The Lennons and THE NAKED TRUTH!

                                    Which thou must (though it grieve thee) grant
                                                     I trumped never a man.
                                             But truely told the naked trueth,
                                                  To men that meld with mee,
                                              For neither rigour, nor for rueth,
                                                       But onely loath to lie.
                                                            [Alexander Montgomerie's "The Cherry and the Slae" 1585]

I think it is time to set the record straight.  This blog is a FORUM for me to share all the unbelievable stories that took place while I was growing up in the 60's and 70's in Venice California. Every single story is based on true events and the conflation of stories that have been pressed down...ground up and as if spit out by a blender in a imaginative mixture. 

SERIOUSLY: I ACTUALLY DON'T KNOW IF THERE IS ANOTHER FAMILY ANYWHERE  - THAT HAS HAD A SHARE OF FANTASTIC, INCREDIBLY AND BIZARRE STORIES AS...

THE DAHLINS! 

My family's stories are TRULY like something out of the Twilight Zone and uniquely centered in the tumultuous 60's - when the world seemed to be changing.  My goal is to have fun, make you laugh and to get you to think about the brotherhood of humankind!  It is an outlandish claim for me to begin with the premise that we were the "World's most dysfunctional family."  Certainly we weren't...but we certainly weren't your average family by any stretch of the imagination.

In order for me to highlight how bizarre we were in this imaginative romp, I set the stage by using the contrast between our family and the famous Lennons who lived two houses over - across the street.

Most everything I said was true...they did have a nice, clean, and orderly home. They did have a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in their large picture window in front. We did have cars and boats and motorcycles and car parts and junk and magazines... and our house really did lean a little to the left! The Lennon Sisters did appear on TV every Saturday night and I think (next to my mom) I was one of their biggest fans. I really did consider them to be the picture of every good and right in the world. 

The Lennon Family were really quite reclusive...but that was only to be expected! I have one teenage daughter and would do everything in my power to protect her. Mr. Lennon had 6 beautiful daughters and did what he felt he had to do to protect them: they had autograph hounds... fans... and crazies that drove down our street trying to catch a glimpse, take pictures and sought autographs. I only pressed in on those differences to highlight how out of control we were in contrast - it enhances our story. BUT, my confession is that those comparisons or contrast were indeed a bit unfair.

I showed the famous Lennon Sisters then I showed us...

Them

 Us

 
I showed them sitting around in their living room together - in the goodness of a very functional family and then I showed pictures of us... (later in years) in all the glory of our hippy-ness. But in truth, the Lennons began to wander off the reservation (and truth be told) at just about the same time we were growing long hair the Lennon boys were becoming hippies as well (I just don't have any pictures of that).

Them

Us

In my broad brush strokes of artistic license... it made us look brilliantly and brutishly VIKING-esque... with all of our crazy antics of shooting each other and horrible pranks over and against the sanity of their house which may have inadvertently put them (or cast them in a bad light) as mam-bee-pambee's.  I want the world to know that nothing is further from the truth.











SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT! 







 
I respect and admire the Lennons for a plethora of reasons:

 1) They are all extremely generous and kind (that is my experience).
                    The Lennon Sisters sang at my dad's funeral.
                    Kippy and the Venice band played at my wedding.
                    Marky Lennon (a cousin, also in Venice) sang at my mom's Funeral
                    The Lennon Sisters invited me and my Water Polo team backstage in Las Vegas
                    They also invited my mom, me and my little sister to the taping of their Christmas Special.

2) Another thing is the sense of deep and meaningful family relationships they nurtured.
                   To this day they still get together for traditions that they fostered years ago.
                   They (very much) still seem to enjoy each others company ( I admire that).

3) Friendship. I paddled outrigger canoes and hung around with Joey in high-school( we were undefeated state champs several years running) and as a founding member of the "Ice Brothers" consider him a good friend to this day. 

4) Smiles. Mimi and DeeDee always had contagious smiles. 

5) Hard working and disciplined (this is something I think they learned from their dad - he was a "man's man)... dreamers of dreams and willing to work hard to make them come true. 

6) Forgiving. Billy should have punched me back in the face...when I blindsided him...but never sought revenge. a) sorry Billy b) Thank you for not beating me up.

7) Strength! Kippy has modeled to me the strength and courage of perseverance. As the youngest boy in the Lennon clan he never gave up on his dream and attacked it with the ferociousness of a pit bull. Today, he and his band travel around the world - despite what-ever setback and obstacle they had to hurdle in order to overcome.

8) My wife! Somehow, I was introduced to my wife through the Lennon-Gass connection! To which I owe a great debt.  Thank you... Dick and DeeDee, Debi...Marilee and Mrs. Gass (and anyone else who conspired in that).  

I love the Lennons and am perhaps one of their greatest fans... and apologize if I paint them in too good a light...and also for my comparisons, which I'd have to admit were intentionally unfair (I'm sure they had their share of dysfunction as well). 

As for the Dahlins...even though we did let the monkeys out of the zoo...have the police department over at our house every couple days...had an attack rooster - instead of a watch dog... grow "Mexican tomato plants"... shoot each other with needle-tipped homemade arrows... have cages full of reptiles and rattlesnakes that kept escaping... an alligator in our backyard pond... electrocute ourselves and one of the nuns from Saint Marks... vacation at the God-forsaken Salton Sea... have a hospital bed in our dining room and have an notorious encounter with the President of the United States. Though I did blow myself up... get shoved in the hamper of death and get left behind at Salton Sea...  I don't think I would had traded my childhood with anyone else... even if tempted by a bite of Sis Lennon's famous chocolate cake.


As for me... I'm just waiting for my next adrenaline fix...and can't wait to see what ambush lies just ahead.

I am convinced that we live in a hard world that is full of ups and downs... success and discouragement...hardships and hurts and  tell people, "It is better to laugh than to cry"

I think laughing at ourselves gives us power over the things that can have power over us...

My advice: "Don't take yourself too seriously.... and if you think I'm weird, at least I have an excuse!"
   
