The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/audio-fish-requiem.mp3[/podcast]audio — fish requiem

Maybe it’s advancing old age … or maybe I need more good books to read to fulfill my literary addiction … but I’m starting to notice the obituaries in the paper these days.  Obits used to fall into the same category as high school sports scores, recipes in the food section and all the devotional stuff under the heading of feel-good clap-trap.  Usually I won’t find friends or acquaintances there, but that will change, no doubt.

At this point I’m mostly pausing to look at the photographs of the recently departed, the one their spouse or children submitted.  You can tell a lot from these, maybe more than we ought to know, way more than the verbiage about passing away peacefully or going to be with the Lord or being called Home, followed by a list of surviving family members that should be indispensable to genealogists many years hence.  The saddest to me are the ones fished out of some old shoebox in the basement, obviously the only one they could locate, faded, out of focus, of a dearly departed no one thought enough of in life to bother photographing.  There’s the shot of poor dead Mom with her daughter — obviously submitted by the now motherless child — which shows a better photo of the kid.  Some have the family dog.  Or the cat.  I assume the pet may still be alive to carry on the memory.

But I’m mostly struck by how many of the men are shown with their fish.  Big salmon, huge halibut, trophy trout.  Bad shots mostly of the happy angler, probably shot at the pier by a half inebriated charter boat buddy.  Dead fish, now both of em…  Sometimes you still see an obit with a bloody elk or a fresh shot buck.  Hunter fishermen:  the last of an era, I suspect.

Maybe the only surviving mugshots are these photos.  Maybe this was their one crowning achievement before departing to the heavenly Fish Pond.  All I know is, I’m gathering up all my old fish fotos and burning them Now.

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/audio-south-end-recycling.mp3[/podcast]audio — south end recycling

I live in a third world sort of place, kind of the Tijuana of Camano Island.  Given that Camano is the Tijuana of Whidbey, it probably tells you all you need to know.  My neighbors have discovered that when they want to rid themselves of a ratty sofa or an obsolete tube TV the size of a Volkswagen, they just drag the item out to the road, stick a FREE sign on it and next day, as if leprechauns had organized into teams, the goods disappear.

In other words we’re just passing our commodities hand to hand, neighbor to neighbor.  Saves that trip to the dump if you don’t own a pickup and, let’s face it, saves the humiliation of trying to sell obvious crap on E-Bay or Craigslist that now self-respecting, fully functional adult would bid on.  I’m all for this, by the way.  South End Recycling: just plain old fashioned good stewardship, you ask me.

So when my next door neighbor hauled his 1970’s butt-ugly hide-a-bed and his busted microwave oven onto the shoulder, I figured the hazard to early morning, pre-caffeinated commuter traffic was offset by this Carbon Credit Swapping tactic.  Sure enough, before any accidents ensued, the aforementioned items disappeared.  All well and good….  The dead refrigerator on the porch, though, sat a week, the result of my neighbor’s laziness and poor signage.  Nevertheless, one day it too vanished.

I was amazed and astounded.  Until my bike ride around the Head the same day …. where the reefer was discovered unceremoniously dumped on a backroad in the nettles, not so noticeable to vehicular traffic, but a white billboard to me on a bicycle.  To say I was pissed would be a gross understatement.  I wanted to pound on my trashy neighbor’s door and UNLOAD not just my anger but the refrigerator too.  But … I thought, unlikely as it might be, maybe this was someone else’s midnight discard.  Plenty of folks who would rather haul stuff into the woods than pay a dump charge ….

It nagged me, though, it really did, that my boy next door would trash up my paradise.  So finally I took some paint and wrote his address on the fridge door after hoisting the appliance upright where it loomed white and apparitional out of the gloom of the nettle forest.  No great harm if I was wrong.  Bullseye if I was right.  The Skeeter Gambit.

The sheriff’s deputies noticed it the very next day, trained professionals that they are, and they stopped by my pal’s house and inquired if perhaps he’d reported a Missing Frigidaire.  He had a cockamamie story, but next day when I checked at the dump, oh yeah, a refrigerator with an address on it was standing over in the appliance section.

If there’s a moral here, damned if I know what it is.  But I’ll say this:  before you toss your old stoves and iceboxes into some woods you think is remote, just leave it on the shoulder of the South End with a FREE sign on it.  Apparently we can always use another appliance out on the front porch.  Save you a lot of embarrassment with the Island County Sheriff.

