Roswell: The Fiery UFO Crash and The Crazy Conclusion!

This was us... blonde haired - blue/green/hazel-eyed Viking-Swedes at the middle of every mischievous thing that either went exactly according to plan or with plans the completely backfired - either way...the end result was usually CHAOS and mayhem.

This was the older boys when they were considerably younger...

And this...

and this...

Although we were surrounded by Lennons (something like a hundred million of them - sure seemed like that anyway) these were the famous ones on the corner!

Movie stars... appearing on the Lawrence show every Saturday night on NBC TV and making records; they were the picture of everything that is good and wholesome.

The Girls...

Look at them: pretty, talented, capturing America's heart in the 60's...





Us... putting fear into the hearts of America...the exact opposite... not very pretty and not at all wholesome... on the prowl and causing trouble.

Footloose and fancy free hippies in the making.

 
Trouble makers with long hair that usually ended up with someone being electrocuted, buried in a pit, dropped form a window, or falling from the notorious "Fire Pole" (previous Blog Post) which usually ended up with someone being hurt and better yet, with broken bones. Nearly a hundred broken bones - hence the old, rusty, crank - hospital bed in the dining room (you can see some pictures of the broken bones in previous blog post).






















Mom was still gone with that weirdo fella - Jerry. They took poor Chewy to the hospital after he "mysteriously" fell off the "fire-escape-pole." 

ALL alone - with no adults around, the Wolf Pack had set up the front yard as an "Area 51" staging ground for what would become our infamous UFO launch!

Little did they know how badly this incident would turn out... a down right "Roswell." That's what it turned out to be...alright! 

They gathered their collective resources and the plastic, dry-cleaner bag, Donny Blaser stole from his dad's closet and assembled a crude UFO.  I'm not sure I should tell you exactly how to put one together... because, as we learned the hard way...it was extremely dangerous.  DANGER  DANGER  DANGER

In complete contrast to my family.. the perfect Lennon Family sat huddled (as usual) in their family room just some 20 feet away from the shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary that was so prominently displayed in their large front picture window.  













The boys filled the plastic bag with hot air from Judy Blaser's Style Queen hair blower. Then lit all 20 birthday candles that had been stuck in the McDonald's straws.

"Huston we have lift off..." Gustav shouted with glee as the Wolf Pack howled in delight as our very first   UFO successfully began to ascend into the atmosphere. Chewbacca could not get dad's complicated old-school Polaroid camera to snap the shot before the slow-moving illuminated apparatus  was too far away for a potentially famous UFO sighting "picture" that we hoped would end up on the front page of the Herald Examiner.

Having to do it all over again, the Wolf Pack sent  conspiring neighbors scavenging for more materials for a second launch. This time, Chebacca had my dad's Real Estate camera all set up and ready to go.

Up, up, up went the second launch with as much excitement as the first. Cheering, applauding, clapping...the Wolf Pack was totally delighted in the outcome of this newest UFO hoax. It was perfect and glowed ominously as it began to drift ever-so-slowly from "Area 51" i.e. my front yard. 

I had cheered from the top of my house, safely away from the crowds and eventually made my way down to street level to join the jubilant crowds below.  Everything was going exactly as planned. When the newspapers got these pictures...Venice would be on the famous UFO Sighting map. Spurious sightings would no longer be from the proverbial - deserted two-lane highway in  the middle of nowhere from a couple named "Clem and Ethyl."

When the camera spit out the undeveloped picture, Chewbacca put it under his armpit to heat it up and hurry the process. We counted down the sixty seconds it took for the picture to appear. Polaroids were awesome - you can get a picture in a about a minute instead of the day or so it took to have film developed - it our house it took forever it seemed like - because our little canisters were always getting lost. We all anticipated the total groovy awesomeness of this latest plan - there was pushing - and shoving - and pulling of hair - and name calling and even a skirmish with Ulrich and members of the angry-little-men-crew who fought the regular-sized-brothers for a front row view of the highly anticipated UFO picture to finally show itself. 

That is when one of the girls screamed as though she were being murdered. The intensity of her high shrill screech, however, did not match the intensity of our reaction when we looked up from the photo and saw the horror at which she had been pointing.

The newest UFO had lost altitude, and as candles blew out, it tilted slightly and caught the plastic on fire.
A huge, bright-red, flaming, fire-ball was heading directly towards the Lennon's house.

The Zeppelin inferno was on a crash course...as panic ensued, hippies fled...girls screamed, and the Wolf Pack ran around like The Three Stooges (only about 20 of them - The 20 Stooges). Gustav began barking out instructions as several of the boys grabbed me and Gherhing the Great. The older guys ran to the Lennons like mosquitoes to a lamp on a dark night. The flaming cleaners bag had crashed landed smack dab on the western slope of the steep roof...and that plastic bag burned like napalm.  

This was like Roswell or Viet Nam or like something out of a Sci-Fi movie - meets a war movie - meets Haight/Asbury - meets Father Knows Best.

Only us, right?

Like cockroaches or like Alfred Hickcocks "The Birds" we swarmed the Lennon House and made a human ladder that got a bunch of us to the second story and that is when they pushed me and Gherhing the Great up the ridge of the valley to scale the roof. Like a fire brigade from western movies (only different), up came bed pans, tin cans, and flower pots full of water. Gherhing and I doused the flames that refused to go out which only spread the fire out more on the asphalt shingle roof.

More hippies
More hair
More bodies
More containers
More water...eventually made it to us and we were able to save the Lennon house and the Lennons who had been watching their sisters perform on the Lawrence show - completely oblivious to the Harding Avenue pandemonium - directly overhead.  

That night the famous Lennon Sisters sang that pop folk-song: "Where have all the flowers gone?"

