Death at The Moon Fire Temple (and Hormones—of course).

1972: The Doors The Temple and The Hormones

Last time, I left off I was being chased by a bull and held as a prisoner in the sloshing-outhouse-brig on a Boy Scout houseboat.

Between my freshman and Sophomore year over the summer, there has been BIG changes. Part of those changes has been the hair under my armpits—finally—about time—which means raging hormones have kicked in.

Yeah! UGH!

I think for the regular guys who went through puberty when they were supposed to like Rick Arredondo, who had a mustache in 7^th grade, this hormone business might have set in gradually. But to a late-blooming sophomore like me was as subtle as a tsunami tidal wave of sexual awareness.  

I read somewhere that guys think about sex every seven seconds—that might be the stat-line for those regular guys who have had time for this thing to settle down a bit. For me, however, it was like EVERY SECOND. I was in trouble; every thought was about girls.  

Too much information right! 

Regardless of what was going on below the belt and everything that was happening down there I was still VERY MUCH interested in finding out what this “love thing” was all about. I hoped that this hormone flood and "lust business" would not derail this sacred quest.

I want to know what real love is all about. I want to feel it—experience it and finally be able to grasp the meaning of what it means to be loved.

 

BUT, I almost did not get the chance to find out because of the DEATH RIDE down Tuna Canyon Road earlier this morning.  It all began with a fundraiser yesterday at Saint Monica’s and a group hike we took last night to the mysterious Moon Fire Temple –something hippie in origin that could rival the Dahlin house and anything in Venice.  

We had recruited our new water polo coach from UCLA, Terry Palma, to join us. All of a sudden my sister and her Venice gaggle of estrogen-groupies were suddenly interested in our rag-tag team.

Mary and Theresa Blaser and Theresa McCarthy and Mimi Lennon and Debi Gas were now followers in our social-media-site in the Water Polo corner of the school lot that we controlled. 

This new “Street-Cred” had given us more status and power to rule the roost—veloci-rooster-status.  We were cool. We had a following. We wore Speedos, had shiny hair from chlorine and reigned supreme on the bench by the music room.  

  

Yesterday, Michael Moore, the big brother of my water polo buddy, James, brought a 55 Ford and parked it in the center of the lot along with a giant 50-pound sled hammer. As one of the school fundraisers, he charged twenty-five-cents-a-swing to destroy the car. Bob Rooke must have had a couple bucks—he smashed windows and took it upon himself to crush the front end of the sad dying beast as if slaying a dragon itself.  

He did it mainly for the girls—damsels in distress!  Heck yeah.  Hello, hormones—I get it.

SEVEN SECONDS.  

Well, we decided that for our fundraising project, we would sponsor tricycle races.

This turned out to be more popular than smashing the car. After the first couple rounds of true competition, girls decided they wanted in on the fun. Girls sat on the trikes while the boys pushed them around the small-orange-coned obstacle course. Boy and girls touching each other—oh yeah. Need I say more?

Anyway, we had all of these tricycles we had amassed from the greater Santa Monica and Palisades area that we had to return.

Our water polo team recruited our new coach, Palma, and in true Dahlin-Wolf-Pack fashion we invited our new groupies to join us in a dangerous midnight hike to the eye of the Moon-Fire Temple. More girls increased the chances and the odds of budding romantic interest and thoughts of well—you know—hormones and the seven-second rule.

This turned out to be like the hikes my brothers used to take to the Albino Camp to scare their girlfriends so they would run into the “strong, protecting arms of the brave boys” who were kept them safe by holding them tight. 

Uh-huh! Right? 

You know what the boys were thinking about EVERY SEVEN SECONDS.

The staging area was the Moore house at the end of Bainum Drive in Topanga. They had just put in a huge built-in pool with a bubble over the top that stayed up with air pressure from a giant air pump. It was kind of cool, but I knew in the wrong hands if someone from Venice (like a Dahlin) were to pull electrical cord it could spell disaster—suffocation and murder. Nervously, I looked around for any of my people who might be suspiciously hovering around the outlet before I decided to enter the bubble. My older brother, Tony, wasn’t there so I didn’t have to worry about electrocution.

