Conclusion: The Psycho Revenge and the Unluckiest Man Alive

Have you ever seen cockroaches scurry around at night after turning the lights on and watched the mad, frantic dash for cover before they were squished by the giant shoe?  That's exactly what we looked like - only different. We were wearing underwear and had tribal markings duct-taped across our naked upper torsos scrambling for cover in our tents.

Seriously, though the duct tape- was the personification of cool!

After the snakes had been let loose in the tents of the other Boy Scouts, we scurried like those cockroaches- only with chonies on - back to our tents, and pretended to be like other normal Boy Scouts.  Ray and Alan had used an entire half roll of the duct-tape on Cockrell - securely fastening his underwear to his stomach. The last thing they wanted was Cockrell running around naked. We giggled in anticipation and then hit each other and shushed each other and giggled and hit and shushed each other in the thrill of anticipation that couldn't be contained.  

Then it happened!

1:37am: "The screech that was heard around the world."
                   
One 14-year-old from Troop 34 screamed like a 10-year-old girl on the drop of a roller coaster when the snake slithered across his face in the middle of the night (or like that lady in the shower scene of Psycho).

This acted as the ALARM and was exactly what we had hoped for. The terrified screaming woke everyone up at Camp Slauson (everyone, expect for us of course). This was when one of the girls from the Santa Monica Troop also discovered the garter snake that had nestled in between two of them (Did I say "one of the girls"? - darn it, I meant one of boys).

Oh well, Panic ensued. Chaos! Mayhem! When the girls oops boys began shooting out through the flaps like cannonballs, they caught the rope, which the recon-team had tied 4 inches above the ground in snare like fashion. Not only, did the stealth rope trip the first kid out, but it also pulled the tent poles along with them - collapsing the tent and trapping the other kids inside.

Perfect and utter pandemonium - couldn't have worked out any better.  Boys fighting inside the shrouds, that had now covered them in pitch blackness, were frantically trying to claw their way out. The death-shrouds were in a tug-of-war match - anchored to a foot of the stupid troglodytes on the outside who were crawling in the dirt thinking that a Zombie had him by the ankle (which was only the rope he had tripped over and on the way out and was now tangled up in).

Santa Monica - same thing.

Beverly Hills - they just started crying thinking it was a Zombie Apocalypse and paid no attention to the empty rolls of duct-tape and pieces of rope lying in their otherwise, pristine camp.

Thank goodness the noise was so loud that our Scout Masters couldn't hear our laughter.  And on cue, this was when we went into our Oscar award winning act. We emerged from tents screaming and running around as if we were casualties of the same prank. We carefully collapsed a couple of the poles when everyone was out of their tents to make it look like we had been victimized as well, by the troop we had framed. ONLY!


Only, on the way out of his tent, Ray FORGOT!

 Ray forgot that we had tied ropes to the front poles of our tents in a ruse that had caught the poor guy right across the ankle (the unluckiest and the luckiest person alive). Down he went with a thud!  Our Troop 32 cabin was on a hill. Down Ray rolled! Bouncing from one dirt terraced step to another - pulling the tent behind. Poor "unlucky" Ray was sure to die. There was no way he could live through this.


Then  WHAM- Ray shot up into the air like an animal in a hunter's snare.

When setting up the tent, Ray had decided to take a shortcut and tie-off the top peak of his tent to a tree branch. Rolling down the hill to his sure death the branch stopped the tent which suspended the "luckiest-man-alive" in mid air.






Ray proved to be the perfect cover up! There was no way Troop 32 could have been involved in the greatest Boy Scout caper of all time, placing blame squarely on Troop 33 from Beverly Hills.

The laughter we had at Ray, who was precariously dangling from the branch - covered the laughter we couldn't contain at the snitches...the cake-eaters and (as Jeffery Lennon called them) the bottle-feeders from the other three troops.

Unfortunate Bridge Crossing

Branch Cracking

Truck Smashing

Ray Skewering.

