Christmas in Venice and the Viking Warrior Gene

Christmas 1970  We were normal once, but that was a long time ago.

At one time we were cute and cuddly and snugly - had manners and said our prayers.

 (I'm the cute one on the rocking horse)

(Erick and Mary)  (Here I am crawling on the floor) 

(Kurt and Karl)

We took pictures without pinching the person in front of us or elbowing the person next to us. We ate meals together at the kitchen table and called our mother and father "mom" and "dad" like most other children in the world. 

Being number 7 most of those days are before my time and are but a shadowy memory at best.

 

(Here is what a couple pictures look like without having prison guards or parents on patrol)

Now that I am 14 and in high-school at Saint Monicas - mom has pretty much checked out and dad stays at work as much as possible--so it is like having the inmates running the asylum.

In the future they will discover something called the warrior gene. This, I'm sure, has been handed down to my family from our Viking ancestry. This genetic disposition is not on my mom's side of the family. There was still some "normal" in her that caused her to long for our family to be like other all the other plain wrap families in the world--but this was not to be.

Everything in our house was a competition. A simple game of croquet turned into World War II with croquet balls launched all the way down Harding Avenue into the Nargie's front yard and the round-missile-objects shot all the way down to the vacant lot where the Fraternity house use to be.

Croquet for the Lennons and Tripps and Blasers was probably just croquet. For us, it would invariability turn into a wrestling match--everything turned into a wrestling match, a boxing match, and a footrace if a chuckwalla, a Iguana or alligator ever got loose.

This is why our house was the center of the world. The Lennons wanted into the fun - the Blasers wanted to hang out here along with the the Tripps - the Grants and is why our house always seemed to be filled with a million people on every occasion.

Why sit around and watch Kung fu or Dick Van Dyke on TV when everyday was an episode of Sanford and Son meets the Adams Family and Dark Shadows--only our haunted house also had a Veloci-Raptor attack-rooster and a crop of luscious marijuana plants in the backyard just to make things more interesting.

(What it looked like then on our front steps)

(What the front steps looks like now with the Police showing up every other day)

Now that I was a Freshman in high school the older boys tried to recruit me into the hippy club and taught me how to smoke and roll a refer. I desperately wanted to be in the club - I wanted to be accepted - I wanted to feel like I was part of the menagerie of older brothers, but didn't want to jump in with both feet quite yet. I wanted to please the older guys and had to show some loyalty to the Wolf Pack by puffing from time to time, but wasn't ready to fully buy in to this whole hippy thing completely.

Making matters worse at Christmas Tony had given up on shopping at Pick and Save altogether. He figured that it was cheaper, more fun and added more to the overall the chaos by rummaging through the attic for junk he could wrap as presents. Then his gift giving digressed from the smelly old-broken stuff to stuff he would steal from someone's bedroom.

One of the highlights of this new Christmas tradition was when any one of of the older boys unwrapped a present allegedly from "Santa" that belonged to someone else all H. E. double toothpicks would break out. This awakens the Force of the Warrior Creed.

Wrestling would break out and bodies would spill out and onto the front lawn.

Dad seemed to enjoy it and acted just like the rest of us but none of this please my mother!

After three or four rounds of utter chaos Mrs. D would stomp her feet on every single tread of the staircase--all the way up to her room while saying things like, "Why couldn't we be more like the Lennons and the Blasers. Slamming her door she would lock her self in imagining what Christmas was probably like next door or down the street at the Lennons.



(Mom...Mrs. D Pictured this to the left...




but got something that looked more like this...to the right)

I could only image that this year after midnight mass upon entering the front door we would get the "Under-Pain-of-Mortal-Sin" speech again just before opening large sliding into the living room just seconds before we jumped onto the mountain of poorly wrapped presents under Mr. D's two dollar tree he finagled from the Troop 32, Boy Scout, Christmas tree lot.

We had a lot to look forward to. Zombies and Wrapping Paper Wars. The stolen presents, the wrestling matches, chaos and mayhem and you can be sure that those normal people would stop by - because they wanted in on the fun also. 

Joy to the World. Merry Christmas from me - Markie D - and from my family to you and yours... may your Christmas be less than normal, but Sacred none-the-less.  

