Venice verses the Dahlins: How we changed the World.

To clean streets with those humongous street cleaning machines was no new thing in the late 60's.

ONLY after the Fraternity House Burned down at the corner of Harding and Grandview it meant that the Dahlins had free access to urban sprawl - or worst yet - urban blight!

I'm sure that, whoever burned down the Fraternity had no idea at the time that we would completely take over that corner of the world and fill it with all of the broken down Dahlin vehicles. The arsonist may have thought they were getting rid of the late-night fracas of partying hippies only to face the horrors of reality that "nature abhors a vacuum" and the empty space became a Dahlin parking lot.

 Cars. Trailers. Boats. Trucks.

Truck is a polite word. In fact, our trucks had become trash barges...sarcophagi for the dead remnants of cannibalize automobiles that had been hastened into an early death by the tribe of White Swedes with Gold hair...

I think you get the idea! 

The Venice Police Department did all they could to help our neighbors who had called the cops on us for abandoning cars in front of their houses and across the street from us. They instituted new laws about moving cars every three days. The parking enforcement officers came by in their nifty three-wheeled-Harleys and began the game of  "Chalk the Tires" but we were too clever!

The game began with the officer drawing a chalk mark on the sidewall of the tire to see if the vehicle had been moved within the three day - maximum time allowed by the new "anti-Dahlin-law."

The Dahlins, however, thwarted the plans of "Big Brother" by taking a sponge dipped in water and washing off the chalk-marks.  I'm sure this made Mr. Blaser and the rest of our neighbors upset.  

                                The line of cars and the trash heaps continued to grow (it was almost like a fungus).

The police department had to institute new policies where they had hoped to trick us and keep us unaware of their sneaky plans to control the spread of Dahlin suburban blight by marking the lowest part of the exposed tread of tire to conceal the fact that they had been down Harding and Grandview Avenues.

This cost us a couple tickets, but we were on to their clever tricks!  "The game's afoot" as Sherlock Holmes would say.



This new part of the game was a bit more irksome, as it required more effort by having to roll the vehicle back a foot or two to conceal the chalk mark that was sneakily drawn on the tread of the tire. WE WON.

Sometimes we had to fix a flat or solicit the help of a hundred hippies to push the barges full of junk - even if it was just a couple feet.  But, we were on to the "MAN!"








Then came a new improved strategy on behalf of the city.      
           Venice verses the Dahlins.
Secret meetings were being held and it was decided that at tax payers expense the city would put up "Street Cleaning" signs for the purposes of making the Dahlin boys move their broken down fleet of cars twice a week  (I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist - BUT I wouldn't be surprised if my dad had something to do with this new parking enforcement). He was as tired of all the #@*&# cars as much as Don Blaser and everyone else in the neighborhood.

Up went the new signs that opened a new "theater of operations!"  IT WAS WAR.

John Gillemot and his friends over on Garfield got so upset over the whole thing that they decided to take the law into their own hands and mowed down all the signs along Garfield ave with an old Chevy truck! Though they destroyed the truck, the crazies over on Garfield felt it was a moral victory. Any day that I wasn't used as a throw toy or punching bag and didn't show up for school at Saint Mark's - all Black and Blue was considered a moral victory!

My dad, on the other hand, tried to wear us down by the great Dahlin spectacle put on for all the neighbors to watch in the Wednesday-and-Thursday-Street-Cleaning-Rituals that involved in moving all the Dahlin cars from one side of the street to the other.

The boys hated when my dad, the Staff Sargent, thumped on the walls at 7:00 am in the morning and began shouting his infamous phrases like "Up and at 'em"  "Time of the harvest moon"  "Party all night- sleep all day" and then rattling off  the command to "go" like a machine gun which was received with just about as much enthusiasm as walking into machine gun fire from a sniper. "Let's go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go!" "Up and at 'em...it's time of the harvest moon. Let's go girly-men. Get the hair out of your eyes and let's go move some cars."  To the older boy, this was a true American Horror Story which the neighbors came out and watched every week as if was the Ringling Brothers circus -itself!

I said "some cars" - that was an understatement - it was more like 'let's go and move the 73,000 broken down cars' - some with flat ties - some with no wheels at all - AND... those TRUCKS FULL of TRASH.

