Gillemonster and His Dog-Poop Alibi

(Continued from 1/25/14) Chewbacca knelt over the dead body as tears lightly fell on the seared flesh that smell of burnt hair.  Crying, he mourned the loss of his friend.

Let's come back to the fatality left behind by the Great Fire of '69 and turn back to our list of possible arson suspects.

Out of the 16 or 17 on my original list, I have narrowed the suspects to a mere four:

1) Rita Nargie
2) Sea-Shell
3) Anti-War, Draft-card-burning, peace-loving hippies
4) The Owner

RITA HAD MOTIVE. She had been rejected by one of the "Frat - guys" and was holding a grudge. When my brothers and crew went down to the "Frat-House" in drag (dressed as women) and two were invited in - it only served to intensify her female hormonal angst against every man in the world. From the kitchen window of her house next door, she was allegedly heard screaming at the top of her Italian lungs that she would get even someday.  Unfortunately for Rita, the entire neighborhood heard her threats and this is why I felt she needed to be investigated. It does turn out that she had not come out of her room for more than a month, which I was able to verify by the dirty stack of surplus dinner plates left just outside her bedroom door.  Her mother had been in no mood to clean up after Rita, which the neighborhood also knew about.

I refer to that incident as "The Leaning Tower of  Stand-off Soufflé"   
 So Rita went off the list and the fire somehow brought closure to all the hurts she had suffered and had seemed to exact the vengeance she was looking for and the next week at church it was mentioned from the pulpit by the droning-monotone Irish accent of  Father Hoban as a miracle.  One lady said, "Hallelujah" and was promptly asked to leave the church.

I'm am now left with 1)  Sea-Shell, the 11 year-old-sister of the Frat-House President who had been
                                      dropped on her head.
                               2)  Hippies - other than my brothers
                               3)  Mr. Malon, the owner of the Property.

As for Johnny the Gillemonster...as I mentioned before he had motive!  He was a paperboy for the our local Herald Examiner newspaper. His route included the Harding Avenue Fraternity House. You can only imagine what a nightmare it must have been for the poor kid to collect the Newspaper fee from a bunch of transient squirrely irresponsible college-dropout types!  Every time Gillemonster knocked on the door, a different person answered and told him to come back tomorrow. After about 10 such visits 'O Gilly figured that they were running him around and that no one was ever going to pay.  He turned bright red and shook his fist at that house and said he's get payback. "You just wait and see!"  he yelled and spun dirt on the porch  from the back wheel of his customized Schwinn Sting-Ray (bicycle) as he spun out.  (Every kid in America had a Stingray bike).

Remember I told you about the lyrics that Four Eyes sent in to Creedence Clearwater Revival... about Do..do...do... looking out my back door... and all the other words the nuns told me when I interrogated them... well it wasn't "do...do...do"  It was literally "Dooh...Dooh...Dooh!"

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Lookin' out my Back Door

Johnny was so angry at feeling like he had been messed with... that he took the largest... stinkiest... warmest... pile of fresh-steaming dog dooh he could find early the next Sunday morning on a neighbors lawn and squished it between the sports section and the comics of the 50 pound Sunday Morning edition of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.  "Gilly" left that "special" payback edition of the newspaper right on the welcome mat in front of the large entry door. He rang the bell, ran across the street, hid in a bush and watched in delight as those drunkards with hangover vomited their guts out.  Gillemonster told me, that was his alibi and as he spoke I carefully watch every indicator on his face and really believe that the Dog-Poop completely satisfied his desire for payback.  TRUE!

I would never accuse a Catholic Priest - that's why Father Hoban never made it on my list to begin with, but he was known to have quite a temper - and being raised in Belfast had plenty of training in making Molotov Cocktails.

Let's just leave it at that - for now!  I was too frightened about going into the Rectory so I wasn't about to interrogate the Father... I'd leave that investigation to the Fire Marshal.

I already had enough problems at Saint Marks and next year - my last and final year - was destined to be a living Purgatory, for I had to look forward to spending the year under Sister Shultz.

Meanwhile, the mellow and cuddly Chewbacca grieved over the death of the neighborhood cat as though the thing had been a close relative of his.  Before the fire, I'd have to admit, that the feral Calico cat did look like a miniature version of my hairy older brother.  My brother looked like a giant version of Cousin It  from the Addams Family TV Show.

