The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I got a buddy who claims he was the first Owner-Builder on Camano Island. The year was 1977, the same year I bought my shack. I met him 13 years later and we ended up building 3 sailboats together, one for each of us and one for his pal the building inspector who became my friend too. Ironically, I may be one of the last Owner-Builders in Island County. I don’t think my permit was ever signed off on so I may well be the last official O-B.

I guess maybe they figured the codes got too complex for us amateur housebuilders, all those R-factors for insulation and E-glass in fenestrations and X-factors for our marriages. Or maybe it was this: a permit for an Owner-Builder was next to nothing, something like $50 when I got ours. The county might’ve done the taX-factor and realized us hippies were costing them revenue. Maybe some of us built our own palaces to save the permit expense, but I would’ve paid full freight just for the right to build my own place the way I wanted. A few hundred bucks wasn’t gonna stop me.

I spoze we can still build our own Xanadu, nothing to stop us. Just have to disclose that a rank amateur threw the hammer and ran the saw, flashed the windows, shingled the roof, installed the electric and plumbing and if you’re the prospective buyer, best beware!!! The people at the county sheds told me I’d be a Total Idiot to apply for an Owner-Builder status. Boy, he read me like a book. A comic book, I’d bet.

By the time I got our permit, us Owner-Builders had to meet the same codes as any fly-by-night contractor, go through the same inspections, all the rigamarole as the Big Boyz. In other words, the government here doesn’t allow for hippie shacks or slam-bang cabins. We got to build our parents’ suburban homes. Might explain why kids just stay with their folks now — why bother building the same damn place twice?

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Now I love used car dealers as much as the next guy. You put an alligator in a white shirt, cheap shoes and some black slacks, give him a commission for every victim he drags into the sewer lagoon, I think you got a pretty accurate image. It’s a dog eat dog world, we all know that, but even in the jungle the beasts of prey don’t take smirking joy at dragging down their dinner. A used car salesman, he takes the kill the way we take a joke.

Just when I thought there was pretty much no lower bar these reptiles could belly down to, along comes Missionary Motors in town. What lemon would Jesus drive? You know, if he was thinking of trading in the donkey. Got a nice Calvary Cross where the T is in Motors. I don’t know if these folks read the chapter in Trump’s favorite book or not, the one where Jesus turns over the tables in the temple where the merchants had set up shop, but I sort of doubt it. Course neither has Trump so maybe they can be forgiven, no pun intended. But there’s something sacrilegious about using your religion to sell cars. Or mattresses. Or real estate. Or breakfast cereal. Or just about anything else outside ecumenical material. If you ask me….

I wonder what we would think if Moslem Motors rolled into our fair city and set up shop. What would Muhammed drive? Mostly I think he would be driven out of town. Which is where I hope Mission Motors goes next.

A few years back I stopped to get gas at Elger Bay Mega-Shop and was accosted by a guy in a panel truck with a fish on his tailgate and a business name stenciled across the side: Hiz Biz. Hiz being, you guessed it, God. Me, I had a fish too, but inside the fish it said DARWIN. He asked in an accusatory way if I knew what that DARWIN fish meant and I said I had a pretty good idea, something to do with evolution if my memory served me well. He spluttered, “They sell those fish at the erotic bakery in Seattle!” I said, “You could have slapped me with a mackerel, but what’s your point?” He told me they baked cakes that looked like penises.

“This will come as sad news,” I said, “but why would I care? It’s a free country.”

I guess it’s a slippery slope, freedom. And maybe I need to shut up about selling cars for Jesus too. Or Muhammed. You got to buy em from somebody.

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When the phone rings early in the morning, we usually jump to the conclusion it’s only going to be bad news. Parent in the emergency room, family member in some accident, something terrible. This morning I answered, expecting a call from my dad about my mom who’s in the nursing home after being in the hospital awhile, but instead, I hear some distant voice I can barely make out saying something like, “It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?” I say yeah, wondering if it’s a buddy of mine out in Chicago, voice gone scratchy with some accident.

He asks if I’ve heard about his trip? I say no, but I heard he’d bought a bike. My buddy just got one and he’d been talking about riding his Harley around Chicago and so I thought this is him, but his voice sounded wrong. “Yeah,” he says, “I’d been visiting my best friend here in Chicago who has stomach cancer and yeah, I had a couple drinks, but on the way home I had an accident.” I asked him who his friend was. Arnie, it sounded like, but not quite, I just think I wanted to twist it into my buddy’s friend. “Arnie? That what you said?”

