Murder On The Humboldt Express

Spring 1970: By the time school began the older boys had been cured of leprosy. The red rash, the puss, the swelling, the boils and the pain had all subsided and they returned to the normal course of Hippie Life on Harding Avenue. In the meantime, my first day at Saint Monica's proved to be the 4th most embarrassing day of my my life (more about that later).

Karl had bought a new boat... well, new to us (pictured below).

It didn't have a motor yet, but it was fiberglass over wood -  though it was something from the early 1960's we felt like we were uptown Santa Monica or Beverly Hills... Beverly Hill Billies that is.  It needed a new interior - on second thought it needed a new everything.

But it was better than the old leaky-wood boat (which I loathed for good reasons and called a "controlled sinking"... pictured to the left). The old boat was under the palm tree in the front yard... next to the 16 foot sailboat and the 12 foot racing sailboat.


We had to make room for Karl's newest thing and had to shuffle around Mario's Borg-Warner, Karl's Morris-Minor and Erick's green MG (slightly pictured above) to make room for the new addition




We moved the scout bus to the driveway since we cleared space by sending the 16 foot travel-trailer up north to a remote place in the thick forest of Humboldt county with Kurt and Mario.

The "Salton Sea Flyer" had now become the "Humboldt Express."

Kurt and his good 'O Saint Monica's water polo chum, Mario, decided that dorm life had been too tame and cost too much money and had been too lame for the burgeoning hippies in their second year at Humboldt.

They thought the humble trailer was not just their ticket for living off campus, but also allowed them to live for FREE!

Besides... with all of the horticulture success in our backyard in Venice... a couple of free spirited entrepreneurs could grow all kinds of stuff in that heavily forested tundra...stuff that might have been frown on by Humboldt State University... Never-the-less this living arrangement could provide a little extra income for a pair of starving students.







The running joke in Venice was, "Would they be able to survive in such close quarters - since they both had deadly gas."  12 feet by six feet by six feet is only 432 cubit square feet of oxygen - easily burned up in a single explosion of flatulence.

Dad laughed and told them not to fart in the presence of lit pilot light...

We made fun of the two of them thinking that one of them just might not make it back alive... Little did we realize how ominous our thinking was that set the stage for murder.


YOU HEARD ME RIGHT.    MURDER!
Does this stuff ever happen to a Lennon or a Blaser? Not really... it could only happen to a Dahlin.

We got the phone call from a detective of the Arcata police...saying that Kurt was being held for questioning regarding a murder that involved his trailer that had been hidden deep in the woods.

Tune in next time: Whose bloody hand-print was on the door?  Where was the body? And will Kurt get sentenced to LIFE?

Wolf Pack Leprosy: All was Well (almost)!

Since the "elephant man adventure" to the Russian River  - ALL WAS WELL!

My left leg (that had been cut in half a year ago) was fully operational and completely healed.


My arm was out of a cast.





I had graduated from Saint Mark's...didn't know anything - but I graduated.

It was summer and several hippie members of the Insurgent Wolf Pack were inflicted with leprosy... poison oak really.

My dad liked to tell stories and from him we had learned to embellish everything. 

Every story grew upon retelling.  And now the Minions of Venice hippies (my brothers) laid wallowing and writhing in red-blistery, pus-oozing pain at my hands. I was a one man boy Avengers.  


THERE WAS JUSTICE in the world...after-all and Markie D was basking in the sweet aroma of victory.




I had gone Into The Woods a boy and not much has changed other than the fact that I felt like there was stardust in the air and it was as if I could hear angels singing.



I let my blonde bangs grow, went body surfing at 27th Ave with the Blasers and the Lennons and thought about Andrea.

No Pits

             No BBs

                          No Arrows

                                           No cliffs

                                                             No ropes

                                                                               No Templates

                                                                                                         No Electrocutions

                              "What a wonderful world this would be"

Jeffery's mom, Jeanette Lennon, came out and accused me of being too happy (AGAIN).
She made me aware that I was oddly happy.

Too happy?

I don't know.  Maybe?  

Maybe I was. Couldn't tell my family that I felt alone. That would have been ridiculous. Who would believed this about a kid that lived in a big house (full of people) that was the center of universe.

Animal House

We were the crazy family with the run-away rattlesnakes, chuckwallas, iguanas and one alligator!

We had the monkey, the Veloci-rooster, and grew the "Mexican tomato plants" for all of Venice, Santa Monica, Mar Vista and Culver City...