Arms and Legs Flailing

Markie D Singing

Cockrell mooning

And Little Wiener Cooing.

Some Kids applauding

Cake-eaters snitching

Tribunal meeting

And Jeffery Seething

Payback Brewing

A Plan Ensuing

Paraphernalia Gathering

And Snipe-Hunt Pursuing.

Snakes Slithering

Boys who need Mothering

Zombies Reaching

And Death-Shrouds Smothering.

Venice Scheming

Mar Vista Bleeding

Santa Monica Weeping

And Beverly Hills Pouting.

Ray Dangling

Our Kids Laughing

Jeffery Proclaiming...

              ...The best Boy Scout Outing! 

You think I jest! But, 96.34% of this story is absolutely true.

Just find Jeffery and ask him yourself. He would tell you, "No Reserve. No Retreat. No Regrets"

To me, it was just another lousy day in paradise on Harding avenue. And that's just the way it was... until the next true of adventure of Markie D and growing up on the best street and the best city in the world.

"Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep"

(continued from last post)

One time we were saints - all of us! Well, practically all of us, except for me. I was the spawn of Charles Manson... (I didn't know what that meant, but that is what Mr. Steadman said when we came to his house and knocked on the door for Halloween). Though my Catholic mother had good intentions and tried to convince me that I was John the Baptist, I felt more like "Wolf Boy" dressed in the old fox stoles and holding a paper plate with a doll's head that had been covered in ketchup as my costume accessory.



 As you can see to the right - I didn't get it! I didn't know why I had to hold a plate with a head on it. She said it was because John was beheaded. I still didn't get it. (You can see the video of me telling that story here... The telling of Wolf Boy )

Since we had opened the portal to the demonic influences through our séances and by conjuring up the dead when we decided to mess around with the Ouija Board -everything had changed.

The darkness that crept out of the door to the dark underworld which we had opened was like a black, slow moving ooze. It was invisible to adults and to most people, but not to me. I could see it and smell the rotting stench whenever it began to take over someone's body and when it influenced their behavior.

I think it had a lot to do with the long hair.. and the burning of draft cards...and the marijuana plants... and the pits that the older boys had buried me in... and the electrocutions and the times they tried to kill Kurt and the time the house tried to eat him (last post).  I think that slimy, evil sludge had something to do with mom locking herself in her room every night and why Chewbacca felt it was important to squeeze the temples on my forehead and knock me out every day for a year. I think it had something to do with the older boy's meanness and rejection towards me.

Maybe that's the reason Ulrich felt he had to launch a big fat loogie down my throat - The Loogie that caused Mount Vesuvius . Maybe that was the reason I ran Urich under the can opener... Oops - Reverse Mohawk, or why I was almost murdered at the McElliot's pool "Here lay Markie D".  It was the Ooze...I tell you and maybe that is why I decided to cut my little sister's hair with the Snippy scissors...

And since the time we had cracked open the door  to the occult, the stinky ooze of evil spilled out of our house and into the neighborhood. If I had to guess, I would say that we didn't have the only portal to hell that had been opened... No...I think there are lots of them.







 

There are probably houses and families just like ours in every city that allowed the the gooey-black substance to flow like slow moving lava that burned everything in its path.

Seriously, think about it... maybe it explains Charles Manson... and the riots on college campuses in the anti-war protest... maybe it explains the Vietnam War... maybe it explains the assassinations... maybe it explains the "Fraternity House" fire on Harding Ave...Venice on Fire .


This is between me and you.... but I even think that the evil slim had been carried over to Saint Mark's School. Don't tell anyone - but I think Sister Godzilla had stepped in it (that would explain why she was so mean and tried to send me back a grade for yawning - of all things)! This would explain why I couldn't get Andrea to notice me.

I think Donny had carried some back with him to the Blaser's house and that Pat had gotten some of the invisible goo stuck on the bottom of his shoe and carried the stuff back to the Lennon house on the corner (if you could believe it). With the shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary in their front window, I didn't think it was possible for the evil slim to enter their house, but Pat was beginning to look like one of the Dahlin boys.