And so the party began!

And because of us...there is street-cleaning, parking-enforcement across this great fruited plain! Okay, so maybe we didn't change the World - but our impact was being felt!

Just another day in paradise for the Dahlins on in  Harding Ave!  

  

How Not to Exact Revenge

(Continued from last time: The Kingdom Hall, the Hypothetical Hippie and the old Venice train)

PLAN: "XYZ"

After getting rolled in the dirt and being embarrassed, I'm not too sure that Tommy had much of an interest in being a member of the Troop 32 ruffians.  Jeffery, on the other hand, was looking for something that pushed the edge of the envelop and was a little beyond the pay-grade of being a Lennon. He could wet his appetite for dangerous living by hanging out with me at my house, "Hotel Crazy," and cut his teeth on adventure by joining The sickness of this rowdy troop from Venice.

BUT FOR NOW - it was all about PAYBACK! My older brother, Chewbacca, had drawn all over my body with a Marks-a-Lot and derailed my chances of finding out about love: HE HAD TO PAY and I had a plan!

When Jeffery sneaked over to my house, he was as giddy as a little kid the night before Christmas with the thought about handling snakes and dead things that were being preserved in our freezer.

The house was quiet because hippie Wolf Pack was out back in the ivy cave smoking it up and mom was locked in her bedroom. Like paleontologists, the first thing we had to do was chip out one of the two dead Diamondback rattlesnakes that were frozen in the glacier of the refrigerator frost (that we had found at Leo Carrillo state park in Malibu) .

Picking away at the thick ice crystals with an ice pick and a heavy metal spoon we scooped out loads of the snow and began eating the stuff.  Chipping away at the snake skins, Jeffery and I shoved gobs of the delicious fluffy white refrigerator snow in our mouths...gobs and gobs of it ...and even made snow balls and threw them at Chewbacca's gross pigeon that lived on top of the refrigerator.

Jeffery was in heaven - nothing like this would ever take place at his house.  We threw freezer snow balls at the flying one-eye'd" parasite carrier and shoved more of the fluffy frost into our mouths UNTIL...

...UNTIL I got a bite that tasted like it had made contact with the dead rattler... I guess it could just have been tainted with the rancid blood of old chicken but my overactive mind conjured up snake guts that incited my superpowers; heaving and gagging I ran to the vomitorium.  Jeffery laughed and continued to dislodge the old rattler carcass from the freezer as he listened to me throw up my guts in the bathroom.  I was a hot mess





So much for payback. Chewbacca, was already winning and he was out back getting high with Bob Dylan and friends - It's not like Bob Dylan was out in our backyard. It's just that they were just doing what Bob said, "Everybody must get stoned." They were smoking the infamous "Mexican tomato plants" which gave us time to lay our devious little trap.






















In order for our plan to work we had to thaw the thing, so I made Jeffery put the snake under his shirt - he loved it and thought it was groovy - but I put a rubber band about the mouth of the snake so the fangs wouldn't accidentally poison him with deadly venom.  

With the snake warming under his shirt, we headed up stairs to the third floor bedrooms of the Wolf Pack and to the (not so secure) snake cages!  I didn't want to kill any one really...just put the fear of God into Chewbacca, so I didn't mess with the rattlesnake cages. I did however make a nice soft warm nest right in the middle of Chewbacca's bed.  Pulling back the covers, I carefully placed one garter snake at a time in a pile of snakes I would leave for Chewbacca to discover when he came stumbling to bed.

Where Plan XYZ gets really good is that we were going to take the thawing rattlesnake and place it among the living ones.  My hope is that with all the slithering and movement from the real snakes he would think that the rattler was alive and have a complete conniption fit and go crazy!

When Jeffery put the warm rattlesnake in the mix the other snakes freaked out - and wouldn't you know it - in the panic - one bit me in the arm!             DANG IT!             This payback better be worth it!

I was hoping the Wolf Pack would turn on each other and that a ruckus would break out on the third floor. In the middle of the night I expected to hear the the sweet sounds of this delicious payback!

I climbed into my loft bed near the place where the ooze was released from the pit of hell and smiled as I fell asleep.

