Venice Zombies And Little Billy Gates pt 1

Star Date: July 17th 1969 (continued)

Unfortunately, Boy Scout troop 186 from Seattle got the unlucky pick of the short straw and had to set up camp next to us.  AND, what made things worse is that this snooty group of "cake-eaters" arrived in one of those expensive travel-coaches and didn't have to poop behind bushes and wipe off with pine cones like we did.

This automatically made them the ire of "THE KYBO PATROL." Ronnie and a couple of the kids from the Flaming Arrow Patrol overhead the Seattle kids whispering some snide comments about having to set up camp so close to the troop from Venice - and that was all it took.

Don't tell Ronnie and Chronister and Cockerel this, but in reality, the "The KYBO Patrol" looked like dirt bags and smelled even worse! When I heard all the plans for retaliation, I felt sorry for "silver-spooners" in troop 186.

They had a kid named Billy, who was a year older than me, and petitioned his scoutmasters that his troop show off the type of skills representing the Indian culture of Seattle that required the use of brains. The freshman with glasses wasn't so much into hiking and knot tying and other normal boy scout stuff. The Scout Masters liked his idea and ran with it.

In a demonstration of  Indian tracking skills, they created a 100 foot long sand course that had to be interpreted. I didn't dare tell the other kids in my troop, but I actually liked it.  It had foot prints and pokes and various paw prints and all kinds of things in the sand that told a story.  At the beginning of the Troop 186 "skills demonstration" a kid handed each camper a piece of paper and golf pencil to write down their observations. You had to identify the foot prints of various animals that crossed the path and the ones the tracker was following - get this -  they even had an owl scat (don't know where they got that?), but I dug it and felt like I did pretty good at it (no, not the owl poop - I dug the course)!

The thing I guessed right was the part about how it was a barefooted Indian who used his bow as a hiking staff which had made the round indentations and how he was followed by a three legged companion.

At the end, you had to turn your paper into the little brainiac nerd, Billy, who read your interpretation and gave you a grade. The little nerdy kid was impressed that I got the part about the limp and the staff and the three legged dog and gave me the highest score so far. Obviously, this made me feel good about myself and couldn't help, but like the scrawny, little four-eye'd geek from a rich suburb of Seattle, who had signed my "Indian tracking sheet!"    

HOWEVER, it was the owl-scat thing that triggered the vindictive imagination of the KYBO patrol which would take place - later that night, well after dark.

In the meantime, it was a historic day for the Boy Scouts as we heard Jesse Owens speak to all 35,000 of us who gathered in the massive Friendship Arena, but even more cool than that - was that Neil Armstrong sent a message to us from space on the way to the moon.

WHAT!?

“I’d like to say hello to all my fellow Scouts and Scouters at Farragut State Park in Idaho at the National Jamboree there this week and Apollo 11 would like to send them best wishes.”  


Never before in the history of mankind has anything like this ever happen for the Boy Scouts and I was there!  And, never before in the history of the Boy Scouts of America has anything as terrifying as what the KYBO patrol did later that night ever happen before...and unfortunately, I was there!

NEXT: THE VENICE ZOMBIE ATTACK!
                               Check in next time to see if little Billy Gates will make it out alive?

Hello Muddah... Hello Fadda... you thought it was bad the last time I wrote... Well you won't believe this.

         Wait until you hear about what "Dego" did!

I guess I should add this to my: "You know you're from Venice If"  list.

The Venice Infection Continues to Spread

Star Date: July 16, 1969       10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1..."BLAST OFF" 

I know dad will be upset because I wasted an extra penny on this post card with my 6 cent Apollo 8 stamp, but I felt like I had to splurge since they launched the Apollo 11 today with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins as humankind was on the verge of taking its first steps on extraterrestrial soil.   Yuri was the first human into outer-space in 1961 and the USSR had been way ahead of us in the Space Race. But now, the good 'O USA was about to finally leap into the lead!  Yee Haw! We were winning so I spent the extra penny on postage.

By this time, most of the pooping business had calmed down and we were regular again - well I don't know if "regular" is a good word to describe our troop from Venice.. but our bowels had certainly settled down.

When we rolled into Farragut State Park in Idaho to meet up with the other 35,000 Boy Scouts we were sweaty from fighting and smelled like an outhouse evidenced by the flies and mosquitoes in tow and also couldn't walk in a straight line - dizzy from carbon monoxide.

 It was pretty obvious that we were far from "regular."

We were like an infection spreading across the Midwest - more like the Bubonic Plague actually.


My adrenaline addiction helped me beat all the kids in the wrestle-mania staged in the back of Scout Truck and so things were looking up. I couldn't fight Cockerel, because he had diarrhea so bad and when our Scout Masters asked those in charge if we could camp next to the outhouses they graciously acquiesced to our request.

