Murder On The Humboldt Express

Spring 1970: By the time school began the older boys had been cured of leprosy. The red rash, the puss, the swelling, the boils and the pain had all subsided and they returned to the normal course of Hippie Life on Harding Avenue. In the meantime, my first day at Saint Monica's proved to be the 4th most embarrassing day of my my life (more about that later).

Karl had bought a new boat... well, new to us (pictured below).

It didn't have a motor yet, but it was fiberglass over wood -  though it was something from the early 1960's we felt like we were uptown Santa Monica or Beverly Hills... Beverly Hill Billies that is.  It needed a new interior - on second thought it needed a new everything.

But it was better than the old leaky-wood boat (which I loathed for good reasons and called a "controlled sinking"... pictured to the left). The old boat was under the palm tree in the front yard... next to the 16 foot sailboat and the 12 foot racing sailboat.


We had to make room for Karl's newest thing and had to shuffle around Mario's Borg-Warner, Karl's Morris-Minor and Erick's green MG (slightly pictured above) to make room for the new addition




We moved the scout bus to the driveway since we cleared space by sending the 16 foot travel-trailer up north to a remote place in the thick forest of Humboldt county with Kurt and Mario.

The "Salton Sea Flyer" had now become the "Humboldt Express."

Kurt and his good 'O Saint Monica's water polo chum, Mario, decided that dorm life had been too tame and cost too much money and had been too lame for the burgeoning hippies in their second year at Humboldt.

They thought the humble trailer was not just their ticket for living off campus, but also allowed them to live for FREE!

Besides... with all of the horticulture success in our backyard in Venice... a couple of free spirited entrepreneurs could grow all kinds of stuff in that heavily forested tundra...stuff that might have been frown on by Humboldt State University... Never-the-less this living arrangement could provide a little extra income for a pair of starving students.







The running joke in Venice was, "Would they be able to survive in such close quarters - since they both had deadly gas."  12 feet by six feet by six feet is only 432 cubit square feet of oxygen - easily burned up in a single explosion of flatulence.

Dad laughed and told them not to fart in the presence of lit pilot light...

We made fun of the two of them thinking that one of them just might not make it back alive... Little did we realize how ominous our thinking was that set the stage for murder.


YOU HEARD ME RIGHT.    MURDER!
Does this stuff ever happen to a Lennon or a Blaser? Not really... it could only happen to a Dahlin.

We got the phone call from a detective of the Arcata police...saying that Kurt was being held for questioning regarding a murder that involved his trailer that had been hidden deep in the woods.

Tune in next time: Whose bloody hand-print was on the door?  Where was the body? And will Kurt get sentenced to LIFE?

The Beatles The Blacklist and Breaking Bad

(Continued from previous post)



No... I'm not trying to bow to the altar of current trends, but only to show how the genesis of these future trends began some 45 years ago right on my short street, known as Harding Avenue in Venice California just at the time the "bromance" known as the Fab Four (i.e. the Bealtes) was in the early stages of breaking up.

Ringo was ticked that he wasn't given as much credit as he felt he deserved and was forced to take a back seat to Paul and John on the album covers.  John was having a love crisis of his own and had divorced Cynthia and married Yoko Ono earlier this year... and was still trying to figure it all out, which only served to erode the cohesiveness of the small tribe of the famous Four from Britain.

The guy who wrote the songs and sang about love seemed to not to know anything more about love as I did...a 13 year-old who had absolutely no clue. As I mentioned before; though, I was part of a large tribe, I was partially numb inside.. running off of the fixes of adrenaline that knew nothing of true affection.

Today was the day I had hoped to make progress in the discovery of what it meant to feel love. Seems like every day on KRLA I heard that song... "Love is all you need"  and the Beatles told me it was easy... but I think John is lying and I figured that it might be harder than it looks - obviously he was clueless.  

"Love... Love... Love...  It's easy" yeah right!

Returning from detention, I walked down Harding feeling like I had failed in my vain attempt to make my own affections known at the water-faucet incident at the girl's corner of the schoolyard at Saint Mark's Catholic grammar school. I rounded the corner by the burned down "Fraternity" house after screaming at Sister Schultz (a conversation that was all in my head) feeling a bit redeemed and withdrawing into the safe place of  my mental illness that my Viking Brothers had convinced me was retardation. If it was, it was okay, because in there, I was happy.

