Kid in a Pit! And a Water Hose?

Hands and feet bound in a rope, I was buried in the backyard up to my neck.  I was thankful to have them build a concrete-block igloo around me so that the Veloci-Raptor couldn't gouge out my eyeballs. But when the plastic yellow tarp came out.... I freaked.  No tears (it was the Viking code)... but I screamed and pleaded for help wondering if they had plans to suffocate me.

I hoped one of the hippy chicks would find compassion in their heart and stop the boys - but their silence equated to complicity in the crime.

I was pretty sure my bothers and their commie-gang wanted me to die...maybe because I made it back alive from Salton Sea (5/13/13) and they really did have a "plan" for family downsizing... Murder!

The decroded, rust-stained, smelly old tarp was thrown over opening of the top of the "Igloo of Death" and that was when the water hose came out.

A WATER HOSE?

We had no use for a water hose other then for the precious "Mexican Tomato Plants" the boys were secretly growing in the far corner of  backyard - patrolled by the notorious Rooster - known throughout Venice as the Veloci-Raptor!

What good was a watering hose for when we didn't have lawn in our gigantic backyard - only weeds and an abandon tear-drop trailer.. several boats... a couple cannibalized cars...petrified tires... putrefied spark plugs and carburetors on the way to becoming one with the earth.

What are you going to do, "water old spark plugs and car tires and get a new Ford?" NO! There was no reason for the Water Hose. It just kept getting worst... AND I WAS SCARED!

"Help...somebody! Help the kid in a pit," I screamed into the deaf atmosphere.

Whose Brilliant Idea was this? Pit of Despair!

There is a crazy lady out there named Margaret Sanger who says that "The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of it younger infant members is to kill it." I hope nobody listens to her. Buried in this pit with cinder-blocks going up around me, I pray that my tribe hadn't been listening to her gobbledygook - if they had, then surely this was the means for my family to lovingly downsize.

The amused hippy clan was sweating and moving and stacking as they continued to build this concrete block Igloo of Death around me.  The only consolation I had was knowing that the Veloci-Rooster could no longer peck out my eyes if they released it from the chicken coop - at least that I was spared from.  With the bandanna around my mouth I couldn't scream for help and being buried up to my neck in this pit, I was completely defenseless and helpless.  In the words of Lee Dorsey, "Lord, I'm just so tired. How long will this go on?"

Little did they know that I was taking names, for if they murdered me, I would come back as a ghost and haunt each one of them.  Where do people come up with ideas like this?  Where in the world did Joseph's brothers (Joseph was a younger brother of a large family in the bible - he was the guy with the coat of many colors)... where did they come up with the idea of putting baby brother in a pit, making him out to be dead and then selling him off to the "Salton Sea-ites" (I think it was Salton Sea-ites - it was some people group like that).  WHY?  

Did the evil inspiration for this come from smoking the leaves of those "Mexican Tomato Plants" in those funny shaped cigarettes. Was it jealously?  Anger? I didn't do anything to them. Was it a feeling of powerlessness and the need to feel powerful so the Wolf Pack had to pick on the weakling of the bunch to feel that way?
I don't know.

The Devil?
I don't know.

The heart?
I don't know.

Some kind of insecurity?
I don't know.

Mass hysteria?
I don't know.

Agent Orange?
I don't know... Wait - this one I do know. Couldn't blame "agent orange" because none of these hippies ever went to Vietnam - they all burnt their draft cards - remember?

All I do know is that an 87-pound 12-year-old was no match for 15 long-hair draft-card-burning anarchist and that I'm stuck in a pit.  As I have said, I have survived being buried before, but this time - things were different. This time it was getting more and more out of control and getting more and more complicated with the ominous stacking of those nasty old blocks.

I just hoped that I had as many lives as that stupid cat, "Lazarus" who was inside the house watching my doom from the kitchen window - "lucky cat."



Around and up went the bricks - this was WORSE!

They were puffing on those hippie-cigarette thingies happy and evil. Working hard and enjoying every moment of it. With all the dirt that was piled up around me and with the pressure around my chest so great I could barley move my rib-cage every time I gagged (because of the rag over my mouth) and when my body convulsed in fear.