      

Help! Wolf Pack and the 9-year-old Junkie

Whenever Mr. Steadmen (my neighbor across the street) looked out between the slits in the blinds of his front window and saw us Dahlins grouping in the front yard - he always reported to his wife that the "Wolf Pack" was on the prowl. To which she always made the same snide comment from wherever she was in the small wood-framed house. "Well, no wonder lions eat their young!"

Being, that this ritual was broadcast so often and the uninsulated walls did nothing to hinder her screeching voice this mocking metaphor was no longer a secret.  This is how I came to affectionately call my brothers "The Wolf Pack."  I'm just not too sure that Mrs. Steadmen quite understood that lions and wolves were completely species. And, I'm not completely sure - that when Mr. Steadman announced that the Wolf Pack was on the prowl and she responded with her diddy about lions eating their young that she fully understood that she and her husband were talking about two different things.

Lions like to hunt alone!
Wolves, on the other hand...well, they do hunt in packs and are very conniving, but best when working together as a team.

One time I was across the street playing with Ellis Steadman - their only offspring (I felt sorry for those "only-child" kids, because they miss so much sibling torture that I have come to enjoy so much) and forgetting that I was there, or that I was one of them, Mr. Steadmen gave a blow by blow description of their activity as though it was like something from one of those wildlife documentaries on TV.


Speaking of enjoying - being squeezed in the temples, and buried in pits, and shoved in hampers, shot with arrows, electrocuted in the pool, tied to trees, caged and hunted with BB guns...adults in my life, recognized that there was something gravely wrong with me. For me, the answer was quite obvious and was rather simple. I was the last born and starving for attention. My parents had checked out and left us to ourselves and if punching and volunteering to subject myself to what-ever torture might be on the menu, then I relished it as a form of touch I so desperately wanted. In the third grade, (Some time after the embarrassing Pee-Pee incident Blog Post 6/18/13) my mom's sister, who is a nun, took me up to Loyola University to make sure that I wasn't retarded. I managed to put all the square blocks into the square holes and the round ones into the round holes and they really couldn't come up with anything - by way of diagnosis...other than the fact, that I was an anomaly! (I think that's "big-people" talk - for weird), but I'll tell you what I think.


I think it has something to do with that thing that happens to you when adrenaline kicks-in, which they call "Fight or Flight." I think that because I live my life on the edge - always having to be on high alert with constant surges of adrenaline pumping through my veins, that by the age of 9 I was totally addicted to it. My little body needed the physical conflict to get my drug fix and my brothers obliged. And, as I've alluded to before, this might be the Lord's way of helping me make it through all the horrible stunts that I somehow enjoyed - but shouldn't have! Capisce?
   
 Anyway, Mr. Steadman had each one of the Dahlin boys and other "Harding-ites" precisely pegged into certain well defined roles that fit into the order of this  "Wolf-Pack" thing that he like to talk about. When my older brothers stood on the porch and whistled their intentions for some mischievous plot, he would stare through those slates and narrate everything to Mrs. Steadmen like that announcer on one of those TV shows. 

This is how he narrated the time the older boys dressed up lured the next door grouch out of her house by staging a kid under her front tire and proceeded to steal avocados from her "precious" tree. She had forbidden us from picking the avocados that hung over our side of the fence.

(You have to lower your voice and speak really deep... and slow.... and clear for this next part -  Pretend you're saying this or hearing the voice of narrator of that Wild-Life documentary as you read this next part).

"The Wolf Pack in on the prowl. For wolves, a successful hunt depends largely on making careful preparations. The Wolf Pack controls a specific area of land known as a "territory". This territory..." Mr. Steadman continued, "is known as Harding Avenue, but this particular Wolf Pack has been known to track its prey in a greater area known as Venice." 

As the oldest Blaser boy next door and Booty and Primo and Chewy and Four-eyes, and Tom and Walter and a couple others responded to the whistles the motley crew began assembling on the Dahlin front lawn.

He continued his sarcastic narration of this event.

"The individual wolves must constantly refine their techniques so that every member is more than ready to play their part when required"

Gustav (my oldest brother) sent Madeline (my sister who was only a year older than me, but much more in-tuned to her position and ways of the Wolf Pack) to gather costumes and the necessary supplies to pull off the caper.

"The alpha male gave orders to the the alpha female, who is approximately 25% smaller than the average male wolf, yet highly considered a specialist huntress of the pack." Mr. Steadmen continued.

Madeline came back with a couple of her girl friends and distributed the costumes for this particular avocado stealing escapade. discussing the plot, Gustav and Chewbacca and Puke-breath and several of the other boys began pointing at Edna's house house next door. It was obvious to see that  poor Edna was the next victim of choice. 

"Having stalked the territory carefully, the alpha detected a weak member of the neighborhood. Usually they prey on large animals like white-tailed deer and caribou and in this case it is the old grouch next door - Edna!"

After staging the body under the front tire of her car, 12-year-old Madeline went to the front door to let Edna know that something terrible had happened (and boy, did she try to sell it). 

"When ready..." Mr. Steadman kept his wife apprised of the progress, "the alpha male sent in the huntress to single out the weak and sick among it prey. Most animals flee when confronted but the grouch next doors stands her ground."

Edna, didn't take the bait at first and didn't budge from her porch when Madeline pointed to the kid with ketchup under her front wheel. So Gustav kicked Dooh-Dooh Pants in the butt - initiating part two of the plan and made him walk by her car like he was going to scratch it. Dooh-Dooh Pants was a little apprehensive about his part in the plan, but Madeline pushed him in the right direction.

"As the risk of injury for a hunter is high, the alpha male is too valuable to the survival of the pack and must send out lower ranked males. This is often difficult and the alpha female will excretes an odor and use her body to direct "Dooh-Dooh Pants," a beta male in the right direction."

"Uh...Huh?" Mrs. Steadmean was amused, but had heard this commentary so many times that she was immune to it and keep on reading her novel and looked up obligingly with a few "uh-huh's" from time to time.  Ellis and I, however, enjoyed the show.

