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).

  

Two Days later - The Alien Zombie!

As you might image, Thanksgiving at our house was totally insane. We didn't have any rattlesnake escapes or rooster attacks, just the noise of 195 people crammed into the 5 rooms of our downstairs. We really didn't have 195 people there -  it just sounded like the cacophony of one hundred and ninety-five very loud and rambunctious people.  With Nana, Aunt Mary, Walter Daniels, all the hippies who live in our house and Pinky and Kleghorn and Mario and Red and Primo and Chewy and last minutes stragglers brought home by my dad - like Roy Spenjamin - plus a couple weirdos like Jim Andel (who was a Lennon Sister stalker) and the guy with the funny voice everyone called "The Quaker" our large house was packed. Add in all the older boys girlfriends it was probably in the neighborhood of 60 plus people at our feast-turned-circus-event.

Dining room




























(Nana in chair and Harry, "The Quaker" very back center - be sure to check out the TV with rabbit ear antennae)

Some of the Lennons, Blasers and other neighbors came by in a long standing tradition just to gape open-mouthed at the lunacy of it all. This allowed them to be on the fringe of our neurotic madness and then escape back to normalcy of the plain-wrapped life.

(Pat Lennon and Bruce Grant to the Right)





                   




  (Left- Dad "Mr. D" partying)

We did not disappoint. Just after dinner, Dooh-Dooh Pants "cut the cheese" with the nastiest silent-but-deadly ever recorded in history and crop-dusted the entire living room in a fashion that he had become notorious for. I was caught in the middle and barely made it to the bathroom before puking up all the turkey and mash potatoes I had gorged myself with when playful rough-housing ensued because of the gas attack.

To stir things up even more like striking a hornets nest with a stick, Donny Blaser got his hands on a loaded Daisy BB gun and began to open fire. Puke Breath ran upstairs and came back armed with his Red Rider repeater and war broke out.

One of the returning Vietnam Vets began having a PTSD flashback. He took cover under a folding table where he loudly cursed and started calling everyone "Charlie."  

Donny shot a hole in our large front picture window and nobody seemed to care. I did. I knew dad would be upset or that he should be upset - other parents would have been mad, but he was too busy horse-playing like a teenager and engaged in the ruckus to notice.

My mom tried to calm down the reckless folly by screaming the, "Under-Pain-Of-Mortal-Sin" clause but since it failed to make a dent in the din she parted the Red Sea of bodies, went up stairs and locked herself in her bedroom.

"How convenient" I thought with prophetic utterance knowing exactly what this meant. It meant that Pinky and I would have to spend the next two days cleaning up the aftermath of this colossal mess and towering stacks of dirty dishes. Chewbacca and the older boys felt I deserved it, since they had blessed me with an extra two days off of school by covering my body in a thousand red marker pockmarks.

Every year they had always managed to come up with some lame excuse that meant I had to clean up the mess. Mostly, it was because they didn't seem to mind the clutter and it was my job to hold back the second law of thermodynamics: increasing degree of chaos. No one cared how dirty our house was by me. The older boys weren't even embarrassed to have their girlfriends over to see the pigsty. I couldn't stand it. I felt to me like the dark Paranormal Ooze was winning and cleaning was the only way to hold the demonic substance at bay.

I put up a fight to make them feel good - they liked a good fight(like I did with the hamper trap Hamper Trap ), but cleaning up after everyone was more than a duty it was my cause. I didn't really feel a part of this family, but felt as if I had been sent to them from another planet to save them and dug deep into my superpowers to wash the one hundred billion dirty dishes. Like a robot drone, I stood next to Pinky who was still in his pajamas and washed one dish after another and daydreamed of what it might feel like to love and be loved. Then and only then would I know what it was like to be human, until that time I would walk among them - alone and distant like a lost, orphaned Zombie that needed to be saved more then them all.

Markie D, The Fire Chief and the Big Mystery

(Continued from last time) Sept 1969

"Going by the Blasers...Now the McClains. Hi Mac how ya doing?  Now by the Bibles Hey Pat, Cathy... beautiful day!  Now a jaunt by Campbell's court around the corner in front of Doctor Arnold's. Hey Doc!"

My dad, "Mr. D" was in the living room jogging in place and talked to himself. He pretended to run around the block and say "hi" to all the neighbors that he passed on his short imaginary journey that took far less time to accomplish than a real run down around Harding Avenue, Grandview, Venice Boulevard, Naples and back.