I was a Swede and I would not cry!  Though my insides ached from betrayal and from being cut out of the pack - (disowned, I guess) I was trained not to show weakness.  I was glad my eyes didn't leak, because I don't dare allow them to see me as a victim.  This would only make them happier!   No! I would not grant them that satisfaction... instead I was determined to die like Sir William Wallace - known to be Brave Heart.

I would let them murder me and though my inside person was a 12 year-old-boy desperately longing to find the meaning of love - disappointed, abandoned (once again), and betrayed by my own people - My outside person would die like a man!  I would not betray the Viking code...I would not cry!  I would not allow them that satisfaction.

HA! I win!

The next part of their evil  master-plan came in the form of a old yellow tarp!   A big piece of moldy plastic that was used to protect all the decaying boxes of National Geographic magazines from the seldom rain was now being proudly paraded around the backyard as a athlete would triumphantly display their country's flag after wining an Olympic gold medal.

I was deathly afraid of suffocation and thinking about what they might used this decrepit old yellow piece of plastic for, and it completely freaked me out.  It couldn't get any worse...right?  Well it did.  Little did I know how brilliant the Wolf pack was. Evil can be very brilliant, if you don't believe me - ask Hitler.

Could it get worse? I didn't think so, but it did. The yellow tarp was thrown over the top of the "Igloo of Death"  And that wasn't the end of the diabolically brilliant plan, there was more!  Much more!

"Lord, I'm tired and scared and hurt and was wondering if you can tell me how much longer this will go on?"

  

The Pit of Despair and Slipping Down...Down

I put up a good fight and nearly escaped... but there was just no way a 12-year-old like me was going to hold off the likes of 15 determined hippies who had a plan. Remember last time; when I said that I wanted to feel like I was part of the tribe...and join them in the backyard fun? Well, little did I know at time that I WOULD be JOINING THEM in THEIR BACKYARD FUN.  It was like the guy who saw the big boiling pot and asked the Cannibal what was for dinner and the Cannibal looked him in the eyes and said... "YOU!" Just before he tied him up and threw him in.

I WAS THE BACKYARD FUN! Dang it!  Why was I so stupid that I couldn't see this coming? Hippies digging a hole...doing hard work and having fun! I knew there was something odd about it. OXYMORON "Markie D, you should have seen this coming" I silently grumbled to myself. I was bound in a wet, coarse rope that they scavenged from the soupy bottom of the leaky boat in the front yard and was being dragged over to the sand pit.

I had been through the ritual before. I had been buried up to my neck in the sand at high tide line at Leo Carrillo State Beach in Malibu and in this exact same spot a couple times.  This time, however, the circumstance have changed somewhat and it was the "somewhat" of the unknown that frightened me. Next to the hole the industrious Wolf-Pack had stacked old cinder-blocks used for construction.  This wasn't good - I was smart enough to know that and began to panic on the inside

PANIC. That's what they wanted! they wanted to see me panic on the outside and they got it! They wanted to see me squirm and maybe even throw up.  I desperately tried to dig deep into my superpowers so that I could vomit on about 8 or 9 of them - but I only had a couple bites of the moldy sourdough toast in the bottom of my stomach - I had NOTHING!   They dragged me across the ground behind them like in one of those TV Westerns where you see the cowboys being dragged by a horse.

If they untied me before stuffing me in the hole...I knew my adrenalin would kick in and could take out another 5 or 6 of the hippies who smelled like skunk.  My life depended on it...what if they buried me and decided to let out the Veloci-Rooster. If that was their diabolical plan, then I was a "gonner" for sure!



The front of the Evening Outlook would read EXTRA EXTRA: Venice boy's eyes gouged out by a Pre-Flood Raptor and talon-ed to death!  I'm not sure "taloned" is a word - but you get it - punctured to death by the four-inch razor-sharp talons of the one-eyed crazy rooster.    WHAT IF?

