The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I was minding my own business in the Pilot House Lounge and Bar — or at least tending to my beer and scribbling away in a notebook I always carry — when a guy I didn’t know parked at the table next to me with a cup of coffee. Army fatigue jacket, butch crewcut, aviator sunglasses hanging from a strap. Probably ex-CIA or retired corrections officer. He had his back to the ballgame on the bigscreen TV over the bar, apparently more interested in my antics. I tried to avoid eye contact, watched a bunt down the first base line, but he didn’t need a cue.

“Whatcha think of that drilling ban in the Arctic?” he finally asked. I looked up from my great American novel, took a slow sip of suds and studied him for motives. He didn’t offer anything obvious. Just a guy in a bar, a student of politics, no doubt.

“Okay with me,” I said non-commitedly. And waited. “You rather have nuclear?” he countered. His coffee sat untouched. I sighed. Here we go …. “Okay with me,” I said again. Cap’n. Klink nodded.

“How about those Muslim terrorists, you okay with that?” I put my pen down. Slid my notebook to the edge of the table. Took a slow sip of beer whose taste seemed metallic now. Why me, Lord, why me? We were alone except for Jerry wiping down the bar that didn’t need wiping. The batter took a called strike. I looked at my inquisitor, some bridge troll out for a holiday.

“We don’t get too many down my way on the South End,” I finally said. “So you aren’t bothered?” he sneered.

“Oh, I’m bothered,” I said, feeling the blood rising. “I’m bothered right now.” He finally sipped his coffee and smiled. Now he was getting there. Strike two to the batter on the TV. I smiled back, hoping to cut off his air supply. It did — he dropped the phony grin. “Whatcha think of us white males turned into second class citizens?” he fairly snarled. I laughed out loud this time. Jerry looked up. Behind him a baseball landed in the outfield stands. I left my beer half finished and stood up to go.

“Try not to be a victim, friend. Especially if you’re white and male. Doesn’t leave much for those terrorists to take from you.” Jerry waved so long and gave me a quizzical arched eyebrow. The pitcher put a baseball in the manager’s hands and headed for the showers. Me too.

Hits: 11

Hits: 11

Bob the Baptist lives up the hollow where the dirt road south of me dead ends in a swampy cul-de-sac. You look hard you can see past the abandoned cars, rotted boats, rusty appliances, kids’ toys, broken furniture and busted machinery to where Bob’s shack leans into the last century. Just to be sure nobody will steal this stockpile of valuable rusty corroded parts from his junkyard covered with leaf mulch and blackberry vines, Bob has nailed handwritten signs every few hundred feet: NO TRESSPASING POSTED KEEP OUT!! PRIVIT PROPPERTY, like anyone would venture into his place. By the driveway or entrance or whatever it is that isn’t maintained and is overgrown to the point any vehicle trying to drive in would be scratched to bare metal by berry thorns and cedar limbs and lost equipment, he’s nailed a plywood plank painted black with white words: JESUS IS COMMING SOON!!

These are the End Times, Bob tells us neighbors. South End Times, anyway, if Bob’s place comes under scrutiny. It looks like Armageddon hit yesterday. Windows are broken out and covered with plastic that’s now tattered. Doors hang off their hinges, usually open winter or spring. The first time I went back there looking for my dog who’d wandered off, I walked through an open door with books and magazines strewn everywhere, thinking it was an anteway or a porch … until I realized to my horror I was deep into his house. Believe me, I backed out of there fast as anything, expecting a shotgun blast from Bob the Baptist. He walked up a minute after I’d exited his home sweet hovel and demanded to know who I was, what I wanted, why I was there. “Lost dog,” I mumbled.

“We’re ALL lost,” he fairly howled. “We’re all lost and we don’t even know it!!” Tobacco stains ran down his matted beard and his eyes bulged like King Lear in a room full of psychiatrists.

Bob’s okay, actually, reasonably harmless and even sociable occasionally. The neighbors hear him once in awhile, exhorting whatever demons drive him day in and day out. Apparently the demons aren’t listening. Awhile back we heard he used to be a minister over the other side of the mountains. Heard it from one of his flock. Bob had had an affair with the local TV station’s weathergirl and his wife had run off with the church’s deacon. The weather lady moved up to a megawatt Atlanta station and Bob was banished to the wilderness. I guess it makes some sense he ended up down here. Although … Bob still hasn’t figured out most of us don’t think of this as punishment or penance. Hell, I guess, is in the eye of the beholder too.

Hits: 13

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When I first arrived on the South End, my biggest concern was finding a job. I’ve always maintained, and still do, that the only thing worse than work is looking for work. The best days of my life are those where I quit or gave notice or just walked off. The worst were the days following when it dawned on me I would now have to go searching for another dead end minimum wage position.