Social-media was my front lawn... and although I lived there - I felt disconnected...abandoned and alone.  I had to fend for myself...feed myself and constantly fight the heinous hippy hoards.



























Weirdly too happy.  

Maybe I was retarded. My psyche was crushed by the continual betrayals and I knew that I had no right to be this happy. I couldn't explain it.  Hope?







Even though I felt like damaged goods I felt protected by the universe... like something up there had its hand on me... in a guardian-angel-kind-of-way...  I could sense a ray of light...  "Love?"


"Love" was a word we had no use for in my house. I had never heard it used by a parent or by a brother or sister. I had heard other four letter words, but not this this one.

I longed that one day a member of my family would look me in the eye (mom or dad - anyone) and use the "L word."


If not someone inside - then maybe it would come from someone outside... A girl? Andrea? Anyone?

I had learned all about God from the nuns at Saint Marks and yet knew nothing about Him. Was He real? Could I reach out and touch Him? Could I know Him...or at least ... would He allow an orphan like me to feel what it means to be loved.

Lost and numb, (trying to make contact) I stepped onto the makeshift stage on the front lawn of the Harding house and danced in the flood-lights.

I sang all the "Pizza Pizza Daddio" songs with Mimi Lennon and Mary and Theresa Blaser and Darleen Tripp.

 "Theresa, has a boyfriend. Pizza Pizza. Daddio"
        "Who told you? Pizza Pizza Daddio"
"You told me Pizza Pizza... Now shake it!"

 ... and "shake it" I did ... as I danced and sang for the summer night shows we put on for the whole neighborhood.


We danced
We body-surfed
We ate potato-chips with sand in them...

Saint Monica's here I come...

Then we heard the news about the bloody hand-print and the arrest for murder....

Next time... THE VENICE MURDERERS IN HUMBOLDT!  You can take us out of Venice, but you can't take the Venice out of us...                          (it's all true).

  

The Elephant Man, The Wolf Pack, The Plague

Continued from last time: The Manhunt!  or "How not to take a Family Vacation (again)"

“Leaves of three, let it be! Leaves of three, let it be! Leaves of three, let it be! Leaves of three, let it be!” 

The crazy mantra from the Boy Scouts got louder and louder as it kept playing over in my head. 

This just might have been the worst idea I ever had. WHAT IF I GOT POISON OAK?  I had seen the ugly and debilitating effects of the toxic plants on my brothers enough times to know how horrible it was and how long it lasted.   

For protection against the predator Wolf Pack, I jumped into the middle of a scraggly poison oak plant. And bolted downhill with two torn branches of the poisonous red leaves - full throttle - chasing a retreating army of 40 hippies.       

                                        It all made sense to me: David verses Goliath. 

He ran headlong into the giant who stood in front of him. My five smooth stones happened to be - weaponized sprigs of  toxicodendron urushiol...i.e. poison oak waving violently in my quivering fist like a mad man.  

"Hippie anti-venom…  hippie anti-venom… hippie anti-venom"

 I screamed all the way down the hill chasing siblings and their friends who scurried like frightened cockroaches. 

My dad, Mr. Sasson and Red took cover, locking themselves inside the station wagon even though it was a hundred degrees out. 

I did victory laps about the camp and tied the insidious branches to my head like antlers and continued to terrorize the viking brood. 

In a evil taunt I even laid in a lounge chair, arms folded under my head, as if tempting the universe to take it best shot.  BAD IDEA! BB's began flying. But it was a pump gun - so I took off directly into enemy fire knowing that "reloading" was hard to do on the run and swiped an assailant who was caught off-guard in the panic of pumping the Daisy rifle. 

A new tacit... I hid in the bushes for hours and didn't move. As the haughty Philistines began trickling back one by one - I lulled them into a false sense of security.  

THEN ATTACKED. Who was the blood-thirsty zombie now - Huh?  YEAH - ME, the little vampire fish.  

I got two of them when called off by my dad who sought to broker a peace treaty. 

All of that to say  ... that by the end of three days - The Plague of red rash... itch... boils... oozing... leaking... swollen arms and legs and other unmentioned body parts... had taken it devastating toll. 

Fortunately for me; it turned out that the itch on my forehead was an irritation from the twine.

ALL WAS WELL! And it got better.   

On the way home... we looked like a traveling circus with at least three of my brothers so severe that they were mocked by the others and one who was so grotesque that he was affectionately called "The Elephant Man."  