About midnight we drove up Tuna Canyon Road towards the top of the mountain range where it intersected Saddle Peak Road. We turned off our lights and rolled quietly onto a dirt road and ditched the cars. There was a big locked gate that we had to climb around to get in.

The moon was only half-full. This gave us enough light to see the path in front of us and also made it dark enough for this clandestine operation.

We heard footsteps approaching that scared the beegebees out of all of us. We took some minor injuries by jumping off the road. Boys and girls huddled together—this part was good—seven seconds, remember? But we could not see the security guards armed with machine guns who were slowly moving along the path searching out intruders. Some alcohol and other herbs were involved, and though hunted, giggles still prevailed.

 Sheeze Louise. We were goners.

 

The armed security guards turned out to be two curious llamas. As we walked along the windy ridge road towards the Moon Fire Temple, James Moore told us the story behind, Lewis Beach Marvin III, the eccentric who built the place and the animals he had brought in – like llamas and camels and “Lions and tigers and bears—Oh my!”

James knows everything. Even though some people believe that the Temple was built for the 1966 movie called Harper, starring Paul Newman and Lauren Bacall, he said that wasn’t true.

He said, Mr. Marvin, the heir to the S&H Green Stamps fortune built the place. James said that this Marvin person had a bunch of artsy-type friends and musicians who came and performed there—like The Doors, Van Morrison, George Harrison, and Janis Joplin.

 

Where it gets weird, is that James says the Manson Family was also part of Marvin’s motley crew who painted bizarre cultic circles all over the place just a couple years ago that lead to a raid by the FBI.

Coming around the ridge we saw the round temple and quietly stepped onto marble flooring with the round moat that had a giant fire-pit inside in the shape of eye. The top was open to the sky and we could feel the eclectic vibes of the hippie ranch and the eerie feeling of crossing paths with the likes of the Charles Manson cult.

 

Whispers grew. Giggles and wonder abounded. Shushing from the “shushing-police” died. We spun, taking in the 360-degree view from the top of the Santa Monica mountains. We jumped back and forth across the dry moat and explored some of the abandoned side rooms as budding romantic-relationships bloomed.

I had my eyes on a couple girls, but I struck out—dang that seven-seconds.   

This would become the first of many trips to Moon Fire or "The Temple in the Clouds." 

On the way out we heard the llamas approaching and walked boldly towards them until we saw the oncoming lights of two jeeps that must have had key access to the large front gates.

Back into bushes.

Quiet this time. The threat was real. Apocalypse pending, we crawled through the rugged chaparral and prickly manzanita bushes. We made it to the cars and escaped.

Hours later, Palma and the girls and the groupies and the casual followers left the Moore’s house that left a small group of us water polo guys who spent the night, for the even more dangerous frivolities that followed the next day. 

DON’T! 

Please don’t, ever allow stupid guys with tricycles loose on the top of steep mountain roads. Trust me it only spells disaster.  

NEXT TIME.

Death on Tuna Canyon Road.   

Oops another second.  hehe 

   

Girls at Saint Monica's credit: Mark Mullineaux Facebook Post 

Harper Movie Poster credit: http://www.impawards.com/1966/harper_xlg.html

Moon Fire on side of cliff overlooking ocean credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/30369681@N03/9317732954/in/album-72157634692817677/

Moon Fire pics Credit: Wall Street Journal “A Cosmic Crash Pad”   http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324705104578147121874414006

Charles Manson credit: http://history1900s.about.com/od/1960s/p/charlesmanson.htm

S&H Green Stamps credit: http://myauctionfinds.com/2010/06/09/licking-and-gluing-s-h-green-stamps/

Jesus. Venice. And Night of the Living Dead!

