Jesus. Venice. And Night of the Living Dead!

Venice was not just a place, but an identity - something that is inescapable part of you. Good or bad, being from Venice gave you both pride and cringe.  Though only 12, by 1969 I had been across the country and back 3 times and seen my fair share of the "Purple Mountain Majesty and Fruited Plains."  Everywhere we went, "tourist" (we called them, derogatorily), were the people living in their own towns who look at the long hair of my brothers and invariable asked if we were from Venice. I learned early on of the stigma of being from Venice that gave my brothers such pride.  It was like that part in the Bible where it talked about Jesus being from Nazareth that said, "Can anything good come for Nazareth?"

Every time someone looked at my family and asked if we were from Venice, it was as if  they were saying, "Can anything other than hippies, free love, drugs Flower Power and Jim Morrison come from Venice?" We thought that was good, but it appeared they didn't share that sentiment. They might well have said to our face, "Can anything good come from Venice?"  So I guess I understood how Jesus felt when he heard those words.

The once glamorous Canals that hadn't been filled-in, began to rot and stink and the formerly cute bungalows of Abbot Kinney's dream were now run down shacks full of pot smoking hippies, unemployed artist, and raucous parties of the flower children of the sixties.

Several weeks after I broke my arm playing football in the street, I had been outside in my cast. Although it had Andrea's treasured signature, as well as some other seventh graders, it smelled and was pretty disgusting already. I was didn't give much thought to that fact that I had only been wearing one shoe when an older couple slowed down to a stop in front of our house and gawked. The old geezer cracked his window a couple inches, as if the air on Harding avenue was unsafe to breathe, and called me over.







His wife was holding some kind of Hollywood, or Beverly Hills, or Celebrity map or something and stared at our house - eyes wide in disbelief and mouth hanging open in shock.




















With cars and boats and more broken down cars and broken down boats and creaky stairs and hippie brothers hanging out on the porch, the couple from Nebraska carefully whispered through the cracked window asking if my house was a hippie commune?



I said, "No, I live here!"

"With your Parents?" they asked, incredulously.

"Yeah!" I said.

"Poor parents" the man muttered.

"Where's your other shoe" the lady asked.

"What other shoe? I asked

"The one your missing" she snarled, thinking I was being a disrespectful smart-aleck.

I informed her, "I'm not missing one."

"Then why are you only wearing one shoe?" her husband barked at me as he took over.

"Oh, this old thing isn't my shoe. I came outside barefooted and found this decroded thing in the flowerbed."

I looked inside the window to see if our house was on the tourist map as a place of interest for being a hippie commune as they rolled up the window and sped away - only to screech to a halt in front of the Lennon Sister's home two houses up the street. I ran down the street towards them in my older brother's size 11 shoe and frightened the poor couple like I was one of the dead bodies in "Night of the Living Dead."

I can't really say with certainty whether our house was on  that map or not, but certainly this couple went back to where they came from telling their neighbors about what they saw on Harding Avenue and wondering if anything good could come from Venice?"






Pshaw... "fer sure" We have the Famous Lennon Sisters across the street and right behind us was Cheryl Arnold who was Miss Venice, and Miss Santa Monica, and Miss LA...SO TAKE THAT... tourist!

Ha! Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

With all that said, I guess the thing I want to share next with the world is that fact that my Boy Scout Troop from Venice - Troop 32, had been in steep decline by the time I had been recruited by my Eagle Scout brother and was not the best thing Venice exported: something me and my fellow hoodlum scouts took great pride in.

We raided camporees at night, causing havoc on Troop 34, cutting the ropes on tents and making life as miserable as we could at Camp Slauson in Malibu in the Santa Monica mountains.

Here is a picture of our (converted moving truck) i.e. Troop 32 Boy Scout Truck - that was a not a whole lot more than "cage wresting" on wheels.

You can take the Boy Scouts out of Venice, but you cant' take the Venice out of Troop 32!

