The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I got a buddy who claims he was the first Owner-Builder on Camano Island. The year was 1977, the same year I bought my shack. I met him 13 years later and we ended up building 3 sailboats together, one for each of us and one for his pal the building inspector who became my friend too. Ironically, I may be one of the last Owner-Builders in Island County. I don’t think my permit was ever signed off on so I may well be the last official O-B.

I guess maybe they figured the codes got too complex for us amateur housebuilders, all those R-factors for insulation and E-glass in fenestrations and X-factors for our marriages. Or maybe it was this: a permit for an Owner-Builder was next to nothing, something like $50 when I got ours. The county might’ve done the tax-factor and realized us hippies were costing them revenue. Maybe some of us built our own palaces to save the permit expense, but I would’ve paid full freight just for the right to build my own place the way I wanted. A few hundred bucks wasn’t gonna stop me.

I spoze we can still build our own Xanadu, nothing to stop us. Just have to disclose that a rank amateur threw the hammer and ran the saw, flashed the windows, shingled the roof, installed the electric and plumbing and if you’re the prospective buyer, best beware!!! The people at the county sheds told me I’d be a Total Idiot to apply for an Owner-Builder status. Boy, he read me like a book. A comic book, I’d bet.

By the time I got our permit, us Owner-Builders had to meet the same codes as any fly-by-night contractor, go through the same inspections, all the rigamarole as the Big Boyz. In other words, the government here doesn’t allow for hippie shacks or slam-bang cabins. We got to build our parents’ suburban homes. Might explain why kids just stay with their folks now — why bother building the same damn place twice?

Two days ago we emerged from an accidental banishment from civilization as you know it. Two weeks with no internet, no streaming services from Prime or Netflix, no emails, virtually cut off from the Outside World, an electronic Black Hole where no messages came in and none went out, truly a dystopian glimpse into a dark future, post-apocalyptic. Sure, it was a nightmare, a stark reminder of life without constant bombardment of newsfeeds, sports scores, crummy movies, Epstein files, kitty videos, advertisements for new pharmaceuticals and unwanted spam. Okay, a nightmare the first day or so, but … once the withdrawal symptoms settled down and the methadone of walks on the beach or time spent with a banjo in my hands supplanted the previous addiction, ya know, time slowed down, books got read, the doomscrolling stopped and life seemed a tad more, for want of a better, if cliched, word, Real.

Try to imagine life before TV. Life before radio. Life before electricity even, which we also lost for four days after the windstorm blew out phones and internet and power. No podcasts, no Instagram, no Facebook, no Netflix bingeing, none of the usual stimuli that we amuse ourselves to avoid boredom. Just the bare minimum of entertainments. Hobbies, dinners with friends, walks in the woods, playing music. I know, why go on living?

If you want to fall into dangerous nostalgia, lose the internet for a few days. It wasn’t so long ago, really, before home computers, cellphones, I-pads and a plethora of electronic digital devices crowded out our old routines and replaced them with constant clickbait. Time-saving, we all thought when these toys arrived, little imagining they would gobble our hours and days. Who has time anymore to read a book? Our concentration wouldn’t allow for much more than a paragraph or two now. The thought for most of us of having a long conversation with our spouse, well, isn’t that why they invented TV?

Most of us wouldn’t want to return to those idyllic days when we had to fill the boredom in our lives with something of our own making. Too damn hard and getting harder by the nano-second. But if the time ever arrives when you too lose your umbilical to the digital world, you might just find that it isn’t the hell you imagine. Look back at your life pre-computer. It wasn’t that hell either….

When I was just out of college — we’re talking the early ‘70’s here — I wanted to join a commune and be a hippie. I know, a little late for the show, but better late than never, I figured. And anyway, I didn’t want to work so that narrowed my options down to very few. Bum, artist or hippie — or, in my case, all of the above. So a few of us went up to an abandoned farm in Northern Wisconsin and set up shop in an old Polish farmhouse, no indoor plumbing, a couple of electric outlets, a handpump out in the yard and a falling down outhouse.

Rick and I were the two males in the encampment so we he-men took it on ourselves to construct a state of the art outhouse. We found some lumber in the barn — which we learned later, much to our embarrassment, belonged to Ernie, the son-in-law of Felix, the farmer across the road — and armed with hammer and hand saw, we set to work. Now maybe you know how to go about outhouse construction, but Rick and me didn’t have Clue One. We were like Cro-Magnons who’d heard rumor of wheels but had never seen one in action. We knew you needed walls, roof would be good, a seat with one or two holes and of course one in the ground. That last one we figured out okay, but the rest, they were real headscratchers.

