The Day the Music Died.

 "Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live"

                                                                                          Norman Cousins

11:37 am 

Like a salmon swimming upstream, Joan forged her way through the party animals that crowded the downstairs of the large turn-of-the-century Craftsman house.

Noise!

Loud noise! 

 

"I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag

I was schooled with a strap right across my back

But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas

But it's all right, I'm Jumpin' Jack Flash

It's a gas! Gas! Gas

I was drowned, I was washed up and left for dead

I fell down to my feet and I saw they bled

I frowned at the crumbs of a crust of bread

Yeah, yeah, yeah"

The Wolf Pack and their friends had the new Rolling Stone album b lasting on the Hi-Fi record-player...needle skipping occasionally as they rocked out to the music - shaking the floor of the old house.

As usual, Mr. D was off selling real estate. Today it was West Covina. 

Dancing

Long golden hair flung wildly.

""Yeah, yeah, yeahs" sung off-tune.

Joan's distressed pleas for help went unanswered - falling on deaf and uncaring ears.  Suddenly, she became the least popular person in the entire universe when she dragged the needle across the record as a last resort.

It was like the proverbial "Shot heard around the world."  It was symbolic for her. Her youngest boy was 2 miles away with a torn appendage in a pool of blood. For her it was the day the music died.

With the stereophonic console silenced it took another 5 minutes for most of the hippies to realize that Mick Jagger wasn't even singing lead vocals any more - as the Hippy clones droned on.

Markie's leg has been cut off!" she screamed, trying to get their attention. "And he might be dead. I need a ride this instant" she demanded with urgency, trying to solicit help and a car. Most of the Wolf Pack knew what THAT meant. It meant that if Markie wasn't dead, it would be a long and boring trip to Saint John's emergency room in Santa Monica that would interrupt what had begun as a good day. 

No one budged. No one said a word. It was like a "Mexican-Standoff" where the first person to speak - loses!

Nothing was ever serious in our house. Everything had to be a joke! In the far back of the living room someone ducked behind a wall of smelly teenage bodies and lowered their voice, pretending to mimic dad and said, "It'll be one less mouth to feed."

Laughter.

Not much at first.

Some of it nervous. The non-Dahlins weren't sure this was an appropriate time to be laughing.  But the "Mexican Tomato Plants" had a way of dulling the senses and made ordinary things funny.  "Hahaha...dude...look at my hand. Where did that come from? Hahahaha"

The little bit of laughter seemed to grant permission  for them not to take the situation serious as one of the clever older boys shouted, "We never liked him anyway."  

More laughter.

Bad timing!

Joan was upset. "Hell!" she exclaimed in utter frustration. She looked out the window and saw that her car was packed in behind twelve other cars and that it would take an Act of God to extricate it within the next 40 minutes. Tom Weltz' 57 Chevy was parked catawampus - half-in and half-out of the driveway. Maybe out of control. Maybe out of mind. Maybe doing the right thing, She swung and caught Tom with a right hook to the face - knocking him to the ground. Don't mess with the lioness when one of her lion cubs are in trouble.

Tom was dazed, but not completely out, so Joan ordered Pinky off his Lazy-Boy throne and made him pin Tom to the ground while she frisked him for his keys.

Pinky was the only one on the first floor that had not inhaled the skunk-smelling herbs. Finding the keys in Tom's tight pants pocket she yanked them out and sprang from the porch with Pinky lumbering close behind.  Hoping upon hope the two of them hijacked Tom precious hot rod.  Pinky couldn't drive a stick shift so Joan did the driving as the car sank on the right side under the weight of Pinky's massive frame.  "Water weight!" and "Big bones" Pinky always said in denial. Yeah, well tell that to the shock absorbers.

Joan popped the clutch twice killing the motor...and jerked backwards out of the driveway on the third attempt.

Stomping her foot on the gas pedal as if she could push it through the floor, she dumped the clutch and pealed rubber all the way down the street towards the Lennon house on the corner.

Mr. Lennon came out with his 4 iron and golf ball to make sure it wasn't Leland, only to be totally flabbergasted to discover it Joan behind the steering wheel of the car that sped around the corner towards Saint Mark's Church. He shrugged his shoulders and rooted for her to make the left turn at the end of the street without crashing through the doors of the church. 

