Shirtless, Dirty and Back to Alcatraz

Between intervals at swim practice, James Moore pestered me with instructions on how to deal things that I would never need to know.

Why on earth (for one minute), would I ever need instructions on how to deal with a charging bull. 

Turns out I was wrong as I describe the worst trip ever and nine million reasons to be happy.

I had just finished one year in high school but I have already known James Moore for two years—we spent a year together in 8^th grade in advanced math.

He came from Corpus Christi in the Palisades and I came from Saint Marks in Venice and we met each morning for zero period in Santa Monica at Saint Monicas—thatwas fall of 69 and spring of 1970.

Can you image me in advanced anything?  Neither could I. 

But somehow geometry came easy to me – it was visual, numbers didn’t lie or talk back and was not nearly as complicated as girls. It’s people that I had the hardest time figuring out—add to that this little thing called love—wow, was I lost!

Anyway, James was brilliant and his mind was full of all kinds of useless data that he stored up in the depths of his gray matter like a giant filing-cabinet.

Atwater polo and swim practice he would come off with ridiculous things like – how to identify a mail bomb or how to foil a UFO abduction.

UFO! Serious? I figured that might not be so necessary for me, but could come in handy for Joey Lennon or Kippy Lennon since we almost burned down their housewith the launch of one of our infamous Dahlin UFOs of flaming death.

Charging bulls—forget about it.

Anyway that’s what I thought until Venice Troop 32 decided to take an ill-fated trip to the Sacramento Delta’s for summer camp. (I laugh to myself as I use the “ill-fated” boy scout trip, because everything we did turned out to be ill-fated—like the time our troop from Venice sabotaged the National Jamboree,like the White-Angel midnight raids on Troop 34 at Camp Slauson in Malibu and like the time the Scout Master decided to drive over the bridge).

This inglorious group of optimistic misfits piled in the back of the Scout Truck (if you can call it that). It was actually diabolical experiment, where we were used as lab rats by scientist to observe the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning. Hence the MMA cage fighting, the mooning, and peeing out the back at passerby’s. I’m sure that if we were tried in a court of law we would not have been convicted due to the toxic fumes we were subjected to and inhaled the entire way.  

SACRAMENTO GET READY. With Karl’s new boat in tow we headed toward the Deltas—fighting—mooning little old ladies—and peeing out the back.

  

We took the old ‘59 Johnson motor off of the decrepit wooden boat that PatGhering, Karl and I almost died in (off of Marina Del Rey) and put the tired motor on a boat that actually had fiberglass.

Dude, we were moving up—Beverly Hills style.

Anyway, I felt dad would let me be the one who was responsible for the “new” boat, but he made Ray in charge.                    You heard me right—Ray—not me!

We got to the Delta’s and Ray took off in the Dahlin-boat speeding by the rest of us who felt like trapped rats on top of the houseboat. There he was, smug, zipping by as we were tortured by the smell of the septic tank vented out top where we slept and were forced to hang out every second of every day.   
 

                Me       

Steve Kissel 

We were not allowed to go down inside the houseboat to escape the heat of the day—shade, comfort and cooler temperatures were reserved for the scoutmasters and leaders.

I wanted my dad’s approval and thought he would have said I was the guy to be in charge of the Dahlin boat and felt disappointment and that disappointment led to bitterness. I wanted his blessing but it went to Ray, instead.

So I started a rebellion that ended with me either pealing potatoes... (picture to Left)

... or serving time in the BRIGG – aka – the KYBO –  the bathroom – the outhouse. 

No, not just an ordinary outhouse, but an outhouse in which the contents were constantly being sloshed back and forth by wakes and snotty-nosed-kids on top rocking the houseboat back and forth and what-not. Needless to say with my superpowers—I lost mostof the food contents of my stomach as I puked out the window every three minutes.