In fact, about everything he said was muffled and mangled. He told me he was in a bad way. That I could believe. “So the cops gave me a breath test and I was over the limit so they took me in. I don’t have the money for bail so I was hoping you could help me out here.” This part came in loud and clear. Those little warning lights I’d been ignoring started blinking bright red. “Naw man, I don’t think so.”

“You can’t help your own family?” this guy asked.

“And what kin are we?” I asked back. At which point my brother or uncle or cousin hung up.

All I can figure is these creeps call 1000 people a day, hoping to get one poor senile old codger with too big a heart to turn down a relative in need. The folks who send money to Nigeria in hopes of actually receiving part of the million dollars the scammer is holding out as a carrot, well, I don’t have much sympathy for greedy people. But taking advantage of someone who is probably old and suffering dementia, who more than likely hasn’t got much savings but has a good heart, that’s more than criminal.

The truth is the weak and the poor are most likely to be prey to the beasts of the jungle. I dread the day when I get that call and wonder if a relative or a long forgotten friend really is in trouble and needs some help. It’s a mean world when compassion becomes a weakness.

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We’d stopped for a picnic lunch at this little wayside along the river up toward the mountains, just us and one other vehicle. While I hauled out the cooler and the box of groceries, my wife walked over to the restroom. A minute later these two guys come over and ask me about accommodations up the road, what the hotel was like they’d seen, how one of them hadn’t slept in 24 hours, where was I going?

Maybe you never had one of those moments when the hair on your neck literally stands up, one of those premonitions of imminent horror about to unfold before your very eyes, but this was one for me. Something about these two men radiated, I can’t think of any other way to describe it, evil. And I use that word evil, not loosely, but with some precision of meaning, even though I have really never personally encountered pure evil in any real sense. But these two hombres were trouble. I had all our stuff on the picnic table and I was nonchalantly moving things around without really unpacking anything. In the silverware bag I took out a big collapsible hunting knife and laid it there between us, not in any threatening way, just another knife with the forks and spoons next to it. I wanted Karen to come out right now. I wanted her to stay inside. Mostly I wanted these boys to walk the hell away from me.

The one who hadn’t slept asked all the questions. Didn’t make much eye contact. Wasn’t friendly, wasn’t unfriendly. His partner stood beside him but never said a word, just watched in a slightly menacing way, a little wound tight, ready for god only knows…. Killer Joe smiled occasionally at some of my answers to his inquiries, some joke only he could hear. I thought, wanting to make it happen, Karen will stay in that bathroom until these guys leave. Then she’ll walk over and we’ll get in the car and drive away, no lunch, to hell with lunch. My appetite was long gone.

Just then the van they were driving opened its panel door and a woman sat there looking at us as she sat in the back seat. Nobody said a word. We all three stood looking at her for what seemed like a very long time. Then the silent one nodded at Killer Joe and the two ambled back to the van. I palmed the hunting knife and from behind the cooler I opened it up to reveal its full 5 inch blade and locked it in place. Karen appeared from the restroom and sauntered toward me. Time stood strangely still although the river behind me ran down rapids and made a sound like burbling blood. I watched the van across the parking lot and the two were talking to the woman in the seat.

“Grab that box and get in,” I said quietly in a voice that probably scared her but didn’t allow for much questioning. “We’re leaving right now. Fast as we can.” I threw the cooler into the trunk and she put the box in the backseat. The trio watched us from across the parking lot. I was estimating the time it would take for one or both to cross. It wouldn’t be much. No other cars were coming in to picnic. No other cars were coming at all on this road.

When we got inside, Karen asked what was up? I shook my head and turned the key. “Lock your door,” I said, feeling like a bad movie, then rolled out past the van and stopped at the stop sign. No one was on the road. We pulled onto the highway. That hunting knife sat between us, open. They might have just been tired travelers, I know that. They might have just been stopping to picnic too. Maybe. But I never felt such bad vibes talking to anyone before or since. I’m a trusting sort, maybe too trusting. This time I decided to trust my instincts.

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