The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Any of you unfortunate enough to know me probably understand that I’m not the kind of hombre who wanted neighbors. Thomas Jefferson famously said people should live far enough apart that they can’t hear their dogs’ barking. Times change, I understand that, but in these modern times, I’d like to think we would live separate enough not to hear each other’s lawnmowers, chainsaws, weedeaters and teenagers’ boomboxes. So imagine my distress when, two years after moving to the end of this island at the end of the continent, the trees across from me were clearcut and a 52 lot development was slated for my neighborhood. I immediately went looking for a new home, up river by the Sauk and Skagit convergence, over on the peninsula, out by the coast, somewhere I could hide out.

Needless to say I never left the South End. The development got scaled down to 26 lots and for the past 3 decades, about one house a year was built. My own included…. This past year the last house was finished and the clamor and clang of construction ended, the quietude enfolding us like a benediction. Amen.

Today we were over at the annual picnic our neighbors put on for themselves and those of us across the road. The mizzus and me are the only non-members who attend, but every year we meet the folks who moved in the past year, shoot the breeze, carry in a potluck dish, eat potato salad and hamburgers, reminisce and get reacquainted. Slowly but surely over the years we’ve made our peace with a more crowded neighborhood than we’d maybe wished for. And slowly but surely the neighbors are no longer folks older than us but quite a few are younger. I can see where this is going. Through bifocals clear as day.

I haven’t always been on the best of terms with these newcomers of ours, I’ll admit that. Probably their fault, I figure. And in the old days they didn’t get along with each other. Not my fault, definitely. But as we all sat around the picnic tables at the cul-de-sac’s only shade under the big leaf maple on a hot summer day, I felt at home with all these folks, all these neighbors of ours, some new, some old, and I count myself lucky, this crusty curmudgeon, for the friends we’ve made over there and the friends we’ll make in the coming years. We crab together, we talk across the fence, we go to birthday parties and anniversaries, all that socializing you might expect when you move to the country and not the suburbs. If you live near your neighbors, close enough, say, to hear their beagle bellowing, think about that picnic once a year if you don’t have one already. Invite the neighbors and if they don’t come like some of ours don’t, it’s their tough luck. Chances are, up close and personal, you’ll find you have plenty in common. And don’t let the potato salad sit out too long….

When I moved to the wilds of Northern Wisconsin as a high school kid, the Big Deal was to letter in sports. They had, for a school out in the swampy boondocks, a reputation for winning teams, particularly swimming and tennis. Maybe there just wasn’t much else to do for us future paper mill workers.

A buddy of mine was a helluva swimmer. Won state championship when he was a junior, set records when he was a senior. We all figured he’d go on to collegiate swimming, probably try for a shot at the Olympics. Every morning before school, every afternoon after, he’d be in the pool. The kid was half porpoise. The future, through his swim goggles, looked bright. After graduation we both went off to seek our destinies, John to win awards, me to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life, a 50/50 proposition. It pays, in case you hadn’t noticed, to decide on directions early then stick to it. Tiger Woods started at 3, kids nowadays probably are doing laps in the womb.

A few years after leaving for our separate colleges, I ran into John. “Still swimming?” I asked, expecting new gills and a long rundown on trophies, awards, scholarships, endorsements from nose plug sponsors.

“No,” he said matter-of-factly, “I quit it. Gave it up.”

“Seriously?” I asked, wondering if he’d been hurt maybe, but no, he said, just wanted to live a life, not just live in chlorinated pools, training for a shot at the Olympics.

The Olympics are going on this week in Rio de Janeiro, the world’s best athletes competing in beach volleyball, ping pong, target shooting, side pocket pool, mudwrestling, horseshoes, every sport imaginable. I’m betting John and I are two of the few who don’t follow the Games. He’s a professor now in Idaho, I’m still wondering what to do with my life. But … I suspect our lives are more interesting than the ones of those dedicated to some sport only the very few will ultimately succeed at. It’s easy enough to be a Loser in this specialized world without taking on the longest odds possible. John, well, he’d be surprised to hear it, but he’s always been a hero to me, a man who could walk away while he was ahead.

Amid rumors that our commissioners have decided to divest the county of its parks, the South End Environmental Koalition (SEEK) has begun a campaign to Save Our Parks (SOP). Ginny Davis, the newly appointed president, spoke at the South End Chamber of Commerce, arguing that parks mean tourism and tourism means dollars. Ralph Hinshaw asked if she thought our little 5 acre park —Hutchison Park — really brought tourists into our ‘economic sphere’.