Whistling "All you need is love" I was headed anywhere, except home.  I was in no mood for a "template" (click here) Chewbacca and the Template of Doom , no mood for electrocution nor was I in any mood for some of my older brother's crazy antics and diabolical forms of sibling torture. I needed the break after being laughed at by all the girls in the eight grade class having to spend a hours worth of prison time. Looking to find Tommy or Jeffery or Ricky or Denny I forgot that being detained for the horrible hour - meant that Ulrich and his Angry-Small-Man-Crew, known as the "H" club, had already made it home from Saint Monica's High School and were hidden behind Frank Nargie's huge, green Mopar secretly siphoning gas. Either my presence shocked them or embarrassed them or startled them or just plain made them feel guilty or something... and seeing that I was already on "The Blacklist"  of the "H" club - they had no hesitation in ambushing me from where the three of them laid in wait behind Frank's car.

Ulrich and I had an arraignment about his paper route.  I was forced to delivered the newspapers, and he got all the money. He was pissed off that I was late today and he and his three cronies had to do the route all by themselves and vowed that I would have to pay with my life (poor Ulrich had to do his own paper route today - somebody call the WAHmbulance).

The torture that I normally received from my other brothers was significantly different. Usually, it was experimental and I was used as a lab-rat before they employed it on the nuns at Saint Mark's or on friends (just to make sure none of them got killed). It wasn't a bad arraignment, I kind of enjoyed it in a sick way - but with Ulrich, it was conjured up from somewhere dark. His bullying always turned into a bloody street fight where I was outnumbered at least 3 to 1. It was Breaking Bad and today was no different.

Before I surprised them, I was  getting to the part in the song where it says... "She loves you... yeah, yeah, yeah" lost in fond thoughts of my true love Andrea and BAM... out of nowhere I was tackled and thrown to the ground by the three angry midgets. I put up a good fight... got "monkey boy" in a head-lock chock-hold and managed to sock O' Casper Milk-Toast in the mouth when Ulrich stepped on my diminutive Adam's apple. Gasping for air, I begged for mercy and pleaded with him to get his foot off of my wind pipe... to which he snarled and retorted in disgust, "Oh it's always about you!" and kicked me until I let go of Monkey-Boy, to which I acquiesced.

Sure, I had some cuts and bruises... but had learned  how to tune out the physical pain and limped home - fearing like I was going down  the rabbit hole...It was as if I was sliding down a slippery slope that was like the story of Pinocchio in reverse where I was becoming less and less human...and needed love to save me. I was afraid that the more I withdrew into my own little world... and the more emotionally numb I became - the sooner I would stop being human and the more I would become a Zombie or Robot or a lifeless shell - incapable of ever knowing what love is.  




I avoided the Veloci-Rooster, stealthily managed to avoid the herb-smoking hippies and quietly navigated my way up the stairs to my room without further detection.


In silence, I cuddled with my beagle and prayed to the universe - begging for mercy that I would not become a monster.  The dog kept silent and stared into my eyes and let me know I was not alone in a big house filled with lots of unfeeling and uncaring bodies.  






   

Stupid Mexican Tomato Plants

"HELP!" I screamed as the yellow plastic tarp went over the top of my concrete block enclosure. I could see through the space between the bricks and could tell that the hippy-chicks weren't exactly too happy about what the boys were doing, but not one of them came to my rescue. 'STUPID Mexican tomato plants,' I cursed silently in head. Smoking the leaves like they had been doing all morning, must have deadened the part of their brain cells that had to do with love or compassion.  I had no other theories as to why the girls would have allowed my older brothers and the other long-haired members of the Wolf Pack to torture me like this.    None of this made any sense.

Puke Breath - my brother who had a brain like Poindexter, pulled out his slide-rule and made some calculations as the motley crew laughed and stacked a couple more strategically placed blocks on the top edge of IGLOO over the yellow tarp in order to hold it in place over me.

Edna the grouch next door wouldn't save me, my dad was off selling Real Estate (which was a convenient escape) and Mom was probably up in her room watching Gun Smoke too far away for my cries for help to be heard).

The black scabby cat sat in the window as if mocking me and my older sister was off somewhere with her neighborhood minions, who were under her control.

As the 7th born and baby boy I was the least powerful member of my tribe, even though I had a sister three years younger than me.

The birth order was  Boy
                                Boy
                                Boy
                                Boy
                                Boy
                       First GIRL TQOTW  "THE QUEEN OF THE WORLD"  Made sense right?

For the first four years her feet didn't even touch the ground. With our long history of sibling torture, my Dad say that if one male offspring were to every laid even a single finger to one hair of her head  - then we were as good as dead (Section 106b of the Viking Code).   And that's the way it was.

       Then another   boy  that was me... nothing special. Just another boy. Had enough of them already and by the time I had a brain we had already added a couple other older boys to the mix... "strays" my dad called them.

