The Infamous "Tuna Canyon" Story part 1: The Quest to Belong

This next part is the lead into one of the classic Dahlin stories which happens to include just about every hippie in Venice and every twenty-something aged person on Harding Avenue. It is a story that is told over and over and over again at every Dahlin function... like the Salton Sea Story.. or the LA Zoo monkey story... or the Good Friday story... or the Fire Escape Pole story... or the Del Diablo story... or the Edna and the Whiffle Ball story... the UFO Story... the Albino Camp stories... McElliot's Pool or of being electrocuted or the story of electrocuting a nun...       

Every man who came back from the military had a nickname. And so it was part of the DNA of my parents generation to give nicknames to friends and to those who fought with you in the trenches.  I never knew my dad's military nickname, but he was the best at dishing out inventive pseudonyms to just about every person he had come in contact with. Jack Underwood, for example, became "Underwater."
Every person who had the last name of McClain or McCelland or McCarthy was called "Mac." Every Ferguson was "Fergy." 

Dad had christened the people in his real estate office after some personality trait or character flaw... "Slim," "Bubbles," and "Liver Lips."  

For the hippies in our neighborhood who hung around our house he gave them names like... "Hercamer Skeeziks," "Kleghorn," "Freeloader," "Sleepy," Girly-Man," "Quaker," "Spongecake" and list goes on and on.  

It was the normative cultural practice at the time. 

And so, this is why all of our friends had a tag-line as a nickname: "Primo," "Sleezy," "Booty" "Pinky," "Monkey boy," "Face," and why my brothers had given each one of us a childhood nickname. This endearing practice quickly degenerated in our house from and were tossed around like hand grenades - meant to inflict harm.  

You could probably figure out the meaning of the insult behind each of  these new names launched by my older brothers (this part doesn't take rocket science).  

In order, our nicknames looked something like this...

Brothers:

            "Zit King"

            "Girly-Man" (BTW, this has nothing to do with being effeminate - only the length of hair). In the                                         early years he was affectionately called, "The Crip." The Crip was the shortened                                         form of The Cripple, because of all the broken bones he had together at one time.                                         Later he was just called "Chewbacca." 

            "Mad-Dog"   

            "Puke-Breath" (if not self-explanatory - he wore a retainer and had the world's worst breath)        

            "Dooh-Dooh-Pants" My 4th or 5th oldest brother(depending on if you counted "Mad-Dog or not)                                                     began early on with this name (because he was always cutting the cheese                                                       and smelled like he had poop in his pants ). This made it easy to find when                                                     we were playing Hide N Seek. 

                                       Then he was called "Lardo" at about 13, because he may have been a                                                               whole 10 pounds over weight! "Lardo" was the shortened form of                                                                "Tub of Lard"(The crueler the better)!    

            "Flea-Bait" (making fun of his short stature). 

Sister: 

             "TQOTW"  (poking fun of her sense of self-importance).

Me: 

          "Marky Sparky" the mailman across the street, Frank                          Nargie, called me this, ( I wished that one had stuck).  

                   My brothers however, has a long list... 

           "Hyper-Boy" "Mosquito-Bait" "Rubber-Band Man"            "Retard... aka 'Tard" (that's the short list...but you get                                                         the idea).

Baby Sister: 

                 She was so far down the food-chain, that she didn't get                    a proper derogatory nick-name...the poor thing. She                        was the only person in our family called by their real                        name ... 

          "Karin." 

   

Following suit (since the Boys Scouts of America was a para-military organization), every kid in our troop had a nick name. Only, most of them had been corrupted by the same viral infection of our human nature (I don't know - maybe it had something to do with the creeping influences of the black ooze) that always seemed to make things flow downhill.

After the infamous camping trip at Camp Slauson we called our skewered and dangling, Senior Patrol Leader, Ray, "Lucky." "Lucky" was intended as a ironic jab and was more sardonic than it was sarcastic, employed in a way to make fun of the poor guy... who was indeed the unluckiest person in the world.

Behind his back, we called our Scout Master, Mr. Degotbee.  Degotbee was the phonetic pronunciation of the acronym, D G O T B, which means "Don't Go Over The Bridge" (which he did). 

Here I am, a 13-year-old late-bloomer and easy target. Not only do I feel insecure in my place in the world, but feel like an outsider in own family desperately trying to fit in.

