The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

We’d stopped for a picnic lunch at this little wayside along the river up toward the mountains, just us and one other vehicle. While I hauled out the cooler and the box of groceries, my wife walked over to the restroom. A minute later these two guys come over and ask me about accommodations up the road, what the hotel was like they’d seen, how one of them hadn’t slept in 24 hours, where was I going?

Maybe you never had one of those moments when the hair on your neck literally stands up, one of those premonitions of imminent horror about to unfold before your very eyes, but this was one for me. Something about these two men radiated, I can’t think of any other way to describe it, evil. And I use that word evil, not loosely, but with some precision of meaning, even though I have really never personally encountered pure evil in any real sense. But these two hombres were trouble. I had all our stuff on the picnic table and I was nonchalantly moving things around without really unpacking anything. In the silverware bag I took out a big collapsible hunting knife and laid it there between us, not in any threatening way, just another knife with the forks and spoons next to it. I wanted Karen to come out right now. I wanted her to stay inside. Mostly I wanted these boys to walk the hell away from me.

The one who hadn’t slept asked all the questions. Didn’t make much eye contact. Wasn’t friendly, wasn’t unfriendly. His partner stood beside him but never said a word, just watched in a slightly menacing way, a little wound tight, ready for god only knows…. Killer Joe smiled occasionally at some of my answers to his inquiries, some joke only he could hear. I thought, wanting to make it happen, Karen will stay in that bathroom until these guys leave. Then she’ll walk over and we’ll get in the car and drive away, no lunch, to hell with lunch. My appetite was long gone.

Just then the van they were driving opened its panel door and a woman sat there looking at us as she sat in the back seat. Nobody said a word. We all three stood looking at her for what seemed like a very long time. Then the silent one nodded at Killer Joe and the two ambled back to the van. I palmed the hunting knife and from behind the cooler I opened it up to reveal its full 5 inch blade and locked it in place. Karen appeared from the restroom and sauntered toward me. Time stood strangely still although the river behind me ran down rapids and made a sound like burbling blood. I watched the van across the parking lot and the two were talking to the woman in the seat.

“Grab that box and get in,” I said quietly in a voice that probably scared her but didn’t allow for much questioning. “We’re leaving right now. Fast as we can.” I threw the cooler into the trunk and she put the box in the backseat. The trio watched us from across the parking lot. I was estimating the time it would take for one or both to cross. It wouldn’t be much. No other cars were coming in to picnic. No other cars were coming at all on this road.

When we got inside, Karen asked what was up? I shook my head and turned the key. “Lock your door,” I said, feeling like a bad movie, then rolled out past the van and stopped at the stop sign. No one was on the road. We pulled onto the highway. That hunting knife sat between us, open. They might have just been tired travelers, I know that. They might have just been stopping to picnic too. Maybe. But I never felt such bad vibes talking to anyone before or since. I’m a trusting sort, maybe too trusting. This time I decided to trust my instincts.

When I first moved to the Left Coast, I had a yearning to get myself a motorcycle, learn to ride, then set myself free on the byways of the Cascades. Being poor, I bought a used Honda 350 that hadn’t run in years, wouldn’t start and looked like it was ready for the crusher. I paid $100 for the piece of junk, hauled it back to my house in the ghetto and pushed it down the basement stairs where I could spend some quality time diagnosing why it wouldn’t start over the winter months.

By summer I had the problem solved and so, with the help of my roommates, I hauled it back up and out to the backyard, kick started it into an oily smoke idle and admired the thing in the full light of a Seattle sunny day. Now all I had to do was figure out how to ride it. I called the police and asked what kind of temporary license I would need to take it for some learning spins on their city streets and was told it was illegal, no temporary licenses were to be had. I said how am I spozed to learn how to ride. The sergeant said it wasn’t his problem.

So right from the start I became an outlaw biker, stalling my crappy bike on half the shifts, careening down the mean streets of my neighborhood, searching for large empty parking lots to practice sharp turns and fast starts. Trouble was, my clutch didn’t shift right and every so often the engine would shut off in mid-travel for no apparent reason that I could diagnose. On one of my ventures I came across a fellow biker working on his Harley at Seward Park, tools spread on the parking lot and so I thought why not ask an expert about my clutch problem. He was hard at it in his Joker leathers with his tattoos bulging as he strained to his work, a fellow outlaw. I interrupted him to ask about my clutch dilemma. He looked at my battered scooter and said — I can remember it clearly to this day 40 years later — ‘Get the fuck away from me, man.’ I took it to mean us real bikers fix our own bikes without outside help.

