The hilarious, picture-driven, true memoir of the youngest boy of the 60's "most dysfunctional family." Markie d's quest for survival and identity helps us discover and deal with the dysfunction in all of us. Funny, politically incorrect and thought provoking.
In the words of an ancient sage, "Laughter is good medicine."
'72 swim team
My New Tribe
Showing posts with label 1969 National Jamboree. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1969 National Jamboree. Show all posts
I just want to know what love is. If any one can tell this 13-year-old kid... please let me know! I think I know what's it not! And I decided that - it's just probably a better idea to treat people kind - and attempt to be nice than it is to bully, than to put people down and treat those who are different poorly.
And I realized from the bungee-jumping gone wrong episode - that I can probably do better, and maybe, like a good Boy Scout the leave the world a better place than I found it.
I may be a psychotic hot mess, but I am a work in progress.
Star Date: July 23, 1969. (continued saga and finale) The Grand Overture of the "Venice Plague."
It was a full two days since the Apollo 11 had landed on the moon and we had witnessed - "The One Giant Step for Mankind" and the Jamboree had officially come to an end. The 1935 National Jamboree in Washington DC had been cancelled because of the polio epidemic and I couldn't help but think that cancelling this Jamboree might not have been such a bad idea, considering the plague that had arrived from Venice California - likened to an abhorrent yet virile virus known as Troop 32. As it turned out, the infection spread throughout the 34,225 other boys who attended the Jamboree, but most ended up surviving - considering the head trauma, the stitches, our E.coli bacteria, the greatest prank of all time and the aggregated psychological torment that will likely require years of psychiatric counseling.
On the very last night after the amazing fireworks display... it was time for another orchestrated raid by the notorious "White Angels." (For those who are just tuning in, "the White Angels" are a band of rowdy Boy Scouts - making late night raids in nothing but their tightie-whities (that is butt-tight underwear) and a cacophony of masking tape that made us look like Zombies from hell. One of our Senior Patrol Leaders gave us the brilliant idea and the permissive wink-of-the-eye that created "culpable deniability" while saying, "But I would never tell you to do this. Because it would be wrong!" (wink-wink)
Dego didn't want to borrow Chronister's underwear and decided that he would go on the raid with us in his "Birthday Suit." Dego was older than most of us pre-teen pubates and was proud of his generous male endowment and was always looking for a good excuse to flaunt his stuff and taunt those of us still waiting for a single hair to show up under our armpits. After some argument, he conceded somewhat and decided that instead of going on the raid stark-naked, he would have Ronnie tape up his private parts with the masking tape - which I knew wouldn't end so well for him. (He didn't seem to care about the consequences... as a matter of fact - I think he was looking forward to it! Sick! Right?)
"You know you're from Venice if!"
Our "Saturday Night Massacre" began at 2:51am in the wee dark hours when everything had settled down and was quiet in the Boy Scout compound. The raid began as we quietly invaded several camps in our immediate vicinity and stole every Idaho potato we could find. We gathered and amassed our vegetarian plunder in small mountain just outside the front tent flaps of the KYBO patrol. Armed with Idaho's finest spuds we sneaked, snaked and snuck out in groups of three towards the massive parking lot that was filled with those disdained luxurious travel-coaches of the other "Regular" Boy Scouts. One boy in each group shoved the oversize potato into the opening of the exhaust muffler.. the other kid hit is with a brick, a rock, a bat...or anything heavy enough to beat the potato solidly into round exhaust pipe - while the third kid served as a look out. It took us a couple hours and by 5:00 we had managed to cover the entire parking lot. Hallelujah!
We didn't want the proverbial smoking gun to point in our direction so we stacked the excess potatoes, bricks, rocks and sticks across the field in the camp of the troop from Beverly Hills.
As 300 Boy Scouts at Farragut State Park (those anxious kids who hoped to receive their "bugle" merit badge) unnaturally forced out an ear-piercing wake-up rendition of reveille on tortured bugles... it served as a covering for the horrifying screams from the tent of the KYBO patrol, as the boys exuberantly pealed the tape off from Dego's hairy underparts and also from his dangling thinga-ma-giggy that had been wrapped like a mummy.