I'm short for my age...don't have one strand of hair under my arm pits... I'm not a dope-smoking hippie and just don't fit in with the older boys...ie. The Wolf Pack. 

I am not welcome in hippie hooch-hut out back... I am too young to be invited to the hippie parties on Hollister ave in Santa Monica. 

I am not old enough, big enough or good enough to be part of the Venice Pinners softball team.

                       And... I didn't surf! 

I don't have my scuba certification like the rest of the older  boys and just don't belong! 

One time they took me on a scuba trip and tied me to the inner-tube they floated offshore as a marker (I made it "more visible"- they said laughing and "if carried away by a swell or wind, then it would be no loss. We tried to get rid of you at Salton Sea, but that didn't work - remember?"). 

They said things they thought were funny... and used cruel nicknames that deeply cut the heart of a little kid, who had longed for a sense of belonging in his own tribe.           THEY DIDN'T KNOW ME.

They told the Salton Sea story as a joke and laughed at each embellished rendition around family gatherings... to newcomers. I laughed too. But it made me feel like the biggest crisis in a life a nine-year-old was of no concern to them - it hurt! 

Here's the weird thing... the more I felt like I didn't belong - the more I felt like I needed to belong. 

That's why I said, "yes" to everything. "Yes, I'll go into the hamper."  "Yes, you can bury me in a pit."

"Yes, I'll hold this wire."  "Yes' I'll stick my finger in this hole." "Yes, I'll do underwater laps." 

And..."ARE YOU KIDDING ME? OF COURSE, I'LL GO ON A HIPPIE HIKE TO MALIBU CANYON WITH YOU GUYS! And the desperate (maybe even psychotic) 13-year-old said, "YES, I'LL GLADLY FIND A ROPE AND BRING IT."

Which brings me to another infamous story, a Dahlin classic. A story I pretend to laugh at and is used as a from of subtle torture at family gatherings!

Here is how it Began...   

Poochie laid out on the warmth of the soft, tar street as cars began assembling on the driveway and on the front lawn on a perfect Saturday morning.  

Hippies! Hundreds and thousands of them.  Maybe not hundreds and thousands... but 30 or 40 would be no exaggeration... gathered on the front lawn of the Harding House...  

     AND Markie D  WAS INVITED!  

 ....and I was even called by my real name...   

They liked me... everything was good in the world.  

                                            I Belonged!  

                                                                                                                                                              At least I thought so... 

                 

Conclusion: The Psycho Revenge and the Unluckiest Man Alive

Have you ever seen cockroaches scurry around at night after turning the lights on and watched the mad, frantic dash for cover before they were squished by the giant shoe?  That's exactly what we looked like - only different. We were wearing underwear and had tribal markings duct-taped across our naked upper torsos scrambling for cover in our tents.

Seriously, though the duct tape- was the personification of cool!

After the snakes had been let loose in the tents of the other Boy Scouts, we scurried like those cockroaches- only with chonies on - back to our tents, and pretended to be like other normal Boy Scouts.  Ray and Alan had used an entire half roll of the duct-tape on Cockrell - securely fastening his underwear to his stomach. The last thing they wanted was Cockrell running around naked. We giggled in anticipation and then hit each other and shushed each other and giggled and hit and shushed each other in the thrill of anticipation that couldn't be contained.  

Then it happened!

1:37am: "The screech that was heard around the world."
                   
One 14-year-old from Troop 34 screamed like a 10-year-old girl on the drop of a roller coaster when the snake slithered across his face in the middle of the night (or like that lady in the shower scene of Psycho).

This acted as the ALARM and was exactly what we had hoped for. The terrified screaming woke everyone up at Camp Slauson (everyone, expect for us of course). This was when one of the girls from the Santa Monica Troop also discovered the garter snake that had nestled in between two of them (Did I say "one of the girls"? - darn it, I meant one of boys).

Oh well, Panic ensued. Chaos! Mayhem! When the girls oops boys began shooting out through the flaps like cannonballs, they caught the rope, which the recon-team had tied 4 inches above the ground in snare like fashion. Not only, did the stealth rope trip the first kid out, but it also pulled the tent poles along with them - collapsing the tent and trapping the other kids inside.

