The hilarious, picture-driven, true memoir of the youngest boy of the 60's "most dysfunctional family." Markie d's quest for survival and identity helps us discover and deal with the dysfunction in all of us. Funny, politically incorrect and thought provoking.
In the words of an ancient sage, "Laughter is good medicine."
1969: The Ouija Board and Dark Portal of Harding Ave.
Last time I left off with - not only my pride bruised from the epic "love-fail" in the Saint Mark's schoolyard in front of all the girls, but also with a couple choice bruises on various body parts at the hands of a bully big brother and his gang of angry little men. Now I am in my room talking to my dog and worried about what is going to happen after dark. You see, not only do I try to avoid the flippant hippies downstairs who think I'm a throw toy and the schemes of the unfeeling Wolf Pack upstairs on the third floor, but spend nights frightened to death of something even more dark and sinister that began years ago.
My family was responsible for opening a portal to the dark underbelly of the demonic realm by dabbling in the dark arts by staging séances in our living room. I was young and remember the time the table lifted off of the floor and how one of my older brothers pee'd his pants - two cried because they were scared to death (teenagers crying - could have been the best day ever EXCEPT...
...Except the fact that at that very moment it was the precise instance that we unleashed something insidious that dwelt in the dark places of our house and we had lots of dark places. Being young, I had a special sensitivity to the boogie man and monsters under the bed, Zombies, demons and things that go bump in the night.
Me? I saw it - they didn't! They were dull and clueless to what they had unleashed into the house and into the neighborhood and probably worst yet - didn't care.
And here I sat in my room with my trusty dog - in the room nobody wanted. The reason I had a room to myself in a house with something like 532 people (that would be my brothers) crammed together in the limited number of bedrooms ... was because this room had a dark secret.
The hole that I slept in was discovered by the Ouija Board.
THIS IS ALL TRUE!
Here is a picture of me (later in about '72 with a broken leg - and a hippy older brother clickhere Hotel Crazy and the Harding History of Broken Bones) and the loft bed in the background. I liked the loft bed because it gave me an advantage over the Wolf Pack that had protection on three sides and offered high ground.
It made it easier for me to defend myself against night raids and suffocation but was the portal of the ghost that lived in the basement.
Since this it is just a couple days to Halloween I think I will tell you the story of that day with the Ouija Board that changed everything.
The boys definitively got more than they expected...
They wanted to prove to the girls what big brave men they were, after freaking out like little girls over the rattlesnake scare (which was nothing more than Markie shaking a baby rattle under the back steps). But, now that they reached the big iron gate and Ulrich claiming to have sighted Albinos - at the same moment Chewbacca stepped on a twig - that's all it took; all twelve of them panicked and ran back down the long dirt road in the blackness of the night towards the old Lincoln Continental.
Clinging and tripping and jumping out of their skin in fear over every leaf that shook and every twig that cracked under foot, you would have thought they were being pursued by apocalyptic Zombies.
Halfway back down the road is where they had an other-world encounter with the dreaded monsters with laser eyes and sharp, flesh eating teeth. Several white Albinos had managed to escape unnoticed and did indeed lay a trap for an ambush. Three quarters of the way back to the car the plotting Albinos sprang from hiding places in the manzanita bushes and aromatic eucalyptus trees with the cunning of raptors.
The poor defenseless girls stood paralyzed as the "brave" Viking men abandoned them - fleeing in abject fear. The hippy guys were practically in the car while the girls were left to defend themselves against the Zombie attackers.
There was crying, screaming, cursing and confusion in a foreboding final doom of Biblical proportions. The girls were surrounded by the midget-clan of half-human Albino fiends wielding sickles, shovels, rakes and other instruments of death. The pathetic boys were too afraid to come back to their rescue. Ronald Reagan's wife, Nancy, was awaken by the clamor and called the police.
Hearing sirens, the tribe of white little people ran for the road, abandoning the plot of murdering the girls who likewise made a mad dash for the "Scuba-Mobile" and began punching the whimpering Viking men who were in a hurry to flee the scene before the police arrived.
By the time the older boys and the girls had patched things up and made it back to the house... all of us little kids in the neighborhood had already removed most of our white makeup and returned the gardening tools to the Blaser's house.
Yep, our "Zombie Attack" was a brilliant idea by my dad, especially since none of us ended in jail and the Wolf Pack became the prey in a fantastic prank of an epic payback they so richly deserved.
Well done, dad! Well done, daddio!
This is still just Friday on Markie d's first week of fifth grade... and tomorrow would be a very - very long day.
Oh. and just so you know... this story about how little we knew about Albinos was true. We did fear them as some type of night predator...but that was a long time ago in the days of ignorance and before political correctness. Today we know that this group of people referred to as Albinos are as human as you or me. They just lack pigmentation that protects their skin against the sun's harmful rays... Yet, because they're different, they were shunned and looked down upon.
It is the tragedy of human nature to look down on and prejudge others...and to take advantage of those who we feel are safe to push around. Low self-worth creates the felt need in us to put other people down in order to make us feel better about ourselves. Bullies are weak people inside who are usually seeking attention, desiring popularity and want to feel big or powerful. In America we say that all people are created equal, but really don't treat each other that way. Jesus says, "We should treat people the way we want them to treat us." Wow! If we listened to that advice alone...just think how much better off the world would be. 2000 years ago an educated Jewish teacher said, "We should learn to consider others better than ourselves."
IF ONLY! Until that happens... it's Friday night and Markie D will go to bed with his boxing gloves on, just in case he needs to defend himself against a night-time retaliation of the Wolf Pack.
Today however, I think you should still be afraid of Zombies, but who knows, maybe someday in the future Zombies, Vampires and Humans can all co-exist, but until then there are some unexplained phenomenon that goes bump in the night that should still send goosebumps up and down our spines. There is nothing wrong with a dose of HEALTHY fear.
My advice:
1) Wear sunscreen
2) Never pick up clowns hitching at night.
Here is a picture of me (later in about '72 with a broken leg - and a hippy older brother clickhere Hotel Crazy and the Harding History of Broken Bones) and the loft bed in the background. I liked the loft bed because it gave me an advantage over the Wolf Pack that had protection on three sides and offered high ground.
