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