The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Some days the past comes calling. I was watering our garden this afternoon when an old friend hauled into the drive with a pack and a 5 gallon bottle of water he had lashed to a roller suitcase. Got off the bus that doesn’t run the last lousy three miles of island and walked here on his way to his brother’s cabin a mile south pulling that water along dirt road and blacktop. The cabin doesn’t have a well.

Tom’s been through some changes. Haven’t we all? I knew him back when … some 30 or 35 years ago. He was a hard drinking 20 something, distributed beer around the area, loved to tell stories of bars between Montana and California, the old saloons mostly gone now or restored to yuppie shrines. I nailed the ridgepole on the day we hoisted the 40 foot log up into position on his brother’s log cabin. Felt like I’d hammered the Golden Spike on the first transcontinental railroad. Quite an honor, definitely a privilege.

Tom moved down to Arizona, did the maintenance for the spring baseball, mowed, watered, all the stuff Mesa needs to keep a desert ballpark grassy and green. He got a bad back, developed an over-enthusiastic love of alcohol, had some physical breakdowns, went into rehab, took an early retirement on disability, discovered — or acknowledged — he was gay. He looked good today. Old, maybe, older even than me, but healthy old. Walking his gear two miles from the bus drop-off, 30 years from when I knew him.

I guess in a way we’re all old codgers now, pulling our water and our stories and our packs down the highway that runs back toward home … or some reasonable facsimile. He’ll stay a night or two, reminisce, commune with the stars and the skeeters, maybe have a campfire there under the big firs up where the dirt road to the cabin ends and something else, not memory, begins. I’ll be doing something similar, I guess, thinking of all the old campfires and the nights long ago up at that cabin. What I think is we’re all hauling water, we’re all dragging stories….

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