IT WAS THE OOZE I TELL YOU.



It began slowly, but several of the Lennon boys were becoming hippies down there too... They were the Best Catholics in the entire world and it took hold there as well.  Yep, even there!

First one - then two...

...they had been infected...

...and my hole in the wall - my bed - (pictured to the left) was right in the center of it all. Maybe that's why I was a target of my older brother's inventive cruel-pranks and horrible tricks and also figured that the awful glop had gotten on me. I keep my rosary beads close and felt I had to pray to keep the monsters away that I saw moving around in the dark shadows at night and thought this was the only way I could slow the stuff down. AND quite possibly - the only way that I would live another day.

I heard wrestling noises in the attic and sinister footsteps that turned my stomach, something evil this way comes.

 "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep."  Terrified, I slipped on my boxing gloves and tried not to close my eyes, for I had to fend off the devil and be ready for my brothers, The Wolf Pack, should they decided to attack tonight.  

The Secret Service and Gunshots on Harding!

I have been trying to write the unbelievable, bizarre, incredible, "too-crazy-to-be-true" stories of my growing up years in chronological order the best I can remember.  I began this blog about a year ago - beginning by telling about my first day in 5th grade (as my class moved up from one end of Saint Marks grammar school to the other end of the school building) in Sister Godzilla's class.















That first day of 5th grade was after my wild family let the monkeys out of the LA zoo - 5/3/13
                   It was after my brothers had learned how to harness  electricity for inventive forms of sibling and
                      neighbor torture, which also happened to include the occasional visiting nun - 4/26/13
               ...It was also the summer my family left me at behind at Salton Sea that ended in a high speed                              Highway Patrol chase to Indio - 5/27/13                                                                                                ...It was after nearly a dozen broken bones and having my leg nearly severed completely off


I continued to work my way through stories about our notorious neighborhood pranks and dangerously stupid UFO launchings that almost burned down the Lennon Sisters house on the corner, fishing for the old grouch next door, and the improbable meeting of a lifetime that led us to cross paths with the President of the United States (LBJ) while on one of our wild adventures across country - 9/14/13






With 30,000  visitors from 86 countries around the world to my blog, I am now in that chronological telling of the history of the world - or the history of Venice or the history of Saint Marks or the history of Harding Avenue in the summer of 1969, just after having my 13th birthday.



(Pictured to left is 900 Harding Ave. Venice. CA. circa 1965 i.e. "The Fraternity House")




My last posting has to do with the tragic death of Mr. Lennon and the pursuing turmoil it presented to the Lennons as well as to our neighborhood with the confusion that was stirred up by media frenzy linking the murder of Bill Lennon to the recent La Bianca-Tate murder spree of Charles Manson and his cult followers. Turns out that the murderer, a disturbed psycho, by the name of Chet Young, had also expressed murder threats against President Johnson back when he was in office.  Thus, necessitating the invasion of the Secret Service to our street for protection of the Lennon clan.

What I found out in my visit to Branson last summer from Joey Lennon was the key to solving the timing of the Great Fraternity-House Fire. He and Billy Lennon told me the events that took place while they were in protective lock-down by the Secret Service that shed light on the exact timing of that event.  I had previously put this event in my blog early in 1969 (for choosing 1969 I get a B+  because no one I had talked to - who lived on Harding during the big fire - could agree on the exact year - let alone the exact time that it happened).

Joey and Billy Lennon, however, knew exactly when that fire took place. It was almost 45 years ago to this exact day.

Most of the Lennon family - including all of the Lennon Sisters, their husbands and kids had all come back to live in the big house on Harding Ave for their protection - because Chet Young had gotten away and was still on the loose.  From across the street where we lived, it looked like a hundred Lennons were crammed in there at the time- but what does a 13-year-old know...none-the-less, it was a big number that exceeded the number of Venice hippies, friends and strays who were crammed in my house.

