Silent Night - Geeze-Louise! Who Came Up with That?

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace

Silent night, holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight
Glories stream from heaven afar
Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ, the Savior is born
                                                        Christ, the Savior is born... SCREeeeeeeeeeeeEEECH! 

 

WAIT A MINUTE..pull the needle off the record player... "Silent night?"...Who came up with that? Yeah, everything could have been bright, but calm? Come on, I know I'm only 12, but I'm not stupid enough to buy that!  

 

About 6 months ago, Tommy and I were around the corner and this hippie couple were having a baby at home. Let me tell you - (after that experience - I don't recommend it), there was nothing silent night or calm about it.  The lady was screaming and the long-haired-hippie husband ran around like he was being attacked by our Veloci-Rooster.  He was shouting out for us to boil hot water and was frantically getting newspaper and towels and she was laying on the ground holding on to a door handle - grunting and pushing with her face turning red.  He was hysterical and ironically begging her (in hippie speak) to be calm...!  

 

"Like, mellow out, man."  "Don't be sweating it, you know...it's all right." "Think of flowers and peace and love...man"  and other stupid stuff like "far out and out of sight"

 

This really bugged me. Firstm he calling his wife "man." Second, he's telling her not to sweat it and all his psychedelic-groovy talk didn't help much - (this was no easy thing and she was sweating it big time). 

 

The baby started coming out and she began freaking out and then screaming and then he tried to calm her more and then she turned on him and said that this was all his fault - and then took one hand off the door handle - and them swung and knocked the hippie dude to the floor, and then she began yelling at him for being on the floor and then said she needed him. 

 

Then the big sissy began crying because he was watching a  miracle unfold before his eyes... I don't know if he was smoking that hippie herbal stuff - like my brothers grow in the backyard...but, like the dude was totally out of it and me and my 9-year-old friend practically delivered the baby ourselves. 

YUCK...there was water and some blood and like this gross extension cord thing and it was wrapped around the babies neck. The baby was blue and the mom was scared and I had to get the dead-beat hippie-dad to do something. Finally, after I knocked some sense into him, he unwound that cord thingy and the baby turned pink and then he spanked the baby in the bottom like we see doctors do on TV and the baby started crying... and everyone was happy and started crying again.

"Sheeze-Louise," there was nothing silent about this thing and there was nothing calm about this baby's birth...either. Everyone was nervous and on edge. It was messy and it was loud!

 

As I sit here and look at my Nativity set,  I can only imagine what it might have been like a couple thousand years ago in a barn...with cows mooing... and angels making a raucous overhead and shepherds and sheep... and all the other pieces that gathered on that blessed occasion that are part of our family's nativity set.

Now listen, I'm not saying it wasn't a "holy and glorious night" but it probably was not like the romantic notion of a "hallmark" moment in the song  "Silent Night."

 

I only have 50 cents to my name for mowing Frank Nargie's lawn, but if I had to bet... I would bet it all! Yep, I would bet all 50 cents that it was anything other than a quiet peaceful night when two frightened parents...real people were having a real baby in the worse circumstances possible.   

I know there was this whole "God-thing" going on...but these were real people having a real baby.  I'm sure they were concern about germs and about that cord thingy.. don't tell my Catholic friends, but Mary was likely going through a lot of pain like every other mother... and Joseph was probably concerned like every other "Father-type" person.  After a long journey...weary from traveling while pregnant and exhausted, she might not has had the resolve NOT to scream at Joseph - most likely she was acutely in-touch with her pain and emotions as any real lady having a baby would be.  There was no family, no help, the nervous dad-to-be was probably freaked out.  The baby probably came with a lot of pain and Joseph probably spanked the new born Jesus (just like hey do in the Western movies on TV) and thankfully baby Jesus started crying.

"No crying he makes"  Who came up with that nonsense?  Of course he cried, and the parents wanted him to. Add to that - cows...mooing... and angels singing... and shepherds visiting... then along comes a drummer boy playing his drum and the "Wise guys" who are on the way... this certainly doesn't add up to quiet night at all - bet my 50 cents.

It was real! God came in human flesh...wholly and fully human in every way. This is what makes the story so Amazing! God become human... with human feelings and human desires...having to feel pain and temptation just like us. It is the humanity part of who He that gave him the capacity to wholly identifies with us and it is the humanity part of His God-appearing in human form that gives credence to His perfect obedience. As God we would expect nothing - but perfect obedience...DUH! Hello? But, as fully man...He had to struggle with pain and food and hunger and sleep and prejudice and temptation and mistreatment and false accusations...and not give in to hate and pride and payback and His own selfish desires. 

In His humanity, he didn't want to go to the cross! Sister Edith (you know the Nun with the "head-tones"), told us the part of the Bible where Jesus prayed and said something like 'Father, I don't want to do it... is there anyway that I don't have to go and suffer on the cross - I don't look forward to having to suffer that much pain...and endure that much humiliation...but Father I will trust you instead...and be obedient to your will!" Wow... that was some pretty heavy stuff.  Can't say that I get it all, but let's not take away His humanity (or Mary's of Joseph's) from the Story - That's what makes it so great!

Noisy night, holy night
craziness, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and loud 

Please won't you sleep
Please won't you sleep

Noisy night, scarey night
Mary screams, Joseph freaks
Two real people, trying to figure it out
afraid until they see His face
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth "

Noisy night, holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight
Glories stream from heaven afar
Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ,a real baby is born 

Christ, the Savior is born. 

There! I fixed the song... this is more like it - bet my 50 cents!