We broke down camp and loaded up the Troop 32 Scout Bus for the long ride home back to Venice. We fired up the old carbon monoxide spewing beast and watched the normal kids climb aboard the nice buses and smiled as if we liked them.
We watched and gladly inhaled the fumes of our glorious beast as the buses of 20,000 Boy Scouts chocked and sputtered and coughed and flat-out refused to start. Alan played his rusty bugle as we laughed and sang a victory celebration from Creedence Clearwater - capped off with Dego and Cockrell flashing their bare-buns in a "full-moon," pressed up against opposite portholes of the beloved old scout truck from Venice.
We bellowed in an awful cacophony like the squealing of 24 rats who had their tails caught in a door.
"There's a place up ahead
and I'm goin'
Just as fast as my feet
can fly
Come away, come away if
you're goin'
Leave the sinkin' ship
behind
Come on the risin' wind
We're goin' up around
the bend
Bring a song and a smile
for the banjo
Better get while the
gettin's good
Hitch a ride to the end
of the highway
Where the neons turn to
wood.."
With a cover up like this; deniability; The Smoking Gun, midnight raids "The Saturday Night Massacre" and learning how to pass the buck.. someone in our group was bound to go into politics.
See ya later Bill Gates...and the rest of you suckas!
Star Date: July 18 1969 2 more days until the Apollo 11 lands on the moon and four hours from the time eight naked boys are loosed at Boy Scout National Jamboree.
(Continued).
Last time, the brainiac nerd from Troop 186 named Billy, gave me the high grades on his tracking skills course, and so, I couldn't hate him...right? He got all excited and started telling me how this tracking thing was like some-kind of logic flow chart - the kind of code they use for programming computers. I didn't even know what a computer was and had no idea what he was talking about - but he was passionate about it.
I liked the little nerd, but unfortunately their troop from Seattle had incited the Flaming Arrow Patrol (of my Troop) which has by now become known throughout the Jamboree as the notorious KYBO Patrol (KYBO: was a military term that meant Keep Your Bowels Open, which had evolved into a derogatory slur against our less-than-illustrious patrol that had requested to be near the outhouses because poor Cockerel was still working through a bad case of "prune induced" diarrhea. In my best guesstimation he still had about 12 pounds of pasty spaghetti he had to pass through the lower part of his intestines - NO, but seriously!).
"Not gonna lie" These guys in the KYBO Patrol were loud, they smelled and they were filthy dirty. The hoity-toity types from Seattle who set up camp right next to us resented our Troop from Venice and got into a verbal sparring match. THIS WAS NOT GOING TO END WELL. Later that night after the speech from Jesse Owens and the message from Neil Armstrong aboard the Apollo 11 from outer space, the KYBO patrol had big plans for Troop 186 - when I use the word big - it is not a metaphor - I mean "BIG!"
During the wee hours of late muggy night the KYBO Patrol decided on a raid. Only, they thought that instead of dressing up and disguising themselves they wanted to do that raid as what they called the "NAKED ANGLES." I heard all the whispering in their tent and I quietly sneaked out of mine to see what they were up to.
I pulled back the flap of their tent to see 8 naked bodies putting tape on each other. I knew it was going to hurt coming off - but more power to them...right! This would be the first time ever in the history of the known boy scout universe for a naked raid at a Jamboree. Troop 32 was about to go down in infamy! I tried to talk them out of the naked part for the sake of our Scout Masters and managed to get them to concede to what I called the "White Angels" and to at least - go in their "Tightie-Whities." Then everyone scrambled and borrowed skin-tight skivvies, if they didn't have any, and went on the 3:00 am raiding party. You talk about the Living Dead or attack of the Zombies this was it! The time had finally come; an event that inspired many a horror movie to come. (Only Chronister read something in an encyclopedia about pixies and wanted the Flaming Arrows to go marauding as something he called "Manic Pixies" everyone thought it was stupid and shot that idea down) "Manic Pixie Hot Mess" I thought that idea would never fly!
First things first! The "White Angels"decided to mess up the Indian Tracking course. By that - all of the kids thought it meant destroying tracks, adding new ones and littering the course with trash and other stuff you can find at 3 am in the morning... all except for "Dego." When his patrol set off to mess up the course... somehow what got stuck in his brain was "to mess on the course." Now that our stools (except for Cockerel's) had some firm consistency to them, Dego threw the owl scat into some bushes and replaced it with the biggest stinkiest pile of human byproduct imaginable.
