The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Radio Free South End was the ‘brainchild’, or lack of, of Wolfman Chuck, once a DJ for KRAP, the alternative music station down in Seattle and Gomorrah back before the city morphed into Tech Town. He claims he was ‘let go’ for pushing the boundaries of even those leftist programmers who decried censorship, something to do, they told him, with violating all manner of human decency.

Not to be so easily cast off the airwaves of Puget Sound, Wolfman laid his plans, moved to the politically incorrect South End, recruited a few of us slackers for his Bandwidth Comeback and launched Radio Free South End, a laughably puny low watt FM frequency so low on the dial even the FCC would have to stoop to find us. This was the Year of our Lord 1999, slightly before podcasts and blogblasts, sort of Old School but without much emphasis on the school. Wolfman had a primitive transmitter — don’t ask me the technical — and a tower he erected over his trailer’s roof. All he needed, he said, were volunteers to be the DJ’s when he needed a break. Of course we asked if this was criminal and of course Chuck said Hell No! Freedom of speech, he told us, First Amendment, he claimed. So sure, we volunteered, why not, we had some things to say, even some music to play.

I doubt anyone further than 5 miles north of the island’s head could hear us, but when you consider most of the bloggers out there on internet podcasts get half the listeners Wolfman got, who really cares? Chuck wasn’t interested in advertising revenue, he just wanted what he called, reverentially, airplay. Chuck played old rock and roll, early blues, strummed his homemade mandolin, told off color stories mostly about us local yokels, even played the South End String Band every damn day, probably as thanks for half of us band members volunteering to DJ.

I can remember like yesterday the day our music died. It was my morning to fill the 10 am to noon slot only to find Wolfman slumped over his microphone, headset off one ear, holding up an official looking paper from some government agency or other.

‘We’re signing off today, Skeeter,’ Chuck told me as American Pie was playing, I bet for the 16th time that morning, the last song on KINK’s brief but glorious existence. A week later Wolfman was gone, the radio equipment too and his trailer had a For Sale sign out by the road. Camano’s infamous and only radio station had put a thumb out and hitchhiked into legend.

Rumor has it there’s a pirate radio station operating off the coast up in the San Juan islands, some DJ on the run from the Feds, still broadcasting to any and all in listening range. I’m betting it’s Wolfman Chuck. Every now and then I crank my radio up and run the dial north to south, hoping, I guess, to hear a crackly South End Blues coming out of Canada on the magnetic waves of an aurora borealis, Wolfman still howling into the wind, the last real DJ fighting the corporate mega-stations. And some nights, maybe too much to drink, I think I hear him and his tinny little mandolin. Godspeed, Wolfman C!!!

You don’t run into a lot of old loggers down here on the gentrified South End these days. Dangerous work and if you do it long enough, accidents you don’t anticipate happen with more frequency than you’d care to consider. Tree climbers, fallers, gyppos, chainchokers, toppers, well, it’s a young man’s job. Us old woodsmen, we count our lucky stars and are happy to tell tall tales from the safety of our rockers, just glad we’re still here, gimped but alive.

Yesterday I was over at the little park I maintain. Ranger Skeeter, garbage picker-upper, lawnmower, trail maintainer and tree removal guy. An 80 year old doug fir had uprooted on the south side perimeter where it had completely blocked two separate trails so my assignment that day was to lug in my big Stihl and see if I could buck it up without pinching the blade, clear the debris and open the paths. No big deal for a seasoned logger like myself, nothing too dangerous, just don’t let the sections fall on my foot.

I tackled the upper end of the tree first, still a large diameter section, made my undercuts and managed to cut a section out for trail passage, bucked up the thing and rolled huge bolts out of the way, then on to the second trail with a larger part of the tree. Once again I undercut the tree but this time I worried the sheer weight would suddenly split the tree and pinch my saw and since I hadn’t brought wedges with me, I really wanted to finish this and take that saw home with me, not leave it crushed under the tonnage of that fir. So I made a Vee in the top, figuring if the cut snapped shut when I reached the undercut, I’d have a chance of not pinching the bar.