Meanwhile the Wise Men are on the way, which we'll celebrate in a couple days on January 6th - in what we call the "Feast of the Epiphany."  In the mean time I might have to share with you the wrapping paper debacle that continued from this Christmas morning for many more years to come, which added to my PTSD.


Oh, and here are my neighbors (the Lennon Sisters) singing "Silent Night"  (I told them, that although I had delivered a baby, that it was okay for them to sing it this way) and so they did!

The origin of the Christmas carol we know as Silent Night was a poem that was written in 1816 by an Austrian priest called Joseph Mohr. On Christmas Eve in 1818 in the small alpine village called Oberndorf it is reputed that the organ at St. Nicholas Church had broken. Joseph Mohr gave the poem of Silent Night (Stille Nacht) to his friend Franz Xavier Gruber and the melody for Silent Night was composed with this in mind. The music to Silent Night was therefore intended for a guitar and the simple score was finished in time for Midnight Mass. Silent Night is the most famous Christmas carol of all time!

Conclusion: To a Dahlin Christmas (the nightmare on Harding Avenue).

(continued) 1:40 am Christmas Morning...during the unwrapping frenzy at the Dahlin house.


While crumpled wrapping paper was whizzing overhead, Pinky was sitting in his large overstuffed chair busily cracking the nuts in his Christmas stocking and putting the shells in one of the ten ashtrays that decorated the eclectic living room comprised of "Early-American-Thrift." 

The pile of colorful paper continued to accumulate to about waist deep and at precisely 1:43am the "Zombie Hand" of the" Ghost of Christmas-yet-to-come" sunk its sharp claws into Pinky's left ankle (I'm pretty certain it wasn't Casper the "Friendly Ghost."

Pinky shot up like the botched-launch of a missile fired from a submarine. Up he shot. Head dizzy from sedentary low blood pressure, the colossal human being spun on one leg as if he could come crashing down in any direction.

Leaning one way, the Wolf Pack made a mad scramble in the opposite direction to extricate themselves from the impact area of the seismic catastrophe. Then Pinky swayed the other direction which caused the troops to move again from one side of the room to the other. Like something out of a Three Stooges movie, this comical clambering took place three or four times before he finally blacked out and landed backwards into his chair with a giant crack that could be heard around the world. Cracked walnut and hazelnut shells scattered into the air like the fallout from a bomb and spread a layer on the wrapping paper and sifted through to the floor.

"We didn't want that chair anyway" Gustav said mockingly.

Even though everyone was thankful that Pinky had finally landed, I was still freaked out about "The Hand" and Matilda was still clinging to dad's head with her tiny hands cupped over his squished eyes which made him navigate through the whole episode blind.Her leg caught the tinsel covered tree and knocked it over...into the center of living room adding to the clutter and chaos.

Mom made us sound off one by one until we had discovered that the youngest Dahlin was not accounted for. missing. Kjersten was gone! Panic ensued, fearing that the baby girl of the family had been killed in the latest calamity.

Mom prayed to Saint Anthony!
Dad barked out orders!
The boys shuffled their feet through the massive wrapping pile in hopes of stumbling across something solid that might be a body. Occasionally, words not authorized by the Catholic church were spewed by angry lips every time one of the older boys stepped on the sharp fragment of a hazelnut or walnut shell.


I pretended to look behind the couch from where I was perched, as though, what I was doing was important. I wasn't about to let the Zombie Hand of death grab my leg. When Pinky landed, I could see the scratch marks on his leg and knew that there was something hidden under the paper and I didn't want to find out what it was.

"The Hand" could help itself to one of the older boys for all I care, but not me. No sir, not me! I nearly died two months ago at McIlliot's pool and it was no fun. My leg still ached where they took the stitches out so I was not any any mood to let a monster kill me on Christmas day.

Mom solved the mystery of "The Christmas Boogie man" and "The lost little sister" when she found Kjersten under a pile of wrapping paper in tears. Turns out that Kjersten had gotten buried under the accumulating pile of rubble and was crawling underneath trying to find her way out. Groping about in the dark, she discovered Pinky's ankle and clung on as though her life depended up on it.  Thankfully, when Pinky spun around, it flung Kjersten five feet away under the safety of the coffee table, which had been excavated by mom.

In "The wrapping paper debacle of '65" we had inadvertently scooped up the dog and threw it out with the trash. Since then, we have lost and broken many presents and lots of toys. Everyone was afraid that it wouldn't bode well for my parents if the local paper ran the story about child endangerment for throwing a kid away in the alley in a heap of multicolored wrapping paper.

This year though we lost only four presents, mainly because of the manhunt... we didn't, however, loose any children or throw away any pets. So all in all - other than the crushed chair and a downed Christmas tree it was a good Christmas at the Dahlin house   We laughed and we sang and we were loud.

And one of the Blasers next door heard the raucous at our house, crumpled a wad of wrapping-paper, looked around carefully to make sure a parent wasn't watching and tossed the crumpled paper into the middle of the floor. The words weren't verbalized, but that particular Blazer was getting tired of normal and wished they could be a little more like the Dahlins.

We just came from church and the Priest read  Luke 2:8-11 "And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord."

The way I look at things as a 12-year-old Religious-Philosopher was that if God could send His Son to earth to save people from their sins...then certainly he came to the right house. Surely there wasn't much good to be found in the Wolf Pack, so I figured that God should probably be down at the Lennon house looking for someone who did deserve to be saved - Lord knows we didn't.

But then, maybe that's what love is all about. True love wasn't just loving those who loved you...but loving those who don't care about you, loving those who hung you on a cross and loving people despite the fact that they hate you. God's love is perfect in that it loves those that don't deserve it.  I guess that's what unconditional love is all about.

