The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Over the past 15 years I’ve been caretaking a little 5 acre park down on the South End, the only county park down this far, kind of a small and easily forgotten parcel the county can conveniently ignore. A couple of years back the parks guy, let’s call him Jim, asked if I needed anything done down there. I said the entire parking lot is a mudhole and he said he’d put it on the top of the To-Do list. A year ago he asked me the same question and I got the same answer.

This past year he’s called me occasionally, always sitting in the parking lot of the park, telling me he’s misjudged the amount of gravel it will take to level that tarpit and make it something that doesn’t swallow dogs, kids and VW bugs. The second time he told me that I thought, gee, he must be in the wrong parking lot … or else he’s not good at estimating projects this small. He would, he said, get right on it. Soon as he got the county tractor back from the shop. Ditto his pickup and oh, he had a bad leg. By the time he got all those fixed up, the mudholes were dry and only the axles of sunken autos showed in the pits, no need to get the lot graded and graveled until the monsoon season in fall.

End of last year he was re-estimating the work over there, misjudged the expense and time, and oh, the budget for that year was pretty much spent so we would have to wait until this year’s budget. Jim called yesterday. It seems he and the ever vigilant road crew had found and removed the sign I had nailed to the maple tree next to the parking lot that read A YEAR AGO THE COUNTY PROMISED TO FIX THIS PARKING LOT MUDHOLE … IF YOU WANT TO THANK THEM, CALL 360- 387-**** . I said I would like that sign put back up and Jim said no, that he would get to the grading and graveling when the weather stopped raining, what he said he had told me last conversation. What he had said last conversation was he had no budget. The trouble with excuses, like lying, is you got to keep them straight.

Well, we got a little heated and finally Jim patiently explained how every little crummy small park like mine wanted stuff done and expected it right away. I said I’ve been waiting years! He explained in a nice way how if I complained, if anyone complained, our park projects would go to the bottom of his list. Not the top where he has had it for a couple of years. I said are you threatening me, Jim and he said no, he was just explaining how it works, complain and you get put at the back of the line. Not a threat, ma’am, just a fact.

I was standing next to our County Commissioner this morning at a philanthropy breakfast honoring, well, philanthropists. Park volunteers meet that criterion, I suspect, so it would have been the perfect time to relate this little story, paid county employee versus an unpaid volunteer who buys gas, lawnmowers, chainsaws etc., one of many who mow and clean and clear and maintain the county parks , good time maybe even to ask the commissioner why on god’s green earth would us citizens volunteer for nasty threats when all we want is to make our park something other than a mudhole that invites vandalism.

But … I didn’t. I’ve never been much for tattle tails, never been a jailhouse rat, never really wanted to give bad reviews on Yelp or write letters of complaint to higher authorities. Course, the truth is … maybe I’m just worried Jimbo will take me off the top of his priority list.

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