I'll Never Forget You Mr. Lennon: The Day that Rocked Venice

Star Date August 13th 1969

The bummer about my birthday being the middle of summer is that every time we took a family vacation it qualified, both - as my birthday party and as my birthday present. We would be grinding the volcanic pumice between our teeth that had blown into a piece of toast soaked in bacon-grease and someone would break out into a horrific rendition of happy birthday that sounded more like cats fighting in an alley.

  "...happy birthday dear Karl and Mark. Happy birthday to youuuuuuuuu."

The Dahlins were definitely not Lennons and nobody in my family could carry a tune nor cared to.

I was born on my second oldest brother's birthday.

 Being 6 and 7 and 8 and 9 and 10, I always complained. I wanted to have a "real" birthday party like all of the other "normal" kids at Saint Marks. But we were always gone to Kings River or Salton Sea at that time of year for our family vacation and my parents would say, "This trip is your birthday party" even though we were going to be there any way. It just didn't seem fair. Nothing was worst than the time they left me behind me behind at Salton Sea on my 11th birthday - you talk about a surprise party...boy was that unexpected birthday present(post 5/13/130. From then on, I figured I was lucky if they brought me back home to Venice with them - presents or no presents.  

Well this year, since I went on the Boy Scout Jamboree, our vacations for the summer was over and it looked like I would get a chance to be at home for once on my birthday and was anticipating a regular, good-old-fashioned birthday party.  I figured that I would get to have my friends over after Mass on Sunday and like my other brothers and sisters and like "regular people" do, we would have ice cream and cake and I would get to open some presents. To me, this was just as monumental as the astronauts landing on the moon a few weeks back.          
                                      "Markie D was going to have a real live birthday party.
                                       Markie D was going to have a real live birthday party.
                                       Markie D was going to have a real live birthday party."

I sang this in my head as I danced up and down the street on Saturday morning in anticipation of having a "real" birthday. Jeanette Lennon looked out her window and thought I was a little crazy, but it was all I could think about. I had arrived: Real friends. Real presents. Real cake.

But when that Sunday morning came the front pages of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the Santa Monica Evening Outlook were plastered with the tragic news of Mr. Lennon's murder yesterday at the Venice Golf Course. My little sister Karin, was over at the Lennon house yesterday playing with Annie in their backyard at the time the bad news had reached them.  Joey came outside to break the news and solemnly told her the second greatest understatement in history "Karin, I think you should probably go." The first greatest understatement being, "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the show?"

Our neighborhood was shocked! I know this wasn't global news. I know this wasn't as scandalous as Chappaquiddick or as sensational as the moon landing - three weeks ago, but this news was just as shocking to us and felt just as bad to our little, close knit neighborhood as JFK's assassination did 6 years ago.  

Sister Edith told us 7th graders, that if we missed Mass, it was a mortal sin and yet none of us felt very much like going this morning and I don't think the Pope was too upset that most of us on Harding Avenue didn't show up for church this morning.

Saturday night dozens of police cars began to show up and by Sunday morning we had cop cars parked up and down our street, along with reporters and a number of other mysterious vehicles.

The murderer had gotten away, but the Lennons knew who the prime suspect was right away. It was that deranged fan, Chet Young, from whom they had been receiving letters from for years. Actress Sharon Tate had been murdered less than a week ago and some of the newspaper people thought this murder was connected to the Charles Manson murders.

Chet Young had made death threats against President Johnson (back while he was still in office) believing that the President should have made Mr. Lennon allow Chet to marry Peggy, one of the four famous singing Sisters.


Since there were so many conflicting reports and since this involved the past President of the United states and possibly involved Charles Manson and might have been part of his serial, killing-spree of famous people the secret service sent a detail to our neighborhood to protect the entire Lennon family.

All of this to say... that I didn't get a birthday party BUT this time it was OKAY!  I was too young and too stupid to know what to say to my friends: Joey and Annie and Kippy. All I knew was that I felt sad for them and for their family. I had really liked Mr. Lennon. At 53 he was way too young to leave us. I remember him and the training he would do with his kids down Naples. I remember him driving down the street in his station wagon and seeing if any of us kids wanted to jump in and go see something that had caught on fire. I remember the time he took us down to the SLIDES at Venice Beach and we climbed under the fence and slid for free!  I remember the cherry bombs and the tin cups he would blow up out of the water in the backyard. I remember him threatening Leland to stop "hot-rodding" down our street. I remember how intense he was and also his sense of humor. I'll always remember some of his shenanigans during the big 4th of July shin-digs in their backyard.  

