Hippies, Skunk Weed and Baseball!

I apologize to my faithful friends and followers world over...this has been an extremely busy and very trying week at my house, where nothing has gone according to plan.

Now, I want to get back to the story of Markie d.

Laying in bed wondering if I'd ever walk again, I figured that my less-than-illustrious little-league baseball career was over. By this time in seventh grade all my friends had moved up from Minors to the Majors - expect for me. "Gherhing the Great" had grown an inch over the summer and now I was officially the shortest boy in the seventh grade class at Saint Marks School. Heck - as far as I knew, I might have been the shortest seventh grader in the whole world.

              That's Gherhing the Great on the far right.   →

The people in the league let me stay down a division even though was too old, because I was so small; I knew it and I knew everyone else knew it too. The most embarrassing thing is that they nominated me to play in the All-Star game and I had to show up pretending that I was something, when I knew I just a skinny, little fraud in a hand-me-down uniform that was too big.


Oh well, before my accident at McIlliot's pool, I played first base in my first and last "All Star" game and got some kind of trophy. I don't know if I really earned it or not, so I hid the trophy away from my family in the big, o' steamer-trunk buried under junk in the front room on the second story - where the "John the Baptist" fox furs had been decaying for the past billion years (Video blog post...Oct 28 2013).

Since no one in my family came to see me play in the all star game - I guess my secret was safe. 

By this time, my leg was healing and I could crutch myself not only to to the bathroom and back, but had finally gotten enough strength to go back to school. Because of this new gift of mobility I was lucky enough to join the family downstairs for our annual catastrophic upheaval of joking, name-calling and inevitable food fight -  known in other normal households by another name - "Thanksgiving."

After much of the chaos in our house had calmed down to the mere roar of a War-Zone, Dooh-Dooh Pants flung moist turkey dressing on my neck that he had pulled out of his mouth. Not knowing exactly what the brown, icky, stinky stuff was, I couldn't crutch quick enough to the toilet and vomited all the way to the bathroom. That was the creme de la creme... the climatic crescendo that delighted the entire Wolf Pack. Thanksgiving was now complete at our house.

Everyone laughed. Laughing at people was what they liked to do best of all (that's why I didn't dare tell them about my trophy- they would have made sure to totally humiliate me).  

Crutches were kind of cool. Horrible for school, but really good for defending oneself against older brothers who tried to torture me. They were lucky that I was too busy hobbling to the bathroom on those wooden weapons than to use them for my protection. Trust me - No, trust "Flea-Bait!" He could tell you that I was a lot better with those old wooden crutches than I was with a wooden baseball bat any day.
         
Wolf Pack be warned.   Yeah, I know I sound tough, right? But the older boys didn't take my threats very serious when it was always like 10 against one.. and especially now that they had bigger fish to fry!

The bigger fish was the Veloci-Rooster!   

The hippies had to figure out how to get back to the Mexican Tomato Plants and to Wall Drug without being attacked. If the cunning bird of prey allowed them free access to the ivy cave, it was only because the fowl thing was setting a trap on them like he did with the "The Chicken Lady"

Only...only they were usually high on the loco-weed when they discovered their exit (their means of escape) had been completely cut off.

It was funny! At least dad and I thought it was. We sat in the house and rolled with with laughter when they tried to negotiate with "Tomahawk attack helicopter" as if it were one of them.

"Hey, there little fella. Its like, it's all good...happy, happy?" They asked  "Like dude, man it's all groovy...you know...we're all one with the same cosmic universe man!"

"Bro...like, it's all copacetic...man."  

"Yeah dude...bro...peach and love and granola and flower power man"  Kjersten, dad and I couldn't help but laugh, because we knew what was going to happen next.

They thought they had talked the vigilante bird (with the "sidewinder missiles") down with all their mellow hippie nonsense.

"Like man...we're just like you. You want to be understood like us...you know man - Love is where it's at."

The next second, under attack,  we hear 7 of the hippies screeching in pain and laughing at each other at the same time. And then falling, and then stumbling, and then laughing at each other, and then screaming, and then begging their bird-friend-brother child-of-the-cosmos to stop. Oh my goodness, this was better than the Star Trek episode a couple weeks ago when William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols shared the first interracial kiss on US television.

