The Twelve Days of Christmas—DAHLIN STYLE!

When God was handing out singing voices the Lennons were in line first and by the time He got through ALL of them—there was nothing left for Him to give the Dahlins.  Plain and simple they could SING —the Dahlins—not so much.  I am sorry to say that this is my attempt at trying to pull off my Dahlin parody of the 12 Days of Christmas. 

PLEASE DON'T JUDGE. 

After the video—later when I have time, I will type out the song and add it here for translation for those of you in other countries (or if you just cannot stand my amazing singing abilities), I will also include pictures along with the written version (and links to the corresponding post).

Christmas at our house was chaotic. We would walk home from Saint Mark's Church after midnight mass and round the corner at the Lennon Sister's house (the one pictured here with the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the front dining room window).  My mother would shush us—hoping to hear some of the angelic voices of the Lennon Sisters as we passed by. 

We would push and pull hair and step on the back of the shoes of the kid in front of us to give them a "flat tire."

When we got into the house mom (we called her H. Joan) would throw herself in front of the large double-sliding doors the led from the front entry into the huge living room with the $2.00 tree purchased from the Venice Boy Scout Troop 32 Christmas tree lot. 

My dad was the treasurer of the Venice Boy Scout Troup (the year of this flyer...his handwritten accounting is in the back) and when it was all over we made a grand total of $148.00 (hey that was a lot of money back then). 

The Blasers next door always bought a nice, expensive tree for $12.00 and in a good year we would buy two $2.00 trees and tie them together because they were so pathetically sparse (seriously the Charlie Brown tree had more foliage), then we'd cover it with tinsel—gobs and gobs of tinsel. 

H. Joan (mom) wanted us to place each piece on tinsel on the tree one strand of tinsel at a time like the Blasers did, but we ended up throwing tinsel hand-grenades at the tree and just let it explode and coagulate where it landed in smothering clumps. 

Anyway, back to the part where Mrs. D threw herself against the big heavy doors, mom would threaten us with her "the pain of mortal sin" speech not to dive into the presents like sharks on a whale carcass—she pleaded and begged us to be more like the Lennons and the Tripps and the Blasers.







She imaged how it might have been down at the corner at the Lennon house, we knew of the relative calm next door at the Blasers and she wanted us to open the presents one at a time for everyone to see the present, to know who it was from, and then to give a polite golf-clap of appreciation after each present. 

After the stern warning and the threat to retreat upstairs if it got out of hand, she would open the doors and like little saints we walked into the living room, THEN flung ourselves on top of the pile of presents in a frenzy like blood-thirsty piranha—tossing presents and tearing into them that made a mountain of wrapping paper that filled the entire living room floor—presents were lost and sometimes so were kids and sometimes we didn't care.   

During the bloodbath, Tony sneaked away and climb into one of the junk rooms up on the third floor to hunt for used stuff to give away and wrap it in the torn and discarded paper. I got the same rusted old Kline-Smith Chemistry sent from him for eight years in a row. None of the chemicals that you could mix to make an explosion were in the set—they had already been used up by about the time I was born (bummer). 

I will leave out the part of the wrapping paper wars—the part where I try to clean things up and organized and where the older boys threw the wrapping paper out again behind my back. It was pathetic—torture—like the poor little dog endlessly running in circles trying to catch its tail.  

Every year it was the same. 

The same threats.

The same speech.

The same chaos.

The same fun...

...and always, the best Christmas ever! 

Merry Christmas 

P.S. and if you would like to buy my Book about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego... it is a short, fun read that does give the historical setting behind WHY there were Three Wise Men (Magi) in the East who anticipated the birth of baby Jesus...  (here is the link if you are interested). 

The Babylonian Fire Scroll 

   

Stupid Teens, Tricycles and Deadman's Curve.

Huffing and puffing I walked up the sharp incline towards the Moore house with the limp bloody-body over my shoulders and a tricycle in each hand. 

Mike, Louie, Alex and the others ran out of the Moore house and gently lifted the dead carcass from my burdened shoulders. “How are we going to tell Mr. Moore that James died,” asked Mike as tears welled up.

FLASHBACK 

Last night was the big hike to the Moon Fire Temple at the top of the Santa Mountains in Topanga. Marylee, Theresa and most of the Water Polo groupies finally went home in the wee-hours of darkness leaving a remnant that spent the night on Moore's living room floor.

James tried to explain to me the intricacies of the detailed mechanisms and gear-ratios in the cuckoo-cuckoo clock when all I was trying to comment about, was the annoying noise it made. 

I pretended to understand, but couldn’t sleep. 