This was a bad day for Harding Avenue: Sorry friends, I'm going to miss your dad too!  

This was definitely not the "best birthday ever," but one I'll always remember - and one I'm glad I didn't have!  

...I guess we'll never get that race between Danny and Tony, but seeing how tony had broken the land speed record when he chased down that gator (last post) there really was no reason for the "match up of the century."

The Epic Race: Dahlins verses the Lennons

Star Date: August 11th 1969.

I got back from the "diarrhea-trip to Valhalla" (otherwise known as the 1969 Boy Scout Jamboree in Idaho) to find that things were awfully weird on Harding Ave.
Wait!
Wait!
Wait...that didn't come out right...everything was always kind of weird on my street, because we lived there of course.


 "Weird" is not the right word, maybe I should have said "unusual." Not that things had gotten normal all of a sudden, but that there was this ominous vibe in the air. I think the adults could explain it better, but as a kid it's something that you could feel by the silence.

Mr. Lennon was very athletic and always had his kids running time-trials up and down Naples avenue with a stop watch in his hand. I don't know if the times he recorded should have counted because the 50 and 100 dash-marks he painted in the street next to their house ran down hill towards Saint Marks church. Anyway, I think Danny and Mimi were his two fastest runners. Mr. Lennon was always trying to get us to race his kids, but I saw Mimi run a couple of times and knew that she could beat the pants off of me by a mile. Danny was playing football at Loyola University up on the hill with the big letter L that you could see from our house. Mr. Lennon's big challenge was his oldest boy, Danny, race against my oldest brother, Tony...
                            .                  ...i.e. the Lennons verses the Dahlins.

It was the anticipated event of the summer!  But when I got back home to Venice from this Boy Scout trip with Troop 32, there was no visible activity going on anywhere on Harding avenue.

 No diabolical plans of reeling in the old grouch next door (post 5/9/13).
 No launching of flaming UFO's (post 8/24/13).
 No bags of dooh-dooh on Edna's front porch.
 No hamper torture (post 6/5/13)
 No electrocutions (post 4/26/13 & 7/8/13).
 No screeching down the streets in Hot Rods.
 No Helm's Bakery Truck ambushes (post 8/3/13).

Tommy couldn't come out and play, the Blasers had to stay inside for some reason

Jeffry couldn't come out and play, Bob and Jeanette Lennon's family had to stay inside.

None of the Superior ave Lennons were around (and they were always around).

No touch football was taking place in the street. No kick-the-can and none of the Dahlins were shooting each other with B.B. guns nor we they hunting me with needle-tipped arrows.


I couldn't put my finger on it, but something wasn't right.

The hippies were in the back, quietly minding their own business, doing whatever it is they do in that back-ivy-cave with those "Mexican tomato plants" of theirs. I was beginning to get suspicious of those plants because they never seemed to grow any tomatoes  - even after all the attention my brothers gave them.

One of hippies was making his way from the ivy enclave (the dark ivy cave that the older boys called "Wall Drug") when the Veloci-Rooster attacked and scared the "long-hairs" spit-less who then screamed like a little girl and fell onto the thin, tin walls of the old, pool-turned reptile-habitat. Stretched out across the side of the fallen tin wall, the freaked-out screeches of the long-hair turned to a muffle as the dude landed face down into the billion gallons of sand that we had stolen from Venice Beach. When the cocky attack rooster caught a glimpse of what was slowly making a predatory approach in the direction of the downed hippie, it wisely backed up and gave way.    

The insidious yellow eyes of the creature blinked slowly as if assessing what to do with its victim. Exposing its dagger-shaped teeth the Caiman alligator appeared to have weighed it options and decided for escape rather than attack.  

Let me tell you, "That was one lucky hippie!"