I had fully intended on jumping on one of the motorcycles out in front and driving it over to the Venice Fire station, but since I had just turned 13 and dad was home - I opted to ride over on the handlebars of Jimmy's custom Stingray "Krate" with the 3 speed gear-shift-lever.  



The only problem with the cool gear-shift-lever is that if you ever slipped off the pedal "OUCH!" Boy did that black knob hurt the "vitals."  (Don't tell Jimmy, but every now and then I jammed on the brakes pretending it was purely accidental, hoping I could get him to jam his boy parts on the shifter! This morning on the way to the Fire Station it worked twice and poor Jimmy could barely walk by the time we arrived).

Anyway, I walked into the station with my list of arson suspects with poor Jimmy hobbling behind and asked to see the Chief. Knowing that he had been at a loss since Young and Manson had officially been removed as prime suspects (last post), I showed him my list of suspects and explained everyone's motives.

1) Chet Young
2) Charles Manson and gang
3) Mr. Blaser
4) A couple of my brothers and a long-haired friend
5) Susie Grant
6)  Mr. D (my dad).
7) Johnny Gillemot
8) The Catholic Nuns
9) Leeland
10) Walter Daniels
11) The Nargies
12) Tommy Blaser
13)  Mr. Malon

Though my neighbor, Don Blaser, had helped in the rescue, he had as much motive to burn the house to the ground as did most of the hard working responsible adults on our street. It was a plight and it needed to go!
The Chief's eyes widened and seemed very interested in Mr. Blaser- until I explained what I thought, unfortunately, was a pretty iron-clad alibi. We were right next door to the Blaser's and our house was an even worse plight.

I had an old couple from Nebraska pull up in front of my house one time and ask me if our dilapidated old thing was a hippie commune. With all the junk and the cars and the long-hairs hanging around. I have to admit, we did look like a commune which certainly had to drive down the prices of real estate on our street. Besides the fleas, the mosquitoes and the escaping rattlesnakes - Escaping Rattlesnakes and Iguana Del Diablo (click here) being right next door to the Blasers...this gave Mr. Blaser more motive to burn our house to the ground.




                                 click here for: Infamous Trash Towers of Venice






Judging by these pictures you might understand why the Fire chief could have felt why Don Blaser would have wanted our house to go up in flames first.

The Fire Chief had written his name down as a person of interest and then sadly scratched it off seeing the logic that if Don Blaser was going to burn anyone's house down-  it definitely would have been ours first!

1) Chet Young
2) Charles Manson and gang
3) Mr. Blaser 

My 4th suspect wasn't just one person, but was really three of the older boys who had been rejected in their cross-dressing scheme hoping to fake out the phony "frat guys" in order to gain acceptance into the place (this was what they had to do for losing a bet).

Again he was interested! I think the city of Venice was looking for any good reason to lock us up, but I explained that it probably wasn't the older long-hairs who had dressed up as girls to get into spurious  "Frat House" - because the guys had all taken their girl friends on another one of their notorious "Albino hikes" Click here for : Albinos and Vampires and finished off the night out back in the hippie-hutch-hut we called "Wall Drug."



That explained the reason why we couldn't wake them up right away when all of the explosions were going off.  They had just gotten to bed and probably had a little too much of this and a little too much of that....

                                Even more sadly, he crossed them off too!

4) Chewbacca. Puke-Breath. Primo. 
5) Next was Susie. Although, she was young, she had every reason to burn the place down. It wasn't because she necessarily wanted to see the place go up in flames, but rather because she wanted to punish her older brother for dropping her on her head on more than one occasion.  (I asked the Chief if he had seen the movie The Bad Seed and told him that I think she could have done it).  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and wanted to hear more.



"Isn't that right Jimmy?" I said, calling on my star witness. "Jimmy, tell the Chief why you believe it could have been Susie. (He was there when Cameron dropped kicked Susie from the second floor balcony of the "Fraternity house" and saw the whole thing). "Jimmy!"




Jimmy was over on the bench, apparently consumed with rubbing life back into his numb boy parts and hadn't been paying attention to one thing were were talking about.

I could tell this investigation was going nowhere without me, and now, the Fire Chief  was beginning to realized  how much he needed my eyes and ears if we were ever going to solve this mystery.

Next time: Susie off the hook and Johnny Gillemot's alibi!  