El Heffe and the Maniacal Machine

Though this is a true story of events... this is more of a time capsule for those who grew up in and around Venice - Circa 1970

Tommy, Jeffery and I had our heads sticking out of the hole on the top of Tony's '59 Ranchero. Like the happiest dogs you ever saw, we turned toward the air blowing in our faces and tried to capture it in our mouths and nostrils. Just like brothers we fought the whole way from Harding ave to Palms Blvd.

Jeffery stuck his head inside the cab and asked Tony if he ever planned to finish the sunroof project he began years before.

"Blech" Tony said, as though fixing the hole he had cut out of the top of the car was furthest thing from his mind and dismissed him with a wave.

"Thirty six cents a gallon" I shouted to Tommy and Jeffery pointing to the prices at the Mohawk Gas station. "That's highway robbery" I said repeating what my dad must have said at least a thousand times. I got a blank stare from both of them―they were only 11 so what did they care. I would be driving in the next couple of years so it mattered to me.

While pushing, shoving, and yelling each other all the way down Lincoln Boulevard we heard a terrifying scream above the riot we were making. Like a retracting periscope, Jeffery stuck his head down again and warned Tony of the awful sound we heard while still a block away―passing Allan's Aquarium.

Tony freaked and punched it. He sped so fast around the corner at Palms that the two outside wheels almost lifted off the warm asphalt as the three of us screamed in exhilaration pretending to be the sirens on top of a rescue vehicle.

This Saturday we had been recruited to paint the investment property at 1041 Palms that Tony had bought from Mr. Blaser for the tidy sum of $12,500 several years ago which was almost equal to his annual salary...AND THIS WAS EAST of Lincoln practically in the ghetto.

Even before screeching to a halt in front of small wooden shack that sat at the back of a very deep lot, Tony finally tuned into the harrowing cries of help that the three of us had already heard two blocks away.

"DISENGAGE ME!   DISENGAGE ME!  DISENGAGE ME!"  Bellowed the poor fellow who was being dragged down the length of the long lot. Tony had left his friend, "El Heffe" (or something like that), with the task of rototilling the front yard and a giant machine.

It appears that El Heffe managed to get the magnificent red-machine fired up and operating which Tony thought would never happen. That alone was a miracle in itself. The machine came to life and El Heffe grabbed the handle and the beast began dragging him up and down the length of the property. It never crossed his mind to let go of the handle grips that engaged the drive gears. As the blades dung into the hard soil and forced itself forward it dragged poor Heffe behind on his belly screaming as if  being tortured by a evil machine that would not let go of him.

"Someone help the boy" pleaded the little old lady next door.
"LET GO OF THE MACHINE" Tony yelled as he ran after the pair.

This thought never occurred to him. "DISENGAGE ME!" El Heffe screamed at a decibel higher than the roar of Apollo 11 taking off at Cape Kennedy. We stood with the growing number of spectators who had gathered on the sidewalks and laughed as Tony chased the helpless body being dragged around like a helpless rag doll.

"LET GO!  LET GO!"

The three of cried with laughter―even the old man next door thought it was funny. This was good stuff―who needs TV?

Tony jumped on the Heffe's back and pinned him to the ground that ripped the death grip he had on the handle bars.

The machine came to an abrupt stop―idling passively as if the devil had been exercised out of it.

Other than being dirty, scratched up, exhausted, sweaty, and thirsty―Heffe was FREE! When he saw the assembled crowds he had no shame at all. Standing to his feet, he dusted himself off with an air of triumph as if he expected accolades for taming the wild beast and for successfully rototilling half the lawn all by himself.

Tony turned his attention to the three of us and pointed to the five gallon buckets of bright yellow paint that he had stacked next to the porch.


With very little instruction he told us paint the house and took off. 

 Heffe also left in the Karmann Ghia, returning to the Harding house for a well deserved nap.
























Not wanted to alarm him, we waited for Tony to turn the corner until jumping up and down at the shear joy of the opportunity that lay before us.


Three stupid kids and a lot of yellow paint. Thinking about what that big, red machine did to El Heffe just imagine how much damage a bucket of possessed evil paint could do in the hands of some nit-wit best friends and no adult supervision.

Yabba dabba doo!... BEST DAY EVER to be continued.