In the midst of smoke and firemen and ambulances and Secret Service and the Crazy Vietnam War vet with a broom and the Zombie Holocaust, Chewbacca scooped the dead cat into a cardboard box and took it past the dreaded Veloci-Rooster into the the hippie sanctuary of "Wall Drug" in our Venice backyard.  If you think the Rita-thing was a miracle - wait until next time.

Wolf Pack and Trouble in Outer Space.

(Sing this humming and snapping your fingers to the Addams Family theme song - it'll make more sense that way).   

"They're Hairy and they're kooky,

Mischievous and spooky,
They're altogether ooky,
The Dahlin Family."

Du, du, du, du..snap snap

"Their house is an Aslyum
When people come to see 'em
The inmates are a screa-um.
The Dahlin Family." 

That's just my family by the way, add to those numbers the Harding Avenue Gang and the Wolf Pack had numbers to be reckoned with.  On one hand, think of the damage that could come from assembling an unruly crowd of that size. Entire small countries have been toppled by less. On the other hand (on a more positive note) - the vast number of hippies in our Venice Tribe also lent itself to the possibility of...say...putting out a fire - should something go awfully wrong. I said "positive" not "realistic"!


Q. And what is "Murphy's Law?"
A. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong!

Problem was, that chaos always seemed to reign over order, and boy, did we cause a lot of problems.

While everyone in the neighborhood was gathered in our dining room (the room with the hospital-bed and bumper-pool table), Gustav my oldest brother and the oldest Blaser-boy from next door came up with a brilliant plan. What you have to remember is, that during this time in the sixties, everyone was all jacked-up and excited about exploring outer space and landing on the moon to gather green-cheese.

As I mentioned before, a new TV show came out two nights ago called Star Trek "Going where no man has ever gone before" add that to a couple TV shows which had already been out now for about a year, 
My Favorite Martin and Lost in Space, it was plain to see that rockets-to-the-moon and space travel were indeed on the forefront of everyone's mind.   

Every stupid fifth-grade-boy in the world already had the twisted theme song from Lost in Space memorized, so they could they could inflict silly grammar-school torment on a smaller kid. They would sing, "It's about time, it's about space, it's about time to..." SMACK "...slap your face" slapping their latest victim in the face at the opportune moment - then laugh at them for falling for it, and then running away in order to avoid adolescent retribution.  I probably don't have to tell you that the Wolf Pack (though, far too old for this kind of thing), was particularly fond of the ending part. The part where they slapped a younger sibling (like me) in the face.

300 slaps! You'd think, I would have caught on, right?   Duh!

Anyway... we were in the middle of the "SPACE RACE" with the Russians and they were winning. They had already landed a spacecraft on the moon and the United States seemed to be falling behind - landing on the moon seemed to be light-years off at a distance at our snail's pace!  This was all part of the Cold War and we were losing!

When we were still using monkeys, I wrote a letter to Washington asking if they wouldn't mind using any of my brothers in their rocket experiments. I told them it would be okay since they weren't a whole bunch smarter then chimpanzees (Oh, I made no mention about letting the monkeys out of the zoo). 

When we started to use real-live human-beings, I wrote another letter asking again - if they wouldn't mind using any of my brothers. I told President Johnson that they wouldn't have to feel too sad if we lost one of them should something bad happened, since I had like 28 big brothers. My dad said we had plenty to go around if something should ever happen to one of us (that's why I didn't think they cared if  they had left me at Salton Sea - I'm the second from the right in this picture - Oh and that was about a third of the group that were crammed in the station wagon and trailer, also pictured in the background. Blog Post: May 13, 2013). 

I never got a letter back from the President or from NASA. That was a disappointment!

Anyway, at this time we were sure there was life on Mars and it seemed like every week some hick-couple in an old Ford pick-up, out in the middle of the boondocks, saw a flying saucer - we called 'em UFO's - that's short for Unidentified Flying Objects.

It was always down an old, dark, two-lane highway,  far outside the city boundaries with no witnesses, where the aliens always seemed to abduct poor Clem in his jump-overalls or his wife Ethyl.

In pictures printed in the front page of the newspapers the UFO's looked like Frisbees, blurry footballs, a hat and one even looked like a cigar, but everyone was sure Martins had antennas and lived among us.

The Viking Tribe leader figured out a way to venture smack dab into the middle the UFO craze. They got dad's Polaroid camera, gathered up all of the necessary equipment and were destined to make local newspaper history.  This was one story, that we hoped would make it on  the front page of the paper, unlike all of the other times we ended up there, only to the embarrassment of my poor mom and dad.