The "gator" creature took off across the stoned victim and began running in a frenzied circle around the backyard looking for the easiest means of exit.

Chickens flew! Feathers were everywhere! Rabbits and chuckwallas and guinea pigs and even the desert tortoises took cover. Things flung, rusty bikes buckled into a heap and old BBQs standing on three legs fell over as stacks of decaying National Geographics swayed as if under the influence of the latest earthquake.

The chicken squawking, the awful screaming, the animal caterwaul, and the clamorous racket of the symphony of dissonance alerted all of us in the house that something terrible was "afoot" (Sherlock Holmes would say), in the backyard.  Tony and I looked out the window in time to see the gator making his way into the front yard.  The prehistoric reptile ran to the soft tar street and couldn't decide which way to turn. I hoped the Tripps wouldn't open their front door after what had happened to them last time (post 8/1/13 Iguana Del Diablo) and thought how nice it would be if Edna's brother, Hutch, was makings one of his notorious visits to Harding Ave instead and had a close encounter of the worst kind with the savage reptilian gargoyle.

(Ricky Tripp pictured to the left).

Without any fear at all, Tony took off his shoes and bolted after the flesh eating monster. The sharped-toothed beast raised it's body on all fours and took off towards the Lennon house. Forget Tony verses Danny Lennon, this was Tony verses the lightning fast cold-blooded carnivore that had escaped from the Dahlin swamp.

Billy Lennon decided he would break the top security curfew and had lurking outside in front where he watched the whole thing.

Down the street, came the gator ablaze with the inspiration of freedom, followed by the barefooted Dahlin whose feet were moving so fast that you couldn't even see them.


Taking a right at the corner of the Lennon's house Tony bolted after the high-strung vertebrate and made a record 50-yard-dash, grabbing the tail of the raptor so that it could not run into the wide open doors of Saint Mark's Church!

Tony flung the thing around a couple times to scatter its feeble brain, heaved it over his shoulder and returned the ravenous beast to it home.

Billy knew!  He saw the whole thing.

Billy knew that his oldest brother, Danny didn't stand a chance against my oldest brother! He sneaked back inside the safety of the compound and whispered accounts of the events of the epic race that took place right out in front of his house.

(I just put in the picture to the Right, for fun of course. The Lennon Sisters weren't really out in front during this latest episode...they were being diligently protected by the watchful eye of their Dad because of the rising intensity of the lunatic threats that the crazed fan, Chet Young, had made against Bill Lennon).

My birthday was in two days. I would finally become a teenager...13!  But in two days that didn't seem to matter anymore.. because everything was about to change the very next day on our beloved street!

                 Venice as I knew it, was about to change forever!

Oh and if any one sees Keith Bjelajac, thank him for letting me borrow his Saint Mark's sweater.

                  Next Time: The Tagic News!



 

Final Approach: The Eagle Has Landed

Star Date: July 26th 1969.


"The Eagle has landed"

 Man had stepped foot on the moon for the first time in history...I know a bunch of rats will be sorely disappointed, but as it turns out, the moon is not made of green cheese after-all.

I have to admit, however, that I was a little disappointed that we did not discovered a colony of Martins hiding behind some pile of moon rocks. The discovery of Martins would have helped to explain some of the outlandish stories of alien abductions on those dark, two-lane highways in the middle of the desert with the lone couple in their rusty old Chevy pickup truck.


BUT... it also was a bit of a comfort to believe that my rescuers at the infamous "Salton Sea Tragedy" (Post 5/13-27/2013) had not been aliens, but angels instead. From time to time I had wondered if I had been subjected to one of those crazy abduction events in my bizarre desert incident and had been given a mind-wipe before being returned to earth at Gene's Diner at the Salton Sea Marina. (An Alien abduction would account for an inexplicable lapse in time and also for the superhuman strength, I experienced that was way beyond my mere 90 pound frame, to fight off trained wrestlers who were 100 pounds heaver than myself and also the ability to fend off five or six members of the hippie Wolf Pack at one time - who just so happened to be at home in Venice waiting for my return ).

