[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/audio-flying-with-the-kid-one-more-time.mp3[/podcast]audio — flying with the kid one more time
Most of you folks I talk to refuse to buy Bob Friel’s hot-off-the-press book The Barefoot Bandit. He spent over a year hunkered down in a bluff cabin on Orcas fighting editors’ deadlines and rat-nibble poverty in order to get the details dead on right. You think maybe you know the whole saga after years of gossiping down at the Diner or endless speculation at Jolene’s Spa or over the neighbor’s truck hood, forget it —- you don’t. Bob’s dug up more facts, details, interviews and in-depth reportage than all the skeletons you got hidden in your shed closet. He knows where the bodies got buried, who helped who, what so and so said to the cops and what they said back and all the minutiae of how the Kid managed to stay fugitive for years. And he tells the saga with an unblinking eye and a style as feisty as a sucker punch.
Some of us don’t like hearing it, but Bob’s got it right: the Barefoot Bandit is the first genuine, certifiable, authentic, bona-fide, bigger than life 21st century folk hero. Sure he terrorized us on the South End and then terrorized Bob and his neighbors up on Orcas. Whaddaya want – an apology?? The Kid’s serving serious time. For serious crimes. You don’t have to feel sorry for him. You don’t have to be some bleeding heart and blame society or his mom or even yourself. But trust me, you’ll get to know Colton as well as your own brother when you finish this book. He was your neighbor. He was maybe your kid’s friend. He was a helluva crook, as you’ll see reading the details of how he operated. And he had nerves of steel, as you’ll see when Bob Friel takes you up on his plane rides, sets you in the cockpit and flies into the cloud covered Cascades and lands in deadly stumped clearcuts and finally into Legend.
But most of all he’s part of the Lore of the South End now. Our folk heroes can’t all be Jesus Christ or Charlie Manson either. Sometimes they’re just the person down the street, the one with a torqued sense of adventure keeping time to a demented drummer with not as many options in life as we ‘normal’ folks got.
Read the book! You won’t get anything better until the next legend comes down the pike. And she won’t be from around here. And a writer fine as Bob Friel won’t be capturing the essence in as entertaining and comprehensive a chronicle. Billy the Kid’s neighbors might not have wanted to encourage the mythologizing either, but trust me, it’s too late. Read this book — it’s part of your lore now. Give you some ammo down at the Diner too next blue plate special…..
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/audio-helping-hands.mp3[/podcast]audio — helping hands
You don’t need a sociology degree from the Stanwoodopolis University to know that these modern times we live in make us more isolated from each other. Oh sure, you got 1500 ‘friends’ on Facebook and you all watch the same TV shows and ‘like’ the same shampoo, but if you need help hauling an appliance from the Goodwill to the back porch, good luck with any of those ‘friends’ driving the truck you need.
Even a gnarly curmudgeon like myself believes Social Networking is okay so far as it goes, but down here on the pioneer South End, we got a slightly more Hands-On social network. Last week I got a call that a friend whose sibling was being held by the state for remedial psychiatric assistance, needed help clearing house and property. A bunch of us dropped what we were doing and headed up the holler with chainsaws, packing boxes, garbage sacks and pickup trucks. We’re still at it, but we’ll get her done.
Another friend needs a little construction done, one needed a lift to the doctor’s office for an eye operation, another wants her cats cared for while she’s on vacation, someone needs help dropping a tree and just this morning I got a call to deliver a prescription to the drug store — the list goes on.
You live on the frontier, you need each other. Learning how to ask for help might just be harder than learning how to give it, but it’s worth learning if you want to live down here in the remote nettle regions of the Great Mossback backwash. Nobody said it would be easy, but it doesn’t have to be too hard either…. All I can say is folks who bellyache about the damn government interfering with their right to ignore their neighbors’ plights better hope their safety net isn’t 1500 yahoos on Facebook.
