Halloween and the Ouija Board pt 2

(Continued from last post) Seeing that it is Halloween and that we had unleashed the evil forces of the dark spiritual world upon Venice... it is only reasonable that I tell of that spooky and TRUE - Yes...True Story of the infamously creepy event of the Ouija Board of 1965.

It was as if dark tar or slow creeping molasses had begun to flow from portal we had opened earlier with the séances that we had carelessly dabbled with back in 1962. The evil substance was like a sticky sludge that stuck to the bottom the shoes of whoever happened to step in the thick wicked slim. It was infectious and I could smell when it began to take over someone's body like an odoriferous cancer.

Adults could neither see the the gooey slim or smell the rotten stench.   But, it was here and it was in our house.

I think it was one of the reasons that I threw up so much...evil deeds seemed to have the stench of rotting flesh that I become very sensitive to.

Being buried in pits  (Click here) Pit of Despair
Given templates   Chewbacca and the template of doom
or stuck in the hamper of death...  Hamper to Valhalla it all smelled!      "Mean" things, smelled.

Our house...like the fraternity house at the corner, the McClain's house and the Lennon Sister's house on the other end of the street were all originally two story homes built at the turn of the last century with giant attics.  Our house at 925 Harding had an attic on top of the attic and in order to make the most use for all of the kids - those attics were converted into third story bedrooms...we had 4 bedrooms on our third floor.















The older boys had returned from "trick or trick"... no I didn't get that wrong... I did not mean to say "Trick or Treat" with my brothers and that cancerous slim that had attached itself to their skin made them torment, prank or trick regardless if given candy or not -  you know the "flaming dooh-dooh bag" and stuff like that.

Well after coming back with the plunder of tormenting all of Venice, they decided to pull out the Ouija Board - after all they reasoned, it the Devil's birthday.

Turning off lights and making the house as scary as possible they begged the oft-used board to reveal to them a hidden secret. I could smell the beast and they did not let me near the board, because I kept gagging and heaving my guts up... after getting thumped on the head a couple times, I stood out of arms reach and watched from a safe distance.

The creepy board had the 5 older boys crammed around it and the pointer-thingy-ma-bobby... slid violently in the direction of the dining room from where we began in the Living room.

Chaos broke out among the boys - accusing each other of pushing the pointer-thing and a small fist fight ensued and eventually order was restored to the normal state of controlled chaos.  Again Wolf Pack lightly placed finger tips on the triangle-shaped-thingy-ma-gigger and this time it jerked to the right - towards the brown stairs just past the 50 pound sack of powered milk. Powered Milk Wars

Again, blaming broke out that turned into a wrestling match with the corresponding protest of innocence as fear settled the boys with the awful realization that just maybe - this thing was really in charge.  Goosebumps!

Up they went! One flight of stairs... yells and accusations and blaming and angry denials and wham went the pointy-thing... up another set of stairs to the third floor they went and I followed. It took them in a 360 turn and pointed to the junk-filled room that overlooked Edna's house (the grouch who lived directly next door).

I'll bet Tommy Blaser was not at home throwing up because he had smelled the stench of death and that Jeffery Lennon had not had to experience the spin-tingling sensation of being in the presence of evil and certainly Joey or Kippy Lennon did not have to live with the oozing tar like evil - You see, they were normal and were probably at home with the lights on counting up the sweet plunder of "trick or treating" and swapping candy with siblings like regular people do.  If I had to guess, I'd say the Lennons were gathered in the family room strumming a guitar and singing "Kumbaya my Lord"    

That's my guess!



But not us... We were at home fighting and under the spell of this contraption that led all of us to a third floor bedroom that was full of junk.

It was dark and it was scary and I did not let the older boys know that I had tears in my eyes and I think one of them had wet their pants again...But no fighting this time - they were too scared!