 "Wasn't that kind of them!"   Uh Huh!  

I was part of the Hawks patrol, thank God, because the Flaming Arrow patrol had Cockerel, Ronnie and "little Wiener" who staked their claim right next to the KYBO's.  In Boy Scout language or in Military language (I'm not sure which), KYBO was some fancy code word for the outhouses...it meant Keep Your Bowels Open! Seriously! I thought they must have read about us in the newspaper or something, because if there was anybody in the world that had their bowels open it was Troop 32!

It was embarrassing, really!  Those guys not only looked like they lived in KYBOs, but smell like it too! I pitched my tent as far-away as possible because I thought I might die from vomiting - you know my SuperPowers!

I felt a little sorry for Venice California because I think we had just soiled (that was a pun) their laid-back beach-city surfer reputation!  Anyway, if I could sing an ode to express the way I feeling right now in "Allan Sherman" style, it would go something like this:


Hello Mudder, hello Fadda
Here I am at camp "Diarrhea"
All the boys are overflowing
They say we'll have some fun when we stop pooping.



I saved the life of, naked Cockerel
he almost drowned from constipation.
You remember "Little Wiener"
He got gut-rot from last night's spaghetti dinner.

Now I don’t want, this to scare ya

But Cockerel now has "prune" eruptions

You remember the "Salton Sea" fuss

The Highway Patrol brought him back to us

Take me home, Oh Mudda, Fadda

Take me home to good ‘O Venice

Don’t leave me here in the back of the scout bus

or I might die from puking my guts up

Chronister smells like a bag of dog poop

And attracts all mosquitoes

Flies are attacking our dirty shirts

And everyone here has the “Hershey Squirts” 

Dearest Fadda, darling Mudda

How are my precious older Brothers?

Let me come home if you miss me

I’ll even let the hippies torture me!

Yellowstone was just okay

We made it out alive yesterday

I beat up Kissel, "Rollie-Pollie" and the Venice High Wrestler

Now I’m the champ, gee that’s better

Mudda, Fadda, kindly disregard this letter. 

for android users Allan Sherman: Hello Muddah Hello Fadda

The Prune Conspiracy: Prison for Cockerel? Part 4

(Continued)  Star Date: July 12th 1969

Unleashing the wrath of Venice upon the unsuspecting world.  There was no one with more spaghetti, more glue, more clumpy oatmeal or more Bisquick dough in their belly than poor, poor Cockerel!  By this time, the 15-year-old Boy Scout must had something like 32 pounds of this glop, clogging the inside of his intestines. Add to that the 900 pounds of prunes he consumed two days ago and it turned out to be an explosive mix of volatile reactants.


 "Thar she blows!" was the warning cry every time Cockerel's stomach began to rumble - as Alan blew taps on his bugle and Ray urgently leaned on the buzzer to warn scout masters up front to pull the truck over.

With most of us feeling better (with the exception of chapped and irritated behinds), the Senior Patrol Leaders who were trapped in the back with us, felt it was important to stage bracketed cage fighting. By this time in the journey, all the backpacks and camping gear that had been carefully confined to the very center section of the rear of the truck (upon our initial departure) was now nothing more than an indistinguishable jumble that filled the entire back end from wall to wall. No longer sitting on the benches, sweaty bodies of stinky teen and pre-teen boys reclined on disorganized mess.

I came to this thing to get away from fighting! I thought I was safe in my new tribe! At home, I had to contend with Ulrich and his angry-little-man-crew almost every day in bloody fist fights and as the baby boy of the Wolf Pack I was subjected to sibling torture and thought this was my chance to get couple weeks off from all of that physical and emotional terrorism.             BUT NO!




Now, the pimple-faced leaders who were in charge of us wanted us to fight, and besides, I'm the second smallest kid in the outfit. I weigh like 90 pounds and there are guys in here on the Venice High School wrestling team who outweigh me by nearly 100 pounds!

Although he had smelled putrid from the fecal particulates spread on his uniform, I had beaten Chronister despite the smell and also beat the pudgy kid who reminded me of the Pillsbury Dough boy!  Then a lot of the bigger guys fought and I was scared about having to eventually go up against one of them.

I beat the other kid my age who was about 40 pounds heavier than me and found that I was somehow the champ of the lightweight division. I don't know why they couldn't just let it go at that and give me a piece of bubblegum and say I was the champion of the 14-and-under bracket.  BUT NO!

