Christmas in Venice and the Viking Warrior Gene

Christmas 1970  We were normal once, but that was a long time ago.

At one time we were cute and cuddly and snugly - had manners and said our prayers.

 (I'm the cute one on the rocking horse)

(Erick and Mary)  (Here I am crawling on the floor) 

(Kurt and Karl)

We took pictures without pinching the person in front of us or elbowing the person next to us. We ate meals together at the kitchen table and called our mother and father "mom" and "dad" like most other children in the world. 

Being number 7 most of those days are before my time and are but a shadowy memory at best.

 

(Here is what a couple pictures look like without having prison guards or parents on patrol)

Now that I am 14 and in high-school at Saint Monicas - mom has pretty much checked out and dad stays at work as much as possible--so it is like having the inmates running the asylum.

In the future they will discover something called the warrior gene. This, I'm sure, has been handed down to my family from our Viking ancestry. This genetic disposition is not on my mom's side of the family. There was still some "normal" in her that caused her to long for our family to be like other all the other plain wrap families in the world--but this was not to be.

Everything in our house was a competition. A simple game of croquet turned into World War II with croquet balls launched all the way down Harding Avenue into the Nargie's front yard and the round-missile-objects shot all the way down to the vacant lot where the Fraternity house use to be.

Croquet for the Lennons and Tripps and Blasers was probably just croquet. For us, it would invariability turn into a wrestling match--everything turned into a wrestling match, a boxing match, and a footrace if a chuckwalla, a Iguana or alligator ever got loose.

This is why our house was the center of the world. The Lennons wanted into the fun - the Blasers wanted to hang out here along with the the Tripps - the Grants and is why our house always seemed to be filled with a million people on every occasion.

Why sit around and watch Kung fu or Dick Van Dyke on TV when everyday was an episode of Sanford and Son meets the Adams Family and Dark Shadows--only our haunted house also had a Veloci-Raptor attack-rooster and a crop of luscious marijuana plants in the backyard just to make things more interesting.

(What it looked like then on our front steps)

(What the front steps looks like now with the Police showing up every other day)

Now that I was a Freshman in high school the older boys tried to recruit me into the hippy club and taught me how to smoke and roll a refer. I desperately wanted to be in the club - I wanted to be accepted - I wanted to feel like I was part of the menagerie of older brothers, but didn't want to jump in with both feet quite yet. I wanted to please the older guys and had to show some loyalty to the Wolf Pack by puffing from time to time, but wasn't ready to fully buy in to this whole hippy thing completely.

Making matters worse at Christmas Tony had given up on shopping at Pick and Save altogether. He figured that it was cheaper, more fun and added more to the overall the chaos by rummaging through the attic for junk he could wrap as presents. Then his gift giving digressed from the smelly old-broken stuff to stuff he would steal from someone's bedroom.

One of the highlights of this new Christmas tradition was when any one of of the older boys unwrapped a present allegedly from "Santa" that belonged to someone else all H. E. double toothpicks would break out. This awakens the Force of the Warrior Creed.

Wrestling would break out and bodies would spill out and onto the front lawn.

Dad seemed to enjoy it and acted just like the rest of us but none of this please my mother!

After three or four rounds of utter chaos Mrs. D would stomp her feet on every single tread of the staircase--all the way up to her room while saying things like, "Why couldn't we be more like the Lennons and the Blasers. Slamming her door she would lock her self in imagining what Christmas was probably like next door or down the street at the Lennons.



(Mom...Mrs. D Pictured this to the left...




but got something that looked more like this...to the right)

I could only image that this year after midnight mass upon entering the front door we would get the "Under-Pain-of-Mortal-Sin" speech again just before opening large sliding into the living room just seconds before we jumped onto the mountain of poorly wrapped presents under Mr. D's two dollar tree he finagled from the Troop 32, Boy Scout, Christmas tree lot.