Next time: National Jamboree and "Diarrhea 'till Easters"

Pubate Peons: The Dangeling Appendenge and Smell of Victory

(continued)...after sitting half-day next to Sister Edith and finishing the second half in solitary confinement next to Sister Schultz (for knocking out Terry in the school yard) a group of us ended up at the lawn between the Venice Police and Venice Fire Station.

Sister Schultz was nicknamed by the kids at Saint Mark's school  after Sergeant Schultz on the TV show Hogan's Heroes. The difference was that Sergeant Schultz on TV was a pushover who was always saying things like, "I see nothing. I know nothing" in order to stay out of trouble. NOT THIS NUN...She was the enforcer at Saint Marks and made everybody's business her business. To us kids, she was the second most fear human being in the world right behind the notorious Sister Godzilla.

Sister Schultz looked just like the German prison guard and behind her back all the kids would say, "I see nothzing...I know nothzing" in our best German accents - while being deathly afraid of getting caught. The guys figured that if you put Sister Schultz and Sergeant Schultz in a ring, the Catholic nun would pin the Nazi prison-camp guard and have him begging for mercy in less than a minute.  The eight grade boys started a rumor that she had been a professional wrestler (in men's competition) before she entered the Nunnery!

Anyway, back to the story. It was three O'Clock and the prison doors were open and we were free - in other words school was out.  A bunch of us headed over to a game of tackle at the lawn next to the Venice Police Station.




The hard part was dodging the land mines - dog poop!  This challenged my vomiting superpowers. As the smallest guy on the field, I was hard to catch...but eventually did get caught with the ball on the 10 yard line and managed to drag three older Venice High guys across the goal line for a touchdown. During the game I stepped in a warm pile of dog poop and vomited like a binge-drinker at 4:00 am in the morning. I couldn't take the stink anymore and invited the Saint Mark-ites over to my house for a game of "touch" in the street. I figured that since it was Friday and Irene (our house cleaning lady post 7/15/13) had spent the day clearing paths in the middle of debris, I thought it might be safe to invite friends over because the mountains of clutter had been leveled.      

MOST IMPORTANT - It was still early in the day and the herbal-smoking WOLF PACK have not had the chance to assemble in full force, therefore my friends would be reasonable safe from the terrorist attacks from my hippie older brothers. The last thing I needed was for one of them to be shoved in a hamper, put under a car, buried in a pit, dropped out of a window or electrocuted while flushing a toilet.

Along with Ralph and Dino and RC and Quarto and "Slow Harry" I recruited neighbors like, Tommy Blaser and Jeff Lennon to join us in the game in the middle of the soft, tar street on Harding Ave.  The teams were evenly matched and the score was tied, so we threw out the "Next Touch Down Wins" challenge.  Receiving the kickoff, we made it past the fifty yard line at the bumper of the Dahlin truck full of trash and earned a new first down.

Being so caught up in the game, I failed to notice that Ulrich and his crew of "Angry Little Men" had arrived back from Saint Monica's and had been sitting on the front stairs plotting something against me and my "pubate peons" (they called us).   Ulrich and his crew were a dangerous subgroup of the Wolf Pack and were not as creative as the older more Alpha members. Instead, his cronies were about as inventive as caveman and usually hid behind cars in ambush where they leaped out on smaller victims with fist and knuckles flying.

With three downs wasted, we had one more possession in order to score the winning touchdown. Although Tommy was younger than me he was a very good athlete and the quarterback drew up the play for him. At the snap of the ball and with the count of "alligators" on two, Tommy was covered like glue and I was free on the right side, running along the curb in front of the Blaser house.

RC threw the ball to me. I reached overhead and snagged it out of the air. Miracle - it actually stuck to my hands. I pulled it in and WHAM! Somehow my foot managed to catch something and down I went - face first on the ruff, greasy asphalt along the curb.

Trying to be as stealth as possible, the scheming Lilliputian villains pretended not to be paying any attention to us as they walked up the street in their covert plan to head to Rosie's liquor store. As planned, Ulrich had stuck his leg out and caught my foot!   By the time any of us looked up, he and his bunch of hoodlums were  already down the street.