On the way back to my ghetto house I was idling at the red light on Jackson and 23rd when a menacing group of black gangbangers roared up beside me on both sides, about 15 or so, all revving their Harleys as we waited for the green so that I thought I was inside a Boeing 747 engine. I didn’t think this was an initiation test. And I didn’t think it would end well either. The light, after what seemed like an hour, turned green and we all popped our clutches, ready for a tire burning, wheel skidding jackrabbit start … and my bike died right then.

I suppose a lesser man, a man not accustomed to the outlaw biker life, might have been embarrassed. A lesser man might have thought the laughter and catcalls from the black Banditos was too much endure. A lesser man might have junked his prized Honda 350 and succumbed to the temptation to buy a Vincent Black Shadow and show these hooligans who really ruled these mean urban streets. But me, I pushed my spray painted motorcycle ten blocks back to the basement and sold it a month later. For $100. My easy riding days had come to an end. There was nothing more to prove, I guess.

Back about 1989 I got my first Washington Arts commission, an elementary school in Wenatchee, a really small budget, about $6000, but believe me, I could see a bigger door opening up with the potential for an escape from the residential glass commissions for sidelights and bathroom window privacy. I met with the school committee along with Richard, my arts liaison, to discuss potential sites for my artwork. Just inside the front door was a curved bank of windows 7 feet high and 15 feet wide for the library. I immediately said let’s do those.

My arts guy Richard hauled me aside and said, “I know this is your first project with us, but understand, you won’t get any more money, it’s a fixed budget.” I said I understood that but hellfire, I’m just excited to do something bigger than what I’ve been doing up til now. He shook his head sadly, said as long as we’re clear, no more money.

We went back to the committee and talked about designs and such, me mostly cracking wise, horsing around, the usual stuff I do. No talk of artistic philosophy, inspiring influences, none of that egotistical song and dance, even though Richard kept trying to steer there, I guess figuring that was part of the drill, impressing the unwashed masses. Who wasn’t impressed was Richard, probably used to dealing with real artists with real portfolios and real egos. Me, probably a hopeless case, some flash-in-the-pan soon to be forgotten.

The final design was delivered to him by Karen, my wife, down in Seattle where she worked at the time running a department in the Univ. of Washington library. Richard was going to be in town that day so it saved me a trip down. At the handoff he told her, for what reason I can hardly imagine, that I should take myself more seriously. Karen is a quiet, reticent woman, anything but confrontational … but she said to my handler, “Maybe you should take him more seriously.”

To this day I smile when I think back on this conversation. I cannot thank her enough for standing by her little man. Since that first commission with the State, I’ve had 10 or so more, most much larger than that library window in Wenatchee, one 70 feet long and 20 feet high. All told I’ve put glass in 50 or more buildings from Florida to Alaska. Personally, I still don’t take myself too seriously as an artist but damn, I love that she does. And believe me, I love her for it. And Richard? Well, my guess is he still thinks of me the way I do myself, mostly a chucklehead.

When I first arrived on the South End, my biggest concern was finding a job. I’ve always maintained, and still do, that the only thing worse than work is looking for work. The best days of my life are those where I quit or gave notice or just walked off. The worst were the days following when it dawned on me I would now have to go searching for another dead end minimum wage position.

I had driven school buses back in rural Wisconsin and in Seattle and Gomorrah. I’d even driven metros so it seemed like I’d be able to get a job with the local school bus company, which proved true and before long I was chauffeuring children into town and back twice a day. My boss was happy to hire an experienced driver … until I let my hair grow and then a beard and he finally realized I wasn’t the cleancut young man he thought he’d hired. At which point he wanted me gone. Twice a week I was summoned into his office next to our break room to answer charges of driving recklessly, driving drunk,  driving on drugs, driving onto the shoulder, driving toward oncoming traffic, slamming the brakes, kicking kids off the bus miles from home, outrageous accusations that I refused to take seriously, but he wanted me to know were serious offenses if true. I would roll my eyes and he’d fire another accusation purportedly made by the parents of my kids. I suspected they were made by him, but really, what difference did it make? I knew my days were numbered as a professional driver.

