Friday Fish Stick Fiasco and the big scare.

It was only Friday on  Markie D's first week of fifth grade. His first week of surviving...Chewbacca's new invention of the "Template of Doom" (blog post June 26, 2013) and having to survive Sister Godzilla was coming near an end, but there is still a lot more that takes place between now and Monday morning. Yet to come is: Friday Fish sticks fiasco...Albino camp raid...poop in the fort...Jerry and the fire escape...another broken arm...the run-away-Iguana...and the near burning down of the famous Lennon sister's house - and that is just in the course of the next day and a half.

It is no wonder that dad was always off selling Real Estate and mom had locked herself in her bedroom.

Mark had just finished dancing with Irene and had been re-energized enough to face another day. The rattlesnake flag was hoisted high up on the peak of the steep roof and the neighbors were in a tizzy. It wasn't exactly like the scene from Frankenstein...where the townsfolk angrily gathered their pitchforks, shovels and lanterns and marched with malice to Dr. Frankenstein's castle. Never-the-less, the neighbors were frightened and most of them locked themselves inside their house in fear of discovering the poisonous snake that had escaped. Believe me, they would have marched, if they weren't afraid of  the deadly snake and retribution of the mischievous Wolf-Pack.

The Lennons on the corner, were on special alert...and their house was put under curfew... it would be sing-along Friday and they would be enjoying the new-fangled fish sandwich from McDonalds. As Catholics, we were not allow to eat meat on Friday and a couple years ago a McDonald's franchise owner in Cincinnati Ohio invented a thing called the McFilet-O-Fish Sandwich...that finally made it our new McDonalds - last year in 1965. 

Vatican II changed that a little bit, but..uh..uh... if the Lennon's weren't going to eat meat on Friday then neither were the Dahlins. The only difference was, we could buy a whole box of Fish Sticks for the same price as a couple of those 15 cent fishy-burger-thingys. You can bet the Blasers and Lennons ate those expensive McFilet-O-Fish sandwiches... but not us...we were condemned to Van De Kamps frozen fish sticks.

Look at that thing - pretty gross, right?


Here's the rub! I hate fish, it's really not a matter of hating them, it's more a matter of throwing up every time the taste of fish enters my mouth... and you can probably guess that the Wolf Pack would capitalize on this weakness. But after throwing up on all of them last night - haha ((blog post "Vomitous Thursday" July 11 2013)...they might think twice about doing something stupid tonight. RIGHT?

To be safe, I hid away in the new fort Tommy, Jeffery, Robert Smith and I had been working on in the backyard. With all the car parts and boat parts and old wood and junk my dad collected, our yard was absolutely the best backyard in the history of the world for building forts - I mean think about it...you couldn't really hurt anything. Anyway we had dug about a four foot pit and put a roof on it. It was really groovy! We put a old van seat in it and a sink we found in a camper and pretended like we had a living room and a kitchen. I closed the lid of the clubhouse-fort and hid from the fish and from the Wolf Pack... I was safe.. everything was copacetic and I was feeling groovy - man.




I chuckled as I heard the hordes inside fighting over the fragments of pressed fish - parts, and as soon as it became apparent that I wasn't there to taste test my dad's milk experiments(blog post July 13th), I could hear them yelling my name.

For sure, I wasn't about to give myself away as I hunkered down quietly and listen to the raucous inside.

"Mark! Mark..where are you?"
"Yeah, you little drip...where are you hiding?"


On and on it went until they sent Flea-Bait and his cohort of little angry men on a search and extraction mission. Flea-Bait found me and the three of them dragged me up the back stairs and into the great big dining room where the Wolf pack was howling with laughter. They knew what touching my lips with fish would do...(they got a taste of it yesterday) and took extra precautions as they made me sample the milk!

This time someone snuck a chuck of fish in one of the sour tasting bottles of milk, which made me gag and heave as they shoved me through the door into the back hallway (near the bathroom). BUT NOT until! NOT UNTIL I managed to hit Flea-Bait... with some warm deliciousness of fish-milk. I smiled like the Grinch on the way out.

Yeah... it was Friday and everything was indeed groovy, man...and getting better!

Seconds later, one of the older boys heard something that frightened the beegeebies out of the Wolf Pack. "Rattlesnake!" someone yelled. Boys and girls and hair - all of them began screeching like third grade girls at a camp fire ghost story.

People shoving and pushing and standing on couches and on chairs and on the table..and on each others shoulders. Chewy blurted, "Ave Maria!" 

"Someone sound the alarm!" Tony shouted out the command. On the back porch was an old rusted fire bell that Kleghorn began clanging by pulling on the attached rope.  the whole house was up in arms. The rattlesnake was somewhere in the room; under the table, under the piano, by the back door, somewhere... they had all heard it slithering around. More screaming, more fighting, more name calling, more mayhem!

Smirking in shear delight and hiding under the back stairs Markie D shook the old baby rattle... and hummed a few bars of his and Irene's song.

"I got-a wings.. all God's chilluns...we got-a wings." (must see blog post July 15, 2013: Its Friday)

And tonight was the big surprise at the Albino Camp.      Oh yeah!