I had driven school buses back in rural Wisconsin and in Seattle and Gomorrah. I’d even driven metros so it seemed like I’d be able to get a job with the local school bus company, which proved true and before long I was chauffeuring children into town and back twice a day. My boss was happy to hire an experienced driver … until I let my hair grow and then a beard and he finally realized I wasn’t the cleancut young man he thought he’d hired. At which point he wanted me gone. Twice a week I was summoned into his office next to our break room to answer charges of driving recklessly, driving drunk,  driving on drugs, driving onto the shoulder, driving toward oncoming traffic, slamming the brakes, kicking kids off the bus miles from home, outrageous accusations that I refused to take seriously, but he wanted me to know were serious offenses if true. I would roll my eyes and he’d fire another accusation purportedly made by the parents of my kids. I suspected they were made by him, but really, what difference did it make? I knew my days were numbered as a professional driver.

We had a bus driver on a Stanwood route who had a reputation as a real ballbuster of a disciplinarian, at least according to him most days in the coffee room after the routes. When he came down with pneumonia, I subbed in for him. Holy Bluebird, the kids on that bus never heard they were spozed to use the seats to sit on. I never saw anything like it. Took me a whole minute or two to pull over and have a short chat with the little attention deficit folks, something to the effect that I might be taking them home for a free vacation day, maybe see if their parents wanted to babysit instead of go to work. After that, we didn’t have much trouble.

On the last day of my short career with the company the supervisor came up to let me know rumor had it there might be a water fight on the bus and I should be watchful. I said I sure would, boss. You better believe he wasn’t going to be my boss much longer.

At a convenient stop that’s now the Visitor Center I pulled my 40 foot long yellow Bluebird over, turned off the motor, set the brakes and turned to my charges. Okay, I said, give it your best shot. We went at it for ten minutes, water pistols and cannons, even a couple of half gallon jugs I brought for the finale. When we’d finished, I opened the front door and water poured out of that bus like a mini-Niagara, cascading down the steps onto the ground. My supervisor asked me when I got back to the barn if there’d been any trouble. No, I said, no trouble at all…. Thanks for the heads-up. That, happily, was the end of my bus driving career. Course, the next week I was scrounging for the next miserable job. Without, needless to say, a good reference.

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My buddy Sam lives in a dilapidated house down by the newly opened Katmandu Kite Shop and no, it isn’t a kite store, it’s a recreational marijuana outlet. Sam’s place sits back in the nettled interior, down a dead end dirt road near the old trout pond that once held trout but got dredged back in the early ‘80’s on one debauched weekend that ended my trout fishing on the South End.

Sam’s been living the bachelor life since his wife left him. She’d grown weary of the power being turned off for non-payment and the back taxes on the place reaching critical mass and since neither of them were willing to work, they played ‘chicken’ with each other, hoping the other would swerve first back into the job market. No way was Sam going back to wage slavery so ultimately Bobbie packed her things, left a short and not-so-sweet note and headed back down to an old boyfriend in Eugene, Oregon who at least worked part-time driving schoolbus.

Sam says he never saw it coming. I believe him, not because all the signs weren’t pointing inexorably toward a dissolution, but because Sam doesn’t have peripheral vision. He would have to hit a sign head-on. In fact, he didn’t find Bobbie’s kiss-off letter until four days after she left. Which isn’t as myopic as you might think. Sam is a Hoarder. His house is like one of those ant farms I had as a kid, nothing but tunnels, stuff stacked along the paths head high, trails leading to the bed or the bathroom or through the kitchen to the stove on one side, the fridge down a different path.

Bobbie kept the piles slightly more passable, but now that she’s gone, the tunnels have narrowed. Nothing much gets thrown away, but stuff apparently is coming in constantly, at least by my observation after not seeing Sam for a few months. The folks who dreamed up ‘planned obsolescence’ never counted on the Sams who keep the broken crap and live in their own midden. Another year, I figure he’ll run out of room completely. I don’t know how many Sams are out there, but I have to wonder if this isn’t why Sears, after a century, is going broke.

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Hits: 12

I remember about 40 years ago first coming up to Skagit Valley and seeing the tulip fields. Pretty amazing. Ten years later I drove down Best Road thinking I might catch a view of the fields and maybe lunch in La Conner. It must’ve been two days later when I finally managed to get off Fir Island. For some reason I’ve never liked tulips ever since. Sure got to thank the Chamber of Commerce for that. I’m sure the farmers thank em too.

But I been thinking — how can we turn this public relations machine to our advantage — and I hit on something I think the Skagit Valley Economic Council can sink their sharp little teeth into. Tulip Fuel. Bio-diesel with Hi Octane Petal Power. You drive in the Tulip Station and you can choose from candy apple red to lemon drop yellow. Earth Friendly, Home Grown Flower Power Fuel. The Valley’s sort of where the 60’s hit the Sound, never really ended. So Flower Power won’t be real hard to sell. The Co-op’s next big Expansion will include 10,000 gallon underground tanks and those colorful pumps. High pollen octane for the BMW crowd. Bulb mulch for the Volkswagens.

Oh, I suppose the backups will be sort of long, but spread out longer than 2 weeks, nothing like the Tulip Festival. Plus knowing you’re doing something great for the planet should help. Something that should’ve been done long ago. You know, putting a halt to that Tulip Gridlock.

Petal Power —- think about it!

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