Crack..went the sound of my bones when my right arm stuck the concrete curb that reshaped my dangling appendage into a grotesque "U" shape.  I guess the adrenaline shock had minimized the pain of the face-plant and the blunt force trauma. The first thing I thought was how lucky my team was that the ball was dead and Dino couldn't score on the fumble.

At first, I had no idea that anything was wrong. As usual, I was the the last one to figure it out. The angry little subgroup of the Wolf Pack ran away to the Kissel's house and it wasn't until I stood up to my feet that I realized that my arm was deformed into the shape of a pretzel. This was a bummer, I had just gotten the full use of my leg back and now my arm. Ughhhh! We were just a bunch of 7th graders and all of them too stupid to know what to do, so they left me there - in the street - with a broken U-shaped arm and scurried home like a bunch of frightened cockroaches when the light is turned on. Irene had already left for the day and Kurt had just gotten home.  He was sitting on the front steps by this time and as I approached from the Blaser's direction I screamed, "Hey, Kurt! I broke my arm!" in stoic, Viking non-emotional language that was instilled in our Dahlin DNA.

"Yeah, right" he said, sarcastically thinking I was pulling a seventh grade prank. Dad always said, "Swedes don't cry" and since there was no tears and carrying-on like a normal kid with a broken arm - Kurt didn't believe me, until I had gotten close enough for him to see the roller-coaster shaped appendage.

The Saint Monica record-breaking Water-Polo player, LA County Lifeguard and Eagle Scout - causally stood to his feet, tore the flap off of a cardboard box of decrepit National Geographic magazines that had cluttered our front porch and folded it lengthwise down the middle. He set my arm in it like a splint and tied twine around the bent thing that had been placed in the crud contraption.

"Go find mom" he said rather unceremoniously, then turned as if bored and went into the house in search of alfalfa sprouts and other hippie food.
(Before cellphones, and before 911, this was not such an easy task - but at least on this occasion, I wasn't going to die like last time (Post 11/29/13).

My white uniform shirt was full of grease, mixed with blood from the a fresh flow that dripped down from the cut over my right eye. It looked worse than it really was - but with the blood and the cardboard splint and the grease, I was a sight to behold.

I went from house to house looking for mom. Blasers. Tripps. Nargies.


I went to the Lennons knowing that mom probably wouldn't be there, but having a little bit of Viking terrorist in me, I was hoping to gross them out. It was devilish, I know, but it worked. Panic ensued when Dick Gas and DeeDee Lennon saw me, but I also have admit, it felt good to think that someone cared. On the way out, I said "Hi" to the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in their front window and headed towards Saint Mark's school.  I waved Hi to the Smiths and to the Gillemots on the way and thought I would try the convent (where the nuns lived) next. I really didn't think mom would be there either, but figured that I could get a little payback on some of the Catholic Sisters and hoped to freak them out like I did when I showed up at their front door as "Spawn of Charles Mason" on Halloween (10/28/13).



The adrenaline was wearing off and my arm had began to throb in excruciating pain. Going from door to door in a bloody, grease-stained shirt with a twisted limb in piece of cardboard was just about the most pathetic picture in the history of the Venice California...NO!...in the History of the world. I looked worst than the "pagan kids" we collected money for in the plastic loafs of bread handed out to us in class.  I felt like that little bird in the book, "Are You My Mother"...... only the little lost bird, didn't have a broken wing and wasn't covered in blood.

Oh well, I found mom later that evening and the poor thing took yet ANOTHER trip to Saint John's emergency hospital. When I arrived home later that night with my arm in a cast the Wolf Pack made fun of me. I may have been down, but I wasn't out.  I thought about putting the alligator we had in the backyard in their room, but I already had one wrestling match with that aquatic dinosaur and didn't want to go through that craziness again. Instead, in the middle of the night, I decided to sneak quietly upstairs to the third-floor abode of the Wolf Pack and slightly opened the cage of Iguana Del Diablo (8/1/13)

Wait for it! 

Wait for it! 