The Hippy Wolf Pack was too smart this time and kept my hands tied behind my back and strapped around my body as they heaved me into the pit. It took them 14 tries. Every time they attempted to shove me into the pit of despair I spread my legs and made it impossible.  Ha! "So There!"  They made Flea-Bait grab my legs and that's when I bit him on the back of the shoulder. He should have seen that coming - Idiot! Well, I tell you right now, that backfired - because I paid for that about 30 times over!

This went on for something like 5 minutes. I kicked and bit and wiggled and squirmed as if the hole and I were magnetically polar opposites and the hole kept obliging as if the hole itself - willed to reject me.

Thank you Mr. Hole.

Mr Hole was my friend for about 13 failed attempts until the Wolf Pack finally got my feet tied together and six of them managed to force my tamed appendages down into the center of the pit.  I was tied and bound and now gagged as the long-haired hippies began back-filling the hole like dogs digging for bones. As the sand filled in around me the pressure pushed in on my chest making it hard to breathe - which incited my secret claustrophobia.

THEN came the "Somewhat."  It went from very bad to worst as they began stacking the construction blocks around me like my own personal Igloo of Death.  I was working in a coal mine and about to slip down...                    
                                               android users: Working In a Coal Mine
It couldn't get any worst - right?     WRONG!
              It got a lot worse - A LOT WORST!

I had cheated death already and now I felt like my number was up... I had escaped from Salton Sea (post 5/13/13), but felt there was no way out of this.

The Pit of Despair and the Hippy Oxymoron

On Saturday, I saw one of the strangest sights I've seen in a long time. The lazy hippies were industriously working in the backyard.  Ha!  It was ironic... these guys digging a hole in the old sandbox play area.  It must have been important. They probably wanted to grow more "Mexican Tomato Plants" or something like that.  They seemed to be having a good time, but knew that I wasn't included in what-ever-it-was they were doing. 

At 12, I was still too young to be inducted into the ways of my older brothers and the hippie Wolf Pack! I wanted to feel a part of the tribe, but knew that was still a couple years off.

My leg was healing, I had returned to school and to kickball at recess and was interested in fitting in with my 7th grade friends and being noticed by the little cutie-pie I had my eyes on.  

My brothers were busy growing hair and burning draft cards and smoking.  I was a tenderfoot in the Boy Scouts and just tying to find my way through the world, trying figure out what life was all about and where I fit?

I didn't particularly care too much about grades. I didn't care too much about sports. I wasn't too motivated by anything except for survival and desperate to discover the meaning of Love. My life sounds like an old song from Sam Cooke

"Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology

Don't know much about a science book

Don't know much about the French I took

But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me too

What a wonderful world this would be

Don't know much about geography
Don't know much trigonometry

Don't know much about algebra

Don't know what a slide rule is for

But I do know, one and one is two
And if this one could be with you

What a wonderful world this would be"

                                                                         Android users Sam Cooke Wonderful life

I'm not sure that I had heard the word "Love," ever mentioned in my house. I called it the "L Word," because I was too embarrassed to say it in front of people or that I might get beat up if I used it. 

It was a foreign concept - and I figured that at the rate we were making progress on our NASA mission to land on the moon, that earthlings would know more about the foreign object some 239,000 miles away in the sky and conquer it - before I knew about this foreign concept that was right in front of me. I knew that the truth about love was out there somewhere - I heard about it... longed for it, but just couldn't quite make contact with it other than my brief encounters with Irene on Fridays (post 7/15/13 "20 Minutes with Irene").

Anyway, we had a great big area in our backyard that used to be a sand-play area. With the Veloci-Rooster defending its dominion territory, it has long since been forgotten.  But the long-hairs bagged the dreaded raptor(Blog Post 12/3/13) and had locked the hideous beast up in the chicken coop and now the hippie-types were working harder than I had ever seen them work before (many of them were not known for their sense of drive and ambition - other than Anti-War demonstrations). There they were stirred in delirious ecstasy digging a hole to the center of the earth for no apparent reason.

                            How do you spell OXYMORON?

