The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

A lot of the newcomers to the fabled South End build their mega-mansions with their yards left menaced by 100 year old 2nd growth nettle forests. The first windstorm slamming them with 80 mph hurricane force winds triggers frantic calls to their insurance agent … when the power and phone service return.

It’s only a matter of time before they realize their woodland retreat is a potential deathtrap and, better safe than sorry, they decide to clearcut the property. Worst case, they can put in a 9 hole golf course with sand and water traps and never miss the forests that brought them here in the first place. The eagles and deer can migrate back inland a ways among us poorer residents, the ones with handicaps too high for golf.

Course now they need a tree expert. Or at least some logger bonded and insured with references a long resume in the woods industry. Trouble is, the logging era on the South End is pretty far back, mostly black and white photos down at the Historical Society and Tourist Information. So … after some futile internet searching, they invariably get to Jimmy the Gyppo.

Jimmy’s been topping trees for suburban worriers ever since the log market went to pot, medical and otherwise, and the price of a board foot of timber nettle plummeted to less than the cost of hauling it to the mill over in Arlington. He figured out the real money was in One-Offs, either before or after they were on a roof, didn’t matter to him either way. When clients asked if he was bonded and insured, he’d just laugh. That’s why you got the home insurance, he’d say, knowing full well their options were fairly constricted.

Jimmy the Gyppo didn’t come cheap and he even charged to haul the downed trees away. Then he sold the firewood off a flatbed down by Tyee Store, what he called a Two-fer. The rich folks didn’t mind. The whoppers Jimmy regaled them with, spitting tobacco plugs across a pansy garden, made them feel a little like pioneers, breaking soil for the next expansion of the American West, bringing civilization to the wild old South End before finally deciding to move on to the sunny southwest where the winters were dry and there were no forests left to threaten their vacation homes.

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