They wanted me to fight, Philip, the wrestler from Venice High who had side burns and a mustache. I was dead!  He was about 5' 8" and I was 4 foot something. Well, do you remember what happened in "The Sourdough Smackdown" in fifth grade to "Cursty," the chump who stole my toast (post 6/29/13) and to Terry the bully in the school yard (post 6/5/14)- I guess that same magic happened here. I think I was so freaked out that my adrenals went into some kind of overload and I jumped on the wrestler's head and had him pinned in a choke hold in about 2 seconds. The two Senior Patrol Leaders had to pull me off and even that wasn't easy.  I didn't mean it to happen, but in my adrenaline mode, I was like one of those drug addicts on PCP.

Now, they wanted to pit me against Cockerel - who was like André the Giant. 

The chants began: "Dahlin" half the troop yelled.
                            "Cockerel" the other half shouted in boyish merriment!

Yuck, I had to fight the humongous high-schooler who had rubbed diarrhea all over his uniform!

                            "Dahlin"
                            "Cockerel"
                            "Dahlin"
                            "Cockerel...Cockerel?  Cockerel? The stupid chanting stopped and the Senior Patrol Leaders began to panic. "Where's Cockerel? Has anyone seen Cockerel?  Their screams were met with lots of empty glares and shoulder shrugs.  Alan, squeaked out some frenzied notes (mostly sharps and flats) on his pathetic bugle and Ray pressed the buzzer with all his might.  Practically out of Yellowstone, the Scout Masters found a place to pull the truck off to the side of the road. The two older boys jumped over the back gate of the truck and had a conference next to the driver's door. Figuring that we left Cockerel behind somewhere in Yellowstone, the scout master came back and asked when any of us saw him last. No one could agree and all kinds of Twilight Zone theories were offered for the cause of his disappearance.

We turned the truck around and headed back inside the National Park, retracing our route. 20 minutes in, we were passed by a Highway Patrol with lights and sirens - headed in the other direction. That's when Kissel spotted Cockerel in the backseat of the Highway patrol vehicle, "There he is. There's Cockerel!"

AGAIN the bugle, and again the panic-buzzer-pushing. AGAIN we pulled over - this time making a u-turn.

The same things happened AGAIN... We're headed back out of the park and AGAIN the Highway Patrol come speeding back in our direction.  Rumors buzzed about him going to jail or the Scoutmasters being thrown into prison (I had been through this once before and figured that if we didn't try to lie like my dad did when he left me behind at Salton Sea (Post 5/27/13) then it was a good chance that nobody was going to have to spend time with Johnny Cash at Folsom prison). Humphries was sure they had him handcuffed. I figured if they did, it was because they didn't want him touching anything with his filthy paws.

The worst part of this whole story is not just that had Cockerel was left behind relieving his burgeoning bowels from "Prune-Gate" and that he was also hitchhiking...but the fact that he was hitchhiking in in his Boy Scout of America uniform and not just any old Boy Scout uniform that you might expect to see on one of those "regular kids" from Beverly Hills Troop 64 or Philadelphia, Troop 26, who rode in one of those nice travel-coaches with bathrooms - BUT No - his uniform was disheveled, filthy and stunk like an outhouse. He looked like a refugee and worse still  - is that fact that he told the poor Highway Patrol officers the whole story of the spaghetti, the near drowning, the stomach aches, the prunes, and about his endless bout with the "Hershey Squirts" and having to wipe off with pine needles and watching us drive off without him while he was still doing his business behind a shrub.    

It was painful for everyone involved.

I don't think I mentioned the part where this was the first time and last time I had ever seen Police Officers riding with their heads out of the windows of their car like police dogs as if trying to escape the stink in the back seat and suck in volumes of  clean Wyoming air.

The Highway Patrol officers escorted us out of the Yellowstone National Park...waited through one more diarrhea run (to make sure Cockerel made it back on board) and escorted us all the way to the Idaho State line!

We were on our way...to the National Jamboree at Farragut State Park in Idaho to represent the Boy Scouts of American and good 'old Venice California.

NEXT TIME: "The KYBO Patrol"    

I hear the whistle blowing... we headed into Idaho and I just hope that before this whole trip is over all of us don't end up singing the The Folsom Blues" from our prison cells.

Stewed Prunes and Open wide "The Flood Gates"

Star-date: July 9th 1969  (continued)...







I had no idea what was going to happen since the Scout Masters had put my name on the "No BM" side of the secret ledger at the private interrogations last night. I crawled out of my sleeping bag the next morning and didn't have a care in the world. We were on the way to the Boy Scout National Jamboree and the United States was about to send men to the moon...for the very first time in the History of the world... and the sun was shining - "I was a Happy Boy and things were going my way!"