I had no idea whether they were digging for lost treasure...archaeological finds from ancient ruins...remains of dead pets we may have buried there or old carburetors; no matter what their intended purpose - they were happy and passionate.  It was cute to see hippies -  both working and happy - that's not a sight you see everyday.   After watching the show for a while, I decided to make my way inside for lunch where I had to beat off the mangy cat - put up with with a few choice cuss words of the foul-mouthed Mynah-bird and find something in the refrigerator that wasn't covered in moldy green fuzz (which my dad claimed was good for us because it was penicillin). 

I had found some bread, cut off the green spots and popped it in the toaster when I heard the fire alarm clang on the back porch stairs.  I heard a thousand foots steps making their way inside the house, but smelled the brood before I saw them come around the corner. Bounding in my direction, I saw the hopeful gleam in their eyes, and the sudden light of epiphany about the purpose of the pit caused me to gulp in terror as my life flashed before my eyes.   

EXTRA, EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT IT: Baby Brother dies in Pit Accident!  

Accident my foot! I jumped, scrambled over the table, took out two of the hippies... went through the legs of a third - shot under another table in the dining room like a greased pig, stepped on the cat's tail and knocked over the Mynah-bird's cage before being brought down by four of them.  I could usually hold my own against about 3 or 4 of them, but not 15.  They tied me up, dragged me outside and I knew I was going to die. 

The Mutant Micro Venice Zoo (Hippies Included).

Now, that Chewbacca fell in love with this "miracle cat," Lazarus, our house was only getting wackier and wackier.   Along with our motley tribe of long-haired hippie-types (AKA the Wolf Pack), the dreaded Veloci-Rooster in the backyard, the snakes held captive in the cages on the third floor, the mice we bred for snake feeding, a Mynah bird that cussed like a drunken sailor in the front entry, a billion guinea pigs, turtles, a giant frog,the Iguana Del Diablo (blog 8/1/13), a bazillion rabbits (that kept multiplying), chickens, and Poochie the Wonder dog - we now had this ugly, black, almost-hairless, scabby cat that was now added to the menagerie at my house.

We had a micro-zoo of mutant animals - including my brothers who were becoming more and more full-fledged hippies!

Someone accused us of stealing one of the monkeys that we let out of the zoo and thought we had smuggled it home, but that wasn't true.  The monkey we presently had came from the new neighbors across the street. Somehow it was turned over to me and was now baby sitting the thing indefinitely.  Monkeys were kind of cool - because not everyone had one, but this one sat on the wainscot ledges around the first floor. The monkey was a boy and was obviously happy that it was a male. The depraved - naked little primate, flaunted his male parts to everyone who dared entered our house.   "Gross!"

By feeding the nasty looking cat (that had cheated death) on the kitchen table, and allowing the ugly thing to walk all over the counter tops - Chewbacca surrendered complete authority and power to the insidious cat to rule over the rest of us mere mortal human beings.  I think Chewbacca's brains had become a conduit to the planet where the far superior Cat Species were sent to earth from - to subject humans to their rule. It might have had something to do with the tinfoil pyramid that Chewbacca wore on his head while smoking the leaves from the "Mexican Tomato Plants...out in the hippie cave in our backyard called "Wall Drug!"

My brothers thought all this was groovy - while, I on the other hand, was down right embarrassed. Embarrassed by the monkey with dangling male parts; embarrassed by the zombie cat that walked unhindered on the top of the table and had absolute authority to lick the butter and open containers of sour cream; embarrassed by the swearing Mynah bird; the mess and junk and stacks of National Geographics magazines; embarrassed by the cars outside on blocks and boats parked on the lawn; and by the fact that the police department made routine visits with warrants in hand - but this was my family and my house and my story and I had to make the best of it.


The good news for my brothers was that with the Fraternity House burned down to the ground, which meant that we had inherited more parking for our armada of hot rods, trailers, boats, broken down cars and old trucks we used as trash barges.  

Hum...? Possibly a motivation for arson - BUT I don't think my brothers burned down the fraternity just so that we could park more of our cars.

All the hippies were accounted for and had alibis - so, I still have to find the perpetrator of his horrible crime - that could have easily been murder.