Sending Donny next door to borrow a dry-cleaner bag from his dad's closet, the Dahlin's put all the other necessary stuff in a pile on the front sidewalk now officially deemed "Area 51"

McDonald straws, birthday candles and of course a Style Queen, hot-air, hair-blower for the initial lift off.

Although the original plan did involve UFO's, it didn't originally include a fiery crash landing on the roof of the Lennon house. We took our extensive resources and laid them out in  "Area 51." Little did we know, however, that in the very next hour or so we would have a "Roswell Incident" on our hands that endangered the entire Lennon family.  


Kids NEVER TRY THIS! EVER EVER EVER.

Until Next...

God Bless

上帝，造物主。

Gud velsigne

God zegene

Dieu vous

Бог благословит

Gud välsigne

Dios te  bendiga!

 

Bob Dylan's secret track: Markie D...Not As It Should Be!

Longest Day Ever Continued:

We now pause for station identification...  

You would think that with being left behind at Salton Sea and nearly erased (blog post), shot with arrows, electrocuted, knocked-out three times a week by being squeezed on the temples (blog post), living in a house run by the inmates of the asylum-  i.e the WOLF PACK (that's my Viking older brothers); betrayed and shoved into the hamper of death(blog Post), chased by Jerry and having to throw-up everyday (as a sole means of self-protection) that the poor little guy, Markie D, would end up psychotic, if he somehow managed to survive at all.
 




The Dahlin's made the Addams Family appear normal!











         As you can see- they had nothing on us!






Add to that -  the trauma of being singled out by the Nuns at the Catholic school, who took a special interest in paying back the last-born-male of this dysfunctional tribe for all the torment that his brothers had inflicted over the past ten years.

It doesn't take rocket science or a advanced degree in psychology to understand that it was no wonder that by the end of the first week of fifth grade - he had trust and focus issues, learning disabilities among other things. He had developed a slight stutter and other speech problems, he was afraid of the dark, gross smells and deathly afraid of suffocation.

Other than all this, the poor little was doing okay - having fun as long as he stayed on the run.

Bob Dylan was so intrigued by his story, that he wrote a bootleg song that was on the secret track of  Another Self Portrait album - simply titled: Markie D.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO759kxMCL8&feature=youtu.be 

Click on link (above) to listen!

I guess it's no wonder that the little guy's brain didn't work like it should be....  

Getting back to our regular programing: Next time "The Great Escape"

A Little About Me!

Not too long ago on a pale blue dot, third from the sun, people and events converged in the space/time continuum that would forever change the course of history.  The setting is a huge Victorian home that slightly leaned on its crumbling foundation, groaning under the weight of unruly kids and hoards of junk. In the era of Ozzie and Harriet and Father’s Knows Best, I was born into a family dysfunction of epic proportions. This decrepit masterpiece in Venice would rival the Addams Family’s house, and the cast of characters would prove to be more incredible and wacky than The Munsters. The big problem was that I was the seventh born, the youngest boy and the runt of the litter. 

To have 10 in a family in our catholic neighborhood was underachieving. To compete with the larger families, my mom gladly took in strays. The official-nonofficial count was more in the neighborhood of 14 ―mostly boys and all older than me.

All sibling rivalry and mischief flowed downhill and ended up on my platter, whether I had any say in the matter or not. For fun, we held on to the live wires that were left hanging out of a wall from a unfinished remodel. We were the only family I knew who voluntarily electrocuted themselves with 110 volt household current, and are the only family in the history of the world to single-handedly let all of the monkeys out of the LA zoo. We got chased out of cities; pursued by the Highway Patrol; and sought after by the entire Needles California Police force. Wherever we went, we made a spectacular splash which usually ended up on the front page of the local newspaper.    

After being buried in pits, caged, hunted, left behind and electrocuted, I somehow managed to survive my childhood but felt numb, disconnected and alone although part of a big family. In college while searching for acceptance and connection, I experienced an event that would alter the course of my life. I graduated from Loyola Marymount University with a degree in Communications.  I coached water polo and swimming at Saint Monica’s my High School Alma Mater and enjoyed major success in investment real estate. After a financial crisis, I committed myself to serving in ministry, working with Youth and Family, as an associate pastor of a large church in Southern California. I graduated with a Masters at the top of my class from Azusa Pacific Graduate School of Theology and was ordained a licensed Pastor.  

I am married to an avid artist and have four children: three boys and a girl who takes after her mother’s creativity.

Currently, I am a senior Pastor of a church in Roseville, CA, and adjunct Professor of Biblical Studies at a Bible college, and live in Sacramento with my wife and daughter.