So it went like this   Boy   1st born
                               Boy   2nd born
                      other Boy
                               Boy   3rd born
                    other   Boy              Pinky pictured to the right                                              
                               Boy   4th born
Several Stragglers:   males
                              Boy   5th born

   TQOTW    GIRL     (must have been an immaculate conception or something).

           Just another boy  That's me ... boring... yawn...
               Another GIRL     Couldn't touch her either- see Section 106b above.

I couldn't lay a finger on her under pain of death and mortal sin. 

So I was on the bottom of the rung...10 down or something like that and I was told that we had enough boys already... so if one (that's me) happened to mysteriously die - who would give a rip!  

I didn't even have power over my little sister...pretty sad right? I was the omega ωμέγα runt of the Wolf Pack completely powerless even over a girl 3 and a half years younger than me. And here I was - stuck in a pit in the backyard completely and utterly lost. Let me tell you, we were not the Lennons (who lived across the street) by any stretch of the imagination.
             

Kleghorn screwed the sprinkler onto the end of the hose.  Flea-Bait turned it on and Puke Breath carefully positioned it so that every time it sprayed in my direction - besides watering the inside of old boats - the tops of some rusted cars that had been cannibalized for parts, a couple old engine blocks and a stack of old tires it sprayed the top of the yellow tarp that had been draped over the open hole on top of the "Igloo of Death" held in place by well placed construction blocks.   

They left!  I didn't see much sense in the hose, and the sprinkler, and the water since they had put the plastic over the top, which was actually protecting me from the imitation rain. I though it was meant as a form of noise torture. You know, like the old Chinese "Water Drip" torture. It was maddening - I'll give that to the brilliant boys. I think the sound of that water hitting the plastic tarp some eight hundred thousand times might cause me to eat one of my arms off, but thankfully I had no access to eat my arm off, because all four of my appendages had been bound in an old itchy rope and buried in the pit.
  

The good news was I couldn't chew off one of my arms and the rooster they let out couldn't gouge my eyes out with his 4 inch razor sharp talons.  

Life isn't all bad.... I guess.

"Help!"  "HELP!"    Nothing.  I was alone and the universe didn't seem to care.  Live or not, I felt a little piece of me die inside...the part that cries and has feelings. I was becoming a less human and more of a unfeeling robot.  "Stop in the name of love"

I was going to die and nobody cared.  I was going to die and never truly know what it meant to love or be loved... I wanted to know. 

                                                                                 Android People  Stop in the Name of Love

The hippies troglodytes were talking about the Yellow Submarine and here I was stuck in my own yellow sub marine cave of death. Yet, I didn't realize how brilliant they were until I figured the whole madness out and realized just how bad it was about to get. Yes, it still got worst...

Free Floating Apparition and the Living Dead!

 At 6:30 am the next morning Mrs. D let out a blood curdling scream...

“Royyyyyyy! 

Startled from mom's screeching, dad woke up from a sound sleep, grabbed the broom next to his bed and began beating the ceiling.  "Up and at 'em...Time of the harvest moon!" he began yelling in his staccato staff sergeant cadence. Meanwhile, mom continued to scream in fright at the piercing red eyes from the black apparition of the living-dead zombie that stood at the end of her bed.  Woken up abruptly to mom's screaming, Mr. D forgot it was Saturday, which was his only day to sleep-in, and thought he urgently needed to wake up the tribe for the Viking "Street Cleaning" ritual (must see blog post 7/13/13). 

The hippie Wolf Pack on the floor above groaned and moaned and cursed and burped and farted and stomped on the floor in mutinous rebellion. "Mr. D its not Wednesday" Puke-Breath yelled back at dad, but unable to overcome feverish pitch the frightened Mrs. D.  When Dad's sleepy eyes finally focused he turned the wrath of his broom handle onto the scabby burnt ghost and chased the demonic phantasm from the room in his underwear.

The free floating apparition sprang from the foot of the bed with the speed of light and escaped up to the third floor to the long rear bedroom. The scabbified-black poltergeist startled the Wolf Pack along with the rattlesnakes and nasty looking iguana that resided in cages built into the side of the room.

 Mayhem broke out. "Fright or Flight." The hair on the rat's spine stood up, rattlesnakes defensively coiled, the iguana from hell (blog post 8/1/13) thew itself against the glass and Ulrich clenched his fist ready to take on the repulsive manifestation. Dooh-Dooh Pants pulled the covers over his head and Puke-Breath cussed out the disgusting creature. Chewbacca, on the other hand recognized it for what it was!