Perfect and utter pandemonium - couldn't have worked out any better.  Boys fighting inside the shrouds, that had now covered them in pitch blackness, were frantically trying to claw their way out. The death-shrouds were in a tug-of-war match - anchored to a foot of the stupid troglodytes on the outside who were crawling in the dirt thinking that a Zombie had him by the ankle (which was only the rope he had tripped over and on the way out and was now tangled up in).

Santa Monica - same thing.

Beverly Hills - they just started crying thinking it was a Zombie Apocalypse and paid no attention to the empty rolls of duct-tape and pieces of rope lying in their otherwise, pristine camp.

Thank goodness the noise was so loud that our Scout Masters couldn't hear our laughter.  And on cue, this was when we went into our Oscar award winning act. We emerged from tents screaming and running around as if we were casualties of the same prank. We carefully collapsed a couple of the poles when everyone was out of their tents to make it look like we had been victimized as well, by the troop we had framed. ONLY!


Only, on the way out of his tent, Ray FORGOT!

 Ray forgot that we had tied ropes to the front poles of our tents in a ruse that had caught the poor guy right across the ankle (the unluckiest and the luckiest person alive). Down he went with a thud!  Our Troop 32 cabin was on a hill. Down Ray rolled! Bouncing from one dirt terraced step to another - pulling the tent behind. Poor "unlucky" Ray was sure to die. There was no way he could live through this.


Then  WHAM- Ray shot up into the air like an animal in a hunter's snare.

When setting up the tent, Ray had decided to take a shortcut and tie-off the top peak of his tent to a tree branch. Rolling down the hill to his sure death the branch stopped the tent which suspended the "luckiest-man-alive" in mid air.






Ray proved to be the perfect cover up! There was no way Troop 32 could have been involved in the greatest Boy Scout caper of all time, placing blame squarely on Troop 33 from Beverly Hills.

The laughter we had at Ray, who was precariously dangling from the branch - covered the laughter we couldn't contain at the snitches...the cake-eaters and (as Jeffery Lennon called them) the bottle-feeders from the other three troops.

Unfortunate Bridge Crossing

Branch Cracking

Truck Smashing

Ray Skewering.

Arms and Legs Flailing

Markie D Singing

Cockrell mooning

And Little Wiener Cooing.

Some Kids applauding

Cake-eaters snitching

Tribunal meeting

And Jeffery Seething

Payback Brewing

A Plan Ensuing

Paraphernalia Gathering

And Snipe-Hunt Pursuing.

Snakes Slithering

Boys who need Mothering

Zombies Reaching

And Death-Shrouds Smothering.

Venice Scheming

Mar Vista Bleeding

Santa Monica Weeping

And Beverly Hills Pouting.

Ray Dangling

Our Kids Laughing

Jeffery Proclaiming...

              ...The best Boy Scout Outing! 

You think I jest! But, 96.34% of this story is absolutely true.

Just find Jeffery and ask him yourself. He would tell you, "No Reserve. No Retreat. No Regrets"

To me, it was just another lousy day in paradise on Harding avenue. And that's just the way it was... until the next true of adventure of Markie D and growing up on the best street and the best city in the world.

Holy Indignation at Cockrell's "Full Moon!"

(Here is what I didn't tell you last time). While the top brass from the other troops were all on one side of the scout bus (which was stuck on the bridge) talking things over Pinky Parlette and our two scout masters, Cockrell pulled down his pants and pressed his bare-bottomed ham-cheeks against the porthole window on the other side - "mooning" the Boy Scout "cake-eaters" on the other side.

12:00 noon: This grotesque, teen-ritual took place out of sight of the fretting leaders on the other side who where trying to figure a way of getting the truck unstuck. A small percentage of the boys - clapped and cheered because they thought it was funny (as most normal adolescent kids should). The rest, cringed in holy indignation, as if this wasn't something that guys this age were supposed to do and acted as if we had broken one of the Ten Commandments of Boy Scouting or something sanctimonious like that.

Little Wiener was on the inside of the Scout Bus and was watching the "Cockrell-show" from the front side and was a little too happy about it - which creeped out Jeffery and the other kids who had lost interest in tormenting poor Ray. Everyone agreed that Little Wiener's excitement earned the little twerp a pink-belly. It had been about two weeks since his last one and he was due for another one!

3:00pm: Anyway, several of the kids from Troop 34 broke the guy code by snitching on Cockrell to their Scout Master when they returned to "camp-regular-kid."

