Holy Indignation at Cockrell's "Full Moon!"

(Here is what I didn't tell you last time). While the top brass from the other troops were all on one side of the scout bus (which was stuck on the bridge) talking things over Pinky Parlette and our two scout masters, Cockrell pulled down his pants and pressed his bare-bottomed ham-cheeks against the porthole window on the other side - "mooning" the Boy Scout "cake-eaters" on the other side.

12:00 noon: This grotesque, teen-ritual took place out of sight of the fretting leaders on the other side who where trying to figure a way of getting the truck unstuck. A small percentage of the boys - clapped and cheered because they thought it was funny (as most normal adolescent kids should). The rest, cringed in holy indignation, as if this wasn't something that guys this age were supposed to do and acted as if we had broken one of the Ten Commandments of Boy Scouting or something sanctimonious like that.

Little Wiener was on the inside of the Scout Bus and was watching the "Cockrell-show" from the front side and was a little too happy about it - which creeped out Jeffery and the other kids who had lost interest in tormenting poor Ray. Everyone agreed that Little Wiener's excitement earned the little twerp a pink-belly. It had been about two weeks since his last one and he was due for another one!

3:00pm: Anyway, several of the kids from Troop 34 broke the guy code by snitching on Cockrell to their Scout Master when they returned to "camp-regular-kid."

4:00pm: Cockrell got called into a court marshal tribunal which had sanctioned him to solitary confinement inside the cabin tomorrow while the rest of us "got to" hike to "Fossil Ridge."

5:00pm: Jeffery Lennon was so upset about the whole thing that went around calling the snitches, "bottle-feeders," and incited the rest of the kids of our troop in agreeing that these mamma's boys deserved no less than the full wrath of Troop 32 (for which we were prepared in advance - hence the snakes).

8:00pm: After dinner and just before the snipe hunt, we began making plans and decided that this would be the inaugural Camp Slauson "White-Angel Raid" like we did at the National Jamboree last summer at Farragut State Park in Idaho (only this time with underwear on). Cockrell was so upset in what he felt was unjustified persecution that it had somehow earned him the right to go on the raid naked tonight and pleaded his case. Senior Patrol leader, Ray Vandenmark, had to calm him down and talk him out of going in his "birthday suit" all over again. (I'm telling you - this kid just wanted to have his pants off all the time. He had the mind of an eight-year-old in the body of a 22-year old - I'm not sure that is the best mix).

8:42pm: We gathered the ropes, the snakes and waited until after midnight, while Jeffery anxiously walked around in circles, rubbing his hands together like a kid at Christmas - doing a personal chant "down with the bottle feeders, down with the snitches."  He was so excited - he wasn't too far away from earning his own "pink-belly."

So we had crossed the bridge, crashed into a tree, crushed the front of the truck, skewered Ray, Cockrell had exposed himself and we had upset the Boy Scout cosmos. By now, Jeffery was sure that this was going to be one of the best camping trips of his life (that wasn't saying much - he never went camping with this family).  He was thrilled, but sad that his cousins Tommy Blaser or Michael or Kevin or Kippy Lennon weren't here with him to enjoy the more "Dahlin-side-of life."

9:30pm: We did the dreaded snipe hunt - and it appeared that even Jeffery liked being out late at night, in the dark, crawling around in bushes and snapping his thumbs inside a brown paper lunch sack. "A man who protest too much, gives himself away."  Apparently Jeffery had bought into the legendary snipe hunt "hook, line and sinker" by vehemently defended his claims that he had actually caught one of the fictional bird-related-rodents which had subsequently managed to escape by eating a hole in the bottom of his brown lunch bag.

I hated the insidious, late-night ritual and hated that Jeffery wasn't the least bit scared - perhaps it was because he was too excited about the raid to think about things like Albinos or Zombies or rattlesnakes that lived in the bushes. On the way back from the snipe hunt we tackled Little Wiener, wrestled him to the ground - pulled up his dirty uniform shirt and with a hundred hands patted his soft, white belly until it turned a bright shade of pink! Every "newbee" got one on their first camp out. He had already gotten his fair share, but seemed to keep earning one every time he acted like one of those namby-pambies from Mar Vista or Santa Monica.

12:33am:  16 of us kids sneaked out with nothing on, but our tight, white undies and some duck tape on our chest and back in the symbol of a cross - we looked like some bizarre tribe that was ready to participate in the crusades...only different... or a mutant group of Scots under William Wallace (we were just happy to be going into battle to defend the honor of our troop - and happier that we were near naked - and happiest about the plan).

Like a bunch of squeaky mole rats we took the rope and tied it to the front tent stakes of Troop 34's tents and wound it around from tent to tent 4 inches above the ground. We had another group doing the same thing over at the campsite of the troop from Santa Monica.  We had Little Wiener and Mosquito Bait doing the same thing at our campsite so it wouldn't be so obvious who perpetrated the crime. Lastly, we had two members stealthily sneak into a fourth camp and leave it completely untouched excepted for lots of evidence that was planted to frame them: i.e. end rolls of duck tape... pieces of rope... and other such paraphernalia.

1:02am: When everything was set... and all of our mole-rats in underwear had returned to our camp and put their clothes back on - over the duck-tape tribal markings, I turned a snake loose in one of the tents of the guys from Troop 34. At the same time, Kissel was busy loosing the other harmless garter snake in one of the tents of the guys from the Santa Monica troop.