You with me so far? Cause I wasn’t really sure this would work. And this is why guys like me should be paranoid back in the woods with a running chainsaw and just enough experience to make things even more dangerous than they already are. I put that Stihl on the Vee and started the top cut, expecting any minute the section would snap shut when my cuts met, but instead … holy moley, Smokey, the tree, instead of crashing onto the trail, sprang up into the air twenty feet above my head while the cut section stayed earthbound with me.

There is a moment in times like this when what is happening doesn’t just defy expectations, it beggars reality. Your mind doesn’t really accept the possibility a tree will right itself any more than time running backwards. Trust me, an old hand at the unexpected when falling trees, this boggled my mind. I scuttled backwards like a crab on meth, not sure what that tree might do, maybe come back down even, on me. But it didn’t. The cut end of the tree stood at 30 degrees above my head twenty feet up. The rootball had rotated halfway back into the cavity it had originally left, partly because another tree had fallen at the base of the fir and its weight, once the majority of the fir’s own weight was gone, lifted the tree semi upright. Logic, once I managed to calm myself, had returned.

You maybe think you’ve seen it all. But trust me, you haven’t. I left the tree, what was left of it, standing over the trail, a saw cut at the top 20 feet above, for hikers to marvel at. How in the hell did anyone make that cut? Did they climb up there and risk life and limb? Could anyone be that courageous, that utterly dumb? Let them wonder. Let them ask the Ranger, but he’s not going to tell them. Trails of Mystery is what I’ll tell them. Just another tall tale from the pioneers of the South End who survived to saw another day….

A few years ago Guitar Bob’s beater car gave up the ghost so he asked if I would drive him north to the used car lots to buy a replacement jalopy. Reluctantly, I said okay even though I had to go after my graveyard shift with no sleep. He was, after all, a friend. And one without wheels to get to work….

Walking into a used car lot is vaguely similar to driving the streets of Baghdad in an unarmored HumVee. It’s a landmine. You might make it back out, but you’re going to take incoming and there’s going to be casualties. At some point you’ll ask yourselves is this war worth it? Did you have an Exit Strategy? And who, in the end, is really the enemy? Or like General Sherman famously stated as he torched the South: car buying is hell.

Bob started out hoping to buy a vehicle for under $500. Not wanting to bust his bubble, I decided to forego the story of my last expedition into the minefields. He would learn soon enough. The Hard Way. The lot in Stanwoodopolis, just prior to closing its doors forever, showed him a $2500 wreck, bad tires, 175,000 miles on the odometer, a tranny that slipped, burned a little oil. Savvy buyers that we were, we moved on.

At a fly-by-night used lot in Burlington we found a nice little Honda, 200,000 miles, ran good, only $6500. Obviously they could rob you without a gun. Bob offered the nice salesman $5000 who said wait right here in his office while he conferred with the manager. Bob was concerned the nice salesman would think we were gay. I said you got way more to worry about than some yahoo with a bad toupee’s opinion of your sorry manhood. In a minute, you’re gonna meet the manager.

Which we did. The manager said we seemed like nice boys and he sure wanted to work with us on this deal, put us in that car, ‘but fellas, I have to make a little money too. I can’t just give this away at a loss.’ He showed us paperwork that proved he was rock bottom on that $6500. But seeing’s how we were nice boys, he’d take a couple hundred off and take no profit. Bob said let me think about it and the manager said sure, sure, but don’t take too long, this beauty’s gonna sell today at this price. Outside Bob worried he’d thought we were parnters. I said I’ll sit out the next negotiation.

