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."
...about - the big house on the other corner that burned down. In the picture to the right - looking across the street from my house is another one of the large grand homes on our short block. If you examine the photo you can see Greek letters (P B X) hiding behind the palm tree on the front of the house. We woefully referred to this house as "The Fraternity." Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you looked at it (I guess) this magnificent Victorian house met it spurious and fateful end in a colossal fire of epic proportions. I'll describe that fateful night in greater detail later - but I can assure you that it did not burn down because of one of our UFO's. Also, this picture contains the only known photo that exist today of what later became the famous RAT KILLER. Parked right in front of "The Fraternity" is Gustav's Ford business coupe before he dropped in the notorious Rat Killer motor. Also, a thing to note, is the little kid (in front there, next to my little sister) is my best-est friend in the whole world - Tommy Blaser.
You certainly won't want to miss when I share the mother of all Catholic stories with you - the true story of John the Baptist and Charles Manson's offspring (I promise) it's on the way... But as for this moment in time, I have one of my boys visiting and am trying to spend some quality time with him. Oh, but remember all the alien stuff and Roswell and Area 51 in the last few blogs... well I guess some of that must have rubbed off (as you can see above).
I must have got gotten some alien radiation in my DNA when I was fighting the fire on top of the Lennon's house, which must have affected my offspring in some way!
Below is a picture of most of us... imagine adding Pinky - Mad Dog and a couple others that had embedded themselves into our motley crew (which you see here) and now imagine trying to fit us all around a dining room table. HA! Oh, let me tell you, the problem in that scenario is not the shear volume of numbers - NO! It was the shear lunacy and ensuing chaos as the hungry Wolf Pack assembled as if thirsting fto make every gathering an adventure seeking the blood of its next victim of pranks and foul play. As you can easily deduce for yourself, "My dear Watson" our house was a regular "looney-bin."
Good bye until my next post...and think about this: If life on this
planet came from outer-space, "Directed Panspermia" or by other means.... then where did that
life come from? Just saying.
This was us... blonde haired - blue/green/hazel-eyed Viking-Swedes at the middle of every mischievous thing that either went exactly according to plan or with plans the completely backfired - either way...the end result was usually CHAOS and mayhem.
This was the older boys when they were considerably younger...
And this...
and this...
Although we were surrounded by Lennons (something like a hundred million of them - sure seemed like that anyway) these were the famous ones on the corner!
Movie stars... appearing on the Lawrence show every Saturday night on NBC TV and making records; they were the picture of everything that is good and wholesome.
The Girls...
Look at them: pretty, talented, capturing America's heart in the 60's...
Us... putting fear into the hearts of America...the exact opposite... not very pretty and not at all wholesome... on the prowl and causing trouble.
Footloose and fancy free hippies in the making.
Trouble makers with long hair that usually ended up with someone being electrocuted, buried in a pit, dropped form a window, or falling from the notorious "Fire Pole" (previous Blog Post) which usually ended up with someone being hurt and better yet, with broken bones. Nearly a hundred broken bones - hence the old, rusty, crank - hospital bed in the dining room (you can see some pictures of the broken bones in previous blog post).
Mom was still gone with that weirdo fella - Jerry. They took poor Chewy to the hospital after he "mysteriously" fell off the "fire-escape-pole."
ALL alone - with no adults around, the Wolf Pack had set up the front yard as an "Area 51" staging ground for what would become our infamous UFO launch!
Little did they know how badly this incident would turn out... a down right "Roswell." That's what it turned out to be...alright!
They gathered their collective resources and the plastic, dry-cleaner bag, Donny Blaser stole from his dad's closet and assembled a crude UFO. I'm not sure I should tell you exactly how to put one together... because, as we learned the hard way...it was extremely dangerous. DANGER DANGER DANGER
In complete contrast to my family.. the perfect Lennon Family sat huddled (as usual) in their family room just some 20 feet away from the shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary that was so prominently displayed in their large front picture window.
The boys filled the plastic bag with hot air from Judy Blaser's Style Queen hair blower. Then lit all 20 birthday candles that had been stuck in the McDonald's straws.
"Huston we have lift off..." Gustav shouted with glee as the Wolf Pack howled in delight as our very first UFO successfully began to ascend into the atmosphere. Chewbacca could not get dad's complicated old-school Polaroid camera to snap the shot before the slow-moving illuminated apparatus was too far away for a potentially famous UFO sighting "picture" that we hoped would end up on the front page of the Herald Examiner.
Having to do it all over again, the Wolf Pack sent conspiring neighbors scavenging for more materials for a second launch. This time, Chebacca had my dad's Real Estate camera all set up and ready to go.
Up, up, up went the second launch with as much excitement as the first. Cheering, applauding, clapping...the Wolf Pack was totally delighted in the outcome of this newest UFO hoax. It was perfect and glowed ominously as it began to drift ever-so-slowly from "Area 51" i.e. my front yard.