Since I shared my memories on the big fire I have heard some stories of others who have shed more light from their perspective (including the Tripps, who lived right next door, and an actual person who told me about how they were trapped inside on the second floor of the fraternity house at the time of the fire).

Now what I would like to do, since there are many new people to my blog, is to paste all of that together with the new information in its correct chronological time frame that took place within weeks of the Bill Lennon murder during the time of the invasion of the Secret Service to our street on Harding Ave (at this exact time 45 years ago).

At the Lennon house things got crazy that night. Gunshots had been fired...so the policemen and Secret Service detail frantically scrambled into action calling all the Lennons to take cover downstairs. The gunshots they heard (or what they thought were gunshots) were not far from the Lennon house and posed an imminent threat.  BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM... the loose windows at our house rattled from the serious of gunshots or explosions or from whatever was going on across the street.

To Be Continued.

PS if you are reading this and have memories of that night, I would very much like to hear your recollection - value your input and would like include your memory of the event in the upcoming continuation of the big event - so please share in a comment below or on FACEBOOK and I'll add it into the story.

Final Approach: The Eagle Has Landed

Star Date: July 26th 1969.


"The Eagle has landed"

 Man had stepped foot on the moon for the first time in history...I know a bunch of rats will be sorely disappointed, but as it turns out, the moon is not made of green cheese after-all.

I have to admit, however, that I was a little disappointed that we did not discovered a colony of Martins hiding behind some pile of moon rocks. The discovery of Martins would have helped to explain some of the outlandish stories of alien abductions on those dark, two-lane highways in the middle of the desert with the lone couple in their rusty old Chevy pickup truck.


BUT... it also was a bit of a comfort to believe that my rescuers at the infamous "Salton Sea Tragedy" (Post 5/13-27/2013) had not been aliens, but angels instead. From time to time I had wondered if I had been subjected to one of those crazy abduction events in my bizarre desert incident and had been given a mind-wipe before being returned to earth at Gene's Diner at the Salton Sea Marina. (An Alien abduction would account for an inexplicable lapse in time and also for the superhuman strength, I experienced that was way beyond my mere 90 pound frame, to fight off trained wrestlers who were 100 pounds heaver than myself and also the ability to fend off five or six members of the hippie Wolf Pack at one time - who just so happened to be at home in Venice waiting for my return ).

Anyway, Armstrong and his crew had plunged into the Pacific and returned safely to earth 2 days ago as President Kennedy had pledged 8 years earlier!  And, just as they had returned home from outer-space... Troop 32 was about to make the final descent back into Venice in our inglorious spaceship otherwise known as the Scout Truck which we affectionately called, "The Beast."  i.e. The converted moving-truck turned mobile-cage-fighting-on-wheels.  

 As we farted and fought, pee'd out the back and "BA'ed" grandmas all the way home from the Boy Scout Jamboree, I imagined how dull the ride must have been for the pathetic"normal" kids like Bill Gates who had to travel in those luxury buses and couldn't help but thinking about how much fun they were missing out on.

We arrived at our Scout House at the intersection of West Washington Boulevard and Washington Way and disembarked looking like a band of rag-tag, war-torn refugees to the horror of awaiting parents! 

  

I put my backpack on and trekked the few blocks home, wondering what was in store for me when I got there.  Oops... Wait, that's not my house... 

                                                              This is..... 

A lot of scary stuff was going on at this time. Charles Manson and his crew had set up shop not far away in Malibu and were in the middle of a killing spree that included actress Sharon Tate as well as the gruesome murders of the LaBiancas. 

Meanwhile, a deranged fan of our neighbors, the Lennon Sisters, by the name of Chet Young had made threats against the Mr. Lennon, and also against President Johnson, for keeping him away from Peggy Lennon (who he believed to be his wife).  

Not only were things tense in the world, but it seemed to be touching-down right in our city... right across the street...right on Harding Avenue and right in my backyard where the Vietnam War, draft-dodging hippies were hiding out next to the "Mexican Tomato Plants" under tyrannical scrutiny of the dreaded Veloci-Rooster.  