By late afternoon I’m fading from lack of sleep and food. It’s late, we’ve hit every shyster and crook up and down the pike, nothing is even close to reasonable and the notion Bob is going to shop for a week or two sends me into adrenaline-fueled panic. I drop down in the Toyota lot and forgetting about promising to stay out of negotiations, march up to a salesman coming out of the showroom side door. “We’re looking for a Toyota or a Honda,” I rapidfire. “$5000 or less, under 100,000 miles. The salesman doesn’t blink, he doesn’t hesitate, he smells the blood in the water and he knows instinctively exactly what to do.

“Your lucky day,” he smiles. “Just came in, hasn’t been detailed yet, but you boys won’t mind saving on that, one owner I’m pretty sure and the boss wants to move inventory, make you a helluva deal.” He points us over to where we just came from, past a line of cars with prices on the windshields and in my sleep deprived fog I realize he’s pointing at MY car. “Give me a minute and I’ll grab the keys from the office. Be right back. Go ahead and kick the tires.”

I regret, even to this day, we didn’t tell him we found the keys in the ignition and take him with us for a test drive. “These two gay guys, see, pulled over on the shoulder …. I thought maybe we’d run out of gas. Then I thought, oh my God, they’re going to do unspeakable things to me. But no, they said get out. Here? I asked. Here, they said. I called the lot and told them to call State Patrol, report a stolen car, even gave them the license number…. Ya know, I always said I could sell snowballs to Eskimos. But those two gay guys, I couldn’t close the deal on selling them their own car. I’m good, but I guess I’m not that good.

Back in the late 20th Century the South End — and the entire island, really — was inundated by hordes of artists. We were like a sprawling refugee camp of painters and potters fleeing their hellish urban existence, so many in such a short time, old timers like myself worried that even the tides would be affected, all the pressure from artistic egos unleashed like a methane tsunami from thawing tundra.

Art, suddenly, was everywhere. Studios sprouted in barns and chicken coops, galleries sprang up in old garages, art tours became yearly events, even the Camano Chamber of Commerce was taken over by brush-wielding artisans bent on bringing culture to the unwashed masses. Sculptures appeared in the parks, murals were painted on buildings, blown glass balls were hidden in shops to entice customers.

Art was everywhere, it seemed. And yet, there was one glaring void. One corner of the once idyllic South End that seemed impervious to the onslaught of this artistic tidal wave. There was no school to train the next generation. We thought maybe, just maybe, the aging artists would slowly die off and eventually, by sheer attrition, the pastoral existence we had once known would return. That dream died the day the Mabana Institoot of Aesthetic Enlargement opened its doors, offering course in everything from macramé to bronze casting. Some of the artists became instructors — some even enrolled as students.

Down at the Pilot Lounge we regulars held our heads, we moaned, we cursed, we wailed and we prayed the Institoot would go bankrupt. Why Lord, why us? Why inflict the locust plague on us? What had we done to offend thee?

Two Toke, ever the philosophical one of us, late in the evening of a mournful drinking bout the night of the Institoot’s Grand Opening, summed it up. “Boyz,” he said, sloshing his 7th or 8th pint onto our table, “boys,” he said again, momentarily searching for the lost thread. “Boys, you live in paradise and it was only a matter of time.”

“A matter of time for what?” Little Jimmy asked after it was obvious TT had slid into some kind of self-induced reverie. Two Toke clawed slowly back to the reality of our sopping littered table, all eyes on him, all ears alert, all of us eager for some hopeful chunk of wisdom.

“To have paradise,” he said, “ you have to accept its opposite.” And with that, he laid his head on the table, cheek to spilled ale, and passed out. The rest of us looked forlornly at this sad tableau. Finally Jerry broke the silence. “I’m gonna drive him home. Somebody want to help me here?” All six of us stood up, albeit wobbly, two under TT’s armpits, two grabbing his feet, two moving chairs and holding doors. Like pallbearers we hauled out our compatriot and our hopes. The Institoot still offers quarterly courses. And we still drink at the Pilot Lounge. Although … in much greater moderation.