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/audio-thinking-outside-the-box1.mp3[/podcast]audio — thinking outside the box
Before the advent of circuit boards, silicon chips and computerized everything, us do-it-yerselfers took no little pride in fixing our broken appliances, our busted stereos, our crippled cars and even our dysfunctional lives. Really didn’t have much choice given our fiscal challenges. The washing machine quits, you have to weigh that $50 service fee just to drive down here. Believe me, you’ll learn to diagnose a blown fuse or a broken fan belt yourself before you wait two days in your last clean underwear and then pay half the cost of a Maytag to keep the wringer washer working another six months.
My dryer quit this week. Nothing new there — it goes on strike regularly. But this time the little gizmo that held the blown fuse wouldn’t let go of the fuse. No big deal — I went on-line, googled up the part, found it … and discovered it cost more than that service fee I’m trying to save. Being a South Ender I balked at the rip-off price. No way was I paying $54 plus shipping for a plastic toy fuseholder. Next trip into town I scrounged the hardware store, found a reasonable facsimile and rewired the dryer to hold it …. And yeah, $5 later, I was fluffing up my dungarees.
Sometimes it pays to think outside the box, cornball as that expression is. I bought an extra hard drive for my computer — and oh yeah, I got one — but when it came it wouldn’t fit inside the Tower. A North Ender might send it back, see if there was a better fit. But like I said, we like to think outside the box, so I cut a slot with a hacksaw in the tower side and slid that new blank brain right in and left its frontal lobe sticking out for better ventilation. Sure, the missus shook her head sadly. But the salient point here is that it worked and MORE IMPORTANT BY FAR, the job was done.
The trick here is to show No Fear to these malfunctioning objects, even the ‘black boxes’. They sense fear quicker than a dog or a tax assessor. Open them up, grab a handful of wires, pull on em with authority, half the time they’ll respond positively when they realize unequivocally you’re the Boss. When my VCR ate a rental movie, I eviscerated the aggressive little unit and when it still refused to function, I made an example of it to its electronic brethren and tossed it two stories out into the driveway. I have put rocks through recalcitrant TV picture tubes and in one instance burned one alive, fully plugged in, begging like HAL in 2001—A Space Odyssey. Some machines are incapable of learning. You must be firm. You may even need to be ruthless. The worst mistake you can make is allowing one miscreant cyborg mutant monster to infect the rest. Give em an inch, they’ll grab half of cyberspace.
For those who think it’s a brave new world, one where nothing can be fixed or repaired, cowboy UP! Down here we aren’t going to be slaves to the machine. Even if we have to destroy every damn one ….!
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/audio-roadkill-recipes.mp3[/podcast]audio — roadkill recipes
All us regulars down at the South End Diner were a little taken aback the other day to find a notice on the Special of the Day readerboard: NO Pink Slime in our Burgers, Not Now, Not NEVER!! I guess all the new coverage of offal mixed into whatever else the FDA deems safe for carnivores had finally hit a nerve in the nethermost regions of Rome. Or at least Sammy the Skillet’s nerves. He was slapping burgers around on the grill like he was looking for a domestic violence charge.
Most of us know when Sammy should be left alone, but Two Toke Tom might’ve been one toke over the line when he called out from his stool — “Hey, Sam, hold the slime, but go heavy on the antibiotics, will ya? I got a cold comin’ on….” Brenda, from the working side of the counter, whacked him sternly on the knuckles with a serving spoon, but it was too late, Sam was on his way, spatula dripping grease and growth hormones, and anybody near Two Toke moved perceptibly out of range of what looked to be certain meat-based mayhem. Even T.T. realized his mistake. Those dilated eyes of his widened to the width of twin coffee cup saucers as he threw up his hands defensively. “Sorry, man, sorry. Truly! Sammy, I mean it!!”
Sam glowered menacingly, but finally shook his head, wiped grease on his apron and went back to his grilling. Brenda rapped Two Toke once more for good measure and the rest of us all chuckled nervously and after a minute or three, the conversational pitch was almost back to normal, meaning caffeinated and lively. I did notice, though, that the burger orders were few and far between. BLT’s and frozen fish sandwiches were substituted instead. I had my usual cheeseburger — nobody’s gonna accuse ME of wussing out over food additives. After all, I’m a dyed pink in the wool South Ender. But … I really did want to ask Brenda, confidentially and out of everyone else’s hearing range, what do you suppose they really do to that Velveeta?