The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

CLICK TO HEAR —mouse abuse

     I know you folks have probably heard the news:  Stanwood wants to bring a 4 year college to the area.  Univ. of Stanwoodopolis.  Higher degrees in Lefse Rolling, Lutefisk Engineering, and Storage Unit Management.

     Now, I know what you’re thinking.  The town’ll be over-run by eggheads.  Professors taking over the barstools at the Stanwood Hotel, ruining our rural backwash hick ambiance.  Expecting political discussions, not fishing stories.  Wanting napkins with their hand-crafted malt beverages and hors douerve plates, not peanuts.  The Snow Goose bookstore will sell 5 pound tomes with 5 dollar words nobody but the PhD’s will understand.  FOR 50 DOLLARS!  With titles like the Socio-Economic Dialectic of the 3^rd generation Scandihoovian in the Stillaguamish River Drainage.

     The whole town’ll go to hell in a hurry.  Just when the fast food franchises were giving us a glimmer of hope of joining mainstream society.  All those student shops will take over now.  More art galleries.  Boutique soap stores.  Boutique clothing stores.  Boutique furniture stores.  Head shops.  Movie houses, Art movie houses.  Fancy pants restaurants.  Ethiopian Epicure.  Persian Pizza.  La De Da Linguini.

     Gonna look like Berkeley in the 60’s.  Long hair.  Free love.  Dope smoking, anti-war, bohemian anti-establishment types.  Weird clothes.  Weird music.  Weird period.  Weird as a Way of Life.

     Which….. if you stop and think about it, is a perfect description of the South End.  Which … if you been following our logic here, is exactly why the new campus should be located down by us —  the University of the South End, Tyee Branch.  Save em from hiring new professors.  The woods are thick with em.  The Band alone could be a quarter of the art faculty.  Think about it.  It’s the obvious location — and it’ll preserve the Stanwoodopolis we all love……

CLICK TO HEAR — UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH END

Oh, I know you all think the next location of the new college campus extension is pretty much a done deal.  Stanwoodopolis University, advanced degrees in lefse rolling, lutefisk production and storage unit management  —- sure, it looks like a lock.

     But before you start building those ivory towers out on the edge of the sewage lagoon, hold on one South End minute, cause we haven’t thrown in our towel yet.  And don’t start yammerin how we don’t have the infrastructure to support all that brain matter.  We got two – count em, 2 – mom and pop grocery complexes.  Plenty of beer and pizzas for future PhD’s.  And Daddle Distilleries can gear up for heavy production in a moment’s notice to supply fraternity and sorority alike PLUS the faculty needs.

     Sure, dismiss us if you like but dismiss us at your peril.  You’re thinking, why on god’s green earth would anybody stick a major university down in a nettle hellhole like the South End.  The only education they got is the School of Hard Knocks and they’re so hard headed now, no degrees are getting handed out.

     But you forget … we got the Elger Bay Institoot of Esthetic Enlargement, a liberal arts school that rivals Evergreen State for creative degrees.  We got graduates down here so creative they don’t need to work anymore to earn a living once they enter the art colonies of the South End.  Oh, I’m not saying they got rich.  I’m not saying they’re famous.  But how many Ivy Leaguers can claim 90% of their graduates instantly retired??? 

    That’s right  … we been preparing students since 1977 for the rigors of early retirement — WITHOUT working for Microsoft.  So don’t count us out.  We got our P.R. machine cranking 24/7, full color promotional brochures, all the megatonnage our art department is capable of when fully sober…

     University of the South End:  25 miles from I-5, but only 4 years from Retirement.  Catchy, ain’t it, Stanwood?  Good luck to ya,  you’ll need it.

CLICK TO HEAR—university of the south end

What with all this global warming this year, the South End’s been inundated with snowstorms, monsoons, windstorms and bad craziness – all of it culminating in power outages that last for days.  The neighbors who didn’t snowbird it to Phoenix or Baja are about half deranged breathing generator fumes and cursing the PUD, the government, God and the day they retired to a backwash like South Camano. 

     I try to reassure em, being the Good Samaritan I am.  I tell em about the good old days where we lost the Grid for even longer, even more often.  I tell em how the missuz came to my love shack in ’81 in a raging storm.  Power out, trees down, tide lashing the beach, practically had to cut our way home to a dark shack she’d, fortunately, never set eyes on. 

     I tell em, think romantic.  Think oil lamps and candlelight, quiet conversation, flickering shadowplay and the haunting strains of a banjo gently weeping.  Think, this is how it once was.  The wind strumming the fir boughs and the world vibrant and pulsing in a way TV pretty much dulled.  Think of that old lovelight rekindled and warming like a cookstove, the dreams rising once again, yeasty and full of glutinous potential. 

     That’s how this old codger thinks of the South End.  And if I have to be reminded of it every storm, every power outage, every candled memory, well, it’s a welcome few days.  And Ma and Me, we think of em sort of as anniversaries.  Course, after 3 or 4 days, we’re ready for TV.  Or divorce.  Or maybe just a generator of our own.

CLICK TO HEAR — global warming worries

CLICK TO HEAR — fox weather channel