Somewhere on the 2nd or 3rd day we’d nailed together some boards, hoping, I guess, inspiration would carry the day. Eddie, our other next door neighbor, who’d probably been laughing himself sick watching from across the field, finally took mercy on us wanna-be hippies and brought over his extension cord, a skilsaw and his cousin Tony who lived in Chicago but had the house down the dirt road we all lived on. Rick and I managed to do just enough to make nuisances of ourselves while Eddie and Tony slapped up our new shithouse in no time flat.

We all sat around afterwards, all us men, drinking cheap beer, warming ourselves in manly companionship and camaraderie, pleased as punch like all masculine carpenters at our ability to erect cathedrals and skyscrapers with our own two hands. So okay, civilization rests on shaky assumptions. Nevertheless, you’d have been pleased too to have an outhouse, not the woods.

When I moved to the wilds of Northern Wisconsin as a high school kid, the Big Deal was to letter in sports. They had, for a school out in the swampy boondocks, a reputation for winning teams, particularly swimming and tennis. Maybe there just wasn’t much else to do for us future paper mill workers.

A buddy of mine was a helluva swimmer. Won state championship when he was a junior, set records when he was a senior. We all figured he’d go on to collegiate swimming, probably try for a shot at the Olympics. Every morning before school, every afternoon after, he’d be in the pool. The kid was half porpoise. The future, through his swim goggles, looked bright. After graduation we both went off to seek our destinies, John to win awards, me to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life, a 50/50 proposition. It pays, in case you hadn’t noticed, to decide on directions early then stick to it. Tiger Woods started at 3, kids nowadays probably are doing laps in the womb.

A few years after leaving for our separate colleges, I ran into John. “Still swimming?” I asked, expecting new gills and a long rundown on trophies, awards, scholarships, endorsements from nose plug sponsors.

“No,” he said matter-of-factly, “I quit it. Gave it up.”

“Seriously?” I asked, wondering if he’d been hurt maybe, but no, he said, just wanted to live a life, not just live in chlorinated pools, training for a shot at the Olympics.

The Olympics are going on this week in Rio de Janeiro, the world’s best athletes competing in beach volleyball, ping pong, target shooting, side pocket pool, mudwrestling, horseshoes, every sport imaginable. I’m betting John and I are two of the few who don’t follow the Games. He’s a professor now in Idaho, I’m still wondering what to do with my life. But … I suspect our lives are more interesting than the ones of those dedicated to some sport only the very few will ultimately succeed at. It’s easy enough to be a Loser in this specialized world without taking on the longest odds possible. John, well, he’d be surprised to hear it, but he’s always been a hero to me, a man who could walk away while he was ahead.

Rita Jansen, ever since her husband died a few years back, volunteers at the South End Senior Center’s thrift store. Beats sitting at home watching stupid talk shows, she says, and it keeps the emptiness at bay. For awhile anyway. And … it supports the Senile Center. Which offers her a whole new gang of friends to keep her company, a good bargain for the Center, a good deal for Rita.

She was working as cashier one day when I came through with my newfound used shirt and found her working a crossword in the Crab Cracker, our local Pulitzer-less bi-weekly tabloid of events, calendars, tide tables, poetry, ads and all things local. Including a crossword puzzle. ‘Whatcha got there, Rita?” I asked. “You so desperate you got to read the Cracker?”

Now, in full disclosure, let me admit here I write for the Cracker, have since issue #1, not worth maybe what the first Superman comic just sold for, but going on now something like 15 or 16 years. Rita, taking my money for the 2.75 shirt, declared how she loves the Crab Cracker and me, a hopeless wiseass, asks what in hell do you like about that rag, nothing in there but goofy humor and ….

Before I can finish she says again how she really loves the Cracker and I of course ask what in there could she possibly love and she says, “I’ll tell you what. I love that Skeeter Daddle guy.” Just so you know, once again, full disclosure, I’m that Daddle guy. But I say, hells bells, Rita, that’s crazy, he just writes weird stuff.”

“He’s funny, that’s why,” she tells me. So around we go, me making cracks about this Daddle kook and , geez, Rita defending me. When I’ve finally had enough of this hilarity, I blurt out, “Rita, I’m Skeeter Daddle.

“Oh right,” she says and hands me my change. “You wish ….” Just as the next customer rolls up to her register. So I pocketed my coins, took my used shirt and unceremoniously left. They say fame is fleeting. In my case, it’s flown the coop.