Snakes. Ropes. Zombies and Troop 32

Continued: Last time, we had left off with Senior Patrol Leader, Ray, dangling inside the back compartment of our Scout Bus as if on a rotisserie inside of a BBQ. It was like he had been shish-kabobed by the oak branch that had crashed through the front window.

The chants of "Don't cross the bridge" morphed into "Monkey in the middle" as the toxic-fumed minions began swatting the helplessly flailing arms and feet of our new object of ridicule!  Meanwhile, the "do-gooders" of the other normal troops, grabbed their neatly packed first aid kits and rushed to the scene of the crash hoping to earn accolades and merit-badges.

We were "ill-equipped" for the attention we were suddenly flooded with! I was on top of the moving van(slash)Scout Bus singing about "Tapp crossing the bridge and the skewered Senior Patrol Leader" to the tune of "Like a Bridge over Troubled Water," but the Scout Master from Troop 34 and his flock of rescuing vermin thought my brilliant parody was inappropriate and tasteless.

"Ill-equipped" ...because we had no rocks to throw at the other regular kids (like we had at our disposal at the National Jamboree when Dego and the rest of the boys tried to kill Bill Gates)!
("at our disposal" meant that at the National Jamobree last summer we had both -  regular kids and rocks - lots and lots of normal kids who weren't from Venice and a billion river rocks!)

Behind their Scout Master's back, the pasty cake-eaters sneered and scowled at us with the expression of disdain written on their namby-pamby faces - that irked Jeffery to no end.    He was fit to tied!

FLASHBACK:  Even though we had tamed down the secret-induction "ritual" ever since the brawl of my induction malfunction - it was still very clear to Jeffery in the new "safer" ceremony - that loyalty to the new "people group" was of paramount importance and that snitches and "rats" were not tolerated.

Even though Jeffery Lennon did not start a riot at his induction like I did, he got the message loud and clear.

BACK TO OUR STORY: The kids in Troop 34 needed payback for violating the code! After we ran everybody off and took care of the mess ourselves we eventually made camp in front the best cabin at Camp Slauson. We were TROOP 32, we were from Venice and we were proud!

The planning began.  We found both of the snakes - one by accident, when it fortuitously bit the annoying "Little Wiener." We removed the snake from his arm, Kissel sucked out the pretend venom - and we praised Little Wiener for his contribution in finding the last snake, which had made its way into his backpack. Secretly, we assembled the ropes and the snakes for the midnight caper that would take place after the traditional "snipe hunt."   I hated the snipe hunts.  Supposedly, this charade is to test the resolve of the new kids and put hair on their chest. I've been on snipe hunts some 20 times, but sitting in a bush in the middle of a moonless night in complete blackness still scared the bajeebers out of me (AND I still didn't have hair on my chest).  I could not admit to my new Boy Scout tribe that I was afraid of the dark! I was afraid of being smothered....buried...suffocated...big brothers and anything that had to do with being tied up in ropes.

Oh, and Zombies!  (That's because my family had opened a Porthole to Hades that was channeled through the mysterious space in my bedroom wall).



For a new little "Pimple-Squeeze" like Jeffery - he actually had a very good plan (it was probably better planned than my payback attempt at Chewbacca - that had left me tied up by a rope and dangling from the third story window of our house IN MY UNDERWEAR on a school morning, in front of ANDREA and every other kid at Saint Marks school).

This was either going to be really good, or else, someone was going to end up in prison (I figured that I would probably have to go to confession next Saturday for not offering up a prayer for those soft kids from Mar Vista and Santa Monica).

Cockrell wanted to do the raid naked  - of course - but thankfully, we settled for duck tape and Tighty-Whities!

Next time:  "THE WHITE ANGELS"  True story!

Last Supper, Jalapenos and The Creature!

