The hilarious, picture-driven, true memoir of the youngest boy of the 60's "most dysfunctional family." Markie d's quest for survival and identity helps us discover and deal with the dysfunction in all of us. Funny, politically incorrect and thought provoking.
In the words of an ancient sage, "Laughter is good medicine."
It was hot and muggy day at the Boy Scout Jamboree in Idaho. We wanted to hit the pool, but somehow the prior condition of our troop (back in the "Post-Prune" days in Yellowstone with the sudden flashes of diarrhea) made it all the up to the top brass. THE RULING BIG-WIGS decreed that "TROOP 32 be bared from the use of the community pool!"
Listen: It was humiliating to be the only Boy Scout Troop in the history of the world to be cut off from the public pool facilities. Unfortunately, it only served to irritated the infamous KYBO patrol. The crazy "loons"sought revenge against the entire Boy Scout universe. After all, we were about to land on the moon and conquer a celestial body in outer space and this is was the best thing they could think of at this historic moment! Man was about to set foot on the moon and they wouldn't let my 20 boys from Venice set foot on the bottom of the pool! Needless to say, Ronnie and Dego and Chronister and Cockerel were fit to be tied. They ended up over by Beaver Bay and began a rock throwing war with three other troops. Kissel, Humphrey and I had to get in on it and defend the honor of Venice!
After pelting each other with rocks we managed to inflict serious damage on two of the kids on the opposing shore! We got a couple of them smack dab on the head and drew FIRST BLOOD...
YEAH!
Victory!
VENICE RULES!
The only thing that would have made it better for the illustrious KYBO Patrol would have been if it were one of the kids from Troop 186 that we conked on the noggin... and even better than that - would have been if they had gotten that nerdy kid...Bill Gates! Luckily for him, he didn't have to eat glue-pasta like we did on the way.. he didn't have constipation...like we did... he didn't have to eat a bucket of stewed "grandma-prunes" like we did...and he and his cohorts didn't have explosive diarrhea like we did... and were now busy splashing around and having fun in the pool with other normal boys ...LIKE WE WEREN'T!
The good news is we did manage to hit a kid named Charlie Schaupp who was one of the over-achievers in Troop 21. Yeah!
And we also manged to hit one of those kids in the ridiculous red felt hats, who thought they were "all that." YEAH us!
When brought up before the Tribunal, we denied it of course and had made up a big story about how we took this hike out in the woods trying to anticipate what the moon walk would have looked like. Ronnie talked about how he pretended to eat the green cheese on the moon and Chronister said something about giant robots that morphed into different shapes on the dark side of the moon - stupid Chronister - who would ever believe that kind of nonsense!
Anyway, none of us cracked under the Waterboarding (just kidding about the Waterboarding part) not one of us cracked under their interrogation and it turned into one of those "he said...she said" type of brouhaha nonsense!
They screamed and yelled and made us recite the Boy Scout pledge to make sure we were really Boy Scouts and not that Zombies had eaten our brains and taken over our bodies. Don't ask me how, but we managed to pull that one off! They threatened to take the TV privileges of watching the Moon Landing away from us if we didn't behave for the rest of the day. Thank goodness we didn't do the naked raid as planned.. because they got pretty upset about the "White Angels" and 3:00 am "Pink Bellies"
Dego didn't care about watching, he thought the whole thing was a hoax anyway and was pretty vocal about it, but the rest of us wanted to watch as man walked on the moon.
We got to watch the whole boring hour of CBS coverage on the TV's they had set up all over Farragut State Park...
But the actually landing was very cool. It was like one of those moments in life like "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" A thing you'll always remember exactly where you where!
Anyway we had a couple days left of making trouble and it is no wonder why they actually invited us NEVER TO ATTEND another jamboree.
I guess (like the Salem cigarette commercial jingle "You can take Salem out of the country, but you can't take the country out of Salem") was true for us... "You can take the kid out of Venice, but you couldn't take Venice out of the kid"
We made our presence felt, we changed the outcome of history and two days later climbed into the back of that old Carbon Monoxide spewing "Scout Truck" and fought all the way home!
