BOO! Did I scare
you? I thought not . . . except maybe
for those folks over there, who were dozing off. I saw you jump!
You see, it’s not easy to scare
people here on the Rock. We’re scared
out of our wits just living here. And
not just at Halloween, although that is a scary time. What with Dale Sherman flinging pumpkins across
Ebey’s Prairie from his catapult, and Cindy Van Dyk selling all manner of
horrifying stuff in her Far From Normal shop on Front Street.
But what I want
to talk about are the EVERYDAY things that scare us on this Rock.
For
instance, turning left from Broadway onto Highway 20. How scary is that? I was in my car the other day, making my way down
the highway toward the Coupeville stoplight, minding my own business. Out pops a beat-up station wagon turning left
at Broadway. . . right in front of me!
Terrifying!
“Idiot!” I yelled, while
stomping on the brakes. Well, actually,
I used a less polite word with an adjective I won’t repeat here. Couldn’t you have turned left at the
light? Would that have been too much
trouble? All I remember is the driver
looked like Freddy Krueger from the “Halloween” movies. And either he had spent too much time at Toby’s
Tavern that afternoon . . . or he was in a hurry to go murder somebody. For a while, I was afraid it was going to be
me.
See what I
mean? The Rock is a scary place to live!
And while
we’re talking about scary moments in the car, how about the worst one of all .
. . of course, that’s driving after dark.
For all those years I lived in America, driving after dark was no big
deal. Lots of big mercury vapor lamps
all over the place made it bright as day everywhere I went. But as soon as I moved to the Rock, I heard people
say, “Oh my no, I never drive after dark.
It just scares me to death.” Of
course, like any newcomer, I thought they were all just a bunch of wimps. Who’s afraid of the dark? Come on!
Then I
ventured out one evening. And I quickly
learned why everybody here makes dinner reservations no later than 5:30. Yikes! It’s really dark! And the few lights you see along the roads
seem to have 25-watt bulbs in them.
And, can we
talk about high-beam headlights? The
ones that the drivers coming toward you never dim until they’re blinding you? Everybody is so small-town polite and civil here
on the Rock. So why is it that some of
us become rude, inconsiderate Big City jerks when it comes to high beams?
The other night I was rounding
the curve by the Navy’s Outlying Field and was caught in a pair of high beams so
bright I thought it was a Close Encounter of the Third Kind and I was about to be abducted by aliens.
Then I
thought maybe it was a tractor trailer driven by some thoughtless off-island teamster. Imagine my shock when I saw it was a
Prius. Shouldn’t high beams be illegal on
a Prius? I’m just sayin’.
Of course, not all the scary
things on the Rock are concerned with driving.
It’s also plain scary when it gets dark here at 4:30 in wintertime. Ever forgot to turn on the porch light before
you wander out to the garage? Good luck
with that! Have a nice trip!
Or tried to get your dog or cat to
come in at dinnertime when it’s pitch black outside, and you have no idea what
kind of wild critter is making that horrifying noise? Can you spell s-c-a-r-y, boys and girls?
And of
course, that pitch-blackness is even scarier when we get one of those power
outages this Rock is famous for. When we
first experienced one, it was kind of nice and cozy. Candles everywhere. Fire in the fireplace. Reading to each other. No background noise. Actually having a conversation. Sweet.
Unfortunately, we found out that the magic wears off as the temperature plummets,
the furnace doesn’t work and you’re almost out of firewood. Going to bed and quickly crawling under the
quilt is the best option to reduce your fright – and warm up your toes.
I’ve saved
a couple of the scariest things about the Rock for last. Here’s one. You discover you need milk and a loaf of
bread. You head to the Red Apple at
Prairie Center.
It’s a little after 3 p.m. A sudden fear grabs you. Damn! You
forgot! School just got out! Backpacks block the entrance. Two girls, one with purple streaked hair, the
other with green streaks, guzzle Red Bulls as you try to grab a cart.
Frightened but undeterred you
push forward into the store. Lines of school
kids back up into the aisles, impatiently waiting to pay for armloads of
Doritos, Ho-Ho’s, Donettes, Twinkies, Fried Pork Rinds, Teriyaki Jerky and
other junk specialties your cholesterol count forced you to give up years ago.
They’re wearing t-shirts with
skulls and cross bones, and pants that somehow hang below the part of the body
that normally holds them up. Their
tattoos celebrate music and celebrities you never heard of. Strange objects fill their pierced ear lobes,
nostrils and other body parts.
How old you feel standing there
with milk and a loaf of bread! How out
of touch! Maybe you really were abducted
by aliens! How scary!
And, finally, here’s the really
scary thing about living on this Rock. Everything
is so historic here!
The glaciers and woolly mammoths
were around a little while, then high-tailed it – leaving behind their rocks
and bones. Then the First Nations people
arrived. Not sure who they were, but it
must’ve been pretty cold because they quickly left, leaving just a few petrified
camas bulbs.
Then the Swinomish, Skagit and
Snohomish people moved in and ate a lot of deer, oysters and salmon and built a
lot of fires. Then Captain Vancouver came
around and named everything after the sailors on his ship. Then Captain Ebey and Captain Coupe built some
really cold and drafty Victorian houses and got scalped. And through it all farmers just kept on trying
to find something they could grow and sell on this Rock.
See what I
mean? It’s his-tor-ick here. You
never know when you’re going to step onto or into something really important
around here. You walk across a field and
maybe step on a prehistoric clam shell dropped by a Pleistocene-era bird. Yikes!
Or disturb the remains of a campfire built several thousand years
ago. Or find an unidentified bone that may be human . . .or
maybe it’s just a squirrel remnant that somebody or something ate in the fourth
century B.C.
Don’t get
me wrong. I love the historic heritage
we have on the Rock. We are the stewards
of what we’ve inherited and our job is to preserve it for those who come
next. Most of us want to keep the Rock just
like it is.
Although don’t you wonder what
archaeologists four thousand years from now will think of – oh, I don’t know – maybe
all those septic tanks they’ll dig up? I
hope they’ll understand they were a big reason the Rock was always so green
while we were here.
Any
way. I need to get home. It’s dark and you know how scary it is around
here!
See ya!