Last Supper and Jalapenos Pt 2

I have a lot of Superpowers, but most of them are in my imagination! Whenever I am buried in a pit, dropped out of a window, shot with needle-tipped arrows, electrocuted, tied up in a rope, or shoved in a hamper, those circumstances provide the opportunity to pretend!  I pretend that I am Superman or Spider Man... and in this latest adventure of the diabolical scheming by older brothers (AKA the Wolf Pack) I wished I could have been the new action hero - Iron Man - mainly because he doesn't feel anything. In the times when I'm been tortured and I receive the gift of adrenalin that pulses through my body and I get the strength of about 3 or 4 boys my size...like the mom who has the superhuman strength to lift up a car to free a trapped baby, I have to be reminded that I am only human. DANG IT! I come to the painful realization that I am like most mere mortals.

Anyway, getting back to the story about the Hawaiian, Luau themed party in the backyard. Everyone was having a good time outside at the party until it came to a screeching halt when they heard the piercing shriek of horror coming out of my mother's bedroom window.

Mr. and Mrs. Nargie heard it
Mr. and Mrs. Blaser heard it
All of those at the (now ruined and infamous) Luau in the backyard heard it!

The Steadmans across the street
The Lennons down at the corner

The Nuns at the convent around the corner
The old grouch next door- and her drunk brother, Hutch, heard it!
The Tripps
John Gillemonster on Naples

and Mrs. Gass over on Crestmore Ave
the Grants down on Angelus Place heard it
The Vasquez'
and Bobby Manriquez  - they all heard it!

I'm sure some heard the terrible screams of the 7-year-old all the way to the Venice canals... and if you were alive back then, it is possible that if you think really hard you might just remember hearing this awful screaming no matter where you might have been in the world at that time.

If you didn't hear me screaming in pain, then you heard my mom, shouting out furiously for Roy (that's what she called my dad) to do something!  That was nice I thought. It was good thing to know that she still cared and still went a little berserk from time to time when bad things were happening.

I don't know exactly why they did it...or whose idea it was to cut open all the left over jalapenos and smear the skins and the juice all over my tender little body. They took off my shirt, held me down and wanted to see what the hot chili peppers would do to human tissue when rubbed over its entirety! By that, I mean everything that was exposed - like arms, legs, upper torso, both arm pits, face and lips.  Everything turned red and swelled, I looked like a red Pillsbury-Dough-Boy that had caught on fire.

I was burning up and wanted to jump from the window, but they held me down until they heard the rushing footsteps of Mr. D tromping up the stairs, then they vaporized into the four corners of the globe (i.e. cluttered bedrooms on the third floor).

Dad picked me up and began running down the stairs and mom began shouting for him to take me to the emergency hospital...she thought I was going to die. My eyes burned and were swelled shut, but I could tell he turned right instead of left. This was not the way to the front - instead he was headed for the backyard!

The pain was too great...I screamed...She screamed and had begun to shout down curses on the older boys and said stuff about "Pain of Mortal Sin" and about how they would never see their way out of Purgatory!

Embarrassed, people left the party quickly yet somber like it was a funeral dirge... as they cleared a path for my dad who was holding an unrecognizable hideous red creature in his arms. Instead, of the hospital, he flung me into the pool! More screaming by Mrs. D...which launched Jerry LaFountaine on a rampage in a search and destroy mission through the the house for the boys. Boy, did he enjoy that! Poor Jerry, however,was sorely disappointed because he could not find a single soul to punish as my clever siblings hid in the secret crawl space behind the walls up in the third story across from the rattlesnake cages.

After recovering from the shock of being tossed into the pool, I emerged from the water CHANGED! Something happened in the chemical reaction to the burns that interacted with the chemicals that had been release by the adrenal glands located in the cortex on top of my kidneys.

I emerged from the water as if i were The Creature from the Black Lagoon bent on revenge. Frightening the remaining guest away, I went on a pillaging rampage... and ate all the cowardly older brothers, drinking all of their blood and letting the helpless reptiles out of their cages (seeing that now, I was related to the scaled reptiles).

I walked the earth all the rest of my days alone and hunted, a reptilian fugitive surviving off the flesh of humans and yearning to drink blood.

Okay, so the last part - the part after I was thrown into the pool and went around eating everybody was only something conjured up in my puny brain while I had been intoxicated with drugs to numb the pain.