Edna opened her screen door and ran to her precious Buick and fired up the motor. Then took off squealing just like the time I was crammed underneath in the "Baby-Diaper-Pail of Death" (Blog Post 6/5/13). When Edna disappeared down the street in her behemoth automobile, the costumed boys hurried up the carport roof... hurdled themselves into that luscious avocado tree and began throwing down those green hand-grenades of mouth-watering goodness-of-protein to the waiting arms of the wolves below.    

"During such an ambush, the pack is split into two or more groups. As one group agitates its victim, another group is usually hidden away using bushes, trees and old junky cars as effective camouflage."

The time window was short, but when it was all over the boys returned to the font porch and divvied up the avocados - as if spoils of war. Gustave was only in for the fun of it because he hated avocados... Dooh-Dooh Pants the other hippies loved them, especially when there was no food in the house.

"Excitedly, the wolves return from their kill and begin to divide the spoils in a orderly manner. Though it may surprise you the alpha doesn't eat first. The 'betas', the rank below the alphas are usually made up of the largest wolves and act like enforcers in the aftermath and are rewarded by helping themselves to more food than the lower ranking individuals."

When it was all said and done everyone had a great time... except for Ulrich who was cheated out of his share and got especially mad when Booty and Primo used their avocados to pelt me with...when I returned from the Steadman's house. I dodged a couple...got hit twice...ran for my life and got a really NICE adrenaline fix that kept me happy and would keep me going for a little while longer.   


Next time I might just have to confess and share the naked  truth!
 

Escaped Convict from Leper Colony: pt 2

Last time, I just confessed to the whole World - the 3rd best-kept-secret in History.  The first best-kept-secret still is, Who really shot President Kennedy. The Second best-kept-secret is knowing the truth behind Area 51 and UFO's. And the third best-kept-secret (that is no longer a secret) is the fact that it was the Dahlins who brought the plague-infested, blood-sucking mosquitoes into the beautiful state of California.  We did it!  Based on my thorough investigation into the World Book Encyclopedia and personal observations, I'm pretty sure they followed my tribe and our sugar-water hair back to Venice where we bred them in our backyard pool!

Gherhing the Great, Tommy and I had just finished building a magnificent, elevated fort just three feet from the dark green waters of our squirming larvae pond. After interrogation, Mrs. Blaser decreed that Tommy could not join in the "inaugural sleep over event."

With great excitement, I placed my sleeping bag near the back door and was under the kitchen sink, looking around for batteries that I could put into my ancient flash light (which probably hadn't flickered in at least 10 years).  That is where I overheard two of my older brothers having a conversation about how to keep those pesky  mosquitoes away.  Puke-Breath (the older brother who wore a retainer and had bad breath all time) and Dooh-Dooh Pants (another older brother who was always cutting the cheese and stinking up the place) said that bananas acted like a true mosquito repellent. They talked about how they would mush them up - liquifying them and intended to put the sticky substance in a spray can where they would make a million dollars selling the product.  It all sounded very scientific to me, and besides they didn't see me in the kitchen - so it must have been the truth!

I kept quiet and waited for them to leave and Voilá...  Guess what I discovered on the counter next to the toaster?  If you guessed a Pigeon - named Johnny or a hairless cat - named Lazarus you would have been right. If you guess a zebra or giraffe, you guessed wrong!  And, if you hazarded to guess bananas - you were right! Just so happens, there were three disgusting bananas at my disposal.

"Ah-ha!" I thought...here are three shrivled-black bananas that are practically in a liquified state already! Well, Gherhing the Great was Irish or something like that and had freckles all over his body. If he got bit by our little mosquito pets, no one could probably tell! Me, on the other hand, I needed a way to keep mosquitoes off...(Hey, I thought "OFF" that would be a great name for the older boy's invention).

Sitting in a green chair, the demonic cat looked over my shoulder while Johnny the pigeon tried to land on my head as I mashed those bananas into a gooey-slim that rivaled my dad's sugar-water hair gel.

Knowing that Gherhing didn't need them as badly as I did, I smeared a thin layer on my arms, neck and face.
I'd have to admit, that it was really kind of mean for me not to tell Gherhing the Great about my secret mosquito repellent especially since our fort was so close to the primordial ooze we called a pool! 

The paste set up quickly and dried on my skin before Gherhing got back with his sleeping bag and the coveted Moon-Pies that he stole from his house. It was almost like I was covered in paper-mache and could barley bend at my joints. Every time I smiled, banana-plaster cracked off my face.

Even though I left a trail behind me like Hansel and Gretel...this would be THE BEST NIGHT EVER!

We made up ghost stories about the Creature from the Black Lagoon crawling out of the dark waters of our pool, grabbing us with his flippered-claws and carrying us back into the spooky depths of the murky waters.

Part of the problem with "grape-stake" fencing, is even in its best condition - it's all gnarled and twisted. Our fort had gaps that a Chachalaca could fly through. I wasn't too worried about the mosquitoes, however, because I had overheard my brother's secret invention and was totally covered. We could hear the relentless buzz of mosquitoes and spent the entire night swatted the bazillion buggers...Poor Gherhing!   Turns out that it was THE WORSE NIGHT EVER. It was one of those nights you prayed for daylight to put an end to the never-ending misery where minutes seem to stretch into hours. At five o'clock in the morning we had enough and retreated into the house and ended up sleeping on the living room floor.

At ten O'clock the next morning, we were awaken to the haunting sound of the Wolf-Pack.  We found ourselves surrounded by my older bothers who were pointing at us, laughing hysterically like frenzied  hyenas gathered around the carcass of a dead animal.

Knowing what I had done to poor Gherhing I felt sorry for my freckled little friend... UNTIL!
Until....I  pulled my arms out from my sleeping bag and SCREAMED at the horrible fright that was before me  Ten billion boils covered my arms! I reached up and touched my face and felt the wall to wall mosquito bites. "Ugggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"  I was Job from the Bible! I was Elephant man. I was the Hunchback of Notre Dame all rolled into one - I HAD LEPROSY!