Tearing around the corner she made a sign of the cross and breathed a silent prayer while shifting into second gear, chirping the tires and barely missing pedestrians at McDonald's.

11:39 Am 
Meanwhile, back at the Harding house...the Wolf-Pack turned on the record again as though the brief annoyance had never happened.

 "But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas

But it's all right, I'm Jumping Jack Flash

Its a gas! Gas! GAs!

Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas

Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas

Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas 

 Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas 

 Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas

11:40 am
Left at Lincoln Liquor Locker - down Zanja - she screeched to a halt in the dirt ally stirring up a dust cloud that enveloped the car.  Frantically emerging from the brown cloud, Joan found 3 crying 9-year-olds, a delirious 12-year-old talking to himself like a mental patient and what appeared to be the corpse of her baby boy laying lifeless in a pool of blood. 

Joan shook him, but there was no response! Pinky meant well when he said the first thing that came to him mind, "kick him!"  (You see, it was hard for him to bend over, so using his feet just made sense to him).  Seeing the leg and blood, Joan felt she had arrived too late.

My Apologies...and Arrested Developement!

Everyone I apologize...for leaving you on the cliff hanger.




I've been running crazy and am working on making another Video for this blog, which I am shooting in the morning. I will be telling the "LA Zoo" story in front of a live audience. This is the story where my family managed to let all the monkeys out.    Blog Post 4/29/13  








Oh, and I guess it is better to be telling the zoo story in front of a live audience instead of a dead one! Right?

As soon as I come back tomorrow, I will continue the story of the tragic and horrible accident that happened at the McIlliot's pool.





It involves an older brother, my younger sister and the baby Lennon girl  - Annie. She is pictured to the right circled in red. Of course she's not that young...she's my baby sister's age, who is 9 at the time of terrible tragedy that took place at the McIlliot's pool.  Trust me - the tragedy is not the horrible trick that my coarse older brother pulled to make me vomit... NO! It was simple tom-foolery that involved slippery, wet bodies and a large glass wall just adjacent to the pool.

By this time in 1968 a couple of the Lennon boys had begun to migrate off the Lennon family compound and had dared venture into the Dahlin backyard...with the snakes, the alligator, the snapping turtles, the chicken-eating giant bull frog, and the dreaded Veloci-Raptor - attack rooster. 

Those Mexican tomato plants must have some powerful magic to get the hippies to fend off the rooster for their horticulture project.

I don't know why it was... but Annie began to come home with Kjersten for lunch - TO OUR HOUSE!
It just didn't make any sense! After all those years of parents being Hüber-protective...now either they didn't know about this or Annie just threw all caution to the wind and passed by her own house (that I'm sure had real food) and joined me and Kjersten at our house for lunch where we would have to scrape the moldy penicillin off our Pioneer sour-dough bread.   I thought I would throw in "Hey Jude" for the sound of 1968.

 Hey Jude by The Beatles

  
Annie and Kjersten were friends and tomorrow she would join me, Tommy, Urich and Ralph for the fateful day at McIlliot's pool.

Mark Twain said, "Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."  

and let me tell ya... between us and the Lennons we had a lot of kids on Harding Ave and at our house a lot of "arrested development".


 

God Bless You - More tomorrow!



 

Reptile Dysfunction

So the liner of the old "above-ground" pool had been removed and my hippy brothers were determined to make use of the 4 foot metal enclosure for a pond and reptile habitat.

I had just turned 12 and was used to cleaning up the mess left behind from car parts and junk scattered throughout the universe of my disorderly home. (There is something about the 2nd law of Thermodynamics and Entropy Increase...that Irene, our once-a-week house keeper, and I worked very hard to push against constantly).

Trying hard to contain the mess was part of my nature, but the need for order or hard work just didn't seem to be on the cosmic menu for the herbal loving - easy going, carefree lifestyle of Haight-Ashbury influenced children of the 60's.

To see all the "long-hairs" out in the backyard with shovels in hand and sweat on the brow was quite the enigma and a demonstration of the commitment they had to this "pond" project of theirs.

Another paradox was the unusual care and attention to these particular plants that they were cultivating out in the very far reaches of the backyard.  To walk over clutter and and pay no attention to the disastrous disorder of our  house was more inline with their blithe character than was care, concern and cleanliness or anything that hinted of a modicum of elbow grease. So shocking was the paradox of this new found work ethic, that my Dad had to ask about this meticulously attended garden which had been deliberately hidden behind stacks of decaying Saint Mark's carnival booths (stored for centuries in our backyard).

