The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

My neighbors are up in arms. A year ago a cluster of alders blew down in a storm, crashing into the bulkhead below and opening a wide gash exposing the bank to the sea. Our trail down to the beach was threatened — and more importantly a few houses close to the bluff’s edge were threatened. The obvious solution, of course — no, not put those houses up for sale — was to repair the breach in that bulkhead.

So permits were applied for and meanwhile the homeowner’s association decided the old bulkhead, rotting pretty fast, might as well be replaced too. More permits, more delays, more time to gather estimates, hire experts, obtain bids, attend meetings and divide up sides. Take a million plus dollar estimate and divide by 25 or so properties, you’ve got a microcosmic snapshot of America, the Haves vs. the Have Nots, the folks on fixed incomes vs. the Boeing and Microsoft retirees. Annie, get yer gun, we’re going to war.!!

I’m not exactly an uninterested bystander in this shoot-out. We have beach rights and since the trail is a necessary component of those rights which the bulkhead protects, the argument has been made that we are equally responsible to pay for the repairs. This, you can infer, is why attorneys were invented. For the time being I’m biding my time.

The irony of this imbroglio, this War Between the Houses, is that we live across the highway where bluff erosion really won’t impact us and our buildings for a millennia or so, unlike the folks perched precariously a few scant feet from potential disaster. And … the path to the beach is steep which means only a few of us geezers ever venture down that trail, mostly me.

Meanwhile the permits languish, attorneys are hired, acrimony builds, guns are loaded, secession seems possible … but wait! The State has revised its rules on bulkheads in the meantime. Possibly, probably! the government won’t allow a replacement. Peace in the hood might be restored. Neighbors might once again speak to one another. Guns will return to their closets. Happy Days?

Not likely. Now they got the new lawsuits concerning a building application that would block the views of the Sound and the Olympics of two other neighbors. Don’t put those firearms away just yet! They just might still be needed.

Hits: 18