 

Mad Man vs Policeman and the Rescue

Circa Sept 1969 (cont pt 2)

The old turn-of-the-century house was built without fire-blocks and the gluttonous flames raced up the studs between the walls devouring the old dry wood on its way to the second floor.

Pop...pop...pop went several more windows exploding from the intense heat as the occupants on the second floor found themselves trapped inside - as the hot flames filled the grand staircase (their only means of escape).

Meanwhile one of the officers from the protective detail (stationed at the Lennon house on the opposite corner) searched between houses thinking that it was the crazed-lunatic, Chet Young or that it might have been Charles Manson who was responsible for the Molotov cocktail that had been thrown through the large front window as a distraction to get at the Lennons.  The popping sounds from the exploding windows sounded just like multiple gun shots. The crackling blaze, sounds of gunfire and the heavy dark smoke was like a scene from the war zone in Vietnam.

As it turns out, the officer who had been tackled on the front lawn of the Tripp's house next door to the blazing inferno was not tangled up with a crazed assassin or with one of Charles Manson murderous minions...as he had thought at the time. No, it wasn't a madman at all. Instead it turned out to be my neighbor Bobby Tripp who had just returned from Vietnam and was experiencing a flashback.

Seeing the scuffle from inside the house, Mrs. Tripp frantically ran out in her nightgown and began yelling at the officer, "Don't hurt my son...don't hurt my son, he just got back from Vietnam." Thankfully, the officer didn't let his wounded pride get the better of him.  Heeding the frantic pleas of Bobby's mom, both of them stood to their feet, respectfully dusted each other off and turned their attention to the fire!

In his skivvies and nothing else, Don Blaser was already on the scene with my Dad along with a couple of my draft-card-burning brothers who were building a human ladder out in front, up the corner of the crude balcony that been built a year earlier by numerous "Frat house members" while on an intoxicated binge.

Chewbacca had climbed onto the balcony contraption and shoved his waffle-stomper through the window and began helping the trapped "fraternity members" out of the window and onto the second story overhang as my brothers lowered members one by one down the human chain of Dahlins, Blasers and Tripps.






I don't know if you have been paying close attention, but every time I talk about the "Frat house" I always put it in quotes. It totally looked legit from the outside with its Greek letters ΦΒΧ  that had been fixed to the exterior of the old house (seen above in the picture), but I'm pretty sure they didn't even know what those letters meant in Greek.  The whole thing was sham - a cover for a party house for guys who couldn't make it into a real college Fraternity - an animal house which was the brain-child of Cameron Grant.


Can't fool O' Markie D - no siree!


The Venice Fire department set up mobile command unit at the Tripp's house next door and Myrtle seemed a little too happy have all those young men in uniform running through her house.  She was more than happy to oblige the terrible - awful - no good interruption.

Anyway, the Lennons on the other corner were safe, but still on protective lock-down. The fireman took some time protecting the nearby properties of 900 Harding Avenue and let the majestic old lady burn to the ground.   (Oh by the way - its not like the Lennon Sisters were always standing outside the Lennon house posing for pictures or anything like that - but I think you get the idea)



This is where I come in. This is where I began my investigation of possible arson suspect. I don't think it was Dracula or Frankenstein or anything as insidious as that but it's interesting that just about everyone on the Harding Avenue including the Nuns in the convent on Coeur d'Alene had a good motive to burn the place down.





My list will follow...  But kids please be careful with matches - and I'm specifically talking to you Tommy Blaser.

The Great Fire: Who-Dunnit

The list of suspects was long: for the GREAT FIRE "WHO-DUNNIT"

1) My tribe...the Wolf Pack
2) Mr. Blaser
3) Mr. D (that's my dad)
4)Chet Young
5) Frank Nargie
6) Charles Manson
7) Sea-Shell
8) Leeland the want-to-be hot rodder
9) Weenie Tripp
10) Johnny Gillemot
11 Tommy Blaser
12) Four boys dressed as girls
13 The Nuns at Saint Marks who lived just behind the house
14) Crazy, Anti-War, Peace-loving members from an opposing Fraternity

 and NUMBER 14 was "The Consipiracy Theory" - not a man on the grassy knoll, but...
 15) The Owner of the property.

This unsolved mystery turned out to be the greatest disaster on Harding Avenue and third biggest crime in the History of Venice CA.