I had cheered from the top of my house, safely away from the crowds and eventually made my way down to street level to join the jubilant crowds below. Everything was going exactly as planned. When the newspapers got these pictures...Venice would be on the famous UFO Sighting map. Spurious sightings would no longer be from the proverbial - deserted two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere from a couple named "Clem and Ethyl."
When the camera spit out the undeveloped picture, Chewbacca put it under his armpit to heat it up and hurry the process. We counted down the sixty seconds it took for the picture to appear. Polaroids were awesome - you can get a picture in a about a minute instead of the day or so it took to have film developed - it our house it took forever it seemed like - because our little canisters were always getting lost. We all anticipated the total groovy awesomeness of this latest plan - there was pushing - and shoving - and pulling of hair - and name calling and even a skirmish with Ulrich and members of the angry-little-men-crew who fought the regular-sized-brothers for a front row view of the highly anticipated UFO picture to finally show itself.
That is when one of the girls screamed as though she were being murdered. The intensity of her high shrill screech, however, did not match the intensity of our reaction when we looked up from the photo and saw the horror at which she had been pointing.
The newest UFO had lost altitude, and as candles blew out, it tilted slightly and caught the plastic on fire.
A huge, bright-red, flaming, fire-ball was heading directly towards the Lennon's house.
The Zeppelin inferno was on a crash course...as panic ensued, hippies fled...girls screamed, and the Wolf Pack ran around like The Three Stooges (only about 20 of them - The 20 Stooges). Gustav began barking out instructions as several of the boys grabbed me and Gherhing the Great. The older guys ran to the Lennons like mosquitoes to a lamp on a dark night. The flaming cleaners bag had crashed landed smack dab on the western slope of the steep roof...and that plastic bag burned like napalm.
This was like Roswell or Viet Nam or like something out of a Sci-Fi movie - meets a war movie - meets Haight/Asbury - meets Father Knows Best.
Only us, right?
Like cockroaches or like Alfred Hickcocks "The Birds" we swarmed the Lennon House and made a human ladder that got a bunch of us to the second story and that is when they pushed me and Gherhing the Great up the ridge of the valley to scale the roof. Like a fire brigade from western movies (only different), up came bed pans, tin cans, and flower pots full of water. Gherhing and I doused the flames that refused to go out which only spread the fire out more on the asphalt shingle roof.
More hippies
More hair
More bodies
More containers
More water...eventually made it to us and we were able to save the Lennon house and the Lennons who had been watching their sisters perform on the Lawrence show - completely oblivious to the Harding Avenue pandemonium - directly overhead.
That night the famous Lennon Sisters sang that pop folk-song: "Where have all the flowers gone?"
I knew... they had been thrown out of flower pots which had been used to save their house - little did they know! "When will we ever learn?"
We left, just as fast as we descended - scurrying away from the scene of the crime, all unbeknownst to the Lennons below who were caught up in singing along as they watched their famous siblings on TV.
(It would only be years later that Dooh-Dooh Pants and I would re-roof the Lennon house as a catholic act of penance.)
Marching back down the street like a pack of aimless lemmings, the Wolf Pack hoisted Gherhing the Great and I on their shoulders as though we were like heroes returning from a victorious war campaign. Retreating to the bizarre sanctuary of the Dahlin living room, the boys destroyed the damning "UFO" picture and we danced - rowdy and ugly - but we danced! We stopped and twisted and gyrated to records of The Beatles on our stereophonic console until mom and Chewy finally arrived home from their emergency room visit.We fully intended on turning down the HiFi sense she was home, but dad had arrived home from selling his lots at Salton Sea. He turned the volume up and showed the older boys how to really dance.
We were dysfunctional and very imperfect, but family. And at least tonight, I wouldn't receive a template (blog post June 26th), be electrocuted (blog post July 8th), bit by a snake (blog Post Aug, 8th), coaxed into a hamper (blog Post June 5th) chased by a kook (Blog Post Aug 12) or left behind (blog post May 13th). Tonight - "Hotel Crazy"or not - I wouldn't have to push cars, taste spoiled milk and from the look of things - probably not barf.
I fit and it felt good!
Love was out there somewhere...I could sense it... but as good at this was it wasn't quite as good as Dancing with Irene, because she taught me what true love really was (Blog Post July 15th).
Good Night.
God bless.
You are loved... and part of much greater story...Markie D
I managed to survive my first week of 5th grade which concludes the end of Book 1!
(Sing this humming and snapping your fingers to the Addams Family theme song - it'll make more sense that way).
"They're Hairy and they're kooky,
Mischievous and spooky,
They're altogether ooky,
The Dahlin Family."
Du, du, du, du..snap snap
"Their house is an Aslyum
When people come to see 'em
The inmates are a screa-um.
The Dahlin Family."
