Holy Indignation at Cockrell's "Full Moon!"

(Here is what I didn't tell you last time). While the top brass from the other troops were all on one side of the scout bus (which was stuck on the bridge) talking things over Pinky Parlette and our two scout masters, Cockrell pulled down his pants and pressed his bare-bottomed ham-cheeks against the porthole window on the other side - "mooning" the Boy Scout "cake-eaters" on the other side.

12:00 noon: This grotesque, teen-ritual took place out of sight of the fretting leaders on the other side who where trying to figure a way of getting the truck unstuck. A small percentage of the boys - clapped and cheered because they thought it was funny (as most normal adolescent kids should). The rest, cringed in holy indignation, as if this wasn't something that guys this age were supposed to do and acted as if we had broken one of the Ten Commandments of Boy Scouting or something sanctimonious like that.

Little Wiener was on the inside of the Scout Bus and was watching the "Cockrell-show" from the front side and was a little too happy about it - which creeped out Jeffery and the other kids who had lost interest in tormenting poor Ray. Everyone agreed that Little Wiener's excitement earned the little twerp a pink-belly. It had been about two weeks since his last one and he was due for another one!

3:00pm: Anyway, several of the kids from Troop 34 broke the guy code by snitching on Cockrell to their Scout Master when they returned to "camp-regular-kid."

4:00pm: Cockrell got called into a court marshal tribunal which had sanctioned him to solitary confinement inside the cabin tomorrow while the rest of us "got to" hike to "Fossil Ridge."

5:00pm: Jeffery Lennon was so upset about the whole thing that went around calling the snitches, "bottle-feeders," and incited the rest of the kids of our troop in agreeing that these mamma's boys deserved no less than the full wrath of Troop 32 (for which we were prepared in advance - hence the snakes).

8:00pm: After dinner and just before the snipe hunt, we began making plans and decided that this would be the inaugural Camp Slauson "White-Angel Raid" like we did at the National Jamboree last summer at Farragut State Park in Idaho (only this time with underwear on). Cockrell was so upset in what he felt was unjustified persecution that it had somehow earned him the right to go on the raid naked tonight and pleaded his case. Senior Patrol leader, Ray Vandenmark, had to calm him down and talk him out of going in his "birthday suit" all over again. (I'm telling you - this kid just wanted to have his pants off all the time. He had the mind of an eight-year-old in the body of a 22-year old - I'm not sure that is the best mix).

8:42pm: We gathered the ropes, the snakes and waited until after midnight, while Jeffery anxiously walked around in circles, rubbing his hands together like a kid at Christmas - doing a personal chant "down with the bottle feeders, down with the snitches."  He was so excited - he wasn't too far away from earning his own "pink-belly."

So we had crossed the bridge, crashed into a tree, crushed the front of the truck, skewered Ray, Cockrell had exposed himself and we had upset the Boy Scout cosmos. By now, Jeffery was sure that this was going to be one of the best camping trips of his life (that wasn't saying much - he never went camping with this family).  He was thrilled, but sad that his cousins Tommy Blaser or Michael or Kevin or Kippy Lennon weren't here with him to enjoy the more "Dahlin-side-of life."

9:30pm: We did the dreaded snipe hunt - and it appeared that even Jeffery liked being out late at night, in the dark, crawling around in bushes and snapping his thumbs inside a brown paper lunch sack. "A man who protest too much, gives himself away."  Apparently Jeffery had bought into the legendary snipe hunt "hook, line and sinker" by vehemently defended his claims that he had actually caught one of the fictional bird-related-rodents which had subsequently managed to escape by eating a hole in the bottom of his brown lunch bag.

I hated the insidious, late-night ritual and hated that Jeffery wasn't the least bit scared - perhaps it was because he was too excited about the raid to think about things like Albinos or Zombies or rattlesnakes that lived in the bushes. On the way back from the snipe hunt we tackled Little Wiener, wrestled him to the ground - pulled up his dirty uniform shirt and with a hundred hands patted his soft, white belly until it turned a bright shade of pink! Every "newbee" got one on their first camp out. He had already gotten his fair share, but seemed to keep earning one every time he acted like one of those namby-pambies from Mar Vista or Santa Monica.

12:33am:  16 of us kids sneaked out with nothing on, but our tight, white undies and some duck tape on our chest and back in the symbol of a cross - we looked like some bizarre tribe that was ready to participate in the crusades...only different... or a mutant group of Scots under William Wallace (we were just happy to be going into battle to defend the honor of our troop - and happier that we were near naked - and happiest about the plan).

