Protective Custody; Fire; the Fight with the Mad-Man!

Sept 1, 1969  (continued)

At the Lennon house things got crazy that night. Gunshots had been fired...so the Secret Service detail - frantically scrambled into action calling all the Lennons to take cover downstairs in the add-on that was now a family room.  The gunshots they heard (or what they thought were gunshots) were not far from the Lennon house and posed an imminent threat.

BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM... the loose windows at our house rattled from the series of gunshots or explosions or from whatever was going on across the street.

The noise woke up everyone on Harding, on Grandview, on Naples, on Coeur d'Alene, on Angelus Pl and even those on Crestmore... One giant explosion followed by other loud pops that sounded like gun shots.

AGAIN, this was in the wake of the Charles Manson murder spree and right after the murder of Bill Lennon.

A detail of Agents were stationed in the Lennon house for their protection from the murderer who was still at large and considered extremely dangerous. In high alert they drew their weapons and called for backup. These trained Officers were not about to take any chances and locked-down all 22 of the Lennons who had been staying in the Harding House under protective custody.

Meanwhile, black ugly smoke had begun to billow and blow in a slow ominous crawl from the Fraternity House that was now a  blazing inferno eastward on the slight ocean breeze across the Tripps and the Nargies - over the Saint Mark's nunnery (the convent) - over the Daniels - over Bob and Jeanette Lennons house that soon engulfed the Lennon Sister's house on the way to the Smiths, Saint Marks Rectory that moved slowly east across Lincoln Blvd.



Was this a ploy? Was this Chet Young or followers of Charles Manson trying to create a diversion to "smoke-out" the Lennon clan on the corner.  One of the officers on duty at the Lennon house, went outside to investigate only to be ambushed on the front lawn of the Tripps (which was directly next door the the grand turn-of-the-century house that was now ablaze in flames). The officer who had been tackled was now engaged in a life-and-death hand to hand combat on the lawn directly next to something that looked and sounded just like something you'd expect to see at the war zone in "Vietnam."

In the violent altercation, there was a tussle for the officer's gun, - the poor policeman looked like he was outmatched by the crazy guy who had attack him and wrestled him to the ground.

My dad, who had served in World War II, and I had both jumped up in a flash - he because of his service in the War and me because of  the PTSD from my service as baby boy to the Dahlin-hippie-Wolf-Pack.




I threw off my boxing gloves...(that's another story),climbed out my window, onto the carport roof and beat all of my other brothers outside. They thought the gun-shot-noise was my Staff-Sergeant dad beating the ceiling with a boom handle because it was street cleaning day and buried their heads...(Blog Post - 7/1/2013  street cleaning circus PS this is the true story for all you Venetians who want to know the real history of why they began street cleaning in Venice)

Who was the mad man on the Tripp front lawn?  Manson and his murderous cronies had still not been arrested yet and Chet Young was still on the loose!




Find out next time... One thing for sure - Harding Avenue was definitely not Mayberry and there was always something crazy going on... only this time there was a fight on the lawn between an officer and a crazy dude, people trapped upstairs in the burning inferno and now things had gotten really scary that Don Blaser had run outside in tightie-whities.

What's going to happen with the Lennons?
Does Don Blaser know he has no clothes on?
Will the hippies trapped in the "Fraternity House" get out alive?
Will my brothers sleep through all this excitement?
Will Leland or Tommy Blaser be blamed for this?