"One small step for somebody and a giant step for someone else - I guess!"
VENICE PRIDE!
Pictured to the right is the rear end of the infamous "Scout Bus"; Eagle Scout Kurt Dahlin on hood of red 1970 Toyota Corolla; Scout Steve Kissel (holding something important in the background) Senior Patrol leader...Ray (leaning in), and Markie D on bike along with other various creatures from Venice in the driveway of the Harding House with Famous Lennon Sister house in background!
Star Date: July 18 1969 2 more days until the Apollo 11 lands on the moon and four hours from the time eight naked boys are loosed at Boy Scout National Jamboree.
(Continued).
Last time, the brainiac nerd from Troop 186 named Billy, gave me the high grades on his tracking skills course, and so, I couldn't hate him...right? He got all excited and started telling me how this tracking thing was like some-kind of logic flow chart - the kind of code they use for programming computers. I didn't even know what a computer was and had no idea what he was talking about - but he was passionate about it.
I liked the little nerd, but unfortunately their troop from Seattle had incited the Flaming Arrow Patrol (of my Troop) which has by now become known throughout the Jamboree as the notorious KYBO Patrol (KYBO: was a military term that meant Keep Your Bowels Open, which had evolved into a derogatory slur against our less-than-illustrious patrol that had requested to be near the outhouses because poor Cockerel was still working through a bad case of "prune induced" diarrhea. In my best guesstimation he still had about 12 pounds of pasty spaghetti he had to pass through the lower part of his intestines - NO, but seriously!).
"Not gonna lie" These guys in the KYBO Patrol were loud, they smelled and they were filthy dirty. The hoity-toity types from Seattle who set up camp right next to us resented our Troop from Venice and got into a verbal sparring match. THIS WAS NOT GOING TO END WELL. Later that night after the speech from Jesse Owens and the message from Neil Armstrong aboard the Apollo 11 from outer space, the KYBO patrol had big plans for Troop 186 - when I use the word big - it is not a metaphor - I mean "BIG!"
During the wee hours of late muggy night the KYBO Patrol decided on a raid. Only, they thought that instead of dressing up and disguising themselves they wanted to do that raid as what they called the "NAKED ANGLES." I heard all the whispering in their tent and I quietly sneaked out of mine to see what they were up to.
I pulled back the flap of their tent to see 8 naked bodies putting tape on each other. I knew it was going to hurt coming off - but more power to them...right! This would be the first time ever in the history of the known boy scout universe for a naked raid at a Jamboree. Troop 32 was about to go down in infamy! I tried to talk them out of the naked part for the sake of our Scout Masters and managed to get them to concede to what I called the "White Angels" and to at least - go in their "Tightie-Whities." Then everyone scrambled and borrowed skin-tight skivvies, if they didn't have any, and went on the 3:00 am raiding party. You talk about the Living Dead or attack of the Zombies this was it! The time had finally come; an event that inspired many a horror movie to come. (Only Chronister read something in an encyclopedia about pixies and wanted the Flaming Arrows to go marauding as something he called "Manic Pixies" everyone thought it was stupid and shot that idea down) "Manic Pixie Hot Mess" I thought that idea would never fly!
First things first! The "White Angels"decided to mess up the Indian Tracking course. By that - all of the kids thought it meant destroying tracks, adding new ones and littering the course with trash and other stuff you can find at 3 am in the morning... all except for "Dego." When his patrol set off to mess up the course... somehow what got stuck in his brain was "to mess on the course." Now that our stools (except for Cockerel's) had some firm consistency to them, Dego threw the owl scat into some bushes and replaced it with the biggest stinkiest pile of human byproduct imaginable.
Next, the practically naked boy-scouts (if you could call us that) cut the ropes of the tent stakes and pulled Billy from his tent. They pants'd him and gave him a "pink-belly." Pretending to be Zombies, they said they were going to eat his brains and poop them out in the morning. After what Dego did, the boys from Troop 186 thought it just might be true.
