The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Crabbers are like fishermen, only worse. They’ll exaggerate, lie outright, then tell you the most wild-eyed outlandish whoppers only the chronically gullible would believe. Three Finger Fred loves to hold up his stubs and tell any newcomer who’s unfortunate enough to gravitate into Fred’s barstool orbit, how he was pulling traps in a full gale out of his 10 foot dinghy one terrible November.

“You don’t mean …?” the poor unsuspecting stool neighbor would invariably ask in horror.

“Yup,” Fred would nod, finishing his beer in a final gulp … and ordinarily the newbie would tell the bartender to give Fred another, on him.

“Terrible storm,” Fred would continue once his glass arrived. “Worst we’d seen all year. But I had traps to pull and by god, no storm ever stopped Fred Jensen, not before, not since.” Fred would glance at his victim, raise his glass and toast the courage of a man such as himself. “I almost swamped on the first trap gettin her in. Full pot, top to bottom with the clacking monsters. I no sooner opened the side hatch than half the beasts were in the boat, grabbin on to my boots, crawlin up my rainpants. It was awful those 8 legged bastards all trying to get at me. And the wind was blowin awful too. And the rain was comin in sideways. I knew right then I’d have to row out of there, crabs or no.

“I was kickin em off me, rowing into the wind and rain was an inch deep in the bottom so the crabs were sloshin back and forth and up my legs. About halfway to shore two of the biggest buggers made it up to my chest, clackin those nasty claws, tearin at my life preserver. It was a nightmare, me tryin to row and swat at the beasts same time. I was half crazy … and that’s when the big one got hold of my swattin hand. Took those fingers right to the bone. I had to beat him with the oar before he’d let go.

“My god, man!” his listener would cry, “give this man another drink!”

Fred, of course, would drag the story out until the drinks stopped coming. Sometimes the boat went over crabs, oars and all. Sometimes the crab that amputated his fingers was kept by the U.W. Science Department, it being the biggest Dungeness ever caught in Puget Sound. Sometimes he rowed back out for the second pot, undeterred by blood loss or hurricane winds, a saltier dog than any in song or story.

Usually, though, one of us South Enders would yell down the bar, all of us yahoos laughing and hollering, “Hey, Fred, didn’t you say you lost those in a saw accident?” And another would shout, “Naw, he took em off in a nose picking incident.”

Fred would growl. Fred would swear. Fred would give us the finger … even if it was nothing but the stub. And if it was late enough and he was sufficiently liquified, Fred would tell the saga of the saw. “I was cuttin through this old growth maple, see? Harder than iron and my saw had a 52 inch blade I’d just sharpened, ran it off a Plymouth slant six I’d rebuilt the week before….”

audio — one woman’s trash is another man’s home

So I get this e-mail, see …. My buddy Captain Lawrence Baum has had some yahoo drop off a derelict 5th wheel trailer on the frontage road to his business. He’s pissed, but he also sees a golden opportunity to tweak old Skeeter about South End riff raff, cc’ing me along with his screed to the Crab Cracker, our quasi-literary/newspaper/calendar of all local events. Rather than summarize, here’s the text:

 
HAS THE SECESSION OF THE SOUTH FROM THE NORTH BEGUN ANEW?
Jumpin’ jehoshaphat and criminently, Folks. I do believe a new civil war has begun and can secession of the Southenders from the Northenders be far behind?
I mean, what else can explain the sudden appearance on the doorsteps of the peace-lovin’ businesses south of our beloved Camano Vet Clinic, of what has to be the quintessential and classic abode of those red-neck, moonshinin’, nettle-wine drinkin’ folks led by (and I suspect egged on by) Skeeter Daddle and his ilk. Sometime in the wee hours of Thurs July 16, most likely between 5 and 7 am, a decrepit, falling-apart, partially-wheeless 30-foot or better 5th wheel trailer was dumped on the easement road serving all of the businesses from Camano Sail and Jon-Sue Mirror all the way north to the Vet clinic. And with nary a fare-thee-well or request for permission. I mean these folks have to be “well endowed” if you get my drift. It would have been nearly or all the way daylight with going-to-work traffic whizzing by. And the towing vehicle would not have probably been some little wimpy car. Egad, I mean we have “dumpers” all over this Island, people who are too cheap or too lazy to take their garbage to the dump, as we used to call it before it got all fancified to “Transfer Station.”
Well now, I knows that them is fightin’ words so how do we know it came from the south, you may well ask. Well, we done fingered that out by the deep scratch marks left in the pavement by a dragging part of the trailer (still visible if you care to look) that begin a few hundred feet south of the Camano Hill/E. Camano junction, and swerve very nicely and definitively into our common driveway and down to its current resting place.
Now, it will be moved one way or ‘tother because the last owner of record lives on this here Island. He claims he sold it but can’t find the documents to prove it, and so, under the law he may be on the hook.
But that is really not who we are looking for. I’m pretty sure the last owner of record did not dump the trailer there. But someone did and we would dearly love to find that “someone.”
If anyone recognizes this pig and can tell us where it may have come from, there is a small cash reward waiting, and I mean really small, $50-small.
Call in privacy and confidence and tell us what you think you know. If the info checks out, you get the bucks.
425-314-9824.
(and my apologies, Skeeter; put your double-barrel away, please)

NOTE: the Salty Dawg runs a charter boat and sailing instruction business on our Beautiful Island and gets just down right bent out of shape by people who dump their garbage on our roads and yards and our beautiful waters.

Here, in its entirety, is Skeeter’s response:

Okay okay, Cap’n! We just thought this would make a nice B&B up there by the dump. That, or a Motel 3, some place a little more affordable than the Camano Inn. And yeah, we might’ve neglected to get the necessary permits and maybe we didn’t meet county commercial codes, but us start-up entrepreneurs ought to get some breaks; after all, we’re the job creators. Admittedly we should’ve washed the rig, but c’mon, we’re conserving precious groundwater. Think Eco-Tourism!

We already have August and September pretty nearly booked so I’m hoping we can find some common ground here, Lawrence, maybe cut you in on part of the rental income. We sure don’t need negative publicity and if you would consider maybe 10% of the profits after deducting our heavy advertising campaign (soon to come), we would be happy to give you naming rights. How does Baum Bungalow sound to you??? Kind of has a nice ring, doesn’t it?

Personally, I was advocating a meth lab in that location, but my partners pointed out the proximity to the sheriff’s shack, a building not a helluva lot nicer than our 5th wheeler. Worst case, I guess we could go head to head, no pun intended, with the Bud Hut. But I think you’ll agree, given the aforementioned 10%, the Baum Bungalows (yes, plural, once we get a few more rentals in there) would be a better fit for the touring public. Our attorney, Bubba Frisk III, will provide you with all the contracts and paperwork at your earliest convenience. If you have any further questions or concerns, contact me through the Crab Cracker, our lead advertising agency. Sincerely, as always, Skeeter
Now, the sad part — or maybe the hilarious part — I thought I recognized that 5th wheeler. So when I saw one of my band mates, I asked, nonchalantly, did you get rid of your trailer? “Yah,” she said, “I put it on Craigslist and some guy from up island came for it. Free. But he had to bring spare tires, the old ones were rotted down to the hubs.”

The sheriff found the old owner, but he’d never transferred title and neither had my bandmate’s boyfriend, so now the trailer was legally abandoned off the highway. I’m sure Cap’n Lawrence is worried he’ll inherit the hulk, but I don’t think so. The guy who hauled it off had a buddy and when they were scrutinizing the trailer, purportedly for scrap potential, his buddy whispered, “This is way better than yours.”

On the South End we call this Recycling. Up Island, they’re treating this as a crime. I admit, I’m torn whether to contact the sheriff, but I may let the Skipper know to just hang on, our boy is looking for fresh tires so he can get it back to his place. In the end I suspect everybody’s gonna win.