Venice was not just a place, but an identity - something that is inescapable part of you. Good or bad, being from Venice gave you both pride and cringe.  Though only 12, by 1969 I had been across the country and back 3 times and seen my fair share of the "Purple Mountain Majesty and Fruited Plains."  Everywhere we went, "tourist" (we called them, derogatorily), were the people living in their own towns who look at the long hair of my brothers and invariable asked if we were from Venice. I learned early on of the stigma of being from Venice that gave my brothers such pride.  It was like that part in the Bible where it talked about Jesus being from Nazareth that said, "Can anything good come for Nazareth?"

Every time someone looked at my family and asked if we were from Venice, it was as if  they were saying, "Can anything other than hippies, free love, drugs Flower Power and Jim Morrison come from Venice?" We thought that was good, but it appeared they didn't share that sentiment. They might well have said to our face, "Can anything good come from Venice?"  So I guess I understood how Jesus felt when he heard those words.

The once glamorous Canals that hadn't been filled-in, began to rot and stink and the formerly cute bungalows of Abbot Kinney's dream were now run down shacks full of pot smoking hippies, unemployed artist, and raucous parties of the flower children of the sixties.

Several weeks after I broke my arm playing football in the street, I had been outside in my cast. Although it had Andrea's treasured signature, as well as some other seventh graders, it smelled and was pretty disgusting already. I was didn't give much thought to that fact that I had only been wearing one shoe when an older couple slowed down to a stop in front of our house and gawked. The old geezer cracked his window a couple inches, as if the air on Harding avenue was unsafe to breathe, and called me over.







His wife was holding some kind of Hollywood, or Beverly Hills, or Celebrity map or something and stared at our house - eyes wide in disbelief and mouth hanging open in shock.




















With cars and boats and more broken down cars and broken down boats and creaky stairs and hippie brothers hanging out on the porch, the couple from Nebraska carefully whispered through the cracked window asking if my house was a hippie commune?



I said, "No, I live here!"

"With your Parents?" they asked, incredulously.

"Yeah!" I said.

"Poor parents" the man muttered.

"Where's your other shoe" the lady asked.

"What other shoe? I asked

"The one your missing" she snarled, thinking I was being a disrespectful smart-aleck.

I informed her, "I'm not missing one."

"Then why are you only wearing one shoe?" her husband barked at me as he took over.

"Oh, this old thing isn't my shoe. I came outside barefooted and found this decroded thing in the flowerbed."

I looked inside the window to see if our house was on the tourist map as a place of interest for being a hippie commune as they rolled up the window and sped away - only to screech to a halt in front of the Lennon Sister's home two houses up the street. I ran down the street towards them in my older brother's size 11 shoe and frightened the poor couple like I was one of the dead bodies in "Night of the Living Dead."

I can't really say with certainty whether our house was on  that map or not, but certainly this couple went back to where they came from telling their neighbors about what they saw on Harding Avenue and wondering if anything good could come from Venice?"






Pshaw... "fer sure" We have the Famous Lennon Sisters across the street and right behind us was Cheryl Arnold who was Miss Venice, and Miss Santa Monica, and Miss LA...SO TAKE THAT... tourist!

Ha! Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

With all that said, I guess the thing I want to share next with the world is that fact that my Boy Scout Troop from Venice - Troop 32, had been in steep decline by the time I had been recruited by my Eagle Scout brother and was not the best thing Venice exported: something me and my fellow hoodlum scouts took great pride in.

We raided camporees at night, causing havoc on Troop 34, cutting the ropes on tents and making life as miserable as we could at Camp Slauson in Malibu in the Santa Monica mountains.

Here is a picture of our (converted moving truck) i.e. Troop 32 Boy Scout Truck - that was a not a whole lot more than "cage wresting" on wheels.

You can take the Boy Scouts out of Venice, but you cant' take the Venice out of Troop 32!

Next time: National Jamboree and "Diarrhea 'till Easters"

Big Mistake Hutch! Come on Baby Light my Fire!