I understand all of this might be hard to imagine... and that I often compare my house to The Addams Family or The Musters, but there really is no comparison!  This was the 60's, this was funky Venice California, this was hippie-ville... this was my house... this was the Dahlins...where truth is indeed stranger than fiction.  

To turn a chapter...With all this going on at home, I thought that maybe I would take a try with the Boy Scouts in order to escape from time to time. I was inducted into my older "way-overachieving-Eagle-scout" brother's troop.   Troop 32.

By the time I joined the troop in 7th grade - the troops only two eagle scouts had graduated away and we resembled something that look more like F Troop (a show on TV).  At Camporees and camp outs we were a band of notorious little thieves that cut the tent strings of other boy scouts and pelted our enemies with dirt clods.

My Family:

The Lennons who lived across the street.

 

As you can tell, we were definitely not normal... by any stretch of the imagination.  Next time "The pit of despair!

                   EXTRA EXTRA read all about it!

Free Floating Apparition and the Living Dead!

 At 6:30 am the next morning Mrs. D let out a blood curdling scream...

“Royyyyyyy! 

Startled from mom's screeching, dad woke up from a sound sleep, grabbed the broom next to his bed and began beating the ceiling.  "Up and at 'em...Time of the harvest moon!" he began yelling in his staccato staff sergeant cadence. Meanwhile, mom continued to scream in fright at the piercing red eyes from the black apparition of the living-dead zombie that stood at the end of her bed.  Woken up abruptly to mom's screaming, Mr. D forgot it was Saturday, which was his only day to sleep-in, and thought he urgently needed to wake up the tribe for the Viking "Street Cleaning" ritual (must see blog post 7/13/13). 

The hippie Wolf Pack on the floor above groaned and moaned and cursed and burped and farted and stomped on the floor in mutinous rebellion. "Mr. D its not Wednesday" Puke-Breath yelled back at dad, but unable to overcome feverish pitch the frightened Mrs. D.  When Dad's sleepy eyes finally focused he turned the wrath of his broom handle onto the scabby burnt ghost and chased the demonic phantasm from the room in his underwear.

The free floating apparition sprang from the foot of the bed with the speed of light and escaped up to the third floor to the long rear bedroom. The scabbified-black poltergeist startled the Wolf Pack along with the rattlesnakes and nasty looking iguana that resided in cages built into the side of the room.

 Mayhem broke out. "Fright or Flight." The hair on the rat's spine stood up, rattlesnakes defensively coiled, the iguana from hell (blog post 8/1/13) thew itself against the glass and Ulrich clenched his fist ready to take on the repulsive manifestation. Dooh-Dooh Pants pulled the covers over his head and Puke-Breath cussed out the disgusting creature. Chewbacca, on the other hand recognized it for what it was!

A MIRACLE!

It was not something to be feared or loathed, but something to be venerated and loved. Chewbacca gave the creature its new name. "Lazarus" he affectionately cried, in an emotional embrace. The room was silent - it was not a ghost! NO, the dead calico cat (that was in a small shoe-box coffin out back at Wall Drug) had risen from the dead!

Apparently the cat had cashed in all nine lives and had cheated death itself.



When Chewbacca was a small child; before The Beatles, before all the hair, he used to fall over all the time and bonk his head. Mr. and Mrs D felt they needed to protect him from brain damage and made him wear a green hockey helmet as an exoskeletal brain bucket.  My vote was that - it didn't fully work and he had some serious issues... either that or it was the hippie weed that had affected his perception of the world.



It wasn't like things weren't bad enough with the veloci-rooster, the chickens, "grampa" the chicken-eating-frog, the alligator, the escaping rattlesnakes, and the dozens of hippies that lived at our house - NOW, the smelly burn victim of the Fraternity Fire (see previous blogs) was considered one of our numbers.





And the rest of us had to contend with the place of honor in which Chewbacca placed the gross looking cat. History turned a new chapter in the Dahlin house as none of us dared to take back our chair from the reviled demon CAT or kick him off the countertop when it dropped scabs and licked the butter - lest we face the wrath of Chewbacca.