I'm a Happy Boy   
Our Senior Patrol Leader, Ray, suspiciously sneered at us as he stood stirring whatever-it-was - steaming in the great big pot over the low flame on the camp stove.  PRUNES!  500 gallons of prunes - so I exaggerate - sue me! But someone in our troop must have bought out the entire prune section of the local Wyoming (not-so-super) Super Market!
 

We were called to attention by a poor rendition of revelry that snorted and wheezed and sputtered out of the end of Alan's dented old bugle. We were separated into two lines. The short line had the kids who were smart enough to lie and say they had taken a "BM" (obviously these were the kids from outside Venice where they used proper language for what we called "Dropping a Buick" "Laying a Brick" "Taking a Dump"). The rest of us stupid kids were herded into the long line right behind 500-million-gallon bucket of stewed prunes. With an ominous premonition I wasn't too sure that things were going "my way" anymore and was suddenly nervous about the immediate future of this Boy Scout summer extravaganza.

There is still a remote possibility that letting Boy Scouts out of Venice could have decent ending... hubba- hubba-hubba-hubba-hubba... but the feeling I was having right now is that this adventure might not have such a good middle.

The four other guys got hot oatmeal - while Ray ecstatically scooped ladles of mushy warm prunes into the tin bowls of our boy-scout mess-kits. I've seen this stuff before. This was "old lady food" and I know what it can do to you. I ate two bites of the laxative-fruit-cocktail, not because I particularly wanted to, but because I was plugged up by oatmeal and gloop-pasta-paste and needed to. However, I wasn't about to over do it. As they watch us, I put one bite in my mouth and flung two bites over my head into the shrubs behind us whenever they looked away. I was beating the system - I was "beating the man"  Hehehe. I  wonder if this is what my older brothers felt like when they burned their draft cards... Markie D was an anarchist.  

Here is the long and the short of it: Remember David Cockerell the 15-year-old human garbage disposal who almost drowned yesterday trying to liberate his bowels? Well, believe it or not - this knucklehead volunteered to eat the remaining 4 gallons of the left-over prunes.  NOT GOOD! Worst was...that some ADULT ALLOWED HIM to scrape out the pot and eat the entire remains of this evil elixir! This guy was either hungry or desperate or both! We packed-up all of our stuff, jammed our personal belonging into our backpacks, threw it into the back of the scout truck and headed down the highway.

As the stiff-shocked, moving-truck rattled down the highway towards the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park - rebellious bellies began to gurgle and rumble and made noises louder than the exhaust of the carbon-monoxide belching truck we traveled in.     SHAKE RATTLE AND ROLL baby!

A rocket ship was about to be sent to the moon and yet the height of our technology, was a whinny little doorbell buzzer someone had brilliantly installed in the back of the moving van, as an emergency communication with those in the front cab.

A couple guys pee'd out of the back, trying to relieve themselves as usual, but two hours later the prunes began to do what prunes do - DRAINO!

I'll tell you right now, "We were no longer The NO POOP TROOP"

Steve had to go. He said that if they didn't stop the truck he would probably explode in some kind of violent eruption akin to what happened at Mount Vesuvius. Alan, the bugler, laid on the buzzer until the scout masters pulled the truck over and even before it came to a complete stop, 3 or 4 guys jumped out of the back and headed into the pine forest.

        The Flood Gates were open wide!

We managed to get inside Yellowstone until the next diarrhea panic attack!

The other "normal" scouts had a bathroom in the back of their luxurious travel-coaches, but for us - it was press the buzzer, jump over the barn-doors and squat behind some shrub and wipe off with nearby branches or pine cones - (something we'd all regret later). I don't think Ronny, Cockerel or Chronister even washed their grubby little hands and it looked like they rubbed their filthy mitts on their uniforms.   "Gross! It was disgusting!" They looked grody and they smelled even worse!"

"Hey, Kissel..what has six wheels and flies?" I asked.
"I don't know. What? An airplane?" he replied
"No" I said "Our troop 32 scout bus."  We laughed, but it was true.


The back of the truck smelled like poop and was now swarming with flies. The good news was that by about our third stop inside the park, the cause of our stomachaches had been liquefied and partially eradicated. 

In the words of Iron Butterfly... IN A GADDA DA VIDA...   

     ...thankfully, it looked like the days of "Prairie Dogging" "Logs, Buicks and bricks were behind us"



With the stuff in our belles that felt like the hot geothermal brew of the Blue Sulfur Springs, poor-poor Cockerel was as eruptive and as reliable as Old Faithful.

We spent a night inside Yellowstone Park and on the 11th began to make our way to Idaho.  This is when the event that led to the embarrassment of the entire Boy Scouts of America - that had Lord Baden Powell rolling over in his grave...happened!