We had a bus driver on a Stanwood route who had a reputation as a real ballbuster of a disciplinarian, at least according to him most days in the coffee room after the routes. When he came down with pneumonia, I subbed in for him. Holy Bluebird, the kids on that bus never heard they were spozed to use the seats to sit on. I never saw anything like it. Took me a whole minute or two to pull over and have a short chat with the little attention deficit folks, something to the effect that I might be taking them home for a free vacation day, maybe see if their parents wanted to babysit instead of go to work. After that, we didn’t have much trouble.

On the last day of my short career with the company the supervisor came up to let me know rumor had it there might be a water fight on the bus and I should be watchful. I said I sure would, boss. You better believe he wasn’t going to be my boss much longer.

At a convenient stop that’s now the Visitor Center I pulled my 40 foot long yellow Bluebird over, turned off the motor, set the brakes and turned to my charges. Okay, I said, give it your best shot. We went at it for ten minutes, water pistols and cannons, even a couple of half gallon jugs I brought for the finale. When we’d finished, I opened the front door and water poured out of that bus like a mini-Niagara, cascading down the steps onto the ground. My supervisor asked me when I got back to the barn if there’d been any trouble. No, I said, no trouble at all…. Thanks for the heads-up. That, happily, was the end of my bus driving career. Course, the next week I was scrounging for the next miserable job. Without, needless to say, a good reference.

I know you’re probably sick unto death of hearing me ramble on about my little projects. Home improvement, self-improvement, who out there cares and why should they? The stuff I do, everybody used to. At least before TV and computers made my world boring and anachronistic. Sure it’s nice to pretend I live up some holler a stone’s throw from the 19th Century or that someday they’ll name my crappy pond Walden Too. Truth is, that pond will maybe hold a footprint of mine in its mud, a future fossil drying up and of interest only to archeologists back to explore the planet. Hominid South Endosaur, bipedal, semi-upright, omnivorous, small brain, tool user from the Menopausal Era before the global warming extinctions.

They won’t find much of us, I’m betting. They’ll make bad guesses from my middens before the mizzus made dump runs mandatory when she arrived on the scene. I don’t even want to tell you what I buried back then, but let’s just say you piece together as much of my civilization as the folks who dig through the Jamestown dumps in the Virginia colonies. I find artifacts myself from prior pioneers. Hell, my shack is an artifact, built over 100 years ago. Up the ravine we’ve found 17 brass beds, an old Studebaker, empty liquor bottles, a copper washing machine tub, assorted glassware, coffee pots, zinc canning jar lids, you name it, it’s out there. I buried a cast iron wood/electric Monarch stove too heavy for me to lift, but okay to roll into a hastily dug grave.

So I was gonna tell you about making a bed this week. I planed rough cut madrona, designed a headboard and a footboard, ripped the wood but saved the ones with bark, assembled them, finished it and hauled it up to the house we just bought next door. You’re thinking, Big Deal, so what, shut up already. You can buy a bed in Goodwill. Or get a job and go buy a nice bedstead downtown at the furniture store. Who in holy hell makes a damn bed anyway?

My father-in-law, visiting a couple months before I finished the new house I’d spent one and three quarter years building already, found me making homemade doors. I was on Door #2 or so with 9 total to build. He said I could buy those at the hardware store and maybe move into the new house before me and his daughter died of old age waiting to finish building it. He had a good point, I guess.

But I’m not much for advice, especially when I’m knee deep already in a project. I finished 7 more doors, hung them and moved on to artsy fartsy floor tiling, stained glass transoms, maple floors, window casements and slate in the entryways and the hallways downstairs. Tedious work a lot of it. We did manage to move in before our demise, I’m happy to report. Course now I’m building an oak bed to replace our brass one. I guess it’s always going to be a race to the finish, one I’ll eventually lose. Like they say, you made your bed, now lay in it. I’m trying…..