Pavlov's Tortured Dog - Damaged Goods and Me!

Ring the bell, drool. Ring the bell, drool. Raise the fist, flinch.

Continued from last time that began with with the shirt.



Everyone thought it was funny—except for Brother Michael. So I went with it and let my classmates think I was doing one of my comical bits. In reality, however it was my PTSD. I didn't want them laughing at me. I wanted them laughing with me.

My brother Bob had come home from Vietnam, as well as two of my neighbors, Robert Tripp and John Gillemot. They looked fine to me on the outside, but they had this Post Traumatic disorder thing that made them flinch and caused them to react wildly and to do weird things at times.

This was understandable for them—they fought in war!  BUT WHAT WAS MY @#*%#@#^% Problem?

(Bob pictured above)

 (John Gillemot pictured to right) 

Like the returning Vets, I looked fine on the outside, but was all messed up in my head and hated myself for having no control over my wild reactions.

I don't know why my brothers felt they had to raise their hand up in the air like they were going to strike me in the head every time they walked by. But they did. Either it gave them a sense of power or they just liked to see me cover my head and duck—or both, I guess. They would gesture violently in my direction, I would cover my noggin, cower in fear, drop to the floor which always made them laugh.

Haha.  I was the laughing stock at home—make me cower or make me vomit—the ironic thing was it that it was the "peace loving" hippies who burned their draft cards that loved to hurt me. Their was nothing peaceful about them. 

I had been hit so many times on the head I was like Pavlov's stinking dog. Ring the bell and I drool only in my case I "stop drop and roll." And if the boys got really lucky, they could make me vomit up my guts which was the height of entertainment in our house.

Every time my poor dad raised his hand—I fell to the floor and took cover.

THANK YOU WOLF PACK.
Let me see if I can make you happy by getting all schizoid whenever you treat me worst than a dog. 

I don't know why my brother Chewbacca had to squeeze my temples or lift me by my chee-chees or by me neck or had to repeatedly slug in in the leg. I don't know why "Flea-Bait" felt he had to beat me up every day. I don't know why I had to be electrocuted, Jalapeno'd or buried in pits. I don't know why I was the one who was chased - hampered - shot - dropped - dangled and tattooed.

Anyway, I realized how bad it was in Brother Michael's class the day after he caught me half-naked in janitor's closet.  

He smirked and talked about Catherine the Great or something in history that excited him when Earnestine raised her hand to answer a question.





Earnestine had graduated with us from Saint Marks.  She was a girl. She was a friend.  A 14-year-old girl for Pete's sake. The 14-year-old girl who sat in the row just opposite me, raised her hand to answer a question and like some mental case I flinched, covered my head and dropped to the floor.
















How retarded was that. Everyone started laughing so I went with it—acting as if it was just some dumb comic bit. I was a hero and comic genius. All the stupid kids in 9th grade loved me.
   
Brother Micheal sent me to some guy with a name like "AutoBelly." Autobelly, what kind of name was that?  

It was worth a trip to the Dean's office, because I made Brother Michael hate me which I counted as a victory. I win!

Raise your hand, flinch. Raise your hand, flinch. Raise your hand, flinch. I felt like I was worst than Bob and Robert and John who had returned from the Vietnam war. Something in me was broken. I was Pavlov's stupid dog.





I was sure there was love in the world somewhere—maybe next door at the Blasers or over at the Lennon's house across the street—it certainly wasn't something I could find at home. 

They seemed to like each other.  That's all I wanted. Love may have been asking too much for my family. I was starved and willing to feel liked.



This guy, Waldo Autobelli, stuck his finger in my chest and began yelling at me. It didn't matter. He could scream his head off all he wanted—though I stood at attention like any real kid—I was nothing more than a Zombie who was dying a little more inside each day. 

I was becoming a robot and his finger couldn't penetrate my steal plate exterior. 

Alex shared his pickles with me as I thought about poor 'O Billy Joe MacAllister - he died and it didn't matter to anyone.  Same thing would happen in my house I thought.   

 "Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

'n' Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas

"Well Billy Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits, please"  

"Hey, Alex could you pass the pickles please." 

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!