the skeeter daddle diaries

1 comment June 27th, 2007

  THE SKEETER DADDLE DIARIES:  Reflections of a South End Nettle Farmer will be read, in part, by its xenophobic author at the Snow Goose Bookstore in downtown Stanwood on Friday, July 13^th at 7 pm.  Book signing and South End revelry will inevitably follow.
 

    “ I sometimes think all of us here represent the last wave of American Westward Expansion.  We paddled across to these islands, looked out our cabin windows one morning and realized this may be as far as we can go.  We got to the tail end of these islands at the far end of this continent at the last hour of the millennium.”
 

     So writes Jack Archibald from one of those cabins three decades later, musing about his journey to the south end of Camano Island.

    “I don’t know about you all, but I was looking for one last chance to live an earlier American Dream, the one where cheap land was still available and opportunity was something you could grab with two strong hands.  I was looking for the same thing the pioneers were:  a fresh start.  A little breathing room.  New ground.  I think that’s what America IS.  The opportunity – the Potential – to recreate yourself.  To hitch up the Conestoga and leave the past behind.  To make your mistakes and move on.  To ALWAYS feel like you can start over….
 

     The Skeeter Daddle Diaries hits the stands this week.  Archibald has compiled a book that is half history, half heresy and one full jug of moonshine wit.  The bad boy bard of the South End String Band has been telling these stories for years at their concerts the old fashioned way, via oral tradition.  “Course,” the author laments, “that was before Bill Clinton and Monica ruined it for the rest of us.”
 

     Skeeter Daddle is, of course, Archibald’s alter ego, a latter day Huck Finn tromping Camano’s backwash in search of an America long thought lost, a banjo on his knee and a grudge against Mark Twain for marooning him in a childhood no longer sanctuary.      The author writes the way he plays banjo:  headlong, brakes out, bystanders beware.  If you read closely enough, you will find him grinning from every page, hiding in the old growth nettle stands of the fabled South End.
 

     The Skeeter Daddle Diaries isn’t merely a recollection of  Camano’s South End, it’s a commentary on our modern times balanced precariously on the cusp of a computer tsunami.  Archibald may well be describing a Paradise Already Lost, but for a brief, sparkling moment, he’ll take you back to a Garden of Eden before the gated communities and the Mark Clark Bridge gridlock.
      “I used to think, sitting early mornings by my big woodstove waiting for the coffee water to boil, my dog, old Dr. Gonzo, watching me sleepy-eyed on the hearth with the cat curled snug up against her, all of us waiting for daylight and that teapot singing a note like a banjo’s high G, I used to think:  we all know what’s been lost, the sound of kids rustling up, hopping on bare feet across a cold plank floor, getting up, getting going, the smell of wood smoke curling out of a chimney, the slow feel of sun coming up through the fog in the firs and the whole world slowly  re-appearing, wet and dripping like a newborn thing just spanked to life, that first intake of breath, everything waiting.  We think we don’t have time for this anymore, but we know we had it once.  We know it’s right there for us to see again, coming awake out of the dawn.”
 

elger bay concert in the park(ing lot)

Add comment June 27th, 2007

mt vernon concert in the park 6-6-07

Add comment June 7th, 2007

     It’s a real privilege to play tonight at the inaugural concert of the first year of Mt. Vernon’s annual Tulipalooza  Concert in what we hope will be the music festival that dwarfs the Tulip Festival in short order.
     The Band here loves Mt. Vernon.  Course half of em thought it was called the city of Hugo/Helmer.  I know Paul over there has single-handedly doubled the city’s sales tax on his guitar purchases.  And I can’t point too many fingers — this banjo I bought from the Hugo Helmer music store behind us in 1980.  The missuz at the time said, “You buy that banjo and I’ll leave you.”  I bet Hugo Helmer has destroyed more marriages in its nearly 70 years of doing business than Burlington has franchised fast foods.
     What I love about Mt. Vernon is this — all the old buildings along the waterfront and downtown are still here.  Most all of it is still intact, just waiting to get restored.  The Band feels the same way,  Naw, they don’t agree with me.  They’re waiting to be restored.
     Mt. Vernon used to be a River Town.  When they put the interstate smack thru the town, it turned College Way into the 2^nd busiest intersection in WA.  But the downtown stayed quaint, just biding its time til the 21^st Century discovered its charms.  You been doing good.  Fixed up the streets,    Built a very nice train station a few blocks from here, saved the Lincoln, started building parks, expanded the hospital and kept your soul doing it.
     That might not seem like much to some, but your kids and your grandkids are gonna thank you.  And half the Band thanks you NOW —- the other half want to thank the City of Hugo Helmer for supplying their instrument addictions…….

mt vernon concert in the park

Add comment June 7th, 2007

mt vernon concert in the park

Add comment June 7th, 2007

      Some of you aging hippies out there probably remember the old Skagit Valley Co-op when it used to sit down here on the corner.  Close to the jail so the sheriff could keep an eye on who came and went.  All us old longhairs would come out of the jungle once a year to get provisioned up.  Fill in what we couldn’t grow …. And catch up on the current events here in Mt. Vernon and Gomorrah.
     I tell you what, that was a historic place, that old Co-op.  Sure didn’t have room for a fancy Deli or a free range meat section or specialty cheeses from around the world.  Don’t remember much of a Beauty and Cosmetic section.  Mighta been a magazine rack with Mother Earth News, but that’s all we needed really.  Fine Homebuilding Magazine, Naw…. Our shacks were beyond Martha Stewarting…..
     Over the past 25 years the Co-op’s grown up along with us.  Its belt kept expanding one notch at a time until finally they just bought the whole damn block.  Sort of downtown Mt. Vernon’s answer to Wal-Mart.
     You think back to those humble beginnings, the cramped bins of grain and the teeny-weeny check-out stand, the loyal customers and the always great staff, you can appreciate how far they’ve come.  And maybe us too.  I know I’ve baked about one million loaves of bread ground from their grains.  And even tho my homebrewing has diminished a bit since they got the giant beer and wine section, a lot of fond memories were from those moonshining Co-op days — even if those memories are starting to slip.
     Mt. Vernon, I don’t need to tell you, took a different route than its neighbor to the north.  Kept its history.  Kept its soul.  For those of us who still make the hard trek in from the hinterlands, we want to say thanks.  And if there’s any sheriff deputies here, I was just kidding about that moonshining……