4:00pm: Cockrell got called into a court marshal tribunal which had sanctioned him to solitary confinement inside the cabin tomorrow while the rest of us "got to" hike to "Fossil Ridge."

5:00pm: Jeffery Lennon was so upset about the whole thing that went around calling the snitches, "bottle-feeders," and incited the rest of the kids of our troop in agreeing that these mamma's boys deserved no less than the full wrath of Troop 32 (for which we were prepared in advance - hence the snakes).

8:00pm: After dinner and just before the snipe hunt, we began making plans and decided that this would be the inaugural Camp Slauson "White-Angel Raid" like we did at the National Jamboree last summer at Farragut State Park in Idaho (only this time with underwear on). Cockrell was so upset in what he felt was unjustified persecution that it had somehow earned him the right to go on the raid naked tonight and pleaded his case. Senior Patrol leader, Ray Vandenmark, had to calm him down and talk him out of going in his "birthday suit" all over again. (I'm telling you - this kid just wanted to have his pants off all the time. He had the mind of an eight-year-old in the body of a 22-year old - I'm not sure that is the best mix).

8:42pm: We gathered the ropes, the snakes and waited until after midnight, while Jeffery anxiously walked around in circles, rubbing his hands together like a kid at Christmas - doing a personal chant "down with the bottle feeders, down with the snitches."  He was so excited - he wasn't too far away from earning his own "pink-belly."

So we had crossed the bridge, crashed into a tree, crushed the front of the truck, skewered Ray, Cockrell had exposed himself and we had upset the Boy Scout cosmos. By now, Jeffery was sure that this was going to be one of the best camping trips of his life (that wasn't saying much - he never went camping with this family).  He was thrilled, but sad that his cousins Tommy Blaser or Michael or Kevin or Kippy Lennon weren't here with him to enjoy the more "Dahlin-side-of life."

9:30pm: We did the dreaded snipe hunt - and it appeared that even Jeffery liked being out late at night, in the dark, crawling around in bushes and snapping his thumbs inside a brown paper lunch sack. "A man who protest too much, gives himself away."  Apparently Jeffery had bought into the legendary snipe hunt "hook, line and sinker" by vehemently defended his claims that he had actually caught one of the fictional bird-related-rodents which had subsequently managed to escape by eating a hole in the bottom of his brown lunch bag.

I hated the insidious, late-night ritual and hated that Jeffery wasn't the least bit scared - perhaps it was because he was too excited about the raid to think about things like Albinos or Zombies or rattlesnakes that lived in the bushes. On the way back from the snipe hunt we tackled Little Wiener, wrestled him to the ground - pulled up his dirty uniform shirt and with a hundred hands patted his soft, white belly until it turned a bright shade of pink! Every "newbee" got one on their first camp out. He had already gotten his fair share, but seemed to keep earning one every time he acted like one of those namby-pambies from Mar Vista or Santa Monica.

12:33am:  16 of us kids sneaked out with nothing on, but our tight, white undies and some duck tape on our chest and back in the symbol of a cross - we looked like some bizarre tribe that was ready to participate in the crusades...only different... or a mutant group of Scots under William Wallace (we were just happy to be going into battle to defend the honor of our troop - and happier that we were near naked - and happiest about the plan).

Like a bunch of squeaky mole rats we took the rope and tied it to the front tent stakes of Troop 34's tents and wound it around from tent to tent 4 inches above the ground. We had another group doing the same thing over at the campsite of the troop from Santa Monica.  We had Little Wiener and Mosquito Bait doing the same thing at our campsite so it wouldn't be so obvious who perpetrated the crime. Lastly, we had two members stealthily sneak into a fourth camp and leave it completely untouched excepted for lots of evidence that was planted to frame them: i.e. end rolls of duck tape... pieces of rope... and other such paraphernalia.

1:02am: When everything was set... and all of our mole-rats in underwear had returned to our camp and put their clothes back on - over the duck-tape tribal markings, I turned a snake loose in one of the tents of the guys from Troop 34. At the same time, Kissel was busy loosing the other harmless garter snake in one of the tents of the guys from the Santa Monica troop.

We ran like "H   E  double toothpicks" back to our campground and waited! AGAIN...Cockrell had asked if he could be pretend to be sleeping in the tent naked, so that when the mayhem broke out he could run around like a chicken with its head cut off in full view of all the scouts at Camp Slauson. That idea was quickly squelched and the two other boys in his tent decided they would sleep outside under the stars.

