The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Times are tough these days down at the South End Marina and Bait Shop.  A lot of barnacle-bottomed boats moored idle at the docks, their glory days of fishing now just a dry-rotted memory.  Occasionally you’ll see one of the skippers doing a little brightwork on some faded trim or turning over an engine just to clear the cobwebs from the lines and the tanks, but time and overfishing have taken heavy tolls.

Used to be the fleet was the pride of the island, running from Mabana to Bristol Bay in search of salmon openings and halitbut catches.  We maybe didn’t have the widows’ walks the Narragansett boys had for their lonely wives to gaze forlornly out to sea scanning horizons for men returned from hunting whale, but it was an event nonetheless when captains sailed into view with full cargo holds and tales of Alaskan storms.

Sadly, those catches dwindled and the fleet turned to lesser dreams.  For a time they chartered for the tourist fishermen,  CEO’s up from San Diego and Frisko, Portland and Seattle, in search of trophy gooeyducks and the elusive free range oyster, but even those became uncommon, then finally rare.  One by one the Captains Courageous were forced to sit idle, swapping tongue-worn tales of the Big Catch of ’78 or the killer storm of ’82, mostly lies now, but better than constant complaining.   And far better than hanging out in the unemployment office.

Some of the skippers sold their boats for what they could get, just pesos on the dollar.  Hazy Jake ran Canadian Bud for awhile through the islands until the borders tightened and his nerves frayed worse than his lines.  You see the last of them down at the bait shop most days, those Ahabs whose Mobys disappeared, hunkered down  over big chipped mugs of thick coffee from the self serve pot, predicting tide and weather, predicting  everything except the future, a place they rarely visit now.

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/audio-crabdog-day.mp3[/podcast]audio —crabdog day

I love a good holiday as much as the next yahoo … but c’mon, this Groundhog’s Day business, let’s be honest, the Chamber of Commerce out there in Pullmyleg, Pennsylvania has pulled a fast one on those of us who take meteorologic prediction seriously.  Down here on the convergence zoned South End, No Way is a groundhog going to see his shadow on Feb. 2nd.  Even if we had groundhogs!  This thing just gives Science a bad name.  And lately, the last thing it needs in these superstitious, Mayan Calendar, end-of-the-world times is a black eye over some mammalian hairball on the East Coast seeing its hairball shadow (or not) and then extrapolating that to El Nino or asteroid strikes on Wall Street or global warming.

Which is precisely why some of the more empirically minded boyz down at the Mabana Body Shop have been searching, in a deductive sort of methodology, an alternative Predictor of winter longevity.  Hellfire, if winter’s just going to last until April, we figure there’s no point in fighting serious incentive-reducing Inevitability.  We’ll just pull the covers up, collect unemployment and wait for spring.  This is how civilizations thrive:  they figure out tides and seasons for planting schedules and harvest times and happy hours.

The model the boyz constructed over the past decade or so is a local paradigm that utilizes a 5 gallon polyethylene bucket of fresh caught Dungeness crabs  —- I KNOW you’re going to point out they’re illegal this time of season, but listen, we’re putting em back when the data is collected.  Spirit of the Law, if not the Letter and that, in a clamshell is the very essence of the South End Way. —- So you got a pail of clacking claws and now you bring out a dog, any dog, any breed, random sampling, see?  And you let the pooch check out the crustaceans.  No shadows, no hibernating drowsy marmots.  And if the crab gets a lock on Snoopy’s snout, voila, studies have shown that is a true omen of an early spring.  The dog schnozz slips the noose, 6 more weeks of sleeping in.

Simple.  Like Einstein says, the more elegant the theory, the higher the probability it’s correct.  And the boyz down at the body shop will tell you, the accuracy here is in the 90 percentile range, statistically astounding.  We’re not claiming, like those unabashed self promoters in Pennsylvania, that this will predict spring for the entire country, but for all us Left Coasters, rest assured, Feb 2nd now has science as its bedrock foundation.  We’ll leave it to the South End Chamber of Commerce how they want to capitalize on it.  Crab Dog Day.  Nice profitable ring to it, don’t you think, kind of like a cash register.  If we can keep PETA at bay….

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/audio-a-big-tent-valentines-day.mp3[/podcast]audio– a big tent valentines day

As most of you careful readers know, political correctness down here on the partisan shores of the steamy equatorial South End is probably not one of our more valued virtues.  Maybe because we’re all trapped down at this skinny dead end backwash cul-de-sac, we’ve learned — the hard way usually —- that if we want to get along without civil war, we have to disagree without resorting to a full blown arms race.  And believe me, we disagree.  On most everything.  That’s why we all ended up down here at the end of a tilting island at the end of America on the edge of a continental shelf sliding herky-jerky under another tectonic plate.

This week the talk down at Jolene’s Beauty Salon and Boutique revolved exclusively around the passage of the same sex marriage bill.  Scissors and tongues snipped and clucked, but Jolene says no blood was spilled.  Ronald, her frothy new beautician, might have intentionally miscolored Mrs. Adeline’s silver perm a tad on the electric blue side when she made the comment that ‘gayness’, seemed to her, was a lifestyle choice, but mostly the banter was affable.