Anyway, Armstrong and his crew had plunged into the Pacific and returned safely to earth 2 days ago as President Kennedy had pledged 8 years earlier!  And, just as they had returned home from outer-space... Troop 32 was about to make the final descent back into Venice in our inglorious spaceship otherwise known as the Scout Truck which we affectionately called, "The Beast."  i.e. The converted moving-truck turned mobile-cage-fighting-on-wheels.  

 As we farted and fought, pee'd out the back and "BA'ed" grandmas all the way home from the Boy Scout Jamboree, I imagined how dull the ride must have been for the pathetic"normal" kids like Bill Gates who had to travel in those luxury buses and couldn't help but thinking about how much fun they were missing out on.

We arrived at our Scout House at the intersection of West Washington Boulevard and Washington Way and disembarked looking like a band of rag-tag, war-torn refugees to the horror of awaiting parents! 

  

I put my backpack on and trekked the few blocks home, wondering what was in store for me when I got there.  Oops... Wait, that's not my house... 

                                                              This is..... 

A lot of scary stuff was going on at this time. Charles Manson and his crew had set up shop not far away in Malibu and were in the middle of a killing spree that included actress Sharon Tate as well as the gruesome murders of the LaBiancas. 

Meanwhile, a deranged fan of our neighbors, the Lennon Sisters, by the name of Chet Young had made threats against the Mr. Lennon, and also against President Johnson, for keeping him away from Peggy Lennon (who he believed to be his wife).  

Not only were things tense in the world, but it seemed to be touching-down right in our city... right across the street...right on Harding Avenue and right in my backyard where the Vietnam War, draft-dodging hippies were hiding out next to the "Mexican Tomato Plants" under tyrannical scrutiny of the dreaded Veloci-Rooster.  

Next time: Another escapee that terrorizes our neighborhood.       

PG 13: The Smell of Victory...You Know you're From Venice If!

Star Date: July 23, 1969. (continued saga and finale)  The Grand Overture of the "Venice Plague."

It was a full two days since the Apollo 11 had landed on the moon and we had witnessed - "The One Giant Step for Mankind" and the Jamboree had officially come to an end. The 1935 National Jamboree in Washington DC had been cancelled because of the polio epidemic and I couldn't help but think that cancelling this Jamboree might not have been such a bad idea, considering the plague that had arrived from Venice California - likened to an abhorrent yet virile virus known as Troop 32. As it turned out, the infection spread throughout the 34,225 other boys who attended the Jamboree, but most ended up surviving - considering the head trauma, the stitches, our E.coli bacteria, the greatest prank of all time and the aggregated psychological torment that will likely require years of psychiatric counseling.

On the very last night after the amazing fireworks display... it was time for another orchestrated raid by the notorious "White Angels." (For those who are just tuning in, "the White Angels" are a band of rowdy Boy Scouts - making late night raids in nothing but their tightie-whities (that is butt-tight underwear) and a cacophony of masking tape that made us look like Zombies from hell.  One of our Senior Patrol Leaders gave us the brilliant  idea and the permissive wink-of-the-eye that created "culpable deniability" while saying, "But I would never tell you to do this. Because it would be wrong!"  (wink-wink)

Dego didn't want to borrow Chronister's underwear and decided that he would go on the raid with us in his "Birthday Suit."  Dego was older than most of us pre-teen pubates and was proud of his generous male endowment and was always looking for a good excuse to flaunt his stuff and taunt those of us still waiting for a single hair to show up under our armpits. After some argument, he conceded somewhat and decided that instead of going on the raid stark-naked, he would have Ronnie tape up his private parts with the masking tape - which I knew wouldn't end so well for him. (He didn't seem to care about the consequences... as a matter of fact - I think he was looking forward to it! Sick! Right?)  

                                      "You know you're from Venice if!"

Our "Saturday Night Massacre" began at 2:51am  in the wee dark hours when everything had settled down and was quiet in the Boy Scout compound. The raid began as we quietly invaded several camps in our immediate vicinity and stole every Idaho potato we could find. We gathered and amassed our vegetarian plunder in small mountain just outside the front tent flaps of the KYBO patrol. Armed with Idaho's finest spuds we sneaked, snaked and snuck out in groups of three towards the massive parking lot that was filled with those disdained luxurious travel-coaches of the other "Regular" Boy Scouts. One boy in each group shoved the oversize potato into the opening of the exhaust muffler.. the other kid hit is with a brick, a rock, a bat...or anything heavy enough to beat the potato solidly into round exhaust pipe - while the third kid served as a look out.  It took us a couple hours and by 5:00 we had managed to cover the entire parking lot. Hallelujah!