Though I was a hideous little red creature for the next couple days and looked like an actual relative to the monster from the Black Lagoon - or something that lived in the snake cages upstairs, I laid in bed, draped in damp towels having weird thoughts and mostly thankful that I hadn't eaten any family members or drank their blood.

A week later, however, I did manage to sneak up stairs when no one was home and opened the door to a rattlesnake cage.  Hehehehe...  

Someone sounded the rattlesnake escape-alarm and raised the flag to alert the neighbors.  Havoc reigned and neighbors complained... but it was just another regular day on Harding avenue...where we all survived - not perfectly unscathed, but enough to share the infamous and crazy stories that made life worth living.







 

 

The Night Walker and...THE FIRE!

The large turn-of-the-century home was a blazing inferno... windows were shattering from the heat and cars in the parking lot were bursting into flame.  Tires sent up black smoke as the gas tanks in those cars blew up one after another. It looked like a scene from the battle-lines in Vietnam. The Vietnam War vet, who was renting a room across the street, began having flashbacks and climbed the to top of  the three story "Pink-House" with a broom - holding it like a sniper with a M16. Hthe crazy guy sat up there taking shots of the enemy as though he was reliving some hellish nightmare that no one should ever have to experience. He shot me twice; once I fell down pretending to be dead, but thought -that maybe -it wasn't too cool.  Though he was perfectly harmless, the poor fella had to be talked down by the police in the midst chaotic mêlée on Harding Avenue that night.

Meanwhile, the clandestine guest - i.e the girls who had been smuggled in, were trapped on the second floor and screeched louder than the sirens of the long awaited firetrucks in blood-curdling cries of shrill terror. The temperature on the second floor was close to reaching flashpoint and old dry timber of the wainscoting was not far from combustion. By this time the stupid Frat-guys on the second floor realized they were trapped and began running around in their underwear screaming louder than the girls, knowing that they had only seconds to escape before being incinerated into a pile of carbon ashes.

Before I finish that story...let me clear some names from my previous list of suspects!

Last time, I have removed the Nuns and Walter Daniels from my list and had discovered that the "Gillemonster" had a perfectly good alibi (that's the "dog-poop story" - which I'll share later). For now, I think it's important to eliminate by bestest friend Tommy from the list. Although he was the youngest person who was considered a possible arsonist, the unique and complex nature of his two-fold condition placed him squarely at the top of the Fire Marshal's suspect list.

Although Tommy was several years younger than me, being right next door, we were best buddies!  Tommy liked to light matches... he would find his dad and my dad's Real Estate Business matchbooks and set fire to just about everything he could. Nothing big, but it did bother his mother. She was pretty concerned about him chewing his fingernails, but was even more worried that he might set fire to something someday and spend much of his eternity in purgatory.  To make matters more complicated, Tommy had a very rare disease; somnambulism. Yes, he was a somnambulant.  I know what some of you are asking:
 "What the heck is somnambulism?"

"Idoes it have to do with haviing air bubble in the blood-veins near his brain stem?"

"Somnambulance...hey, does it have something to do with an ambulance?

"What, does the kid do? Does this disease make him run around like a chicken with its head cut off screaming as though he were an ambulance."

"Is it medical? Delusional? What is it?"

In answer to your questions it does as a matter of fact, have to do with the word ambulance! But first, let's clear this up...it's not really a disease- his mother told me, rather it's a very rare condition. The word ambulance comes from the Latin word 'ambulare' which when translated means to move about. Hence the words ambulance and ambulatory.

"Is he retarded?"

No, he's not a retard... just a little special. When most people are fast asleep he has the propensity to move about... Turns out...Tommy is a certified Sleep Walker!

I was at his house one time and stopped him from going pee in the refrigerator; another time I stopped him from going pee in the kitchen trash and on another sleep over I stopped him from walking down to Kippy's house. Kippy is his cousin, one of the Lennon's who lives on the corner opposite from the fire. The poor kid did all kinds of weird things in the middle of the night and when it was all over - had no recollection at all. TRUE!