My stomach felt better and we were on the road again so "I was a happy boy." However, this inexplicable euphoric feeling might have had something to do with the fact that I chose to travel with my head hanging out of the back of the truck, inhaling the toxic fumes in order to keep from smelling, Ronny, Cockerel and Chronister...

Next, my premonition comes true: Our Scout Masters worst nightmare and the unfortunate serious of events in the not-so-good middle part of our summer adventure...

...MMA cage fighting and the Highway Patrol escort.  In the mean time we pretended to be hippies and got all psychedelic rocking out on air guitars to Iron Butterfly - We were from Venice and had a reputation to uphold.    

The Venice Invasion part II: The Scoop on the No Poop Troop!

(continued) Star-Date: July 8th 1969

All of us crazy Boy Scouts who had dizzy-heads and bloated-stomachs in the back of the converted Boy Scout Troop 32 "truck" (suffering brain and nervous system disorders from carbon-monoxide poisoning) were singing the words to new Fifth Dimension song at the top of our voices - mostly out of tune and completely out of rhythm. No matter how bad we sounded, no one either really seemed to care... or possessed the right mind to discern just how bad the cacophony really was. We were high on fumes and jacked up about the thought of the Apollo 9 moon launch...eight days from now.

When the moon is in the Seventh House

And Jupiter aligns with Mars

Then peace will guide the planets

And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius

Age of Aquarius

Aquarius! Aquarius!

At the part of song where we bellowed the words "Aquarius," for some unknown reason Ricky ripped off his shirt as if mankind had reach the pinnacle of evolution that had inspired Cockerel to pull down his pants and "moon" the travel-coach full of the "regular" boy scouts who were passing us on the way to the National Jamboree.

 

(Here is a picture of the Boy Scout "truck" in our front yard - just behind the motley crew to the right)



"Those poor suckers" we thought about the other kids who had to travel in the confines of solemn order, stuck in a seat, on air-conditioned bus -heavily scrutinized by those in authority. Sure, we may have had headaches and stomachaches, "but, boy did we have it good!"

  We were from Venice and we were proud! 

To reiterate where we were last time, I mentioned the diabolical plan by our scoutmasters to solve the problem of mass constipation. The problem ingloriously came to light in the paste-pasta dinner-rebellion and subsequently by the fact that we had almost lost David Cockerel.

We were camped by a small lake just outside Rock Springs Wyoming on the extended detour we had planned on the way to Farragut State Park in Idaho.  Last night for dinner we had spaghetti again. AND AGAIN the noodles were not rinsed and the stuff was like gloppy paste which no one could swallow one more bite of it (except Cockerel).

Steve took his plate and pushed it down on top of Ronny's plate, sticking the two plates together. In solidarity, Philip and Chronister and James and Ricky and I all followed suit and did the same thing. I'm pretty sure this had to be a Guinness World record, and if not, a Ripley's Believe It or Not  FOR REAL!  NO LIE!

TRUTH...We stuck seven plates of spaghetti together and turned the whole shooting-match upside down. Kissel, held it from the bottom plate, which was now on top and shook it up and down and ALL SEVEN PLATES STUCK TOGETHER!

To invent something with this much tensile-glue-strength required a million-dollar laboratory and advance degrees in chemistry... and THIS STUFF WAS IN OUR INTESTINES and it wasn't about to come outany time soon! We were plugged up and bloated and not one of us had taken a poop since we left Venice.  Anyway, we affectionately called Cockerel, who was 2-years-older than me and about 5 times my size, our "human garbage disposal." This dude scraped the remains of everyone's plates. It just seemed like he could never get enough food. The "glue-factor" didn't seem to deter his appetite at all! After we were done marveling at the sticking power of this gloppy-pasta, he stopped us in the middle of our rebellion from throwing the stuff away and ate about 15 pounds of the leftover goop that should have been incinerated.

The next day, the poor fella swam about 200 yards away from the dock, out into the middle of this murky lake, laden with fresh water algae - all by himself.  No one knew what he was doing out there.

I think he swam out all by himself, so he could try to liberate a "floating log fish"...i.e take a poop!

Cockerel just couldn't manage to deliver the package, short of a "Caesarean Section" and got so tired of pushing that he didn't have the strength to make it back and started freaking out. Unfortunately, I happened to be on the dock and since my Eagle Scout older brother was a water polo legend and swimmer at Saint Monica's High school he had taught me how to swim and some basic life guard skills. I didn't want to go, but no one else was close enough, besides Chronister, and he was completely hopeless. I pulled everything off, down to my skivvies and went out for the 15-year-old who was flailing and splashing and desperately crying out for help. He had gone down twice already and I knew I had to get there quick, thinking he would be a goner by his third time underwater.