And that is the message of Christmas - The One true God of the universe, Maker of all things - never giving up on us - relentlessly perusing us with His Love - even when we don't do a darned thing to earn one bit of it.

And maybe - just maybe, there is a little bit of Dahlin in all of us...and maybe not everyone is as normal or a perfect as we think!                                                  Merry Christmas

The Nightmare of Christmas Present

1:43 am (middle of the night) after Midnight Mass

You know that moment in a horror flick when the hand comes up out of the ground, or out of the water, or out of grave... (it doesn't really matter what it comes out of) - but in any case, it scares the snot out of you...well, this is exactly what happened at our house on this particular Christmas in the dark hours of the early morning.


Out of nowhere, a hand - "The Hand" shot up through the 4-foot strata of wrapping paper and grabbed one of Pinky's thick ankles. Ejected out of his chair like a misfired rocket, Pinky screamed bloody murder if he had just been attacked by the legendary one armed hatchet murderer. In a dizzy head-rush, Pinky began to spin in circles as though he were about to fall over and the Wolf Pack panicked, scrambling to get out of the way - for fear of being squished to death...as if by an 8 ton tree.






As I mentioned before, our house was haunted, so I wasn't worried too much about being Pinky falling over on top of me. I was more concerned about "The Zombie Hand" of the Boogie-man - so I freaked out and jumped up on the back of couch while Matilda climbed up and perched herself on top dad's head.

Screaming...Panic...Fear and Mayhem broke out... This was our house on Christmas.




I'm pretty sure this is not they way it is most normal families.  My friend, Julie, at Saint Mark's told me about their Christmas. She said they had a fake, white Christmas tree and had the cool colored lights...the kind you see in the window displays at department stores. If she said this to make me jealous - it worked. The best part about the picture was not the green ornaments on the Styrofoam flocked Christmas tree or that she was still taller than her little brother, but the mini-skirt!  

That was was pretty cool - I guess!


32 minutes earlier: 1:11am.



My mother remembered back to the days when we were young and in control and longed for those days again - but they had been lost forever.








But the fact that my Brothers had grown up to be full fledged hippies - never stopped her from trying to make our Christmas like they used to be.

Good luck with that one Mrs. D.  So on the way home from Mass...by the time we were passing by John Gillemot's house Mom was already screaming for us to pay attention. She was about to give the annual "Pre-Christmas-Speech" on how we were to open our presents.

 It didn't help that we had to pass the Famous Lennon sister's house...it only served to make things worse. I swear you could angels signing "Gloria in Excelsis Deo" as we rounded the corner and passed by their statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Mom looked towards the Lennon with begging eyes as if hoping her kids could be more like Bill and Sis's kids: sweet, obedient, kind, thoughtful, intelligent, musical, reverent...(I think the list was pretty big - because her pause was long).

As if she were herding a bunch of feral-cats... she screamed all the way to the front door of the house and charged inside in front of the motley crew. Throwing herself against the two great big sliding door that lead into the living room (where the presents had been delivered by Frank Nargie while we were at Church).

Mom gave us her list of demands...as though we were prisoners of war and was threatening to withhold our weekly rations should we not comply.  I wanted it mom's way but nobody listened. The older boys tried to open the doors and prior her fingers off as she shouted her famous last words. "Over my dead body!" 

That didn't work... then the list of names and the "Clause"  GustavBjornKnutLeifUlrich...hell...whatever your name is...UNDER PAIN OF MORTAL SIN!" she screamed hoping to get our attention.

SILENCE for one split second as the Wolf Pack contemplated purgatory then rushed head long into the room and assaulted the presents as if they were a dead caribou that lay under the Charlie Brown Tree.

Whoosh…wizzzzz…Bam
Presents were chucked and flew across the room like misguided missiles striking members of the brood in the forehead!

Picking up a present and reading the label...someone would say "Here...this one's for Dooh-Dooh Pants" and  fling it - not really caring whether or not it got broken or where it ended up - other than hoping someone got hurt in the process. 

"This one's for... Puke-Breath" another brother would say, just before the indiscriminate tossing of projectile that nearly cracked a window. 

 Whoosh…KaBam!

Presents flew... Mom fumed...Dad mumbled...and Kjerstan and I "stopped, dropped and took cover" as if the Air Raids Sirens were blaring in alarm.

There was no soft golf clap of appreciation after each patient unwrapping that neither honored the gift-giver or acknowledge the person receiving the gift.      My mom's biggest nightmare had come true. 

1:26 am 
Shredded rapping paper was carelessly flung into the center of the room like the living room was the Sepulveda Dump.

1:42 am 
The loud chaos... the present opening frenzy continued at a fevered pitch and the strata of torn-up wrapping paper began to pile up higher and higher. 4 feet high - a record and that was when the Zombie attack happened. 

1:43 am  The Hand emerged from under the strata of crumpled paper and clawed Picky's ankle, which set off an unfortunate chain of events...

I will share the rest of the story on Christmas Day... until then be blessed and be a blessing! On this Christmas Eve know that you are loved dearly - the message of Christmas! 

You Got Nothing On Us - Charlie Brown

I'm getting to the "Great Fire of 1968," but since it is close to Christmas I think I'll take a couple post to share what Christmas was like at my house on Harding avenue in Venice California.

I have tried to tell people about Christmas at my house...but find that there are really no words adequate to describe the level of chaos that took place every Christmas right after Christmas Mass.  I will try, but (I can guarantee you), I'm not even convinced that Hollywood with a big budget would be able to portray on the big screen the scene at our house at Christmas.  Whatever I do here... however, I portray this... no matter how much flourish and embellishment I add...use your imagination, multiply everything by 10 and it'll only get you close.