SOUTH END COMMISSIONER CANDIDATE POSITION STATEMENTS

Bubba Frisk Jr. JOB CREATION  PARTY

Our current tourism ad slogan might as well be ‘the place to do nothing’ .  Sadly, it’s not just for tourists; it’s for all the unemployed we have down at the South End.  If I’m elected, my first executive order will be to jumpstart the Mother of All Tourist Promotions centered around our own HomeBoy:  the Barefoot Burglar, the Camano Kid, the Flying Filcher, our very own international anti-hero.  The movies are being shot, the books are being written, the documentaries are being edited, the mom has hired an entertainment lawyer, the deals are being made!  Rolling Stone has declared Camano officially the Cape Cod of the Pacific Northwest.  And we still want to be the place that does nada?  Maybe the Chamber  …. But the rest of us are ready to roll!  Tour buses, T-shirts, coffee mugs, souvenir shops:  we’re ready to cash in.  Camano, the island to do nothing?  We don’t need a new slogan, we need a new NAME.  Colton Island.  Nice ring to it.  And how do you get to Colton Island? Bingo!  Get off the hammock and call your commissioner today!

[Paid for by the Colton Harris- Moore Bridge Committee]

Tweeter Daddle  47% PARTY

My father Skeeter Daddle was the perennial candidate for the position of South End Commissioner.  I know there will be folks who accuse me of riding his infamous coat-tails.  Course, Dad never won a single election so only a damn fool would ride those tails.  And believe me, I’m nobody’s fool but my own.

If elected, I promise my fellow 47%’ers that we will grow the county government until WE become the 53%.  Once we have the majority vote we’ll give our disadvantaged business sector a fiscal injection of county corporate welfare, B&O tax breaks and nettle subsidies so that we can compete against Whidbey markets.  Together we’ll make Government work FOR us …. so we won’t have to!!  Thank you for your vote.  “Two chickens in every pot, a little pot in every chicken.”

Sarah Doolittle DO NOTHING PARTY

We all know County Government has done nothing to bring jobs to the South End.  Instead it has encouraged a debilitating, work-sapping ethic of entitlement to the region, one where able-bodied people prefer the sad sack life of a Lay-About over good minimum wage jobs.

When I take office, I will raise cable TV fees so that the indolent will be forced to work to pay for their government induced slothfulness.  And that includes the retirees as well!  We need to put the South End back to work.

We all know Government is the real problem.  Not just Big government, but Little government too.  That’s why I’m running for a government position.  As your next South End Commissioner I will WORK to eliminate unnecessary programs and agencies.  Government jobs are phony jobs.  Let’s get back to the Business of Island County.  Government should not be Job Creators.  I promise to be a Job Killer where county jobs are concerned.  You have my promise…

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/audio-you-cant-always-get-what-you-want-but-you-get-what-you-knead.mp3[/podcast]audio — you can’t always get what you want, but you get what you knead

A lot of us chainsaw-wielding menfolk around here are engaged in role reversals with the missus.  Probably says more about rampant unemployment on the South End than it does gender bending, but when the women work to pay the mortgage on the shack, most of us lay-abouts realize a healthy marriage — not to mention physical well being — depends on us pitching in around the house.  Cooking, laundry, dishwashing duty, basic cleaning chores go hand in hand with our more manly obligations now.

The reverse is true too.  A lot of lady friends chop wood or repair their plumbing or push a lawnmower or throw a mean hammer.  Part and parcel of living with one foot in poverty and the other in the 19th century.  Gender roles get pretty blurry.

So it always surprises me when I take a savory potato salad or a loaf of fresh homemade bread to a potluck and the hosts compliment, without fail, the missus.  I only been baking bread now, continuously, for 4o plus years.  Got a grain grinder older than me attached to a curly maple butcher block table I made when I built the house designed just for that purpose.  I grind wheat berries, rye, barley, oats, corn, quinoa, flax, amaranth, buckwheat, spelt and soybeans.  It doesn’t get much fresher.  Add some salt, some olive oil, plenty of molasses or brown sugar and let the yeast froth it up to something alive and kicking.  Knead it, roll it, put it in a buttered pan, bake it for half an hour.  Used to bake it in the wood cook stove and still do occasionally, but we got a gas one we use most of the time now.

A lot of the womenfolk ask if I use a breadmaker.  Actually, they all ask.  Just assume, I suppose, a He-Man like myself wouldn’t strap on an apron and grab a rolling pin.  (Next thing they’ll have to imagine my thinning locks up in curlers.)  Most of em sigh and say they always wanted to learn, maybe they could drop by for a hands-on lesson or two next time I’m in full knead mode.  I say sure, but I know they won’t.  Working women really don’t have enough free time.  Maybe when they’re semi- retired  …. like me.  Besides, breadmaking is a little like magic.  A good magician doesn’t give away the trick.  And anyway, if they all started baking, what would I bring to the next potluck?

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/audio-lazarus-funeral-home.mp3[/podcast]audio — lazarus’ funeral home