“Seriously, Ginny,” he asked, “who the hell comes to that park except teenagers doing drugs and having sex? You think they’re going to fuel the economy down here?” Ginny realized she’d maybe gone down the wrong cul-de-sac, citing economic growth where economics barely existed, but Harry Walton, owner of Tyee Megastore, stood up and declared he sold a lot of ice cream bars to the bicyclists who stopped at the store and he’d seen more than a few eating popsicles at the picnic tables down at the park an eight of a mile north.

Ralph avowed how he’d never seen a soul down there much less a motorcycle gang with sweet tooths. Ginny, who didn’t catch the humor in that, asked, “What do you think, Ralph? Sell the park for a building lot? Not much revenue in a single house on a lot zoned for 5 acre rural residential.”

The South End only has this one park. Course it only has one store. One diner. One hair salon. And two art galleries. Which are extraordinary if you’ll allow me to play art critic. We got plenty of art studios, some good, some not, but they all add to the mythology of the fabled South End, if not, admittedly, to the tax base.

Personally, I think the park should stay. I don’t give a fig or a fart if folks throng to its short trails and its unused BBQ grills or notice the flowers or idiosyncratic sculpture. Some day when this is an art mecca for weary urbanites, they’ll have a place to pull in and check the GPS for how to get home. Meanwhile the teenagers got a place for backroad sex.

Right next door to our Shangri-La-La sits an old 1940’s bungalow, a small one bedroom, low ceilinged place perfect for one person or two people very much in love. Over the years it’s been a low income rental, one of the cheaper rents on the island. I got a buddy who rents a chicken house a mile north for $200 more per month than this place charged. Not to insinuate that cheap rent equates to low life renters, we have had our share of heroin addicts, malcontents and obnoxious neighbors roll through that place the past couple of decades.

The best neighbors were usually single women, two of whom we practically never laid eyes on the couple of years they rented the place. Barry, the Navy guy, wasn’t too bad, but his dog would come down by the garden and snarl at the mizzus, who, never growing up with the four legged pets, mistrusts the barking beasts. Something to do with bared teeth rattles her. I finally had to wander over to Barry and ask if maybe he could keep his mutt from coming over to menace her. He said his dog never left the property. O … Kay, I said, I guess this conversation is over. I made it pretty clear what would happen to him, not the dog, if the dog that looks like his and growls at us shows up once more. Barry moved on a few weeks later.

We had the guy whose girlfriend went off her meds and her head, then chased him down the highway with his rifle, angry about something or other, alarming us neighbors with gunfire in the night. Three SWAT teams arrived, 50 police cars and who knows how many officers before finally talking the girlfriend into surrendering herself.

The two gay junkies who parked in there for years were usually broke. They borrowed tools and lawnmowers, gas and whatever else they needed, usually without asking. They sent their pals over to the orchard to pick fruit. And their vehicle was usually out front, hood up, another breakdown. When one of the partners died, the remaining junkie took the inheritance and bought an SUV, a hot tub, a motorcycle and all manner of goodies so that over the next few weeks we watched the repo folks come to take back what Jeff didn’t bother to make payments on. PUD turned off his power and for months we thought he’d moved on, but no, he lived in a heroin haze in the dark and cold until finally Lisa, his landlady, kicked him out. Actually, she basically paid him to go, helped him pack, brought the boxes, paid for a storage unit. I should’ve chipped in.

The last guy, a nice enough fellow who kept to himself mostly, drove the mizzus crazy calling for his cat incessantly. She called me over to the garden one day and asked, what is he saying? Here Girlfriend, Here Girlfriend, over and over. I admitted that it sounded strange but it had to be, god help us if it’s not, the name of his cat. I never really saw a cat, but the alternative was too grim to contemplate. Either way, the mizzus was disturbed by this and started to avoid the garden completely.

So when Lisa came up to do what seemed like more than touch-up after Girlfriend’s owner packed up the Conestoga and headed over the mountains, I asked if she was thinking of selling the place. She replied that yeah, the rental biz was starting to wear her down. I said it was wearing us down too, truth be told. And so, that is how — and maybe why — we ended up buying the place. Privacy, it turns out, unlike when we first came out here, is a pretty expensive proposition.