Remember the Wolf Pack began as somewhat normal children. We did things that other normal Catholic families might do for our family Christmas traditions.

We had a manger; a nativity set with Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus!  We went to bed at night dressed in pajamas... we woke up at 11:00 pm and dressed for church. We went to midnight Mass and came home to find that Santa had filled our living room with presents and toys. Oh what joy!

It is quite possible that we even read the Christmas story from Matthew or Luke's gospel...said, "Happy birthday Jesus" and unwrapped our presents like regualr people. It is likely that we did that. I have some great pictures that would support this rather civil and ordinary Christmas proceedings. (I submit the picture on the right as evidence to support these claims).

 I'm the baby on the front of the rocking horse.









(On the left) I'm the baby crawling on blanket.



Look at how adorable and how normal we once were...



We are the model of the perfect Catholic Family...

The Nuns at Saint Marks Convent would be proud and we might even put the Lennons to shame... could it get any better or cuter than this? 

Now it is important to remember that at this amazing time in the evolution of the Wolf Pack (before the boys turned into wild animals and began devouring flesh and turning on one another) I was a mere baby and have no such recollection of this sweet and reverent demeanor.

By the time my memory kicks in (at about 6 or 7) the older boys are teenagers and had been growing more and more out of control.

By 1968 with the addition of the "Mexican Tomato Plants,"  the Veloci-Rooster, the alligator, the hippie-"girlie/man"-cave, the pond, the mosquitoes, the fleas, the snake cages, the stacks and stacks of old decomposing National Geoprpahic magazines... the addition of cars out front, trailers, boats, car parts and also with the additional members (we kept adding to our clan) Christmas was no longer the idealistic picture seen above. 

By this time in our history Dooh-Dooh Pants had gotten involved in the Boy Scouts and dad helped out every year with the Troop 32 Christmas tree lot.  We sold trees that started at a dollar-fifty that went all the way up to $3.50 for the most expense Nobel Firs on the tree lot. The Blasers next door always managed to buy the best looking tree - I think one year they even paid $5.00 for their perfectly shaped tree. 

My dad would never be caught dead paying that kind of money for a Christmas Tree. He made a dollar donation to the Boy Scouts and somehow managed to bring home a tree worst than Charlie Brown's. Mom wasn't too keen about that and dad would usually bring another tree home from the Boy Scout lot that was twice was bad that no one wanted to buy. As a clever and frugal Swede, he would use old twine to tie the two trees together. Sometimes he drilled holes in the trunk of the first tree and stuck branches from the second tree into the holes to increase the foliage on the incredibility sparse stick he brought home in the first place (This hole-drilling thing only took place on the particular Christmas' when he could find the electric drill motor, find the drill motor chuck and find a drill bit - the convergence of all three was indeed a rarity).




But the good new was: TINSEL!   Tinsel had to be Swedish invention or by thought up by someone from a culture that was also defined by frugality and use of imagination.  You could buy a ton of tinsel for like a buck at Pick and Save and gob it so thoroughly on the branches that you could hide any manner of hideous tree underneath. And that's what we did .

The more kids, the less money spent on the tree; the less money spent on a tree - the more tinsel we packed on the thin and meager branches. Sometimes, I wondered if Charles Shutlz visited our house and got his idea for "Charlie Brown's Christmas."

I wouldn't be surprised if we were his inspiration. 

Anyway, the rambunctious boys were growing up and took all the youthful energy they had for climbing and fighting and channeled it together along with smoking the hippie-stuff out back and melded it into the craziest, the loudest and the rancorous frivolity known in the history of mankind! 

But by the time I had a brain, I'm sure that whatever was taking place at our house on Christmas was much different than what was happening over at the Famous Lennon Sisters' house across the street. I happen to know as fact that the events at our house on Christmas was totally different from what was happening next door at the Blasers.

Deductive logic would conclude that a Dahlin Christmas frenzy had to be completely different from just about anything that was taking place at most homes around the world with those who were celebrating Christmas.  

My mom had a dream. Her dream was that we could be more like the Lennons, (which I sure looked more like something in the picture on the right)  My Mom spent considerable energy describing the rules for engagement as if was a military briefing on how we were to open presents  when we arrived home from Midnight Mass.

She had a perfectly good image of organization...of cooperation... and of  this quiet and peaceful present exchange which she hoped would be a bit more subdued than the lurid din of an active battle zone in Vietnam.

At 11:00 pm Mr. D would bang the ceilings and walls with the handle of broom, and like the staff sergeant, he would begin shouting out commands for the troops to get dressed for war...ummm... I mean for church. The regular high-octane hullabaloo would break out in the mad scramble as the hippies were trying to find pants to wear, because my mom band jeans with holes in them. As usual we fought over socks and I had to sniffed around the floor of Flea-Bait's room looking for stinky old socks to wear that no one wanted to touch (they were shiny and stiff and hard and stood up all by themselves).  

This 50 minute scramble usually involved a lot of screaming, name calling, booger flinging (that was my favorite -I hope you noticed the tone of sarcasm - because boogers always activated my heightened gag reflex) along with Dooh-Dooh-Pants passing potent gas that had the power to empty entire rooms .

My mom's  vision for a serene and sacred evening was usually shot to "H E double hockey sticks" before we even left the house for church (that was one of her words). By the time we rounded the corner in front of the Lennon house, she would be shouting words like this all the way down the street right up to the moment the 14 of us darkened the doors at Saint Marks church, 10 minutes late for midnight mass looking slightly better than drowned rats, but not much better than refugees who had just escaped through dirt tunnels from a prisoner of war camp.  

