AT ANY COST: The Induction Malfunction

As they tied the Boy Scout handkerchief around my eyes I could smell the salt air mixed with the dust of the backyard of the old Venice Scout House. With my eyes blindfolded my senses buzzed. I could hear the sound of the lone engine of the “Venice Short Line” that slowly chugged down West Washington Way and could also smell Alan, who hadn't bothered to bathe or use deodorant in about a month, and fought back against my urge to vomit.  In this initiation process, two Patrol Leaders spun me around trying to make me as dizzy as possible before pointing me in the direction of the backdoor that finally creaked open.

 

My heart jumped with anticipation about the secret induction ceremony into the Venice Boy Scout Troop 32. We were not the saints we had been years earlier. 

At twelve, I was youngest, smallest, weakest member of the Dahlin Wolf Pack. I was in by blood, but didn't really feel like I belonged.

I wasn't old enough to smoke with them in the hippie "hooch hut" out back or hang out with them when they went on those notorious hikes to Tuna canyon in Malibu. 

All I was to them was a toy, a thing to punch, or knock out, or electrocute, or bury, or shoot, or embarrass in front of friends and to experiment with.  

I lived in the same house, drove in the same cars, but always felt like an outsider looking in.    

I hoped this Boy Scout thing would be different, like a new tribe – a brotherhood where I might feel accepted and as though I belonged - crazy right? This is probably the same thing “Squeaky” Fromme was thinking when she signed up for the Manson Family. 

My head was still spinning when the Junior Assistant Scout Master put a dollar bill in my hand and whispered in my ear that I should not lose it, "at any cost."  Still reeling and off balance I ran into the door jam and eventually stumbled into the scout house that was dark and lit only by candles. Waiting inside were all the potential members of my new tribe. 

Walking through the short, dark corridor and into the center of the dilapidated old house on Washington Way (that had been purchased by the Venice Lions Club and giving to our Troop), I could feel the intensity of those anxious, sweaty, smelly boy scouts who had been just as eager as I was for this induction initiation.  Before reaching my destination someone grabbed the dollar bill out of my hand. I could smell the fiend and had every honorable intention of getting the dollar back “at any cost” (but figured that socking the kid in the face who stole it was something that I had to deal with later).

The handkerchief was pulled off eyes and I stood stunned before a tribunal of Senior Patrol Leaders and the two Scout Masters – Jim Serosi and Lyman Tapp as the entire troop looked in.  I don’t know why, but I felt like one of those Christians in the coliseum getting ready to be burned at the stake. 

“Mark Dahlin” said the skinny Scout master, “You were handed a dollar bill, were you not?”

“Yes sir,” I said nervously, yet with intense pinpointed eyes that I think might have frightened him.

In an effort to bail out the other leader, the heavier Scout Master continued, “Where is the dollar bill now, Mr. Dahlin? Will you produce it for us?” 

Biting my tongue and clenching my jaws, I had a couple options and I didn't want to blow my chance of finally belonging. If I said I dropped it, it would be a lie. Did they want a liar in the troop? Probably not! If I told the truth and said that someone stole it from me, then it would be like ratting-out one of my new tribal members and who would want a snitch to belong to this new brotherhood that I was so desperate for.

At home no one listened to me anyway, so blaming someone else was totally out of the question. Besides, the dollar bill was given to me and it was my duty to hang on to it. I had one job and I failed. I looked around the room at all the solemn eyes that stared disapprovingly in my direction.  I wanted in! I saw Steve Kissel, and Ronnie, and James Humphries, and David Cockrell, and Phillip Aylala, and Chronister and Dego, and Mark and Alan and Ray and had to figure a way to fix the mess I had gotten myself into. Then I remembered the words, “At all cost.”  Was that a challenge or permission to do whatever it took?  Maybe that’s what they wanted, I thought?  Maybe this whole thing was a test and felt that this new tribe wanted to see what I was made of. 

I looked around at the “Pillsbury Doughboys” and the “Theodore Cleavers” and the “regular” kids from regular families that hadn't been raised by a pack of wolves like I had. 

I looked at those soft kids who hadn't had to fight everyday and who hadn't been though the same crud I did… and did what any member of a Wolf Pack would do among sheep. I smelled the stench of the kid who stole my dollar bill, grinned at the two Scout Masters and hurled myself onto about six members of the Flaming Arrow Patrol. 

Down we went into a massive dog pile of flailing arms and legs. I had Ronnie around the neck in a choke hold and squeezed him until his fingers loosened the grimy grip he had on the coveted dollar bill. Phillip, a wrestler from the Venice High wrestling team, (who outweighed me by 50 pounds) was on my back and was unsuccessfully trying to peal me off of Ronnie.  