First, let me apologize for all the "throw-up" talk. It might be grossing some of you out, but you have to understand - that is where I lived. I practically threw-up every single day. A lot of it came by way of Wolf-Pack terrorism and some just because...

Just because... someone "cut the cheese" or spit a gross loogie - BAM there it was...heaving - gagging and vomit! (You think I liked that, NO! It will eventually add to my Arrested Development - Hey, that might make a good name for some demented TV show- ah...who knows). 

It wasn't like I planned it...I'd be the first to admit it wasn't pretty, but it just happened. So I apologize if you feel there has been too much description and detail, but I am trying to be accurate in my reporting to you THE HISTORY OF THE 60'S ACCORDING to Markie D.


I can't make this stuff up! This was true... plus or minus ten percent.


Anyway... Gherhing and Great and I had sprayed each other off with a hose and were back at my house ready to "rock and roll" with the rest of the crew.  Gherhing always wanted to be right in the middle of things - NOT ME!

Yeah us... that we didn't smell like pee or vomit! Could you just image how much fun the Wolf Pack would have had with that? We would have been unmercifully bullied by the older boys, stripped or used in some devious prank. 

Everyone was laughing when we walked in, as Gustav was recounting how he outran and outfoxed the Venice Police Department.

Remember no adults were home.

 Mom and Jerry "TT" had taken poor Chewy to the hospital. I could still hear his string of pain-filled "Ave...Maria" ringing in my head as they lifted him into the Dodge station wagon and drove off down the street! 

The jumper cables had been taken off the "fire-pole" to eliminate the evidence that his fall from the pole (at the second floor level) was precipitated by the surge of electricity, switched on by my conniving, ingenious, and scheming older brothers (not-so-affectionately know as the Wolf-Pack).

The little old lady next door had a brother named Hutch, who came to her house every Saturday night drinking from a bottle concealed in a brown paper bag. Hutch was as mean and cantankerous as she was and the boys figured, they had time left before it got completely dark to pull off one prank that would be a grand "twofer."  Never mind messing with her precious car, this time...they figured they could make this  one up-close and personal.

Dooh-Dooh Pants had scooped up a big, warm pile of dog-dooie and put it in a brown-paper lunch-bag.  I knew what was up and was smart enough to know that if I were within 20 feet - it would be a "three-fer." I had nothing left in my stomach to give to this newest enterprise and scrammed. I climbed out the second story window and scaled the valley of the steep roof and watched all the excitement from the top of the roof. I figured that from that distance, I was safe from the awful smell.

Just as Hutch was rounding the corner by the Lennon Sister's house (where they were gathered in their living-room practicing for Mass on Sunday), Ulrich and the band of angry little men placed the paper bag and it's contents on poor Edna's front porch and lit the paper sack on fire.

It was a pretty substantial blaze by the time Hutch reached his sister's front Porch. She came out screaming and hollering and threatening the call Police... and Hutch figured he'd be the hero and stomp out the fire!

Big Mistake Hutch...as he stomped on the flaming bag, poochie's pooh-pooh went spraying in a million different directions. He stomped that dookie all over the place and even got some on 'O Edna herself. She grabbed her garden hose and began spraying him off (I could identify). He was yelling and screaming... she was yelling and screaming as she sprayed off her porch and then just stood blaring out threats as though she were the siren on top of a police car and sprayed her hose into the air in the hope of dousing at least one member of the ornery Wolf Pack! 

                                                            She was fit to be tied!  

If my mom was home...we'd probably, all be under the "Pain of Mortal Sin!" 

FIRE!      

That was it... Gustav had a brilliant idea. 

In this case, however, he had no contingency plan - should things go terribly wrong! 

What could possibly go wrong...go wrong...go wrong...go wrong...go wrong... the record player below began to skip... come on baby light my fire...fire...fire...fire...fire..fire...

I think it was an omen.

 Tune in next time to catch the incredible end to a very long day.