I will try my very best to paint as accurate a picture as possible - knowing how daunting that task really is.

So until our next time together in my blog titled: The Hand  
               

Merry Christmas

God jul

Wesołych Świąt

¡Feliz Navidad!

Crăciun fericit

С Рождеством

З Різдвом

Весела Коледа

Joyeux Noël!

Καλά Χριστούγεννα

 Buon Natale!

חג שמח

Chúc mừng Giáng sinh

Hippies, Skunk Weed and Baseball!

I apologize to my faithful friends and followers world over...this has been an extremely busy and very trying week at my house, where nothing has gone according to plan.

Now, I want to get back to the story of Markie d.

Laying in bed wondering if I'd ever walk again, I figured that my less-than-illustrious little-league baseball career was over. By this time in seventh grade all my friends had moved up from Minors to the Majors - expect for me. "Gherhing the Great" had grown an inch over the summer and now I was officially the shortest boy in the seventh grade class at Saint Marks School. Heck - as far as I knew, I might have been the shortest seventh grader in the whole world.

              That's Gherhing the Great on the far right.   →

The people in the league let me stay down a division even though was too old, because I was so small; I knew it and I knew everyone else knew it too. The most embarrassing thing is that they nominated me to play in the All-Star game and I had to show up pretending that I was something, when I knew I just a skinny, little fraud in a hand-me-down uniform that was too big.


Oh well, before my accident at McIlliot's pool, I played first base in my first and last "All Star" game and got some kind of trophy. I don't know if I really earned it or not, so I hid the trophy away from my family in the big, o' steamer-trunk buried under junk in the front room on the second story - where the "John the Baptist" fox furs had been decaying for the past billion years (Video blog post...Oct 28 2013).

Since no one in my family came to see me play in the all star game - I guess my secret was safe. 

By this time, my leg was healing and I could crutch myself not only to to the bathroom and back, but had finally gotten enough strength to go back to school. Because of this new gift of mobility I was lucky enough to join the family downstairs for our annual catastrophic upheaval of joking, name-calling and inevitable food fight -  known in other normal households by another name - "Thanksgiving."

After much of the chaos in our house had calmed down to the mere roar of a War-Zone, Dooh-Dooh Pants flung moist turkey dressing on my neck that he had pulled out of his mouth. Not knowing exactly what the brown, icky, stinky stuff was, I couldn't crutch quick enough to the toilet and vomited all the way to the bathroom. That was the creme de la creme... the climatic crescendo that delighted the entire Wolf Pack. Thanksgiving was now complete at our house.

Everyone laughed. Laughing at people was what they liked to do best of all (that's why I didn't dare tell them about my trophy- they would have made sure to totally humiliate me).  

Crutches were kind of cool. Horrible for school, but really good for defending oneself against older brothers who tried to torture me. They were lucky that I was too busy hobbling to the bathroom on those wooden weapons than to use them for my protection. Trust me - No, trust "Flea-Bait!" He could tell you that I was a lot better with those old wooden crutches than I was with a wooden baseball bat any day.
         
Wolf Pack be warned.   Yeah, I know I sound tough, right? But the older boys didn't take my threats very serious when it was always like 10 against one.. and especially now that they had bigger fish to fry!

The bigger fish was the Veloci-Rooster!   

The hippies had to figure out how to get back to the Mexican Tomato Plants and to Wall Drug without being attacked. If the cunning bird of prey allowed them free access to the ivy cave, it was only because the fowl thing was setting a trap on them like he did with the "The Chicken Lady"

Only...only they were usually high on the loco-weed when they discovered their exit (their means of escape) had been completely cut off.

It was funny! At least dad and I thought it was. We sat in the house and rolled with with laughter when they tried to negotiate with "Tomahawk attack helicopter" as if it were one of them.

"Hey, there little fella. Its like, it's all good...happy, happy?" They asked  "Like dude, man it's all groovy...you know...we're all one with the same cosmic universe man!"

"Bro...like, it's all copacetic...man."  

"Yeah dude...bro...peach and love and granola and flower power man"  Kjersten, dad and I couldn't help but laugh, because we knew what was going to happen next.

They thought they had talked the vigilante bird (with the "sidewinder missiles") down with all their mellow hippie nonsense.

"Like man...we're just like you. You want to be understood like us...you know man - Love is where it's at."

The next second, under attack,  we hear 7 of the hippies screeching in pain and laughing at each other at the same time. And then falling, and then stumbling, and then laughing at each other, and then screaming, and then begging their bird-friend-brother child-of-the-cosmos to stop. Oh my goodness, this was better than the Star Trek episode a couple weeks ago when William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols shared the first interracial kiss on US television.

The skunk smelling boys would desperately rush up the back steps - pulling and pushing each other to get in the back door to safety, then seeing us they would walk in and act calm as if pretending like they weren't just out back in the hippie-hideout of Wall Drug smoking it up.  And the funny thing was, I don't think they knew what just happened.  I think that "what-ever-it-was" they were smoking, made them forget EVERY TIME. And every time it was the same: they would emerge from the hollow - try to talk down the crazy rooster with razor-sharp talons having forgotten the results from the last negotiation failure.

For those of you with androids   TV's first interracial kiss

I'm getting to the story of the "Great Fire" of '68.  I'm just setting the stage for the events leading up to it.    

  

Hell Hath no Fury...Veloci-Rooster Conclusion.