I managed to grab him under one arm and around the neck and proceeded to drag him back, face-up, to the shore where the entire troop was now standing watching the spectacle. When I got within about 4 feet of the shoreline, a couple of the Senior Patrol Leaders grabbed Cockerel from me and dragged him up onto the beach.  Never mind the fact that his trunks were down around his ankles, he looked like one of those whales that was dying and had tried to beach itself.

             IT WAS NOT A PRETTY PICTURE BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION.  

I had already touched his naked body and didn't want anything to do with him, but the older scouts didn't seem to know what to do - so I put my foot under his back and rolled him on his side - just in case he had any water in his lungs.  He coughed! Water came out! He lived! Yeah me...maybe I'd get some kind of merit badge for this?

Anyway, the Scout Masters interrogated him about violating the "buddy system" and wanted to know why he was in the middle of the lake with his shorts off all by himself.  This is when they found out that he was trying to take a poop, but couldn't squeeze it out.

Later that evening was the top-secret tribunal.

The two Scout Masters sat at a table with a sheet of paper and a pen while the the Senior Patrol Leaders had us sequestered in a single file line on the other side of the Scout truck.  After each interrogation, the Scout Masters shouted, "Next!" and a Senior Patrol Leaders walked around the truck and to the foldout card table that was like appearing before a judge at court.

They had a paper in front of them with a line drawn down the middle. On top of one column were the capital letters "BM" and on the other side was written "No BM" with names written on both sides. In hushed voices they quietly asked, if I had taken a BM. I didn't know if a BM was a good thing or a bad thing. It was all so serious. I didn't know whether it was admitting to stealing something like Building Materials or Bacon. My Aunt was a Catholic Nun that had something to do with BVM. That's all I know, and I wasn't about to admit to anything that I didn't do!  I didn't take a thing! I passed the secret test and they wrote my name down on the "No BM" side of the paper.  "NEXT!" They yelled as I was collared the higher ranking boy scout and shuffled into the group that had been through the line so far.



Kissel asked, "Well?"
"Well, what?" I replied.
"Well, what did you say?"
"I said no, of course... I didn't take anything.. besides I don't even know what a BM is.
"Neither, did I, but Chronister said it had to do something with taking a poop"
"Well, why didn't they just say so?"
"I think that's how they say it, if your from Mar Vista or if you're one of those kids on those real buses."
"OHHHHHHHHHHHH...." I said, struck with fresh revelation "Why can't they just be normal like us and say poop like everyone else in the world?" I asked rhetorically and got a lot of shoulder shrugs.



In the morning, the Scout Masters had a big surprise planned for Cockerel and for all of the kids whose names were listed on the " No BM" side of the paper.

Do I need to mention Venice was coming to a town near you? Do I need to mention anything about Mount Vesuvius? Do I even need to say that this is where things got even worse?  But let me tell you this...this is how we earned our police escort out of Yellowstone National Park.

"Harmony and understanding

Sympathy and trust abounding

No more falsehoods or derisions

Golden living dreams of visions...."

         "Uh.... Not so much!" 

For Android users Fifth Dimension Aquarius  

Venice Invades the Boy Scout Universe!

I don't know what was worst...the Dahlins headed out of Venice to the zoo (post 5/3/2103) or Troop 32 headed to Farragut State park in Idaho to meet up with 35,000 other Boy Scouts.

In the words of the robot on Lost in Space "Danger Will Robinson"

Stardate: July 6th 1969

Captains Log: We had our heavy-duty, 1959 Chevy moving-truck converted into a "scout bus" by cutting the back doors in half,  installing some porthole windows and hard wooden benches along the sides. This left the center floor section open for transporting all the tents and backpacks and camping gear and for staging cage fighting. Miraculously, no one had fallen out of the back doors on any of the trips to Camp Slauson or Josepho so far, but we came close a couple times.

This half-open, barn-door (at the rear of the truck) arrangement had its advantages and disadvantages.

ADVANTAGE 1) On one trip, Charlie climbed out of the back of the truck onto the tongue of the trailer and slid himself onto the fender of the little cargo trailer, we were pulling in order to appropriate something we "desperately" needed inside the truck that was a matter of life and death.  Like a spider monkey, Charlie, climbed up on top of the little white trailer and slowly scooted himself very carefully towards the rear. I voted against the rope. I kind-of-felt like Charlie would have been better off without a bowline tied around his waist. I figured that if he fell off without the rope then at least he might have a chance of survival, but with the rope - it would be like being dragged behind a horse at 57 miles per hour on hot rough asphalt (not a good ending - if you know what I mean)!  Believe it or not, Charlie actually made it inside the trailer grabbed the bag of marshmallows and made his way back into the back of the "Scout Bus" without the scout masters being none-the-wiser.