Then the accident. Yes, another accident. I think the Scoutmaster thought boats should behave like cars. Hello, cars have brakes. We were cutoff coming around the corner of a delta “T-intersection” and I guess he thought after throwing the 52-foot behemoth in full reverse that he could simply step on the brakes. It doesn’t work that way – it has something to do with math. I didn’t know the formula – but I did know that it had something to do with weight and velocity and force and momentum involving inertia (in other words a boat does not have four wheels making contact with the ground and does not stop like a car).  

He threw the engine into forward but it was too late.

The Scoutmaster reversed the boat into a low hanging branch that plowed through the back door–which kept plowing through the back door, and the wall, and through a couple bunks and about ten feet through the houseboat. We were skewered right up to the kitchen.

In my rebellion, I loved it! It served everybody right.

While the Scoutmasters brainstormed the solution (that didn’t seem to involve any of us lab rats), Steve Kissel and I escaped. We climbed out across the large branch of the oak tree and into freedom. We ran wild in some farmer’s cornfield. Playing hide-and-go-seek, we picked ears of corn and threw them like hand-grenades at each other.

Eventually, knowing that we would have to come back to giant houseboat Shish-Kabob we felt we had better bring back a peace offering as a penance for leaving Alcatraz.

Shirts stuffed with corncobs and walking down a slopping field we encountered a bull blocking our path. Turns out that the bull was as insane as the attackveloci-rooster in the Dahlin backyard.

Giving us fair warning the angry beast snorted, stomped his foot and headed in our direction.  The odds were stacked against us. We were at least 500 yards from a fence in any direction.

What the heck did James Moore say about dealing with a charging bull? What was it? What did he say between laps of 200-yard-freestyle? 

UGHHhhh…Mark can’t you remember anything?

First we split up. Maybe one of us would live to tell about it. The bull charged Kissel. I was free and knew that he would most likely die. I decided to take my treasured peace-offering and began firing them at the charging thousand-pound-predator like hand-grenades. One solid whack to the noggin worked! The bull stopped short of killing Kissel—looked at me with those crazy rooster-eyes and headed in my direction.

Running zig-zags, throwing corn over my shoulder, depleting my resources, I figured by some kind of subconscious math calculations that I could not beat the bull to the fence and that I was a goner (in other words the bull could run faster than me).

Steve ripped his shirt off, ran in my direction and began doing the bull-fighting “Toro” dance. By golly it worked. Stupid bull. Now Steve was in trouble, so I ripped off my shirt and ran to the bull like a brave Matador waving my boy scout shirt as if it were a red cape. The ignorant brute could not resist the temptation and took off in my direction. This time, however, closer to the fence I tossed my shirt giving Kissel and I enough time to leap over the fence.  We somersaulted straight into a lush blackberry bush—and we commenced to roll headlong down the dirt grade. 

Never mind that fact that we looked like bloody refugees–we lived to tell about it.

Dirty, shirtless, bleeding and scratched, blackberry stains from head to toe, we climbed back across the oak limb into the houseboat. We ended up taking turns for the duration of the trip in solitary confinement in the stinking-hot poop-sloshing Brigg. I puked my guts out–but this time it was worth it.

This would go down in history as the worst summer camp ever.

The only highlight of the notorious Delta-trip was that at night we made up mean songs about Ray and his boat with the 35 horse-power motor that refused to start after the second day. I was happy about the callouses he had from futilely pulling the starter rope—some nine million times.







(Paddling the boat back) 

              (Towing it behind the houseboat)

With plenty of time to think in the KYBO—I realized that I just wanted dad’s approval and that none of this was Ray’s fault. It fueled the bitterness I felt from the primal yearning for belonging. 

Fitting in was easy. I was good at it. But fitting in, is the enemy of belonging.* Fitting in means you shape yourself to meet others expectations, but belonging means that you are accepted for you are, warts and all.  

I couldn't wait to get back to Venice once again and back to my friends for a new school year at St. Mos. I don't think I'll tell James Moore about my bullfighting career, but I do think I will share some of the stuff I know - stuff from Venice that really matters like shoving potatoes in the tailpipe of a car  (next time). 

*Brene Brown "The Gifts of Imperfection"
KYBO Boy Scout acronym for bathroom or outhouse - Keep Your Bowls Open (no joke)