Everyone had goosebumps and no one dared set foot in the uninviting blackness until the the bravest one pushed Kurt into the room. THIS IS WHEN THINGS GOT CRAZY! We heard a crack... and frantic cries for help as Kurt disappeared and then muffled screams as if he had fallen into an abyss.  He had been eaten by the room. The older boys screamed and jumped up and down and swung wildly in the air as if defending themselves from an invisible attacker.

Kurt was gone. They would have to explain to mom and dad how they had either murdered their brother or try to explain how the house had swallowed him.

Then the faint cry. Kurt had indeed been swallowed, like Jonah who been trapped in the belly of a great fish. Sharp teeth tore his shirt and clawed the sides of his body as he was helplessly wedged in the black darkness of the secret hole stuck between walls a floor below.

This was the Devil's portal that the Ouija Board had led us to and Kurt was now stuck in it.

I ran down a flight of stairs and threw up in the toilet while the boys fought over whether to rescue him or let him die and discussed how they could cover up the evidence.

The ooze was creeping and I could smell the stench of death.

(Sorry - but kids are knocking on my door asking for candy so I'll have to finish this dark TRUE Story of the The Black Abyss of Death next time...)

If you don't believe me - Find someone in my family as ask!

Stay safe!

The Dark Secret of the Ouija Board.

1969: The Ouija Board and Dark Portal of Harding Ave.

Last time I left off with - not only my pride bruised from the epic "love-fail" in the Saint Mark's schoolyard in front of all the girls, but also with a couple choice bruises on various body parts at the hands of a bully big brother and his gang of angry little men.  Now I am in my room talking to my dog and worried about what is going to happen after dark.  You see, not only do I try to avoid the flippant hippies downstairs who think I'm a throw toy and the schemes of the unfeeling Wolf Pack upstairs on the third floor, but spend nights frightened to death of something even more dark and sinister that began years ago.









My family was responsible for opening a portal to the dark underbelly of the demonic realm by dabbling in the dark arts by staging séances in our living room. I was young and remember the time the table lifted off of the floor and how one of my older brothers pee'd his pants - two cried because they were scared to death (teenagers crying - could have been the best day ever EXCEPT...

...Except the fact that at that very moment it was the precise instance that we unleashed something insidious that dwelt in the dark places of our house and we had lots of dark places.  Being young, I had a special sensitivity to the boogie man and monsters under the bed, Zombies, demons and things that go bump in the night.

Me? I saw it - they didn't! They were dull and clueless to what they had  unleashed into the house and into the neighborhood and probably worst yet - didn't care.

And here I sat in my room with my trusty dog - in the room nobody wanted. The reason I had a room to myself in a house with something like 532 people (that would be my brothers) crammed together in the limited number of bedrooms ... was because this room had a dark secret.

The hole that I slept in was discovered by the Ouija Board.  

                              THIS IS ALL TRUE!

Here is a picture of me (later in about '72  with a broken leg - and a hippy older brother clickhere Hotel Crazy and the Harding History of Broken Bones) and the loft bed in the background.   I liked the loft bed because it gave me an advantage over the Wolf Pack that had protection on three sides and offered high ground.

It made it easier for me to defend myself against night raids and suffocation but was the portal of the ghost that lived in the basement.

Since this it is just a couple days to Halloween I think I will tell you the story of that day with the Ouija Board that changed everything.            


 If you don't believe me ask my brothers!


What my house looked like...

What I thought it felt like....  

Next time the conclusion to the Ouija curse. 

 

The Beatles The Blacklist and Breaking Bad

(Continued from previous post)



No... I'm not trying to bow to the altar of current trends, but only to show how the genesis of these future trends began some 45 years ago right on my short street, known as Harding Avenue in Venice California just at the time the "bromance" known as the Fab Four (i.e. the Bealtes) was in the early stages of breaking up.

Ringo was ticked that he wasn't given as much credit as he felt he deserved and was forced to take a back seat to Paul and John on the album covers.  John was having a love crisis of his own and had divorced Cynthia and married Yoko Ono earlier this year... and was still trying to figure it all out, which only served to erode the cohesiveness of the small tribe of the famous Four from Britain.