ADVANTAGE 2) Another thing this particular arrangement afforded us on long trips, was that we could stand on the bench seat and hang our talliwackers out the back, when some small-bladder'd tenderfoot had to take a pee-pee between potty-stops!

ADVANTAGE 3) This gaping hole in the back end also allowed us to "full-moon" passerby's, especially if there were pretty girls and grandmothers in the cars trapped behind our slow-moving, smog-belching, billboard of a truck  - representing the Boys Scouts of America (Hey, I was twelve and at least we thought it was pretty cool - though, I'm pretty sure our scout masters might have felt differently - had they known).

DISADVANTAGE 1) Potential for falling out of the back - especially when leaning out to take a leak or when "giving the moon" to an old Mormon grandmother from Utah.

DISADVANTAGE 2)  Was the fact that carbon monoxide FUMES blew into the large open back. Carbon monoxide poisoning includes light-headedness, confusion, headaches, vertigo and can lead to the toxicity of the central nervous system. This might EXPLAIN WHY we sent a Boy Scout crawling out on top of a trailer on the freeway, pee'd on the cars behind us, indiscriminately exposed our bare butts to grandmas and fought with one another all the way to Idaho.  And... it might also explain why we always looked like dazed, refugee-rats whenever the truck finally rolled into a rest stop.




The other normal Boy Scout troops did not travel like us... they had air-conditioned travel-coaches with a restroom on board and drove through McDonald's on their way across country.












Although the carbon-monoxide poisoning could be blamed for a lot of things, in our case, however, I don't think the toxic fumes we were breathing could be blamed for mass constipation. I think that was due instead, both to the menu, and to the fact that the Scout Master's son never rinsed the pasta which ended up sticking to the insides of our intestines like the heavy paste on paper mache!

It's not like something we compared notes on.  "Hey, Kissel..have you taken a poop yet?"  That would have been ridiculous.

But, after 4 or 5 hot, sweaty days of traveling and camping the two scout master finally put two and two together when everyone began to moan and groan about stomachaches which they figured was more than just the ordinary toxic confusion, vomiting associated with minor carbon monoxide poisoning that was driving us all mad.

AND SO... the night after the infamous spaghetti incident, on the very same day I rescued David Cockerel from drowning in a small muddy lake outside Rock Springs in Wyoming...is when the proverbial "poop would have hit the fan" except for there was no poop and the scout masters came up with a diabolical plan.

I'll have to leave you hanging on this one... and come back and share how this interrogation tribunal got us a Highway Patrol escort... (well, kind of anyway)... to the embarrassment of the Entire Boy Scout Universe and to which (I'm sure) Lord Baden Powell was rolling over in his grave.  

AS I leave you until next time-  there are many of you right now saying, "Oh, this guy is just making up stories for sensationalism!"

I guarantee that every single bit of this is the "Straight Up TRUTH!

And I would ask, or dare anyone who is reading this - especially if you were a member of the illustrious Troop 32 from Venice California to weigh-in and corroborate these stories for the rest of the disbelieving world - at least for those in the 78 countries who read this BLOG!

Until next time...  Du är älskad!

AT ANY COST: The Induction Malfunction

As they tied the Boy Scout handkerchief around my eyes I could smell the salt air mixed with the dust of the backyard of the old Venice Scout House. With my eyes blindfolded my senses buzzed. I could hear the sound of the lone engine of the “Venice Short Line” that slowly chugged down West Washington Way and could also smell Alan, who hadn't bothered to bathe or use deodorant in about a month, and fought back against my urge to vomit.  In this initiation process, two Patrol Leaders spun me around trying to make me as dizzy as possible before pointing me in the direction of the backdoor that finally creaked open.

 

My heart jumped with anticipation about the secret induction ceremony into the Venice Boy Scout Troop 32. We were not the saints we had been years earlier. 

At twelve, I was youngest, smallest, weakest member of the Dahlin Wolf Pack. I was in by blood, but didn't really feel like I belonged.

I wasn't old enough to smoke with them in the hippie "hooch hut" out back or hang out with them when they went on those notorious hikes to Tuna canyon in Malibu. 

All I was to them was a toy, a thing to punch, or knock out, or electrocute, or bury, or shoot, or embarrass in front of friends and to experiment with.  

I lived in the same house, drove in the same cars, but always felt like an outsider looking in.    

I hoped this Boy Scout thing would be different, like a new tribe – a brotherhood where I might feel accepted and as though I belonged - crazy right? This is probably the same thing “Squeaky” Fromme was thinking when she signed up for the Manson Family. 

