The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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If you’ve lived long enough on the island to experience one commute on Camano, you probably know already Camano was named after Jacinto Caamano, a Spanish explorer who did a drive-by sail about 1792 or so, Course, this is the white folks’ history. They sail a little boat up and down the west coast, thinking they’re in China or Mars, then they give it their name, stick a flag in the sand and voila, it’s theirs.

Well, the Snohomish and Kikalo tribes beg to differ. They lived on the end of Camano from about the turn of the Ice Age and they never called it Camano. Actually, they called it Kal-lut-chin, which means ‘land jutting into a bay.’ The Southendomish, being a breakaway tribe of the Snohomish people, called the island by its Lushootseed language name.
I was just at a Tribal Meeting at the Southendomish Casino last week. Okay, mostly I was there for the blackjack tables and wandered accidentally into the inner sanctum past the men’s room. They were pretty wound up that President Obama had jetted right over them to hightail it up to Alaska where he restored Mt. McKinley to its rightful native name: Denali. They were hoping the South End Historical Society could maybe write to the Great White Chief and ask if he could restore the original name for their homeland. Kicki-Cialis. Roughly translated, it means Clam with Better Blood Flow.

I said I would do what I could. That’s when they asked me to leave…. Okay by me, I really needed that men’s room.

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Sally Jenkins got elected President of the Flame-Ons, the women’s auxiliary arm of our volunteer fire department. The South End is the last place on the island with a volunteer station. All three other stations have paid firefighters. Sally and her fellow Flame-Ons have their hair on fire over this slight and they have vowed to take up arms over it with the fire commissioners, all men, all of who live up north where they keep the manned units in case they themselves need mouth to mouth. Or so Sally opines….

When I debarked the turnip truck here on the South End back in 1977, every station was a VFD. I guess us homesteaders were just happy even to have volunteers. The cops went home after midnight and the closest hospital or clinic was 40 miles away. If you moved here expecting CPR in three minutes or less after your heart attack, well, you had a For Sale sign up on your yard PDQ. And believe me, there were plenty who left.

Sally is one of the new breed of immigrants. She figures we’re living in the past and it’s High Time we stepped into dathe 21st Century. And maybe she’s right. We pay the same taxes as our pampered neighbors to the north. And we got the same incidence of medical emergencies. But … I’m still not one of those who’s all that hot and bothered, even though I’m getting old and decrepit and more and more likely to need that CPR.

The Volunteer Fire Department represents rural to me, I guess. Neighbors helping neighbors, not hiring it out. Sally says I won’t feel that way when I need an ambulance some midnight dreary and I know she’s right, but self reliance is one of the last things I went to let go of. Maybe next to my heartbeat.

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History is written by the winners, some say, but those folks obviously never ran into the South End String Band. Saturday, Feb 6th, the Stanwoodopolis Historical Society will host ‘Camano in a Clamshell’, a brief but complete history of the island by us losers, the South End String Band, fiddling once again while Rome burns with special guest Julie Campbell on violin.

According the band’s grief counselor, Skeeter Daddle, it will be a fair and balanced accounting of Camano’s rich past as a backwash paradise accompanied by song and music. As always, food will be provided, wine and beer will be available and ample, the music will be spirited and history degrees will be awarded to those who complete the course by the prestigious if non-accredited Elger Bay Institoot of Aesthetic Enlargement.

7 pm Sat. Feb. 6th, Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center. $15 donation at the door. Y’all come on down! Remember, you forget history, you got to repeat it. Don’t make us do that to you. Once is plenty.

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Awhile back I was at the Big Hospital up north looking up a friend who’d been admitted the day before. Something about a hospital that puts you off your ease … even after working at one for 10 years. Or maybe because of it.

I’d slipped past Admitting and planned to head right up to my buddy’s room, but I needed to use the john so I found a sign that pointed to the restrooms at the far end of the hall. When I turned the corner a guy was standing next to the Men’s room with his back to me. What, a line? I’d barely seen anybody cruising the halls, couple of nurses about it. I was about to ask if he was waiting for the toilet when he turned around and mumbled in a garbled voice something I couldn’t quite make out.

“Say again?” I asked. He was pointing now to his crotch. Zipper unzipped. Creepy thoughts were flashing red lights in my head when he mumbled something else unintelligible. I shook my head. “No comprende,” I said and he pointed to his crotch again with the zipper wide open. He was tugging at the thing in some distress and I was feeling more than a little distressed myself.

“Mmm, muh, mawah,” he told me. You read these stories in the newspaper, you get overdosed with em on TV news. You think perverts are everywhere, waiting down an alley, crouched in a dark corridor, hiding in a bathroom stall. We’re all one step from being victims, the next night’s news lead. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t let your kids out of your sight. Lock your doors, bolt em from inside. Buy a gun. Hell, carry a gun. Depravity is everywhere! Danger! Danger!

Don’t ask me why, but I stood there. “What?” I asked and he pointed one more time at his crotch, zipper down. Finally, finally, I asked if he wanted help getting it zipped up. He garbled something happily, nodded his head yes. I reached down and put two hands on his fly, pulled the zipper up and looked at this guy. He was nodding earnestly. He mangled something that sounded like thanks. I took it to be exactly that. When he started down the hallway, he had a tortured gait, hip akimbo, leg hauled along painfully, holding close to the wall.

It’s a small thing, that little act of hesitant kindness. I hate to think how hard this man’s life must be, how much fear he witnesses day in and day out, how courage must seem rare to him. Maybe we should quit watching the nightly crap on the evening news. It makes cowards of us.

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I got myself some new health insurance last year which replaced the ‘catastrophic’ health plan we had the past 30 years or so. The catastrophic plan was actually more of a catatonic plan, meaning, we’d have to be nearly dead to get any benefit from it. It just kept the wolves from picking the bones clean when things got bad and our savings were used up in the first round of care. For the past few years I’ve been hobbled a bit with a bad knee, something I figured would heal up over time but didn’t. So … with that new insurance plan in hand, I decided to limp in for a look-see.

The South End Clinic is a small but busy little place. My appointment to see a doc took a month, but I finally got in for an appointment just before Christmas. The doctor asked questions, rotated the knee, said it could be any number of things so he scheduled me for an x-ray. A week later I had the knee x-rayed at a clinic in town. A few days later the South End Clinic called me with the results. Mostly old age, they said and gave me an appointment for another visit to see the doctor.

I went in a few days ago. Got my blood pressure rechecked and my weight redone, then I got deposited in a waiting room. My doc came in, checked my chart, asked how I felt, asked if my wrist feel any better. I said my wrist still hurt, but it was my knee I wanted to have looked at. He checked the chart again then asked once more about my wrist. After a couple verses of the kneebone’s connected to the neck bone he finally seemed exasperated and called me by name.  Ronald somebody.

No, I said, wrong patient. I’m the one with the bad knee. He shook his head sadly, apologized and told me to wait for a few minutes while he retrieved my chart, probably from some poor guy down the hall getting arthroscopic surgery on a knee that wasn’t bothering him. Just before he shut the door I asked, “This mean I don’t get that new heart?”

It took him a double-take but he finally smiled. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. Me, I can’t tell you how good it feels to be in the health care system finally.

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