The skunk smelling boys would desperately rush up the back steps - pulling and pushing each other to get in the back door to safety, then seeing us they would walk in and act calm as if pretending like they weren't just out back in the hippie-hideout of Wall Drug smoking it up.  And the funny thing was, I don't think they knew what just happened.  I think that "what-ever-it-was" they were smoking, made them forget EVERY TIME. And every time it was the same: they would emerge from the hollow - try to talk down the crazy rooster with razor-sharp talons having forgotten the results from the last negotiation failure.

For those of you with androids   TV's first interracial kiss

I'm getting to the story of the "Great Fire" of '68.  I'm just setting the stage for the events leading up to it.    

  

Wolf Pack and Trouble in Outer Space.

(Sing this humming and snapping your fingers to the Addams Family theme song - it'll make more sense that way).   

"They're Hairy and they're kooky,

Mischievous and spooky,
They're altogether ooky,
The Dahlin Family."

Du, du, du, du..snap snap

"Their house is an Aslyum
When people come to see 'em
The inmates are a screa-um.
The Dahlin Family." 

That's just my family by the way, add to those numbers the Harding Avenue Gang and the Wolf Pack had numbers to be reckoned with.  On one hand, think of the damage that could come from assembling an unruly crowd of that size. Entire small countries have been toppled by less. On the other hand (on a more positive note) - the vast number of hippies in our Venice Tribe also lent itself to the possibility of...say...putting out a fire - should something go awfully wrong. I said "positive" not "realistic"!


Q. And what is "Murphy's Law?"
A. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong!

Problem was, that chaos always seemed to reign over order, and boy, did we cause a lot of problems.

While everyone in the neighborhood was gathered in our dining room (the room with the hospital-bed and bumper-pool table), Gustav my oldest brother and the oldest Blaser-boy from next door came up with a brilliant plan. What you have to remember is, that during this time in the sixties, everyone was all jacked-up and excited about exploring outer space and landing on the moon to gather green-cheese.

As I mentioned before, a new TV show came out two nights ago called Star Trek "Going where no man has ever gone before" add that to a couple TV shows which had already been out now for about a year, 
My Favorite Martin and Lost in Space, it was plain to see that rockets-to-the-moon and space travel were indeed on the forefront of everyone's mind.   

Every stupid fifth-grade-boy in the world already had the twisted theme song from Lost in Space memorized, so they could they could inflict silly grammar-school torment on a smaller kid. They would sing, "It's about time, it's about space, it's about time to..." SMACK "...slap your face" slapping their latest victim in the face at the opportune moment - then laugh at them for falling for it, and then running away in order to avoid adolescent retribution.  I probably don't have to tell you that the Wolf Pack (though, far too old for this kind of thing), was particularly fond of the ending part. The part where they slapped a younger sibling (like me) in the face.

300 slaps! You'd think, I would have caught on, right?   Duh!

Anyway... we were in the middle of the "SPACE RACE" with the Russians and they were winning. They had already landed a spacecraft on the moon and the United States seemed to be falling behind - landing on the moon seemed to be light-years off at a distance at our snail's pace!  This was all part of the Cold War and we were losing!

When we were still using monkeys, I wrote a letter to Washington asking if they wouldn't mind using any of my brothers in their rocket experiments. I told them it would be okay since they weren't a whole bunch smarter then chimpanzees (Oh, I made no mention about letting the monkeys out of the zoo). 

When we started to use real-live human-beings, I wrote another letter asking again - if they wouldn't mind using any of my brothers. I told President Johnson that they wouldn't have to feel too sad if we lost one of them should something bad happened, since I had like 28 big brothers. My dad said we had plenty to go around if something should ever happen to one of us (that's why I didn't think they cared if  they had left me at Salton Sea - I'm the second from the right in this picture - Oh and that was about a third of the group that were crammed in the station wagon and trailer, also pictured in the background. Blog Post: May 13, 2013). 

I never got a letter back from the President or from NASA. That was a disappointment!