Like a bunch of squeaky mole rats we took the rope and tied it to the front tent stakes of Troop 34's tents and wound it around from tent to tent 4 inches above the ground. We had another group doing the same thing over at the campsite of the troop from Santa Monica.  We had Little Wiener and Mosquito Bait doing the same thing at our campsite so it wouldn't be so obvious who perpetrated the crime. Lastly, we had two members stealthily sneak into a fourth camp and leave it completely untouched excepted for lots of evidence that was planted to frame them: i.e. end rolls of duck tape... pieces of rope... and other such paraphernalia.

1:02am: When everything was set... and all of our mole-rats in underwear had returned to our camp and put their clothes back on - over the duck-tape tribal markings, I turned a snake loose in one of the tents of the guys from Troop 34. At the same time, Kissel was busy loosing the other harmless garter snake in one of the tents of the guys from the Santa Monica troop.

We ran like "H   E  double toothpicks" back to our campground and waited! AGAIN...Cockrell had asked if he could be pretend to be sleeping in the tent naked, so that when the mayhem broke out he could run around like a chicken with its head cut off in full view of all the scouts at Camp Slauson. That idea was quickly squelched and the two other boys in his tent decided they would sleep outside under the stars.

1:15am: Giggling, in hushed excitement and whispers - We Waited!

And, I do have to tell you this: it worked out better than than anything we could have imagined - EXCEPT for poor Ray (the luckiest and the most unlucky person in the world).

1:37am: "The screech that was heard around the world!"



             (Pinky pictured in his Pajamas)

(p.s. no snake was harmed. Unfortunately, I can't say that about Ray and some of the boys in the other camps - hehehe).

The Venice Invasion part II: The Scoop on the No Poop Troop!

(continued) Star-Date: July 8th 1969

All of us crazy Boy Scouts who had dizzy-heads and bloated-stomachs in the back of the converted Boy Scout Troop 32 "truck" (suffering brain and nervous system disorders from carbon-monoxide poisoning) were singing the words to new Fifth Dimension song at the top of our voices - mostly out of tune and completely out of rhythm. No matter how bad we sounded, no one either really seemed to care... or possessed the right mind to discern just how bad the cacophony really was. We were high on fumes and jacked up about the thought of the Apollo 9 moon launch...eight days from now.

When the moon is in the Seventh House

And Jupiter aligns with Mars

Then peace will guide the planets

And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius

Age of Aquarius

Aquarius! Aquarius!

At the part of song where we bellowed the words "Aquarius," for some unknown reason Ricky ripped off his shirt as if mankind had reach the pinnacle of evolution that had inspired Cockerel to pull down his pants and "moon" the travel-coach full of the "regular" boy scouts who were passing us on the way to the National Jamboree.

 

(Here is a picture of the Boy Scout "truck" in our front yard - just behind the motley crew to the right)



"Those poor suckers" we thought about the other kids who had to travel in the confines of solemn order, stuck in a seat, on air-conditioned bus -heavily scrutinized by those in authority. Sure, we may have had headaches and stomachaches, "but, boy did we have it good!"

  We were from Venice and we were proud! 

To reiterate where we were last time, I mentioned the diabolical plan by our scoutmasters to solve the problem of mass constipation. The problem ingloriously came to light in the paste-pasta dinner-rebellion and subsequently by the fact that we had almost lost David Cockerel.

We were camped by a small lake just outside Rock Springs Wyoming on the extended detour we had planned on the way to Farragut State Park in Idaho.  Last night for dinner we had spaghetti again. AND AGAIN the noodles were not rinsed and the stuff was like gloppy paste which no one could swallow one more bite of it (except Cockerel).

Steve took his plate and pushed it down on top of Ronny's plate, sticking the two plates together. In solidarity, Philip and Chronister and James and Ricky and I all followed suit and did the same thing. I'm pretty sure this had to be a Guinness World record, and if not, a Ripley's Believe It or Not  FOR REAL!  NO LIE!

TRUTH...We stuck seven plates of spaghetti together and turned the whole shooting-match upside down. Kissel, held it from the bottom plate, which was now on top and shook it up and down and ALL SEVEN PLATES STUCK TOGETHER!

