Chemical Warfare: The Hazards of Living Next to the Dahlins.

So, last time we left off...contemplating the tumultuous condition of the brotherhood of mankind and the newly discovered roadkill, that one of the hippies down the street, brought to our house. Booty had found it squashed in the middle of the road in Santa Monica Rustic Canyon where he went to channel aliens with the aluminum-foil pyramid he fastened to the top of his thick curly hair.

"Dude...Bro...this is totally tubular." Booty (the surfer) said holding out the dead skunk to my brother as if handing him a million dollars.

"Dude...Cool...this is like totally groovy man." Dooh-Dooh Pants exclaimed, overjoyed at gift he was delighted to receive.

As I said before, Dooh-Dooh Pants had fancied himself as a combination of a child-of-the-earth and backwoods-mountain-man and thought that this skunk's fur would make the perfect hat - kind of like Davey Crockett's - only way more cool. Laying the squished beast out on the table on the patio, both of them realized something was missing. 

THE STINK! 

Whoever ran it over, failed to pop the stink-sacks and they were struck with the sudden revelation that special caution would have to be taken as Dooh-Dooh Pants prepared to remove the hide. This was not to be taken lightly and needed additional inspiration as the two of them decided to retreat to the hidden-hippy cannibus-cavern behind the pool and puff the "magic dragon."

"Dude" Booty said.
"Dude...Dude!" Dooh-Dooh Pants said in return, as if they were communicating deep truths of the universe.

With a new sense of carefree confidence and inconsequential frivolity, Dooh-Dooh Pants and his partner in crime emerged from the dubious ivy cave, smelling slightly of skunk themselves, with a newly hatched PLAN.

You see, the neighbors next door had the perfect house and the perfect yard and had the perfect dog. Mr. Blaser even went as far as paying for professional flea-spraying laboring under the misapprehension that he could keep the Dahlin's fleas out of his backyard. Ha...that was like thinking that refugee mosquitoes seeking asylum from the Dahlin's green pool wouldn't illegally migrate onto his pristine property.
(to the left is a picture of our mosquito breeding pond at the zenith of its crystal purity)
Spinning like a discus thrower at the Olympics, Dooh-Dooh Pants nearly fell over as he enthusiastically launched those sacks high over the ivy and into that immaculate backyard next door.

 That cuddly-cute Collie, Ginger, could not resist the inner-canine and attacked those skunk sacks with the viciousness of a Beverly Hills house wife who had been pulled over by a cop. She latched on to those gelatinous tissues filled with the liquid plague of terror and ferociously shook them like a true descendent of a wild wolf.  When the those sacks popped, Ginger went crazy...ran around the yard like she had gone blind and howled in excruciating pain.

Panicking, Barbara opened the the back door and in darted Ginger with those awful stink-sacks still wedged between teeth and gums.  The screaming began!  First it was high shrill sound of the girls screeching in horror...then everyone in the neighborhood could hear Mr. Blaser yelling out commands to catch the crazy dog that had gone totally berserk and was running a muck in the house dragging that hideous smell from room to room.

Dooh-Dooh Pants and Booty rolled on the cement ground of that patio and laughed more than they should have. Maybe this is what it meant to "frolic in the Autumn midst."

Gagging bodies began pouring out of the Blaser house with "T" shirts and towels held over their noses as if escaping a burning building. Judy carrying little Michael in her arms; Barbara with Christine.  Mrs. Nargie, across the street, called the Fire Department and Mr. Steadmen pointed to the Dahlin house and said to Mrs. Steadmen, "Its no wonder lions eat their young!" In the mayhem that followed, Ginger had managed to spread that skunk-chemical-warfare throughout every inch of every room and the Firemen made sure everyone had been thoroughly evacuated from the house.

Ginger had to be sent away to the vets for a tomato bath followed by psychological evaluation and the house was uninhabitable for the next two weeks. 

Thanks to Dooh-Dooh Pants...and his Skunk-Sack-Prank, my best friend Tommy and family got to stay at a nice nearby motel that had a built-in pool and a real jacuzzi. Tommy sneaked me into the motel pool and I got to swim in clear water that was mosquito free.

To this day, the Blasers are still wondering where their beloved collie found a skunk in the first place and  what made their stupid dog decided to attack such a formidable foe. 
 
Oh well, such is the hazard of living next to the Dahlins and I guess in a metaphorical sense...that is the hazard of living next to any neighbor - be a nation, a country, or a people group who look different, talk different or dare to think different.

Love indeed is a difficult concept to wrap our minds around...that really requires viewing others as valuable, but we can only do that in all humility that looks at others as being better than ourselves. But such is the human condition to press in on exalting self at the expense of others.       

OH... and the hairdo you see (in this picture to the left), is a story all of its own...One that takes a trip across country, which involves The PRESIDENT of the United States.

Next time!

 Until then, know that you are indeed relentlessly perused by the only perfect Love that exist in the universe!             Smile and pass it on.

Wolf Pack and Trouble in Outer Space.