The guy who wrote the songs and sang about love seemed to not to know anything more about love as I did...a 13 year-old who had absolutely no clue. As I mentioned before; though, I was part of a large tribe, I was partially numb inside.. running off of the fixes of adrenaline that knew nothing of true affection.

Today was the day I had hoped to make progress in the discovery of what it meant to feel love. Seems like every day on KRLA I heard that song... "Love is all you need"  and the Beatles told me it was easy... but I think John is lying and I figured that it might be harder than it looks - obviously he was clueless.  

"Love... Love... Love...  It's easy" yeah right!

Returning from detention, I walked down Harding feeling like I had failed in my vain attempt to make my own affections known at the water-faucet incident at the girl's corner of the schoolyard at Saint Mark's Catholic grammar school. I rounded the corner by the burned down "Fraternity" house after screaming at Sister Schultz (a conversation that was all in my head) feeling a bit redeemed and withdrawing into the safe place of  my mental illness that my Viking Brothers had convinced me was retardation. If it was, it was okay, because in there, I was happy.

Whistling "All you need is love" I was headed anywhere, except home.  I was in no mood for a "template" (click here) Chewbacca and the Template of Doom , no mood for electrocution nor was I in any mood for some of my older brother's crazy antics and diabolical forms of sibling torture. I needed the break after being laughed at by all the girls in the eight grade class having to spend a hours worth of prison time. Looking to find Tommy or Jeffery or Ricky or Denny I forgot that being detained for the horrible hour - meant that Ulrich and his Angry-Small-Man-Crew, known as the "H" club, had already made it home from Saint Monica's High School and were hidden behind Frank Nargie's huge, green Mopar secretly siphoning gas. Either my presence shocked them or embarrassed them or startled them or just plain made them feel guilty or something... and seeing that I was already on "The Blacklist"  of the "H" club - they had no hesitation in ambushing me from where the three of them laid in wait behind Frank's car.

Ulrich and I had an arraignment about his paper route.  I was forced to delivered the newspapers, and he got all the money. He was pissed off that I was late today and he and his three cronies had to do the route all by themselves and vowed that I would have to pay with my life (poor Ulrich had to do his own paper route today - somebody call the WAHmbulance).

The torture that I normally received from my other brothers was significantly different. Usually, it was experimental and I was used as a lab-rat before they employed it on the nuns at Saint Mark's or on friends (just to make sure none of them got killed). It wasn't a bad arraignment, I kind of enjoyed it in a sick way - but with Ulrich, it was conjured up from somewhere dark. His bullying always turned into a bloody street fight where I was outnumbered at least 3 to 1. It was Breaking Bad and today was no different.

Before I surprised them, I was  getting to the part in the song where it says... "She loves you... yeah, yeah, yeah" lost in fond thoughts of my true love Andrea and BAM... out of nowhere I was tackled and thrown to the ground by the three angry midgets. I put up a good fight... got "monkey boy" in a head-lock chock-hold and managed to sock O' Casper Milk-Toast in the mouth when Ulrich stepped on my diminutive Adam's apple. Gasping for air, I begged for mercy and pleaded with him to get his foot off of my wind pipe... to which he snarled and retorted in disgust, "Oh it's always about you!" and kicked me until I let go of Monkey-Boy, to which I acquiesced.

Sure, I had some cuts and bruises... but had learned  how to tune out the physical pain and limped home - fearing like I was going down  the rabbit hole...It was as if I was sliding down a slippery slope that was like the story of Pinocchio in reverse where I was becoming less and less human...and needed love to save me. I was afraid that the more I withdrew into my own little world... and the more emotionally numb I became - the sooner I would stop being human and the more I would become a Zombie or Robot or a lifeless shell - incapable of ever knowing what love is.  




I avoided the Veloci-Rooster, stealthily managed to avoid the herb-smoking hippies and quietly navigated my way up the stairs to my room without further detection.


In silence, I cuddled with my beagle and prayed to the universe - begging for mercy that I would not become a monster.  The dog kept silent and stared into my eyes and let me know I was not alone in a big house filled with lots of unfeeling and uncaring bodies.  






