All the Poor People Sleeping With the Shade on the Lights
Posted in rantings and ravings on January 22nd, 2026 by skeeterWe’re encamped on the beachfront community of 3 Crabs Road, a strip of land hosting million plus dollar homes, mostly vacant between Dungeness Spit in front and a half mile of marsh behind. A few owners are in residence but not many, no doubt safely ensconced in their homes for the holiday in Seattle or Tacoma. These are their summer vacation villas, one of which we’re staying at between Christmas and New Year to watch the storms coming up the Straits or over the Olympics and avoid the Christmas besotted masses of our consumer citizenry. Fa la la, y’all.
Beyond the marshes are the landed poor, primarily rusting single and doublewides braving the mud and tidal seep, a few festooned with fading Santas and trees draped in colored lights, but nary a creature was stirring other than the ducks, geese, gulls and eagles who seem to be the primary residents here. Wealth and poverty lean comfortably into one another … or so it would seem to this itinerant guest. Although … no place I’ve ever seen outside military bases are there as many NO TRESPASSING, PRIVATE PROPERTY, KEEP OUT signs as this mile long area.
My old man nearly every visit to our island shack would ask why it was people would choose to live in the interior rather than on the shoreline. Gee, Dad, I don’t know. You spoze it had anything to do with the high cost of beachfront property?? But he invariably would shake his head and declare he himself would choose the beach.
Ah yes, and we would all choose palaces over dilapidated trailer homes. Maybe in the widening chasm between the wealthy and the poor, the poor are just glad to have a roof when more and more are living on the street or in their car. Maybe their dream isn’t to be Mark Zukerberg who’s building a Versailles in his tony neighborhood and passing out noise-canceling headphones to shut up the chronic complainers this Christmas.
In the current America, Scrooge is very much unrepentant. The rich not only get richer, they get harder hearts. Hopefully they get a visit from Marley’s ghost.