And it happened just as I planned!  I heard a screech that sounded just like the girls did when the older boys took them to the Albino camp... I heard the boys yell at Chewbacca...I heard a  wrestling match break out on the third floor. YES!  PERFECT! All was right and good in the world (only Jeffery was home and missing all the fun)... UNTIL...

...UNTIL...I heard my name!  "MARKKKKKKKKKKKKK!" came the bitter sounding screech from the third floor.  "I'm going to kill you. You little twerp!"

Footsteps!  Lots of them coming down the stairs and heading my direction. I was trapped!

The boys grabbed me, stripped me down to my tightie-whities, tied a stand of Christmas lights around my ankles and hung me out the second story window!

Luckily it wasn't long, but there I hung until morning. Mom walked under me and mumbled something about the "pain of mortal sin" and when Jeffery stepped outside his house and saw me hanging nearly naked he knew that PLAN XYZ was an epic fail and that being a Lennon wasn't so bad after all.

When the mom who drove the Saint Mark's advanced-math kids to Saint Monica's in the morning pulled up and saw me hanging there she - burned rubber and sped away to Santa Monica as fast as she could!

My only hope was to pull some kind of Houdini and escape before Andrea would see me in my underwear on her way to school.        This was certainly not the way to exact revenge.            
                                                 YOU WON THIS ONE CHEWBACCA!



I guess it was a good thing My dad and mom had prepared me for this when I was young.

   
So you know what, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" or something...

  ...or SOMETHING!

All I know was that I was still trying to figure out what this love word was all about.  Clueless in Venice!

Where we Buried the Body

(Continued from the last post about the hippie we murdered and from the post before that about my sex education).


Anyway, running away from the Kingdom Hall on West Washington Blvd, I was very concerned about becoming emotionally attached to my captures. This is something that happens to Swedes don't ya know... There is no name for it yet, but trust me in the couple years it will be a diagnosed syndrome named after something Swedish - maybe after me or maybe after a city in Sweden like Stockholm!   Just saying!



Afraid of having positive feelings and have empathy towards our kidnappers - I didn't look back and ran straight up the street to the Troop 32 Boy Scout house followed closely behind by Tommy and Jeffery!

There we met up with the likes of Ray Vandenmark and Alan Scout, who were the two Senior Patrol Leaders on the infamous "Boy Scouts from Venice" raid on the National Jamboree in which we nearly killed that nerd kid, Bill Gates, from Seattle and were forever banished from returning to a Jamboree. Anyway, all the same hoodlums who were on that 1969, "fighting-cage-on-wheels," "diarrhea-revenge" road-trip were all there. It was a pretty derelict group and I had earned everyone's respect by fighting my way to the top (Special forces training, care of all of gnarly fights with my big brothers - thank you very much Wolf Pack!).

The grungiest kids were from the  "Golden Triangle" area of Venice whose parents were pretty persnickety by thinking they were better than those of us north of Washington Blvd as though they had somehow been annexed into the new Marina Del Rey. Even though they wrote Marina Del Rey on their outgoing mail - it was still 90291 and they still had Venice DNA, despite how much they pretended to be "Beverly Hills yacht owners."  Even though Steve Kissel was from that area - he was pretty cool and didn't smell as bad as some of the other kids.

Anyway, we get to the troop meeting late when the patrols were already outside in the backyard for the group activity.  I don't know what they did for the group activity over at Mar Vista Troop 34...(if I had to guess) probably something a whole lot tamer and a whole lot cleaner than what we were used to - crocheting maybe..hehehe.  We assembled out back in the dirt lot of the small property that was located between West Washington Boulevard and Washington Way (confusing right... "Sheeze" I guess someone ran out of names when they were naming all the streets in Venice) for a game of "Steal the Bacon."  This was a universal Boy Scout tradition...however, THIS WAS VENICE!  This was not like the normal kind of Steal the Bacon they played over in Mar Vista or in Beverly Hills or in little Billy Gates' troop in suburbia Seattle...  NO... this was knock down and drag out.

I loved it; it was Viking style.  Like something that took place on regular basis in our front yard (only with kids closer to my age).
                         









However, poor Tommy had the wet spot on his jeans and no matter how hard he tried to hide it, as soon as he got dragged across the dirt yard a couple times, it collected dirt that acted like a beacon - a neon sign in Vegas that said "Look, I Pee'd my Pants!"