Next, the practically naked boy-scouts (if you could call us that) cut the ropes of the tent stakes and pulled Billy from his tent. They pants'd him and gave him a "pink-belly." Pretending to be Zombies, they said they were going to eat his brains and poop them out in the morning. After what Dego did, the boys from Troop 186 thought it just might be true.
As the baby boy of the"Wolf Pack" and perpetual underdog to my older brothers torturous shenanigans there shouldn't be any question in anyone's mind as to why I had this felt need to stand up for the underdog.
It was almost psychotic and my PTSD adrenaline addiction didn't help things either - when incited, I was always like that mother you hear about who could lift a car off her baby. I let them have their fun, but when they began to drag the poor kid over to Dego's "leaning tower of Dooh-Dooh," I Intersected their path and tried my best to derail their plans (this is what I would have wanted from a parent or a neighbor or anyone who I felt cared)...so I cared - sue me! I lied to them and told them that the MP's were on the way and punctuated that by telling the hairless Zombies that, "The nerd was safe.. because...How can you eat his brains... WHEN HE DOESN"T HAVE ANY!" Then I laughed in hopes of priming the pump and began howling in laughter, believing they had gotten the best of Troop 186 and scattering in victory. I watched as eight pair of white-clad buns scurried back into the tent of the KYBO Patrol.
I checked on Billy to see if he was okay, but didn't want to say much because I could see he was embarrassed. The poor guy. I don't think he's got what it takes to become an Eagle Scout and knew that this Boy Scout thing just wasn't for him. I helped him up as he mumbled under breath that, he'll get even. That somehow he would show those guys. I knew exactly what he had felt like mainly because of what I had waiting for me when i got back to my house.
He said something about computers again and about making a bazillion dollars and about taking over the world. "I'll show them" he said... I wasn't too sure about that...(to be honest, I wasn't too sure about the future for computers). Then I saw the look in his eye and figured that it might be good to keep his signed piece of paper. Who Knows! Maybe someday, we will all have giant super-computers in the basement of our homes. Right! Pshaw! That would be like portable phones you could carry around with you... like that will ever happen. What are you going to do strap a phone booth on the top of your car! - Not very likely.
Hello Muddah.. Hello Faddah... "When I get home remind me to tell you about the White Angels some time and if you see Tommy Blaser and Jeffery and Kippy and Michael and Kevin Lennon running around the neighborhood, tell them it was better that they weren't here. I think the trip would have changed their outlook on world.
I had no idea what was going to happen since the Scout Masters had put my name on the "No BM" side of the secret ledger at the private interrogations last night. I crawled out of my sleeping bag the next morning and didn't have a care in the world. We were on the way to the Boy Scout National Jamboree and the United States was about to send men to the moon...for the very first time in the History of the world... and the sun was shining - "I was a Happy Boy and things were going my way!"
I'm a Happy Boy
Our Senior Patrol Leader, Ray, suspiciously sneered at us as he stood stirring whatever-it-was - steaming in the great big pot over the low flame on the camp stove. PRUNES! 500 gallons of prunes - so I exaggerate - sue me! But someone in our troop must have bought out the entire prune section of the local Wyoming (not-so-super) Super Market!
We were called to attention by a poor rendition of revelry that snorted and wheezed and sputtered out of the end of Alan's dented old bugle. We were separated into two lines. The short line had the kids who were smart enough to lie and say they had taken a "BM" (obviously these were the kids from outside Venice where they used proper language for what we called "Dropping a Buick" "Laying a Brick" "Taking a Dump"). The rest of us stupid kids were herded into the long line right behind 500-million-gallon bucket of stewed prunes. With an ominous premonition I wasn't too sure that things were going "my way" anymore and was suddenly nervous about the immediate future of this Boy Scout summer extravaganza.
There is still a remote possibility that letting Boy Scouts out of Venice could have decent ending... hubba- hubba-hubba-hubba-hubba... but the feeling I was having right now is that this adventure might not have such a good middle.
