The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Karen and I bought the little house next door to us. We know a bit of its history and the history of Ruby, the woman who built it with her husband Harry, a fellow vaudevillian. Ruby was a dancer. Actually, she was a burlesque dancer and more accurately, a stripper during the Depression. We even have a full size theater marquee of her we found in the wall of our shack back in 1978 where, it turns out, Ruby lived with her mom Mary and her sister Pearl and her brother Marion back as far as 100 years ago when the shack was built. In the 40’s she and Harry built the little house we just bought.

I think half the reason we bought it was because Karen is an historian and wanted to bring the two places back together, sort of the way it was originally, all in the family. She’s been searching websites, googling up Ruby and binging Harry and yahooing Pearl. She’s got folks down at the Historical Society sleuthing tidbits on burlesque queens and strippers to the point the FBI may have a sting soon on geriatric porno purveyors, a psychopathology that has received all too little attention in the media. Genealogists have joined the fray and fragment by fragment, some of Ruby’s life has begun to materialize. More than her dance outfit, that’s for sure….

But … you go searching into closets and crevasses, you better be prepared for what you uncover. People’s lives hold secrets and surprises. We don’t all have happy endings, even us South Enders. Maybe particularly us South Enders. This past month we were given an article from the Oct. 18, 1946 Sacramento Bee which reads as follows: “A suave and polite bandit raped burlesque dancer Ruby Reed, 28, at gunpoint yesterday morning while her husband lay in the same bed, tied and gagged.
The gunman, dressed in navy or merchant marine uniform, folded his coat neatly on a chair but did not remove his cap or mask.
Miss Reed and her husband, Harry Mayers, a burlesque comedian, woke at 4:30 A.M. to find a man pointing a gun and a flashlight in their room at 324 Hyde Street. He said: ‘This is a stickup. Never mind the money. Get back into bed.’ He tied Mayer’s hands with clothesline, gagged both of them and then raped Miss Reed.
Afterward, he rose, took his coat and left, remarking, ‘Thank you very much.’

This account leaves altogether too much to the imagination and raises serious questions as to where the plot will take us next. Part of me wishes we’d never delved this deeply. But the other part wants to know how the coming chapter will play out. I’ve always maintained that history is half mystery. I just hope it isn’t a murder mystery. Stay tuned. We are.

Back in the days before brie and merlot replaced nettle hardtack and homebrew, the South End was a wild and woolier frontier than its gated communities and statuary-riddled estates might lead a Sunday driver to believe. Laws weren’t so much meant to be broken as they were just ignored. Most of us scofflaws were pretty harmless, but you live in a place beyond the reach of Rome, you’ll get a nastier sort too.

Mountain Man Mike lived up behind me with only a vicious barrier of nettles and blackberries to hold him at bay. Mike thought he was pretty much the Law unto himself, like a lot of us, but Mike had a cruel streak and a violent temper. Mountain Man rode his horse and his dogs up and down the highway and backcountry through what trails we kept open into the salmonberry jungles. He hunted deer out of season all year long, shot them and anything else that came into view. Rumor was he made vats of fresh killed varmint and fed the stew to his hounds. Wasn’t long before the Bambi population reached near zero. I gripe with the best over deer grazing our gardens and orchards, but I didn’t want them exterminated. And not by Mike.

Mike shot our neighbor’s dog one year. John came around looking for it and I said I hadn’t seen the pooch for more than a week, maybe check up back with Mountain Man. Which he did and Mike said yeah, I shot the sonofabitch, it was messing with the chickens. Mike’s wife was standing there and she said no it wasn’t messing with the chickens, you just wanted to kill her. Mike said get your sorry ass inside and to Johnny get his off my property. The sheriff came out next, issued a citation for killing the dog for which Mike paid $500 and gave his mizzus a black eye.

A few months later a couple of dogs were found tied together with baling wire and left to die in a field near Mike’s. I guess Mike figured better to kill them on the QT than just blast away with his rifle. Or maybe he found a new form for his sadism. My neighbor untied them and they both lived. Lucky dogs!

Mountain Man eventually divorced his wife and he’s moved somewhere north where hopefully the neighbors fence their dogs and kids and where shooting a rifle out back will bring the Law and I mean right now. Down here, we’re not going to miss him. Mike is exactly why we have laws in the first place and why, even on the South End, we don’t believe in Anarchy, despite rumors to the contrary.

Somewhere just shy of the tail end of the Last Century, we built the Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center and Art Park. Even won some architectural awards when we finished it. Got a post-modern building, a huge Matzke stainless steel sculpture, a Paula Rey sculpture, a Gunter painting, a David Maritz sculpture, another by Debbie Rhodes and a big-ass stained glass window. We planted trees and shrubs, laid a walkway, redid the signboard and map and striped a parking lot. We even managed to obtain 3.5 acres behind this for a continuation of our sculpture park. You want to know if something like that is inspirational, an art story where art wins at the end, I can tell you. It is!