The boys mercilessly "stop-drop-and-rolled" poor Tommy. When he got home, I got called in to testify about jumping off of metaphoric ten-story-roof and how I shouldn't have encouraged him to jump.







I did want to tell Mrs. Blaser that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Pope and the Catholics should all be proud... but that might led to having explain about the hippie we might have killed, so I kept my mouth shout about the railroad tracks, the pennies, the guitar...about the Kingdom Hall incident and just said,  "Yes, ma'am!"  afraid that she would ask us to show where we buried the body.

Jeffery kind of liked the thrill of the whole thing and wanted some more...He signed up to go to Camp Slauson in Malibu next week with us and decided to help me with my big plans of payback for Chewbacca. I warned him in advance by asking how he did with snakes and dead things. He said he wasn't sure, but wanted to give it a try. They run a tight ship over at Bob and Jeanette Lennon's house, but Jeffery sneaked over and that is when we put into play       "PLAN: X Y Z!"

The Night I killed a Hippie and the Pope was Proud

(continued) Tuesday Evening: Though my brain had been consumed in thoughts about sex (now that I knew something), I managed to apply some unused gray matter to come up with a plan at getting back at Chewbacca for marking up my body. However, I would not be able to employ my devious plan at the moment, it would have to wait until after my Boy Scout meeting - because snakes have this propensity for crawling away. I would have to put the ooze inspired plan of payback into action after coming back from my Boy Scout meeting tonight.



In an effort to recruit by neighbor buddies, Tommy Blaser and Jeffery Lennon, to join troop 32, I invited them to come me over at the scout house by bribing them with some "Dahlin" deviousness. I told them that we could put some pennies on the railroad tracks that ran along West Washington Blvd.

I know this temptation of dangerous living was out of their normal comfort zone and was attractive to the male psyche that is naturally Wild at Heart.

 *

Between you and me, I think Steppenwolf was on to something and believe that is why so many people liked hanging out our house - because we were so out of control. People could come over to our house, handle snakes, fight against our attack rooster, get close to danger with our alligator, get electrocuted if they wanted to or not, smoke marijuana, maybe even come close to a confrontational encounter with the cops and then return to the safety of their normal lives.

That's why our house was such a popular hang out spot in Venice! It was the center of the universe!


With my pockets filled with pennies and my two friends filled with mischievous optimism we headed down Woodlawn towards the railroad tracks at West Washington. We wanted to make the most of it knowing that the train inched along the tracks with less and less regularity - but this was going to be our night.

We heard the clatter of the train and hurriedly ran down to where "X marks the spot." After some coaxing I got Tommy to join me and Jeffery in strategically lining up our soon to be copper souvenirs on the cold metal rail and took cover. Our imaginations were on overload from all the stories we had heard about pennies being shot out and piercing through cars and killing people. This was bound to be one of these events where Mrs. Blaser would line us up and have the, "If-Mark-were-to-jump-from-a-ten-story-building, it-doesn't-mean-that-you-have-to-Tommy" speech.  

Anyway, the slow train was coming down the tracks and we hid behind some old car so that we didn't get killed and as the train passed, shucks, no copper missiles shot in our direction and the train didn't derail. It was kind of a bummer that no one got hurt - to a Dahlin it always made the story better. A couple pennies had fallen off, two were missing and one indeed had been transformed into the thin-oval, squished-copper memento that we had hoped for.  

That's when we spotted the guitar - an abandoned guitar in the bushes on the other side of the tracks.

The strings were intact and there was no reason to throw a perfectly good guitar away... UNLESS...one of our pennies shot out and killed the owner. Our imaginations ran wild and we began telling a story that grew like Dr. Seuss' kid on Mulberry street.

It was a hippie who owned the guitar chasing fortune and fame on his way to Hollywood when he suddenly got hit by a copper bullet and died. "It might have been Bob Dylan" Tommy said. I thumped him on the noggin and said, "No, Bob Dylan is still alive - don't you know anything? Don't you know about the birds and the bees and sex and stuff like that?"

Turns out they did - darn it!

