The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Just about everything you need is here on the South End. I admit we haven’t got a Mac Donald’s yet and there isn’t a Mall within hollering distance, but I’m talking about the Important Things, like a Modern Art Gallery, a café with friendly waitresses and a decent cup of joe, a mom and pop grocery that rents movies and knows your name, a little church to save a few souls – but not too many.

We used to have a garage and a junkyard back when Snowdens ran the store at Tyee. The first time I went to the garage, I needed my universal joints fixed. Ted was out there with his drinking buddy Seth – you see Seth Road by Mabana –that’s who Seth was.
They said sure, young feller, pull it right in, friendly as could be to a newcomer to the South End. I should’ve known things weren’t quite up to snuff, though, when they had ME under the truck handing ME tools and telling ME what to do next.

Course I was new and eager to get along with these fine neighbors of mine, and when in Rome, I thought, be a gladiator or be eaten. So with the help of these good ole boys I got the thing tore up fairly handily. Next day I hitchhiked into town and got myself some new universal joints – now I know you’re thinking isn’t it odd I got to go in myself, and I was thinking the same myself … but next night Seth and Ted drank and told lies to each other between supervising my cussing and grunting and smashing my knuckles and now I was thinking this is the damndest service station I ever had the misfortune to go to, but it was the ONLY garage on the island and it got me out of the winter monsoon, so I kept at it.

When I got done and crawled out from under that greasy blood-spattered pit I’d spent hours in, I asked how much I owed em for my time. I mean they had a genuine Slicker here is what I figured.
Ted said he thought maybe if I brought a bottle by someday, we’d call it even, and I thought well, that seems about fair.

It wasn’t til a week later somebody told me Ted’s wasn’t a real Service Station – just a place he worked on his own rigs. Later, when I took the jug over, we had a good laugh at my expense. And that was the first and last time we had us a repair shop on the South End and I guess you’re looking at the Head Mechanic. Retired now, thank you.

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