The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/publess-in-paradise1.mp3[/podcast]publess in paradise

The South End’s never had a tavern … at least not a legal one.  Never had a bar.  Surely never had a cocktail lounge.  The Diner doesn’t have a liquor license although the Marina and Bait Shop can sell beer or wine To Go, but they don’t allow drinking on the dock.

Well, okay, they allow discreet drinking on the dock.  Meaning, pour your beverage into a coffee mug or drink like the bums do from a bottle in a paper bag.  Legalities are fluid down here, needless to say.  It’s more than a bit ironic that the South End, notoriously bibulous, is today – and always has been – legally dry.  This was, after all, one of the destinations of Prohibition rumrunners bringing in Canadian booze to us thirsty statesiders trying mightily to avoid the DT’s and wicked withdrawal.  Back then we South Enders had our own speakeasy in the form of a bevy of burlesque dancers and their impresario who partied into the dusk of the Great Depression.  Our old shack once boasted the marquis poster of Miss Ruby, our own in-house stripper, one of those party girls who now graces our bedroom with her still risqué outfit.  She lived in our shack with her mom Pearl and then built the house next door that still stands too, although, like ours, not without a lot of help.

So I guess the tradition of private parties, ad hoc speakeasies, impromptu makeshift livingroom lounges still flourishes.  Some might suggest this makes us a refuge of scofflaws, an accusation we accept as no small approbation and certainly nothing new down here.  If we want to drink in legally sanctioned-by-the-state houses of intoxication, we obviously are forced to drive long distances.  Since drinking and driving are rightly frowned upon in modern society, we South Enders have decided our best and obvious recourse is to do em one at a time.

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/audio-TyeeCo.mp3[/podcast]audio —TyeeCo

I joined CostCo this past year, what they refer to as a ‘buying club’, meaning you can join the fun for a fee.  For years I’ve resisted.  I usually don’t pay my stores for the privilege of shopping, but friends had been buying stuff for me when they went and I finally let guilt wear me down.

CostCo, for those of you who are accustomed to express lines or Quickie Marts, is a bit jarring.  You don’t just grab a basket and run in for a couple of items.  No, you get a cart the size of a tractor trailer rig.  Within seconds of entering the warehouse, passing through their version of TSA, you are swept into a traffic nightmare comparable to Seattle at rush hour.  Folks in quest of huge cost savings, are investing in giant food rations that are stacked alongside electronics, auto parts, hardware, toys and clothing, sporting goods, then grunted along corridors more and more jammed as we maneuver bravely toward the checkout assembly line while maniac kamikaze cart wielders slash blindly toward free food samples, totally risk averse and apparently near starvation.  The stopping distance of one of these overloaded vehicles is about that of the Exxon Valdez.  I don’t have statistics on pedestrian fatalities, but presumably it is a national scandal.

All in all it’s a surreal shopping scene.  A year’s supply of rations piled high, mammoth sized jugs of perishables whose prices don’t portend the probability of spoilage, super sized everything  — we Lilliputians struggle with 200 pound loads, bumpercars on steroids, everyone carbon-loaded and dreading the deathmaze of the parking lot zoo waiting open jawed for us after the cart inspection at the exit.  I can only assume most head for a storage unit to unpack the booty.

Every time I go I feel awash in shopping shame.  Imagine, say, a Sudanese immigrant or a fellow South Ender, stumbling onto this scene, aghast at the sight of gallon jars of everything from kalimata olives to pickled okra.  I know I have to pay a little more at Tyee Store — okay, a lot more — but sometimes I don’t need to stock up like a survivalist.  Sometimes I just want the small jar of pickles.  And that’s what Tyee Store’s got …. and so far they don’t charge me to join their buyer club just to come in.

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/south-end-archeology.mp3[/podcast]south end archeology

The other day I was vacationing up at Lost Lake (apparently rediscovered) where I was conscripted to help clear an overgrown homestead.  A couple days into it, first with a chainsaw, then a sickle and finally just mano y mano with the downfall and the ivy and the blackberries, I was full bore into what was a veritable archeological dig.  I see how Mayan temples disappear under vines and sediment, lost civilizations stumbled on by accident centuries later.

The Lost Lake Dynasty didn’t appear to be quite centuries old, but some of it had slipped under mud and mulch.  If I was hoping for discovered treasure, I was sorely disappointed.  A couple more days of burn piles for the brush revealed old shrubs, creeping myrtle, hidden rhododendrons, plenty of daffodils and hyacinth pushing greenery into spring, all the telltale of someone’s old homestead next to the lake.

History here doesn’t lead back generation after generation to a distant Vanishing Point.  Much as some of us want to believe, the South End isn’t the Cradle of Western Civilization and Lost Lake isn’t Mesopotamia on the Stilly.  This was virgin ground and scarcely trod upon much less inhabited even by aboriginals who, like us newcomers, preferred the waterfront real estate of Puget Sound’s Big Sea Waters.

Most history, you stop and think about it, is lost.  Oh sure, we remember the Big Stuff:  wars and conquests, religious beginnings, Hot Shot Philosophies — but most of human endeavor is lost to rot and rust and ruin, covered over by the neglect and detritus of the next generation busy with making their own history.  Civilization is built on burial grounds.  Down here on the South End, we got the dubious distinction of being the bottom layer.

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/end-of-prohibition-again.mp3[/podcast]end of prohibition, again

The South End, being a bit occupationally challenged, has always relied on alternative avenues of work to sustain us.  In the 20’s we used our inaccessibility to advantage by bringing in Canadian hooch through our coves and hidden ports.  Course, we added our own single stalk nettle scotch to the blend and managed to prosper even into the Great Depression.  The end of prohibition cut into the Canadian stock, but Daddle Distillery continues to this day back in the ravines where Revenuers rarely trek.

In the 60’s a new breed of entrepreneur flurourished here in the backwoods, men who accepted risk for high profit.  I’m talking, obviously, about the Green Trade, Camano Cannabis.  You’d see the sheds with the boarded up windows or the plots bordered by 8 foot high nettles to hide the outdoor crops.  An underground market flourished from Elger Bay to Tyee, and homegrown became a staple and a lifestyle.  Some say the artists who gravitated down to the island’s far reaches were inspired by Killer Kannabis or Two Toke or Bud Bomb.  Others claim they were the new Pharmers of the South End, painters and sculptors who turned their creative energies to horticulture.  Or hortichuckle.

These Avante Gardeners now find their way of life threatened with the onslaught of another end to prohibition now that the tidal wave of medical marijuana has reached their hidden shores.  No doubt some will adapt.  Hazy Jake says he’ll switch to hydroponics and slick marketing.  He’s enrolled at the Skagit Community College where he’ll bone up on biogenetics and website design.  Jake should do fine.  But some of the others ….. well, a lot of bootleggers went broke overnight following the Repeal.  My guess is you’ll be seeing an upsurge in art real soon.  Not much profit, but we need to stay busy down here…..