(Sing this humming and snapping your fingers to the Addams Family theme song - it'll make more sense that way).   

"They're Hairy and they're kooky,

Mischievous and spooky,
They're altogether ooky,
The Dahlin Family."

Du, du, du, du..snap snap

"Their house is an Aslyum
When people come to see 'em
The inmates are a screa-um.
The Dahlin Family." 

That's just my family by the way, add to those numbers the Harding Avenue Gang and the Wolf Pack had numbers to be reckoned with.  On one hand, think of the damage that could come from assembling an unruly crowd of that size. Entire small countries have been toppled by less. On the other hand (on a more positive note) - the vast number of hippies in our Venice Tribe also lent itself to the possibility of...say...putting out a fire - should something go awfully wrong. I said "positive" not "realistic"!


Q. And what is "Murphy's Law?"
A. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong!

Problem was, that chaos always seemed to reign over order, and boy, did we cause a lot of problems.

While everyone in the neighborhood was gathered in our dining room (the room with the hospital-bed and bumper-pool table), Gustav my oldest brother and the oldest Blaser-boy from next door came up with a brilliant plan. What you have to remember is, that during this time in the sixties, everyone was all jacked-up and excited about exploring outer space and landing on the moon to gather green-cheese.

As I mentioned before, a new TV show came out two nights ago called Star Trek "Going where no man has ever gone before" add that to a couple TV shows which had already been out now for about a year, 
My Favorite Martin and Lost in Space, it was plain to see that rockets-to-the-moon and space travel were indeed on the forefront of everyone's mind.   

Every stupid fifth-grade-boy in the world already had the twisted theme song from Lost in Space memorized, so they could they could inflict silly grammar-school torment on a smaller kid. They would sing, "It's about time, it's about space, it's about time to..." SMACK "...slap your face" slapping their latest victim in the face at the opportune moment - then laugh at them for falling for it, and then running away in order to avoid adolescent retribution.  I probably don't have to tell you that the Wolf Pack (though, far too old for this kind of thing), was particularly fond of the ending part. The part where they slapped a younger sibling (like me) in the face.

300 slaps! You'd think, I would have caught on, right?   Duh!

Anyway... we were in the middle of the "SPACE RACE" with the Russians and they were winning. They had already landed a spacecraft on the moon and the United States seemed to be falling behind - landing on the moon seemed to be light-years off at a distance at our snail's pace!  This was all part of the Cold War and we were losing!

When we were still using monkeys, I wrote a letter to Washington asking if they wouldn't mind using any of my brothers in their rocket experiments. I told them it would be okay since they weren't a whole bunch smarter then chimpanzees (Oh, I made no mention about letting the monkeys out of the zoo). 

When we started to use real-live human-beings, I wrote another letter asking again - if they wouldn't mind using any of my brothers. I told President Johnson that they wouldn't have to feel too sad if we lost one of them should something bad happened, since I had like 28 big brothers. My dad said we had plenty to go around if something should ever happen to one of us (that's why I didn't think they cared if  they had left me at Salton Sea - I'm the second from the right in this picture - Oh and that was about a third of the group that were crammed in the station wagon and trailer, also pictured in the background. Blog Post: May 13, 2013). 

I never got a letter back from the President or from NASA. That was a disappointment!

Anyway, at this time we were sure there was life on Mars and it seemed like every week some hick-couple in an old Ford pick-up, out in the middle of the boondocks, saw a flying saucer - we called 'em UFO's - that's short for Unidentified Flying Objects.

It was always down an old, dark, two-lane highway,  far outside the city boundaries with no witnesses, where the aliens always seemed to abduct poor Clem in his jump-overalls or his wife Ethyl.

In pictures printed in the front page of the newspapers the UFO's looked like Frisbees, blurry footballs, a hat and one even looked like a cigar, but everyone was sure Martins had antennas and lived among us.

The Viking Tribe leader figured out a way to venture smack dab into the middle the UFO craze. They got dad's Polaroid camera, gathered up all of the necessary equipment and were destined to make local newspaper history.  This was one story, that we hoped would make it on  the front page of the paper, unlike all of the other times we ended up there, only to the embarrassment of my poor mom and dad.

Sending Donny next door to borrow a dry-cleaner bag from his dad's closet, the Dahlin's put all the other necessary stuff in a pile on the front sidewalk now officially deemed "Area 51"

McDonald straws, birthday candles and of course a Style Queen, hot-air, hair-blower for the initial lift off.

Although the original plan did involve UFO's, it didn't originally include a fiery crash landing on the roof of the Lennon house. We took our extensive resources and laid them out in  "Area 51." Little did we know, however, that in the very next hour or so we would have a "Roswell Incident" on our hands that endangered the entire Lennon family.  


Kids NEVER TRY THIS! EVER EVER EVER.

Until Next...

God Bless

上帝，造物主。

Gud velsigne

God zegene

Dieu vous

Бог благословит

Gud välsigne

Dios te  bendiga!