The South End Discovers the Old World
Don’t ask me why, but the Avant-Gardeners got it in their heads to build a boat. Not a dinghy, not a rowboat, not a cute little sailboat. Naw, they decided to build a 50 foot ferro-cement ship down at the beach. Ralph, their chief engineer, studied from books he gleaned at the big Stanwoodopolis Biblioteca in town after the head librarian twice made him prove residency when she didn’t care for his unkempt look, then during the first winter when the garden work was pretty much on hold, they commenced to constructing their Ark. Which was what they called this hulk of a boat that slowly began to blight the beach. A late winter storm set the plywood and wood strongback framework out to sea prematurely … but the Gardeners, accustomed to setbacks, rebuilt the skeleton a little higher from the beach.
Years passed, children were born, members left and new ones arrived. But there came a day when us South Enders looked off toward Whidbey to see the S.S. Avant-Gardboat circling the Straits like an inebriated whale, a sight repeated for a week until the lumbering Ark sobered sufficiently, headed south and disappeared around Whidbey’s own South End, its diesel chugging mightily to move the leviathan through the tides and waves of the shipping straits of San Juan de Fuca, an obvious menace to merchant ships and Navy warmachines.
Somewhere west of Pt. Townsend the steering failed and the brave crew managed to limp into Pt. Angeles Marina where they berthed at the visitor dock and promptly abandoned ship, leaving the boat moored. The dockmaster, two days later, realized his ‘guest’ had no registration and its owners were unavailable for contact. He was mightily pissed.
Our itinerant Ahabs, of course, had returned to work their land, tending their gardens and their livestock. Ralph set to work studying the steering fix. And so, following the harvest season, the Gardeners returned to the Peninsula to fetch their vessel, where, of course, they found it impounded and upon indignant inquiry they were promptly arrested.
All due to misunderstanding, you understand. Nothing a hefty fine and some salty cursing couldn’t cure. Nothing unusual, really, when South Enders leave the rarefied bubble of their small ecosystem and encounter the cultural values they left so long ago, long enough, apparently, to have completely forgotten. In a word, they had gone native. And in the Old World, they were now strangers. Like the rest of us.
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