A MIRACLE!

It was not something to be feared or loathed, but something to be venerated and loved. Chewbacca gave the creature its new name. "Lazarus" he affectionately cried, in an emotional embrace. The room was silent - it was not a ghost! NO, the dead calico cat (that was in a small shoe-box coffin out back at Wall Drug) had risen from the dead!

Apparently the cat had cashed in all nine lives and had cheated death itself.



When Chewbacca was a small child; before The Beatles, before all the hair, he used to fall over all the time and bonk his head. Mr. and Mrs D felt they needed to protect him from brain damage and made him wear a green hockey helmet as an exoskeletal brain bucket.  My vote was that - it didn't fully work and he had some serious issues... either that or it was the hippie weed that had affected his perception of the world.



It wasn't like things weren't bad enough with the veloci-rooster, the chickens, "grampa" the chicken-eating-frog, the alligator, the escaping rattlesnakes, and the dozens of hippies that lived at our house - NOW, the smelly burn victim of the Fraternity Fire (see previous blogs) was considered one of our numbers.





And the rest of us had to contend with the place of honor in which Chewbacca placed the gross looking cat. History turned a new chapter in the Dahlin house as none of us dared to take back our chair from the reviled demon CAT or kick him off the countertop when it dropped scabs and licked the butter - lest we face the wrath of Chewbacca.

   

The Detroit Exorcism and the Naked Teenager.

Sorry to keep you hanging. Where were we?


Oh yeah, a bunch of dirty, hungry, ornery, smelly kids and two cranky parents just pulled into the parking lot of a Catholic Convent in the inner city of Detroit.

 (A never before seen picture recently discovered before the start of the trip - Disneyland parking lot - monorail in background). 

We had been fighting and farting and starving all the way across country in order to visit our Swedish relatives in the suburbs of Detroit. My parents thought they could kill two birds with one stone: 1) We could pay a visit to my mom's only sister, who was a catholic nun; AND 2) They figured that the layover and the food stop might minimize the potential havoc and destruction upon arriving at aunt Sally's house. My dad was trying to spare his brothers and sisters the plague of the locust.

"What could possible go wrong at a convent...for Pete's sake?" My dad said, making his case for the stop at the Convent!  I saw my mom roll her eyes... remembering that this was the last thing the captain of the Titanic said just after striking the iceberg.

The infestation of Dahlins hovered across the ground like a dark cloud as the Viking clan approached the concrete steps of the red brick building. Nuns rushed to the large front door for greetings and pleasantries, but mom frowned with worry, thinking of the death cloud in Genesis in the Jewish Passover. She took two deep cleansing breaths and apologetically gave her sister a hug.

As the dark cloud....I mean as the Dahlin clan ascended the stairs for the formalities, Puke-Breath was suitably satisfied and pleasantly distracted with his hands fishing around inside his pockets to make sure "everything" was still in order after the long journey.  Not wearing any underwear, he was confident that he was immune to a surprise "wedgie attack" and gave no thought to Gustav's inquisitive investigation of the tropical fire ants that swarmed under the tires of the Ford Econoline van.

One of the little buggers bit (or stung or whatever- Fire Ants - do) Gustav's hand and he leaped with joy shouting "Eureka!" like Archimedes and seemed as happy as Benjamin Franklin when he had harnessed lightning at the end of that kite string.     

Everyone was too busy to pay attention to the fact that Gustav had scooped up half the colony in the Folger's Coffee "pee-pee" can, trapping them inside by snapping on the plastic lid.

Mom and Dad hadn't stopped at a phone booth to warn the nuns of the exact time or hour of our arrival- and being unprepared, the black and white clad - agents of God's mercy on earth - scrambled to throw together a meal with leftovers from the food program. Like a bunch of cowboys on a cattle drive, the nuns stoically herded us through the wooden, double sliding-doors into the large dining room.

If you ever been in a convent you know that there are three distinct characteristics of a Catholic "Nunnery." 1) There was always a distinct smell that was a little bit musty mixed with moth balls and something like million year-old mildew...as if you could smell the dirt from the actual sandals of Jesus and other 2000-year-old relics that have been preserved from the Holy Land. 2) They were always quiet as though loud noise was forbidden and unholy. When the nuns walked you couldn't see their feet move under their long black robes, it appeared as if they floated across the floors like ghost without making any sound what-so-ever. Holiness and quietness seemed to go hand in hand. 3) Nuns never hurried. They moved slowly with a sense of deliberate purpose and never let their emotions show.  It is as though they were in the boat with Apostles being buffeted by the angry storms on the sea of Galilee and had learned their lesson long ago. Since that embarrassing outbreak of panic and emotion, they weren't going to let anything ever again -  ruffle their holy feathers.      
                         (And just for the record, to this point in history - they have succeeded).   

