The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I heard a study recently that said the poor are more charitable than the rich. On average they give almost twice as much of their income percentage-wise to those in need than their wealthier brethren. They also volunteer more for charities and non profits, service groups and outreach programs. Basically, if my sociology statistical studies are still in semi-working order, this proves, not quite conclusively but damn close, the South End is way more philanthropic than our neighbors up yonder ensconced behind their key carded gated communities.

I had a friend tell me in all seriousness awhile back (in regard to my bemusement over her financial plight at the time) that a million dollars just wasn’t what it used to be. What exactly do you say to a pronouncement like that? Do you work out the math of inflation vs. income? Do you shrug your overburdened shoulders and just agree? Or do you take pity and offer up a loan …. you know, to get her by until that devalued million dollars returns to its rightful place in the economy?

These are tough times. Especially, I guess, for the rich. Or, more aptly, the folks who no longer count themselves among the Gatsbys of Camano. Their stocks have slipped, the value of their two homes has dropped, their retirement funds seem inadequate now, even their hedge fund broker refuses to return their frantic calls — that vast chasm between Us and Them looks like a ditch, not a Grand Canyon. And if sacrifices must be made — and believe me, they must — a little less giving to the needy is definitely the order of the day.

Meanwhile, down here on the Lower Tiers, we kind of see we’re all in this together. So we still donate, we still volunteer and we still give. We don’t have much, but it never seemed too little somehow. Even though a hundred dollars isn’t what it used to be.

If you wander back through our woods beyond our old shack, you’ll pass into a ravine where the trail is lined with bleeding hearts and periwinkle, sort of a path into our own worldly heaven. It meanders around past the Nesje farm, then turns uphill through a nice stand of fir and follows the pastures over to the east side of the island where it eventually pops out at Guitar Bob’s place near the Tyee Store and the Art Gallery. I used to keep a couple of miles of trails cleared where I ran every morning in moccasins, carrying a sickle to slash at the always intruding berry vines and nettles. The woods back there stretched unbroken clear to the Head where nobody much went but us kids, young and old. And maybe the Barefoot Bandit.
I would find old homesteads long gone and I’d collect their heirloom plants to bring back to our homestead. Daffodil Hill was an acre of golden flowers every spring, escapees from someone’s ghost garden. The old house was long gone, just a shadow of myrtles to mark its passing. I’d carry a gunnysack and a small spade, dig a few hundred bulbs each spring, then plant them back home, mostly in the woods where it was too dark for them to prosper. Kitty’s grave and old Dr. Gonzo’s too are marked with them up by the shelter I had in the hemlock copse where sometimes I slept at night only to wake up with slugs sliming my hair.
You walk over to Tyee Store now, what used to be woods, but got clearcut twice since I started making trail, you would find the old farm that must have stretched from the west side to the east a century ago. In a clearing off Tamarack Road was an old cabin, covered in ivy and the ivy was up in the firs, a ruined cathedral of green reaching to the treetops, dark and forbidding like dreams covered in kudzu. Just before you got to the blacktop by the store there was another house, mostly just a foundation and some rotted walls fallen in on itself.
A telephone line still stood where the driveway must’ve been. And an outhouse which was pretty much intact. The last logging operation they pushed the house into a pile with a bulldozer and that’s still sitting there in the pasture now, covered with blackberries. The outhouse they left, leaning into its past. Even loggers get nostalgic for what they’re taking away, I guess.

Sometimes I think I’m like that, an old fool growing even older now, even more foolish, looking back over his shoulder more than where he’s going. And these stories I’m telling you, they’re like that outhouse with the telephone line coming in off the highway, its dryrotted pole waiting apprehensively for the next winter storm. We’ll all be gone soon, that much is true, maybe the only thing. And someday someone else will wander this way, wondering who planted Daffodil Hill and where did they go, those people who once lived here not so very long ago, the pioneers who lined their dreams with bleeding hearts and left clam shell trails going nowhere now, the folks who maybe thought their outhouse was a telephone booth, who left a few clues for the next stories of the once wild South End.

Billy Nashville was wailing on a red Gibson he’d put stick-on gold letters up the body that read B-I-L-L-Y  S-I-X G-U-N. His real name, William Cosnosczski, wouldn’t fit in neon, he claimed, so he changed it to a stage name he thought better suited to his debut in Nashville. None of us figured Billy had ever owned a gun, certainly never shot one, but Billy 6-Gun only had to write ballads of bad marriages, drunken brawls, truck driving romance, heavy drinking and hard living. He didn’t know anything about those either and Nashville wasn’t waiting for him to learn, not when most of the songwriters came in from Hard Rock County, Tennessee or Whisky Creek, Kentucky, practically born with a guitar in their pudgy little hands and bottle fed Jack Daniels.

