The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

My neighbor Roy was down at the new watering hole the other day trying to decide between the 3 dozen microbeers they have going stale on tap. So many choices, so little time …. Finally, after inquiring about a couple of their options with the bartendress who really didn’t know much of anything about any of them other than reading the name off the tap, Roy asked her what she preferred. Roy is single and probably thought it would give him a leg up on a possible dating opportunity if he ordered same as her.

So what if she’s 20 years younger, drinking the same beer is one rung up the ladder of shared ‘likes’. Now, if she liked to fall asleep on the couch watching ESPN after a hearty dinner of peanuts, Doritos and vodka tonics, Roy was in like Flint, a match made, if not in Heaven, somewhere this side of internet dating.

“Bud Lite,” she told him, beer of choice. “Bud Lite?” he repeated, sorely disappointed. It was as if he’d gone to a white linen restaurant, asked his waitress what was good this evening, and been told Big Macs. With fries. Roy told me he actually considered ordering a Bud Lite so as not to hurt her feelings. Roy — as you can see — is a Sensitive Man. Although his first wife, and second one too, might disagree. He met them both in bars late at night in Stanwoodopolis. Poor lighting, I guess, or lack of competition. A relationship probably lasts longer built on more than a shared thirst, but then, I’m not a marriage counselor.

Roy finally decided he’d just go somewhere else to find a beer. Maybe he noticed her wedding ring or maybe it was just too many unknowns on all those taps. Down at the South End we like to keep it simple, but not too simple.

Quite a few islanders ask me if they’re South Enders or not, thinking, I guess, there’s a geographical demarcation, a Mountain View/Dixon Line. I usually tell them it’s more a psychological barrier, but then they think I mean psychotic and before you know it, misunderstandings turn into subtle hostilities and they decide they don’t want to be one of us after all. It’s not exactly a social club. Most of us down here didn’t choose to be South Enders. These things just happen.

Nevertheless, it does get a person to thinking: maybe we should annex a few acres here and there, suburbanize the backwashes and the bayous, zone them as Free Thinking refuges, then while we’re at it, liberate the gated communities trapped behind remote controlled bars and alarms with their high def TV’s and their BMW’s. Lower their taxes, if nothing else, fair compensation for the loss of their overvalued self esteem. Get em off their High Horse and their high property tax.

Hellfire, sometimes I get grandiose and imagine we could bring our enlightened way of living clear up to the north end, maybe even Stanwoodopolis. A little Shucks and Awe or maybe Aw Shucks and Law, liberate them from their backward ideas on government and philosophy. South End Exceptionalism! The 21st century’s answer to Manifest Destiny. I know, it sounds good to me too.

But then I pause and think: if we break it, we own it. Iraq just went to pieces this week and if we couldn’t bring those folks some good old fashioned American Values, how do we expect Utsaladians and Camalochers to get behind our South End Ideals? They got their tribal ways, entrenched for decades and barely hanging together by a thread. Upset the delicate balance and we’ll reap the whirlwind. Onamac vs. Finistere, grabbing for that northern gas pipeline. Juniper Beach sweeping down on Twin City Food, overtaking its strategic barricades on the river. Terry’s Cornermen capturing Cascade Lumber. It would make Middle East sectarianism look like Wednesday night women’s mud wrestling at the Leatherheads Pub. No, I think to keep the peace we need to keep the boundaries defined. You folks envious of us South Enders, well, you probably need to talk to a realtor down at Windy Rear. Or just wait til you lose your job. You’ll find your way here….

Billy Jean ran the art gallery down here at the aesthetically swollen South End, the only paid employee. The artists who showed their wares could pay extra commission or work 10 hours a week. Since they rarely sold their art, the extra commission was zip so why should they work? The first year the co-op, the South Fork Art Barn, was closed most days when no one was willing to sit in the vacant Second Hand Shoppe they’d leased. Finally, after mounting rental bills, the South End Arts Council voted to hire a staff person to do what they wouldn’t.

Billy Jean interviewed for the minimum wage, no benefits job and was hired the same day, primarily by dint of NOT being an artist herself, the main criterion the Council set for qualifications. Not having been around artists, B.J., who thought the position would mostly be running the store, tracking sales and receipts, closing up at the end of the day, well, she never dreamed the job actually was Ego Masseuse. The first day Sarah Jenkins came in early to demand her watercolors be moved front and center where they would cheerily greet the customers before they decided to leave empty handed. Billy Jean nodded and smiled, but eventually pled ignorance of the rules by virtue of being the New Hire. She would, she vowed, check with the Council and the Co-op Board. Course, it turned out the Board had their art front and center so a rule was made on-the-spot to keep the current display configuration.