Next time: Another escapee that terrorizes our neighborhood.       

Karl Dahlin and a Whale of a Terrifying Tale

(Continued from last time)
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale.
A tale of a fateful trip
that started from Harding Avenue
Aboard this tiny ship

Patrick fancied he was a sailin' man
The Skipper brave and sure
The three of us set sail that day
for a Three hour tour
a three hour tour...

The weather started getting rough
the leaky boat was tossed...
all for the sake of a couple fish
The Minnow would be lost.
The Minnow would be lost

The swells had gotten so big that the little motor couldn't even push the boat up what seems like an uphill climb at a 45 degree angle, and I didn't know if we were moving forward or whether we were actually going backwards. Every time we crested the top of the swell we sped downhill like a skier shooting out of the gates of a slalom run at the winter Olympics. Down we sped into a 30 foot trough - assisted by gravity - motor revving into a crash course with a mass of water that begged to swallow us at the bottom.  I held on to the throttle arm of the sputtering motor as Patrick bailed while Karl was busy pressing the gooey Velveeta cheese on to his fish hook, totally oblivious to the fact that we were all going to die!


We plowed into the bottom as the nose of the boat buried itself into the dark water that crashed over the front.  Karl cast his line and told me to head towards the Venice Pier and barked out orders for Patrick to bail faster as we were ankle deep in water and things were beginning to float in the bottom of boat. Heck, I was beginning to think that a fisherman would be happy to hook a prize fish and be dragged away to a sea burial. Unable to keep up with the leaks and the water that kept crashing over the front, Patrick was beginning to get scared and I in particular did not care how many fish we caught - this was not the way I wanted to die!

The swells, the wind and the current was moving south against us and we were not making any progress. In fear of over using it, I didn't say Sister Edith's "death prayer" yet. I only prayed that the motor would continue to run and that Karl would catch something soon so that we could head back into the safety of the Marina Del Rey Harbor. The optimistic fisherman didn't seem to care about the fact that water in the bottom of the boat had been inching higher and that Patrick was crying and under the front bow screaming Sister Edith's prayer every time the USS Minnow crashed into the bottom of trough between swells. Karl fished, I furiously bailed with one hand as I held onto the throttle arm of struggling old Johnson 35.

The wind and the seas continued to blow against us until we realized that we had hadn't made any forward progress at all...only pushed back between the angry sea and the breakwater... (this is the part of the story where you hear the lady on Psycho scream in terror)... we had to keep the boat pointed directly out to the open sea, just to keep our distance from the gnashing teeth of the breakwater rocks that had eaten a boat or two.

Then it happened (this is the part in the story where you hear the Psycho sound effects of the screeching death knife) - The 'O Johnson motor just up and quit and gave up the ghost.

We were now being pushed dangerously back towards the rocks by the fury of the relentless storm.

Doom, Doom, Doom!  Why weren't we in the Blaser's boat? Why were we here in the first place?

Gherhing the Great, me and the Fisherman were all going to die. Karl had a feisty corbina on the line and he wasn't about to be distracted by something so trivial as death.  We were going to die!



Good bye Tommy, Good bye mom and dad,

Good bye Saint Mark's friends,

Good Bye Frank Nargie










Good bye Ricky Tripp...


...and Dennis Dugan and Jeffry Lennon, and Kippy and all baby brothers


 Good by Lennons - on Harding

and Lennons on Superior Ave 

Good Bye Wolf Pack -

Good bye Monster under my bed...

Good Bye Alligator
Good Bye Monkey
Good Bye foul-mouthed Mynah bird
Good Bye Snakes, lizards, Veloci-Raptor, and Iguana Del Diablo

Good bye Harding Avenue...











...And - Good bye future me...

I'll see you all at the bottom of Davy Jones Locker.

Du...du....du...Just When you think things couldn't get any worse...