One stop, at a gas station in Big Sur, the owner had called the police who forced us out of the store and escorted out of town with lights and siren. 

I would love to post those pictures, but they have been banned by the Federal government... Okay, not by the Feds, but essentially banned by older brothers who later burned the incriminating evidence. 

Crusty-pink hippies were running around Venice coated in dried Calamine lotion while one recuperated on the hospital bed in the dining room and Chewbacca was quarantined in a room in third floor - naked - with a fan blowing over the aforementioned (unnamed) body parts. 

Of course it was bound to be an adventure - it involved the Dahlins ...and that's the way it was. 

I was none-the-closer to knowing what true love was all about - but for three weeks I had a spring in my step and a huge grin on my face!

        "Ahhhhhh.... the smell of Calamine in the morning."   

                       Just another day on Harding Ave...  

The Russian River, The Manhunt, and Elephant Man!

From Last time: I figured that I was safe and that there wasn't a whole lot that could go wrong on this family adventure.

This was not just an escape from Venice...I was on a journey. This was more than just a trip to Northern California. I was determined  to find out what love is...all about. I heard about it enough.

The Beatles sang all about love.  I saw the words painted on the sides of brightly colored Volkswagen vans that read "Make Love not War."

"I can't stop now, I've traveled so far" I wanted to know what other people knew - what normal people understood about things like love.

I climbed into the back of my dad's station wagon with apprehension as if testing to see how cold the water was...testing to see how deep could it be and to see how dangerous the current...was.

I got in slowly...with the hopeful expectation that this journey was a path that would lead me to connect with my brothers in a special way that - brothers and sisters do in regular families... like I'm sure the Lennons do.  They're normal.

So off we went!

Our low-down-and-dirty caravan was an eclectic potpourri of hippies and regular people...in a percentage ratio of 92:8.  Me, my dad and my two sisters were the four normal people among the hordes of "herb-smoking" irregulars crammed into our station wagon and into "Red" Sasson's conversion van - as we took off through Santa Monica and headed up the coast route to the Russian River.

We passed the red beach-house on PCH at the foot of Tuna Canyon drive. My eye began twitching and my stomach churned thinking about the Hippie Fest and the betrayal of rope incident. It made me feel as though the Wolf Pack couldn't be trusted and that I shouldn't let my guard down. But since dad was with us, I figured they would be on their best behavior and that I would be safe!


What could possible go wrong?



You couldn't blame someone for having gas...could you?  Kurt and his Water Polo friend, Mario, had both graduated from Saint Monica's. Kurt was famous (scratch that out)... he was infamous for the lethal power of his toxic farts, but was a mere 6 on a Richter-scale compared to the seismic phenomenon of Mario. Deep within, Mario had the unbelievable capacity to blow up an entire city block―that at times measured a 10 on the Richter-scale along with unrelenting aftershocks measuring well above 8.

 (Here is the Poster for the disaster movie that came out last year - 1969)

Every fifteen minutes "Krakatoa" erupted that caused the caravan to pull over so we could exit...take cover and find fresh air.
Long-haired bodies dramatically gagging (as if on stage) stumbling out of the car―pushing―shoving―laughing!      

Point Dume - BAM! "Krakato - East of Java" Mario exploded - mayhem ensued.

Like clockwork - another aftershock - Mario clears the car!

Past Sycamore at "Sand Hill"  Bam! A Mario Explosion. Caravan pulls over giving us the time and excuse to run to the top and slide down on pieces of cardboard.
                                               
ONLY!

Only my dad was building an immunity to the stink and grew more and more impatient with the delays.

THEN!

Then he remembered the button: later to be called, "The button from Hell"

Our top-of-the-line, Ford Esquire wagon was loaded and came with door locks, power windows and all the bells and whistles... One bell and whistle was a button on the driver-side door-panel that locked all the windows.

After we got through Ventura, my hilarious father rolled up all the windows and locked them shut every time Mario exploded with flatulence in something on the scale of Mount Vesuvius that smelled like your head had been forced down the hole of an outhouse on a pig farm.

This might have been funny for most people - but this did not take into consideration my "Superpowers."

My dad thought he was being funny. He laughed as fights broke out and I heaved my guts up in an empty Folgers can that was supposed to be used as a "thunder bucket." A thunder bucket was the traveling port-a-potty all the boys were supposed to use instead of pulling over to make potty-stops - it sounded like thunder whenever anyone had to take a pee. It was gross, but that's the way it was.

