Someone knocked my two mailboxes off their posts today.\u00a0 Now \u2026 I don\u2019t want to make a federal case out of this — but it IS.\u00a0 Although I probably won\u2019t call the FBI or even the sheriff\u2019s office.\u00a0 My last episode with the deputies convinced me Rome keeps these centurions down at our outpost primarily as slim proof Island County is still in charge.\u00a0 Until you need them to solve crimes more heinous than speeding violations.\u00a0 Mass mailbox destruction is pretty low on their priority.<\/p>\n
Like most crime here, we\u2019re pretty much on our own, okay by me, judging from the lack of crime waves.\u00a0 The Barefoot Bandit ran amok for awhile and we got our first good look at Rome\u2019s puny presence.\u00a0 The Kid even stole their assault rifles and laptops right out of their squad cars.\u00a0 Now that Rome\u2019s running budget deficits, the sheriff is threatening to make cutbacks that will leave the South End without a single deputy most nights.\u00a0 Exactly what we had when I moved here.\u00a0 Pretty much what we got now.\u00a0 I listened to my neighbor\u2019s high decibel burglar alarm going non-stop for half an hour two nights ago.\u00a0 If it had been an actual robbery, a moving van would’ve had time to empty the place.\u00a0 You know, IF the burglars wore hearing protection.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re still small enough, still closed-knit enough, that when a break-in or vandalism occurs, we got a pretty good notion who the culprit was.\u00a0 Been awhile since the last lynching, but a phone call to the miscreant\u2019s parents usually does it.\u00a0 Not always.\u00a0 I had the mom of the kid who\u2019d broken into my rootcellar and emptied my wine and homebrew stash bring said kid and herself over Right Now or I\u2019d call the Law.\u00a0 She sat in her idling car smoking her cigarette and denied denied denied.\u00a0 I said her daughter\u2019s step-dad had told me she had a winebottle with one of my labels on it for Roadspray Blackberry.\u00a0 \u201cWhat did you do with the bottle, honey?\u201d she asked her punk progeny.\u00a0 \u201cI did what you told me, Mom, I got rid of the evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, I know blood is thicker than blackberry wine, but I also believe in good parenting.\u00a0 So, reluctantly, I called the Law.\u00a0 When they showed up a couple days later at my thief\u2019s door, they took the step-dad aside and questioned him for half an hour about guns he supposedly had in his possession, then left.\u00a0 Later I got a call from Deppity Dash wanting to see my rootcellar crime scene.<\/p>\n
Deppity Dash, newly arrived from the Los Angeles police force, drove over in his squad car and I showed him my hand dug cellar behind the shack.\u00a0 He just shook his head and said, \u201cDamn, I thought those were just something you read about in books.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t think they actually existed.\u201d\u00a0 I didn\u2019t tell him I thought the same about law enforcement on the island\u2026.\u00a0 Turns out one of us was right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Someone knocked my two mailboxes off their posts today.\u00a0 Now \u2026 I don\u2019t want to make a federal case out of this — but it IS.\u00a0 Although I probably won\u2019t call the FBI or even the sheriff\u2019s office.\u00a0 My last episode with the deputies convinced me Rome keeps these centurions down at our outpost primarily […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[6076,4355],"class_list":["post-17178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-crime-on-camano","tag-crime-on-the-south-end"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17178"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17209,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17178\/revisions\/17209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}