I mean, Tony should have known better...right?





   

The Summer of Love. The Summer of Manhood. Both? Neither?

June 1970: it was a big, big year.
             "A Rite of Passage"







I was finally graduating from Saint Mark's grammar school and would become a man.

Well, maybe not a man, but I would begin a new life as a Freshman at Saint Monica's High School.



This sacred rite of passage, however, seemed to be lost on me. The other normal kids in my class seemed to know things. They knew about love and sex and English grammar. The knew about the three branches of our American government, how to spell and lots of stuff about God and Jesus and Mary and Joseph and also stuff about science.

   Me?  Uh-uh!

I had been too busy running for my life, dodging needle-tipped arrows, digging myself out of pits, surviving electrocutions, fighting off ambushes by the "Angry-Little-Man-Crew," pushing our fleet of broken down cars from one side of the street to the other, not to mention the psychological torture of the Catholic nuns at Saint Marks, and most recently, the bullying and physical torture of the "Wolf-Pack" hippie clan that repeatedly threw me over the cliffs in Malibu - TO ACTUALLY LEARN ANYTHING.

I was okay at math - accepted into the "Zero Period" advanced math program at Saint Monica's, but other than that I barely knew the difference between a noun and a verb. I was so preoccupied with ducking every time one of the kids in my class raised a hand - thinking I was going to be belted in the head - that I didn't have sufficient brain synapse to learn a blinking thing.

Why, I was so ignorant that I hardly knew where babies came from. 







It seemed my only "rite of passage" was the fact that I finally outgrew my dad's frugal invention of the infamous sugar-water, gel-concoction that attracted the mosquitoes to California.





I graduated from the hard shell helmet-look to the  dry-look with my long bangs as a junior-hippy.


The girls in my 8th grade class seemed to like my golden locks and began doting on me - you would think this was good... right?  Well, I don't think it had anything to do with any sort of romantic inclination. At our graduation party at Mike Dunagan's house the girls sat me on their lap and combed my hair as if they were 8-year-olds (in touch with there mothering instincts) playing with me like I was a doll. 

I didn't put up a fuss. It made me feel good. I enjoyed actual human contact and physical touch that didn't leave bruise marks or some kind of road rash. Though it wasn't love (other than Irene), this was the closest thing I had come to making contact with what might have looked like love.

I sat on the front steps of our Venice house, watched the world go by and surveyed the landscape - trying to take it all in.

I think the Lennons knew what love was.


I think the Blasers knew what love was.


I think the Tripps knew what love was.





My friends next door and across the street... surely Tommy and Jeffry and Joey and Ricky knew... right?







The girls in my class knew. Marilyn and Theresa and Andrea - they had to know... didn't they?











There was a normal family behind us - across the ally - the Arnolds - they knew. Right?


 (Photo courtesy of Cheryl Arnold - Miss Venice, Miss Santa Monica, and Miss LA)






So what is wrong with me? COULD SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME! I wanted to believe that what I felt for Andrea was love, but was so insecure that I couldn't utter one coherent word in her presence.

I was either retarded, like my brothers said, or I was damaged goods.  I began to wonder if I was even capable of something so grand a notion as love?

Numb! An Island! A Rock!  I had spent considerable time building a wall around my heart to protect myself - afraid of becoming vulnerable and afraid that only by being vulnerable could I know what love truly is.  "In case I need it when I get older."



Do I just blurt it out! Do I tell Andrea that I love her?  We didn't use the word in our family and I couldn't get the "L Word" past my lips.  Andrea, please, read between the lines.


I've traveled so far... I wanna know what love is. Please someone show me.



Do I let down my guard and trust my brothers? Maybe, one small steps at a time!  Take a little time and think things over. I have this mountain I have to climb.

Tomorrow, we are going to set out for another great adventure. It's always a great adventure when my family goes camping.

As usual we will cram a hundred bodies into our Ford station wagon and drive up the coast to visit our neighbor, Roger Sasson's, new property up by the Russian River.

I'm sure that I'll be perfectly safe and nothing will go wrong.... NEXT TIME "Russian River, The Man Hunt, Elephant Man and The Plague"    

Snakes. Ropes. Zombies and Troop 32

Continued: Last time, we had left off with Senior Patrol Leader, Ray, dangling inside the back compartment of our Scout Bus as if on a rotisserie inside of a BBQ. It was like he had been shish-kabobed by the oak branch that had crashed through the front window.

