The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Stanwoodopolis, like all little burgs up and down the Puget Sound, is experiencing growth pains. New schools, housing subdivisions, roads, infrastructure, you name it, the little planning department goes through personnel like suet through a goose. They’re underpaid, overworked and highly stressed. And businesses are packing up from down at the flood plain and evacuating before the tsunami of insurance premiums inundates them.

So when a new business opportunity knocks on their door, they’re all ears. The permit for a large scale compost facility at the end of town was contentious, you better believe. The good citizens of Stanwoodopolis already have the sewer lagoon next door across the highway and the thought, or the odor, of one more rotten acreage was too far a bridge. After plenty of acrimony the city council denied the composters their dump site. No doubt the Welkommen sign that would read SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN STANWOODOPOLIS had something to do with their decision.

This week another business venture application was heard by the Planning Board and the City Council. Seems a start-up crematorium wanted to open up its furnace right there in downtown. You might think denying the compost site might have been precedent aplenty to deny the burning of bodies, but you’d be mistaken. The Council, in a carefully worded approval, stated that since restaurants emit odors in nearby locations, they could not find legal reason to deny the application on the grounds of noxious odors. I guess the difference between a burger smell emanating from the Duck Inn and the odor of human flesh may not be all that great. Who knows, the traveling public, upon sniffing the wafting breeze of the new crematorium, might subliminally hunger for the Monster Burger down the street. Great for the restaurant business, not bad for the funeral home and probably a revenue source for Stanwoodopolis. What’s not to like?

Personally I think a contest for best sign is definitely in order. Me, I like one that takes its cue from Whidbey Naval Air Base: Pardon Our Odor, It’s the Smell of Freedom. I’m sure the rest of you have your own preferences. Like Two Toke Tom’s: Stanwoodopolis, Your Last Stop. Let’s get the Chamber of Commerce on this as soon as possible. The tourism potential is too immense to be put on hold. Or, as one of the Flathead Car Guyz said down at the Diner, Stanwoodopolis, wake up and smell the coffins.

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