Dahlin kids scrambled and ran between legs and hung from the mantle and the wainscoting...mom couldn't scream at us, because it was forbidden (under clause number 2 above),  boys fought for position at the smelly oak table which was probably from the "Upper Room." When dinner came...before grace was even finished, we attacked what was set before us like vultures on fresh road kill. I want to apologize for our behavior, but when you're that hungry - no one is about to succumb to the social norms of using utensils. Why use a fork, when you can bury your face in a plate of spaghetti and suck in gobs of wet noodles and shove fists full of bread into your mouth from one hand and scoop globs of butter into your mouth at the same time with the other.

Don't judge us!  Seriously, knives and forks are just a worthless waste of time when you're starving to death. Dad was kicking us under the table and mom was giving us the angry-eye, "under the pain of mortal sin" stare - which seemed to say that if God didn't strike us dead that she would kill us later for this. She had a PHD in "Whoopology" and we're all sure to get a whooping later.

When things seemed like they couldn't get any worse... Puke Breath, who had been sitting next to Gustav, jumped from his chair and began screaming holy murder. He began patting his bottom and reaching into his pants - which we all thought was normal! I thought it was kind of rude for him to be checking in on his private parts in front to the nuns and all, but the teenager just went crazy and began running around the dining room crashing and breaking things like a Tasmanian devil.

Remember last year when the meat-bee went down his cast and he rolled around on the shore of the Kings River like the demonic? Well, this was ten times worse!
 
Nuns grabbed crucifixes and thought it was time for an exorcism. Sister Mary Catchatore pulled her skirt thingy up, exposing her Government-Jack-Boots and gave chase while clanking her heals on the hardwood floor in an unholy manner. She and three of my brothers managed to tackle Puke-Breath bringing him to the ground. He rolled and flung himself wildly as one nun threw holy water on him to see it if the devil would come out, but nothing worked. While Sister Catchatore had him pinned to the ground he reached down, unzipped his pants - forgetting that he had no underpants on and pulled his pants off. There he lay squirming and worming stark naked as the day he was born. Horror! Shrieks filled the once hallowed halls. Mom and Sister Dominique ushered my two sisters out of the room that had now been defiled.

His butt had a million red ants running to take cover with at least a hundred small inflamed blisters. He begged for mercy as embarrassed nuns - a little too enthusiastically rushed to his aid and picked them off his bare buns one by one. Gustave, just so happened to have an empty Folgers can for them to deposit the evil little critters into. "How convenient!"

If that wasn't bad enough, the late-blooming 13-year-old was in such misery, that he rolled over on to his back happily exposing all of his boy parts to the frantic and - much too helpful nuns. Speaking of worming and squiring, his worm was infested with the nasty little beast as the jolly nuns did their sacred duty in picking the Fire Ants off of his little pink poo-poo.

They figured this was the very least they could do to help the poor little boy.

Aside from everyone in the universe seeing exactly just where he was on his beginning journey into manhood, poor Puke-Breath was a miserable wreak the rest of the trip.     He had bites everywhere and I mean everywhere!  
   
Fearing we might come through town on our next visit, the Bishop asked Aunt Mary to leave the convent and was sent to the inner city of Kansas Missouri.   

Because Puke Breath couldn't sit, he had to stand in the back of the van for the entire rest of the two weeks we traveled back across country. And Sister Dominique and a couple nuns wrote a song about this little incident. 


Rejoicing over the fact that the Dahlins came and left in Il ne parle que du bon Dieu - which is French for "In a Ford Econoline van" and speaks about how  "One day the ants forced the boy to crawl
Dominique with just one prayer
Made him hear the good Lord's call"

Hey I'm only 7 and my French isn't that good!  But that is what my big brothers told me the song was all about.

"Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. " ~ Mark Twain

Hair Hippies and Hot Rods: THE RAT KILLER

WEDNESDAY MORNING: The Sixties was not only about the Beatles, long hair, hippies, campus protest, Haight and Ashbury, race-riots, anti-war demonstrations BUT it was also about "CUBIC INCHES"  Hot rods, street races and cruising Van Nuys Boulevard.  I couldn't leave this out of what was taking place in my first week of 5th grade. And the story I'm about to tell you is strictly off the record and totally confidential, but I think you need to know the truth.