(Continued from last blog posting)

Around the corner from us was this single-mother, who was probably way ahead of her time. She lived in a small house that was sandwiched between the "Fraternity" house at the corner of our street and just before the convent which was across the street form Saint Marks Catholic School. (A convent is a place where all the Sisters of The Holy Names of Jesus and Mary live).

 
Everyday, for the sake of educating her two young children, this lady brought them over to our house for a lesson in science and biology.  Where else could you expect to find a giant 20-year-old frog (the size of a beagle) named, "Grandpa," swallowing baby chickens whole and wrestling rats like they were mere crickets.

Where else in the city could you expect find tortoises cavorting or rabbits mating on any given day.  With the infestation of guinea pigs and rabbits along with the snakes and all the other critters, we had a veritable zoo in our backyard. This is not to mention the long-haired hippies who belonged in the Zoo right next to their primate relatives. With our plethora of animals and the per diem enterprise of procreation on prominent display, what a brilliant way to teach your children about nature and sex education. 


As Catholics, we were not allow to talk about those kinds of things but I'm sure Darwin would be pleased with this lady's progressive approach to home-education. 

These field trips with her 4-year-old and stroller-bound infant had become routine. She was as regular as the Milk Man, the Post Man or the Helms Bakery Man (even though Herbie the Helms Man was mad at us for stealing his eclairs - Harding Avenue was still on his route (Blog Post 8/3/13).

Her children especially loved the chickens and would spend considerable time staring though the chicken wire at the hens in our crudely built hen-house. Her 18-month-old would stand in the stroller, giggling, gawking, and ecstatically drooling down her bib while her 4-year-old jumped up and down, enthusiastically waving his hands in an awkward way, as if he broken chicken wings, while making attempts at chicken sounds. He had very thick glasses and looked special and this only helped to reinforce our assumptions.  

The way I looked at it (keeping my family in mind - who managed to find the worst in people and christian that with an awful nickname), I figured that this lady was probably lucky to have such a tame nickname like "The Chicken Lady."   Seriously, it could have been a whole lot worse!  She had learned to let herself in through the side gate and usually showed up unannounced.

MIND YOU - I was up in bed with my leg sutured in a million places AND COULD NOT WARN HER!

She had absolutely no idea that the delicate laws of the universe had been change last night when the group of angry small man and hippies climbed over the fence (fell really) and brought home:

THE BEAST!

EL POLLO LOCO!

 VELOCI-ROOSTER!

THE TERROR OF VENICE!

Unfortunately, understanding the new rules that governed the universe came with a terrible price tag. One that would required a bloody and protracted learning curve for anyone and anything that entered our backyard, including the herbal-smoking-perpetrators of this latest fowl kidnapping.  

This bird was definitely related to its dinosaur ancestor, the Veloci-Raptor. Though it had the brain the size of a pistachio nut it was a devious and cunning predator. (Speaking of gray matter, my dad said my brother's brains were not more than the size of a walnut. Which made them slightly more intelligent and more capable in their diabolical scheming.)

Anyway, the calculating beast let the poor Chicken Lady push her stroller all the way back to the chicken coop.   The kid squawked, the baby drooled and the rooster from hell stealthily moved in behind them to seal off the exit path.


This unprovoked attack by the raptor of prey, would be its revenge for the kidnapping the night before.

Talons blazing...up, up, up flew El Pollo Loco! In a rear assault as the Veloci-Rooster struck the lady in the derriere time and time again like something out of a Hitchcock horror movie.

                              "Hell has no fury like a mother scorned"

Under siege, the mother pushed the baby down into the stroller and closed her in the bonnet. She protected the 4-year-old by shielding him with her body. There was only one way out of the primordial graveyard of old car parts, decaying boats, and travel trailers —that had no "travel" left in them. She could not navigate her baby stroller over the decaying remains of prehistoric washing machines and outboard motors that haven’t had pistons in them for ten years. She had no other option, but to go through the BEAST! 

Ramming the rooster with the stroller and beating it off with a trashcan lid, she eventually managed to escape the ravages of the taloned-beast with only 16 bloody puncture wounds. The poor woman moved from Venice and was never heard from again. As for the crazy-eye'd rooster, the Chicken Lady had only managed to wound the bird's pride thus making it meaner than it ever was.

Venice - Harding - Dahlins - Marijuana Thieves BEWARE! 

Four Eyes sneaked in past the foul-mouthed mynah bird in the entry to visit me in my room so he could inform me of all the details of today's events (I was sad that I couldn't be there to protect the Chicken Lady and her two children). Four Eyes pulled a pen and notepad out of his pocket and began writing notes. While writing, he droned on about how in the future they should make a movie about Veloci-raptors. He said that because of our rooster, someone in Hollywood should portray the raptor as a close relative and make it have the cunning ability to hunt its prey. I hit him in the head and said, "You're so dumb! For real! Four-Eyes. No one would ever be stupid enough to believe something like that! Not ever! 

A minute later, I heard some of the hippies in the backyard screaming bloody murder. Apparently they had been back at Wall Drug and they had been trapped by Veloci-Rooster.  I giggled thinking this was divine payback. Four Eyes left and I could go to sleep on with something positive on my mind :)

Next the Big Fire and the scandalous tightie-whities.

The Veloci-Rooster and What Does the Fox Say?

It was October 1968 and I laid in the old hospital bed (that had been moved upstairs to my room) recovering from the big accident at McElliots' pool that should killed me.  My leg had been stitched together and looked worst than Frankenstein's face. Most of my leg was still numb felt like they had installed a metal plate inside my leg behind the 97 stitches that ran a zig-zagged path from above my knee all the way up my left thigh.

