The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Rita Jansen, ever since her husband died a few years back, volunteers at the South End Senior Center’s thrift store. Beats sitting at home watching stupid talk shows, she says, and it keeps the emptiness at bay. For awhile anyway. And … it supports the Senile Center. Which offers her a whole new gang of friends to keep her company, a good bargain for the Center, a good deal for Rita.

She was working as cashier one day when I came through with my newfound used shirt and found her working a crossword in the Crab Cracker, our local Pulitzer-less bi-weekly tabloid of events, calendars, tide tables, poetry, ads and all things local. Including a crossword puzzle. ‘Whatcha got there, Rita?” I asked. “You so desperate you got to read the Cracker?”

Now, in full disclosure, let me admit here I write for the Cracker, have since issue #1, not worth maybe what the first Superman comic just sold for, but going on now something like 15 or 16 years. Rita, taking my money for the 2.75 shirt, declared how she loves the Crab Cracker and me, a hopeless wiseass, asks what in hell do you like about that rag, nothing in there but goofy humor and ….

Before I can finish she says again how she really loves the Cracker and I of course ask what in there could she possibly love and she says, “I’ll tell you what. I love that Skeeter Daddle guy.” Just so you know, once again, full disclosure, I’m that Daddle guy. But I say, hells bells, Rita, that’s crazy, he just writes weird stuff.”

“He’s funny, that’s why,” she tells me. So around we go, me making cracks about this Daddle kook and , geez, Rita defending me. When I’ve finally had enough of this hilarity, I blurt out, “Rita, I’m Skeeter Daddle.

“Oh right,” she says and hands me my change. “You wish ….” Just as the next customer rolls up to her register. So I pocketed my coins, took my used shirt and unceremoniously left. They say fame is fleeting. In my case, it’s flown the coop.

About 2008 I got a phone call from a woman who said she was doing a documentary on glass, had seen some large windows I’d done and would I meet with her and her cinematographer for an interview. And … did I know any other glass artists whose work was in the area they could interest? Sure, I was skeptical. Us artists get inquiries all the time from publishing outfits that want to include us in their compendium of modern art, mostly a scam to get us to buy expensive coffee table size copies for our friends and family, show em how important we are now.

But I thought why not talk to these people, no harm in that, no money has to be passed when they inevitably ask if I’ll fund their project, just a couple lost hours. I had plenty of hours to lose and no money for wild-eyed investments. The day they arrived I had some crud or cold or flu, the usual yearly malady. I felt rotten, I looked rotten, I probably sounded rotten as they interviewed me about my work, photographed me in a beat up hat and a torn coat, then packed up their gear and went back to Seattle. A few weeks later they had edited their ‘pilot’ film ‘Fire and Glass’ and planned to take it to PBS where they would pitch it to the execs there. Would I consider, assuming they got funding and the public TV buy-in, being the narrator? I guess Dale Chihuly or David Attenborough were busy, but since I wasn’t I said I would love to. They said I’d be the face of modern stained glass, start with America, next season hit other countries, see how it goes.

You can maybe imagine the fantasies that played through my mind. I’d be the Rick Steves of the glass world, hopscotching from cathedrals to courthouses, introducing the viewer to fantastic glass murals from the South End to Tokyo, expounding on design and blown glass, educating a TV audience to the wonders of contemporary stained glass. And whoa ho, a lot of those examples would be mine! I, of course, as your guide to the world of glass, would be properly modest.

Well, timing is everything and it so happened that the Great Recession hit right before the months they pitched the project to prospective funders. Money had dried up and whatever dreams my handlers had dried up too. C’est la vie. Another road not traveled, another life not lived. I’m not a man who looks back with regret, but … I do look back and wonder where those forks might have led.

It’s a pretty notion to imagine What Ifs, let the possibilities play out and try to guess at unforeseen consequences. Sure, I would have liked to highlight the modern glasswork that rarely gets publicity, the murals that transform our secular cathedrals, the ones basically ignored by the artworld. But I can also picture myself stepping out of the glass shack, never having time to build another window myself, maybe not caring but maybe looking back and realizing I’d stopped being an artist and become instead a pitchman. Since then I’ve built a few dozen murals of glass that might never have been built if I’d taken that gig, if the funding had come through, if if if… It was a close brush with celebrity. Assuming I didn’t fall flat on my face. Us moths are better off avoiding the flame and us artists, I suspect, might be better off avoiding fame.