The four other guys got hot oatmeal - while Ray ecstatically scooped ladles of mushy warm prunes into the tin bowls of our boy-scout mess-kits. I've seen this stuff before. This was "old lady food" and I know what it can do to you. I ate two bites of the laxative-fruit-cocktail, not because I particularly wanted to, but because I was plugged up by oatmeal and gloop-pasta-paste and needed to. However, I wasn't about to over do it. As they watch us, I put one bite in my mouth and flung two bites over my head into the shrubs behind us whenever they looked away. I was beating the system - I was "beating the man" Hehehe. I wonder if this is what my older brothers felt like when they burned their draft cards... Markie D was an anarchist.
Here is the long and the short of it: Remember David Cockerell the 15-year-old human garbage disposal who almost drowned yesterday trying to liberate his bowels? Well, believe it or not - this knucklehead volunteered to eat the remaining 4 gallons of the left-over prunes. NOT GOOD! Worst was...that some ADULT ALLOWED HIM to scrape out the pot and eat the entire remains of this evil elixir! This guy was either hungry or desperate or both! We packed-up all of our stuff, jammed our personal belonging into our backpacks, threw it into the back of the scout truck and headed down the highway.
As the stiff-shocked, moving-truck rattled down the highway towards the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park - rebellious bellies began to gurgle and rumble and made noises louder than the exhaust of the carbon-monoxide belching truck we traveled in. SHAKE RATTLE AND ROLL baby!
A rocket ship was about to be sent to the moon and yet the height of our technology, was a whinny little doorbell buzzer someone had brilliantly installed in the back of the moving van, as an emergency communication with those in the front cab.
A couple guys pee'd out of the back, trying to relieve themselves as usual, but two hours later the prunes began to do what prunes do - DRAINO!
I'll tell you right now, "We were no longer The NO POOP TROOP"
Steve had to go. He said that if they didn't stop the truck he would probably explode in some kind of violent eruption akin to what happened at Mount Vesuvius. Alan, the bugler, laid on the buzzer until the scout masters pulled the truck over and even before it came to a complete stop, 3 or 4 guys jumped out of the back and headed into the pine forest.
The Flood Gates were open wide!
We managed to get inside Yellowstone until the next diarrhea panic attack!
The other "normal" scouts had a bathroom in the back of their luxurious travel-coaches, but for us - it was press the buzzer, jump over the barn-doors and squat behind some shrub and wipe off with nearby branches or pine cones - (something we'd all regret later). I don't think Ronny, Cockerel or Chronister even washed their grubby little hands and it looked like they rubbed their filthy mitts on their uniforms. "Gross! It was disgusting!" They looked grody and they smelled even worse!"
"Hey, Kissel..what has six wheels and flies?" I asked.
"I don't know. What? An airplane?" he replied
"No" I said "Our troop 32 scout bus." We laughed, but it was true.
The back of the truck smelled like poop and was now swarming with flies. The good news was that by about our third stop inside the park, the cause of our stomachaches had been liquefied and partially eradicated.
In the words of Iron Butterfly... IN
A GADDA DA VIDA...
...thankfully, it looked like the days of "Prairie Dogging" "Logs, Buicks and bricks were behind us"
With the stuff in our belles that felt like the hot geothermal brew of the Blue Sulfur Springs, poor-poor Cockerel was as eruptive and as reliable as Old Faithful.
We spent a night inside Yellowstone Park and on the 11th began to make our way to Idaho. This is when the event that led to the embarrassment of the entire Boy Scouts of America - that had Lord Baden Powell rolling over in his grave...happened!
My stomach felt better and we were on the road again so "I was a happy boy." However, this inexplicable euphoric feeling might have had something to do with the fact that I chose to travel with my head hanging out of the back of the truck, inhaling the toxic fumes in order to keep from smelling, Ronny, Cockerel and Chronister...
Next, my premonition comes true: Our Scout Masters worst nightmare and the unfortunate serious of events in the not-so-good middle part of our summer adventure...
...MMA cage fighting and the Highway Patrol escort. In the mean time we pretended to be hippies and got all psychedelic rocking out on air guitars to Iron Butterfly - We were from Venice and had a reputation to uphold.