Rhonda Wilkins did wonder out loud if the bill’s passage meant she and her no-account husband Tom’s opposite sex marriage would be annulled now.  “That’s wistful thinking,” Wanda blurted from two chairs away in the middle of a henna touch-up on the minister’s mizzus who steadfastly refused to be drawn into a curling iron showdown, and if Rhonda hadn’t been curled herself and heat-lamped into her chair, she might have stormed out, but by the end of the drying cycle she was cooled down and still unhappily married to the love of her life whose zenith of ambition was to reach retirement before cirrhosis.

So Valentine’s Day on the metrosexual South End this year promises to be a cross between Mardi Gras and a Pink St. Patrick’s Day.  Maybe no parades by the Diner, but a lot of closets opened for an early spring cleaning.  Believe me, the South End could always stand a little more love….  And just in case Mrs. Adeline is right, some of us should think about renewing those old marriage vows.  On the outside chance there really might be a statute of limitation.

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/audio-naming-rights.mp3[/podcast]audio — naming rights

Now that the Sinsemilla Tsunami is rolling across the Land of the Free, Home of the Bud, some of the defenders of American Values are banning the legalization of medical marijuana.  Towns from Mt. Vernon to Everett are debating the pros and cons, weighing the consequences and scrutinizing consciences.  Even Smokey Point, with its perfect name for cannabis fame is balking at allowing doobie dispensaries.

Down on the green shores of the South End of Cannabis Island, we have no qualms about serving the medicinal needs of the area.  After all, we’ve risked arrest and public censure doing exactly that for 50 years.  We don’t like to brag, but hellfire, our pharmers, both indoors and outdoors, have provided psychic relief to the chronically unemployed, the seasonally insane and most of the serious artists of the area.

Decades of hydroponic experimentation, lighting strategies, agri-chemical balancing models, forced budding techniques, nettle cross-feritilization genetics and spiritual incantations have made South End Sinsemilla the envy of the cannabis connoisseur.  From ‘One Toke Smoke’ to the ‘Green Blitz’, our varietal selections provide a complete range of pharmaceutical panacea for all your medical needs in every price category.      Marital problems — try Marital Blitz.  Constipation — take a couple tokes of Canna-Colonic.  Insomnia — one puff of Sinsemilla Insensate should do the trick.  Employment Anxiety —  Welfare Wowee.

The South End Economic Development Council is fully on board with the idea that we can be the region’s Medical Miracle Mile, a lifeline to Nirvana and an emotional booster for the entire Puget Sound Basin.  We’re here to offer our euphoric expertise and our agricultural acumen.  Profits are merely a byproduct, of course.  But hey, Smokey Point, if you aren’t going to capitalize on that name, we’d be interested in purchasing the rights.  Save you any future embarrassment, if nothing else.  We’re here to help.

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/audio-insta-foto-fence.mp3[/podcast]audio — insta foto fence

Neighbor, do you wake up mornings, look out your window over a cup of your favorite roasted coffee and discover the suburb you left behind two short years ago has followed you here to Paradise?  Does it seem like four of your next door neighbors are saluting you with their Starbuck’s coffee?  At night does it look like the sky is glowing an eerie electronic blue from 17 TV’s flickering out every living  room window?  During the day does it seem like every retiree from here to Elger Bay is mowing his weed and feed lawn on a precision close-order drill of riding John Deeres?   Do you find yourself daydreaming of a place in the country where you’re the only lucky fella in the subdivision?       Friend, stop thinking the grass is gonna be greener somewhere else… You know the chemical fertilizers aren’t any more effective there.

What you need is our newly patented, completely remodeled South End Insta-Foto Fence.  Installs in just minutes with household tools!  The Insta-Foto Fence not only repels stray dogs and unwanted neighbor kids, the life-like realistic scenes of rural retirement will lull you back into a reverie of country contemplation.

Lay back in your reclino-lounger with your favorite adult beverage and view scenes of rural bliss.  We offer a full catalogue of bucolic  photo options.  Maybe you want an ocean vista, waves gently rolling on to your immaculate yard.  Order ‘Sleepy Shores #17’.   If Pastoral Paradise (#3)  is more to your taste, a panorama of cattle grazing by far off trees on a gently undulating hillside will make you want put a straw in your mouth and a lemonade on the side table.  Maybe the long monsoon months of interminable winter have got you long in the mouth.  Try ‘Tropical Sunset foto-fence #6’ and forget those drizzly days of the past.  Prefer something more exotic?  Maybe a golf course scene in Hawaii is more your style with its happy duffers driving the fairways of your own backyard.  Just order ‘Pebble Beach Hole #9’ and imagine that drive between the sand bunkers hitting the green every time.    Twenty images to choose from, installed with no muss, no fuss.  So easy and affordably priced you’ll want to change fences often.

Instant Foto-Fence.  Because you deserve more than another man’s suburbs.  Now available in electric for maximum dog repellant protection.  Keeps out the deer too!!!