The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Folks are all the time making suggestions for how I can improve this South End literature I’m writing, figuring, I guess, a little tweak here, an improvement there, we got the Pulitzer sewed up. The Camano James Joyce or another Homer ready to be passed down orally generation to generation around the smoldering trash barrels. And sometimes, as much as I hate to admit it, they’re right. Doesn’t make me wrong, you understand, just amenable to perfection.

The other day some folks up north wanted me to write about the North End. I said okay, that’s well and good, but I might just as soon write about France for all I know about their customs and cuisine and odd ways of speaking. Then, a few days later, a neighbor mentioned how what I was doing was creating an Us vs. Them scenario. I said, gee, I sure don’t want to do that. Not so much because I’m afraid folks would scapegoat Stanwoodopolis or Utsalady, but I wouldn’t want all the refugees afterward.

I once offered KSER, our Everett public radio station, the opportunity to have Skeeter read these aloud. But the program manager said he didn’t want to ‘offend’ people living on the South End of Camano by inflicting these on them. God forbid! And so those poor wretched citizens will have to succeed or fail on toeing their own Straight and Narrow, no help from me.

It’s hard to tell, I guess, whether the South End is more to be pitied or more to be envied. I’d say yes, but other folks feel different. Okay by me, I’m a great believer in co-existence, not only between Us and the North End (Them), but between my editors (Them) and me (Us). As always, your criticism is welcome and your suggestions duly considered. Just remember, though, you may be the next story. No hard feelings, I hope. We sure don’t need another Rwanda on Camano.

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