Wolf Pack and Trouble in Outer Space.

(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.  


Kids NEVER TRY THIS! EVER EVER EVER.

Until Next...

God Bless

上帝，造物主。

Gud velsigne

God zegene

Dieu vous

Бог благословит

Gud välsigne

Dios te  bendiga!