The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

When I first arrived on the South End, my biggest concern was finding a job. I’ve always maintained, and still do, that the only thing worse than work is looking for work. The best days of my life are those where I quit or gave notice or just walked off. The worst were the days following when it dawned on me I would now have to go searching for another dead end minimum wage position.

I had driven school buses back in rural Wisconsin and in Seattle and Gomorrah. I’d even driven metros so it seemed like I’d be able to get a job with the local school bus company, which proved true and before long I was chauffeuring children into town and back twice a day. My boss was happy to hire an experienced driver … until I let my hair grow and then a beard and he finally realized I wasn’t the cleancut young man he thought he’d hired. At which point he wanted me gone. Twice a week I was summoned into his office next to our break room to answer charges of driving recklessly, driving drunk,  driving on drugs, driving onto the shoulder, driving toward oncoming traffic, slamming the brakes, kicking kids off the bus miles from home, outrageous accusations that I refused to take seriously, but he wanted me to know were serious offenses if true. I would roll my eyes and he’d fire another accusation purportedly made by the parents of my kids. I suspected they were made by him, but really, what difference did it make? I knew my days were numbered as a professional driver.

We had a bus driver on a Stanwood route who had a reputation as a real ballbuster of a disciplinarian, at least according to him most days in the coffee room after the routes. When he came down with pneumonia, I subbed in for him. Holy Bluebird, the kids on that bus never heard they were spozed to use the seats to sit on. I never saw anything like it. Took me a whole minute or two to pull over and have a short chat with the little attention deficit folks, something to the effect that I might be taking them home for a free vacation day, maybe see if their parents wanted to babysit instead of go to work. After that, we didn’t have much trouble.

On the last day of my short career with the company the supervisor came up to let me know rumor had it there might be a water fight on the bus and I should be watchful. I said I sure would, boss. You better believe he wasn’t going to be my boss much longer.

At a convenient stop that’s now the Visitor Center I pulled my 40 foot long yellow Bluebird over, turned off the motor, set the brakes and turned to my charges. Okay, I said, give it your best shot. We went at it for ten minutes, water pistols and cannons, even a couple of half gallon jugs I brought for the finale. When we’d finished, I opened the front door and water poured out of that bus like a mini-Niagara, cascading down the steps onto the ground. My supervisor asked me when I got back to the barn if there’d been any trouble. No, I said, no trouble at all…. Thanks for the heads-up. That, happily, was the end of my bus driving career. Course, the next week I was scrounging for the next miserable job. Without, needless to say, a good reference.

I’M ALREADY AGAINST THE NEXT WAR!

Me and my buddy Clyde were sitting up at my deck on a nice summer afternoon this year enjoying a cold one and listening to the pesky howl of a lawnmower in the distance down below. Except for the lawnmower it was an idyllic scene. Warm breeze off the Sound, mountains beyond, good conversation, cold beer — about all a South Ender requires of Paradise …
… before Nirvana was shattered by an ungodly scream of metal on metal, a horrific clatter and screech and finally silence. Clyde and I shook our heads. “That doesn’t sound good,” he said. “No, sounds like a John Deere death knoll. Glad it’s not our mower.”

We popped another cold one and counted our blessings. The neighbors could afford a new John Deere. Sure, a bit of an inconvenience, but hey, keep the economy humming, if nothing else. You can’t expect a mower to last forever, right?

About this time we hear footsteps on the stairs and from around the corner here comes Junkie Jeff, my heroin addict deadbeat con-artist no-account who rents the house next door and before we can say ‘whazzup?’ he’s apologizing, didn’t mean to hurt anything, he’ll make it good … and I finally say “STOP! You mean that godawful noise we just heard was MY mower???”

Jeff had borrowed it from my unlocked shed, filled it with my gas without asking and proceeded to run it into a pipe half buried in his lawn where it died a horrible death, spinning blade vs. steel opponent. RIP. “I’ll buy you a new one, really, I’ll replace it, Skeeter.”

From a calm center I replied firmly, “Naw, Jeff, I’ll buy a new one myself. And here’s the deal: you never touch it, you never ask to use it, you never step on my property again, not ever, never. And … I would greatly appreciate you start as of now.” Head hung hangdog low, Junkie Jeff retreated back to his syringe-filled sorry ass miserable excuse for a life with the unmowed lawn and the drawn curtains and his sad dreams of the next fix. “Man,” Clyde said in amazement, “you really let him off the hook.”

“Not really,” I admitted. “This morning I stripped the bolt that holds the blade. The blade is shot. The mower was shot too. I was going to buy a new one this week anyway. Jeff just saved me taking that one to the dump. And … now he’ll never darken my doorway again. He wouldn’t have bought me a mower in a hundred years, trust me. He’s a junkie. A liar. And he’s dead broke. This way, it’s a win-win. Say adios to my buddy Jeff.” Clyde smiled, we returned to our beers and celebrated. The South End — morally uncomplicated.

Tea Party Ted, my neighbor here on the Don’t-Tread-On-Me South End is doing some major Martha Stewarting on his high bluff property. He’d had a little problem with water draining into his house so to solve it he trenched along the side, dropped in what we call a French Drain (what Francophobes prefer to call a ditch with perforated pipe) and shunted the water away from his hacienda.

Like a lot of us down here, Ted’s not much for permits. Course, Ted’s not much for anything except Ted. The Law of the Jungle works pretty well for the Teds of the world, you just need to own more guns than the rest of us and be twice as mean. I was down at his place the day he was laying pipe. The pipe ran off into the shrubbery, made a sneaky left turn and headed toward the bluff where I assumed he’d hooked up a ‘tight line’, a solid pipe that would reach to the beach below so the run-off wouldn’t erode the bluff.

“To hell with that,” Ted replied to my inquiry. “Same water, same bluff.” I wandered over for a look-see. “What’re you?” he growled, obviously irritated. “The *%##@! EPA?” Ted had put his run-off over toward the edge of his property, but above his neighbor down the hill whose house sat precipitously close to an unstable bluff. The last thing they needed was more water working on the erosion beneath them.

There was a time — about when I first got here — when there were so few of us it didn’t much matter what we did, it didn’t affect any neighbors. I miss those days, I really do, but with boys like Ted still playing outlaw down the road, I’ve come to appreciate a few rules. Saves me strapping on the gunbelt, if nothing else.

They say those who forget history … are doomed to repeat it. Maybe most places, but not on the South End! You get a Second Chance, a Do-Over, a Mulligan. Which is why the South End String Band is back at the Stanwood Area Historical Society’s Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center playing another fundraiser: they figure someday they’ll actually get it right. That, or the Floyd will wise up to their shenanigans.
Probably neither., but meantime, come join them for some Camano roots music, good food, adult beverages and a glimpse of what history could’ve been if we weren’t in such an All-Fired Hurry to move on to tomorrow. Like the band famously sez: the future isn’t Prologue, it’s just Prolonged.

Sat. Feb 7th , 2015 at 7 PM at the Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center. Finger food and appetizers will be served and beer and wine will be available for purchase. Apologies, if necessary, will be forthcoming from the Band. Suggested donation: $15.

Address: 27130 102nd Avenue Northwest, Stanwood, WA 98292
Phone:(360) 629-6110

The truth, the whole truth and nothing butt the truth…

Check out www.southendstringband.com for more historical records.