The worry of being smothered, the sounds of raspy-slobbery snoring, the smell of armpits and bile-beer-burps haunted me. I laid awake and thought about the mechanical parts of the cuckoo-cuckoo clock and about my new tribe. Friends. Acceptance and belonging.

“Cuckoo,” screeched the irritating rooster SIX TIMES as it sprung forth from the little doors on someone’s annoying invention for keeping time—like fingernails on a chalkboard.

The sun was coming up when I finally fell asleep.

The creatures sleeping next to me began to awaken like that small rooster—emerging from the cocoon of slumber with all manner of irksome gurgles and farts and groaning from partying too hard the night before.

The restroom was full. So a small contingent of us went outside into the rustic chaparral of the Topanga hillside and relieved our bladders. Louie pointed to the pile of tricycles.

Epiphany.  

Someone had the brilliant idea of racing the tiny three-wheelers down Tuna canyon road. It was brilliantly ridiculous! Wonderful and dangerous. If someone could get killed doing it, then it was precisely something the Dahlins would do.  

I’ll never take credit for it, but I may have been responsible for flaming the foolish idea into becoming a very irresponsible reality.

With too much enthusiasm, eight of us threw the trikes into the back of Mike Moore's truck. We road in the back of the truck and fought like brothers over dibs on tricycles all the way to the top. 

Past Saddleback ridge—past the dirt road leading into the Moon Fire Temple we arrived at the spot where we could see Ojai on one side and the expanse of the Pacific Ocean on the other.

Since seven of us were Water Polo players and swimmers and practiced practically naked everyday, Mike Broneau suggested that we do the crazy ride in Speedos. 

More Insanity!



Since a member of the football team, Alex Delgadillo, was with us, we decided not to discriminate against those who wear shoulder pads, butt pads, tights and who do not wear Speedos.

Flip-flops and shorts it was.

Two hours from the time I would arrive with James over my shoulders → we shot out of the back of that truck and down the hill in a “shotgun start” like the Le Mans.

Poor Louie Coda was stuck with the pink tricycle and the frilly-sparkly-things that dangled from the ends of the handlebars.

Reaching speeds of up to forty, some of the guys began to freak-out and gave up after barely surviving the first outside turn.

Six of us regrouped and started the race all over again. 

Kevin McCaffrey, Broneau, and Coda sat on the trikes while James and I decided to stand on the back axle. 

Our idea was better. There was no way to tame the little peddles spinning at a bazillion-miles-an-hour. Mike almost got run over as he careened around a corner to find he was on a crash course with an oncoming station wagon of a driver who managed to swerve at the last second – almost killing Louie in the process.  

Mike Moore picked up the rest of the crew—the smart ones who quit—and took them back to the house leaving just James and me to finish the fateful ride to the bottom.

After a near head-on with a Buick, I put my foot on top of a rear-wheel in an effort to slow down and tumbled, skidding head-first into the dirt bank. This is when I knew we were in trouble. I waited for for James to catch up. He crashed into the same hill. I told him that for the rest of the harrowing thrill-ride that neither of us should attempt to slow the trikes by putting a foot on one of the rear wheels. I told him my plan would be to try and ride-it-out by steering my trike up a steep hillside instead. 

He was the genius and waved me off.

I jumped on my Le Mans race-car and sped away followed close behind by James. I gained distance on him and could no longer see him behind me. I came to a sharp corner, “Deadman’s-curve,” as it will be solemnly known from this day forward—and feared I would not make it out alive. Like a toboggan-racer at the Olympics, I banked my trike up the side of dirt grade at almost ninety-degrees and made it out unscathed.

I had a premonition!  A thought. A bad feeling that James would try use that small wheel to brake his speed. At forty-miles-an-hour, I carefully looked over my shoulder a couple of times and never caught a glimpse of James.

Knowing something bad had happened I ran my purple batman-trike up a dirt embankment and sprawled headlong across dirt and rocks into the prickly manzanita bushes (that I had become so familiar with prior to last night when I was used as a rope-toy by the Wolf-Pack).

I left my tiny trike and walked up the hill towards "Deadman's curve" to find an empty tricycle in a bush and no James.

Eighty feet further up I discovered the lifeless body of my genius friend.

I checked for vitals, wasn’t about to do mouth to mouth, and slung his carcass over my shoulders.

Making my way back to Banium Drive, I trudged up the sharp incline towards the Moore house huffing and puffing with exhaustion. 

Broneau, Coda, Delgadillo, McCaffrey, and Reardon sprang out of the front door like that cuckoo-clock rooster. Mike cried wondering how we were going to tell Mr. Moore what we had done. 