We had a lot to look forward to. Zombies and Wrapping Paper Wars. The stolen presents, the wrestling matches, chaos and mayhem and you can be sure that those normal people would stop by - because they wanted in on the fun also. 

Joy to the World. Merry Christmas from me - Markie D - and from my family to you and yours... may your Christmas be less than normal, but Sacred none-the-less.  

The Hunger Games and Thanksgiving at the Dahlins

Thanksgiving at the Dahlins

After doing the "marble thing" a couple more times and throwing up in both instances, my dad realized that his speech-improvement-method wasn't working out so good for me. He didn't like the smell of vomit on his dress-shoes. And Kurt never did figure out why his baggie of precious marbles smelled like barf.

It's November 1970 and my first season of water polo had come to an end at Saint Monica's. I had to change in and out of my speedos under my tee-shirt to hide the fact that I was still waiting for stupid puberty to finally have its way. Mom or Dad―I don't know whose genetic predisposition I inherited for being a late bloomer, but it was definitely a curse.









I began building new friends on the Water polo team with Loui Coda,

Kevin McCaffery,




and that genius nerd from Topanga who was in my advanced math class a year earlier―James Moore.

And also the kid who played football "Pickles." This was my nick name for Alex Delgadillo who fed me lunch every day i.e. the pickles on the top of his daily lunch-hamburger and who also helped me do my history homework for Brother Michael's class.  Speaking of pickles Thursday is Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving is a big day in the Dahlin House.

Sis Lennon (mother of the Lennon Sisters) prepares a home cooked meal every single day, 364 days of the year EXCEPT for Halloween. This is when all the Lennons would meet and set up for the haunted house -- the only day the Lennon's ate McDonalds and the only day Aunt Sis did not cook. 

By this late stage in our house and with the various coming and goings of the Wolf Pack, however, Thanksgiving was just about the only day of the year that my mom cooked! She got up early and stuffed the giant bird while working hard all day in the kitchen with Mary and Karin: 

Mashed Potatoes, green beans, yams with marshmallows, and canned cranberry―a true feast even bigger than the one that takes place in Whoville at Christmas.  I would spend two days cleaning up the first floor―sometimes raking everything from the entry, living room, and dining room into a ginormous pile and sift through the rubble. Setting up a piece of plywood on the pool table in the dining room and moving the hospital bed to the backyard―we were ready for Dahlin-sized festivities. And when I say festivities, I mean the hilarious festival and comical cacophony of chaos―that made for such a great day.  

What contributed to the magnitude of this Comedy of Errors was not only the shear madness of the Dahlin's trying to out do each other in the competition of story-telling by adding flare and personal embellishments to stories like Salton Sea or the daring rescue attempt at Kings river  President Johnson and the snapping turtles, Tony chasing our runaway alligator down Harding Avenue or, of course,―the monkeys and the infamous day of the Dahlins at the LA zoo but was also due to the extent the guest list.  Or should I say the lack of a guest list.

Invites were a free-for-all which drove my mom crazy. 

Mom always hoped we could do something "normal" for once. She gave us the "Why-couldn't-we-be-more-like-the-Lennons" speech so many times that most of us could repeat it word for word―sometimes a Dahlin sibling would even lip the words in perfect sync behind her back. 

She so desperately wanted us to open presents one at a time like the Lennons while the onlookers gave a nod of appreciation and soft golf-clap before the next gift was opened but had giving up on that, knowing that our Christmases were doomed to look more like a free-for-all of sharks on a whale carcass as we came home from midnight mass―jumped into the pile and began shredding them to the bone faster than a plague of locust. 

BUT at Thanksgiving, she still had one goal which was to control the mayhem by attempting to control the the number of people.

Dad and Mom

Nana

Tony and Patti

Karl and Laura

Bob

Pinky

Kris and Vicky

Kurt and Irma

Erick and another Vicky  

Mary

Mark

Karin 

Gigi

Bruce

Susie

John Masson

Tom Wetlz
Nick Pappas (a Republican hippy - Go Figure-  no one in Venice is Republican)... 

