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.