The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Every blue moon a good idea comes rolling down to the South End. Or at least a crazy idea so goofus, it catches the air on fire around it. Viagra Falls exploded on the scene right before oil prices shot through the roof in Jimmy Carter’s reign. Ernie Crandall bought up the old Camp Camano cabins, all 12 of the dilapidated clapboard units, tore the worst two down, then restored the remaining 10 to like-new condition. Each had its own bathroom, unlike the shared bathhouse of the 1920’s, and each got a fully equipped kitchenette, a TV set with adult VCR movies, and a queen sized bed.

Ernie gave each cabin its uniquely distinct ‘theme’. Suite #7, for instance, was advertised as the “The Caveman: for the Primitive in all of us.” The Rancho Deluxe was touted as “a cross between rawhide and satin.” It sported cowhoof lamps and a table supported by three sets of longhorns. The Casanova had a “heart shaped bed, red boudoir and a shower curtain to make a sheik blush.” Ever the P.R. specialist, Ernie provided local reporters and their editor with free introductory accomodations. Needless to say, Viagra Falls received lavish praise and exceptional press coverage. The South End, to most Seattleites soon became the Sodom and Gomorrah of the island archipelago, a playground for bacchanalian delights and salacious get-aways. Ernie was booked for six months in advance and the Falls, despite a cascade of water of any sort, was brimming to overflow.

All this notoriety brought not only customers, but the wrath of the Little Church of the Ravine, one of whose members was a County Health inspector. Septic violations became frequent and building code violations were uncovered. Not coincidentally #4 was renamed the Pastor’s Hostage Wife cabin, a romper room for Sado-Masochists. Ernie held the hounds at bay for a time, but finally decided he might prosper financially better in a less morally upright area closer to the urban areas of Sin City. And so the South End narrowly escaped becoming Las Vegas North and a magnet for lovers. Some of us, of course, mourn the loss.

Of course it had to happen! What did you think: the South End would be immune? The South End is quarantined from the cultural diseases of the Outside World?? That the contamination couldn’t spread down to here??? Get a grip! Look around. The world has grown real small since you last took off your Google Glass, man. Or since you put em on….

The Zombies are here. That’s right, here on the South End. They’re everywhere else, right? They’ve long overstayed even a teenager’s infatuation and now they’re in the same category as skateboarding or Dungeons and Dragons, passing fads that never pass, they just lobotomize the immature brains of their adolescent hosts, then stick around into what we euphemistically call adulthood. Science can’t explain it. Science doesn’t even try. The Johnson boys have been slinking around the Diner’s nicely sloped blacktop parking lot since about 1995. Big Larry put a stop to their truck surfing where they’d grab a tailgate, crouch down behind the bed out of sight, then ‘surf’ their way onto the highway. He assured them he’d drag their crazy asses clear to Stanwoodopolis if he caught them at it one more time. Nobody doubts Big Larry’s follow-through on threats.

Except the zombies. They came in one Friday night, all goobered up in whiteface make-up and blackened eyes, smeared Hunts ketchup all over their mouths and giggled over their French fries at the customers’ reactions, mostly boredom, but a little bothered the teens couldn’t take their antics into town ‘where they belonged’. “Wuz up?!” Big Larry asked when he stepped out from back behind the grill, looming over the table of kids like Godzilla over Tokyo. All he got back was snorts and chortles from the guys, averted black sunken eyes from their dates. “Halloween early this summer?” he tried again.

Zombies, as every yahoo in America knows after years of movies and books and cable programming, don’t communicate verbally much. They make guttural sounds, they smack their lips on the bloody meat of their victims, they just don’t remember English. Larry said menacingly, “You ghouls better clean that ketchup slop up before you go, otherwise I’ll be cleaning YOU up, comprende?” The zombies suppressed their laughter, the zombies left a mess the way zombies always do. So yeah, the zombies are among us, even down here. When they learn to skateboard, we’re all in serious trouble. Even Big Larry.

Like a lot of places, the South End is far more discerning of the oddities of others than themselves. The Avant-Gardeners’ hippie commune was the most prevalent gossip for years down here. Were they communists? Were they polygamists? Were they drug addicts? Were they pagans? There was no end to the rumors, no matter how fantastic — and, of course, the Gardeners themselves fed the flames with their fantastic behavior. Not just their colorful gypsy attire or their unorthodox social behavior, but Grand Experiments involving ship building and dome construction, all gone horribly awry, yet never diminishing their unbounded optimism or their total lack of fear of failure. They were pioneers, not just in breaking ground for their greenhouses and their livestock sheds, but in how they viewed the world. And the rest of us South Enders.