To invent something with this much tensile-glue-strength required a million-dollar laboratory and advance degrees in chemistry... and THIS STUFF WAS IN OUR INTESTINES and it wasn't about to come outany time soon! We were plugged up and bloated and not one of us had taken a poop since we left Venice.  Anyway, we affectionately called Cockerel, who was 2-years-older than me and about 5 times my size, our "human garbage disposal." This dude scraped the remains of everyone's plates. It just seemed like he could never get enough food. The "glue-factor" didn't seem to deter his appetite at all! After we were done marveling at the sticking power of this gloppy-pasta, he stopped us in the middle of our rebellion from throwing the stuff away and ate about 15 pounds of the leftover goop that should have been incinerated.

The next day, the poor fella swam about 200 yards away from the dock, out into the middle of this murky lake, laden with fresh water algae - all by himself.  No one knew what he was doing out there.

I think he swam out all by himself, so he could try to liberate a "floating log fish"...i.e take a poop!

Cockerel just couldn't manage to deliver the package, short of a "Caesarean Section" and got so tired of pushing that he didn't have the strength to make it back and started freaking out. Unfortunately, I happened to be on the dock and since my Eagle Scout older brother was a water polo legend and swimmer at Saint Monica's High school he had taught me how to swim and some basic life guard skills. I didn't want to go, but no one else was close enough, besides Chronister, and he was completely hopeless. I pulled everything off, down to my skivvies and went out for the 15-year-old who was flailing and splashing and desperately crying out for help. He had gone down twice already and I knew I had to get there quick, thinking he would be a goner by his third time underwater.

I managed to grab him under one arm and around the neck and proceeded to drag him back, face-up, to the shore where the entire troop was now standing watching the spectacle. When I got within about 4 feet of the shoreline, a couple of the Senior Patrol Leaders grabbed Cockerel from me and dragged him up onto the beach.  Never mind the fact that his trunks were down around his ankles, he looked like one of those whales that was dying and had tried to beach itself.

             IT WAS NOT A PRETTY PICTURE BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION.  

I had already touched his naked body and didn't want anything to do with him, but the older scouts didn't seem to know what to do - so I put my foot under his back and rolled him on his side - just in case he had any water in his lungs.  He coughed! Water came out! He lived! Yeah me...maybe I'd get some kind of merit badge for this?

Anyway, the Scout Masters interrogated him about violating the "buddy system" and wanted to know why he was in the middle of the lake with his shorts off all by himself.  This is when they found out that he was trying to take a poop, but couldn't squeeze it out.

Later that evening was the top-secret tribunal.

The two Scout Masters sat at a table with a sheet of paper and a pen while the the Senior Patrol Leaders had us sequestered in a single file line on the other side of the Scout truck.  After each interrogation, the Scout Masters shouted, "Next!" and a Senior Patrol Leaders walked around the truck and to the foldout card table that was like appearing before a judge at court.

They had a paper in front of them with a line drawn down the middle. On top of one column were the capital letters "BM" and on the other side was written "No BM" with names written on both sides. In hushed voices they quietly asked, if I had taken a BM. I didn't know if a BM was a good thing or a bad thing. It was all so serious. I didn't know whether it was admitting to stealing something like Building Materials or Bacon. My Aunt was a Catholic Nun that had something to do with BVM. That's all I know, and I wasn't about to admit to anything that I didn't do!  I didn't take a thing! I passed the secret test and they wrote my name down on the "No BM" side of the paper.  "NEXT!" They yelled as I was collared the higher ranking boy scout and shuffled into the group that had been through the line so far.



Kissel asked, "Well?"
"Well, what?" I replied.
"Well, what did you say?"
"I said no, of course... I didn't take anything.. besides I don't even know what a BM is.
"Neither, did I, but Chronister said it had to do something with taking a poop"
"Well, why didn't they just say so?"
"I think that's how they say it, if your from Mar Vista or if you're one of those kids on those real buses."
"OHHHHHHHHHHHH...." I said, struck with fresh revelation "Why can't they just be normal like us and say poop like everyone else in the world?" I asked rhetorically and got a lot of shoulder shrugs.



In the morning, the Scout Masters had a big surprise planned for Cockerel and for all of the kids whose names were listed on the " No BM" side of the paper.

Do I need to mention Venice was coming to a town near you? Do I need to mention anything about Mount Vesuvius? Do I even need to say that this is where things got even worse?  But let me tell you this...this is how we earned our police escort out of Yellowstone National Park.

"Harmony and understanding

Sympathy and trust abounding

No more falsehoods or derisions

Golden living dreams of visions...."

         "Uh.... Not so much!" 

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