I was like a kid waiting for Santa Clause to arrive. I didn't sleep until I heard the screaming and panic of the Wolf Pack on the third floor as they wrestled with Del Diablo and with each other(that was the part).  I smiled, reveling in sweet revenge and fell sound asleep with this comforting thought,  "Victory...smells like the sounds of the Wolf Pack turning on each other."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 hehehehehe

I know I was the one with the broken arm, but I felt like I had won! 

       

Werewolf II: Terry, Don't mess with youngest member of the Wolf Pack!

(Continued) 


The cool kids in our seventh grade class rarely ever picked Harry for kickball. He was tall and lanky and a little slow and I felt sorry for him. I felt sorry for stray dogs, for big fat Pinky (who was now living with us), and for anyone I felt was an underdog! 

Go figure! With a hundred older brothers and nine hundred of their friends who all tortured the baby brother - that's me - I thought it was my job in life to protect the "least of these" and to stand up for widows and orphans. You would think that when I dished out Terry's punishment the Nuns at Saint Marks would have been happy with my cause - especially since it had to do with justice and caring for a "slow" kid in class. 

No.  As it turned out, they weren't happy at all! 

As a matter of fact Sister Schultz, who was built like a NFL linesman and outweighed me by 200 pounds, put me in a headlock and I figured that Jesus wouldn't be happy with me if I took her down like I did Mike "Curtzy" back in the fifth grade (Post 6/29/13). I fell on the ground and pretended to pass-out hoping they would send me home.  No such luck!  I would have to go in and smell the sweaty aftermath of recess. 

Here's what happened. I could have cashed-in on the "bloody-knuckles thing" and get a higher pick for one of the kickball teams now that my approval rating was at an all time high, but I chose instead to do the ridiculous helicopter thing with Harry since he was left out again. He wasn't just picked last, he wasn't picked at all. Don't ask me how I did it, but I even managed to recruit Ralph to the silly nonsense that was making Harry so happy. 

Terry was one of the big kids and I'm sure he had hair coming in under his armpits. You could always tell when that was happening, because these guys were the ones who smelled like a garbage truck after recess. It was the same with eight grade boys too...they were plagued with this thing called puberty, but hadn't learned to take showers yet - like the high school boys had, so our end of the hall at Saint Marks always smelled like the rotting carcass of a dead cow that had been left in the sun too long. 

Terry was upset because I had stolen Ralph away from his team and Ralph could kick the ball over the church roof. Anyway, Dino had a mean kick and sailed the ball out-of-bounds over mean 'O Mr. Schneider's fence (who lived on the other side of the chain-link on Garfield), which meant that the kickball game was over.  Now Terry, was not only one of the big kids - I'd say in the top three, but was probably the brightest among the tallest and he like to let every know how smart he was.

Because he was upset that his team lost without Ralph he came over and began making fun of us twirlers. I was okay with it, it didn't bother me or Ralph that much, but when he started calling Harry hurtful names - THAT WAS IT, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.  I had been attacked by a rooster, whacked by a Nun, and totally humiliated in front of all the girls. This was not the day to sweat and stink and have hair under your arms or be too tall and pretend to be too smart and pick on the underdog -"slow Harry." 

I had to use restraint. I didn't want to just jump on his head and take him down. I had to think of a way to show how stupid he was at the same time. You know, like, cut him down a notch or two in his own eyes. 

Epiphany! The idea came to me. I asked Terry if he had ever taken the "Viking-Neck-Strength-Test?" (say that three times fast). I felt if Terry was too stupid to fall for it then he double deserved it. I told him we did this at home all the time and then proceeded to show him how to do it. I stood in front of the concrete wall and let Ralph demonstrate on me. He pretended to pull really hard and I pretended to fight back the best I could. I said the object was to see how far he could pull my head away and we would measure the distance and see who had the stronger neck muscles. The bet was on and all the boys gathered around for the Viking challenge. Since Ralph had just demonstrated on me, I "let" Terry try his strength test first. (Grin) 

You know that story in the Bible about wolf in sheep's clothing... well... I smiled on the outside as the inner werewolf went to work. I pulled Terry's head...the kids cheered.. he really thought he was something - UNTIL...

Until I had planted my feet against the wall and had his head out from the concrete wall some four inches and LET IT GO! 