Building the story, Jeff said, our hypothetical hippie was singing a love song to his hippie chick and in the middle of his ballad, he was so focused and enamored - looking deep into her big brown eyes- that he didn't see the train coming and WHAM! He shouted causing Tommy to jump! We all laughed, but then went silent for minute thinking that we may have been responsible for killing someone as though we were at the guys funeral or contemplating a life sentence in prison.  We search for blood - couldn't find any and picked up the lonely guitar. 

Half of the irony of this whole thing was that begin related to the Famous Lennon Sisters (and though it seemed as if every single Lennon in the history of the world could sing) neither Tommy and Jeffery could sing a lick. That's understandable for us Dahlins - none of us...not one of us could sing - expect for my Dad. And none of us - not one Dahlin had the raw talent for playing an instrument...of any kind (even though my older brother could play a folded leaf). Hence the mountainous stack of old instruments that cluttered the entry into our old house near the cussing mynah-bird. The other half of the irony was that it was me, of all people, who brought the gift of music to the younger generations of Lennons, like Kippy and Michael, with my air guitar renditions of silly songs that I performed in the Blaser's backyard. Kippy and Michael did not want to appear on the Lawrence Welk show - NO... they wanted to be a rock star like Markie D.     

Anyway, as the oldest member of our impish adventurers, I picked up the guitar and began an imitation of the last love song of the murdered hippy for my two cohorts.  I had the boys in stitches, but this wasn't enough. Adrenaline was pumping through the veins of our pre-pubescent bodies and felt like we needed to find more trouble. 

"AH-HA" came the collective epiphany when we looked across the street and saw people in suit and ties entering the old  brick-faced Kingdom Hall building that was mostly hidden by thick green overgrowth. The door was open and we were attracted like mosquitoes to the light. After the doors shut we went over to put on a show or I went went over, strumming the guitar to put on a show for Tommy and Jeffery AND of course this had to be authorized by the POPE since this whole Jehovah Witness thing had to be a cult not sanctioned by the Catholic Church (I knew that when I stood in front of Mrs. Lennon or Mrs. Blaser at the inquisition... I could roll my eyebrows into the look of innocence and claim to be fulfilling my duty as a canonized saint for which - it was Tommy and Jeffery's catholic-bound duty to jump off the 10 story building with me. How could the best of Catholic mothers reason against the POPE). 

Facing my audience (of two) with my back to the front doors, I wailed in the loudest version of the "Kingdom Hall Blues." I had the kids in stitches and think Tommy pee'd his pants...when the doors swung open and a hand shot out and collared me. 

My days were numbered. Two other men came around behind Tommy and Jeffery and the three of them invited us in. INVITED US IN?  They escorted us in with phony smiles. It was more like a kidnapping. We were ushered down front of the little building and directed to sit in the front pew. We were trapped like rats! This is what must have happened to our long lost hippie friend. This must be how they recruit - they leave things as bait and they make prisoners of their captives until you put on a suit and tie and become one of them. 

I have no idea what the guy was saying about Jehovah (Who-ever that was) and how he had two sons: one Michael and one Lucifer - it was all too complicated, especially since the three couldn't stop giggling. Tommy made sure to keep showing us the wet spot on his the front of his pants near his taliwacker. He was doing a good job of messing up their Mass...or what-ever-it was and this is when I decided to drive a nail in the coffin and make a run for it. 

I picked up my (murdered-hippie love-ballad) guitar, jumped up right in the middle of center isle, faced all the people, strummed away and put on the performance of a lifetime.  THEN RAN!  I ran out of the doors with Tommy and Jeffery closely drafting behind.  Mrs. Blaser should be happy because we knew that THE POPE WOULD BE PROUD!  

After boy scouts tonight - it would be Chewbacca's big surprise!    Bwahahahaha.  

Kipp, Tom, Jeff, Kevin, and Michael on the front stairs of the Harding house.  

* "Born to-be wild-steppenwolf-45" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Born_to-be_wild-steppenwolf-45.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Born_to-be_wild-steppenwolf-45.jpg

Sex Education and the stupid eight grader.

Last time, I left off sharing how my attempt to impress the girl I loved (peanut butter and unrequited love) had been blown up in my face (literally) by an unfortunate encounter with an indelible marker. I thought I had finally met the pinnacle of embarrassment by having to go to school with the "drive-by tattooing" all over my face...compliments of the early morning ambush by big brother, Chewbacca, who had been sneaking in at the crack of dawn from one of those hippie all-nighters. Though that embarrassment made it beyond the Venice boarders into Santa Monica and back and had consumed two full days of heartache until an even greater embarrassment of discovering that I may have been the stupidest kid in the 8th grade (I don't mean at Saint Mark's grammar school - I mean in the world)!