Anyway, you could probably guess how much happier the boys were that I was being tortured to the point where I vomited every time Mario "pooped" his pants!

I wanna know what love is

I want you to show me

I wanna feel what love is

I know you can show me...

After the flatulence terrorism we finally - FINALLY - arrived at Roger Sasson's new property - up at the Russian River. From all the vomiting, I felt drained of life as if having gone through grand-mal seizures!   

Everyone had a great time!  

Me, however, I needed the break.  I needed to run away and hide to get my strength back!  

"In my life there's been heartache and pain

I don't know if I can face it again

Can't stop now, I've traveled so far

To change this lonely life"

Sweaty! Stinky! Sticky long-haired bodies squeezed out of the car like toothpaste from a tube under pressure...out we poured like a swarm of blonde locust!   

I rolled onto the dirt like a sailor returning from long voyage and kissed the ground. "Terra-firma!" 

I looked over my shoulder to see the Wolf Pack assembling in a secret meeting that intentionally excluded me and dad. 

There were adults here. I was safe―right? They would protect me if the boys had some sinister scheme to bury me...or to tie me to a tree...or to put me in a straight jacket and throw me over a cliff. 

This couldn't happen―not here―not when all of my physical strength had been drained from my 98-pound-body.  I was too weak to fight them off.  They must have been having a tribal council about the timing and place for them to smoke a little "herb." 

That's it! 

THEN I HEARD MY NAME! Endorphins pumped - adrenaline flowed - my heart raced... brain cells synapsed - Fight or Flight!  Like the Grinch when he held the slay of stolen toys over his head - I now had the strength of five 180-pound hippies.  

I was in danger...and I wanted dad to protect me. Hoping not to incite them (like wasp in a hive), I was careful not to draw their attention. Slowly, I walked in dad's direction.  WHEN I SAW the crowd break like a football team after a huddle and ominously move in my direction - I knew all was not right.  

THEN HEARD THEM SHOUT MY NAME! I ran!  

"Mark" screamed one of the Alpha Males. "We're going to give you a 30 second head-start, then we're coming after you."

Zealously, Erick began pumping the daisy BB gun. This was serious. They meant business. Ironically the MANHUNT included peace-loving hippies armed with BB guns and armed for war. 

     

They didn't care what my dad said... they were coming after me! Life wasn't fair, but I couldn't complain because dad had always said, "Life isn't fair."  

We were in a flat plateau in the bottom of an natural amphitheater surrounded by towering pines and all kinds of scrubby looking brush... I HAD THIRTY SECONDS! 

I ran up up a hill for my life!  The hordes soon took flight and came after me like blood thirsty ZOMBIES... 

Up I ran... "DAD!" I yelled.  Nothing! I was on my own.  

The hippie Wolf Pack - all of them - fanned out and came up hill after me. 

In my mental-sickness, I felt honored to be counted such a worthy prey. 

BUT...I was tired of the game. I was tired of pits and ropes and electrical wires and pink-bellies and the "knock-out" game. I was tired of being chased and dragged and shot at with BB guns and needle-tipped arrows... I hated that fact that bigger people found pleasure in hurting weaker members of the pack.  I hated feeling left out. I hated the betrayal that was nothing more than a funny game to them. I hated not knowing what human kindness and what love felt like... I just wanted to be included. 

There was a lot of talk about Love it two years ago at Haight-Asbury... "The Summer of Love" everyone seemed to know what it was all about - except me!  

John and Yoko knew―right? 

I ran for my life... UNTIL! 

Until, I spotted a shrub with clusters of three leaves that were turning shades of ugly red that I had recognized from Camp Slauson in Malibu. 

I been on snipe hunts a thousand times and never got poison oak. I think I was immune. I wasn't sure, but decided to take a chance anyway as the throng of blonde-haired Zombies closed in. I dove head first into a giant shrub and hid inside.  Then it dawned on me... "Hey stupid dummy" the voice in my head said... "you have three older brothers who are crazy allergic to toxicodendron diversilobum" I ripped two large twigs of the dangerously toxic plants and charged after the delirious band of brothers who took off running in the opposite direction.

What a sight. Markie D was now chasing 300 hippies down a hill!  

I didn't care if I got the horrible plague - it was a risk I was willing to take.  At the moment, all I could think about was that fact that I was winning...all 98 pounds (dripping wet) against an army of that weighed in at 4,228 pounds collectively. 

