The Secret Service and Gunshots on Harding!

I have been trying to write the unbelievable, bizarre, incredible, "too-crazy-to-be-true" stories of my growing up years in chronological order the best I can remember.  I began this blog about a year ago - beginning by telling about my first day in 5th grade (as my class moved up from one end of Saint Marks grammar school to the other end of the school building) in Sister Godzilla's class.















That first day of 5th grade was after my wild family let the monkeys out of the LA zoo - 5/3/13
                   It was after my brothers had learned how to harness  electricity for inventive forms of sibling and
                      neighbor torture, which also happened to include the occasional visiting nun - 4/26/13
               ...It was also the summer my family left me at behind at Salton Sea that ended in a high speed                              Highway Patrol chase to Indio - 5/27/13                                                                                                ...It was after nearly a dozen broken bones and having my leg nearly severed completely off


I continued to work my way through stories about our notorious neighborhood pranks and dangerously stupid UFO launchings that almost burned down the Lennon Sisters house on the corner, fishing for the old grouch next door, and the improbable meeting of a lifetime that led us to cross paths with the President of the United States (LBJ) while on one of our wild adventures across country - 9/14/13






With 30,000  visitors from 86 countries around the world to my blog, I am now in that chronological telling of the history of the world - or the history of Venice or the history of Saint Marks or the history of Harding Avenue in the summer of 1969, just after having my 13th birthday.



(Pictured to left is 900 Harding Ave. Venice. CA. circa 1965 i.e. "The Fraternity House")




My last posting has to do with the tragic death of Mr. Lennon and the pursuing turmoil it presented to the Lennons as well as to our neighborhood with the confusion that was stirred up by media frenzy linking the murder of Bill Lennon to the recent La Bianca-Tate murder spree of Charles Manson and his cult followers. Turns out that the murderer, a disturbed psycho, by the name of Chet Young, had also expressed murder threats against President Johnson back when he was in office.  Thus, necessitating the invasion of the Secret Service to our street for protection of the Lennon clan.

What I found out in my visit to Branson last summer from Joey Lennon was the key to solving the timing of the Great Fraternity-House Fire. He and Billy Lennon told me the events that took place while they were in protective lock-down by the Secret Service that shed light on the exact timing of that event.  I had previously put this event in my blog early in 1969 (for choosing 1969 I get a B+  because no one I had talked to - who lived on Harding during the big fire - could agree on the exact year - let alone the exact time that it happened).

Joey and Billy Lennon, however, knew exactly when that fire took place. It was almost 45 years ago to this exact day.

Most of the Lennon family - including all of the Lennon Sisters, their husbands and kids had all come back to live in the big house on Harding Ave for their protection - because Chet Young had gotten away and was still on the loose.  From across the street where we lived, it looked like a hundred Lennons were crammed in there at the time- but what does a 13-year-old know...none-the-less, it was a big number that exceeded the number of Venice hippies, friends and strays who were crammed in my house.

Since I shared my memories on the big fire I have heard some stories of others who have shed more light from their perspective (including the Tripps, who lived right next door, and an actual person who told me about how they were trapped inside on the second floor of the fraternity house at the time of the fire).

Now what I would like to do, since there are many new people to my blog, is to paste all of that together with the new information in its correct chronological time frame that took place within weeks of the Bill Lennon murder during the time of the invasion of the Secret Service to our street on Harding Ave (at this exact time 45 years ago).

At the Lennon house things got crazy that night. Gunshots had been fired...so the policemen and Secret Service detail frantically scrambled into action calling all the Lennons to take cover downstairs. 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 serious of gunshots or explosions or from whatever was going on across the street.

To Be Continued.

PS if you are reading this and have memories of that night, I would very much like to hear your recollection - value your input and would like include your memory of the event in the upcoming continuation of the big event - so please share in a comment below or on FACEBOOK and I'll add it into the story.