Phenomenal observational phenomena revealed

Published 4:00 pm Saturday, July 8, 2006

Wow.

What was that all about?

Where did all those people come from?

Who were they?

Have you been waiting in lines lately?

This week’s Monday/Tuesday/fireworks/family fun/Fourth of July festival was more chaos and fiasco than a power outage on Thanksgiving.

It took me over eight minutes of solitary waiting before I could left-turn my pick-up from Newman onto Highway 525, heading south (or is it east?) toward the adventures of Sunlight Beach.

My fighter pilot buddy, The Right Reverend Buddha Bob, formerly homeland security and a personal body guard for Senator Ruby Begonia, considers what happens every holiday on Whidbey a yet-to-be-named phenomenon.

It is a phenomenon not unlike meteorological phenomena facing pilots and weather forecasters, or electronic voice phenomena experienced by ham operators, CB’ers and police scanner enthusiasts.

These phenomena, witnessed every Fourth of July weekend, Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend, affect each and every one of us.

They affect our traffic.

They affect our food lines.

They affect our blood pressure.

Naturally, these phenomena usually appear in warm weather and are heavily concentrated in pristine beach communities such as Columbia Beach, Maxwelton Beach, Mutiny Bay, Lagoon Point, Shore Avenue and Sunlight Beach.

For those of you unfamiliar with phenomena, the word phenomenon is associated with any observable event such as earthquakes, lightning, rain, fire, sunrises, thunderstorms, and, my personal favorite, rusting.

As noted in Wikipedia, “Phenomena constitute the world as we experience it, as opposed to the world as it exists independently of our experiences (thing-in-themselves, ‘das Ding an sich’).”

Das Ding an sich to you, too.

Philosopher Immanuel Kant’s argument was that humans are unable to know things-in-themselves, only things as we experience them.

No wonder my Dad would get excited when I started to tell him what “they” said.

“Who are they, Jimmy? I do not care what they said if I do not know who they are.”

So, as a young boy, struggling without leg hair on the hot summer pavement of the Midwest, I was forced to find out who they really were.

Not finding them in the Midwest, I began searching in the East.

They were not there.

They were not in the south, the southeast, the southwest or at any Sonic Burger drive-ins.

Who were they and where were they?

Had Dad asked me about God, or the flag, or the Hardy Boys, I could have answered him.

Finally, many, many years later, after searching this great land of ours, I know now who and where they are.

They are here.

Here is the THEY Phenomenon.

They were here all along.

They know who they are, and now, because we have lived here long enough, observing them, we do, too.

They are they.

They are the summertime beach crowd on Whidbey Island.

They that know, that are-in-the-know, that know that they know.

They know it all.

They know who is best, what is best, where is best, when is best and how is best.

They are the best.

THEY — Those Humans Explaining You.

They are the ones.

That’s who they are, Dad.

They tell me who and what to vote for.

They tell me where and what to eat.

They even tell me what to write in this column.

The THEY Phenomenon has suggested that I write about gas prices. Do you realize that we are victims of “zone pricing?” Do you even know what zone we are in? Do you care if we are zoned-out?

I asked Freeland Union 76’s Marvelous Marty about zone pricing.

“Yep. We got it. My advice? Watch your pump. Don’t blink. It gets to five dollars real fast!”

The THEY Phenomenon suggests that we need a Trader Joe’s on both sides of the highway so we can all join hands and swim together in inexpensive olive oil. Do you realize that Trader Joe’s olive oil in a barrel is cheaper than that Saudi Arabian blend, oil-on-a-stick?

This week, on Sunlight Beach, we asked them what they thought.

“You might slow down and drive in the middle of the street. We have kids and dogs running around with bones and bottle rockets.”

“Hey, don’t you have a show on the Discovery Channel called ‘Dirty Jobs’? Why don’t you clean up that mess at the Greenbank Farm?”

Now there is a phenomenon.

See for yourself when they all gather together to ask who they are at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, July 12 at the Jim Davis House at the Greenbank Farm.

As stated in a letter to the Coupeville Port Commissioners, dated April 25, 2006, “The Greenbank Farm Management Group at its monthly meeting, April 20, passed the following motion — The GFMG wishes to begin negations with the Port of Coupeville for an early termination of its management agreement and lease of property at the Greenbank Farm.”

There is nothing quite like beginning negations to get the negotiations going.

But, I do know one thing. They will prevail. They always do.

Whether they meander, mill around, mosey or muse, they will know what to do and when to do it.

We thank them.

We thank them for our pristine beaches, only occupied a few days of the summer when they are here, after they have arrived and before they go.

And they will also know when they return next year.

They will know what we also know.

Take this to the bank, no matter which branch, or wherever you eat your free Fourth of July hot dogs. The phenomenon is this.

On Whidbey Island, it will always rain on the Fourth of July.