We didn't want the proverbial smoking gun to point in our direction so we stacked the excess potatoes, bricks, rocks and sticks across the field in the camp of the troop from Beverly Hills.




As 300 Boy Scouts at Farragut State Park (those anxious kids who hoped to  receive their "bugle" merit badge) unnaturally forced out an ear-piercing wake-up rendition of reveille on tortured bugles... it served as a covering for the horrifying screams from the tent of the KYBO patrol, as the boys exuberantly pealed the tape off from Dego's hairy underparts and also from his dangling thinga-ma-giggy that had been wrapped like a mummy.












We broke down camp and loaded up the Troop 32 Scout Bus for the long ride home back to Venice.



We fired up the old carbon monoxide spewing beast and watched the normal kids climb aboard the nice buses and smiled as if we liked them. 

We watched and gladly inhaled the fumes of our glorious beast as the buses of 20,000 Boy Scouts chocked and sputtered and coughed and flat-out refused to start. Alan played his rusty bugle as we laughed and sang a victory celebration from Creedence Clearwater - capped off with Dego and Cockrell flashing their bare-buns in a "full-moon," pressed up against opposite portholes of the beloved old scout truck from Venice. 

We bellowed in an awful cacophony like the squealing of 24 rats who had their tails caught in a door.    

"There's a place up ahead and I'm goin'

Just as fast as my feet can fly

Come away, come away if you're goin'

Leave the sinkin' ship behind

Come on the risin' wind

We're goin' up around the bend

Bring a song and a smile for the banjo

Better get while the gettin's good

Hitch a ride to the end of the highway

Where the neons turn to wood.." 

With a cover up like this; deniability; The Smoking Gun, midnight raids "The Saturday Night Massacre" and learning how to pass the buck.. someone in our group was bound to go into politics.

See ya later Bill Gates...and the rest of you suckas!

                                 Venice Rules!



 

Venice Pride, Bill Gates, and the Moon Landing!

Star Date: July 20 1969  (continued). THE BIG DAY

It was hot and muggy day at the Boy Scout Jamboree in Idaho. We wanted to hit the pool, but somehow the prior condition of our troop (back in the "Post-Prune" days in Yellowstone with the sudden flashes of diarrhea) made it all the up to the top brass. THE RULING BIG-WIGS decreed that "TROOP 32 be bared from the use of the community pool!"

Listen: It was humiliating to be the only Boy Scout Troop in the history of the world to be cut off from the public pool facilities. Unfortunately, it only served to irritated the infamous KYBO patrol.  The crazy "loons"sought revenge against the entire Boy Scout universe.  After all, we were about to land on the moon and conquer a celestial body in outer space and this is was the best thing they could think of at this historic moment! Man was about to set foot on the moon and they wouldn't let my 20 boys from Venice set foot on the bottom of the pool! Needless to say, Ronnie and Dego and Chronister and Cockerel were fit to be tied. They ended up over by Beaver Bay and began a rock throwing war with three other troops. Kissel, Humphrey and I had to get in on it and defend the honor of Venice!

After pelting each other with rocks we managed to inflict serious damage on two of the kids on the opposing shore!  We got a couple of them smack dab on the head and drew FIRST BLOOD...
                                                                               

YEAH! 

Victory! 

VENICE RULES! 

The only thing that would have made it better for the illustrious KYBO Patrol would have been if it were one of the kids from Troop 186 that we conked on the noggin... and even better than that - would have been if they had gotten that nerdy kid...Bill Gates! Luckily for him, he didn't have to eat glue-pasta like we did on the way.. he didn't have constipation...like we did... he didn't have to eat a bucket of stewed "grandma-prunes" like we did...and he and his cohorts didn't have explosive diarrhea like we did... and were now busy splashing around and having fun in the pool with other normal boys                                  ...LIKE WE WEREN'T!

