The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Some of my buddies are working hard to see who can build the largest wrecking yard on the South End. Ever since Tyee Store sold back in the ‘80’s and the new owners hauled off the acre of cars, trucks, chassis and bus parts, the neighborhood had to drive clear to Mount Vernon or Marysville for cannibalized auto parts to repair our beaters. The last trip I made to the Quilceda Swamps to pull an automatic tranny in the mudhole where a ’62 BelAire had bellied down before submerging completely into the tarpits, well, that transmission lasted less than a hundred miles before it bit the dust. Or mud. Or whatever.

Maybe that’s why we keep our dead rigs — never know when a part off the old vehicle might save us the dreaded trip to distant off-island wrecking yards. So we make our less-than-manicured acreage our own personal salvage yards. Sure the mizzus cries, sure she sobs, but hellfire, she sure isn’t going to be the one who crawls on her belly to dismount some rusted differential in the mud and the rain miles from home.

Now, you know and I do too, chances are slim to none that we’ll ever need anything off those blackberry strangled rigs up on blocks or down on deteriorated radials back by the woods. But it’s a kind of backwash insurance policy, see? If you got it, the gods of fate will pass you by. If you don’t, you might as well stick a black flag on the roof and say come and get me. It’s a law of the universe actually. And it’s certainly the Law on the South End, inviolable and terrible and probably swift. Tempt the gods at your own peril, amigo, we’ve learned the Hard Way.

So if you see an old ’65 Mustang peeking out of the nettle forests down some dead end road up a dark ravine, don’t bother knocking on that shack door to inquire how much the owner might want for that vintage car you want to restore. He needs it, my friend. He needs it for parts, he needs it for peace of mind, he needs it to barricade the door from the gods of fate.

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