         ...and the several seasonal stragglers who were bound to show up.  

26 was the absolute maximum number of mouths mom was planning to feed this year. Dad thought that 26 was only a suggestion, since mom didn't invoke the "under-pain-of-mortal-sin" clause. He proceeded to open his mouth by inviting everyone he came in contact with two days prior to Thanksgiving meal.  

When we were out in front wrestling we could hear mom scream..."And who else..," followed by some words good Catholics weren't supposed to say.

My dad invited his best friend Pat Lennon to stop by for The Hunger Games. (pictured to the Left)

He invited the homeless stalker in our neighborhood―Jim Andel. He invited his lonely hermit-friend Roy Spengemen, Jack Underwood got an invite along with the spooky dude in the black "Quaker" hat, who we called, "The Quaker" (pictured below with hands in the air).                                                                                                                  









The Alligator was safely locked away up stairs and behaving like a Good Dinosaur. 

Walter Daniels would eat at home and come by―Nick Pappas was sure to show up and Terry Walker who would eat at the Lennons  was sure to show up for the fun-filled food-feeding frenzy.

The Dahlins at Thanksgiving was the greatest show on earth.   

It meant the hippies would assemble in the backyard in the hutch-hut to get their munchies on. It meant wrestling in the front yard. Touch football in the street with Tommy Blaser and Jeffry Lennon AND VIKING CROQUET(you don't even want to know).  It also meant that Kurt would silently pass gas and crop-dust - clearing an entire room in less than 2 seconds.

It meant an occasional food fight...laughter, lots of fun and nobody wanted to be left out. I wondered what a normal thanksgiving looked like at the Coda mansion in Brentwood at the Arnold's who lived behind us or at James Moore's house who lived at the top of Topanga―those poor people.

We were the craziest house in Venice and every regular person in all the normal families wanted to be at our house.

Happy Thanksgiving... to the 55, 630 people from 92 countries who have checked in and visited this blog!


  from Markie D

Picture credit - Poster for an 1879 production on Broadway, featuring Stuart Robson and William Crane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Comedy_of_Errors 

Veteran's Day Memorial and Marbles in the Mouth

November 1970: "Mumfer bafumbbbfe humferummmba"

"No! Keep practicing" my dad said tersely as he came back inside after standing on the back porch and watching the electric meter spin.

It seemed like he had been out there forever. He cursed the thing for spinning too fast. He rang the ancient fire bell (the one with the bullet holes) to wake up the rest of the viking tribe.

"Mumfer bafumbbbfe humferummmba" I said again this time pleading―knowing that the Wolf pack would descend from the third floor to interrupt a warm Saturday morning spent with dad.

Don't ask me how, but dad knew exactly what I was complaining about.

"Buuuu myyy mouthhhmfa iss hurmmmperuing?"

"I don't care how much your mouth hurts." He said in response to my last garbled and gagging words. "You're going to keep the marbles in there and you'll  keep reading that sonnet until you can pronunciation improves."

I had lost the election at Saint Monica's to Terry Balantine for Freshman Class President. He had a really well crafted speech (probably written by his mother). It was cleaver. It was funny. He began his speech by talking about mini-skits. He had gotten everyone's attention when he said that he wanted his speech to "be short enough to be interesting and long enough to cover the subject." At this all the hormonally-charged freshmen-boys cheered and the attention starved girls were flattered as the pubescent boys looked around lustfully.


UGHhhhhhhh... How was I supposed to follow that? I was doomed. My mom had written me speech which sounded just like her―not me!  I shoved it into my pocket and walked up to the podium and tried to ad-lib. That was probably about the stupidest thing I ever did.

I stared at the audience inside Cantwell Auditorium like a deer in the head lights of a oncoming car. Words were slow coming out and it never got any better from there. There was no Hollywood ending... no happy hands... no dance ...just utter and complete failure.