"Whack" Cracked his recoiling head against the wall that sounded like a watermelon that had been dropped from the top of our three story house. 

Bam  Went Terry's limp body to the ground. 

I stood over the top of Terry in a symbolic jester of victory, foot on his chest, raised my hand and said, "Yeah! Who's smart now..Huh?" and called him one of the names he had insulted Harry with. Applause from the smelly 12 and 13-year-olds, prompted me to go into my "Wicked Witch" routine, "I'm melting...Good bye cruel world!" Laughter! 

Then  thud... I was on the ground, tackled by a 290 pound female linebacker dressed in black in white in a police choke-hold. She thought I killed Terry, but I knew he was only unconscious and would wake up momentarily seeing stars. 

I decided not to take out the Nun, because she was Jesus' wife and knew that it wouldn't have bode so well for all the Purgatory time I already had coming, but Terry? He DESERVED IT!  Poor...poor...Terry! 

Sister Schultz pinched my ear, dragged me inside and made me sit next to her desk for the rest of the day in front of the entire eight grade class to give Sister Edith a break.  "Yuck!" Those guys smelled worst than seventh graders. I sat there and stared down David Smith for the rest of the day and only managed to heave twice.  

                      It was a good day after all!  

"In a city known as Venice, there's a grand old school
Pledged to God and to our country, hail all hail to you.


Joyous days. Happy Days. Spent with in our hearts. 
Hail to you, our Alma Mater. Hail, all Hail Saint Marks!" 

P.S. Alma Mater.. means pregnant mother or something like that in Latin.        
 

"Et tu, Brute?" The Werewolf of Venice

(Continued) I apologize for being late on getting this one out.. but as it turned out, after my epic clash with the rooster, (which was once a close ally) the insidious beast was now nothing more to me than a backstabbing traitor... "Et tu, Brute?"

Needless to say, I was late for school.

I wasn't happy that I had to give excuses for my being late to school, either. I tried the best I could to explain why to my seventh grade teacher, Sister Edith. I went on about how it was trash day and how it was my job (even though I had fifteen thousand older brothers) to drags the cans (all by myself) to the ally because of my "Saint Francis" relationship I had built with the mini-Godzilla (when my brothers tried to kill me by burying in the Igloo of Death Post 2/27/14) and how the ugly attack rooster wouldn't let anyone else in the backyard and how all of this had something to do with the Mexican Tomato plants...

I don't know what it was...but I don't think that a 12-year-old is supposed to use words like: Saint Francis, Godzilla and Mexican Tomato plants all in the same sentence or all in one long breath. She interrupted me, impatiently tapping her worn out yardstick on the old brown desk. 'Rude! Hello!' I thought.

Thump Thump Thump! Tap Tap Tap!  The sound of her rapping that stick on her desk gave me a flashback! My pre-pubescent PTSD kicked in and I zoned out!

The rest of the kids in the class room started laughing. 'What?'  I thought, 'Like this doesn't happen to any of you other little creeps. Yeah like none of you have attack roosters and a Staff-Sergeant-Dad, who beats on the ceiling with a broom handle on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings. Like none of you have to eat oatmeal with meal worms before you get here. Like no one else here has ever had to wrestle an alligator or has been bitten by a snake or thrown over a cliff or shot at with needle-tipped arrows, electrocuted or dropped out of a window. Sure, right, like none of you other kids haven't ever had to do battle with a prehistoric monster first thing in the morning before school.' I sneered at the class and looked at all the empty eyes staring back and then it dawned on me!


THEY DIDN'T!  Normal People didn't have a giant frog the size of a beagle that ate baby chickens, or an alligator, or a monkey, or rattlesnakes, or chuckwallas or a bazillion rabbits and guinea pigs, turtles, a nasty looking cat that had been raised from the dead... or a pigeon that lived on top of the refrigerator or mushrooms that grew in the shower.    

I forgot that the Dahlins weren't normal...by any stretch of the imagination... and then realized that they thought I was making this entire story up about having to do battle with Godzilla before even getting to school! Like it wasn't true! 'Idiots! What do they know?'