Last time we left off as the Dahlin Clan of Viking-Hippies were pushing a broken down fleet of cars from one side of the street to the other in a Tow-War with the city.  7:00 am, Mr. D had wakened the brood of wild animals that occupied 2 and a half rooms of the third floor. Two were packed full of junk, but that didn't stop Kleghorn from burrowing in and nesting like a rat on top of one of the other two junk filled rooms.

Tony came barreling down Woodlawn peeling rubber from both rear tires, all the way from Venice Blvd through first and second gear. Tony didn't dare pull a stunt like that down Harding Avenue. Not after the lesson Bill Lennon taught Leland, uh uh...Tony wasn't about to invite a well placed golf ball through a side window of his precious hot rod.

Thank you Mr. Lennon.

The agitated crew of car pushers and tire-taker-off/ers-and-put'em-back-on/ers... jack slinging and lug wrench carrying tribe who had resorted to passing gas and rubbing boogers in each others hair - froze as Tony's legendary RAT KILLER came skidding to a stop inches away from the clan and belched steam into Erick's face as though it were alive. A fire breathing dragon of 750 horsepower.





Tony had been out again to Van Nuys Boulevard sucking the doors off of rich kids who thought they buy a turn key hot rod from a high-Performance pro-shop.  Tony stepped out of the car and emerged from the black cloud of tire smoke and held up a thick wad of cash that he had won that even impressed dad.

Tony is a story teller and everything he says must be scrutinized carefully. I have since learned from eyewitnesses that the racing stories of mythological proportions about Tony and his dreaded RAT KILLER in the 60's are absolutely true.

The part of this story that would be unbelievable (had the Dahlin's not been involved) is how Tony surreptitiously came in possession of the famed motor that stumped the engineers at Ford motor company, when he was finished with his creation.

Tony and dad went for a test ride in a 65 Galaxy at Wright Ford on Lincoln Blvd. They only had one in stock at the time, a red convertible with a 427 that came factory with dual quads (that's 2, four barrel carburetors - for you non-car-people) and a four speed.

With Tony's giddy insistence and squealing like a girl, dad relented and signed a lease.

It was dad's real estate car by day and Tony's off the showroom floor hot rod by night.

Dad, however, complained that the motor ran rough and sucked gas. Tony said, "I could I could fix that for you."

Tony Purchased a '58 station wagon for a hundred bucks from someone who lived behind us in the pink apartments. He took the old 352 from that ancient old Ford, dropped it in the Galaxy and now had the 427 on a engine stand in the little garage he had rented in a ally, on Glyndon, across the street from the Downey's house. Dad was happy...Tony was happier and the next owner of the Ford Galaxy was non-the wiser as he drove his second-owner beautiful car with a tired old 352 off the resale floor of Wright Ford.

Tony was Dr. Frankenstein and the motor on that stand like was his monster, waiting to come alive.  

I tell you more about the car later when we finally get around to Saturday and how me and my bestest Saint Mark's buddy, "Ghering the Great" crawled into the trunk and ended up in a police chase doing 157 miles an hour down Venice Boulevard.

Oh, and please don't tell the guy who owns the Galaxy! This is all top secret stuff! 

Happy 4th of July. (p.s. I know the Steppenwolf song is from 1969, but it just kind of sums it all up - the crazy Dahlin boys were "Born to be wild") And there just might be a little bit of that adventure and wild heart in all of us... maybe that's what drew the normal families to the Dahlin House which was the center of the Universe... at least it was the center of my universe and I was still trying to find my fit and my connection to the Universe! 

part 4 The HAMPER OF DEATH: Valhalla and the epic Conclusion

It was Saturday and my dad was off selling real estate at the lucrative Salton Sea Resorts (that’s a sarcastic “twofer”–obviously both lucrative and resorts were a joke). He left the Wolf Pack home alone to terrorize the World.. okay not the world, but Venice.. Okay again, not Venice but the neighborhood….Okay again, again, not the entire neighborhood - just me and the angry grouch next door.  It’s what the boys victoriously claimed as a “Twofer.”

She had made it abundantly clear that none of the wild animals that lived in our house were to come within 15 feet of her pristine 55 Buick that had less than 9,000 miles on it - in the 10 years she owned it.

The older boys were always trying to pick on poor Edna and their most inventive forms of torture always seem to include me… Last time I left off with me being lured into a retired diaper pail turned hamper under the guise of being included in a game of Hide-N-Seek…after falling for the offer I squished my wiry little body into the conformity of the dreaded tin-coffin when Dooh-Dooh Pants quickly shut the lid and locked the latch. It was a dirty, rotten, mean, horrible, no-good-for-nothing trick, which means, that things were going exactly according to plan when the neighborhood tribe of cannibals locked me in the decroded old metal hamper and tossed me under the rear wheels of Edna’s precious Buick as if I was begin sacrificed to some pagan god.