With his predilection of lighting things on fire and walking around in the middle of the night -all fingers pointed to him. Even his own mother thought he might have been responsible. So I guess the best news was that on this particular night I was having a sleep over in the two story fort that his dad built in their backyard.  They didn't have snakes and a Veloci-Rooster and a chicken-eating-frog and a mosquito breeding pond in their backyard - they were just normal people. Well, mostly - whatever normal means...but around 11:00 O'clock at night.. I did have to get up and play kick ball for a couple minutes while Tommy was in one of his sleep-states, but the fire didn't happened until much later - after he was settled back in and strapped into the loft in his sleeping bag.  I WAS HIS ALIBI.

Tommy's name goes off the List.

1) My tribe...the Wolf Pack

2) Mr. Blaser

3) Mr. D (that's my dad)

4) Mr. Lennon

5) Frank Nargie

6) Rita Nargie

7) Sea-Shell

8) Leeland

9) Weenie Tripp

10) Johnny Gillemot

11 Tommy Blaser

12) Four boys dressed as girls

13) The Nuns at Saint Marks who lived just behind the house.

14) Walter Daniels 

15) Crazy, Anti-War, Peace-loving members from an opposing Fraternity

16) The Owner of the property.

As for the "Tighty-Whities" (that's what we call tight, white underwear in the United States), Mr. Blaser believing his match wielding - night-walking son may have had something to do with and feeling a sense of responsibility, shot out of bed and ran across the street in his bun-tight skives after hastely slipping into his "Sunday-come-to-meeting" Black polished Real Estate shoes.   WHAT A SIGHT!

His underwear provided him with the alibi he needed as someone who was in bed at the time that the explosive devise went through the window of the old house.
Therefore Mr. Blaser goes off the list.  

1) My tribe...the Wolf Pack

2) Mr. Blaser

3) Mr. D (that's my dad)

4) Mr. Lennon

5) Frank Nargie

6) Rita Nargie

7) Sea-Shell

8) Leeland

9) Weenie Tripp

10) Johnny Gillemot

11 Tommy Blaser

12) Four boys dressed as girls

13) The Nuns at Saint Marks who lived just behind the house.

14) Walter Daniels 

15) Crazy, Anti-War, Peace-loving members from an opposing Fraternity

16) The Owner of the property.

Weenie didn't do it! Her sister Kathy was out on a date...she didn't do it. Their brother Bobby was on top of the Tripp house right next door with a garden hose trying to prevent their house from catching their house on fire.  It wouldn't have made any sense for any of the Tripps - so I they go off the list - yep, all them including little Ricky!

 1) My tribe...the Wolf Pack

2) Mr. Blaser

3) Mr. D (that's my dad)

4) Mr. Lennon

5) Frank Nargie

6) Rita Nargie

7) Sea-Shell

8) Leeland

9) Weenie Tripp and family: brothers sisters, mom, dad.

10) Johnny Gillemot

11 Tommy Blaser

12) Four boys dressed as girls

13) The Nuns at Saint Marks who lived just behind the house.

14) Walter Daniels 

15) Crazy, Anti-War, Peace-loving members from an opposing Fraternity

16) The Owner of the property.

My list was shrinking... meanwhile my dad had joined Mr. Blaser in the rescue of the guys and girls who were trapped on the second floor.  My hairy brothers, along with Donny Blaser, climbed up like cockroaches on top of each other to the balcony and formed a human ladder for the half-naked half-intoxicated refugees to use as a human fire escape.


By the time the firemen got there, half-clad people were running around all over the place. To me it seemed like the scene that I pictured in the the bible where it describes the resurrection in Jerusalem when bodies came out of the grave and began walking around.       ZOMBIES!

Our neighborhood was now filled with wild Zombies...  the pandemonium from a blazing inferno... that included cars exploding and a crazy guy on top of third story turret taking shots at people with a broom handle. Let me tell you - it doesn't get any CRAZIER THAN THIS... A real Helter Skelter it was... Paul McCartney can thank us for the lyrics to the Beatles new song.

The night was still young and Chewbacca has spotted something below the ancient palm in the front yard of the blazing inferno...

For you android users Paul McCartney Helter Skelter

Oh, by the way...just in case you were wondering, the first ambulance was developed in France by Dominique-Jean Larrey in the 1700s.