Not quite a year ago we bought the little 1940’s house next door, mostly to keep it from being torn down and replaced with a 2015 McMansion on the hill above our gardens. Trouble is, now we got a house to deal with. I suppose we could board it up, let the mice and the rot have at it, or maybe use it for a woodshed or storage unit, but we figured, being citizen-capitalists, we maybe ought to ‘monetize’ it. We didn’t want to rent it by the month because for the past twenty years or so we’ve had to deal with the folks who rent the cheapest place on the South End. I mean, I like mean dogs, girlfriends who go off their meds and shoot up the neighborhood, heroin addicts and all the rest as much as the next guy, but we thought we’d try renting by the night, offer it up as a romantic get-away, bring in the honeymooners and the nostalgic, pay off the utilities and the mortgage.

This week we had the first paying customers, a couple who just got married, honeymooned in Vancouver and needed a few nights down at Viagra Falls here to fully consummate their wedding. Three nights would do it. The day before their awaited arrival they called to say they would be a day late, stay a day longer. Odd, but okay, we’re not your ordinary hoteliers. Yesterday, their new arrival date, they didn’t show up either. This morning we get a call to inform us they rolled in at midnight, took one look at the place and vacated. Spiders, they said. The place had spiders. They couldn’t stay in a place with arachnids. Just couldn’t, just wouldn’t.

I guess there’s a lot of reasons not to stay at our little bed and breakfast. Flies. Mice. Mealy bugs. Coyotes outside howling. Deer stomping through the yard. Raccoons peeking out from behind the shed. Birds making a racket at dawn. Trees menacingly swinging in the wind. Moles leaving mounds in the yard. Nettles growing over by the woods.

I maybe forgot to mention we live in the country. Or maybe they just figured the place would be a Super 8 or a Motel 6 nestled next to a suburban shopping mall. I don’t know.

In the end we gave them back their money, lost three days rental and probably the innocence we had when we embarked on landlordship. The mizzus feels bad about this and so do I. Me, I’m liking the idea of a storage unit or a woodshed. One more bad rental and I’ll start hauling in this fall’s alder supply.

Mermaid Jim used to live south of me, the closest person to the island’s Head, its southernmost inhabitant. I only encountered him infrequently and so he never remembered meeting before which meant I heard his stories numerous times. Invariably he would recount his mermaid story, and invariably I’d wait to find discrepancies from the previous tellings.

“I was scuba diving in the Bahamas,” he’d start in, apropos of nothing in our conversation and only moments from new introductions, how do ya do’s, where ya live? “I was down maybe 30 feet off the reef when she swam right up to me, talked to me like I’m talking to you, bubbles coming out of her mouth while she held steady with her tail. Her tail, man, her tail!”

“Mermaid?” I’d say after hearing the story the first time. “Right,” Jim would say, grateful I wasn’t rolling my eyes or calling 911 for psychiatric help.

“I saw her the next day and the next, every day I dove down there.”

“Whaddaya talk about?”I’d ask. “Nothing much,” he’d always respond.

I guess if I met a mermaid, I’d have some questions and maybe she would too, but Jim apparently didn’t and his sea princess was similarly uncurious. It made his mermaid story short and sweet but not particularly interesting. Still, he never embellished it. Never altered it. He met a mermaid, they talked, he went home. Simple facts. Extraordinary encounter. Worth telling everyone he met about it — mermaids exist, he’s seen one, he’s even talked to one.

Once I asked him if he thought she had a family, if maybe there was a whole undersea city of mermen and mermaids, if they had a watery civilization, if ….
“How would I know?” Jim answered, annoyed that his one mermaid wasn’t plenty as it obviously was for him. “I met a mermaid,” he said, “and she talked to me.”

Developers built four houses near Jim’s place maybe 10 years ago where there hadn’t been anyone for half a mile either direction. Jim told me, last encounter we had, he’d be leaving for over the mountains, maybe Mazama, where there would be less neighbors to bother him. I nearly asked why he wasn’t headed back toward water, maybe be reunited with his mermaid, but I didn’t.   I figure in a way he’s taking her with him.