Andrea must have thought I was a complete looser.

I was!   My hopes of her falling in love with me were dwindling.    


Mom asked about her speech - I lied and told her I read it. Dad found out and asked me to read it to him. I tried and mispronounced half of the words... I had a whole long list of things I couldn't say correctly and half of those words were in that speech.

He might have been the only person in the world who knew how terrible my diction was... He might have been the only one in the world who knew I stuttered (most people thought I was just joking around - and when I did stutter I played it off). But he cared and he tried to help me.

Hence the marbles in my mouth. 

The only thing was that dad was summing the Wolf Pack and they would make fun of me, so I had to get rid of the marbles and spat them back into the bag Kurt had used to collect them in.

It was a Saturday. Dad was home and it would be a Dahlin work day. Dahlin work days were pretty chaotic. It usually meant cutting back the forest of bamboo and ivy that had begun to grow over stuff. It meant shifting junk from one area of the yard to another area―and most certainly meant that we be juggling the million boxes of the billion decrepit National Graphics my mom had been collecting since 1952.  They had been moved from room to room in the attic to the second floor - to the sun porch to the carport to the patio and back several times.






My poor dad. Now he had not only to get them moving―he had to keep them focused. This was the hardest task of all. The older boys seemed to have a pain threshold for work that did not last much more than about an hour and this drove him crazy. I knew that after a lot of screaming and consternation it would be dad and me.

 I didn't mind the work and besides I wanted to please dad.

I finished gagging on the marbles and  returning the moist glass-gems to the baggie and dad was on the stairs beating the walls and ceiling with a broom handle.

"Up and at 'em. Time of the harvest moon.  Let's go, go, go, go go, go go" he would say as rapidly as machine gun fire. Beating the broom handle on the ceiling in cadence (this was probably from his days spent as a Master Sergeant in the Marines - during WW II in the South Pacific). This was his regular routine for Street Cleaning Day.



The Blasers, next door, had already been up and doing their Saturday morning chores. Mr. Blaser has them all pretty well trained and disciplined in chores and yard work. This is what made me also feel sorry for my dad - because at our house it was such a circus and so difficult to keep the boys motivated.



(pictured Tommy and Mrs. Blaser)




"Come on girly-men" he said about all the guys upstairs with long hair. "Let's go, go, go, go, go! Party all night - sleep all day. Oh, the big man on campus. We're burning daylight...Up and at 'em"


He sped by - returning to the back porch stairs to clank the fire alarm some more.

CLANK CLANK CLANK CLANK CLANK CLANK rattled the firehouse bell.  I'm picturing my dad as if he was wearing his uniform getting his men ready for drills.






By this time, the entire neighborhood knew what was about to take place: the Arnolds behind us - the Tripps, the Nargies, the Steadmens, the Vasquezes, and the three Lennon families that surrounded us.



(* Pictured: Cheryl Arnold as Miss Santa Monica - who lived in the house directly behind us)



















                                (Frank Nargie across the street)
















(picture of Vasquez family moved from Harding to Naples 4 houses over)








                                         








                                            (Bruce came by - Dad tried to get him working)











 (*Tripps across the street - next to the Nargies and the Fraternity house that burned down) )
















This meant that Billy Lennon (pictured to the right) might come by to pick up stuff for the Halloween haunted house or for the 4th of July extravaganza held in their backyard.








After lots of grumbling and oatmeal the work party would begin and neighbors began gathering to watch the show.  I'm telling you this was better than cartoons on Saturday mornings.

It ended up the older boys dropped off one by one while dad and I worked together until 5 o'clock when the sun was setting and I loved every minute of it.         HAPPY VETERAN'S DAY

                                               Harding Avenue another beautiful day in Paradise.

 A picture of the grand old house. 

Miss you dad. 

(* Picture of Cheryl Arnold by Cheryl Arnold Mosely)

(* Picture of Tripp family by Darleen Tripp Beringhele)