My head was still spinning when the Junior Assistant Scout Master put a dollar bill in my hand and whispered in my ear that I should not lose it, "at any cost."  Still reeling and off balance I ran into the door jam and eventually stumbled into the scout house that was dark and lit only by candles. Waiting inside were all the potential members of my new tribe. 

Walking through the short, dark corridor and into the center of the dilapidated old house on Washington Way (that had been purchased by the Venice Lions Club and giving to our Troop), I could feel the intensity of those anxious, sweaty, smelly boy scouts who had been just as eager as I was for this induction initiation.  Before reaching my destination someone grabbed the dollar bill out of my hand. I could smell the fiend and had every honorable intention of getting the dollar back “at any cost” (but figured that socking the kid in the face who stole it was something that I had to deal with later).

The handkerchief was pulled off eyes and I stood stunned before a tribunal of Senior Patrol Leaders and the two Scout Masters – Jim Serosi and Lyman Tapp as the entire troop looked in.  I don’t know why, but I felt like one of those Christians in the coliseum getting ready to be burned at the stake. 

“Mark Dahlin” said the skinny Scout master, “You were handed a dollar bill, were you not?”

“Yes sir,” I said nervously, yet with intense pinpointed eyes that I think might have frightened him.

In an effort to bail out the other leader, the heavier Scout Master continued, “Where is the dollar bill now, Mr. Dahlin? Will you produce it for us?” 

Biting my tongue and clenching my jaws, I had a couple options and I didn't want to blow my chance of finally belonging. If I said I dropped it, it would be a lie. Did they want a liar in the troop? Probably not! If I told the truth and said that someone stole it from me, then it would be like ratting-out one of my new tribal members and who would want a snitch to belong to this new brotherhood that I was so desperate for.

At home no one listened to me anyway, so blaming someone else was totally out of the question. Besides, the dollar bill was given to me and it was my duty to hang on to it. I had one job and I failed. I looked around the room at all the solemn eyes that stared disapprovingly in my direction.  I wanted in! I saw Steve Kissel, and Ronnie, and James Humphries, and David Cockrell, and Phillip Aylala, and Chronister and Dego, and Mark and Alan and Ray and had to figure a way to fix the mess I had gotten myself into. Then I remembered the words, “At all cost.”  Was that a challenge or permission to do whatever it took?  Maybe that’s what they wanted, I thought?  Maybe this whole thing was a test and felt that this new tribe wanted to see what I was made of. 

I looked around at the “Pillsbury Doughboys” and the “Theodore Cleavers” and the “regular” kids from regular families that hadn't been raised by a pack of wolves like I had. 

I looked at those soft kids who hadn't had to fight everyday and who hadn't been though the same crud I did… and did what any member of a Wolf Pack would do among sheep. I smelled the stench of the kid who stole my dollar bill, grinned at the two Scout Masters and hurled myself onto about six members of the Flaming Arrow Patrol. 

Down we went into a massive dog pile of flailing arms and legs. I had Ronnie around the neck in a choke hold and squeezed him until his fingers loosened the grimy grip he had on the coveted dollar bill. Phillip, a wrestler from the Venice High wrestling team, (who outweighed me by 50 pounds) was on my back and was unsuccessfully trying to peal me off of Ronnie.  

“At any cost”

“At any cost”

“At any cost” …were the words that kept going through my head.

The whole troop was on the floor fighting. It was a regular bar-room brawl. Yelling and screaming and making threats to cancel the National Jamboree trip planned for July, the Scout Masters and Senior Patrols Leaders pulled kids off one by one until they got down to Ronnie and me.

Leaving Ronnie’s limp body on the ground, I quickly stood my feet, straightened my uniform, smiled at the two men in charge, saluted and said, “I believe this is the dollar bill you guys are looking for.” Pleased with myself. I smiled as though this was all in the course of ordinary business, like it was straight out of the scout handbook or something. 

It took a tribunal, several phone calls to parents (and seeing that my dad was the President of the Lions club and Troop treasurer), I was admitted to my new clan. Pshaw I didn't get what all the fuss was about…this was like just an ordinary day at my house.  After all this was not your ordinary Boy Scout Troop –this was a Boy Scout Troop from Venice California and a Boy Scout Troop that was now infected by the youngest member of the Dahlin Wolf Pack.  

Just so you know, this long-held, sacred ‘rite of passage’ for Troop 32 was abandoned and exchanged for something much different, more friendly and a little tamer...JUST IN CASE another kid from Harding Avenue every decided to join the Troop. 

Our dysFUNtional troop was now headed out of Venice and into the the Midwest! 

 Beware World! 

Moon Landing and Diarrhea part I