Anyway, at this time we were sure there was life on Mars and it seemed like every week some hick-couple in an old Ford pick-up, out in the middle of the boondocks, saw a flying saucer - we called 'em UFO's - that's short for Unidentified Flying Objects.

It was always down an old, dark, two-lane highway,  far outside the city boundaries with no witnesses, where the aliens always seemed to abduct poor Clem in his jump-overalls or his wife Ethyl.

In pictures printed in the front page of the newspapers the UFO's looked like Frisbees, blurry footballs, a hat and one even looked like a cigar, but everyone was sure Martins had antennas and lived among us.

The Viking Tribe leader figured out a way to venture smack dab into the middle the UFO craze. They got dad's Polaroid camera, gathered up all of the necessary equipment and were destined to make local newspaper history.  This was one story, that we hoped would make it on  the front page of the paper, unlike all of the other times we ended up there, only to the embarrassment of my poor mom and dad.

Sending Donny next door to borrow a dry-cleaner bag from his dad's closet, the Dahlin's put all the other necessary stuff in a pile on the front sidewalk now officially deemed "Area 51"

McDonald straws, birthday candles and of course a Style Queen, hot-air, hair-blower for the initial lift off.

Although the original plan did involve UFO's, it didn't originally include a fiery crash landing on the roof of the Lennon house. We took our extensive resources and laid them out in  "Area 51." Little did we know, however, that in the very next hour or so we would have a "Roswell Incident" on our hands that endangered the entire Lennon family.  


Kids NEVER TRY THIS! EVER EVER EVER.

Until Next...

God Bless

上帝，造物主。

Gud velsigne

God zegene

Dieu vous

Бог благословит

Gud välsigne

Dios te  bendiga!

 

Markie D Takes a Flying Leap

Star Date: Saturday September 10, 1966.  I thought saying "Star Date" was a groovy idea since the new TV show STAR TREK came out two nights ago on Thursday.

This Saturday turns out to be one of the three longest day ever recorded.

We began at 8:00 this morning with a visit from "Honking Jimmy" who had incredibly chapped lips and Vaseline smeared all over his face (Blog post "Hotel Crazy" 7-26-2013) Tommy, Jimmy and I made progress on the cool fort, which was a large hole we had dug in the backyard - thinking that if we kept digging we would end up in China!

The Wolf Pack woke up to my Staff-Sergeant dad - beating the walls with a broom so they could come down to the feeding trough of cold gruel and spoiled milk experiments (see blog post Milk Wars). 


Gustav drove up in his monstrous Hot-Rod and lent his genius to the project of electrifying the crude "fire escape" pole, that dangerously perched from the tippy-top corbel of our three and a half story dilapidated old house.


Chewbacca found the loose rattlesnake, or rather, it found him by crawling up his pant leg and settling in.

Gustav and crew, electrocuted poor Chewbacca in order to extricate the venomous snake from his underwear.

Upon returning the rattlesnake to its habitat on the third floor reptile-cages, Chewy threw a garter-snake at me, which firmly sunk in its fangs attaching itself to my arm. Swinging around, the snake hit Chewy in the face who tripped on a stick that opened the Iguana cage.  Not just any Iguana cage mind you, but Iguana DEL DIABLO.  The demon lizard ran for its life, chased by the Wolf Pack, down all the stairs, across the entry, past the foul-mouthed Minah bird, out the door, across the street and into the Tripp's house - seeking refuge by climbing into the wall furnace. (blog post Iguana Del Diablo 8-1-2013)

We had the entire neighborhood up in arms with "Dahlin" havoc and  mayhem. The Italian family was screaming, the Steadmens made sarcastic remarks, and the famous Lennons on the corner, locked themselves securely in the safety of their living room - rarely seeing the light of day.  

The Gillamonster (Johnny Gillemot) stole his mothers car, hoping to show off, but dumping the clutch instead all he managed to do was break the drive shaft.

The Wolf Pack (that's my Viking brothers) used the broken down car to stage an accident by shoving my 5th grade buddy, who like to call himself Gherhing the Great, under the front fender with ketchup smeared all over his body as a diversion in order to rip off the Helm's Bakery delivery man (Blog post "Heist" 8-3-2013).

