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).

  

The Elephant Man, The Wolf Pack, The Plague

Continued from last time: The Manhunt!  or "How not to take a Family Vacation (again)"

“Leaves of three, let it be! Leaves of three, let it be! Leaves of three, let it be! Leaves of three, let it be!” 

The crazy mantra from the Boy Scouts got louder and louder as it kept playing over in my head. 

This just might have been the worst idea I ever had. WHAT IF I GOT POISON OAK?  I had seen the ugly and debilitating effects of the toxic plants on my brothers enough times to know how horrible it was and how long it lasted.   

For protection against the predator Wolf Pack, I jumped into the middle of a scraggly poison oak plant. And bolted downhill with two torn branches of the poisonous red leaves - full throttle - chasing a retreating army of 40 hippies.       

                                        It all made sense to me: David verses Goliath. 

He ran headlong into the giant who stood in front of him. My five smooth stones happened to be - weaponized sprigs of  toxicodendron urushiol...i.e. poison oak waving violently in my quivering fist like a mad man.  

"Hippie anti-venom…  hippie anti-venom… hippie anti-venom"

 I screamed all the way down the hill chasing siblings and their friends who scurried like frightened cockroaches. 

My dad, Mr. Sasson and Red took cover, locking themselves inside the station wagon even though it was a hundred degrees out. 

I did victory laps about the camp and tied the insidious branches to my head like antlers and continued to terrorize the viking brood. 

In a evil taunt I even laid in a lounge chair, arms folded under my head, as if tempting the universe to take it best shot.  BAD IDEA! BB's began flying. But it was a pump gun - so I took off directly into enemy fire knowing that "reloading" was hard to do on the run and swiped an assailant who was caught off-guard in the panic of pumping the Daisy rifle. 

A new tacit... I hid in the bushes for hours and didn't move. As the haughty Philistines began trickling back one by one - I lulled them into a false sense of security.  

THEN ATTACKED. Who was the blood-thirsty zombie now - Huh?  YEAH - ME, the little vampire fish.  

I got two of them when called off by my dad who sought to broker a peace treaty. 

All of that to say  ... that by the end of three days - The Plague of red rash... itch... boils... oozing... leaking... swollen arms and legs and other unmentioned body parts... had taken it devastating toll. 

Fortunately for me; it turned out that the itch on my forehead was an irritation from the twine.

ALL WAS WELL! And it got better.   

On the way home... we looked like a traveling circus with at least three of my brothers so severe that they were mocked by the others and one who was so grotesque that he was affectionately called "The Elephant Man."  

One stop, at a gas station in Big Sur, the owner had called the police who forced us out of the store and escorted out of town with lights and siren. 

I would love to post those pictures, but they have been banned by the Federal government... Okay, not by the Feds, but essentially banned by older brothers who later burned the incriminating evidence. 

Crusty-pink hippies were running around Venice coated in dried Calamine lotion while one recuperated on the hospital bed in the dining room and Chewbacca was quarantined in a room in third floor - naked - with a fan blowing over the aforementioned (unnamed) body parts. 

Of course it was bound to be an adventure - it involved the Dahlins ...and that's the way it was. 

I was none-the-closer to knowing what true love was all about - but for three weeks I had a spring in my step and a huge grin on my face!

        "Ahhhhhh.... the smell of Calamine in the morning."   

                       Just another day on Harding Ave...