The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I drove by the old Visitor Center this last week, the one we built for the Chamber of Commerce ten years ago. Mostly a bunch of us artists who thought a sculpture park and murals and architecture would be a great gateway onto the island. Later we got 3 more acres for what became Freedom Park and a couple of years ago a playground went in. It makes a nice story about volunteerism and local pride.

I had to join the Chamber in order to get that Center finished. Didn’t want to, trust me. They don’t call it the Chamber of Commerce because they’re philanthropic. They want money. Revenue. Bizness. Profits. Art and architecture, parks and sculpture — not so much. Awhile back they offered me a Lifetime Membership for my part in building that Center. All I need now is an NRA badge, good for perpetuity, I’ll be set until the ammo’s used up.

This year they moved the Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center out of the building we built, the one that won awards from the American Institute of Architecture, and put it in a trailer down the road past Freedom Park. Okay by me. Sort of fits their vision nicely. But now I see the old Center has a vinyl banner on the side facing the traffic, big THANK YOU FOR VISITING CAMANO ISLAND under the giant RE-FLUX REALTY.

When we were almost done building the Center and the Sculpture Park, the president at the time decided to magnanimously set up her store in it, charge herself some cheap rent in return for having her staff greet visitors. No one on the Board was troubled by this, not even the artists. Chamber of COMMERCE, remember?? Course, I was a little troubled by this, but hey, I was just a lone voice in the impoverished, morally burdened wilderness. But … sometimes you hold the hammer, literally in this case, and the Board did want to see the Center finished and I was the only boy left working on it by then.

If there’s a moral here, damnation if I know what it is. Like the fable of the woman who kindly takes pity on the snake, feeds it, gives it a place to sleep, then has it bite her next day. “Why’d you bite me?” the poor lady asks, incredulous that her kindness was repaid so viciously. “Because I’m a snake,” the serpent replies.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see a strip mall down there next, the very thing we fought so hard to prevent in the first place. You know … if they had some poor dumb volunteer to build it for them with donations from the community ….

 

Hits: 83

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 21st, 2013 at 4:20 pm and is filed under rantings and ravings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.