Upon discovering the foul smelling poop Jimmy left in the fort, Gherhing the Great and I condemned it and began filling it in with dirt. Sorry China, we had to abandon our efforts to dig that far.

The boys began terrorizing Jerry the weird guest of my mother. Mom had no clue that Jerry like to touch the boys who were now set on driving him looney - thus driving him away. It has worked as he chased Dooh-Dooh Pants (that's my 4th older brother who "cut the cheese" all the time!) up the stairs and into the long back abode of the boys and of snakes. Dooh-Dooh Pants flung himself out the window like a suicidal flying squirrel onto the pole... sliding and eventually falling to safety away from the sinister clutches of Jerry "TT."

Seeing all the action, Gherhing the Great decided to get in on it by running up to the third-floor with Jerry in hot pursuit. I was right behind Gherhing who was running too much too slow. Feeling like I was about to be picked off, I and made a hasty and ill-advised decision by heading for one of the rooms on the second floor instead.

ALL OF THIS had taken place and it is still only two-something in the afternoon - with a lot more to come before the day was over.

I ran down the hall through the door to my bedroom and then proceeded through another door on oppostie side of the room which lead to the sun-porch that was now being used for junk storage. It was filled to about window level of precious stuff that we had long since forgotten about (expect of course, for the buried trunk that had the fox stoles, which my mom used for my very first Halloween costume years earlier-  that caused a nun at the convent to faint and my next door neighbor to call the police - that's another story).

I hurdled myself like Iguana Del Diablo across the ancient and smelly boxes of National Geographics, over stacks of newspapers, over old clothes and stuff that was supposed to "come in handy someday" and opened the window on the far east end of the room. Scurrying back across the junk like a terrified rat, I curled up into a ball smaller than my previous record - when I was was shoved into The Hamper of Death (blog post "Hamper" 6-5-2013). Under the window and next to a old forgotten desk, I burrowed into a pile of newspapers covering myself in musty old clothes. There was no way Jerry "TT" could ever find me! I had heard some of the awful rumors and didn't want to find out if they were true or not. I was safe as long as I didn't give myself away by breathing too loud.

Jerry scanned the room and saw the open window. I was hoping he thought maybe I had flung myself to my death, rather than the alternative of being apprehended by his soft icky hands. He clumsily climbed over the piles of junk and viewed out the window; seeing that my body was not lying on the cement below, he proceeded to scrutinized the sloping exterior of the second floor roof for a possible means of escape. He signed in defeated exasperation and departed from the room.


I Had WON!

I had outwitted, out-played, and out-survived - Jerry (Hey, that might be a good idea for a TV show someday - use real people in it...and call it something like "Outwitted" or "Survivor" or something like that! Nah, it would never work!). 

I waited a couple minutes and silently slipped my head up like a prairie dog and cautiously looked around. Like a deer in the meadow, I tuned my ears to the slightest sound as though I were like Bambi trying to see if  "man was in the meadow."   Except for the sound of the Wolf Pack below, I had assumed Jerry to be defeated and gone. Digging myself out of the hole as if pulling myself up out of quicksand I finally emerged standing on the pile of junk pumping my triumphant fist into the air. The celebration didn't last long as Jerry violently swung the door opened jolting my faint heart into shock. Jerry gave that sickening grin and it was at that point that I decided it was best to throw myself out of the window. Turning the latch, with one foot on the sill I catapulted myself aiming for the lawn - hoping only for broken legs - THAT HAD TO BE BETTER, RIGHT?

As I sprung from the window sill, a sickness came over me, realizing the horror that Jerry had me by the belt. Kicking and screaming he drug me back into the room against every fiber that fought against him.

"What big eyes you have" "What big teeth you have"  "What big hands you have Jerry" I thought. Empowered by mom's "Under-Pain-of-Mortal-Sin" clause... Jerry turned me over his lap and began spanking me with too much delight and too much delay in each lingering swat.