1:15am: Giggling, in hushed excitement and whispers - We Waited!

And, I do have to tell you this: it worked out better than than anything we could have imagined - EXCEPT for poor Ray (the luckiest and the most unlucky person in the world).

1:37am: "The screech that was heard around the world!"



             (Pinky pictured in his Pajamas)

(p.s. no snake was harmed. Unfortunately, I can't say that about Ray and some of the boys in the other camps - hehehe).

Snakes. Ropes. Zombies and Troop 32

Continued: Last time, we had left off with Senior Patrol Leader, Ray, dangling inside the back compartment of our Scout Bus as if on a rotisserie inside of a BBQ. It was like he had been shish-kabobed by the oak branch that had crashed through the front window.

The chants of "Don't cross the bridge" morphed into "Monkey in the middle" as the toxic-fumed minions began swatting the helplessly flailing arms and feet of our new object of ridicule!  Meanwhile, the "do-gooders" of the other normal troops, grabbed their neatly packed first aid kits and rushed to the scene of the crash hoping to earn accolades and merit-badges.

We were "ill-equipped" for the attention we were suddenly flooded with! I was on top of the moving van(slash)Scout Bus singing about "Tapp crossing the bridge and the skewered Senior Patrol Leader" to the tune of "Like a Bridge over Troubled Water," but the Scout Master from Troop 34 and his flock of rescuing vermin thought my brilliant parody was inappropriate and tasteless.

"Ill-equipped" ...because we had no rocks to throw at the other regular kids (like we had at our disposal at the National Jamboree when Dego and the rest of the boys tried to kill Bill Gates)!
("at our disposal" meant that at the National Jamobree last summer we had both -  regular kids and rocks - lots and lots of normal kids who weren't from Venice and a billion river rocks!)

Behind their Scout Master's back, the pasty cake-eaters sneered and scowled at us with the expression of disdain written on their namby-pamby faces - that irked Jeffery to no end.    He was fit to tied!

FLASHBACK:  Even though we had tamed down the secret-induction "ritual" ever since the brawl of my induction malfunction - it was still very clear to Jeffery in the new "safer" ceremony - that loyalty to the new "people group" was of paramount importance and that snitches and "rats" were not tolerated.

Even though Jeffery Lennon did not start a riot at his induction like I did, he got the message loud and clear.

BACK TO OUR STORY: The kids in Troop 34 needed payback for violating the code! After we ran everybody off and took care of the mess ourselves we eventually made camp in front the best cabin at Camp Slauson. We were TROOP 32, we were from Venice and we were proud!

The planning began.  We found both of the snakes - one by accident, when it fortuitously bit the annoying "Little Wiener." We removed the snake from his arm, Kissel sucked out the pretend venom - and we praised Little Wiener for his contribution in finding the last snake, which had made its way into his backpack. Secretly, we assembled the ropes and the snakes for the midnight caper that would take place after the traditional "snipe hunt."   I hated the snipe hunts.  Supposedly, this charade is to test the resolve of the new kids and put hair on their chest. I've been on snipe hunts some 20 times, but sitting in a bush in the middle of a moonless night in complete blackness still scared the bajeebers out of me (AND I still didn't have hair on my chest).  I could not admit to my new Boy Scout tribe that I was afraid of the dark! I was afraid of being smothered....buried...suffocated...big brothers and anything that had to do with being tied up in ropes.

Oh, and Zombies!  (That's because my family had opened a Porthole to Hades that was channeled through the mysterious space in my bedroom wall).



For a new little "Pimple-Squeeze" like Jeffery - he actually had a very good plan (it was probably better planned than my payback attempt at Chewbacca - that had left me tied up by a rope and dangling from the third story window of our house IN MY UNDERWEAR on a school morning, in front of ANDREA and every other kid at Saint Marks school).

This was either going to be really good, or else, someone was going to end up in prison (I figured that I would probably have to go to confession next Saturday for not offering up a prayer for those soft kids from Mar Vista and Santa Monica).

Cockrell wanted to do the raid naked  - of course - but thankfully, we settled for duck tape and Tighty-Whities!

Next time:  "THE WHITE ANGELS"  True story!