So we shunned them, most of us. Made them Outsiders in a place already Outside. Oh, a few of us bought their eggs and raw goat milk. I traded bread for those and vegetables, even got to know a few of the menfolk. The women mostly held back, kids peeking from behind their long granny dresses. Although I did teach Betsy, the most gregarious of the whole troupe, how to make stained glass. She would walk to my shack and glean scraps from the throwaway pile, then make the most beautiful suncatchers and small windows, far surpassing her teacher in no time flat.

After a few seasons I showed them where the wily Dungeness could be caught by hand and where to dig for free range clams. I took a few of the boys out in the S.S. Pterodactyl, my little sailboat, and we fished for true cod and bottomfish before they were gone, both the fish and the boys. Because one day the FOR SALE signs went up and the farm was abandoned as fast as it had arrived.

I bought a couple of their goats and some laying hens, took some greenhouse glass panels, accepted some macramé and pottery gifts, then waved adios as their gypsy caravan exited the South End one misty, fog filled autumn day. I guess they were as mysterious to me as they were to my neighbors, the only difference being I never minded. But I still remember that day when the Flower Children headed off island, north into the cruel ‘70’s, waving goodbye as I stood by my blue mailbox in a slow drizzle, wishing they would never leave. For me at least, that was the day, looking back, the 60’s really ended.

About 50 years ago Karen and I made our first foray into Mexico along with my brother and his buddy in a ’62 Chevy Impala we weren’t sure would get us back. Gringos on a road trip, drinking too much cervezas, slept on the side of a road in sleeping bags hastily thrown down near the car and the gila monsters, then woke to find we were camping on the streets of Tijuana.

We didn’t last long in old Mejico. Even though we were young and poor, we encountered real poverty. Made us feel like Ugly Americans, larking around while the folks who lived there saw us as privileged and rich. Which we were —comparatively — and we didn’t much relish the comparison.

I know folks who go to Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, Vera Cruz, Acapulco and stay at the gated resorts, venturing out to see the temples or the ocean, maybe buy some trinkets in the local ciudads, but mostly hang out poolside and dine at the restaurants inside the compound. The weather is nice, the staff impeccably polite, the narco-trafficers not an immediate threat, a perfect colonial vacation.

Today I took a short road trip up the coast along Chuckanut, our miniature Big Sur, and finally arrived at Bellingham where I wandered downtown, ate a quesadilla at a tequila bar and noticed the alleys crowded with the homeless and the run-aways. Everywhere I go off our little island enclave, this is what I find, makeshift tents, shopping carts with all worldly possessions, food banks lined up with people in need.

There are wealthy people in Mexico. In India. In China. Here too. Who rarely share the plenty. Kids scavenge in the dumps, families live in makeshift shelters, the rich give themselves tax breaks and harden their hearts.

I may never go to Tijuana again so long as I live, but Tijuana is coming here. I’m not that poor young Ugly American anymore. I’m the older version.

We just got back from a little R&R on the Olympic Peninsula, Marrowstone Island to be exact, Mystery Bay to be precise. The island is 7 miles long, roads running east side and west side, pretty much the same as the South End here on Commando Island. Just one store, closed after a fire. No commerce, pretty much the same as here. Paradise. Sometimes you have to leave home to appreciate your own slice of heaven, I guess.

A few days without news or word from the Outside, makes you feel like the world is not a half bad place to hang out. Course we get home and there’s the announcement of the Biden impeachment by the House, the ongoing war in Ukraine, the floods in Libya and the earthquake in Morocco. The debt ceiling is coming up. Again.

It makes a guy like me want to pull up the covers and go back to sleep. Or at least hang the hammock and listen to the breeze and the birds, let the rest of the planet deal with whatever politics or calamities they have this week. What can we do anyway? Volunteer for Doctors without Borders? Send money to the refugees fleeing Sudan by the millions? Or the Syrians? Grab a picket sign and protest in front of the Supreme Court asking the bribe takers to step down? Vote my one measley vote? Put a solar panel or two on our roof and buy an electric car?

We don’t have much say in how the world works. Although judging by some of the rants out there on the internet, plenty of folks think they do. Sometimes I feel as if my own carping and bitching is pretty much the same, just spitting into the wind blowing back at me, not just a waste of time but a face full of my own expectorant. So I don’t know. What I do know is we should be thankful for whatever we got, never take it for granted, maybe pay some attention to the things we can affect and even those we can’t. And try not to let the world make us cynical. Yeah, it’s hard….