   

Love: Serious Sad Sinister and too Happy

Star date: 1969

That's me in eight grade!

A little serious
A little sad
A little sinister

Always contemplating the world around me and probably more than anything else - HAPPY!  Probably too happy - that's what Jeffery's mom, Jeanette Lennon, thought... and always asked me why?

She asked why I was smiling - like it was a bad thing and interrogated me about my incessant whistling.  I really wasn't aware of it until she brought it up and realized that I didn't have a good answer and felt like maybe she was accusing me of  hiding something... like I had buried a million dollars in the backyard or a body or something. But, as I thought about her questions, I felt the answer did not lie in a hidden treasure,  but might have been the fact that I was actually a little retarded!

It seems to me that retarded people are always happy and I didn't have a good explanation as to why I felt so confident at times like one of those young characters in a Disney movie who was homeless and penniless - you know, one of those street rats who enjoyed the difficulty of fending for himself as I moved throughout the neighborhood like the artful dodger, bouncing from house to house, trying to avoid the traps set for me by the Wolf Pack.

Anyway, my brothers (the Wolf Pack) told me that I was retarded and I began to believe them. I suspected that something must have been wrong with my brain cells.
After all I wrestled an alligator click here: Reptile Dysfunction

Lost a battle with the Dreaded Veloci-Rooster Click here Prophet of Evil or Bird
Was buried alive  Kid in a Pit and a Water Hose
Survived the Monkey Fiasco at the LA Zoo Monkey Business

          Had my leg chopped off My death and long-haired hippies



Attacked by a whale... No lie - A Whale of a Tale!
and sent to Valhalla and back in the Hamper of Death Hamper of Death: I took the bait!
Not to mention that was I LEFT BEHIND by my family at Salton Sea Abandoned and LEFT BEHIND







I don't know what was wrong with me - after being shot and buried and attacked and tied up and caged and electrocuted and suffocated - to be left out and always made to feel like I was on the outside - if anyone had any reason to feel sad or sorry for himself - it was me! But, it's like I had this glow-plug thingy inside that burned with some kind of secret knowing.  It might have been the same thing that Joseph (you know, the younger brother in the Bible who had the coat of many colors) had burning in him, despite the fact, he had lots of mean older brothers who picked on him and tricked him, and threw him in a pit and left him behind.

Anyway, I didn't want the kids at Saint Marks grammar school to know I was retarded or had some kind of mental problem, because I was in love with Andrea and wanted to see what this thing that other people had a lot to talk about was all about. Though we had a million people living in our house...no one ever used the "L" word. I never heard it in a conversation and no one had ever said it to me. I wanted to know what it felt like and what it meant to be loved and to feel as though I mattered to someone.

LOVE!
What was it?
What did it mean?
Could that little cutie, Andrea possibly like someone like me - who was damaged goods? I had superpowers that helped me survive and that made me numb to a lot of physical torture and also might have made my heart numb as well. Was it possible for me to find out what love was and wanted to know that I could be loved and was becoming more and more desperate to find out?

Today was the day!  Happy, Smiling, Whistling, Markie D - the artful dodger would dare look up from his his shoes and mismatched socks and say a word to her.  Our eight grade nun, Sister Shultz, set us free for recess and today I would make the big move. During recess I wondered off from the boys reservation to where the girls congregated like the noisy seagulls at the beach and pretended the reason for invading their sacred territory was, because I needed a drink from the water fountain.

There was a little buzz when I walked by... and I felt like maybe they were talking about me... maybe even making fun of me. I hated that feeling. Things got quiet! I hated that even more it made me feel self conscience like they were looking through me with a magnifying glass and were mocking my insecurities and fear of the dark and flaws and shortcomings - like they were seeing all the trash and junk in our backyard as though that was me... Venice Trash Towers .  I doubted myself and my plan but continuing with my ruse, I put my mouth close to the disgusting fixture and turned the chrome handle on the porcelain fountain as if this drink of water was an important reason for being in the girl's corner of the schoolyard.