I felt like a soldier coming off the battlefield with a wounded comrade, someone please take a picture, I thought.   

So, it didn't happen exactly the way I said in the beginning. However, I did have both tricycles in one hand and supported James who had his arm slung across my shoulders. AND I did walk all that way supporting him and those two tricycles the entire distance. 

I felt like a hero. 

OKAY, HE DIDN’T DIE! But he could have. He had a gaping hole in his kneecap that exposed the bone underneath. Blood ran down his leg and the grotesque wound was mixed layers of flesh, dirt, asphalt and rocks. He couldn’t walk and needed to go to the emergency room.

We got in trouble with everybody—the Moore's, Coach Palma, parents, and were brought in before a tribunal of the Dean, Waldo Autobelly, and Priests and the Principal at Saint Monica’s high school.

I was a part of something. A new tribe. I couldn’t wait to do something stupid like this again—being a Dahlin—being from Venice—and being from Harding Avenue, danger was right in my "wheelhouse." 

The next chapter of this ongoing epic saga is where six of my older brothers along with nine other hippies from Venice died in a storm on the Salton Sea. Unlike this story, I had no power to save them, but was thankful—for once—that I was not included in that fateful and disastrous, “Three-Hour Tour” across the giant inland sea in our leaky, wooden boat.  

Just another day in paradise. 





Pictured here with Pat Lennon and Bruce Grant is the infamous wooden-boat → there under the Palm tree, next to the green MG, behind the piece of plywood, parked behind the sailboat and the paint thinner can. 


...and the bonus video below explains it all 

Death at The Moon Fire Temple (and Hormones—of course).

1972: The Doors The Temple and The Hormones

Last time, I left off I was being chased by a bull and held as a prisoner in the sloshing-outhouse-brig on a Boy Scout houseboat.

Between my freshman and Sophomore year over the summer, there has been BIG changes. Part of those changes has been the hair under my armpits—finally—about time—which means raging hormones have kicked in.

Yeah! UGH!

I think for the regular guys who went through puberty when they were supposed to like Rick Arredondo, who had a mustache in 7^th grade, this hormone business might have set in gradually. But to a late-blooming sophomore like me was as subtle as a tsunami tidal wave of sexual awareness.  

I read somewhere that guys think about sex every seven seconds—that might be the stat-line for those regular guys who have had time for this thing to settle down a bit. For me, however, it was like EVERY SECOND. I was in trouble; every thought was about girls.  

Too much information right! 

Regardless of what was going on below the belt and everything that was happening down there I was still VERY MUCH interested in finding out what this “love thing” was all about. I hoped that this hormone flood and "lust business" would not derail this sacred quest.

I want to know what real love is all about. I want to feel it—experience it and finally be able to grasp the meaning of what it means to be loved.

 

BUT, I almost did not get the chance to find out because of the DEATH RIDE down Tuna Canyon Road earlier this morning.  It all began with a fundraiser yesterday at Saint Monica’s and a group hike we took last night to the mysterious Moon Fire Temple –something hippie in origin that could rival the Dahlin house and anything in Venice.  

We had recruited our new water polo coach from UCLA, Terry Palma, to join us. All of a sudden my sister and her Venice gaggle of estrogen-groupies were suddenly interested in our rag-tag team.

Mary and Theresa Blaser and Theresa McCarthy and Mimi Lennon and Debi Gas were now followers in our social-media-site in the Water Polo corner of the school lot that we controlled. 

This new “Street-Cred” had given us more status and power to rule the roost—veloci-rooster-status.  We were cool. We had a following. We wore Speedos, had shiny hair from chlorine and reigned supreme on the bench by the music room.  

  

Yesterday, Michael Moore, the big brother of my water polo buddy, James, brought a 55 Ford and parked it in the center of the lot along with a giant 50-pound sled hammer. As one of the school fundraisers, he charged twenty-five-cents-a-swing to destroy the car. Bob Rooke must have had a couple bucks—he smashed windows and took it upon himself to crush the front end of the sad dying beast as if slaying a dragon itself.  

He did it mainly for the girls—damsels in distress!  Heck yeah.  Hello, hormones—I get it.

SEVEN SECONDS.  

Well, we decided that for our fundraising project, we would sponsor tricycle races.

This turned out to be more popular than smashing the car. After the first couple rounds of true competition, girls decided they wanted in on the fun. Girls sat on the trikes while the boys pushed them around the small-orange-coned obstacle course. Boy and girls touching each other—oh yeah. Need I say more?

Anyway, we had all of these tricycles we had amassed from the greater Santa Monica and Palisades area that we had to return.