On our short block on Harding avenue, we had 5 large turn-of-the-century houses with the Lennon Sisters occupying one of these grand masterpieces on the opposite end of the street and us right-smack-dab in the middle.  If this was just a story and not true life, it would have been written this way to symbolically suggest that we were in the geographical center of the universe - and for all intents and purposes WE WERE!

In the picture shown here - practically every car seen was one of ours...except for the Lincoln Continental parked in the driveway next door.  This picture was taken a couple of years ago and you can see my best friend, Tommy, and my little sister, Kjersten playing out front. At this time, however, Tommy was about 9 and loved to play with matches...he loved to burn things up -  that's why he made the list.

You can see the wonderful round turret that graced the craftsman architecture of the old house. This large magnificent home on the corner was owned by a man who lived in Santa Monica that consented to rent it to an ambitious party animal against the wishes of my my dad and the other concerned Real Estate Broker, Mr. Blaser, who lived next door to us (owner of the Lincoln Continental). Making matters worse, the tenant was a friend of my brothers named, Cameroon who decided to turn the old place into a "College Fraternity House."



No one in the neighborhood liked the idea. That's why Mr. D and Mr. Blaser made it on the list of suspects. 




Since most of us are Catholics on our block and had only learned Latin for Mass, we butchered the proper pronunciation of the three Greek Letters...        
            Φ Β Χ 
 ...which Camaroon hung on the front facade that you can see playing "peek-a-boo" behind the palm tree.

Also of note in this picture is the 56' Ford Business Coop parked out in front of the "Frat-House" that is in the beginning stages of  being transformed into the legendary Rat Killer (Shhhhhh - please don't tell Ford Motor Company where their high-performance 427, V8 motor disappeared to - Blog Post 7-4-2013 click here The legendary Rat Killer of Venice ).






 
Anyway, I wasn't about to tell my mom and I certainly wasn't going share this with the priest at confession, but one things that was pretty cool about being the house in the middle of the block was the college girls who walked by our house on their way to the so-called "Frat-House."  I was 12 - not a Zombie.  Ummmmmmm...I know this is the Sixties, but I'm pretty sure that the clothes they were wearing (or should I say lack of clothing) wasn't appropriate at any college in America, unless it was Magical Mystery Tour University.

       Weird...Right? I have no idea what the Beatles were thinking!

Speaking of the ill-clad "frat-girls" I guess some of the members of my tribe - the Wolf Pack, had lost some kind of bizarre bet in the hippie-cave in our backyard while smoking those funny-looking, hand-rolled Zig Zag cigarettes. The outcome of losing the bet was that a couple of  my brothers and several of their glassy-eyed friends had to dress up like girls and try to get into the Fraternity house. A couple of the boys with long hair looked pretty cute - my dad especially loved this - because he got to add this as evidence for his "ahhh...the little girly-men" speech he would often sing-song, invoking his Swedish inflection making fun of older boys who had long hair. I'm not going to lie, however, Chewbacca, looked like the ugliest women you every saw with his pink, poka-dotted dress and beard. The boys looked ridiculous staggering down to the end of the block in their fish net tights, mini-skirts and high heals. What was really gross was that Primo wore a bikini with oranges stuff inside the top.

Two of the hippies pretending to be girls got "hit on" Ewwwww...GROSS! ...and the rest were thrown out. 

That's why four boys ended up on the suspect list - the two that made it in and two who were jealous for getting kicked out. 

Weenie made it on the list just because she lived right next door, but really - anybody in the Tripp Family had motive.With all the wild parties and cars speeding in and out of the dirt driveway, no one on our street would blame them.

No one really knows for sure what happened to "Sea-Shell."  It was one of those, "which came first things"...the chicken or the egg?  Was she always slightly crazy or did that happened to her when her big brother, Camaroom, dropped her on her head from the second story balcony of the Fraternity house after her 15th attempt to sneak in.  Because of the head accident, she definitely makes it on the list.

Four Eyes says that someday they should make a movie based on the Fraternity called Party House or Animal House or something like that - but he was always speaking nonsense - like that is ever going to happen. 

I guess I have to tell you why some of the other people on our street made in on the list and also tell you about the night the Molotov cocktail - the poor man's grenade, smashed through the large plate glass window that sent the house up in an blazing inferno.

“Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself”

                                                          Mark Twain         

                                                       Until next time...   Happy New Year!