Two days later after my suspension, I was riding the Santa Monica blue bus, number 3, with a group of peers traveling back to Saint Mark from the early morning advanced high school math at Saint Monica's high school.


There was still remnants of the back ink under the red blotches of skin that I had scrubbed raw for two days. The bus stopped in front of the newer McDonalds on Lincoln blvd and the group of us nerdy "brainiacs" were walking in front of the Saint Mark's Rectory when it happened... THE MOMENT of revelation!



This moment of discovery didn't just enlighten me, but also made me believe that I must have been the dumbest kid in the eight grade, and if not, then certainly the stupidest kid ever in advanced high school math.

Why?

I'll tell you why! What was I thinking all these years? Why didn't I see it... and where was my brain the whole time? Was I the only 13-year-old in the entire universe not to have a clue about "the birds and the bees" - reason with me here - we had a zoo in our backyard, a terrarium of snakes, chuckwallas, iguanas, guinea pigs, turtles...we had a cage for breeding mice  - two of the most prolific baby-producing females dogs in the world... and rabbits all having sex right in my own house- right under my own nose - under my own roof. The Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom nature show could have been filmed at my house - and I had no clue that this was how babies were born!     DUMB!     Hello!  

AND... I had to open my big mouth - right there - only steps away from the schoolyard in front of the house where the Catholic priests lived. Terry Balletine mentioned some juicy morsel about the kid in our class who came from a divorced family. To Catholics, this was scandalous and he was the only kid we knew from a divorced family.  I had been to this kid's apartment and tried to add some information to the conversation (as tough I had some superior inside knowledge) and said how sad it was that "he only had a mother."

UNFORTUNATELY they took it - exactly the way I meant it.  That was when everyone stopped dead in their tracks and looked at me in utter horror as if the world had stopped spinning or as if time slowed down like in one of those Twilight Zone episodes.  

I still loved the smell of crayons and building forts with Tommy Blaser and Jeffery Lennon in the backyard and it suddenly dawned on me that there was this other world out there...one that I had not given any thought to.  Why? Probably because I spent too much time thinking about how I was going to survive the next attack, ambush or devious prank from the Wolf Pack!

Maybe normal parents told their regular 12 or 13-year-old kids about the birds and the bees - but not mine- NO! My mom was locked in her room watching the Lennon Sisters and I Love Lucy.

I felt like Mowgli in Jungle Book when he saw the girl and all the bells and whistles went off... I got it.





Suddenly, it all became clear and I finally got the meaning behind all the dirty schoolyard jokes the boys had been telling for the past 4 years!  I had really thought a stork (of some sort) had delivered little Ralph to his mommy... and to think that with the million times we sprayed the male dogs that had been attached our female dog in the moment of sexual procreation and that I didn't get it!  

They laughed and circled me and pointed and said I was retarded! I was! Utter humiliation...then in a stroke genius... connecting all the dots with the epiphany of revelation that made everything come to light I said, "No, I didn't mean he didn't have a dad..." (not true) praying hoping they would buy it  "...Pshaw, what I meant was that he lived with his mom only!"  and then proceeded to tell them that of course he had to have a dad...as though I was an expert on the subject of having babies. I say, "The father was just out of the picture, because poor Ralph's parents had gotten a divorced!"

And to drive home my point ... I made sure to look at all of them as though they were complete idiots! Triumphantly, I lifted my head, broke though the circle of mocking - and walked towards school - never looking back at other kids... knowing that I would have to show up to church on Saturday for confession, because - I had told the greatest fib ever (especially if I was going to serve as an Altar-Boy).

I spent the whole day in class trying not to make eye contact with anyone - especially Andrea!   How could I ever look into her big brown eyes - when thinking about the birds and the bees.

How could I ever look at girls the same!  I spent the rest of my time - contemplating this new paradigm shift in my brain and had to force myself  back to holier thought on how I could get back at Chewbacca - for his evil prank with the marker - and  - that's when I came up with the brilliant idea!

Next time!