Most of you folks I talk to refuse to buy Bob Friel\u2019s hot-off-the-press book The Barefoot Bandit.\u00a0 He spent over a year hunkered down in a bluff cabin on Orcas fighting editors\u2019 deadlines and rat-nibble poverty in order to get the details dead on right.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You think maybe you know the whole saga after years of gossiping down at the Diner or endless speculation at Jolene\u2019s Spa or over the neighbor\u2019s truck hood, forget it —- you don\u2019t.\u00a0 Bob\u2019s dug up more facts, details, interviews and in-depth reportage than all the skeletons you got hidden in your shed closet.\u00a0 He knows where the bodies got buried, who helped who, what so and so said to the cops and what they said back and all the minutiae of how the Kid managed to stay fugitive for years.\u00a0 And he tells the saga with an unblinking eye and a style as feisty as a sucker punch.<\/p>\n
Some of us don\u2019t like hearing it, but Bob\u2019s got it right:\u00a0 the Barefoot Bandit is the first genuine, certifiable, authentic, bona-fide, bigger than life 21st century folk hero.\u00a0 Sure he terrorized us on the South End and then terrorized Bob and his neighbors up on Orcas.\u00a0 Whaddaya want \u2013 an apology??\u00a0 The Kid\u2019s serving serious time.\u00a0 For serious crimes.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to feel sorry for him.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to be some bleeding heart and blame society or his mom or even yourself.\u00a0 But trust me, you\u2019ll get to know Colton as well as your own brother when you finish this book.\u00a0 He was your neighbor.\u00a0 He was maybe your kid\u2019s friend.\u00a0 He was a helluva crook, as you\u2019ll see reading the details of how he operated.\u00a0 And he had nerves of steel, as you\u2019ll see when Bob Friel takes you up on his plane rides, sets you in the cockpit and flies into the cloud covered Cascades and lands in deadly stumped clearcuts and finally into Legend.<\/p>\n
But most of all he\u2019s part of the Lore of the South End now.\u00a0 Our folk heroes can\u2019t all be Jesus Christ or Charlie Manson either.\u00a0 Sometimes they\u2019re just the person down the street, the one with a torqued sense of adventure keeping time to a demented drummer with not as many options in life as we \u2018normal\u2019 folks got.<\/p>\n
Read the book!\u00a0 You won\u2019t get anything better until the next legend comes down the pike.\u00a0 And she won\u2019t be from around here.\u00a0 And a writer fine as Bob Friel won\u2019t be capturing the essence in as entertaining and comprehensive a chronicle.\u00a0 Billy the Kid\u2019s neighbors might not have wanted to encourage the mythologizing either, but trust me, it\u2019s too late.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Read this book — it\u2019s part of your lore now.\u00a0 Give you some ammo down at the Diner too next blue plate special\u2026..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most of you folks I talk to refuse to buy Bob Friel\u2019s hot-off-the-press book The Barefoot Bandit.\u00a0 He spent over a year hunkered down in a bluff cabin on Orcas fighting editors\u2019 deadlines and rat-nibble poverty in order to get the details dead on right.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You think maybe you know the whole saga after years […]<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-1900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900","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=1900"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1903,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900\/revisions\/1903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}