As the baby boy of the"Wolf Pack" and perpetual underdog to my older brothers torturous shenanigans there shouldn't be any question in anyone's mind as to why I had this felt need to stand up for the underdog.
It was almost psychotic and my PTSD adrenaline addiction didn't help things either - when incited, I was always like that mother you hear about who could lift a car off her baby. I let them have their fun, but when they began to drag the poor kid over to Dego's "leaning tower of Dooh-Dooh," I Intersected their path and tried my best to derail their plans (this is what I would have wanted from a parent or a neighbor or anyone who I felt cared)...so I cared - sue me! I lied to them and told them that the MP's were on the way and punctuated that by telling the hairless Zombies that, "The nerd was safe.. because...How can you eat his brains... WHEN HE DOESN"T HAVE ANY!" Then I laughed in hopes of priming the pump and began howling in laughter, believing they had gotten the best of Troop 186 and scattering in victory. I watched as eight pair of white-clad buns scurried back into the tent of the KYBO Patrol.
I checked on Billy to see if he was okay, but didn't want to say much because I could see he was embarrassed. The poor guy. I don't think he's got what it takes to become an Eagle Scout and knew that this Boy Scout thing just wasn't for him. I helped him up as he mumbled under breath that, he'll get even. That somehow he would show those guys. I knew exactly what he had felt like mainly because of what I had waiting for me when i got back to my house.
He said something about computers again and about making a bazillion dollars and about taking over the world. "I'll show them" he said... I wasn't too sure about that...(to be honest, I wasn't too sure about the future for computers). Then I saw the look in his eye and figured that it might be good to keep his signed piece of paper. Who Knows! Maybe someday, we will all have giant super-computers in the basement of our homes. Right! Pshaw! That would be like portable phones you could carry around with you... like that will ever happen. What are you going to do strap a phone booth on the top of your car! - Not very likely.
Hello Muddah.. Hello Faddah... "When I get home remind me to tell you about the White Angels some time and if you see Tommy Blaser and Jeffery and Kippy and Michael and Kevin Lennon running around the neighborhood, tell them it was better that they weren't here. I think the trip would have changed their outlook on world.
Star Date: July 17th 1969 (continued)
Unfortunately, Boy Scout troop 186 from Seattle got the unlucky pick of the short straw and had to set up camp next to us. AND, what made things worse is that this snooty group of "cake-eaters" arrived in one of those expensive travel-coaches and didn't have to poop behind bushes and wipe off with pine cones like we did.
This automatically made them the ire of "THE KYBO PATROL." Ronnie and a couple of the kids from the Flaming Arrow Patrol overhead the Seattle kids whispering some snide comments about having to set up camp so close to the troop from Venice - and that was all it took.
Don't tell Ronnie and Chronister and Cockerel this, but in reality, the "The KYBO Patrol" looked like dirt bags and smelled even worse! When I heard all the plans for retaliation, I felt sorry for "silver-spooners" in troop 186.
They had a kid named Billy, who was a year older than me, and petitioned his scoutmasters that his troop show off the type of skills representing the Indian culture of Seattle that required the use of brains. The freshman with glasses wasn't so much into hiking and knot tying and other normal boy scout stuff. The Scout Masters liked his idea and ran with it.
In a demonstration of Indian tracking skills, they created a 100 foot long sand course that had to be interpreted. I didn't dare tell the other kids in my troop, but I actually liked it. It had foot prints and pokes and various paw prints and all kinds of things in the sand that told a story. At the beginning of the Troop 186 "skills demonstration" a kid handed each camper a piece of paper and golf pencil to write down their observations. You had to identify the foot prints of various animals that crossed the path and the ones the tracker was following - get this - they even had an owl scat (don't know where they got that?), but I dug it and felt like I did pretty good at it (no, not the owl poop - I dug the course)!
The thing I guessed right was the part about how it was a barefooted Indian who used his bow as a hiking staff which had made the round indentations and how he was followed by a three legged companion.