President Johnson had said that he would not seek re-election which made all of us Dahlins really sad, since we felt like we had bonded with him a couple months ago along the shore of that muddy Texas river. My dad said that the biggest laugh the President had during his time in the White House was when he pranked us with the bit about snapping turtles (Blog 9/14/13).

Everything was was going pretty good with the Apollo 7. It was still orbiting around the earth at this time, which was pretty important for the United States, because we had been so far behind the Soviet Union in the Race to Space!  We need some good news from all the bad news. JFK's brother, Robert Kennedy's assassination in June and Martin Luther King Jr's assassination 2 months before that - along with Vietnam war protest, the marijuana plants hidden in our backyard, the fleas in my bedroom and the crazy-attack Rooster, "El Pollo-Loco" the boys were about to bring home.  We desperately needed something positive to cheer about.   I did!

In the meantime my faithful and loyal dog, Poochie, laid on my bed and chewed his butt because of all the fleas. By taking down the pool, (seen to the right) we had gotten rid of most to the "mosquito problem" that we created in California when we had traveled back east with my Dad's "Sugar Water" invention in our hair(blog post 9/21/13). But now our house had become infested with fleas instead. 

Don Blaser next door had hated our mosquitoes and was even more passionately opposed to our migrating fleas that ended up on their perfectly groomed collie. 



Everyone wanted to blame my mangy mutt Poochie, but my dad said he thought the fleas were from the hippie-commies that my older brothers had evolved into.      

Here is a picture of them.

Oops sorry - wrong picture! 







Here's a couple pictures of the evolution of my sibling wolf-pack.
 

 



from here










                                                                            To here










to here

                                                                                     to here












to here








                                                



                                                                   to This

I could be wrong, but I think they are picking fleas off each other in this picture...I wondered if that is why they launched the rockets so far away from Venice, so that none of our fleas would make it abroad the Apollo rocket-ships. Image having to live with a couple inside your space suit.  "No Sir," someone in charge of NASA probably said, "lets put the launch pads in Texas or in Florida."  
 
Anyway, at midnight they sent Syndrom and Cosmo and Ulrich over the chain-link fence at the toxi-water, drainage-ditch (near where they converted the marsh lands into what we call the Marina Del Rey) to fetch that great, big, ugly, killer rooster!  And from the story, Four Eyes came back and reported to me - it sounded like the dreaded Veloci-Rooster got the best of Ulrich and his "Small-Man" crew.

I not going to lie. When he told me the story, I thought all 97 stitches were going to pop!

That crusty old bird (if you can call it that) herded all three of the boys into a corner and took flight into an all-out air-assault.  He boys cowered together as the bird repeatedly struck them with it's sharp 4 inch talons.  Under the influence of hippie-herbal "Mexican Tomato Plants" the Viking Tribe on the outside of the fence thought this was the funniest thing had they ever seen.

"Reefer madness!...Reefer madness!" one of them kept shouting between hearty guffaws.
"Ha..ha...can you dig it bro"

 While the rooster attacked, the three trapped boys screamed like little girls that made the guys on the outside of the fence -  laugh even harder. "That bird is going ape on the little spaz'es...Ha...ha..ha"

"Dude...far out... groovy"

Smoking the cannabis may have made this funny for the guys on the outside, but for the three trapped monkeys on the inside it apparently didn't do anything to numb the pain

"In your face" Ulrich screamed angrily.

"Hey...hey...hey...hey...hey―" said one of outsiders in reply...until interrupted.

"Cheese it! The Cops!  The motley crew took cover until the patrol car passed and then sent a couple of guys over the fence who bagged the bird from behind, while it was distracted withdrawing blood from the angry "little-man" crew.

As Four Eyes related all the juicy details of the story... he told me about the boys conversation once they had gotten back from this latest escapade and regrouped at Wall Drug at 2:00 in the morning.

The three boys were still whimpering and whining from the 68 bloody pock-marks inflicted by the Veloci-Rooster that had been released in the Dahlin backyard.

In a sing-song voice, Primo said, "Cock-a-doodle-do, says the rooster. "
"Ow ow ow, says the little man crew..." Weltz added in perfect sync.

"Poochie goes woof" said another keeping pace with the song.
"The cat goes, meow"
"The bird goes, tweet"
"And mouse goes...squeak"

"Yeah, but what do the stupid dweebs say? ow, ow ow!" They all laughed at their cleverness

Chewbacca (who really wasn't paying attention) said, "Yeah... man... but what does a fox say?"

The hordes of hippies stopped dead in their tracks and couldn't come up with an answer. 
"Idiot" Ulrich shouted in an attempt at payback.
Chewbacca swatted him in the head

Laughter... then the boys started making up stuff.
"Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!

Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!
Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!"

"Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!
Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!
Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!"

"Joff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!
Tchoff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!
Joff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!"

"What does a fox say?"  They mimicked Chewbacca... and they all laughed again until they were bent over in tears.

When Four Eyes told me this part of the story, I told him this was the stupidest thing I had ever heard.
He said, "Yeah... but knowing your people, it'll probably become a song some day."
"My people? What do you mean by my people ?"  I hoped he was talking about hippies and not Swedes.
When he saw the intent look on my face, he stuttered (backtracking) and said.. "Oh...oh...oh...not Swedes, but probably hippies."

We both signed in relief - that I didn't have to hit him with the crutch next to my bed. Then we both laughed and said together "Yeah, like that will ever happen!"

"Jinx" I said first - which had stopped him from talking!  'Yeah,'  I thought 'like anything even remotely as stupid as the drug induced "Fox Song" could ever happen!' Right?

