic. I drop down in the Toyota lot and forgetting about promising to stay out of negotiations, march up to a salesman coming out of the showroom side door. “We’re looking for a Toyota or a Honda,” I rapidfire. “$5000 or less, under 100,000 miles. The salesman doesn’t blink, he doesn’t hesitate, he smells the blood in the water and he knows instinctively exactly what to do.

“Your lucky day,” he smiles. “Just came in, hasn’t been detailed yet, but you boys won’t mind saving on that, one owner I’m pretty sure and the boss wants to move inventory, make you a helluva deal.” He points us over to where we just came from, past a line of cars with prices on the windshields and in my sleep deprived fog I realize he’s pointing at MY car. “Give me a minute and I’ll grab the keys from the office. Be right back. Go ahead and kick the tires.”

I regret, even to this day, we didn’t tell him we found the keys in the ignition and take him with us for a test drive. “These two gay guys, see, pulled over on the shoulder …. I thought maybe we’d run out of gas. Then I thought, oh my God, they’re going to do unspeakable things to me. But no, they said get out. Here? I asked. Here, they said. I called the lot and told them to call State Patrol, report a stolen car, even gave them the license number…. Ya know, I always said I could sell snowballs to Eskimos. But those two gay guys, I couldn’t close the deal on selling them their own car. I’m good, but I guess I’m not that good.

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