At the end, you had to turn your paper into the little brainiac nerd, Billy, who read your interpretation and gave you a grade. The little nerdy kid was impressed that I got the part about the limp and the staff and the three legged dog and gave me the highest score so far. Obviously, this made me feel good about myself and couldn't help, but like the scrawny, little four-eye'd geek from a rich suburb of Seattle, who had signed my "Indian tracking sheet!"
HOWEVER, it was the owl-scat thing that triggered the vindictive imagination of the KYBO patrol which would take place - later that night, well after dark.
In the meantime, it was a historic day for the Boy Scouts as we heard Jesse Owens speak to all 35,000 of us who gathered in the massive Friendship Arena, but even more cool than that - was that Neil Armstrong sent a message to us from space on the way to the moon.
WHAT!? “I’d like to say hello to all my fellow Scouts
and Scouters at Farragut State Park in Idaho at the National Jamboree there
this week and Apollo 11 would like to send them best wishes.”
Never before in the history of mankind has anything like this ever happen for the Boy Scouts and I was there! And, never before in the history of the Boy Scouts of America has anything as terrifying as what the KYBO patrol did later that night ever happen before...and unfortunately, I was there!
NEXT: THE VENICE ZOMBIE ATTACK!
Check in next time to see if little Billy Gates will make it out alive?
Hello Muddah... Hello Fadda... you thought it was bad the last time I wrote... Well you won't believe this.
Wait until you hear about what "Dego" did!
I guess I should add this to my: "You know you're from Venice If" list.
Star Date: July 16, 1969 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1..."BLAST OFF"
I know dad will be upset because I wasted an extra penny on this post card with my 6 cent Apollo 8 stamp, but I felt like I had to splurge since they launched the Apollo 11 today with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins as humankind was on the verge of taking its first steps on extraterrestrial soil. Yuri was the first human into outer-space in 1961 and the USSR had been way ahead of us in the Space Race. But now, the good 'O USA was about to finally leap into the lead! Yee Haw! We were winning so I spent the extra penny on postage.
By this time, most of the pooping business had calmed down and we were regular again - well I don't know if "regular" is a good word to describe our troop from Venice.. but our bowels had certainly settled down.
When we rolled into Farragut State Park in Idaho to meet up with the other 35,000 Boy Scouts we were sweaty from fighting and smelled like an outhouse evidenced by the flies and mosquitoes in tow and also couldn't walk in a straight line - dizzy from carbon monoxide.
It was pretty obvious that we were far from "regular."
We were like an infection spreading across the Midwest - more like the Bubonic Plague actually.
My adrenaline addiction helped me beat all the kids in the wrestle-mania staged in the back of Scout Truck and so things were looking up. I couldn't fight Cockerel, because he had diarrhea so bad and when our Scout Masters asked those in charge if we could camp next to the outhouses they graciously acquiesced to our request.
"Wasn't that kind of them!" Uh Huh!
I was part of the Hawks patrol, thank God, because the Flaming Arrow patrol had Cockerel, Ronnie and "little Wiener" who staked their claim right next to the KYBO's. In Boy Scout language or in Military language (I'm not sure which), KYBO was some fancy code word for the outhouses...it meant Keep Your Bowels Open! Seriously! I thought they must have read about us in the newspaper or something, because if there was anybody in the world that had their bowels open it was Troop 32!
It was embarrassing, really! Those guys not only looked like they lived in KYBOs, but smell like it too! I pitched my tent as far-away as possible because I thought I might die from vomiting - you know my SuperPowers!
I felt a little sorry for Venice California because I think we had just soiled (that was a pun) their laid-back beach-city surfer reputation! Anyway, if I could sing an ode to express the way I feeling right now in "Allan Sherman" style, it would go something like this:
Hello Mudder, hello Fadda
Here I am at camp "Diarrhea"
All the boys are overflowing
They say we'll have some fun when we stop pooping.
I saved the life of, naked Cockerel
he almost drowned from constipation.
You remember "Little Wiener"
He got gut-rot from last night's spaghetti dinner.