I knew... they had been thrown out of flower pots which had been used to save their house - little did they know! "When will we ever learn?"

We left, just as fast as we descended - scurrying away from the scene of the crime, all unbeknownst to the Lennons below who were caught up in singing along as they watched their famous siblings on TV.

(It would only be years later that Dooh-Dooh Pants and I would re-roof the Lennon house as a catholic act of penance.)

Marching back down the street like a pack of aimless lemmings, the Wolf Pack hoisted Gherhing the Great and I on their shoulders as though we were like heroes returning from a victorious war campaign. Retreating  to the bizarre sanctuary of the Dahlin living room, the boys destroyed the damning "UFO" picture and we danced - rowdy and ugly - but we danced!  We stopped and twisted and gyrated to records of The Beatles on our stereophonic console until mom and Chewy finally arrived home from their emergency room visit.We fully intended on turning down the HiFi sense she was home, but dad had arrived home from selling his lots at Salton Sea.  He turned the volume up and showed the older boys how to really dance.

We were dysfunctional and very imperfect, but family.  And at least tonight, I wouldn't receive a template (blog post June 26th), be electrocuted (blog post July 8th), bit by a snake (blog Post  Aug, 8th), coaxed into a hamper (blog Post June 5th) chased by a kook (Blog Post Aug 12) or left behind (blog post May 13th). Tonight  - "Hotel Crazy"or not - I wouldn't have to push cars, taste spoiled milk and from the look of things - probably not barf.

I fit and it felt good!

Love was out there somewhere...I could sense it... but as good at this was it wasn't quite as good as Dancing with Irene, because she taught me what true love really was (Blog Post July 15th).

Good Night.
God bless.

You are loved... and part of much greater story...Markie D

I managed to survive my first week of 5th grade which concludes the end of Book 1! 

Hair Hippies and Hot Rods: THE RAT KILLER

WEDNESDAY MORNING: The Sixties was not only about the Beatles, long hair, hippies, campus protest, Haight and Ashbury, race-riots, anti-war demonstrations BUT it was also about "CUBIC INCHES"  Hot rods, street races and cruising Van Nuys Boulevard.  I couldn't leave this out of what was taking place in my first week of 5th grade. And the story I'm about to tell you is strictly off the record and totally confidential, but I think you need to know the truth.

Last time we left off as the Dahlin Clan of Viking-Hippies were pushing a broken down fleet of cars from one side of the street to the other in a Tow-War with the city.  7:00 am, Mr. D had wakened the brood of wild animals that occupied 2 and a half rooms of the third floor. Two were packed full of junk, but that didn't stop Kleghorn from burrowing in and nesting like a rat on top of one of the other two junk filled rooms.

Tony came barreling down Woodlawn peeling rubber from both rear tires, all the way from Venice Blvd through first and second gear. Tony didn't dare pull a stunt like that down Harding Avenue. Not after the lesson Bill Lennon taught Leland, uh uh...Tony wasn't about to invite a well placed golf ball through a side window of his precious hot rod.

Thank you Mr. Lennon.

The agitated crew of car pushers and tire-taker-off/ers-and-put'em-back-on/ers... jack slinging and lug wrench carrying tribe who had resorted to passing gas and rubbing boogers in each others hair - froze as Tony's legendary RAT KILLER came skidding to a stop inches away from the clan and belched steam into Erick's face as though it were alive. A fire breathing dragon of 750 horsepower.





Tony had been out again to Van Nuys Boulevard sucking the doors off of rich kids who thought they buy a turn key hot rod from a high-Performance pro-shop.  Tony stepped out of the car and emerged from the black cloud of tire smoke and held up a thick wad of cash that he had won that even impressed dad.

Tony is a story teller and everything he says must be scrutinized carefully. I have since learned from eyewitnesses that the racing stories of mythological proportions about Tony and his dreaded RAT KILLER in the 60's are absolutely true.

The part of this story that would be unbelievable (had the Dahlin's not been involved) is how Tony surreptitiously came in possession of the famed motor that stumped the engineers at Ford motor company, when he was finished with his creation.

Tony and dad went for a test ride in a 65 Galaxy at Wright Ford on Lincoln Blvd. They only had one in stock at the time, a red convertible with a 427 that came factory with dual quads (that's 2, four barrel carburetors - for you non-car-people) and a four speed.

With Tony's giddy insistence and squealing like a girl, dad relented and signed a lease.

It was dad's real estate car by day and Tony's off the showroom floor hot rod by night.

Dad, however, complained that the motor ran rough and sucked gas. Tony said, "I could I could fix that for you."

Tony Purchased a '58 station wagon for a hundred bucks from someone who lived behind us in the pink apartments. He took the old 352 from that ancient old Ford, dropped it in the Galaxy and now had the 427 on a engine stand in the little garage he had rented in a ally, on Glyndon, across the street from the Downey's house. Dad was happy...Tony was happier and the next owner of the Ford Galaxy was non-the wiser as he drove his second-owner beautiful car with a tired old 352 off the resale floor of Wright Ford.

Tony was Dr. Frankenstein and the motor on that stand like was his monster, waiting to come alive.  

I tell you more about the car later when we finally get around to Saturday and how me and my bestest Saint Mark's buddy, "Ghering the Great" crawled into the trunk and ended up in a police chase doing 157 miles an hour down Venice Boulevard.

Oh, and please don't tell the guy who owns the Galaxy! This is all top secret stuff! 

Happy 4th of July. (p.s. I know the Steppenwolf song is from 1969, but it just kind of sums it all up - the crazy Dahlin boys were "Born to be wild") And there just might be a little bit of that adventure and wild heart in all of us... maybe that's what drew the normal families to the Dahlin House which was the center of the Universe... at least it was the center of my universe and I was still trying to find my fit and my connection to the Universe!