“At any cost”

“At any cost”

“At any cost” …were the words that kept going through my head.

The whole troop was on the floor fighting. It was a regular bar-room brawl. Yelling and screaming and making threats to cancel the National Jamboree trip planned for July, the Scout Masters and Senior Patrols Leaders pulled kids off one by one until they got down to Ronnie and me.

Leaving Ronnie’s limp body on the ground, I quickly stood my feet, straightened my uniform, smiled at the two men in charge, saluted and said, “I believe this is the dollar bill you guys are looking for.” Pleased with myself. I smiled as though this was all in the course of ordinary business, like it was straight out of the scout handbook or something. 

It took a tribunal, several phone calls to parents (and seeing that my dad was the President of the Lions club and Troop treasurer), I was admitted to my new clan. Pshaw I didn't get what all the fuss was about…this was like just an ordinary day at my house.  After all this was not your ordinary Boy Scout Troop –this was a Boy Scout Troop from Venice California and a Boy Scout Troop that was now infected by the youngest member of the Dahlin Wolf Pack.  

Just so you know, this long-held, sacred ‘rite of passage’ for Troop 32 was abandoned and exchanged for something much different, more friendly and a little tamer...JUST IN CASE another kid from Harding Avenue every decided to join the Troop. 

Our dysFUNtional troop was now headed out of Venice and into the the Midwest! 

 Beware World! 

Moon Landing and Diarrhea part I    

Jesus. Venice. And Night of the Living Dead!

Venice was not just a place, but an identity - something that is inescapable part of you. Good or bad, being from Venice gave you both pride and cringe.  Though only 12, by 1969 I had been across the country and back 3 times and seen my fair share of the "Purple Mountain Majesty and Fruited Plains."  Everywhere we went, "tourist" (we called them, derogatorily), were the people living in their own towns who look at the long hair of my brothers and invariable asked if we were from Venice. I learned early on of the stigma of being from Venice that gave my brothers such pride.  It was like that part in the Bible where it talked about Jesus being from Nazareth that said, "Can anything good come for Nazareth?"

Every time someone looked at my family and asked if we were from Venice, it was as if  they were saying, "Can anything other than hippies, free love, drugs Flower Power and Jim Morrison come from Venice?" We thought that was good, but it appeared they didn't share that sentiment. They might well have said to our face, "Can anything good come from Venice?"  So I guess I understood how Jesus felt when he heard those words.

The once glamorous Canals that hadn't been filled-in, began to rot and stink and the formerly cute bungalows of Abbot Kinney's dream were now run down shacks full of pot smoking hippies, unemployed artist, and raucous parties of the flower children of the sixties.

Several weeks after I broke my arm playing football in the street, I had been outside in my cast. Although it had Andrea's treasured signature, as well as some other seventh graders, it smelled and was pretty disgusting already. I was didn't give much thought to that fact that I had only been wearing one shoe when an older couple slowed down to a stop in front of our house and gawked. The old geezer cracked his window a couple inches, as if the air on Harding avenue was unsafe to breathe, and called me over.







His wife was holding some kind of Hollywood, or Beverly Hills, or Celebrity map or something and stared at our house - eyes wide in disbelief and mouth hanging open in shock.




















With cars and boats and more broken down cars and broken down boats and creaky stairs and hippie brothers hanging out on the porch, the couple from Nebraska carefully whispered through the cracked window asking if my house was a hippie commune?



I said, "No, I live here!"

"With your Parents?" they asked, incredulously.

"Yeah!" I said.

"Poor parents" the man muttered.

"Where's your other shoe" the lady asked.

"What other shoe? I asked

"The one your missing" she snarled, thinking I was being a disrespectful smart-aleck.

I informed her, "I'm not missing one."

"Then why are you only wearing one shoe?" her husband barked at me as he took over.

"Oh, this old thing isn't my shoe. I came outside barefooted and found this decroded thing in the flowerbed."

I looked inside the window to see if our house was on the tourist map as a place of interest for being a hippie commune as they rolled up the window and sped away - only to screech to a halt in front of the Lennon Sister's home two houses up the street. I ran down the street towards them in my older brother's size 11 shoe and frightened the poor couple like I was one of the dead bodies in "Night of the Living Dead."

I can't really say with certainty whether our house was on  that map or not, but certainly this couple went back to where they came from telling their neighbors about what they saw on Harding Avenue and wondering if anything good could come from Venice?"






Pshaw... "fer sure" We have the Famous Lennon Sisters across the street and right behind us was Cheryl Arnold who was Miss Venice, and Miss Santa Monica, and Miss LA...SO TAKE THAT... tourist!