The good news and bad news was - that while Jerry had been stalking me, Chewy had preceded to slide down the "fire escape" pole when Gustav and the Wolf Pack threw the electrical switch (after all, he was the one who let Iguana Del Diablo get away - it was his fault). Chewy was only about half way down to the second story when he let go of the electrified pole and tumbled to the azalea bush below breaking his arm in two places. Yes, it was bad for poor- Chewy... but the good news was that the timing probably saved my life from being eaten by the "Big Bad Wolf"

On behalf of my mother, Matilda, my year-older-sister, came into the room screaming for Jerry to drive her and bent arm Chewy to Saint John's emergency room.

Matilda looked at me, horrified that I was in the greasy clutches of Jerry "TT" and trying to protect me she screamed even louder for him to stop what he was doing and to rush to my mother's aid.

"Thank you Matilda...and thank you God for breaking Chewy's arm," I silently prayed, giving thanks for the Wolf Pack's diabolical scheming and for Chewy's willingness to break his arm on my behalf.

There was no such thing as 911 back then and in an emergency, you had to find the phone number of an ambulance company. Our phone books were typically buried under piles of stacked rubble and could never be found or retrieved in urgent moments of an emergency, which meant that mom had to solicit rides to the hospital from the most expedient means. At our house that meant a willing person with a working car which was least likely a Dahlin.

In this case - hallelujah- it was Jerry "TT." This reminds me of Martin Luther King Jr. speech 3 years ago as I began shouting "Free at last, Free at last."



"Yes mam" I thought, as if talking to Irene "I got wings. All God 's chillen's.. we got a wings" (Blog Post "It's Friday July 15th 2013).




Little did the Lennons  (who were tucked away in the safety of their own home) know...Wait ...little did we know that later that night, one of our UFO experiments would go terribly wrong and catch their house on fire.


Tune into: The Great Escape
                The Prank
                The Burning

 



  

Electrified Rattlesnake Mayhem

"As it is written in the Book of Jashar.        The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since..." 

Star Date: September 10th, 1966.  The Bible records a day the sun stood still... and this Saturday had the makings of such a day.

Captain's Log: This very, very, very long day includes:
            AM  8:00-10:00   Welcome to Hotel Crazy   (Last blog post)
                                                   Honking Jimmy and the incredibly chapped lips
                    10:00-12:00  Electrified Rattlesnake Mayhem 
                                                   Discovering the rattlesnake while electrifying the "fire escape"
            PM  12:00-1:00    Day of the Iguana
                                                   Catch one and lose another - the poor Trips!
                    1:00 - 2:00    The Dreadful Discovery: What Jimmy left behind
                                                    Jimmy literally thought we meant bathroom.
                     2:00-2:30     Fire Pole Terrorism: The Not-So-Great Escape
                                                     Chased by Jerry "TT" (See last blog post) Not Good!                           
                     3:00- 4:00    Chewy's Free Fall.
                                                   The switch gets turned on, mom rushes Chewy to the Hospital
                     4:00-5:00     The Great Escape.
                                                   "The Rat Killer" verses the Venice Police Department...
                                                      ...and the stupid hitchhikers!

                    Time out for french fries. We had to eat sometime (and gather resources). 

                     6:30-7:30     The Prank on Edna's Porch
                                                    The whole stinking shooten-match
                     8:30-9:30      Burning Down the Lennon Sister's House
                                                    What happens when a homemade Chinese lantern goes very wrong!
 
10:00 AM. The peaceful jungle on the third floor was suddenly alive when dad beat the ceiling and walls with a  broom handle to wake up the Wolf Pack. The hot Oatmeal he had made was now nothing more than a lump of cold gruel.

Jimmy was still hanging out in the fort probably slurping the boogers and Vaseline that lathered together on his upper lip. Tommy had run home in fear and Gherhing the Great came by when he heard Gustav's "Rat Killer."   The excitement was just beginning. Gustav didn't dare "hot-rod" down Harding, because of what Mr. Lennon did to Leland's car with a well placed golf-ball using his 5 iron, but that didn't keep Gustav from waking up Venice with the roar of the billion horsepower he had under the hood of his rather nondescript outside packaging of that old 56 Ford (deception at its finest).

I told Gherhing the Great (my 5th grade buddy from Saint Marks) that it wasn't safe inside - at least not for me, because of Milk Wars (blog post 7 13 2013). So I kept Gherhing the Great at bay until the Wolf Pack finished their food fight and emerged from the back door to begin their diabolical plan of electrifying the "fire escape" pole they installed years earlier that dangled precariously from a tippy-top corbel at the peak of the roof. 

