The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Back before the building booms when Camano was discovered by the denizens of Seattle and California seeking low cost gated communities, the Piranha Brothers plied their trade in the South End backwash. Their motto, We Don’t Need No Stinking Permits, explains why they worked after hours, on weekends, often times in the gloom of night, anything to avoid the dreaded building inspector. They worked fast and they worked cheap, hammers strapped to their construction belts slung low the way a gunfighter hung his .45, safety off, trigger filed.

They used recycled materials gleaned from tear downs and salvaged structures, not so much out of environmental concerns as a strategy to building on the cheap. Sheds, garages, chicken coops, artist studios — no job was too small, no building too demeaning. They moved surreptitiously from site to site, word of mouth spread to prospective clients the way a virus travels by stealth and speed. The jobs they turned down were those that might arouse the neighbors or were visible from the highway. Cash only, the Brothers demanded. Leave no trace.

It was only a matter of time, of course, before the long reach of the Island County Building Department tracked the two men to an unpermitted barn south of Tyee Store where Jimmy Kennedy found the pair hammering rafters into place three stories above ground. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. ‘I’ll need to see a building permit, boys,” the lawman shouted above their hammers’ racket, ‘and I’ll need to see it now.’ Even though they’d never laid eyes on the county’s agent, they knew who this was and they knew too the jig was up now that their cover was blown. It was, Josh told his partner Pete over a long afternoon of beers at the Stanwood Hotel after paying their fines and receiving their reprimands, inevitable.

‘You aren’t suggesting we go legit, are you?’ Pete asked bleary-eyed. ‘No way, partner, that’s for other construction outfits, not the likes of us.’ And so, maybe sad to say, maybe not, the heyday of the Piranha Brothers seemed at its end.

There are some who say the Piranha Brothers never really existed, just a rumor from the scofflaw days of the island when we built our own homes without permission or permit, us pioneers of Camano. Others claim they retired, drifted back into time and the backwash where even today they construct odd buildings that defy gravity and the law. But if truth be told — and it seldom is down here at the end of the island — the boys drifted into legend. Even if it was only in their own minds.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 18th, 2023 at 3:12 pm and is filed under rantings and ravings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.