Now
I don’t want, this to scare ya
But
Cockerel now has "prune" eruptions
You
remember the "Salton Sea" fuss
The
Highway Patrol brought him back to us
Take
me home, Oh Mudda, Fadda
Take
me home to good ‘O Venice
Don’t
leave me here in the back of the scout bus
or I
might die from puking my guts up
Chronister
smells like a bag of dog poop
And
attracts all mosquitoes
Flies
are attacking our dirty shirts
And
everyone here has the “Hershey Squirts”
Dearest
Fadda, darling Mudda
How
are my precious older Brothers?
Let
me come home if you miss me
I’ll
even let the hippies torture me!
Yellowstone
was just okay
We
made it out alive yesterday
I
beat up Kissel, "Rollie-Pollie" and the Venice High Wrestler
All of us crazy Boy Scouts who had dizzy-heads and bloated-stomachs in the back of the converted Boy Scout Troop 32 "truck" (suffering brain and nervous system disorders from carbon-monoxide poisoning) were singing the words to new Fifth Dimension song at the top of our voices - mostly out of tune and completely out of rhythm. No matter how bad we sounded, no one either really seemed to care... or possessed the right mind to discern just how bad the cacophony really was. We were high on fumes and jacked up about the thought of the Apollo 9 moon launch...eight days from now.
When
the moon is in the Seventh House
And
Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then
peace will guide the planets
And
love will steer the stars
This
is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
Age
of Aquarius
Aquarius!
Aquarius!
At the part of song where we bellowed the words "Aquarius," for some unknown reason Ricky ripped off his shirt as if mankind had reach the pinnacle of evolution that had inspired Cockerel to pull down his pants and "moon" the travel-coach full of the "regular" boy scouts who were passing us on the way to the National Jamboree.
(Here is a picture of the Boy Scout "truck" in our front yard - just behind the motley crew to the right)
"Those poor suckers" we thought about the other kids who had to travel in the confines of solemn order, stuck in a seat, on air-conditioned bus -heavily scrutinized by those in authority. Sure, we may have had headaches and stomachaches, "but, boy did we have it good!"
We were from Venice and we were proud!
To reiterate where we were last time, I mentioned the diabolical plan by our scoutmasters to solve the problem of mass constipation. The problem ingloriously came to light in the paste-pasta dinner-rebellion and subsequently by the fact that we had almost lost David Cockerel.
We were camped by a small lake just outside Rock Springs Wyoming on the extended detour we had planned on the way to Farragut State Park in Idaho. Last night for dinner we had spaghetti again. AND AGAIN the noodles were not rinsed and the stuff was like gloppy paste which no one could swallow one more bite of it (except Cockerel).
Steve took his plate and pushed it down on top of Ronny's plate, sticking the two plates together. In solidarity, Philip and Chronister and James and Ricky and I all followed suit and did the same thing. I'm pretty sure this had to be a Guinness World record, and if not, a Ripley's Believe It or Not FOR REAL! NO LIE!
TRUTH...We stuck seven plates of spaghetti together and turned the whole shooting-match upside down. Kissel, held it from the bottom plate, which was now on top and shook it up and down and ALL SEVEN PLATES STUCK TOGETHER!
To invent something with this much tensile-glue-strength required a million-dollar laboratory and advance degrees in chemistry... and THIS STUFF WAS IN OUR INTESTINES and it wasn't about to come outany time soon! We were plugged up and bloated and not one of us had taken a poop since we left Venice. Anyway, we affectionately called Cockerel, who was 2-years-older than me and about 5 times my size, our "human garbage disposal." This dude scraped the remains of everyone's plates. It just seemed like he could never get enough food. The "glue-factor" didn't seem to deter his appetite at all! After we were done marveling at the sticking power of this gloppy-pasta, he stopped us in the middle of our rebellion from throwing the stuff away and ate about 15 pounds of the leftover goop that should have been incinerated.
The next day, the poor fella swam about 200 yards away from the dock, out into the middle of this murky lake, laden with fresh water algae - all by himself. No one knew what he was doing out there.
I think he swam out all by himself, so he could try to liberate a "floating log fish"...i.e take a poop!