Our water polo team recruited our new coach, Palma, and in true Dahlin-Wolf-Pack fashion we invited our new groupies to join us in a dangerous midnight hike to the eye of the Moon-Fire Temple. More girls increased the chances and the odds of budding romantic interest and thoughts of well—you know—hormones and the seven-second rule.

This turned out to be like the hikes my brothers used to take to the Albino Camp to scare their girlfriends so they would run into the “strong, protecting arms of the brave boys” who were kept them safe by holding them tight. 

Uh-huh! Right? 

You know what the boys were thinking about EVERY SEVEN SECONDS.

The staging area was the Moore house at the end of Bainum Drive in Topanga. They had just put in a huge built-in pool with a bubble over the top that stayed up with air pressure from a giant air pump. It was kind of cool, but I knew in the wrong hands if someone from Venice (like a Dahlin) were to pull electrical cord it could spell disaster—suffocation and murder. Nervously, I looked around for any of my people who might be suspiciously hovering around the outlet before I decided to enter the bubble. My older brother, Tony, wasn’t there so I didn’t have to worry about electrocution.

About midnight we drove up Tuna Canyon Road towards the top of the mountain range where it intersected Saddle Peak Road. We turned off our lights and rolled quietly onto a dirt road and ditched the cars. There was a big locked gate that we had to climb around to get in.

The moon was only half-full. This gave us enough light to see the path in front of us and also made it dark enough for this clandestine operation.

We heard footsteps approaching that scared the beegebees out of all of us. We took some minor injuries by jumping off the road. Boys and girls huddled together—this part was good—seven seconds, remember? But we could not see the security guards armed with machine guns who were slowly moving along the path searching out intruders. Some alcohol and other herbs were involved, and though hunted, giggles still prevailed.

 Sheeze Louise. We were goners.

 

The armed security guards turned out to be two curious llamas. As we walked along the windy ridge road towards the Moon Fire Temple, James Moore told us the story behind, Lewis Beach Marvin III, the eccentric who built the place and the animals he had brought in – like llamas and camels and “Lions and tigers and bears—Oh my!”

James knows everything. Even though some people believe that the Temple was built for the 1966 movie called Harper, starring Paul Newman and Lauren Bacall, he said that wasn’t true.

He said, Mr. Marvin, the heir to the S&H Green Stamps fortune built the place. James said that this Marvin person had a bunch of artsy-type friends and musicians who came and performed there—like The Doors, Van Morrison, George Harrison, and Janis Joplin.

 

Where it gets weird, is that James says the Manson Family was also part of Marvin’s motley crew who painted bizarre cultic circles all over the place just a couple years ago that lead to a raid by the FBI.

Coming around the ridge we saw the round temple and quietly stepped onto marble flooring with the round moat that had a giant fire-pit inside in the shape of eye. The top was open to the sky and we could feel the eclectic vibes of the hippie ranch and the eerie feeling of crossing paths with the likes of the Charles Manson cult.

 

Whispers grew. Giggles and wonder abounded. Shushing from the “shushing-police” died. We spun, taking in the 360-degree view from the top of the Santa Monica mountains. We jumped back and forth across the dry moat and explored some of the abandoned side rooms as budding romantic-relationships bloomed.

I had my eyes on a couple girls, but I struck out—dang that seven-seconds.   

This would become the first of many trips to Moon Fire or "The Temple in the Clouds." 

On the way out we heard the llamas approaching and walked boldly towards them until we saw the oncoming lights of two jeeps that must have had key access to the large front gates.

Back into bushes.

Quiet this time. The threat was real. Apocalypse pending, we crawled through the rugged chaparral and prickly manzanita bushes. We made it to the cars and escaped.

Hours later, Palma and the girls and the groupies and the casual followers left the Moore’s house that left a small group of us water polo guys who spent the night, for the even more dangerous frivolities that followed the next day. 

DON’T! 

Please don’t, ever allow stupid guys with tricycles loose on the top of steep mountain roads. Trust me it only spells disaster.  

NEXT TIME.

Death on Tuna Canyon Road.   

Oops another second.  hehe 

   

Girls at Saint Monica's credit: Mark Mullineaux Facebook Post 

Harper Movie Poster credit: http://www.impawards.com/1966/harper_xlg.html

Moon Fire on side of cliff overlooking ocean credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/30369681@N03/9317732954/in/album-72157634692817677/

Moon Fire pics Credit: Wall Street Journal “A Cosmic Crash Pad”   http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324705104578147121874414006

Charles Manson credit: http://history1900s.about.com/od/1960s/p/charlesmanson.htm

S&H Green Stamps credit: http://myauctionfinds.com/2010/06/09/licking-and-gluing-s-h-green-stamps/