I took control of the situation and turned that handle with all the vigor I could muster. I would show those girls that I wasn't afraid of them or of afraid of what they thought of me. I was in love or something like that... at least I think I was... and this was my big shot at find out if I was worthy of someone's affection.

Speaking of my big shot - the water shot out with the force of the jet spray of a rocket ship and hit me right in the eye. Michael Boyle was known to take boogers and jam them into the water spickets - just for occasions like this.

Blinded, I reeled up and thought about how one of Michael's fat, gross, boogers had embedded itself in my eye socket, which triggered my vomit sensors and I ended up ingloriously puking my guts up in front of 30 laughing girls and the one I hoped to impress the most. EPIC FAIL!

Needless to say, today didn't go as planned. Sister Shultz scolded me and said, "That I shouldn't have put myself in that position." Like it was my fault that Boyle pasted a green globule of snot in the faucet and that I shouldn't have punched him in the face.

I said to her, "Well, he shouldn't have put himself in that position" which was brilliant by the way.. only it was an hour later on my way home after detention and under my breath a dozen times - wanted to fell like I had won.  

Once again I managed to make a fool of myself and moseyed home like a defeated dog with his tail between his legs, but after a couple rounds of my pretend shouting match with the Catholic nun that looked like Sergeant Shultz (on Hogans Heros) my whistling returned as I rounded the corner by the burned down Fraternity House. I was looking forward to playing with Tommy or Jeffery or Dennis - just anything that would keep me away from alligators, from electricity, from hampers and pits and arrows and BB guns and ropes and the WOLF PACK!  I had already been through enough humiliation for one day and didn't need any more torture from my older brothers.  I wanted to be anywhere, but home and needed to avoid my family at all cost.

With a spring in my step...and a little too happy...in light of the disastrous events of the day... I gladly withdrew into my mental illness - if that's what it is - daydreamed and sang the Beatles "All my Loving" totally oblivious to the ambush that awaited me behind Frank Nargie's behemoth Plymouth.

     
all my loving

Running out of Suspects: The Big Fire and Love...

(Continued from last time).

First, I must apologize to the 30,000+ people who have visited me over the past year on this blog from 86 countries around the world. I want you to know that I appreciate you checking in from time to time to check in on the History of the World (in the 1960's from the perspective of that little kid in Venice - Markie D - that's me)!

You are important to me and I don't want you to feel like I'm neglecting you (I have been busy with another project unrelated to this and am down to my last chapter and am trying to make the final big push to finish it off - please forgive me as I come back up for a breath of air).

This is part 3 of the big fire... Sadly the majestic old lady at 900 Harding Avenue (pictured to the right) had burned to the ground during a very turbulent time not only in history, but what was also an extremely difficult time for everyone on the short block of Harding Ave in Venice.

Venice Troop 32 managed to spread the Venice contagion around the Western part of the United States - that helped shape the future of Bill Gates. Click here for this unfortunate encounter!

 Man had just landed on the moon. The Vietnam War had escalated... rioting on colleges was practically the norm and my hippie brothers along with many others across the fruited plain had burned draft cards in protest.

Civil Rights and race riots consumed our corporate National psyche.  JFK, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had all been assassinated.

This was a crazy time... "It was the best of times the worst of times."

All of this seem to spill over into our neighborhood. We were wigged out over the senseless murder and still grieving the loss of Bill Lennon Sr. This murder threw our tight-knit neighborhood into a tailspin of mourning, loss, fear and suspicion. The murder of the famous Lennon Sister's dad came at a time that Charles Manson and "The Family" had been out on a cultic killing spree of actress Sharon Tate and the high-profile LaBianca murders that convinced the authorities that "Americas Singing Sweethearts" might be the next target and put the entire clan under a protective detail.


Other than the heightened drama that the PTSD flashback caused by returning vet, Bobby Tripp, and the big fight on the front lawn next door to the blazing inferno - the quick action by Mr. Blaser, my dad and my brothers helped save all the Fraternity Members who had been trapped on the second floor of the house that had been engulfed in flames.