A bunch of us artists spent a year on that project. Plenty of headbutting with the Chamber Board, mostly folks who felt like us artists had pulled a fast one on them, turning an information booth into a celebration of art. I finally had to join up myself so we could get the thing done, about as appealing a notion to me as signing up for the NRA. Half the Board wondered who the hell the guy in the hat was who worked every day down there 7 days a week all that spring and summer and into the fall. Some unemployed sucker, they probably thought, who we don’t need to know who he is or stop by and maybe say thanks for the free labor.

Fast forward a few years. Maritz’s sculpture was stolen for scrap metal. Debbie’s ‘Diver’ sculpture was stolen for the same reason. A decommissioned Seattle copper and bronze sculpture by Glen Alps we’d hauled up to reinstall was hauled off in the middle of the night by metal thieves. The stained glass window was riddled with bullet holes and broken by bottles thrown from passing cars. I got a call last week from the guy who’s going to rent that Visitor Center from the current Chamber now that they decided they’d rather set up an info booth around the corner in a trailer and rent the empty building at the most strategic location on the island for a few miserable pesos. I spoze I could’ve been pissy with him. I spoze I could’ve gone to the county and asked if maybe a commercial building meets their codes. I spoze I could’ve gotten on my High Horse and gone to the papers, see what people think of folks who take all our volunteerism and turn it into a cash register.

But … Don Quixote here has tilted too long at windmills, even if it’s one he helped build. I must be getting old and tired. I wish I was getting wiser. Although … if dealing with the Chamber of Commerce hasn’t smartened me up, nothing much will. Most folks don’t know the history of that Art Park and most wouldn’t care anyway. I like to think — and I certainly say it enough — all I want is to move on to the next project. The past, dammit, just is. Past. I can’t spend time fighting battles to save it. I’m not a historian, I’m a South Ender.
They want me to say it’s fine, it’s okay. Just a new wrinkle in the old Center. They tried to put the President’s retail shop in there back when we first built it. So maybe the way to look at it is we held them at bay for 15 years at least. But capitalism has won now, why not shout hurray! Join the Chamber. Salute the real estate offices. Pledge allegiance to Money.

But! For a brief time, maybe not forever, art won. I think maybe the battle is lost, but the war isn’t over on Commando Island, not by a long shot. We’re leaving a silver bullet on the table when we go even though they’ll smile and figure it’s just something they can melt down and cash in. Like an old pal of mine once said, “They don’t know what to make of me …. but I know exactly what to make of them.”

Je Suis Fred

Francophobe Fred was lecturing with a cold limp French fry to a few of us malingerers at the newly christened Leatherhedz Pub and Swill. Admittedly, we were deep in our cups, not quite ready to face the music at home, although … a few more flaccid fries with ketchup dripping noodled in our faces, anything would look better.

“They’re ALL terrorists!” he shouted. A fat splotch of ketchup put an exclamation point on Ralph’s Carhartt jacket. Another stain only added to the ‘worn’ look of it, but even so, Ralph rubbed at it as if it were acid eating through to his chest. “Jeez, Fred, watch where you’re shakin that fry! This coat’s American made.”

“The hell, you say.” And for a moment, I thought the invocation of jobs still in this country might swing Fred onto another of his favorite rants, illegal immigration and jobs going overseas. But no, he popped the accused fry into his mouth and said between chews, “A few more boatlads and they’ll ram Sharia Law through. The French won’t know what hit em til it’s too late. Maybe,” he wondered aloud, brandishing another greasy potato stick, “they’ll get the message now.”

Ralph was muttering. He’d poured part of his beer on a napkin and was furiously scrubbing the ketchup stain deeper into cotton grown in Bangladesh and sewn in Mexico by workers who hadn’t yet smuggled themselves north. “I’m getting the message, Fred. Jeez, settle down.”

“It’s about Free Speech, Ralph, can’t you see what’s happening?” Ralph shook his head sadly. “I see this ketchup isn’t coming out, that’s what I see, Fred.” Ralph looked like he’d been shot in the chest, blood oozing above his right breast pocket. Jerry, two stools down, laughed out loud. “He means that cartoon of Muhammed, Ralph. They got a right to make fun at someone’s religion, that’s what he means.” None of us waiting for Last Call were particularly religious.

“Damn right that’s what I mean! They don’t like it, lump it … or leave the country. All of em!” “Or what?” I asked, breaking off from watching Ralph washing his coat with Budweiser.

“Round em up! Send em home where they belong! Why the hell not?”

“Their free speech?” I asked. “Freedom to live where they want?”

Ralph stood up suddenly. Fred drew back as if expecting the worst. “I gotta go,” Ralph blurted. He lurched out of his booth. “I don’t want this to set. Maybe I can still soak it in cold water.”

“Soak yer head too,” Fred called after him, although not loud enough for Ralph to hear. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to call it a night. Facing the music looked like a real good plan. “Wait up, Ralph,” I hollered. “I’m right behind you.” Sometimes freedom isn’t at all what you think.