Well, last time I described how I was being dragged under the differential of her behemoth Buick spraying a rooster tail of sparks from her parking spot all the way past the Blaser’s house!  NOT GOOD.  My skinny, little white Swedish fanny was getting char-broiled as the bucket of death was heating under the friction of metal against asphalt at 40 miles an hour. 

“HELP” I cried in terror knowing that neither me nor my burial urn could take much more heat… as Edna sped past the big pink house at the corner…

It was getting hot – too hot!

My oxygen was being used up - too quickly!

I was suffocating and knew I had only seconds until their plan would be complete until the Angel of Death would come and escort markie d from this world into Purgatory.  

I blacked out into momentary unconsciousness until I saw the white light. This was the end… (in the words of Fred Sanford, “I’m coming home Ethyl”)   up, up, up, I flew…

The only thing I didn’t know was that the journey across the River Styx was like a roller-coaster that had spun off its track. 

Up I flew tumbling end over end – somersaulting… none of the nuns at Saint Marks had prepared me for this… I had expected a white light and some angel music – the kind I hear at the Lennon house and certainly a smoother ride.  Maybe the reason this was such a violent passage to the other world was because this had nothing to do with heaven or hell or purgatory or limbo, BUT VALHALLA!

The Norse god Odin had chosen me for the “hall of the slain.” This majestic hall in Asgard was for those who died in combat. It couldn’t be any worse than Salton Sea…right? I couldn’t see anyway, so I closed my eyes, sucked in my final breath and decided to let the valkyries to carry me to my eternal home.  I would have preferred angels, but whatever.

 BAM

I landed in Valhalla with a giant thud and was flat on my back – semiconscious… looking at orange stars…pink hearts,  yellow moons, and green clovers…  hey wait a minute! That’s from the new Leprechaun cereal, the Blasers and Lennons got to eat… NOT US…we had Malt-O-Meal and Oatmeal with meal worms. Dad said the worms were extra protein…Viking food!

I was lying face up on the Leland’s lawn. Leland was the hot-rodder at the corner of Woodlawn who was like a complete outsider to Harding. Mr. Lennon had already shanked a golf ball at Leland's black hot rod for racing down the street... It seemed to work...but I wonder if my landing on an outsider's lawn meant something for me...was this a sign?

Turns out that when Edna made the right  turn at corner of Harding two of her wheels came off the ground dislodging my flaming casket which shot out and struck the curb across the street. The hinges by this time had turn molten red and melted off my tin pooh-pooh container of death.  When the baby-diaper-diarrhea-bucket struck the curb the impact flipped the can up that shot me out like an ejection seat of a fighter pilot. I was ejected into the wild blue yonder…spinning somersaulting.. head-over-heels 10 feet into the air and landed flat on my back.

Dooh-Dooh Pants yelled, “It’s alive” and the Viking brood and fellow Hardingites clapped and laughed hysterically like sneering wolves at their prey. Even though Dooh-Dooh Pants was relieved that he wouldn’t have to add another billion years to his Purgatory sentence…the rest of the hordes didn’t clap that I was alive…instead, they clapped for themselves at the perfect outcome of a brilliantly executed plan and were LAUGHING AT ME.

I was hurt and embarrassed and sad and mad! I wanted to be included…I wanted to feel accepted, but felt even more and more rejected by my family – alone. I felt like Mowgli the man-cub who had been abandoned to the jungle and was being raised by the wild animals... Was this a right of passage that formally cut me out as an outsider.  

I would not give them power over me. I stood to my feet like an ace Viet Nam Fighter Pilot… Proud…Tall...Brave...

They laughed and scattered…  I saluted as the President gave me a congressional medal of honor… music played in my head!  Who had the last laugh now? HUH?  I turned not to show my tears…

“Swedes don’t cry’” my dad said…and I was learning not to cry…just not now. “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” my dad said. I was getting stronger each and every day…thanks to the Wolf Pack and their nasty pranks. 

Yep… I was one of the few… the brave… a member of the elite green beret… I retreated down the alley and invisibly slinked into backyard past the veloci-rooster, past the alligator, past the prehistoric frog and made it to the hero’s retreat of my room and listened to the boys telling the story below and laughing.     

Yep, I was getting stronger and stronger!  The next time one of them pushed my buttons they would get punched in the face…Yes siree, even if it was one Lennon brothers…Yep, even if it was Billy Lennon who was completely innocent.  I knew he didn’t deserve it…but, BOY someone was bound to GET-IT!  Smack right out of the blue. I would cold-cock someone...anyone and then run. 