Cockerel just couldn't manage to deliver the package, short of a "Caesarean Section" and got so tired of pushing that he didn't have the strength to make it back and started freaking out. Unfortunately, I happened to be on the dock and since my Eagle Scout older brother was a water polo legend and swimmer at Saint Monica's High school he had taught me how to swim and some basic life guard skills. I didn't want to go, but no one else was close enough, besides Chronister, and he was completely hopeless. I pulled everything off, down to my skivvies and went out for the 15-year-old who was flailing and splashing and desperately crying out for help. He had gone down twice already and I knew I had to get there quick, thinking he would be a goner by his third time underwater.
I managed to grab him under one arm and around the neck and proceeded to drag him back, face-up, to the shore where the entire troop was now standing watching the spectacle. When I got within about 4 feet of the shoreline, a couple of the Senior Patrol Leaders grabbed Cockerel from me and dragged him up onto the beach. Never mind the fact that his trunks were down around his ankles, he looked like one of those whales that was dying and had tried to beach itself.
IT WAS NOT A PRETTY PICTURE BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION.
I had already touched his naked body and didn't want anything to do with him, but the older scouts didn't seem to know what to do - so I put my foot under his back and rolled him on his side - just in case he had any water in his lungs. He coughed! Water came out! He lived! Yeah me...maybe I'd get some kind of merit badge for this?
Anyway, the Scout Masters interrogated him about violating the "buddy system" and wanted to know why he was in the middle of the lake with his shorts off all by himself. This is when they found out that he was trying to take a poop, but couldn't squeeze it out.
Later that evening was the top-secret tribunal.
The two Scout Masters sat at a table with a sheet of paper and a pen while the the Senior Patrol Leaders had us sequestered in a single file line on the other side of the Scout truck. After each interrogation, the Scout Masters shouted, "Next!" and a Senior Patrol Leaders walked around the truck and to the foldout card table that was like appearing before a judge at court.
They had a paper in front of them with a line drawn down the middle. On top of one column were the capital letters "BM" and on the other side was written "No BM" with names written on both sides. In hushed voices they quietly asked, if I had taken a BM. I didn't know if a BM was a good thing or a bad thing. It was all so serious. I didn't know whether it was admitting to stealing something like Building Materials or Bacon. My Aunt was a Catholic Nun that had something to do with BVM. That's all I know, and I wasn't about to admit to anything that I didn't do! I didn't take a thing! I passed the secret test and they wrote my name down on the "No BM" side of the paper. "NEXT!" They yelled as I was collared the higher ranking boy scout and shuffled into the group that had been through the line so far.
Kissel asked, "Well?"
"Well, what?" I replied.
"Well, what did you say?"
"I said no, of course... I didn't take anything.. besides I don't even know what a BM is.
"Neither, did I, but Chronister said it had to do something with taking a poop"
"Well, why didn't they just say so?"
"I think that's how they say it, if your from Mar Vista or if you're one of those kids on those real buses."
"OHHHHHHHHHHHH...." I said, struck with fresh revelation "Why can't they just be normal like us and say poop like everyone else in the world?" I asked rhetorically and got a lot of shoulder shrugs.
In the morning, the Scout Masters had a big surprise planned for Cockerel and for all of the kids whose names were listed on the " No BM" side of the paper.
Do I need to mention Venice was coming to a town near you? Do I need to mention anything about Mount Vesuvius? Do I even need to say that this is where things got even worse? But let me tell you this...this is how we earned our police escort out of Yellowstone National Park.
I don't know what was worst...the Dahlins headed out of Venice to the zoo (post 5/3/2103) or Troop 32 headed to Farragut State park in Idaho to meet up with 35,000 other Boy Scouts.
In the words of the robot on Lost in Space "Danger Will Robinson"
Stardate: July 6th 1969
Captains Log: We had our heavy-duty, 1959 Chevy moving-truck converted into a "scout bus" by cutting the back doors in half, installing some porthole windows and hard wooden benches along the sides. This left the center floor section open for transporting all the tents and backpacks and camping gear and for staging cage fighting. Miraculously, no one had fallen out of the back doors on any of the trips to Camp Slauson or Josepho so far, but we came close a couple times.