"The bigger they are. The harder they fall. One and all."  

Did I mention anything about the "Elephant Man?" Oh, I thought I did. Sorry to leave you hanging, but I'll save that for the next time in the big conclusion of who got what and how!  

   

       

The Summer of Love. The Summer of Manhood. Both? Neither?

June 1970: it was a big, big year.
             "A Rite of Passage"







I was finally graduating from Saint Mark's grammar school and would become a man.

Well, maybe not a man, but I would begin a new life as a Freshman at Saint Monica's High School.



This sacred rite of passage, however, seemed to be lost on me. The other normal kids in my class seemed to know things. They knew about love and sex and English grammar. The knew about the three branches of our American government, how to spell and lots of stuff about God and Jesus and Mary and Joseph and also stuff about science.

   Me?  Uh-uh!

I had been too busy running for my life, dodging needle-tipped arrows, digging myself out of pits, surviving electrocutions, fighting off ambushes by the "Angry-Little-Man-Crew," pushing our fleet of broken down cars from one side of the street to the other, not to mention the psychological torture of the Catholic nuns at Saint Marks, and most recently, the bullying and physical torture of the "Wolf-Pack" hippie clan that repeatedly threw me over the cliffs in Malibu - TO ACTUALLY LEARN ANYTHING.

I was okay at math - accepted into the "Zero Period" advanced math program at Saint Monica's, but other than that I barely knew the difference between a noun and a verb. I was so preoccupied with ducking every time one of the kids in my class raised a hand - thinking I was going to be belted in the head - that I didn't have sufficient brain synapse to learn a blinking thing.

Why, I was so ignorant that I hardly knew where babies came from. 







It seemed my only "rite of passage" was the fact that I finally outgrew my dad's frugal invention of the infamous sugar-water, gel-concoction that attracted the mosquitoes to California.





I graduated from the hard shell helmet-look to the  dry-look with my long bangs as a junior-hippy.


The girls in my 8th grade class seemed to like my golden locks and began doting on me - you would think this was good... right?  Well, I don't think it had anything to do with any sort of romantic inclination. At our graduation party at Mike Dunagan's house the girls sat me on their lap and combed my hair as if they were 8-year-olds (in touch with there mothering instincts) playing with me like I was a doll. 

I didn't put up a fuss. It made me feel good. I enjoyed actual human contact and physical touch that didn't leave bruise marks or some kind of road rash. Though it wasn't love (other than Irene), this was the closest thing I had come to making contact with what might have looked like love.

I sat on the front steps of our Venice house, watched the world go by and surveyed the landscape - trying to take it all in.

I think the Lennons knew what love was.


I think the Blasers knew what love was.


I think the Tripps knew what love was.





My friends next door and across the street... surely Tommy and Jeffry and Joey and Ricky knew... right?







The girls in my class knew. Marilyn and Theresa and Andrea - they had to know... didn't they?











There was a normal family behind us - across the ally - the Arnolds - they knew. Right?


 (Photo courtesy of Cheryl Arnold - Miss Venice, Miss Santa Monica, and Miss LA)






So what is wrong with me? COULD SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME! I wanted to believe that what I felt for Andrea was love, but was so insecure that I couldn't utter one coherent word in her presence.

I was either retarded, like my brothers said, or I was damaged goods.  I began to wonder if I was even capable of something so grand a notion as love?

Numb! An Island! A Rock!  I had spent considerable time building a wall around my heart to protect myself - afraid of becoming vulnerable and afraid that only by being vulnerable could I know what love truly is.  "In case I need it when I get older."



Do I just blurt it out! Do I tell Andrea that I love her?  We didn't use the word in our family and I couldn't get the "L Word" past my lips.  Andrea, please, read between the lines.


I've traveled so far... I wanna know what love is. Please someone show me.



Do I let down my guard and trust my brothers? Maybe, one small steps at a time!  Take a little time and think things over. I have this mountain I have to climb.

Tomorrow, we are going to set out for another great adventure. It's always a great adventure when my family goes camping.

As usual we will cram a hundred bodies into our Ford station wagon and drive up the coast to visit our neighbor, Roger Sasson's, new property up by the Russian River.

I'm sure that I'll be perfectly safe and nothing will go wrong.... NEXT TIME "Russian River, The Man Hunt, Elephant Man and The Plague"