"Mexican Tomato Plants," they told my dad!
 My dad raised a suspicious eye-brow and walked
 away.

I was curious as to why these beloved "tomato plants" got so much attention - especially since the dumb things never grew tomatoes.     What's up with that?    

Not only did my older boys water, weed and meticulously prune the leaves, but they also imported a 3 foot, mutant, wild eye'd, attack-rooter with 4 inch razor sharp spurs to guard the cursed plants.

Life use to be good for an imaginative kid in that great big 'O backyard of ours, but now it was a nightmare with that Veloci-Rapter of an guard-rooster hunting down and attacking anything that came near those precious plants.  

My dad always seem frustrated that the older boys just didn't seem to care much about anything having to do with keeping the place clean, so I did the best I could to try to please him. 

Only problem was that I think it made them mad and is probably why they tied me up and buried me and shoved me in that hamper of death...(blog 6/5/13) and maybe even kept their mouth shout when my parents left me behind at Salton Sea (blog 5/27/13). .

Anyway, the pond was near completion and at twelve I was up to taking a shower about once a week- whether I needed to or not. Today, however, no one was home and I felt that it was safe to take a bath. Usually that wasn't a good idea, because there was no handle on the door to the bathroom with the bathtub near my parent's room. You never knew who would walk in or what kind of torture they might put you through - like throwing hot or cold water on you or bring friends in to look at you naked.

None of that was fun!

I hadn't been in the bathtub in months and thought I'd give it a try. I turned on the water and let it run while I stripped down. I slightly pulled back the shower curtain and stuck one foot in the bathtub...
             ...do you remember the scene from the horror flick, "Psycho" - in the shower scene with the crazy-scary music?    Well, this was like that!

 Insert music from your head here...

No one was home and our house was scary enough.  I told you before that it was haunted by ghost or demons or other-world stuff that wasn't too good for a person my age. And so it was easy to be a bit jumpy...and afraid of noises and things that go bump in the night. So as I stuck my foot into the tub and was looking at the faucet to adjust the water temperature... something splashed inside the tub and grabbed a hold of my ankle. Okay this is the point where - if I wasn't just a kid - I probably would have had a heart attack and died. Something was alive in the tub. A dead corpse - maybe, that had come to life...and this thing (what-ever-it-was - began furiously flailing - the Creature from the Black Lagoon...a monster- LEVIATHAN!

I slipped and fell head-long on top of the cold creature and was eyeball to eyeball with death itself.


I stared into the eerie slit pupil of the alligator my brothers had been secretly storing in the tub awaiting the completion of the pond project.

I don't know who was more scared me or the alligator?  It opened it's mouth in fright.. I screamed and think the Lennons down the street could hear the shriek of my death cry. 

Both of us splashed helplessly flinging water out of the tub as the curtain tore off bar and fell over the top of our two naked bodies. The young cayman had razor sharp teeth, but somehow I managed to free myself without incurring a single wound and ran from the room dripping wet.

One flight of stairs... two flights of stairs.. down I ran.  Scared, wet, I ran down past the foul mouthed mynah bird into a oncoming gaggle of my sisters and her friends just entering in through the front door..

Scared, dripping wet and...oh yeah - NAKED!

Yeah, like they believed me that I just survived an alligator attack! 

That might be "TMI" (Too Much Information) so please just accept it, but don't feel you have to visualize it... I'm still traumatized by this memory - hopefully you won't have to be.

Just for clarity - it wasn't the alligator attack that I was traumatized by... it was the mocking of my sister and her friends who stood there and stared and pointed and laughed at me.

Hey,  it was cold by the time I got down stairs!

That wasn't a lot of fun. What I discovered is that girls can be just as mean as the Wolf Pack.

"An idyllic childhood is probably an illusion."
                              - Martha Grimes

Next time - the fatal accident!

The Boogie-Woogie, Boogy Man!

What I didn't say last time (when I told the truth about the Lennons), is that they were also very creative along with being talented.

Some of that creative juice began to spill over into their elaborate front and backyard productions.

