The Pit of Despair and the Hippy Oxymoron

On Saturday, I saw one of the strangest sights I've seen in a long time. The lazy hippies were industriously working in the backyard.  Ha!  It was ironic... these guys digging a hole in the old sandbox play area.  It must have been important. They probably wanted to grow more "Mexican Tomato Plants" or something like that.  They seemed to be having a good time, but knew that I wasn't included in what-ever-it-was they were doing. 

At 12, I was still too young to be inducted into the ways of my older brothers and the hippie Wolf Pack! I wanted to feel a part of the tribe, but knew that was still a couple years off.

My leg was healing, I had returned to school and to kickball at recess and was interested in fitting in with my 7th grade friends and being noticed by the little cutie-pie I had my eyes on.  

My brothers were busy growing hair and burning draft cards and smoking.  I was a tenderfoot in the Boy Scouts and just tying to find my way through the world, trying figure out what life was all about and where I fit?

I didn't particularly care too much about grades. I didn't care too much about sports. I wasn't too motivated by anything except for survival and desperate to discover the meaning of Love. My life sounds like an old song from Sam Cooke

"Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology

Don't know much about a science book

Don't know much about the French I took

But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me too

What a wonderful world this would be

Don't know much about geography
Don't know much trigonometry

Don't know much about algebra

Don't know what a slide rule is for

But I do know, one and one is two
And if this one could be with you

What a wonderful world this would be"

                                                                         Android users Sam Cooke Wonderful life

I'm not sure that I had heard the word "Love," ever mentioned in my house. I called it the "L Word," because I was too embarrassed to say it in front of people or that I might get beat up if I used it. 

It was a foreign concept - and I figured that at the rate we were making progress on our NASA mission to land on the moon, that earthlings would know more about the foreign object some 239,000 miles away in the sky and conquer it - before I knew about this foreign concept that was right in front of me. I knew that the truth about love was out there somewhere - I heard about it... longed for it, but just couldn't quite make contact with it other than my brief encounters with Irene on Fridays (post 7/15/13 "20 Minutes with Irene").

Anyway, we had a great big area in our backyard that used to be a sand-play area. With the Veloci-Rooster defending its dominion territory, it has long since been forgotten.  But the long-hairs bagged the dreaded raptor(Blog Post 12/3/13) and had locked the hideous beast up in the chicken coop and now the hippie-types were working harder than I had ever seen them work before (many of them were not known for their sense of drive and ambition - other than Anti-War demonstrations). There they were stirred in delirious ecstasy digging a hole to the center of the earth for no apparent reason.

                            How do you spell OXYMORON?

I had no idea whether they were digging for lost treasure...archaeological finds from ancient ruins...remains of dead pets we may have buried there or old carburetors; no matter what their intended purpose - they were happy and passionate.  It was cute to see hippies -  both working and happy - that's not a sight you see everyday.   After watching the show for a while, I decided to make my way inside for lunch where I had to beat off the mangy cat - put up with with a few choice cuss words of the foul-mouthed Mynah-bird and find something in the refrigerator that wasn't covered in moldy green fuzz (which my dad claimed was good for us because it was penicillin). 

I had found some bread, cut off the green spots and popped it in the toaster when I heard the fire alarm clang on the back porch stairs.  I heard a thousand foots steps making their way inside the house, but smelled the brood before I saw them come around the corner. Bounding in my direction, I saw the hopeful gleam in their eyes, and the sudden light of epiphany about the purpose of the pit caused me to gulp in terror as my life flashed before my eyes.   

EXTRA, EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT IT: Baby Brother dies in Pit Accident!  

Accident my foot! I jumped, scrambled over the table, took out two of the hippies... went through the legs of a third - shot under another table in the dining room like a greased pig, stepped on the cat's tail and knocked over the Mynah-bird's cage before being brought down by four of them.  I could usually hold my own against about 3 or 4 of them, but not 15.  They tied me up, dragged me outside and I knew I was going to die. 

Free Floating Apparition and the Living Dead!

 At 6:30 am the next morning Mrs. D let out a blood curdling scream...

“Royyyyyyy! 

Startled from mom's screeching, dad woke up from a sound sleep, grabbed the broom next to his bed and began beating the ceiling.  "Up and at 'em...Time of the harvest moon!" he began yelling in his staccato staff sergeant cadence. Meanwhile, mom continued to scream in fright at the piercing red eyes from the black apparition of the living-dead zombie that stood at the end of her bed.  Woken up abruptly to mom's screaming, Mr. D forgot it was Saturday, which was his only day to sleep-in, and thought he urgently needed to wake up the tribe for the Viking "Street Cleaning" ritual (must see blog post 7/13/13). 

