The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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The South End Senior Center —what the wags at the Marina and Bait call the Senile Center— is basically a pole building down by the Camano Cut and Curl, about a stone’s throw from the now defunct Tyee MegaStore.  A pole building, for those unfamiliar with architectural stylings, is a metal sided structure constructed with beams instead of stud framing.  Barns and shops are often built this way.  So is our Senior Center.  Cheap and stout enough.

The Center has a Board and it has a small staff — which is Jenny Hancock and various volunteers who man (well, okay, woman) the desk and phones.  Jenny has the only room, other than the unisex toilet in back, that has its own door.  This makes it perfect for the occasional dance and their annual fashion show, the flea market fundraiser and their gala auction, capital G, that brings in most of their yearly funding.

The auction used to be held at the close of the flea market, sort of an afterthought.  Year after sorry year, the stragglers would bid on bad local art the artists couldn’t sell or give away on the Mother’s Day Studio Tour, plus the usual items from South End biznesses.  A day of fishing Jesse’s Deep Sea Charters.  Believe me, an hour would be plenty.  Or a perm at the Cut and Curl.  An hour of acupuncture down at Pins and Needle Therapy.  Whoa, Nelly, you can imagine the bidding wars!

Just before they decided to throw in the towel on the auction, Jenny convinced the board to go Gala.  Meaning, basically, play dress-up and serve wine and beer, charge an entry and serve coldcuts and cheese with crackers.  The first year the Center made 5 times what they HAD been making.  The second year they doubled that and on the third they served hard liquor.  And made even more.  Two Toke Tom is lobbying for medical marijuana sampling, but he’s not on the Board.

The Center is raising money now for a new building.  The toxic mold is starting to be an issue and anyway we’re feeling growing pains, not so much from all the new immigrants as that demographically we’re inexorably moving into our senile years.  If the auction keeps on improving, we might just make it.  Believe me, 3 martinis and even the Bait Shop Boyz bid a day’s wages for an hour with Janice, head dominatrix at the Pins and Needles.

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When the Board of the South End Senior Center met last month at what was the old Tyee Grange Hall, now the SESC, members were caught off-guard when Brenda Bodice, the newly elected President, proposed changing the name. “We need to make this a Big Tent,” she argued strenuously in the face of what she assumed would be a recalcitrant Board. “We have to expand the Mission,” she cried, waving her half full paper Starbucks cup the way a general would hoist his sword atop his horse. In fact it looked as if Brenda might stand on her chair the more animated she became.

“Aw, Brenda,” Jim Swenson, newly elected Vice President and current highest volume realtor up at Windy Rear’s last remaining office on the island after closing satellite offices this past month, “we argue this chestnut every new President. New name, same game, you ask me. What’re you proposing we call it anyway, the Senile Center and hope we draw the dementia crowd?” From his perch near the back door, Jerry Cook guffawed. Maybe, he chortled, we could play Jeopardy with them, see who can remember the clue long enough to hit the buzzer.

Mandy Van Horne, whose mother had just been diagnosed with Alzheimers, scolded him. “Instead of making fun of the afflicted, Jerry, maybe you could button it up and give your humor a rest. I think it’s tired.” Jerry started to mouth off once more but thought better of it. Mandy was not a woman you want to offend. Her ex-husband Wally could tell you some terrifying stories if you needed proof.

“We need to draw a younger crowd,” Brenda forged forward. “Half our membership is dead or will be soon. Same as what happened to the Tyee Grange. You have to give the kids a reason to come down and they’re sure not coming down to a Senior Center for bingo night if they’re not seniors. Is that hard to understand?”

Elizabeth Aalmgren wondered what they would want to do with kids anyway. ‘We going to bring in rap bands?” she asked sarcastically. Brenda, not about to be dissuaded easily, said, “We can figure that out once we get a new name. I don’t know, Liz, maybe some music for the younger crowd isn’t a bad idea. They sure aren’t coming to hear the South End String Band play old time fiddle songs from two centuries ago, I know that.”

“What about calling us just The Center,” Jerry said. “Easy to remember.” Mandy threw him a glare and Jerry immediately threw up his hands. “I didn’t mean it to be funny, Mandy. Sorry, geez, don’t take it the wrong way.”

Phil from Whidbey Bank suggested Tyee Center. Donna from Albertson’s Funeral Home thought Community Center would be neutral enough. Jim Swenson declared he didn’t want to change the name at all, think of all those stationary changes, addresses, email accounts, “c’mon, it would be a total headache. Plus, think of the history. We been the South End Senior Center for twenty-five years. Why change it now?”

The meeting lasted an extra half hour until Phil said he needed to get home to watch the latest installment of some show he recommended to everyone, in its 3rd season and a little late to start. Jim wanted out too so he proposed renaming themselves the South End Center. Phil seconded it, Brenda grumbled, Elizabeth said let’s do it and Jerry voted yes too, motion passed, meeting adjourned. Brenda turned out the lights, locked the doors and walked to her car in the dark parking lot. Rap bands, she was thinking she’d have to look into that. Somebody down at the high school must know a few….

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