"Unclean. Unclean." The Wolf Pack pointed at me and chanted hilariously. Gherhing didn't have a single bite!
What's worse, is that I was an "itcher" (I was a scratcher like that mange 'O cat). I scratched and clawed and bled and entered my first day of sixth grade in a stolen sweater as a scabby...pocked...plague-ridden leper.

To make things worse, Chewbacca took a black Marks-a-Lot marker and connected the dots making constellations all over my body. I looked like an 11-year-old escaped convict from a leper colony...and in Catholic school the kids petitioned Sister Superior that I wear a bell and announce my presence, whenever I was in ten feet of anyone.

I guess you know the moral of this story:

1) Don't believe everything your brothers tell you.                        
2) Bananas do not keep mosquitoes away.
3) If you wear boxing gloves to bed at night, they will keep you from scratching off all the scabs and help you defend yourself should the Wolf Pack attack.
4) Chlorine is good for pools... and
5)  "sticks and stones" may break my bones - which will certainly heal in time...but names can hurt a sixth grader.

Practice Kindness!

Oh, and Keith B, thanks for letting me "borrow" your sweater!

                                              

The Leprosy Episode of 1967 pt 1

In order for me to explain the traumatic "Leprosy Incident" of 1967, I have to take you back several years to one of our infamous, Dahlin cross-country trips. In that time in history - in the early sixties it seemed like everyone used gel on their hair to grease it down. It was cool. It is no secret, (that with as many kids as my parents had) that had my dad was always looking for ways of saving money. Who wouldn't, right? Sometimes he would stand on the back porch and ring his hands together nervously watching the dial-thing on the electrical meter spin fast and furious.  The poor guy would moan and groan as he visualized dollars flying away.

 "Turn off the Lights. Shut the doors. What's the matter with you...were you born in a barn?" He'd shout out desperately trying to slow down and consumption of electricity and capture some of those dollar bills that had wings and had taken flight.      "Can't anyone, ever turn off a light when they leave a room?"

Anyway, it was while staring at the spinning electrical meter that he came up with one of his brilliant ideas.  Now-a-days gas is like 30 cents a gallon, but back then it was about 25 cents a gallon and sugar was practically free. He invented hair gel by mixing sugar in a little bit of warm water - heck, who needed Brylcreem?



To the right is a picture of one of my brothers with his hair covered in Brylcreem...  or was it my dad's concoction of sugar water? 
       (isn't he cute ladies) 

It's just what we (as a culture) did...until The Beatles came along a couple years ago and changed everything.   So long greasy hair! 
  Hello "Mop Heads."   Hello long hair!

Anyway, since I was so much younger than the rest of the boys I wanted to make my dad feel good, so I stuck with the sugar-water...concoction all the way through 6th grade.

One day while I was digging through a couple layers of strata in one of the three rooms that collected junk in our house I came across a dusty old set of "World Book Encyclopedias."  The out side covers were red and beat up and looked to be a million years old.  For fun, I looked up California and was shocked to find that it said, California did not have mosquitoes. Well, I tell you right now, that if at one time...California didn't have mosquitoes - IT DOES NOW!   I think in 1963 those little blood-sucking pest discovered our sweet sugar-hair while we were back east and decided to followed us across country all the way back to Venice.  I was embarrassed to let anyone know that it was my family that was responsible for the illegal immigration of sap-sucking-yellow-bellied mosquitoes across the state line into the "Golden State"...which isn't so golden anymore - thanks to the Dahlins.  



To the left,  there I am (in the sixth grade) with my helmet head" -  hair plastered  with that mosquito-loving  potion of sugar-water.


 (speaking of cute?)



You might remember the pool that we had in our backyard..(you know, the one that the big boys used to shock O' Sister Godzilla (blog post 4/26/2013). Well, to be honest, sometimes it was pool and other times it was just a breeding ground for the mosquitoes that we were responsible for importing.   

Whenever Tommy wanted to come over and swim, his mom would interrogate him and ask, "What color is the pool, Tommy?" And if Tommy said it was green, then Mrs. Blaser forbade him from joining me and the mosquitoes larvae that were squirming in our breeding pond - that we still affectionately called a pool. 

Mrs. Blaser was convinced that Tommy would come home one day with malaria , and was told that if he ever lied, he would be grounded for, like - a hundred years!

It was the summer of 1967 and Mr. Blaser next door had just built a brand-spanking-new fence in their backyard. Their house looked like something right off the cover of Sunset Magazine... Ours, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. It was a junk yard which was a veritable paradise for 10 and 11 year-old-boys who liked to monkey around, create go-carts, use our imagination and build forts. A kid could build and do just about anything they wanted back there - it was awesome!

Gherhing the Great and I salvaged all the old "grape-stake" fencing that the Blasers had thrown away. We went through the alley and dragged in a ginormous pile of that old decrepit fencing, which we added to the vast collection of junk that had already been accumulating in my backyard. Tommy helped. I think his dad encouraged him to drag their trash into our backyard - seeing that I wanted it so badly.

It was definitely a win-win situation

It was two weeks before school and Gherhing the Great, Tommy and I had just finished building the second best fort in the entire world... Jimmy pooped in the first best fort in the whole world that we had to condemn it and fill in(blog post 7/26/2013). Last year's fort (the best in the world) was in a hole, but this one would be elevated above the ground!  Swiss Family Robinson  - you would have nothing on us.

Take a guess where we built it?  If you guessed right next to the pool-mosquito breeding pond, then you were right. Take a look at the picture of our pool again...(the one pictured above). Do you see the pole that is sticking up - just to the right of the stairs under that patio looking thing. Well, that's where we built our glorious fort that would rival the "Swiss Family Robinson" tree house. 

Using all that discarded and decorroded "grape-stake" us kids had built a thing of true beauty!

Now the test!     A sleep over...YEAH! Gherining the Great Tommy and myself.  

Only when the time came, Mrs. Blaser sat Tommy down in a dark room under a bright lamp and interrogated him about the color of the water. When Tommy described the color in three deep-shades of green that border-lined on blackish (like a scene from the Creature of the Black Lagoon), Mrs. Blaser forbade him Under Pain of Mortal Sin or worst - that he would be grounded for a thousand years. 