The hippie Wolf Pack on the floor above groaned and moaned and cursed and burped and farted and stomped on the floor in mutinous rebellion. "Mr. D its not Wednesday" Puke-Breath yelled back at dad, but unable to overcome feverish pitch the frightened Mrs. D.  When Dad's sleepy eyes finally focused he turned the wrath of his broom handle onto the scabby burnt ghost and chased the demonic phantasm from the room in his underwear.

The free floating apparition sprang from the foot of the bed with the speed of light and escaped up to the third floor to the long rear bedroom. The scabbified-black poltergeist startled the Wolf Pack along with the rattlesnakes and nasty looking iguana that resided in cages built into the side of the room.

 Mayhem broke out. "Fright or Flight." The hair on the rat's spine stood up, rattlesnakes defensively coiled, the iguana from hell (blog post 8/1/13) thew itself against the glass and Ulrich clenched his fist ready to take on the repulsive manifestation. Dooh-Dooh Pants pulled the covers over his head and Puke-Breath cussed out the disgusting creature. Chewbacca, on the other hand recognized it for what it was!

A MIRACLE!

It was not something to be feared or loathed, but something to be venerated and loved. Chewbacca gave the creature its new name. "Lazarus" he affectionately cried, in an emotional embrace. The room was silent - it was not a ghost! NO, the dead calico cat (that was in a small shoe-box coffin out back at Wall Drug) had risen from the dead!

Apparently the cat had cashed in all nine lives and had cheated death itself.



When Chewbacca was a small child; before The Beatles, before all the hair, he used to fall over all the time and bonk his head. Mr. and Mrs D felt they needed to protect him from brain damage and made him wear a green hockey helmet as an exoskeletal brain bucket.  My vote was that - it didn't fully work and he had some serious issues... either that or it was the hippie weed that had affected his perception of the world.



It wasn't like things weren't bad enough with the veloci-rooster, the chickens, "grampa" the chicken-eating-frog, the alligator, the escaping rattlesnakes, and the dozens of hippies that lived at our house - NOW, the smelly burn victim of the Fraternity Fire (see previous blogs) was considered one of our numbers.





And the rest of us had to contend with the place of honor in which Chewbacca placed the gross looking cat. History turned a new chapter in the Dahlin house as none of us dared to take back our chair from the reviled demon CAT or kick him off the countertop when it dropped scabs and licked the butter - lest we face the wrath of Chewbacca.

   

Help! Wolf Pack and the 9-year-old Junkie

Whenever Mr. Steadmen (my neighbor across the street) looked out between the slits in the blinds of his front window and saw us Dahlins grouping in the front yard - he always reported to his wife that the "Wolf Pack" was on the prowl. To which she always made the same snide comment from wherever she was in the small wood-framed house. "Well, no wonder lions eat their young!"

Being, that this ritual was broadcast so often and the uninsulated walls did nothing to hinder her screeching voice this mocking metaphor was no longer a secret.  This is how I came to affectionately call my brothers "The Wolf Pack."  I'm just not too sure that Mrs. Steadmen quite understood that lions and wolves were completely species. And, I'm not completely sure - that when Mr. Steadman announced that the Wolf Pack was on the prowl and she responded with her diddy about lions eating their young that she fully understood that she and her husband were talking about two different things.

Lions like to hunt alone!
Wolves, on the other hand...well, they do hunt in packs and are very conniving, but best when working together as a team.

One time I was across the street playing with Ellis Steadman - their only offspring (I felt sorry for those "only-child" kids, because they miss so much sibling torture that I have come to enjoy so much) and forgetting that I was there, or that I was one of them, Mr. Steadmen gave a blow by blow description of their activity as though it was like something from one of those wildlife documentaries on TV.


Speaking of enjoying - being squeezed in the temples, and buried in pits, and shoved in hampers, shot with arrows, electrocuted in the pool, tied to trees, caged and hunted with BB guns...adults in my life, recognized that there was something gravely wrong with me. For me, the answer was quite obvious and was rather simple. I was the last born and starving for attention. My parents had checked out and left us to ourselves and if punching and volunteering to subject myself to what-ever torture might be on the menu, then I relished it as a form of touch I so desperately wanted. In the third grade, (Some time after the embarrassing Pee-Pee incident Blog Post 6/18/13) my mom's sister, who is a nun, took me up to Loyola University to make sure that I wasn't retarded. I managed to put all the square blocks into the square holes and the round ones into the round holes and they really couldn't come up with anything - by way of diagnosis...other than the fact, that I was an anomaly! (I think that's "big-people" talk - for weird), but I'll tell you what I think.


I think it has something to do with that thing that happens to you when adrenaline kicks-in, which they call "Fight or Flight." I think that because I live my life on the edge - always having to be on high alert with constant surges of adrenaline pumping through my veins, that by the age of 9 I was totally addicted to it. My little body needed the physical conflict to get my drug fix and my brothers obliged. And, as I've alluded to before, this might be the Lord's way of helping me make it through all the horrible stunts that I somehow enjoyed - but shouldn't have! Capisce?
   