This half-open, barn-door (at the rear of the truck) arrangement had its advantages and disadvantages.
ADVANTAGE 1) On one trip, Charlie climbed out of the back of the truck onto the tongue of the trailer and slid himself onto the fender of the little cargo trailer, we were pulling in order to appropriate something we "desperately" needed inside the truck that was a matter of life and death. Like a spider monkey, Charlie, climbed up on top of the little white trailer and slowly scooted himself very carefully towards the rear. I voted against the rope. I kind-of-felt like Charlie would have been better off without a bowline tied around his waist. I figured that if he fell off without the rope then at least he might have a chance of survival, but with the rope - it would be like being dragged behind a horse at 57 miles per hour on hot rough asphalt (not a good ending - if you know what I mean)! Believe it or not, Charlie actually made it inside the trailer grabbed the bag of marshmallows and made his way back into the back of the "Scout Bus" without the scout masters being none-the-wiser.
ADVANTAGE 2) Another thing this particular arrangement afforded us on long trips, was that we could stand on the bench seat and hang our talliwackers out the back, when some small-bladder'd tenderfoot had to take a pee-pee between potty-stops!
ADVANTAGE 3) This gaping hole in the back end also allowed us to "full-moon" passerby's, especially if there were pretty girls and grandmothers in the cars trapped behind our slow-moving, smog-belching, billboard of a truck - representing the Boys Scouts of America (Hey, I was twelve and at least we thought it was pretty cool - though, I'm pretty sure our scout masters might have felt differently - had they known).
DISADVANTAGE 1) Potential for falling out of the back - especially when leaning out to take a leak or when "giving the moon" to an old Mormon grandmother from Utah.
DISADVANTAGE 2) Was the fact that carbon monoxide FUMES blew into the large open back. Carbon monoxide poisoning includes light-headedness, confusion, headaches, vertigo and can lead to the toxicity of the central nervous system. This might EXPLAIN WHY we sent a Boy Scout crawling out on top of a trailer on the freeway, pee'd on the cars behind us, indiscriminately exposed our bare butts to grandmas and fought with one another all the way to Idaho. And... it might also explain why we always looked like dazed, refugee-rats whenever the truck finally rolled into a rest stop.
The other normal Boy Scout troops did not travel like us... they had air-conditioned travel-coaches with a restroom on board and drove through McDonald's on their way across country.
Although the carbon-monoxide poisoning could be blamed for a lot of things, in our case, however, I don't think the toxic fumes we were breathing could be blamed for mass constipation. I think that was due instead, both to the menu, and to the fact that the Scout Master's son never rinsed the pasta which ended up sticking to the insides of our intestines like the heavy paste on paper mache!
It's not like something we compared notes on. "Hey, Kissel..have you taken a poop yet?" That would have been ridiculous.
But, after 4 or 5 hot, sweaty days of traveling and camping the two scout master finally put two and two together when everyone began to moan and groan about stomachaches which they figured was more than just the ordinary toxic confusion, vomiting associated with minor carbon monoxide poisoning that was driving us all mad.
AND SO... the night after the infamous spaghetti incident, on the very same day I rescued David Cockerel from drowning in a small muddy lake outside Rock Springs in Wyoming...is when the proverbial "poop would have hit the fan" except for there was no poop and the scout masters came up with a diabolical plan.
I'll have to leave you hanging on this one... and come back and share how this interrogation tribunal got us a Highway Patrol escort... (well, kind of anyway)... to the embarrassment of the Entire Boy Scout Universe and to which (I'm sure) Lord Baden Powell was rolling over in his grave.
AS I leave you until next time- there are many of you right now saying, "Oh, this guy is just making up stories for sensationalism!"
I guarantee that every single bit of this is the "Straight Up TRUTH!