Turns out - that moms, know stuff! 


Gherhing and I packed up our sleeping bags, our flash lights, a couple Moon Pies and went out to spend the night in our amazing fort next to the THE BLACK LAGOON!

 Oh, I don't mean to get our family into any kind of trouble for bringing mosquitoes into the State of California, but I do think the Statute of Limitations has passed, should there be any type of Congressional Hearing over the matter.

Since we knew President Johnson (sort of), I guess you can say, he knew us - seeing us all naked and all, I wrote him a letter and begged for a Presidential pardon (Blog Post Snapping turtles)  "Oh Snap!"

Gherhing and I were afraid of the kind of monster that might crawl out of our pool that night, but we had no idea of the nightmare that awaited us.  TO BE CONTINUED!

 

THE DAHLIN ZONE and my biggest nightmare!

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man.  It is a dimension in Venice California in the gap in time between now and then. It is the middle ground between what was fact and what was perceived to be. In it lies the pit of fears regarding the survival of Catholic school and lots of older brothers. It is the dimension of 1960’s in Markie D’s imagination. It is filled with tragedy, humor and a satirical look at the human condition.  

It is known as “The Dahlin Zone”  

I blogged my way through that first terrible week of fifth grade in September of 1966. It is now October 1968, I have just turned 12 and am in seventh grade in Catholic School. Sister Edith is my teacher, and (like a lot of the nuns before her), she has had her share of Dahlin boys (5 or 6 to be inexact, one right after another).  By this time in her long teaching vocation she was just plain tired of the plague that had infested Saint Marks some many moons ago beginning in the 1950's. Sister Edith will forever be notorious for her music lessons and will likely go down in infamy for her "head tones," for cracking rulers over hands of many-a-seventh grader, and for throwing erasers. She had a good arm and nailed me just about every time she hurled one of those chalk-filled bombs in my direction. She is probably in heaven right now playing catch with Jesus (However, I just hope she's not throwing erasers).

Anyway... I skipped reporting on last year - my sixth grade experience. If life wasn't already difficult enough, I mean, being shocked and shot, buried and shoved in the Hamper of Death, Milk Wars and pushing cars, left behind and knocked out, bitten by snakes, tormented and tossed like a salad in the trunk of Gustav's legendary Rat Killer...Sixth Grade was far worst than all of those things combined!

Besides starting the year off on the "wrong foot" with leprosy, and a stolen sweater that embarrassed the heck out of me...Du...Du...Du...I discovered my biggest NIGHTMARE!

Oh, I had barely made it out of Sister Godzilla's class by the skin of my teeth. I'm not joking when I say,  "I barely made it out." My only consolation was the fact that all of the Nuns at Saint Marks already had - like - eight Dahlins before I got there and were not, under any circumstance willing to subject themselves to that kind of pain ever again. Not one of them would ever consider holding anyone of us back for another year. Thanks to the shear number of Dahlins and the rather rambunctious nature of my brothers, who preceded me, I practically had FUNKING INSURANCE.  When I was promoted from fifth grade, it was Sister Godzilla's last year and she tried everything in her power to flunk me back into the fifth grade for another stint- since she was leaving. PAYBACK for the time we had electrocuted her (BLOG Post 4/26/13). Apparently, the Pope vetoed her, because the Catholic Church felt they couldn't afford to ruin a perfectly new teacher, recruited to be her replacement.

I made it!  Just like the Hamper of Death... just like the Templates... and just like Salton Sea, I made it out alive!

Having said all that, why couldn't they have moved me across the hall into the other sixth grade class? Why did they stick me in my mother's class? (The reason was obvious,, to spare the nun across the hall). Yep, my mom had begun teaching the sixth grade at Saint Marks and I mistakenly figured that this year would be like being on a holiday where I could just kick back and relax!  Nepotism had to have it's advantages, right?




I love my mom, but boy was I wrong!

Turns out that, I didn't have a clue!

My mom was funny and there wasn't room in our classroom for two class clowns and besides she could make an example out of me! 

In the future.. they are going to find out some things about little boys.  They are going to discover things like ADD and ADHD and learning styles and things like that.  In 1967 they didn't have those kinds of labels. I don't know if that was a good thing or bad thing. Without being defined or confined by a label I guess we really didn't have all the excuses we have today. But, the way I was wired...let me just put it this way...there was nothing in that classroom setting that was conducive to my particular learning style. We couldn't move enough, we couldn't touch enough, the desk chairs were too hard and too straight...there was too much order... I couldn't learn through my ears and the teachers talked too much. All of this to tell you that...I was special...and they just didn't know it or how to handle someone like me. Shucks, why stand when you can sit? Why sit when you can slough? Why slough when you can lay down? Why lay down when you can crawl around on the floor and grab the girl's ankles. 

Why obey when you can climb over the cloakroom wall and make everybody laugh and why study when you can cheat off Regina's paper.  (It was all pretty simple to me - I don't know why they didn't get it)

Sixth grade would be the hardest ten years I ever spent in school! I figured my mom  might just flunk me, since I was hers. I pictured it in my head - I would probably end up like Jethro Bodine (on The Beverly Hillbillies) as a 26-year-old in Junior High School (I guess by then, at least, I'd be as tall as Marilyn Jones and maybe even have hair on my lip by then like some of the other boys). Anyway, like The Beverly Hillbillies, I was a fish out of water. That very first week I learned that sixth grade in my mom's class would not be a "cake-walk" especially since I arrived on the first day with "leprosy."

I'm going to tell you about that story,  but it all begins a few years earlier about how the Dahlins managed to bring mosquitoes to California.

Yep, we are the one's...all right. And I'll tell you exactly how that came back to bite me (that's a pun)...let's say, it came back to bite me - like a bazillion times AND just two weeks before the first day of school. Everybody knows that sixth graders can be pretty cruel at times and should understand why I wished I have been committed to a Leper Colony Instead.

I would have gladly accepted the bell around my neck and publicly declared myself to be unclean rather than the ridicule of my friends.