That's just my family by the way, add to those numbers the Harding Avenue Gang and the Wolf Pack had numbers to be reckoned with. On one hand, think of the damage that could come from assembling an unruly crowd of that size. Entire small countries have been toppled by less. On the other hand (on a more positive note) - the vast number of hippies in our Venice Tribe also lent itself to the possibility of...say...putting out a fire - should something go awfully wrong. I said "positive" not "realistic"!
Q. And what is "Murphy's Law?" A. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong!
Problem was, that chaos always seemed to reign over order, and boy, did we cause a lot of problems.
While everyone in the neighborhood was gathered in our dining room (the room with the hospital-bed and bumper-pool table), Gustav my oldest brother and the oldest Blaser-boy from next door came up with a brilliant plan. What you have to remember is, that during this time in the sixties, everyone was all jacked-up and excited about exploring outer space and landing on the moon to gather green-cheese.
As I mentioned before, a new TV show came out two nights ago called Star Trek "Going where no man has ever gone before" add that to a couple TV shows which had already been out now for about a year, My Favorite Martin and Lost in Space, it was plain to see that rockets-to-the-moon and space travel were indeed on the forefront of everyone's mind.
Every stupid fifth-grade-boy in the world already had the twisted theme song from Lost in Space memorized, so they could they could inflict silly grammar-school torment on a smaller kid. They would sing, "It's about time, it's about space, it's about time to..." SMACK "...slap your face" slapping their latest victim in the face at the opportune moment - then laugh at them for falling for it, and then running away in order to avoid adolescent retribution. I probably don't have to tell you that the Wolf Pack (though, far too old for this kind of thing), was particularly fond of the ending part. The part where they slapped a younger sibling (like me) in the face.
300 slaps! You'd think, I would have caught on, right? Duh!
Anyway... we were in the middle of the "SPACE RACE" with the Russians and they were winning. They had already landed a spacecraft on the moon and the United States seemed to be falling behind - landing on the moon seemed to be light-years off at a distance at our snail's pace! This was all part of the Cold War and we were losing!
When we were still using monkeys, I wrote a letter to Washington asking if they wouldn't mind using any of my brothers in their rocket experiments. I told them it would be okay since they weren't a whole bunch smarter then chimpanzees (Oh, I made no mention about letting the monkeys out of the zoo).
When we started to use real-live human-beings, I wrote another letter asking again - if they wouldn't mind using any of my brothers. I told President Johnson that they wouldn't have to feel too sad if we lost one of them should something bad happened, since I had like 28 big brothers. My dad said we had plenty to go around if something should ever happen to one of us (that's why I didn't think they cared if they had left me at Salton Sea - I'm the second from the right in this picture - Oh and that was about a third of the group that were crammed in the station wagon and trailer, also pictured in the background. Blog Post: May 13, 2013).
I never got a letter back from the President or from NASA. That was a disappointment!
Anyway, at this time we were sure there was life on Mars and it seemed like every week some hick-couple in an old Ford pick-up, out in the middle of the boondocks, saw a flying saucer - we called 'em UFO's - that's short for Unidentified Flying Objects.
It was always down an old, dark, two-lane highway, far outside the city boundaries with no witnesses, where the aliens always seemed to abduct poor Clem in his jump-overalls or his wife Ethyl.
In pictures printed in the front page of the newspapers the UFO's looked like Frisbees, blurry footballs, a hat and one even looked like a cigar, but everyone was sure Martins had antennas and lived among us.
The Viking Tribe leader figured out a way to venture smack dab into the middle the UFO craze. They got dad's Polaroid camera, gathered up all of the necessary equipment and were destined to make local newspaper history. This was one story, that we hoped would make it on the front page of the paper, unlike all of the other times we ended up there, only to the embarrassment of my poor mom and dad.
Sending Donny next door to borrow a dry-cleaner bag from his dad's closet, the Dahlin's put all the other necessary stuff in a pile on the front sidewalk now officially deemed "Area 51"
McDonald straws, birthday candles and of course a Style Queen, hot-air, hair-blower for the initial lift off.
Although the original plan did involve UFO's, it didn't originally include a fiery crash landing on the roof of the Lennon house. We took our extensive resources and laid them out in "Area 51." Little did we know, however, that in the very next hour or so we would have a "Roswell Incident" on our hands that endangered the entire Lennon family.
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.
...about - the big house on the other corner that burned down. In the picture to the right - looking across the street from my house is another one of the large grand homes on our short block. If you examine the photo you can see Greek letters (P B X) hiding behind the palm tree on the front of the house. We woefully referred to this house as "The Fraternity." Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you looked at it (I guess) this magnificent Victorian house met it spurious and fateful end in a colossal fire of epic proportions. I'll describe that fateful night in greater detail later - but I can assure you that it did not burn down because of one of our UFO's. Also, this picture contains the only known photo that exist today of what later became the famous RAT KILLER. Parked right in front of "The Fraternity" is Gustav's Ford business coupe before he dropped in the notorious Rat Killer motor. Also, a thing to note, is the little kid (in front there, next to my little sister) is my best-est friend in the whole world - Tommy Blaser. 