Ha! Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

With all that said, I guess the thing I want to share next with the world is that fact that my Boy Scout Troop from Venice - Troop 32, had been in steep decline by the time I had been recruited by my Eagle Scout brother and was not the best thing Venice exported: something me and my fellow hoodlum scouts took great pride in.

We raided camporees at night, causing havoc on Troop 34, cutting the ropes on tents and making life as miserable as we could at Camp Slauson in Malibu in the Santa Monica mountains.

Here is a picture of our (converted moving truck) i.e. Troop 32 Boy Scout Truck - that was a not a whole lot more than "cage wresting" on wheels.

You can take the Boy Scouts out of Venice, but you cant' take the Venice out of Troop 32!

Next time: National Jamboree and "Diarrhea 'till Easters"

The Mutant Micro Venice Zoo (Hippies Included).

Now, that Chewbacca fell in love with this "miracle cat," Lazarus, our house was only getting wackier and wackier.   Along with our motley tribe of long-haired hippie-types (AKA the Wolf Pack), the dreaded Veloci-Rooster in the backyard, the snakes held captive in the cages on the third floor, the mice we bred for snake feeding, a Mynah bird that cussed like a drunken sailor in the front entry, a billion guinea pigs, turtles, a giant frog,the Iguana Del Diablo (blog 8/1/13), a bazillion rabbits (that kept multiplying), chickens, and Poochie the Wonder dog - we now had this ugly, black, almost-hairless, scabby cat that was now added to the menagerie at my house.

We had a micro-zoo of mutant animals - including my brothers who were becoming more and more full-fledged hippies!

Someone accused us of stealing one of the monkeys that we let out of the zoo and thought we had smuggled it home, but that wasn't true.  The monkey we presently had came from the new neighbors across the street. Somehow it was turned over to me and was now baby sitting the thing indefinitely.  Monkeys were kind of cool - because not everyone had one, but this one sat on the wainscot ledges around the first floor. The monkey was a boy and was obviously happy that it was a male. The depraved - naked little primate, flaunted his male parts to everyone who dared entered our house.   "Gross!"

By feeding the nasty looking cat (that had cheated death) on the kitchen table, and allowing the ugly thing to walk all over the counter tops - Chewbacca surrendered complete authority and power to the insidious cat to rule over the rest of us mere mortal human beings.  I think Chewbacca's brains had become a conduit to the planet where the far superior Cat Species were sent to earth from - to subject humans to their rule. It might have had something to do with the tinfoil pyramid that Chewbacca wore on his head while smoking the leaves from the "Mexican Tomato Plants...out in the hippie cave in our backyard called "Wall Drug!"

My brothers thought all this was groovy - while, I on the other hand, was down right embarrassed. Embarrassed by the monkey with dangling male parts; embarrassed by the zombie cat that walked unhindered on the top of the table and had absolute authority to lick the butter and open containers of sour cream; embarrassed by the swearing Mynah bird; the mess and junk and stacks of National Geographics magazines; embarrassed by the cars outside on blocks and boats parked on the lawn; and by the fact that the police department made routine visits with warrants in hand - but this was my family and my house and my story and I had to make the best of it.


The good news for my brothers was that with the Fraternity House burned down to the ground, which meant that we had inherited more parking for our armada of hot rods, trailers, boats, broken down cars and old trucks we used as trash barges.  

Hum...? Possibly a motivation for arson - BUT I don't think my brothers burned down the fraternity just so that we could park more of our cars.

All the hippies were accounted for and had alibis - so, I still have to find the perpetrator of his horrible crime - that could have easily been murder.

I understand all of this might be hard to imagine... and that I often compare my house to The Addams Family or The Musters, but there really is no comparison!  This was the 60's, this was funky Venice California, this was hippie-ville... this was my house... this was the Dahlins...where truth is indeed stranger than fiction.  

To turn a chapter...With all this going on at home, I thought that maybe I would take a try with the Boy Scouts in order to escape from time to time. I was inducted into my older "way-overachieving-Eagle-scout" brother's troop.   Troop 32.

By the time I joined the troop in 7th grade - the troops only two eagle scouts had graduated away and we resembled something that look more like F Troop (a show on TV).  At Camporees and camp outs we were a band of notorious little thieves that cut the tent strings of other boy scouts and pelted our enemies with dirt clods.

My Family:

The Lennons who lived across the street.

 

As you can tell, we were definitely not normal... by any stretch of the imagination.  Next time "The pit of despair!

                   EXTRA EXTRA read all about it!