The chants of "Don't cross the bridge" morphed into "Monkey in the middle" as the toxic-fumed minions began swatting the helplessly flailing arms and feet of our new object of ridicule!  Meanwhile, the "do-gooders" of the other normal troops, grabbed their neatly packed first aid kits and rushed to the scene of the crash hoping to earn accolades and merit-badges.

We were "ill-equipped" for the attention we were suddenly flooded with! I was on top of the moving van(slash)Scout Bus singing about "Tapp crossing the bridge and the skewered Senior Patrol Leader" to the tune of "Like a Bridge over Troubled Water," but the Scout Master from Troop 34 and his flock of rescuing vermin thought my brilliant parody was inappropriate and tasteless.

"Ill-equipped" ...because we had no rocks to throw at the other regular kids (like we had at our disposal at the National Jamboree when Dego and the rest of the boys tried to kill Bill Gates)!
("at our disposal" meant that at the National Jamobree last summer we had both -  regular kids and rocks - lots and lots of normal kids who weren't from Venice and a billion river rocks!)

Behind their Scout Master's back, the pasty cake-eaters sneered and scowled at us with the expression of disdain written on their namby-pamby faces - that irked Jeffery to no end.    He was fit to tied!

FLASHBACK:  Even though we had tamed down the secret-induction "ritual" ever since the brawl of my induction malfunction - it was still very clear to Jeffery in the new "safer" ceremony - that loyalty to the new "people group" was of paramount importance and that snitches and "rats" were not tolerated.

Even though Jeffery Lennon did not start a riot at his induction like I did, he got the message loud and clear.

BACK TO OUR STORY: The kids in Troop 34 needed payback for violating the code! After we ran everybody off and took care of the mess ourselves we eventually made camp in front the best cabin at Camp Slauson. We were TROOP 32, we were from Venice and we were proud!

The planning began.  We found both of the snakes - one by accident, when it fortuitously bit the annoying "Little Wiener." We removed the snake from his arm, Kissel sucked out the pretend venom - and we praised Little Wiener for his contribution in finding the last snake, which had made its way into his backpack. Secretly, we assembled the ropes and the snakes for the midnight caper that would take place after the traditional "snipe hunt."   I hated the snipe hunts.  Supposedly, this charade is to test the resolve of the new kids and put hair on their chest. I've been on snipe hunts some 20 times, but sitting in a bush in the middle of a moonless night in complete blackness still scared the bajeebers out of me (AND I still didn't have hair on my chest).  I could not admit to my new Boy Scout tribe that I was afraid of the dark! I was afraid of being smothered....buried...suffocated...big brothers and anything that had to do with being tied up in ropes.

Oh, and Zombies!  (That's because my family had opened a Porthole to Hades that was channeled through the mysterious space in my bedroom wall).



For a new little "Pimple-Squeeze" like Jeffery - he actually had a very good plan (it was probably better planned than my payback attempt at Chewbacca - that had left me tied up by a rope and dangling from the third story window of our house IN MY UNDERWEAR on a school morning, in front of ANDREA and every other kid at Saint Marks school).

This was either going to be really good, or else, someone was going to end up in prison (I figured that I would probably have to go to confession next Saturday for not offering up a prayer for those soft kids from Mar Vista and Santa Monica).

Cockrell wanted to do the raid naked  - of course - but thankfully, we settled for duck tape and Tighty-Whities!

Next time:  "THE WHITE ANGELS"  True story!

Like a Bridge Over Troubled Waters and 20 Intoxicated Rats!

We had an excuse in the back of the Boy Scout truck for being crazy. We had been freely inhaling carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen and other hydro-carbons that got belched out of the tailpipe of the old moving van that blew over the half barn-doors filling the prison space we inhabited for the duration of the slow moving - hour and a half drive to Camp Slauson. BUT, the guys in front - the two Scout Masters and Pinky Parlett had no excuse for what was going to happen next. Mr. Tapp was a novice in driving the horrendous beast - this was his "solo" checkout flight - per say!