 Anyway, Mr. Steadman had each one of the Dahlin boys and other "Harding-ites" precisely pegged into certain well defined roles that fit into the order of this  "Wolf-Pack" thing that he like to talk about. When my older brothers stood on the porch and whistled their intentions for some mischievous plot, he would stare through those slates and narrate everything to Mrs. Steadmen like that announcer on one of those TV shows. 

This is how he narrated the time the older boys dressed up lured the next door grouch out of her house by staging a kid under her front tire and proceeded to steal avocados from her "precious" tree. She had forbidden us from picking the avocados that hung over our side of the fence.

(You have to lower your voice and speak really deep... and slow.... and clear for this next part -  Pretend you're saying this or hearing the voice of narrator of that Wild-Life documentary as you read this next part).

"The Wolf Pack in on the prowl. For wolves, a successful hunt depends largely on making careful preparations. The Wolf Pack controls a specific area of land known as a "territory". This territory..." Mr. Steadman continued, "is known as Harding Avenue, but this particular Wolf Pack has been known to track its prey in a greater area known as Venice." 

As the oldest Blaser boy next door and Booty and Primo and Chewy and Four-eyes, and Tom and Walter and a couple others responded to the whistles the motley crew began assembling on the Dahlin front lawn.

He continued his sarcastic narration of this event.

"The individual wolves must constantly refine their techniques so that every member is more than ready to play their part when required"

Gustav (my oldest brother) sent Madeline (my sister who was only a year older than me, but much more in-tuned to her position and ways of the Wolf Pack) to gather costumes and the necessary supplies to pull off the caper.

"The alpha male gave orders to the the alpha female, who is approximately 25% smaller than the average male wolf, yet highly considered a specialist huntress of the pack." Mr. Steadmen continued.

Madeline came back with a couple of her girl friends and distributed the costumes for this particular avocado stealing escapade. discussing the plot, Gustav and Chewbacca and Puke-breath and several of the other boys began pointing at Edna's house house next door. It was obvious to see that  poor Edna was the next victim of choice. 

"Having stalked the territory carefully, the alpha detected a weak member of the neighborhood. Usually they prey on large animals like white-tailed deer and caribou and in this case it is the old grouch next door - Edna!"

After staging the body under the front tire of her car, 12-year-old Madeline went to the front door to let Edna know that something terrible had happened (and boy, did she try to sell it). 

"When ready..." Mr. Steadman kept his wife apprised of the progress, "the alpha male sent in the huntress to single out the weak and sick among it prey. Most animals flee when confronted but the grouch next doors stands her ground."

Edna, didn't take the bait at first and didn't budge from her porch when Madeline pointed to the kid with ketchup under her front wheel. So Gustav kicked Dooh-Dooh Pants in the butt - initiating part two of the plan and made him walk by her car like he was going to scratch it. Dooh-Dooh Pants was a little apprehensive about his part in the plan, but Madeline pushed him in the right direction.

"As the risk of injury for a hunter is high, the alpha male is too valuable to the survival of the pack and must send out lower ranked males. This is often difficult and the alpha female will excretes an odor and use her body to direct "Dooh-Dooh Pants," a beta male in the right direction."

"Uh...Huh?" Mrs. Steadmean was amused, but had heard this commentary so many times that she was immune to it and keep on reading her novel and looked up obligingly with a few "uh-huh's" from time to time.  Ellis and I, however, enjoyed the show.

Edna opened her screen door and ran to her precious Buick and fired up the motor. Then took off squealing just like the time I was crammed underneath in the "Baby-Diaper-Pail of Death" (Blog Post 6/5/13). When Edna disappeared down the street in her behemoth automobile, the costumed boys hurried up the carport roof... hurdled themselves into that luscious avocado tree and began throwing down those green hand-grenades of mouth-watering goodness-of-protein to the waiting arms of the wolves below.    

"During such an ambush, the pack is split into two or more groups. As one group agitates its victim, another group is usually hidden away using bushes, trees and old junky cars as effective camouflage."

The time window was short, but when it was all over the boys returned to the font porch and divvied up the avocados - as if spoils of war. Gustave was only in for the fun of it because he hated avocados... Dooh-Dooh Pants the other hippies loved them, especially when there was no food in the house.

"Excitedly, the wolves return from their kill and begin to divide the spoils in a orderly manner. Though it may surprise you the alpha doesn't eat first. The 'betas', the rank below the alphas are usually made up of the largest wolves and act like enforcers in the aftermath and are rewarded by helping themselves to more food than the lower ranking individuals."

When it was all said and done everyone had a great time... except for Ulrich who was cheated out of his share and got especially mad when Booty and Primo used their avocados to pelt me with...when I returned from the Steadman's house. I dodged a couple...got hit twice...ran for my life and got a really NICE adrenaline fix that kept me happy and would keep me going for a little while longer.   


Next time I might just have to confess and share the naked  truth!