The first week various grumpy artists brought forth their complaints, moved paintings or hung new ones, argued their cases with Billy Jean and wished her luck. Meaning, sell my work! By Friday she felt like a vise had scrunched her ears into one auditory pancake of pain. She was, she told her newly unemployed plumber husband Brent, nothing but a glorified Cat Herder. Brent, still in shock over his sudden layoff, told her she’d get the hang of it, just stick with it, Honey, we need the money, a refrain she later could have embroidered in needlepoint and hung front and center by her own front door and called it art or literature or just a motto for the rest of the South End.

Billy Jean lasted two more months. The Gallery lasted three.

Opportunities come and go here faster than county commissioners. Like Shakespeare said, albeit a wee more poetically, You snooze, You lose. A few years back the island had the chance to capitalize on the Barefoot Bandit’s international notoriety. Colton Island. We could’ve been what Forks is to vampires, a major tourist destination for teenagers and their drag-along parents. But no, we let it slip through our fingers and now Colton is just a fading memory cooling his heels in the federal pen south of Seattle and Gomorrah. All that memorabilia us South Enders invested in will no doubt jam the Second Chance Thrift Store for a decade.

But! Fate has dealt our backwash island another Hand, a real 2nd chance. And, as always, we’re here to promote it! Forget that 3rd time is the charm stuff — there won’t be a 3rd time. Jump on the 2nd. Learn from our mistakes. Ride the Gravy Train for a change. It’s coming into a station near you. Call your commissioner. Talk to your priest. Chat with your retirement investment counselor. Take out some loans. Do what needs to be done!

The mom and pop auto parts store on 530 has closed to make room for a cannabis store. A marijuana mercantile. A drug emporium. A regular Dr. Feelgood’s real goods. Down on the South End the Tyee Store has been sold and soon will boast multiple greenhouses and grow operations. That’s correct, Sherlock: Marijuana Pharming. Agribusiness is alive and well once again and the island — cue the Power Point Presentation — is ideally positioned to cash in. Cannabis Island!!! Imagine the tourism. Imagine the potential, the profits, the notoriety. Cannabis Island, the island higher than Mt. Rainier.

Forget Colton. He’ll be out soon and he’ll probably get a white collar job with the FBI teaching them his fugitive tactics. The future is now. The future, if we have sense enough to grab it by the bong handle, is going to pot. Contact the Chamber of Commerce, alert the realtors, listen to the artists: Cannabis Island “where you can take a trip and never leave your seat.” Don’t let this opportunity slip from our grasp! We missed our chance once, don’t let this one be a savage flashback.

Don’t look now, but the long economic drought of the South End is about to come to an end. Tyee Store, long shuttered and overgrown with weeds, has sold! Soon a new era begins down here and prosperity will be ours. Ironically it will be farming that returns us to the cash cows we once were. Or, in this case, Pharming.

Tyee Store is going to grow commercial cannabis. Medical marijuana. Recreational mary jane. This isn’t an April Fool’s joke, folks. This is the South End rising up from the ashes of a nettle industry gone to pot, higher than a Katmandu Kite, on the wings of what we once grew illegally, but now will grow and pay taxes on. Without a doubt this will be the largest employer down here. Probably larger than all the others put together. Growers and trimmers, pruners and baggers, labelers and quality control testers. Half of the neighbors have offered to help, free of charge, although I suspect our worthy volunteerism will be turned down. These are legitimate biznesspeople. These are what the 1% refer to proudly as ‘job creators.’

The South End is embarking on a new entrepreneurial era. Ironically, what once made us criminals, now will make us rich. After all, isn’t this the American Way? Oh, there will be some that cry foul, who will say why reward the criminals, who would rather forego the taxes to see miscreants and scofflaws put in their rightful place. Behind bars. We waged a war on drugs and after decades and billions, we lost. In the end pot was the largest agricultural commodity in the country, more than corn, more than soybeans, more than tobacco. And none of it was taxed. You don’t have to be an MIT math professor to do the calculations.

We’ll leave it for others to debate the morality. Obviously down here, we’ve opted for some fiscal sanity and a return to sound agricultural practices. Soon we’ll be exporting not only our THC but our way of life to markets near you. Watch for our tractor trailers rolling in to a distributor in your locale. The South End will Rise Again!