Now that we have acquired the dreaded Veloci-Raptor,  I guess I should probably tell you about the incident with the poor, poor, unsuspecting "the Chicken lady" and her two children.

What Does a Fox Say?

The Veloci-Raptor Cometh...

My dad used to be called "Daddio" by the brotherhood of the Viking "Wolf-Pack" when we were younger, but now the older guys just referred to him as Mr. D as though he was no longer a parent, but a roommate.  Mr. D moved our old hospital bed upstairs and into my bedroom.  The old rusty thing had smelled like toxic metal ever since it was donated to us, back in 1962 when Puke-Breath had broken his leg into a billion pieces (Okay, 8 to be exact),  That was when my brothers (affectionately known as the Wolf-Pack) climbed over the chain-link fence at Saint Marks school in their escape after breaking into the church vestry and drinking all the communion wine.                                                                                       There they were: 6 or 7 drunken' platinum-haired, midgets trying to pull Puke-Breath out from under 500 feet of schoolyard fence they had managed to knock over. 

YEP, it made the front page of the Evening Outlook (our local newspaper) like many of the other Dahlin Exploits like the "Salton Sea" story (blog 5/13/13) and the time we "Let all the monkeys out of the Zoo" (Blog 4/29/13)

Anyway...that bed ended up being pretty handy and stayed in our dining room for years, because of all the broken bones our daring brood had suffered.  (As you can see to the left we all had special climbing skills - it was like we entered military boot camp as soon as we came shooting out of the womb).

Now with the bed in my room... I felt like I had been banished to recover from the near-fatal accident when I lost the wrestling match with the glass wall at the McElliot's pool.  My mom prayed to Saint Anthony and said it was a miracle that I lived. (If my mom has any hope of being canonized a saint, she said this will be one of the two miracles she needs to qualify. She said the other miracle is living in the same household as the rest of her offspring. My brothers jokingly said her second miracle was giving birth to all of us - overhearing that, my dad piped in and said that the second miracle was that there were no shallow graves in the backyard.  I think what that meant, was that she didn't kill any of us. He felt - that alone was a miracle).  But I think murder might nullify one's candidacy for sainthood, since it broke one of the "Ten Suggestions"  Number 11 was "Thou shalt not electrify a Nun" and we already did that.  The reasons they were called suggestions in our house is that we had already broke most of them.                                                                               

As I lay here in that ancient, squeaky, metal-smelling, hand-crank hospital-bed I took comfort in my dog who loved me unconditionally and all the get well cards from my mom's classroom - 6S.  6 S is the classroom at Saint marks with the 33 kids in the sixth grade on the south-side of the long east-and-west running hallway - that stretches from one end of the school to the other. 

I kind-of wished I had received some cards from Marilyn or Theresa or Julie or John or Andrea or Keith or Ricky or RALPH or any of the other kids in my seventh grade class...but I didn't. So again I say, thanks to mom for her rescue and to the sixth grade class, which she made write all of my get well cards.                                                                       

I'm not going to lie; it wouldn't have been so bad to hear some kind words of sympathy from my brothers like, "Sorry you almost died"  "Sorry your leg was almost cut off" "Sorry you can't walk for a long time" "Sorry for your pain" "Sorry that we didn't stop dancing to the Rolling Stones and come to help" or  "Get well soon, you little dweeb,"  but like that was ever going to happen!  RIGHT?   They were still too mad that dad made them help carry the million-pound bed frame up all those flights of stairs which they blamed on me.

They gave me some Velcro-tipped sponge darts, knowing that when I threw them for the first time at the target, that I'd be stuck in bed all day without being able to retrieve them.  That was their form of sadistic torture...and let me tell you - IT WORKED! My beloved Poochie, wouldn't fetch them and it was like Dante's Inferno - the thing I desired most was just out of reach.

Anyway, the hippy-commies in my household had a big problem. Turns out that other peace-loving, anti-war, free-love hippies kept sneaking into our backyard and stealing sacks-full of carefully trimmed leaves from the my brother's coveted "Mexican Tomato Plants." So much for love and peace and anti-war - how do you spell "OXYMORON?"  Like generals in a war room, they declared war on the other hippies who they now hated and began planning violent counter measures in order to protect their self-interest.  Since the older boys were good at climbing, they devised a plan to steal a great, big, nasty, notorious rooster from drainage ditch near Marina Del Rey.

From the stories I heard, this rooster was 4 feet tall, had 9-inch razor-sharp talons, had one detached eyeball that hung down by its optic nerve to the goiter on its neck and attacked the chain link fence whenever anyone walked by.  I could hear them downstairs plotting about the rendezvous back at "Wall Drug" to smoke some "hooch" (they called it ) and how they intended to send the "little man crew" of Ulrich, Syndrome and Cosmo over the fence of the drainage-ditch/bird-sanctuary at midnight with a burlap sack and a couple lassos.

That was bound to be a great story! 

The time I spent confined in my room felt like purgatory, but between watching cartoons like Ricochet Rabbit and Mighty Mouse it did give me plenty of time to reflect on the world and contemplate the things around me. Things like: will we ever land on the moon....what does love feel like.... and what is going to happen to the "Chicken Lady" if the boys are successful in bringing home the dreaded and feared Veloci-Raptor of Annihilation to protect their precious plants. 



Those stories to come...  in the mean time... know that Mighty Mouse is on the way...

Take comfort in a good dog... tell someone you love them. I think hearing the "L" word is a good thing...
and know even when you don't hear someone say the words you long to hear -  that you are loved and pursued by the Greatest Love in the universe.