I salute you Markie D...you earned your silver wings and your medal of valor. Stand proud and tall and be brave.

THE ZOO Part 2: "THE VIKINGS"

Building from yesterday's episode where we escaped from Venice... I want to quickly draw your attention to a popular cigarette commercial at this time in the 60's. If you're old enough, you might remember it. If you're too young, then you might not know that there was a time that they allowed cigarette commercials on TV trying to convince dummys that smoking was actually cool.  It was a Salem ad (Kids DON'T SMOKE) I still remember it, the popular jingle went like this... "You can take Salem out of the country, but you can't take the country out of Salem."   

Is anyone already getting the connection? (Raise your hand if you think you might know where I'm going with this.)  Stick around and see if your correct then give yourself a pat on the back. SIMPLY: "You can take the Dahlins out of Venice but you can't take the Venice out of the Dahlins." Did you get it right? Anyway, let me say it differently... The Dahlin brood pulled out of Venice, but it didn't mean that we were escaping their inner Viking. NO WAY 

In the words of Bill Cosby, "We were off to the zoo." In the thought bubble of our dog Poochie, "It was bound to be a disaster."

When the overstuffed station-wagon (that's a type of car families drove in 60's) pulled into the parking lot everything (the smell, the noise, the violence, the name calling, the attitude - all of it) squeezed out of the car like Crest oozing out of a tube of toothpaste under pressure.         Watch out world HERE WE WERE!

 

When we got there the boys scattered in a million direction and began climbing over fences and squeezing under the turnstiles.  The Dahlins had arrived and the zoo would never be the same.

Gustav - the oldest, immediately went out on a hunt for girls. Hormones had set in and he didn't care a lick about the animals, He was a teenager on a mission.  When the older boys (along with our additions) scattered to the four winds my mother felt the zoo might have been safer that way. 

When Mom, the two girls and I finally made it to the monkey habitat. I was excited to see the cute little critters. 

But the winds began to change - like a warm Santa Ana wind, blowing in from the east. It was an OMINOUS SIGN that something bad was just ahead (like Dorthy in the Wizard of Oz). The Dahlins - all of them... all 92 of them (okay I'm stretching that a little - but that's what it seemed like) converged at the monkey habitat as if strange ill fate brought us all back together. "Mad Dog" (one of the older boy's nickname) made some snide remark about them being our relatives and "Flea-Bait" (another nickname) began jumping up and down on the ledge of the dry moat mimicking the monkeys.

This was his big chance. Bouncing up and down, he pretended to eat an invisible banana with one hand and scratched his side with the other. One by one, people began to gather to watch his dumb act.  As he   mimicked the monkeys, the monkeys mimicked him. This was his stage and the people loved him (of course I was jealous) but I knew I could do a better monkey (Sister Godzilla told me when she caught me climbing over the cloakroom wall to make fun of her behind her back). 

Flea-Bait did not want to let the vast crowds down that had assembled to watch his show. The more they clapped the bigger his performance grew, the wilder he got the bigger the applause. He had the frantic monkeys and the throngs of visitors eating out of the palm of his hand - "disgusting!"  He kept creeping closer and closer to the edge of the dry moat that separated zoo visitors from the monkeys below that were unable to make the 20 foot leap to freedom. 

Mom wanted him down and invoked the clause. "The-Under-Pain-Of-Mortal-Sin" clause. What that means to a good Catholic is - that if you don't immediately respond, then you are subject to a mortal sin and will likely spend another million years in Purgatory.  MOM SHOUTED, "Flea Bait, under pain of mortal sin get down right this instant." Only Flea Bait couldn't hear mom over the thunderous approval of his audience and the screeching of the agitated monkeys below in the pit. 

What you got to understand is - is that mom had invoked the clause in order to get the older boys into the car this morning in the first place. We took it serious, very serious! Knut (not the first born, but still an older brother that had a bit of first-born police-keeping in his compulsive personality), thought he would enforce "THE CLAUSE."   

Knut went over and gave O' Flea-Bait a slight shove to scare the Purgatory out of him just as Flea-Bait was spinning off balance on one leg. Yep, you guessed it... Knut sent Flea-Bait over the edge. 20 feet below the anxious monkeys had received him as if a prophecy had been fulfilled in their midst. 

(I'm sorry, but I'll have to come back to the gruesome and hilarious details of this event that went from bad to worse). 

May God keep you and bless you and may you never break "THE CLAUSE."