Rockin' a Hard Place

This is a "blogtalk" I gave during performances last weekend of "Postcards From Whidbey Island," a new, live monthly variety show we've started here in Coupeville, Washington, USA.

I live on Whidbey Island . . . and that, my friends, takes a little explaining. We have a different slant on life here on the Rock, as we call it, versus those who live in America. That’s what we call any place you can get to from here by ferry, bridge, bicycle, kayak or hiking boot.

Now you take what I’m wearing this evening, for instance. Baseball cap…fleece vest….T-shirt….shorts…flip-flops. For those of you who don’t recognize it, this happens to be the Whidbey male’s uniform for fall weather. Now you might ask why a grown man would wear this get-up when it’s forty degrees outside. Simple. Maybe it’s forty right now, but it may be sixty in a hour or so. On the Rock, you gotta be prepared for the temperature to change. And when you’re sipping a nice warm latte someplace like William Bell’s hangout at the end of the Wharf, you don’t want to swelter in all that bundled-up stuff. On the Rock, we avoid bundling and unbundling whenever possible. Bundling is for January, not October.

Folks on Whidbey are modest, for the most part. We don’t go in for bragging...even though we do live in the best place on the planet and we know it. But we don’t brag about it because we don’t want America to move here. Of course, we love it that so many tourists visit the Rock in the summertime, and gush about how beautiful it is, how historic and quaint and friendly, how amazing the scenery is, and how lucky we are to live here. We just smile, say yeah, and take their money. And then we heave a sigh of relief when they’re gone after Labor Day. Finally, we have a place to park again!

We aren’t loud talkers here, either. You don’t hear us raise our voices much on the Rock... except when the Navy jets fly over. No...we like nice, quiet talk. Think it’s gonna rain? Had any luck with your tomatoes this year? Stuff like that. And when anybody brings up politics, we just nod and pretend to agree with them. Then ask ‘em how their kids are.

Another thing is, not much really changes here. No matter what anybody says, everything’s like it always was. For instance, some folks like to think hardly anything happened before Captain Vancouver sailed in a couple hundred years ago and sent his first mate Joe Whidbey on a couple-day cruise around the Rock.

Truth is, native people lived here for at least five thousand years before Old Joe ever set eyes on the place. In fact, several different nations shared the Rock. There were the Snohomish in the South, the Skagits in the North and a few Clallams growing food on the prairie. They were separate nations and spoke their own dialects.

It’s the same today. We still have different tribes sharing the Rock and speaking their own dialects. We have the Clint-ish, the Langl-ish and the Freel-ish in the South, the Coupe-ish and the Greenb-ish in the middle, and the Oak-ish in the North. Now sometimes the uppity Clint-ish, Langl-ish and Freelish poke fun at the Oak-ish and callthem Oakies. That’s certainly not nice-talk.

When Old Joe Whidbey took his cruise, he wrote that everything appeared ever so peaceful and nice on the Rock...even though the various tribes bad-mouthed each other and fought a lot. That hasn’t changed, has it? The Snohomish were basically mainlanders and they canoed back and forth a lot. The only difference today is that the Clint-ish and the Langl-ish use park-and-ride lots and take the ferry. Clallams were claim jumpers from the Olympic Peninsula who horned in on the Skagit farmers on the Prairie. Today, the Coupe-ish try to even that score by going over to the Peninsula to buy cheap stuff. When the ferry’s running, that is.

And, in the old days, the Skagits on the north end were always fretting about raids by the fierce Haida warriors from Canada. That’s certainly no different today. You know how pushy those Canadian tourists can be.

The original people on the Rock used to put aside their differences once or twice a year for this thing called a potlatch. Kind of a picnic on steroids. One tribe would host the others for several days of eating barbecued salmon and local concoctions with unknown ingredients, drinking homemade liquor and cavorting in a big cedar hall called a long house. No back-biting or fighting was permitted. Only nice-talk about kids, fishing and other pleasant stuff. And when the visitors left, they all got nice gifts from the local chief. Then, in a few days, they went back to fighting each other.

Today, it’s still the same. Only we call our gatherings potlucks. We do them in big cedar halls like the Crockett Barn or the Rec Hall. We eat salmon and local concoctions with unknown ingredients. We call them casseroles. We drink liquor, cavort and talk. No insults or fights are allowed. And when we leave, everybody gets a chance to win nice presents called door prizes. Then we go back to bad-mouthing each other.

Now let me give you an example of how all this works here on the Rock. A couple days ago, I had a phone call from my friend Carl in Langley. This is how it went:

"Hello? Oh, hi Carl. How ya doin’? Oh, I forgot. I’ll bring back that weed whacker I borrowed next time I see you. What? Oh, I just got back from Home Depot in Oak Harbor. They had a sale on the gutter screens I need to keep the pine needles out."

"What?" Carl says, "You went where? WHY did you go THERE?" he cries.

"They have good stuff," I say.

"Way too corporate for me," he says. "I only support local businesses. "Like Ace Hardware in Freeland," he says.

"You ought to give Home Depot a chance," I say.

"But it’s in Oak Harbor," he says. "Do you realize how many quarts of gasoline my Prius would burn to drive up there? And it’s Oak Harbor, for cryin’ out loud. Taco Bell . . . Burger King . . . Starbuck’s . . . Wal-Mart!! I moved to Whidbey to get away from all that," he says. "And those people live there." he says.

"Well, Carl," I say, "The Republicans have to live someplace. Be nice. You’re being very un-Whidbey-like."

"Yeah, well," he says, "You can burn fossil fuels going up there to ship your dollars off-island into the greedy palms of corporations if you want. I choose not to."

"OK, Carl," I say. "Whatever. Want to see a movie at the Clyde later in the week? I hear they’re finally playing Avatar."

"Great," he says. "Love to. Text me with the time. Gotta run. I’m catching the 1:30 ferry."

"Where you going?" I ask.

"Gotta pick up a roll of weed-blocker and some organic slug bait at Lowe’s in Lynnwood," he says. "Bye!"

Anyway, that’s how it goes here on the Rock. The new ferry’ll be running by the time we meet again. I can hardly wait to feel the big rattle they can’t seem to fix. I’ll blog about it next month. See ya then!