But now, it was time to find out - Who! Who was responsible for the attempted murder of at least a dozen college-aged students and was responsible for the Molotov Cocktail bombing?

I had a list of suspects whom I submitted to the Venice Fire Chief.

Poor Jimmy's nuts were still sore from being impaled on the gear shift lever of his new Schwinn Stingray and wouldn't ride me back over to the fire station. So now I was on my own to interview my top arson suspects.

Though Susie was young (as I mentioned last time), she was a prime suspect "in my book." Her older brother (not Bruce pictured here - to the left ) but her oldest Cameron had something to do with it. He ran the infamous Fraternity House and kept telling his little sister to stay away from his hallowed sanctuary of booze and "frat boys" and loose women.

Finding her sneaking in for the umpteenth time, Cameron had literally booted her off the second story balcony, but the biggest factor had to do with the time he dropped her smack dab on her head (which some say caused irreparable damage to her gray matter) either way - whether, brain damaged or not, she certainly had a motive for payback.    

I looked everything I could find out about how to make a Molotov Cocktail and there wasn't much in the World Book Encyclopedia. After interviewing Susie (I certainly couldn't disprove the rumors of her brain malfunction, but I was totally convinced that a "poor-man's hand-grenade" was definitely above her pay grade) and crossed her off my list of suspects.

Johnny Gillamonster (pictured to the right) could have done it!  He had motive and a technical expertise that was at a much more sophisticated level than Susie's.  He had been the paperboy to the fraternity house and had gotten jacked around so many times when trying to collect his paper-route money that he did indeed plan a diabolical payback. This he admitted!  Ah Ha!  I had him.

However, in my rather extensive investigation I discovered collaboration that backed up his spurious alibi of burying a pile of dog dooh-dooh which he took great pleasure in scoping off the Nargie's lawn and delicately placing the stinky, steaming, gooey pile right between the sports section and the funny pages of the huge Sunday morning edition of the LA Times.

Johnny laugh so hard in his recollection of the story that I figured it must be true and satisfied his felt need for revenge.

One by one - The Saint Mark Nuns, the Daniels, the Dahlins, the Nargies, The Manriquez, the Blasers, the Lennons, even Leeland had all come off my list for one reason or another.

I was stuck with one name - the owner who was my last suspect and the Fire Chief said that I was not allowed to "go down that road."

"Ah ha... I knew it... it was the man on the grassy knoll"  i.e. another conspiracy theory that would never be resolved.

At least I tried!  Now I had to get back to the more important things that consumed the minds of 8th grade boys which was to see if I could get one of the girls in my class to broker a relationship with the one true love of my life - Andrea.

I think the Fire Chief was glad to see that I was in love and had decided to moved on... It kept me out of his hair and restored order to the Venice Fire Station.

I can tell you this...love is not as easy as it looks on TV... especially for a 13 year old in the body of an 11-year-old... that definitely had issues in his gray matter!  

Somebody help the boy!

Markie D, The Fire Chief and the Big Mystery

(Continued from last time) Sept 1969

"Going by the Blasers...Now the McClains. Hi Mac how ya doing?  Now by the Bibles Hey Pat, Cathy... beautiful day!  Now a jaunt by Campbell's court around the corner in front of Doctor Arnold's. Hey Doc!"

My dad, "Mr. D" was in the living room jogging in place and talked to himself. He pretended to run around the block and say "hi" to all the neighbors that he passed on his short imaginary journey that took far less time to accomplish than a real run down around Harding Avenue, Grandview, Venice Boulevard, Naples and back.

I had fully intended on jumping on one of the motorcycles out in front and driving it over to the Venice Fire station, but since I had just turned 13 and dad was home - I opted to ride over on the handlebars of Jimmy's custom Stingray "Krate" with the 3 speed gear-shift-lever.  