The good news is we did manage to hit a kid named Charlie Schaupp who was one of the over-achievers in Troop 21.   Yeah!
 
And we also manged to hit one of those kids in the ridiculous red felt hats, who thought they were "all that."       YEAH us!

When brought up before the Tribunal, we denied it of course and had made up a big story about how we took this hike out in the woods trying to anticipate what the moon walk would have looked like.  Ronnie talked about how he pretended to eat the green cheese on the moon and Chronister said something about giant robots that morphed into different shapes on the dark side of the moon - stupid Chronister - who would ever believe that kind of nonsense!

Anyway, none of us cracked under the Waterboarding (just kidding about the Waterboarding part) not one of us cracked under their interrogation and it turned into one of those "he said...she said" type of brouhaha nonsense!

They screamed and yelled and made us recite the Boy Scout pledge to make sure we were really Boy Scouts and not that Zombies had eaten our brains and taken over our bodies.  Don't ask me how, but we managed to pull that one off!  They threatened to take the TV privileges of watching the Moon Landing away from us if we didn't behave for the rest of the day. Thank goodness we didn't do the naked raid as planned.. because they got pretty upset about the "White Angels" and 3:00 am "Pink Bellies"

Dego didn't care about watching, he thought the whole thing was a hoax anyway and was pretty vocal about it, but the rest of us wanted to watch as man walked on the moon.

We got to watch the whole boring hour of CBS coverage on the TV's they had set up all over Farragut State Park...

But the actually landing was very cool.  It was like one of those moments in life like "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" A thing you'll always remember exactly where you where!

Anyway we had a couple days left of making trouble and it is no wonder why they actually invited us NEVER TO ATTEND another jamboree.

I guess (like the Salem cigarette commercial jingle "You can take Salem out of the country, but you can't take the country out of Salem") was true for us... "You can take the kid out of Venice, but you couldn't take Venice out of the kid"  

We made our presence felt, we changed the outcome of history and two days later climbed into the back of that old Carbon Monoxide spewing "Scout Truck" and fought all the way home!

"One small step for somebody and a giant step for someone else - I guess!"


VENICE PRIDE!

Pictured to the right is the rear end of the infamous "Scout Bus"; Eagle Scout Kurt Dahlin on hood of red 1970 Toyota Corolla; Scout Steve Kissel (holding something important in the background) Senior Patrol leader...Ray (leaning in), and Markie D on bike along with other various creatures from Venice in the driveway of the Harding House with Famous Lennon Sister house in background!



Love you

Bill Gates and the Naked Zombies part 2

Star Date: July 18 1969    2 more days until the Apollo 11 lands on the moon and four hours from the time eight naked boys are loosed at Boy Scout National Jamboree.

(Continued).

Last time, the brainiac nerd from Troop 186 named Billy, gave me the high grades on his tracking skills course, and so, I couldn't hate him...right? He got all excited and started telling me how this tracking thing was like some-kind of logic flow chart - the kind of code they use for programming computers.  I didn't even know what a computer was and had no idea what he was talking about - but he was passionate about it.

I liked the little nerd, but unfortunately their troop from Seattle had incited the Flaming Arrow Patrol (of my Troop) which has by now become known throughout the Jamboree as the notorious KYBO Patrol (KYBO: was a military term that meant Keep Your Bowels Open, which had evolved into a derogatory slur against our less-than-illustrious patrol that had requested to be near the outhouses because poor Cockerel was still working through a bad case of "prune induced" diarrhea. In my best guesstimation he still had about 12 pounds of pasty spaghetti he had to pass through the lower part of his intestines - NO, but seriously!).

"Not gonna lie" These guys in the KYBO Patrol were loud, they smelled and they were filthy dirty. The hoity-toity types from Seattle who set up camp right next to us resented our Troop from Venice and got into a verbal sparring match. THIS WAS NOT GOING TO END WELL.  Later that night after the speech from Jesse Owens and the message from Neil Armstrong aboard the Apollo 11 from outer space, the KYBO patrol had big plans for Troop 186 - when I use the word big - it is not a metaphor - I mean "BIG!"  