   

Why...Chewbacca...Why?

I really don't understand a lot of stuff... i.e. here we are in the middle of a terrible fire that is consuming a grand old home with the daring rescue effort by my hippie brothers and a neighbor in underwear and two of the most bizarre things happen.  Let me set the stage:  Not only were there firemen and policemen that you would normally expect to find at a typical 3 alarm fire, but this particular event also drew the special interest of these mystery Men In Black - members of the President's Secret Service detail who had been staying in the Lennon house for their protection. These Men in Black began sniffing around like bloodhounds for information and asking questions about Chet Young and were concerned that this Molotov Cocktail bombing might have had something to do with Charles Manson.  The crazy-man, Chet Young, had made assassination threats against the President and Charles Manson was plastered on the front page of every newspaper in America for the gruesome Tate and La Bianca murders.


With the ensuing chaos of fire and smoke and firemen, and police, and paramedics, and anxious Secret Service, and my hippie brothers, and my dad and my near-naked neighbor rescuing half-clad college drop-outs - who were now homeless and walking around like dazed Zombies - it was totally crazy right! Picture - cars blowing up - people screaming, smoke hovering and flaming ashes falling... imagine if you will -  Night of the Living Dead, conspiracy - threats and big things to worry about - which in light of that brings me to the two things that I don't get:

Number 1) At a time like this, in the middle of all of this chaos with everything that is at stake - why would my second oldest brother, affectionately known as, Chewbacca, feel compelled, at this moment to make some type of emotional connection to a dead feral-cat that nobody in the neighborhood cared for anyway.                  

                           WHY?                   Weird?  Right!

He had lots of hair and the charred cat had lots of hair at one time I suppose - was that it?  Was it some strange hippie thing that I didn't know about? Did it have to do with some form of Arrested Development? Did it have something to do with those funny cigarettes and those hidden "Mexican Tomato Plants" the older boys were meticulously taking care of in our backyard.







I understand that I'm only 12 and in seventh grade, so I guess I have a lot to  figure out...but I just didn't get it.


Okay, now with all that said, why this next part?  Take your stupid dead cat that the cosmos has directed you to fall in love with and leave me out of this.    This leads me to number 2).

Number 2). Why on earth did Chewbacca feel he had to bring that char-broiled cat which had stunk like burnt hair and that had looked like some 4000-year-old thing buried in a pyramid in Egypt alongside of Tutankhamen...AND SHOVE IT IN MY FACE?  

Why Chewbacca?   Why?   What did I ever do to you? What did I do to deserve the 732 titty-twisters, a year of being squeezed to unconsciousness(blog post 6/26/13), 532 wedges, 321 monkey bumps to the leg...and now a dead, stinky, burnt corpse of a despised cat shoved in my face?  

CAN ANYONE TELL ME?   He could have taken that cat to the backyard and happily had some kind of hippie ritual for all I care, but why did he feel it was necessary to torment me on the way?  I was watching the show minding my own business and out of nowhere he shoved that disgusting thing in my face and you know what happened!   That's right - my superpowers kicked in - I bent over gagging and heaving and threw up 13 times on the Blaser's front lawn... and before everyone could clear the blast zone - Tommy, Ricky and even one of the escaping Lennon brothers had puke all over them.

There I stood despised by everyone - making matters worst, I was in my hand me down shirt, my holey jeans, my miss-matched socks - looking like a complete moron...besides all that, I knew that Mr. Blaser was sure to be mad at me in the morning - as if this was all my fault.

Later the next day, Mr. Blaser made me wash the puke off of his lawn and it was there that I determined to find out who started this whole thing. That's why I felt like I had to take investigative matters into my own hands and find out who started this thing in the first place - and why I figured that the Secret Service and the Fire Marshal needed my help is solving this terrible arson case.  

It turns out that it was neither Charles or Chet, which meant that my list of suspects was dwindling.

To my shame, I am not happy to report the next incident, which turned out to be an unbelievable miracle of epic proportions and the beginning of a new saga at the Harding House!