Poor Billy grew up in Olympia, Washington, then ended up on the South End when his parents moved here, not exactly an early retirement. We all thought maybe his Daddy shoulda gone to Nashville. With or without a 6 string.

Billy 6 Gun or Billy Nashville or William G. Cosnosczki, he wasn’t half bad on that cherry red Flying V Gibson. The trouble is, half the damn males in America aren’t half bad either. And some of them write decent songs. And every now and then, one of them looks good on stage. Unlike Billy …

Music is like any art medium, it’s hard — very hard — to make enough money to keep above water while you learn the ropes. And trust me, there are ropes. Some to hang yourself by, but some to swing to another level. If we made accountants work this hard for so little money, well … maybe this would be a world filled with song instead of one painted by numbers. Just my opinion, of course. Not based on scientific data. Or even much research.

Billy still plays the open mike down at the South Grange every Wednesday night. He’s talking about a Try-Out with American Idol. Good luck, Billy, I say. Just don’t be too disappointed. Don’t quit playing, don’t quit singing. And if you ever get despondent, consider this: there is no, and never will be, an American Accountant. Because, really, why would anyone with a soul care? Just my opinion. Of course.

I was out on the road the other day trying to sell the last of my Skeeter Daddle Diaries, the second printing. I’m about as good at door to door sales as I am at hedge fund managing. Me and money don’t really mix, I’ve learned slowly over a long life without an MBA degree. Neither of us trusts the other….

I meet folks — even down here on the indolent South End — who knew shortly after teething that they wanted to make money, get rich, retire early. They didn’t go to college and spend four years on a Philosophy degree. They picked careers in law or dentistry or finance. You don’t drill for water in the Sahara, that’s what they understood.

Me, I always thought I’d rather do something I loved doing. Call me naïve and slap me with an IOU, but I figured there was always a job, even a miserably low paying one, that would pay the bills and allow me to pursue some quaint interest or other. So I took English, majored in literature and poverty, then stepped off the educational track years later with a nice solid background in arts and history and yeah, literature, then promptly discovered I had virtually NO marketable skills. Kind of a shock. You kind of figure if they sell you a degree, there’ll be a placement.

I worked awhile in a dog pound, ran a cafeteria, drove metro buses, wrote poetry and short stories that got published for, oh, nothing, drove school buses, seriously considered graduate school (maybe get a PhD. in Unemployment or Swahili), moved around a bit, lived in shabby apartments, ate a lot of macaroni and cheese. To be honest, I didn’t mind. What I did mind was not finding the exact perfect job that fulfilled some as yet undiscovered passion in life. Four years at a university and I sure didn’t find it. Now I had to do it AND work crap jobs looking.

I can tell you youngsters — in hindsight — the only thing worse than some crummy job is looking for the next crummy job. But I can also tell you — and don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Perfessor of Smartology — if you settle for the money, or the security, or the health insurance benefits, or the pension, you’ll maybe be satisfied, possibly even happy, but you will never find the thing that makes working really worthwhile. It took me plenty of dead end jobs, too much macaroni, far too many bad bosses, but in the end, you’ll persevere. Probably not rich, but trust me on this, a helluva lot happier.

Somehow in the course list of my varied syllabus I never got around to reading Thoreau’s Walden Pond, the musings of an individualist who decamped from civilization, such as it was in the 1800’s, parked himself in a cabin and reflected on life and living. It was a short walk to his mom’s house for lunches or dinners, tough life, Dave. But give him this: he created his own myth, true or not, doesn’t matter, Americans love a tall tale. Hell, we’ll vote for a guy as President who takes the prize for best liar in the country. You think most people care? C’mon, even the so-called Christians make excuses for his sexual affairs, his financial frauds, even his attempt to overthrow the government — they love the myth, he’s lying, cheating and stealing … for them!

I guess if you don’t have your own Tall Tale, the story of your own life’s heroics, well tag on to someone else’s, ride their coat tails. Taylor Swift or Brad Pitt’s. Identify with them, maybe make you feel a kinship, a bond, a shared world view. Nothing wrong with that. Except … you aren’t Taylor Swift and you will never be Brad and I hope to God we never see another Donald Trump.

Seems to me, a kid who grew old living a life that was maybe not heroic or enviable or soon to be a serialized Netflix drama, but at least my own, where the protagonist, for good or ill, was my own self. Yours is too, by the way. You just have to see it that way, make it yours, not someone else’s. Fine to have role models — okay, maybe not Trump — to clear a path, to show you the way. But eventually we have to bushwhack our own trail even if it means getting lost. Or worse.

Thoreau walked away from what was expected of him. I couldn’t tell you if he was disappointed maybe he didn’t move very far from town and lunches with mom. But I’ll give him this — he gave it a shot. And maybe someday I ought to read his book, see how he did. Right now I’m still working on my own pond.