...and it all began with my dad's frugal, hair-gel concoction of sugar-water... which I tell you about Next Tme...

...in the mean time, here is a picture of my hair that is as hard as a plastic, baseball helmet...that a gale force wind couldn't mess it up. That is where we get the derogatory expression... "Helmet Head."

Oh, and by the way, The Beatles just came out with a new song, "Hey Jude" sounds pretty cool to me and looks like it's probably going to be a pretty big hit.

Take a bad song and make it better...  Don't be afraid

And anytime you feel the pain, hey Markie D, refrain,
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders

President Johnson - Naked Boys and Snapping Turtles!

"Snapping turtles! Snapping turtles..." President Johnson said laughing slightly on his death bed trailing off  from this life to the next as the receiver slipped from his hand. The senior Secret Service agent on the other end laughed along knowing this was the President's way of saying goodbye. "Snapping turtles"he chuckled. How could he forget? He remembered the incident so vividly and smiled knowing how the story of those 'snapping turtles' that often brought a chuckle and a modicum of solace to a rather tumultuous presidency which had been rocked by the riotous disapproval to the Viet Nam War. 

President Johnston's last few minutes on this earth didn't necessarily end that way... but it could have. As "Rosebud" was to Citizen Cain, "snapping turtles" was to Lyndon Baines Johnson.

No matter how far fetched this next story sounds, WHAT I'M ABOUT TO TELL YOU,  IS THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH (plus or minus a 2% margin allowed for literary license) 

I'm in seventh grade in Sister's Edith Mary's class and over the summer we took one of our wild adventures across country to visit my dad's Swedish relatives in Michigan. Only this time, my mom thought she would  spare the girls the arduous journey by sending them ahead on an adventure of their own.  So my 14-year-old brother, Ulrich, escorted my 12-year-old and my 7 year-old sisters on a once in a life-time train ride across this fruited plain. 

My mom wasn't taking the trip this year which meant that in our brand new,  "top of the line" 1967 Ford Country Sedan station-wagon that had a 390 motor, electric windows, a two way tailgate (which was very cool) and even had FM stereo radio - we would have only 6 bodies for a change.

Only SIX BODIES!       

That meant only two people would be in front, two would be in the second set of seats and 2 got to stretch out comfortably in back on a fluffy stack of sleeping bags that put The Princess and the Pea to shame! What made this trip so groovy, and so awesome, was the fact that there was no Ulrich beating me up every mile of the 3000 mile journey back East. And Secondly, because I wasn't shoved in someone's armpit or crammed in a corner, stuck between a metal ice chest and pressed up against a cold window at night and a hot window by day. We had never traveled across country this way before - it was heavenly (I always tried to bring my guardian angel along and this time there was room for him). 

None of that changed the fact that my dad still had a very frugal operating system. Without mom and the girls, this meant that he could cut back on luxuries like meals and potty stops. Dad  figured he could change drivers with a couple of the older teenage boys, we could pee in old Folgers cans and keep right on going. My dad reasoned that with the money he spent on the train, he would make it up in food cost by starving us to death until we got to Michigan, where we would gorge ourselves at a different aunt and uncle's houses - every night of the week  - eating like Viking Warriors returning from a pillaging conquest. 

On the seat next to him was a box of Triscuits and a block of Jack cheese. My dad would pull out his well used fishing knife, cut off thin squares of cheese that we would sandwich between those baked wheat cracker-like-things.  This was about all the food he planned for for our entire journey...as we chocked down cheese that had turned a yellowish-brown as it hardened more and more - each successive day. By the time we had arrived in Michigan it was like trying to tear off a piece of an ice hockey puck with your teeth,  I wonder if this is what the Israelites felt like having to eat manna for 40 years. I don't know who was luckier - us or them?

Once my dad started somewhere, he never liked to stop... that's why he was so upset with the Highway Patrol Officer who demanded that he GO BACK  to SALTON SEA and PICK ME UP- where they had left me behind (BLOG POST 5/13/2013). 

Anyway, by the time we got rolling through the top of Texas on the I-40 something in the car started smelling pretty skanky.  Since this was a "guys-only" trip, no one knew it if the rank smell was the rotting cheese my dad kept in the box of Triscuits, if it was Dooh-Dooh Pants "Cutting the Cheese" or if was simply the grody smell of ripe teenage armpits! Didn't matter - might have been a combination, never-the-less, it was gross. "How bad was it?" you ask! Bad enough for my dad to pull our station-wagon over, so the boys and I could skinny-dip in some murky Texas river.  There we were, far away from everywhere, parked under the shade of an overpass trying to escape the awful heat of that Texas sun; 5 naked, blonde-haired boys frolicking in that mucky shallow brown river.

Being in our birthday suits we were a bit nervous at first when we heard the caravan of cars overhead, but really began to freak out when they circled off and a line of black limos pulled up behind my dad (who, had been sitting in the station wagon). The fact that my bothers were hippies made it seem like the police never really liked us very much, and therefore, by default, felt that we were in some-kind of big trouble.

Worst was...these armed "Men in Black" cautiously approached our direction, followed by this tall fella in a dark suit. We could see from where we were splashing around that my dad nearly had a seizure. This only served to confirm our suspicions and began to think that this just might be one of those infamous "two-lane-highway, in-the-middle-of-nowhere, alien-abductions."

That distinguished looking fella with gray hair (the one who seemed to be in charge) walked down to the edge of that murky water and screamed a warning to us with the sound of terror in his voice and a sense of urgency.

"Hey, you guys...there. Be careful of your worms. Don't you know, this river is full of snapping turtles!" he shouted with resolute hands firmly planted on his hips then turned and laughed all the way back to his presidential motorcade with this small army, who also were having a good chuckle at our expense.  As a good democrat, my dad stood and saluted as the boys cupped their hands over their taliwakers, charged out of the dangerous waters and ran bare-bunned across that dirt field to the car where dad sat laughing.

