South End Parks and Wrecreation
Add comment June 18th, 2006
The humble beginnings of today’s
6 Flag’s Over Camano.
Sometimes referred to as
the Disney of Desire.
Posts filed under 'roadkill culture (south end two lane blacktop)'
a real brief but concise history of south end crabbing
Add comment March 20th, 2009
I guess I’ve lived on the South End long enough to see many changes in Crabbing Techniques. Down by us we still walk for the dangerous beasts, armed with only a potato rake and our wits. Obviously the crabs have a definite advantage…. If, as sometimes happens, the wily Dungeness gets the potato rake, well, the poor South Ender is rendered nearly helpless and few, if any, hear those anguished screams.
Some of my newcomer neighbors can afford traps and boats. Boats with motors even. They launch at high tide and bait the traps with caviar and special crackers from Trader Joe’s. They say they catch crab, but I suspect they eat the bait themselves later with lobster flown in from Maine.
In the olden days, when crabbing was a mainstay of South end maritime economics, we drove the great Dungeness herds north every spring to the stockyards of Utsalady and Stanwood. These were difficult and dangerous drives for the crab cowboys — and many a young wrangler never made it up the coast. Crab stampedes were a constant source of concern. Knee deep in the eelgrass with 10,000 head of the crustaceans clacking claws, the smallest motion would set em to running. Old drovers still tell the story of Mabana Mike, caught in the stampede of ’09 with a herd of barnacle crusted monsters whittling him down like a chainsaw speed carving contest. Old Stumpy, they called him after that at the Tyee Retirement Villa. Never the same. The sound of a denture clacking would set him off for days, the nurses said.
But when the crabs were delivered and the happy Crabpokes had money in their waders, you better believe Stanwood and Utsalady resounded to the whoops and cries of drunken drovers celebrating another successful drive to market. You see an occasional crabber in the Hotel now, a small reminder of those South End glory days when Crab was King and Crabboys were too. So when you’re eating high on the shell this year, remember you’re partakin in a bit of history. And be careful. Don’t want to hurt yourselves with those nutcrackers and picks…
rocky horror stock market show
Add comment November 17th, 2008
Like maybe a few of you, I’ve been watching the stock market. It looks like a jumping bean on steroids and meth both. Thousand point jumps, kamikaze dives. It’s like a horror movie where the dead keep getting back up and killed again.
The zombies, of course, are all those folks who preached unbridled capitalism. You remember them. The people who wanted to privatize Social Security. Why make a puny couple of percentage points interest when we could make some serious money in the Market? Why put the brakes on a wild ride to riches? Bubble? No sir, that was a balloon sailing to Eldorado, streets paved with gold…..
They’ll be back! They’ll dig up out of the hasty grave we threw them in and kicked dirt over. They’ll knock on our door some midnight dreary when our own fiscal wounds have started to heal and the memory of this nightmare has faded. They’ll be at the door grinning blood and money, offering impossible returns, easy loans, fast bucks.
Me. I’m resharpening my wooden stakes. I’m hanging credit cards wrapped in garlic by the porch. I’m looking for silver bullets, not silver linings.
So when the rollercoaster levels out and you know the extent of the damage finally, don’t let your guard down, don’t call your broker, don’t assume the worst is over. It isn’t. They’re clawing their way above ground even now.
And here’s a tip: when dawn finally comes and the ghouls in Brooks Brother suits slink back to their coffins, check your MasterCards. From now on, Leave Home Without It.
religion and state
Add comment November 17th, 2008
We got ourselves a little chapel down at the South End. It’s non-denominational, which means, I guess, they haven’t got money either. Every Sunday they ring the bell they took from the old schoolhouse and call the flock to pasture. My cronies in the South End String Band don’t attend real regular. Like most musicians, getting up by 10 a.m. isn’t natural for em, but I notice most religions must feel like it’s important to make hard working folks like us get out of bed early.
If I was a Preacher, I’d figure let the congregation sleep in, come on down when they’re all rested up and alert. But it isn’t my show and the church probably has got its own reasons.
You talk about separation of church and state, we used to vote at the chapel. Nobody seemed to care back then, but still, it isn’t like we were Pilgrims, and finally some atheistic pinko commie liberal pervert must’ve took offense so we started voting down at the Fire Hall, more secular I guess.
We hear a lot of commotion from up north aways about prayer in schools and religion getting mixed into government and on and on, pretty heated up stuff. People take their religion fairly serious, I’ve noticed, and other people’s they’d like to take somewhere else.
I’m as religious as the next fella. I want to go to heaven but I’m not in any particular hurry to die, which makes me think deep down all of us are hedging our bets. Life’s a gamble, but only a fool likes to draw to an inside straight ….