And I would ask, or dare anyone who is reading this - especially if you were a member of the illustrious Troop 32 from Venice California to weigh-in and corroborate these stories for the rest of the disbelieving world - at least for those in the 78 countries who read this BLOG!
On Saturday, I saw one of the strangest sights I've seen in a long time. The lazy hippies were industriously working in the backyard. Ha! It was ironic... these guys digging a hole in the old sandbox play area. It must have been important. They probably wanted to grow more "Mexican Tomato Plants" or something like that. They seemed to be having a good time, but knew that I wasn't included in what-ever-it-was they were doing.
At 12, I was still too young to be inducted into the ways of my older brothers and the hippie Wolf Pack! I wanted to feel a part of the tribe, but knew that was still a couple years off.
My leg was healing, I had returned to school and to kickball at recess and was interested in fitting in with my 7th grade friends and being noticed by the little cutie-pie I had my eyes on.
My brothers were busy growing hair and burning draft cards and smoking. I was a tenderfoot in the Boy Scouts and just tying to find my way through the world, trying figure out what life was all about and where I fit?
I didn't particularly care too much about grades. I didn't care too much about sports. I wasn't too motivated by anything except for survival and desperate to discover the meaning of Love. My life sounds like an old song from Sam Cooke
"Don't know much about history Don't know much biology
Don't know much about a science book
Don't know much about the French I took
But I do know that I love you And I know that if you love me too
What a wonderful world this would be
Don't know much about geography Don't know much trigonometry
Don't know much about algebra
Don't know what a slide rule is for
But I do know, one and one is two And if this one could be with you
I'm not sure that I had heard the word "Love," ever mentioned in my house. I called it the "L Word," because I was too embarrassed to say it in front of people or that I might get beat up if I used it.
It was a foreign concept - and I figured that at the rate we were making progress on our NASA mission to land on the moon, that earthlings would know more about the foreign object some 239,000 miles away in the sky and conquer it - before I knew about this foreign concept that was right in front of me. I knew that the truth about love was out there somewhere - I heard about it... longed for it, but just couldn't quite make contact with it other than my brief encounters with Irene on Fridays (post 7/15/13 "20 Minutes with Irene").
Anyway, we had a great big area in our backyard that used to be a sand-play area. With the Veloci-Rooster defending its dominion territory, it has long since been forgotten. But the long-hairs bagged the dreaded raptor(Blog Post 12/3/13) and had locked the hideous beast up in the chicken coop and now the hippie-types were working harder than I had ever seen them work before (many of them were not known for their sense of drive and ambition - other than Anti-War demonstrations). There they were stirred in delirious ecstasy digging a hole to the center of the earth for no apparent reason.
How do you spell OXYMORON?
I had no idea whether they were digging for lost treasure...archaeological finds from ancient ruins...remains of dead pets we may have buried there or old carburetors; no matter what their intended purpose - they were happy and passionate. It was cute to see hippies - both working and happy - that's not a sight you see everyday. After watching the show for a while, I decided to make my way inside for lunch where I had to beat off the mangy cat - put up with with a few choice cuss words of the foul-mouthed Mynah-bird and find something in the refrigerator that wasn't covered in moldy green fuzz (which my dad claimed was good for us because it was penicillin).
I had found some bread, cut off the green spots and popped it in the toaster when I heard the fire alarm clang on the back porch stairs. I heard a thousand foots steps making their way inside the house, but smelled the brood before I saw them come around the corner. Bounding in my direction, I saw the hopeful gleam in their eyes, and the sudden light of epiphany about the purpose of the pit caused me to gulp in terror as my life flashed before my eyes.
EXTRA, EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT IT: Baby Brother dies in Pit Accident!
Accident my foot! I jumped, scrambled over the table, took out two of the hippies... went through the legs of a third - shot under another table in the dining room like a greased pig, stepped on the cat's tail and knocked over the Mynah-bird's cage before being brought down by four of them. I could usually hold my own against about 3 or 4 of them, but not 15. They tied me up, dragged me outside and I knew I was going to die.
"One small step for somebody and a giant step for someone else - I guess!"
Love you 
