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!