During the wee hours of late muggy night the KYBO Patrol decided on a raid. Only, they thought that instead of dressing up and disguising themselves they wanted to do that raid as what they called the "NAKED ANGLES." I heard all the whispering in their tent and I quietly sneaked out of mine to see what they were up to.

I pulled back the flap of their tent to see 8 naked bodies putting tape on each other. I knew it was going to hurt coming off - but more power to them...right! This would be the first time ever in the history of the known boy scout universe for a naked raid at a Jamboree. Troop 32 was about to go down in infamy!  I tried to talk them out of the naked part for the sake of our Scout Masters and managed to get them to concede to what I called the "White Angels" and to at least - go in their "Tightie-Whities." Then everyone scrambled and borrowed skin-tight skivvies, if they didn't have any, and went on the 3:00 am raiding party. You talk about the Living Dead or attack of the Zombies this was it! The time had finally come; an event that inspired many a horror movie to come. (Only Chronister read something in an encyclopedia about pixies and wanted the Flaming Arrows to go marauding as something he called "Manic Pixies" everyone thought it was stupid and shot that idea down) "Manic Pixie Hot Mess" I thought that idea would never fly!

First things first! The "White Angels"decided to mess up the Indian Tracking course. By that - all of the kids thought it meant destroying tracks, adding new ones and littering the course with trash and other stuff you can find at 3 am in the morning... all except for "Dego."  When his patrol set off to mess up the course... somehow what got stuck in his brain was "to mess on the course." Now that our stools (except for Cockerel's) had some firm consistency to them, Dego threw the owl scat into some bushes and replaced it with the biggest stinkiest pile of human byproduct imaginable.

Next, the practically naked boy-scouts (if you could call us that) cut the ropes of the tent stakes and pulled Billy from his tent. They pants'd him and gave him a "pink-belly." Pretending to be Zombies, they said they were going to eat his brains and poop them out in the morning. After what Dego did, the boys from Troop 186 thought it just might be true.

As the baby boy of the"Wolf Pack" and perpetual underdog to my older brothers torturous shenanigans there shouldn't be any question in anyone's mind as to why I had this felt need to stand up for the underdog.

It was almost psychotic and my PTSD adrenaline addiction didn't help things either - when incited, I was always like that mother you hear about who could lift a car off her baby. I let them have their fun, but when they began to drag the poor kid over to Dego's "leaning tower of Dooh-Dooh," I Intersected their path and tried my best to derail their plans (this is what I would have wanted from a parent or a neighbor or anyone who I felt cared)...so I cared - sue me! I lied to them and told them that the MP's were on the way and punctuated that by telling the hairless Zombies that, "The nerd was safe.. because...How can you eat his brains... WHEN HE DOESN"T HAVE ANY!"  Then I laughed  in hopes of priming the pump and began howling in laughter, believing they had gotten the best of Troop 186 and scattering in victory.  I watched as eight pair of white-clad buns scurried back into the tent of the KYBO Patrol.

I checked on Billy to see if he was okay, but didn't want to say much because I could see he was embarrassed. The poor guy. I don't think he's got what it takes to become an Eagle Scout and knew that this Boy Scout thing just wasn't for him. I helped him up as he mumbled under breath that, he'll get even. That somehow he would show those guys. I knew exactly what he had felt like mainly because of what I had waiting for me when i got back to my house.

He said something about computers again and about making a bazillion dollars and about taking over the world. "I'll show them" he said... I wasn't too sure about that...(to be honest, I wasn't too sure about the future for computers). Then I saw the look in his eye and figured that it might be good to keep his signed piece of paper.  Who Knows!  Maybe someday, we will all have giant super-computers in the basement of our homes.  Right! Pshaw!  That would be like portable phones you could carry around with you... like that will ever happen. What are you going to do strap a phone booth on the top of your car!  - Not very likely.

Time to write another letter home I guess...

for you Android People Shocking Blue Write Me a Post Card

Hello Muddah.. Hello Faddah... "When I get home remind me to tell you about the White Angels some time and if you see Tommy Blaser and Jeffery and Kippy and Michael and Kevin Lennon running around the neighborhood, tell them it was better that they weren't here. I think the trip would have changed their outlook on world.