My escape wasn't so quick!  My feet were stuck in the molasses-type-mud and had a much more difficult time breaking the suction of that mud than did the older boys. With all those turtles and only one worm left in  that 'O brown stream, I panicked... grabbed my boy parts and sluggishly my way back through the mucky bottomed-bog. 

When dad told us who it was...Chewbacca nearly had a conniption fit.  As a pacifist Anti-War hippy,  he had sent his draft card back to the President and believed this to be another conspiracy and a plot of the President to get back at a couple those "draft-dodging hippies from Venice." 

If there were no turtles and just a practical joke - Good one President Johnson. Good One!

TRUE STORY!

If it wasn't a joke - and indeed a valid waring, it was funny just the same. Imagine what might have happened if we had not headed his advice...HA!  I guess we could have been "The Venice Choir Boys" along the line of The Vienna Choir Boys (if you catch my meaning in that). 

Maybe this is where that expression "Snap!" comes from. It's really just short for snapping turtles.

"Rosebud" "Snapping Turtles"  "Dude"

Next:  My Biggest Nightmare!

   

Chemical Warfare: The Hazards of Living Next to the Dahlins.

So, last time we left off...contemplating the tumultuous condition of the brotherhood of mankind and the newly discovered roadkill, that one of the hippies down the street, brought to our house. Booty had found it squashed in the middle of the road in Santa Monica Rustic Canyon where he went to channel aliens with the aluminum-foil pyramid he fastened to the top of his thick curly hair.

"Dude...Bro...this is totally tubular." Booty (the surfer) said holding out the dead skunk to my brother as if handing him a million dollars.

"Dude...Cool...this is like totally groovy man." Dooh-Dooh Pants exclaimed, overjoyed at gift he was delighted to receive.

As I said before, Dooh-Dooh Pants had fancied himself as a combination of a child-of-the-earth and backwoods-mountain-man and thought that this skunk's fur would make the perfect hat - kind of like Davey Crockett's - only way more cool. Laying the squished beast out on the table on the patio, both of them realized something was missing. 

THE STINK! 

Whoever ran it over, failed to pop the stink-sacks and they were struck with the sudden revelation that special caution would have to be taken as Dooh-Dooh Pants prepared to remove the hide. This was not to be taken lightly and needed additional inspiration as the two of them decided to retreat to the hidden-hippy cannibus-cavern behind the pool and puff the "magic dragon."

"Dude" Booty said.
"Dude...Dude!" Dooh-Dooh Pants said in return, as if they were communicating deep truths of the universe.

With a new sense of carefree confidence and inconsequential frivolity, Dooh-Dooh Pants and his partner in crime emerged from the dubious ivy cave, smelling slightly of skunk themselves, with a newly hatched PLAN.

You see, the neighbors next door had the perfect house and the perfect yard and had the perfect dog. Mr. Blaser even went as far as paying for professional flea-spraying laboring under the misapprehension that he could keep the Dahlin's fleas out of his backyard. Ha...that was like thinking that refugee mosquitoes seeking asylum from the Dahlin's green pool wouldn't illegally migrate onto his pristine property.
(to the left is a picture of our mosquito breeding pond at the zenith of its crystal purity)
Spinning like a discus thrower at the Olympics, Dooh-Dooh Pants nearly fell over as he enthusiastically launched those sacks high over the ivy and into that immaculate backyard next door.

 That cuddly-cute Collie, Ginger, could not resist the inner-canine and attacked those skunk sacks with the viciousness of a Beverly Hills house wife who had been pulled over by a cop. She latched on to those gelatinous tissues filled with the liquid plague of terror and ferociously shook them like a true descendent of a wild wolf.  When the those sacks popped, Ginger went crazy...ran around the yard like she had gone blind and howled in excruciating pain.

Panicking, Barbara opened the the back door and in darted Ginger with those awful stink-sacks still wedged between teeth and gums.  The screaming began!  First it was high shrill sound of the girls screeching in horror...then everyone in the neighborhood could hear Mr. Blaser yelling out commands to catch the crazy dog that had gone totally berserk and was running a muck in the house dragging that hideous smell from room to room.

Dooh-Dooh Pants and Booty rolled on the cement ground of that patio and laughed more than they should have. Maybe this is what it meant to "frolic in the Autumn midst."

Gagging bodies began pouring out of the Blaser house with "T" shirts and towels held over their noses as if escaping a burning building. Judy carrying little Michael in her arms; Barbara with Christine.  Mrs. Nargie, across the street, called the Fire Department and Mr. Steadmen pointed to the Dahlin house and said to Mrs. Steadmen, "Its no wonder lions eat their young!" In the mayhem that followed, Ginger had managed to spread that skunk-chemical-warfare throughout every inch of every room and the Firemen made sure everyone had been thoroughly evacuated from the house.

Ginger had to be sent away to the vets for a tomato bath followed by psychological evaluation and the house was uninhabitable for the next two weeks. 

Thanks to Dooh-Dooh Pants...and his Skunk-Sack-Prank, my best friend Tommy and family got to stay at a nice nearby motel that had a built-in pool and a real jacuzzi. Tommy sneaked me into the motel pool and I got to swim in clear water that was mosquito free.

To this day, the Blasers are still wondering where their beloved collie found a skunk in the first place and  what made their stupid dog decided to attack such a formidable foe. 
 
Oh well, such is the hazard of living next to the Dahlins and I guess in a metaphorical sense...that is the hazard of living next to any neighbor - be a nation, a country, or a people group who look different, talk different or dare to think different.

Love indeed is a difficult concept to wrap our minds around...that really requires viewing others as valuable, but we can only do that in all humility that looks at others as being better than ourselves. But such is the human condition to press in on exalting self at the expense of others.       

OH... and the hairdo you see (in this picture to the left), is a story all of its own...One that takes a trip across country, which involves The PRESIDENT of the United States.

Next time!

 Until then, know that you are indeed relentlessly perused by the only perfect Love that exist in the universe!             Smile and pass it on.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon! Messy Humanity

This Blog is a bit of a phenomenon in that it has reached into every area of the globe. It has been read by thousands of people in over 100 countries on every Continent. Thank you for joining me in this funny look back at America in the turbulent sixties through the eyes of a lost boy who is trying to find his way.