(Picture above of "boy scout" truck in background with dent over driver side)

We already looked ridiculous pulling into campground!  We didn't care. We liked being different! We like to proudly say we are from VENICE to every other smug Boy Scout in the Boy Scout Universe (you know - the other regular kids who were actually there to learn something and to do something constructive).  We had our plans, which did not include anything to do with merit badges nor anything  remotely considered constructive.

                                     (pictured above- regular kids from Troop 34 pictured at camp Slauson)

Since my over-achieving Eagle Scout brother, Kurt, had left the troop last year and went away to Humboldt State University where he went into rigorous training to become a full fledged hippie, we were not about to let small details like merit badges and rank advancement get in the way of having fun.

In the meantime, Ray Vandenmark, who had been to Slauson a billion times, had his face pressed up against one of the two porthole windows that had been cut in front of our cargo compartment, (one either side of the cab), when Mr. Tapp was faced with the decision of crossing over the creek bridge to take the back route up to our Troop 32 cabin or to take the road most traveled that would put us below the cabin on main road.

Pausing, to contemplate the decision - wondering what direction to take... Ray began screaming into the glass window not to cross over the bridge!  His screams became the fuel for a chant the rest of us intoxicated kids in the back which only made the noisy arrival of Troop 32 even more inglorious and obvious to every camper within 16 miles (give or take 15 miles).
                             "Don't cross the bridge"
                             "Don't cross the bridge"
                             "Don't cross the bridge"
                             "Don't cross the bridge"
Louder and louder the cacophony grew as Kissel began pounding on a bucket while Mosquito Bait and Cockrell pounded on the inside walls of the converted moving van, like drums beating in unison to our new song!

We had reason... We were drugged  - but Tapp chose the bridge. Pinky was too large and was squeezed in so tight - that he had his arms pinned between Mr. Tapp and Mr. Sarosi - rendering him powerless to grab the wheel in order to prevent Tapp from driving the oxidized, blue monster over the creaky, wooden bridge.

There could be no greater entrance like ours, with boys at full octave - blaring off key,  "Don't cross the bridge," buckets pounding, walls resounding the thuds of enthusiastic fist like the beating of African drums... Ray screaming and bridge squealing in protest under the load.          

Venice had made it's way to Topanga - and everyone knew it!

Headlong with confidence, without heeding the wisdom of the 20-drugged-rats making noise in the back to the contrary - Tapp drove "boldly where no man has gone before."

In one final gasp Ray screamed at the top of his lungs before ducking to take cover...

...went the sound of a branch shattering the window where Ray (a mere nano-second) previously had been watching the awful event unfold before his very eyes.  Ray, was both, the most unlucky person alive and the most lucky! Somehow he had escaped death more times than me, but was like a magnet for near-death experiences without needing any help from older brothers. He did this all by himself and didn't need anyone else to shove him in hampers, bury him in pits, dangle him out of windows, tie him to trees, throw him over cliffs or electrocute him - like I had been privileged at the hands of my older brothers.

In an explosive crunch of twisting metal, the low hanging branch crushed the top driver-side of our juvenile delinquent containment box (other-wise known as"Scout Bus"). The branch shot through the window and slid along the flesh of Ray's back - under his uniform shirt that subsequently dangled him in mid air as though he was a large piece of meat on a Sish-Kabob!

Arms flailing and feet kicking, Ray dangled as the impaled truck was pinned between the large oak and the old bridge... the snakes had gotten away in the chaos while all of the other normal Boy Scouts on the planet watched in horror at our arrival.




So far, this is turning out to be just the kind of trip that Jeffery Lennon is going to love!  He was tired of being normal and wanted a dose of "Dahlin" to spice his life up, and believe me, he was going to get his share of "crazy"this weekend in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Just saying!

Seeing that we were stuck on the bridge, I climbed out on top of the scout bus and began an "air-guitar" rendition of the new Simon and Garfunkel song, "Like a Bridge over Troubled Waters"

Next time: "The White Angels"


  
   
                         

Venice verses the Dahlins: How we changed the World.

To clean streets with those humongous street cleaning machines was no new thing in the late 60's.

ONLY after the Fraternity House Burned down at the corner of Harding and Grandview it meant that the Dahlins had free access to urban sprawl - or worst yet - urban blight!

