To Toke or Not to Toke - The Law of the Jungle

Captain's Log: Star-date 1971  

To smoke or not to smoke?  That was the question (this is where I left off last time).

Tony Alva offered me an olive branch or a “peace pipe” of acceptance. 

I was in.

By smoking his doobie I could freely roam the ruins of Pacific Ocean Park pier. This certainly took the edge off the feeling that I had been rejected by Andrea—my one true love.  

In that second, I thought about love and how desperately I wanted to know the feeling that other people feel. When Andrea wrapped herself around the neck of that surfer-dude from Santa Monica my dreams were now dashed like a shipwreck being tossed back and forth on an angry tide on the jagged Santa Monica breakwater rocks.  

This kid inhaled and held it out to me. 

If I was going to toke on a joint for the first time—it should be with the Wolf Pack.  

Smoking pot just might be my way in.

Maybe my older brothers and the other Harding Hippies would accept me and want me around for something more than just a play toy or to experiment with some newfangled trap of some sort.   

Waving him off, Tony frowned, shrugged his shoulders and passed it along. He and his tribe allowed me to slip away from the domain of his rat’s nest unharmed.  

POP was nothing like it's glory days.  

The walk home to Venice was a good time to think. I paused under the 200-year-old Banyan Fig tree at Hollister Ave and Neilson Way and eventually crossed over at “Heroine Park” at Main Street and Westminster.

I walked down Washington Blvd that was nothing more than a bunch of old vacant and rundown buildings behind the ghetto.

I thought about visiting Dego who lived on Electric, but decided to head back to Hippy Central at my house—via the Venice Troop 32 Boy Scout House near the railroad tracks.  A bounce returned to my step. 

Even though I had a dark secret I was not a victim.         I had friends. 

I belonged to a group of water polo players and swimmers at Saint Monica’s. 

I belonged to Troop 32. Heck yeah, we were the most disorderly Boy Scout Troop in the world, but I belonged and had fought my way to the top of that kingdom hierarchy. 

  

So Andrea chose another…so what?  I had a best friend next door and the craziest family in the animal kingdom.  

 

Still?

I wanted to belong to my own pack at home. I wanted to be accepted by my own and protected.  

Maybe Tony Alva was on to something. 

Maybe the way to join my brother’s club was to be become a reefer-smoking-junior-hippie. 

But, what if I said yes and what if I took a hit and what if they still rejected me—what then?

 

I wanted in—I think?

NOW this is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the sky,

And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.      

As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;       

For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

Walking up Crestmore Ave Mrs. Gass saw me talking to myself—arguing with God really, but she didn’t know that.  I smiled and waved. 

God is this too much to ask for?

I nodded to Leland as I rounded the corner and eventually made it home to the most exciting house in America or in California—certainly in Venice. 

"Hi Mrs. Mcclain"

"Hi Mrs. Tripp"

"Hi Mrs. Blaser"

    yep—yep I could hear Mrs Nargie.

It was late and by this time, the backyard was bound to full of a menagerie of Lennons, Blasers, Grants, the H Club, Kleghorn, stragglers and strangers.   

I was finally home to scheming hippies and hibernating turtles. Home to the infamous Veloci-Raptor who made war with a Catholic nun. 

Home to vagrant carburetors and leaning towers of a half-century’s worth of decaying National Geographic’s. Chickens outside of cages and rabbits inside poorly constructed ones. 

Cars on blocks—three sailboats and a 1956 MG cohabitating under the palm tree. 

Rusted bikes with missing wheels, outboard motors in trashcans full of water, lawnmowers that I don’t think ever worked and several tools we borrowed from the Blasers (borrowed in the loose translation of the word). 

And lots of cars that didn’t work and trucks used as trash barges.   

I was home. Home to the snakes, the chuckwallas, the Iguanas, Leopard lizards and two new kittens on the porch. 

Best of all, I was home to my favorite person on earth—my little beagle Pooch.  Now, all I would have to do is go to the back and smoke some hooch. 

Yes I was home, but with a hole in my heart and contemplating my future being spurned by Andrea and being apart.

Home without a girlfriend or Pack –tree trunk forward or back—no strength—no place in the jungle in a law as old and as true as the sky, no way to prosper—and feeling like I wanted to die. 

Why Andrea? Why?

I took two steps and stopped and couldn’t bring myself to go back—there was someone I feared in the Pack.

I strapped on my boxing gloves and lay down in bed—I pleaded or fought or yelled at God and told Him it was His fault and then asked for His protection against the evil we had unleashed into the world.   

Next Stop: The Venice BSA Infection spreads to the Sacramento Deltas via the concentration camp at Dachau... and who let Lyman drive the houseboat anyway?   

And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.  

Images credits: 

Kids running at ruins of POP Facebook post (don't know who to credit)

POP ruins: Facebook post the rise and fall of Pacific Ocean Park 

POP bubbles: Facebook  Photos of Los Angeles by Bill Gabel

POP in its Glory days Postcard: Facebook (don't know who to credit) 

All other pictures: mine