These are my true stories of growing up (of course, embellished with literary license). People don't believe me when I tell them these unbelievable stories, but we really did let all the monkeys out of the zoo. We really did reel in the old grouch next door with a fishing string. We really did had a fire escape pole and were chased by a weirdo we were all afraid of - and for good reason. We did have rattlesnakes that escaped. Our iguana really did run across the street and into the Tripp's house. We really did hold on to the loose wires in our kitchen and voluntarily electrocute ourselves - as well as those unsuspecting guest who showed up at the front door. We really did have a hospital bed in our dining room. We really did shock a nun with the electricity that my bothers hooked up to the metal side of the dough-boy pool. We really did those scary Albino-Camp hikes.

I really was bitten by that snake. I really was shocked in my pool. I really was buried in pits. I really was shoved in that hamper and I really was left behind at the Salton Sea, which really did turn into a high-speed Highway Patrol chase!

I really did fight Michael in the schoolyard over sourdough toast.  I really had a nun in the 5th grade that all of us kids at Saint Marks Catholic grammar school dreadfully feared who we called "Sister Godzilla."

I really did visit the infirmary and was told to hold my ankles and pass gas and I really did climb over the cloakroom wall imitating Sister Edith, which brought the entire 7th-grade class to its knees in laughter.

And my brothers were indeed becoming vocal Anti-War long-haired hippies that had too much-unrestrained freedom with the lack of supervision that allowed us to reek havoc on the WORLD.

AND WE REALLY DID PULL THIS NEXT TERRIBLE PRANK ON THE PERFECT FAMILY THAT LIVED RIGHT NEXT DOOR.

What you have to understand is that not only did the BEST CATHOLICS IN THE WORLD  live across the street, (http://markdahlin.blogspot.com/2013/04/best-catholics-in-world-monkeys-are.html), but we also had Lennons living directly adjacent to us. We shared an ivy laden, chain-link fence that separated our inglorious mess from their perfect domain.  Their house came right out of TV in the Sixties. The outside was the spitting image of the TV house on Father Knows Best and the inside was as meticulous as Rob and Laura Petri's house on The Dick Van Dyke show. Mr. Blaser had his kids up early every Saturday morning fastidiously manicuring the yard, carefully snipping and clipping blades of grass around the decorative and expensive brick border that highlighted their landscape design.

Here is one of my older brothers when he was younger - look at how cute this picture is of him!  I'm probably just out of diapers by this time, but notice the landscaping behind him or should I say lack of any coherent landscaping plan. He looks a little like Pugsley Addams posing for a picture in front of The Addams Family house. Add years to this...add cars to this...add more years of neglect and it only served to highlight and contrast the extreme difference between our house and our finicky neighbor next door.

Our dogs, no matter how beloved to us, were mixed mutts. Theirs, on the other hand, was a beautiful pure-breed collie...a gorgeous dog that made Lassie (on TV) jealous. By this time, bamboo and leaning towers of old National Geographic magazines had taken over our yard. 

What you see to the right is an actual picture of us trying to reclaim parts of our backyard that had been completely consumed by the encroaching clutches of belligerent bamboo. 

I don't want to bore you with all the details, but I feel I need to say all this to set up the context for the story of...doom...doom...doom: "THE SKUNK SACKS." 

We had the hippy and Venice version of the Watt's Towers right in our very own backyard. I’m not sure I can adequately describe what it was like back there.  It had grown into a primordial graveyard of old cars parts, decaying boats, travel trailers —that had no "travel" left in them. We had carcasses of prehistoric washing machines and outboard motors that haven’t had pistons in them for ten years. The encroaching ivy had an insatiable appetite and had all but consumed an entire patio and other structures that had been gobbled up for an archaeologist to unearth in the distant future.

As it turns out, bamboo is a fungus that is no respecter of boundaries and can't be stopped short of anything less than a nuclear holocaust. That rebellious bamboo grew up through old bikes and rusted BBQ's that had 'given up the ghost' years earlier. It wound its way through ancient baby strollers, carburetors, and rabbit cages that had been long abandoned.

Hanging some twenty feet up in the air were old Schwinn ten-speeds and decaying cabinets my dad had dragged into the backyard he salvaged from the clutches of the garbage truck (because "Someday, they just might come in handy"). DON'T JUDGE..."One man's trash is another man's treasure" and our backyard was full of treasure!  That junk just hung there, in all its glory for the world to see at the disdain of that demanding personality in the perfect house next door.

There it was: THE HANGING GARDENS OF BABYLON

It only made sense that this particular house is the target of choice for this next prank that would incorporate the recently discovered ROADKILL. A veritable treasure for my snake-skinning brother who fancied himself as an up and coming taxidermist.

I will give you the hilarious conclusion to this story in the Next Post...

Until then... I know we live in uncertain times. Today we are concern about the economy, political ideology, and the vast implications of what is presently taking place in Syria. BACK THEN, we were also a country consumed with concern. We fought cultural battles for racial equality, the Cold War with the Soviet Union...the Race to Space...a cultural milieu fraught with assassinations...riots on campuses and in the inner city...and suffering repercussions from our involvement in the Vite Nam War.

Back then, just as today, we were politically and philosophically polarized and I think My House just might serve as a metaphor for a "messy community" that is universal representative of the Human Condition.

We may aim for perfection, but usually that is only the external whitewashing we want to present to our neighbors, when in reality, all of us have stuff buried underneath we try to keep hidden and trimmed and manicured that from time to time will surface in our relationships that hangs like dirty underwear on bamboo for the world to see.  If we could all just loosen up a bit and come to terms that none of us has it dialed in perfectly and that we really do live in a broken world - then maybe - just maybe, we would be more forgiving... more generous...less judgmental...and seek to celebrate our differences rather than fight and divide over the things that make us the beauty of human diversity.

The sad commentary is that if we can't make the choices to get along with our neighbors who live right door or show kindness to those in our own homes... it might shed light on why the world is in the condition that it is.