I'm sure that, whoever burned down the Fraternity had no idea at the time that we would completely take over that corner of the world and fill it with all of the broken down Dahlin vehicles. The arsonist may have thought they were getting rid of the late-night fracas of partying hippies only to face the horrors of reality that "nature abhors a vacuum" and the empty space became a Dahlin parking lot.

 Cars. Trailers. Boats. Trucks.

Truck is a polite word. In fact, our trucks had become trash barges...sarcophagi for the dead remnants of cannibalize automobiles that had been hastened into an early death by the tribe of White Swedes with Gold hair...

I think you get the idea! 

The Venice Police Department did all they could to help our neighbors who had called the cops on us for abandoning cars in front of their houses and across the street from us. They instituted new laws about moving cars every three days. The parking enforcement officers came by in their nifty three-wheeled-Harleys and began the game of  "Chalk the Tires" but we were too clever!

The game began with the officer drawing a chalk mark on the sidewall of the tire to see if the vehicle had been moved within the three day - maximum time allowed by the new "anti-Dahlin-law."

The Dahlins, however, thwarted the plans of "Big Brother" by taking a sponge dipped in water and washing off the chalk-marks.  I'm sure this made Mr. Blaser and the rest of our neighbors upset.  

                                The line of cars and the trash heaps continued to grow (it was almost like a fungus).

The police department had to institute new policies where they had hoped to trick us and keep us unaware of their sneaky plans to control the spread of Dahlin suburban blight by marking the lowest part of the exposed tread of tire to conceal the fact that they had been down Harding and Grandview Avenues.

This cost us a couple tickets, but we were on to their clever tricks!  "The game's afoot" as Sherlock Holmes would say.



This new part of the game was a bit more irksome, as it required more effort by having to roll the vehicle back a foot or two to conceal the chalk mark that was sneakily drawn on the tread of the tire. WE WON.

Sometimes we had to fix a flat or solicit the help of a hundred hippies to push the barges full of junk - even if it was just a couple feet.  But, we were on to the "MAN!"








Then came a new improved strategy on behalf of the city.      
           Venice verses the Dahlins.
Secret meetings were being held and it was decided that at tax payers expense the city would put up "Street Cleaning" signs for the purposes of making the Dahlin boys move their broken down fleet of cars twice a week  (I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist - BUT I wouldn't be surprised if my dad had something to do with this new parking enforcement). He was as tired of all the #@*&# cars as much as Don Blaser and everyone else in the neighborhood.

Up went the new signs that opened a new "theater of operations!"  IT WAS WAR.

John Gillemot and his friends over on Garfield got so upset over the whole thing that they decided to take the law into their own hands and mowed down all the signs along Garfield ave with an old Chevy truck! Though they destroyed the truck, the crazies over on Garfield felt it was a moral victory. Any day that I wasn't used as a throw toy or punching bag and didn't show up for school at Saint Mark's - all Black and Blue was considered a moral victory!

My dad, on the other hand, tried to wear us down by the great Dahlin spectacle put on for all the neighbors to watch in the Wednesday-and-Thursday-Street-Cleaning-Rituals that involved in moving all the Dahlin cars from one side of the street to the other.

The boys hated when my dad, the Staff Sargent, thumped on the walls at 7:00 am in the morning and began shouting his infamous phrases like "Up and at 'em"  "Time of the harvest moon"  "Party all night- sleep all day" and then rattling off  the command to "go" like a machine gun which was received with just about as much enthusiasm as walking into machine gun fire from a sniper. "Let's go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go!" "Up and at 'em...it's time of the harvest moon. Let's go girly-men. Get the hair out of your eyes and let's go move some cars."  To the older boy, this was a true American Horror Story which the neighbors came out and watched every week as if was the Ringling Brothers circus -itself!

I said "some cars" - that was an understatement - it was more like 'let's go and move the 73,000 broken down cars' - some with flat ties - some with no wheels at all - AND... those TRUCKS FULL of TRASH.

And so the party began!

And because of us...there is street-cleaning, parking-enforcement across this great fruited plain! Okay, so maybe we didn't change the World - but our impact was being felt!

Just another day in paradise for the Dahlins on in  Harding Ave!