As some of them began to wonder off the premises and down to our house, I think it lead several of them to be corrupted by the Dahlins as they also began to grow long hair. Some of the older Lennon boys began to come over and help my brothers in the cultivation of the "Mexican tomato plants." 

 Again it was quite bizarre to me...for a couple reasons!  The first, is those plants never grew tomatoes and second is the fact that this gang of hippies were so fastidious and diligent about those ugly - stinky o' plants... when they weren't really known to be fastidious about anything else!  It's 1968, I'm in seventh grade, and I just didn't get it.

I don't know what their infatuation was in those stupid plants. I'm no expert, but it did seem to have something to do with the long hair.  Hummmm?

Now the Lennons began hardcore decorating for Halloween and putting on a show for all of Venice and Santa Monica and Culver City... Everybody would come and crowd our block and watch the latest installment of the Lennon haunted mansion. ONLY...!

The only thing is, although the the Lennons put on a great show, our house really was haunted.

                      I'm not lying!

When I was really small, my mom and the Wolf Pack would hold scary séances. With all the lights in our big creaky old house turned off  - mom and the boys would gather in the candle lit room, touching thumbs and baby fingers connecting all the way around the large oak table. I don't know why we were allowed to do this as Catholics...but we did! I don't know if there was a formula or chant involved, I was too young to remember that, but whatever it was they did... it worked! That old heavy table lifted off the ground and hovered as if floating.

Watching the table float like that gave me the heebeegeebies as the hair on my neck stood up and I got fraidy-cat goosebumps all over my body. Freaked out by all this darkness and candles and everything else, I crawled underneath to see if it was some kind of hoax. But it wasn't!  That 'O table was moving all by itself... and I didn't like it one bit!  And I tell you right now -even some of the older boys were scared. When I was under the table.. I smelled urine! Somebody peed their pants... and that somebody was a teenager!  

I think what this voodoo-ritual-thingy did, was invite bad stuff into our house that stayed there for a long, long time. If you stick around long enough with me...I  am eventually going to share some of that evil-craziness that really did happen.

So RIGHT NOW...I going to admit to the WORLD that I was afraid of the dark. I figure that if you knew the context then you wouldn't judge me so harshly. We had angry ghost as well as the boogie man living with us...NO WONDER WE WERE SO MESSED UP!

I just knew...they lived in the attic, in the dark dingy basement, in the recesses of my bedroom closet and in most of the dark places where light refused to shine. When the boys were doing their herbal experimentations with those tomato plants and smelling like a bunch of skunks, I think those ghost...the boogy man...whatever you want to call them...whispered in their ears and gave them some of their brilliantly sinister ideas...

“Hey…order of the Wolf Pack, why don’t you electrify the sides of the pool and shock your little brother.” 

They would happily emerge from the cavity in the ivy saying things like, "Dude bro... that's a groovy idea bro..."
 "Righteous dude! Cool man, let's do it."
 "Dude!"
 "Groovy"
 "Psychedelic Man"
 "Now, this is a funky situation"

 
It sure seemed to me that whenever those older boys got around those plants and they ended up in that dark, hippy, ghost-infested-grotto (that was covered in thick ivy hidden behind our mosquito pond...AKA the pool) they would come out looking for me... with some diabolical plan in mind.  

ANYWAY... I never-ever-ever-ever wanted to be home alone!  When the three of us little ones were left all alone we heard footsteps and things that went bump in the dark.

 I'd have to admit, however, that it was a good thing not to have the Wolf Pack in the house. At least I didn't have to worry about getting shoved in a hamper, squeezed in the temples of my forehead and knocked out, tied to a tree or anything like that - THINGS THAT WENT BUMP IN THE DAY!  YAY!   But Madeline (one year older), Kjersten (couple years younger) and me...we would find the clearest room of house (the room with the least amount of junk and clutter) - turn every light on that was possible, huddle together and arm ourselves with butter knives!

 THIS IS TRUE!  I'm not making this up. Pshawwww!    I have no idea how a butter knives would help us against the likes of the ghouls who lived under the bed or in the closet - monsters that I knew were just waiting to grab me by the ankles and drag me away, but it was worth a try!

 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-
Only this, and nothing more." 

                                                                                    'The Raven', by Edgar Allen Poe

If you grab your butter knife, next time I'll  tell you the EPIC story of how "John the Baptist" imploded into the scariest Halloween of all...      "The Spawn of Charles Manson."