                       Here is a picture from years earlier!

and years before that...

                                                       ...and years before that!







It appears that we liked to climb and fight and hang on to things that would cause irreparable damage if we fell - hence all the broken bones and the need for a hospital bed in the dining room (last blog post). Putting ourselves at risk seemed to be in our DNA.




Making the flying leap out the back window of our three story house had ceased to thrill them and they felt compelled to come up with some brilliant plan in order to satisfy their sweet tooth for peril. With Gustav there you can bet it would included something to do with electricity... since they had already found out a way to electrify me, John Masson and one of the nuns from Saint Marks Catholic grammar school.

With king Gustav's help they employed the bare electrical wires that hung out of the kitchen wall (blog post 7 11, 2013 "Shocking") with bunch of jumper cables he had wired through a crude switch.

The pole, however, missed the ground by about six feet, which still made the final leap to the ground pretty hairy for someone my size. Below the pole was an old Azalea bush that helped cushion the landing... while Puke Breath was standing on Chewbacca's shoulder attaching the jumper cables... that is when we made the most terrifying discovery...or should I say, that is when the missing rattle snake discovered us. Well, not really us  - but Chewbacca. Turns out that this just happened to be the hiding spot of choice for the fugitive rattlesnake.  Since Chewbacca's feet were glued to the ground with Puke Breath standing on his shoulders, the snake decided to seek refuge up Chewbacca's pant leg.

Chewbacca stiffened and screamed as the snaked slithered northward towards his boy parts. He vaulted Puke Breath off his shoulders who landed 8 feet away on top of my new fort crashing the roof in on top of Jimmy who was still inside. Jimmy Honked letting the boys know he was trapped underneath.

Honk!

No one had any idea what was going on with Chewbacca as he froze like a concrete pillar and pointed to his pants. The Wolf Pack grew frustrated as they decided to tackle him and take him down. Chewbacca turned slowly and the Band of Brothers could see the snake slithering up towards his crotch.

Chewbacca was dead. There was just no way to rescue the doomed 18 year old.  The flustered tribe couldn't come up with any way to coax a deadly and agitated rattlesnake out of someone britches?  In a snide comment Dooh-Dooh Pants sarcastically said, "Why don't we electrocute him."

"That's it" Gustav said.
"What's it?" Dooh-Dooh Pants said.
"What you said!" Gustav said.
"What did I say?" Dooh-Dooh Pants asked.

"We'll electrocute them!" Gustave said, snapping fingers and beginning to bark out orders.

"Them?" Chewbacca asked fearfully discering the plural in the word "them." At this moment he felt he would rather take his chances with the deadly viper that had begun taking up residence in his crotch. "No" he begged, trying not to move his lips or any part of his body, but it was too late.

Dooh-Dooh Pants was already in place with jumper cables ready to forcefully make contact to Chewbacca's exposed forearms at Gustav's command. "Now!" shouted Gustav as Dooh Dooh Pants touched the metal ends to Chewbacca like paddles of a electronic defibrillator.

Chewbacca screamed as all that long blonde hair shot straight up, he stiffened and keeled over as if dead.

The boys rushed in and descended on him like a pack of wolves on a downed bear.  They unzipped his pants and pulled them down to his ankles in a split second. As Chewbacca laid unconsciousness (like I usually did after one of his infamous "Templates" - blog post 6 24, 2014 "Template of Doom") Dooh-Dooh Pants, our official snake wrangler, had the stunned rattler around the neck so it couldn't strike with its deadly teeth and carefully began to transport it back upstairs to the cages up on the third floor.

Meanwhile, Chewbacca came to (that was good news), but staggered to his feet in nothing but his tightly-whities...tripping over the pants that had been pulled down around his ankles. At least mom didn't have to make a trip to the emergency room.

Mind you, I did take great literary license in this story, as I conflate the big picture of several stories and put them together. I think, however, you're beginning to get an idea of what life was like at my house i.e. "Hotel Crazy"  (I also changed the names to protect the innocent - or should I say guilty).