Their stupid excuses on the other hand were like pathetic white bread in comparison, "My dog ate my homework." Hello, gag me with a spoon! "I stubbed my toe and my mom rushed me to the emergency room and I had to keep it elevated all day and had to watch cartoons and eat ice cream."  Whaaaaaa! Really? 'Oh poor baby, call the Whammmbulance!'

They thought I was joking and Sister Edith thought I was trying to make fun of her and she pulled a desk up to the front of the room and made me sit right next to her all day long! She wouldn't even let me show her the blood that had run down my leg and into my red Ked sneakers.  "Sheeze-Louise"

Trust me, someone was going to get it!  "Stay clear or my, oh my!"  Forget about the boys for a minute - one of them was bound to get it at recess. But. there. THEY. were! The girls! Ughhhhhhh. Looking at me like I was some alien creature from Mars.  Marilyn and Theresa and Julie and ANDREA!  I knew I didn't stand a chance with the girls against regular boys who were human-beings from planet earth.

Stupid
Dumb
Retarded
There I sat like a wounded or sickly wolf cut out of the pack - right up next to Sister Edith's desk. It was like I had leprosy or some contagious disease.

"Head tones" the Catholic nun screeched.  No! She wasn't about to get 'head tones' from me today... I refused to sing!

I was somewhere outside the Troposphere... Flying in one of the Apollo rocket ships on the way to the moon. I was trying to get away and thought that maybe I could live up there - if I was lucky!

"Read the question Mark!" Sister Edith bellowed judiciously from the platform where her desk was perched! My spaceship crash landed and I was suddenly back on planet Earth, in Venice, in the seventh grade, in a room at Saint Mark's school. I fumbled around for what seemed like 20 pressured-filled minutes trying to find the page we were on and didn't have a clue where we were. I knew it had something to do with Pavlov's dog, and, in a conditioned involuntary reflex I began reading in the middle of the page at the exact same time that Earnestine started to read! Sister slapped my desk with her yardstick and yelled at me.

I had no idea why the nun had gone berserk! First the rooster, now her! In front of the entire class, she wrapped my knuckles with her ruler and broke the thing over my hand. 'Ha! That'll teach her' I thought.

After Earnestine began reading again, I looked down the page of the text book and realized that she hadn't asked me to read.  She had asked Earnestine to read the paragraph following the QUESTION MARK - you know - a question mark the little squiggly thing with a dot that looks like this...
          ?
I thought she had asked me to read the question!  But she had asked Earnestine to read the question mark.

Alright! Touché Sister, this one was yours - you won this one, fair and square.  I limped outside for recess and all the boys wanted to see my bloody knuckles. They thought it was cool how I made up the big story about having to fight a rooster this morning and then how I dared to disrupt the class by reading right over the top of Ernestine, especially since I was in whacking distance of Sister Edith's notorious yardstick. 

Acting braver than I really was, my bloody knuckles were now a middle-school badge of honor and I said, "Oh Yeah!" and tried not to limp. Ricky said it was the best excuse story he had ever heard and all the smelly 12-year-old boys laughed in agreement. They thought I was cool for making up such a far fetch story about guard roosters and Saint Francis and all that! 

Anyway, I had been attacked by a rooster, humiliated, threatened with a stick and whacked with a ruler by a 300-year-old nun. Like one of Pavlov's dogs my fuse was a little short because of all the stimuli I had been subjected to this morning and knew that I had a long hard day in front of me. 

Ralph, the guy who helped me nearly cut off my leg 5 months ago, (blog post 11/29/13) Harry and I decided that we would ditch kickball and twirl ourselves around like helicopters instead. Actually the cool kids didn't pick Harry for one of the teams and I felt sorry for him.

And... this is when the Inner-Viking - the fuse blew... and Pavlov's passive dog turned into a werewolf that snapped. 

Poor, Poor, Terry!  

Blame it on the rooster, on Sister Edith, on her stick - her broken ruler; blame it on my PTSD...blame it on a conditioned involuntary reflex... blame it on my past electrocutions...but none-the-less, I really think Terry deserved what he got next!