The only problem with the cool gear-shift-lever is that if you ever slipped off the pedal "OUCH!" Boy did that black knob hurt the "vitals."  (Don't tell Jimmy, but every now and then I jammed on the brakes pretending it was purely accidental, hoping I could get him to jam his boy parts on the shifter! This morning on the way to the Fire Station it worked twice and poor Jimmy could barely walk by the time we arrived).

Anyway, I walked into the station with my list of arson suspects with poor Jimmy hobbling behind and asked to see the Chief. Knowing that he had been at a loss since Young and Manson had officially been removed as prime suspects (last post), I showed him my list of suspects and explained everyone's motives.

1) Chet Young
2) Charles Manson and gang
3) Mr. Blaser
4) A couple of my brothers and a long-haired friend
5) Susie Grant
6)  Mr. D (my dad).
7) Johnny Gillemot
8) The Catholic Nuns
9) Leeland
10) Walter Daniels
11) The Nargies
12) Tommy Blaser
13)  Mr. Malon

Though my neighbor, Don Blaser, had helped in the rescue, he had as much motive to burn the house to the ground as did most of the hard working responsible adults on our street. It was a plight and it needed to go!
The Chief's eyes widened and seemed very interested in Mr. Blaser- until I explained what I thought, unfortunately, was a pretty iron-clad alibi. We were right next door to the Blaser's and our house was an even worse plight.

I had an old couple from Nebraska pull up in front of my house one time and ask me if our dilapidated old thing was a hippie commune. With all the junk and the cars and the long-hairs hanging around. I have to admit, we did look like a commune which certainly had to drive down the prices of real estate on our street. Besides the fleas, the mosquitoes and the escaping rattlesnakes - Escaping Rattlesnakes and Iguana Del Diablo (click here) being right next door to the Blasers...this gave Mr. Blaser more motive to burn our house to the ground.




                                 click here for: Infamous Trash Towers of Venice






Judging by these pictures you might understand why the Fire chief could have felt why Don Blaser would have wanted our house to go up in flames first.

The Fire Chief had written his name down as a person of interest and then sadly scratched it off seeing the logic that if Don Blaser was going to burn anyone's house down-  it definitely would have been ours first!

1) Chet Young
2) Charles Manson and gang
3) Mr. Blaser 

My 4th suspect wasn't just one person, but was really three of the older boys who had been rejected in their cross-dressing scheme hoping to fake out the phony "frat guys" in order to gain acceptance into the place (this was what they had to do for losing a bet).

Again he was interested! I think the city of Venice was looking for any good reason to lock us up, but I explained that it probably wasn't the older long-hairs who had dressed up as girls to get into spurious  "Frat House" - because the guys had all taken their girl friends on another one of their notorious "Albino hikes" Click here for : Albinos and Vampires and finished off the night out back in the hippie-hutch-hut we called "Wall Drug."



That explained the reason why we couldn't wake them up right away when all of the explosions were going off.  They had just gotten to bed and probably had a little too much of this and a little too much of that....

                                Even more sadly, he crossed them off too!

4) Chewbacca. Puke-Breath. Primo. 
5) Next was Susie. Although, she was young, she had every reason to burn the place down. It wasn't because she necessarily wanted to see the place go up in flames, but rather because she wanted to punish her older brother for dropping her on her head on more than one occasion.  (I asked the Chief if he had seen the movie The Bad Seed and told him that I think she could have done it).  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and wanted to hear more.



"Isn't that right Jimmy?" I said, calling on my star witness. "Jimmy, tell the Chief why you believe it could have been Susie. (He was there when Cameron dropped kicked Susie from the second floor balcony of the "Fraternity house" and saw the whole thing). "Jimmy!"




Jimmy was over on the bench, apparently consumed with rubbing life back into his numb boy parts and hadn't been paying attention to one thing were were talking about.

I could tell this investigation was going nowhere without me, and now, the Fire Chief  was beginning to realized  how much he needed my eyes and ears if we were ever going to solve this mystery.

Next time: Susie off the hook and Johnny Gillemot's alibi!