We ran like "H   E  double toothpicks" back to our campground and waited! AGAIN...Cockrell had asked if he could be pretend to be sleeping in the tent naked, so that when the mayhem broke out he could run around like a chicken with its head cut off in full view of all the scouts at Camp Slauson. That idea was quickly squelched and the two other boys in his tent decided they would sleep outside under the stars.

1:15am: Giggling, in hushed excitement and whispers - We Waited!

And, I do have to tell you this: it worked out better than than anything we could have imagined - EXCEPT for poor Ray (the luckiest and the most unlucky person in the world).

1:37am: "The screech that was heard around the world!"



             (Pinky pictured in his Pajamas)

(p.s. no snake was harmed. Unfortunately, I can't say that about Ray and some of the boys in the other camps - hehehe).

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!

Where we Buried the Body

(Continued from the last post about the hippie we murdered and from the post before that about my sex education).


Anyway, running away from the Kingdom Hall on West Washington Blvd, I was very concerned about becoming emotionally attached to my captures. This is something that happens to Swedes don't ya know... There is no name for it yet, but trust me in the couple years it will be a diagnosed syndrome named after something Swedish - maybe after me or maybe after a city in Sweden like Stockholm!   Just saying!



Afraid of having positive feelings and have empathy towards our kidnappers - I didn't look back and ran straight up the street to the Troop 32 Boy Scout house followed closely behind by Tommy and Jeffery!

There we met up with the likes of Ray Vandenmark and Alan Scout, who were the two Senior Patrol Leaders on the infamous "Boy Scouts from Venice" raid on the National Jamboree in which we nearly killed that nerd kid, Bill Gates, from Seattle and were forever banished from returning to a Jamboree. Anyway, all the same hoodlums who were on that 1969, "fighting-cage-on-wheels," "diarrhea-revenge" road-trip were all there. It was a pretty derelict group and I had earned everyone's respect by fighting my way to the top (Special forces training, care of all of gnarly fights with my big brothers - thank you very much Wolf Pack!).

The grungiest kids were from the  "Golden Triangle" area of Venice whose parents were pretty persnickety by thinking they were better than those of us north of Washington Blvd as though they had somehow been annexed into the new Marina Del Rey. Even though they wrote Marina Del Rey on their outgoing mail - it was still 90291 and they still had Venice DNA, despite how much they pretended to be "Beverly Hills yacht owners."  Even though Steve Kissel was from that area - he was pretty cool and didn't smell as bad as some of the other kids.

Anyway, we get to the troop meeting late when the patrols were already outside in the backyard for the group activity.  I don't know what they did for the group activity over at Mar Vista Troop 34...(if I had to guess) probably something a whole lot tamer and a whole lot cleaner than what we were used to - crocheting maybe..hehehe.  We assembled out back in the dirt lot of the small property that was located between West Washington Boulevard and Washington Way (confusing right... "Sheeze" I guess someone ran out of names when they were naming all the streets in Venice) for a game of "Steal the Bacon."  This was a universal Boy Scout tradition...however, THIS WAS VENICE!  This was not like the normal kind of Steal the Bacon they played over in Mar Vista or in Beverly Hills or in little Billy Gates' troop in suburbia Seattle...  NO... this was knock down and drag out.

I loved it; it was Viking style.  Like something that took place on regular basis in our front yard (only with kids closer to my age).
                         









However, poor Tommy had the wet spot on his jeans and no matter how hard he tried to hide it, as soon as he got dragged across the dirt yard a couple times, it collected dirt that acted like a beacon - a neon sign in Vegas that said "Look, I Pee'd my Pants!"



The boys mercilessly "stop-drop-and-rolled" poor Tommy. When he got home, I got called in to testify about jumping off of metaphoric ten-story-roof and how I shouldn't have encouraged him to jump.







I did want to tell Mrs. Blaser that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Pope and the Catholics should all be proud... but that might led to having explain about the hippie we might have killed, so I kept my mouth shout about the railroad tracks, the pennies, the guitar...about the Kingdom Hall incident and just said,  "Yes, ma'am!"  afraid that she would ask us to show where we buried the body.

Jeffery kind of liked the thrill of the whole thing and wanted some more...He signed up to go to Camp Slauson in Malibu next week with us and decided to help me with my big plans of payback for Chewbacca. I warned him in advance by asking how he did with snakes and dead things. He said he wasn't sure, but wanted to give it a try. They run a tight ship over at Bob and Jeanette Lennon's house, but Jeffery sneaked over and that is when we put into play       "PLAN: X Y Z!"

Hygiene and the Psychotic Hot Mess

At three hundred and some-odd pounds I couldn't blame Pinky for not wanting to take a bath; he was too big for the bathtub and he didn't want to touch his feet the moldy mushroom stuff we were growing at the bottom of our shower. Besides that, the bathroom door to the shower on the second floor didn't close all the way and there was a small opening that anyone could peer into - if they decided to invade his privacy. Pinky wasn't about to let anyone see him naked - in all of his glory and was determined not to take a shower. The older boys had already tortured him mercilessly with horrible name-calling about his weight and wasn't about to give the Wolf Pack one more thing that they could make fun of him about. His simple hygiene regime was to douse himself in cheap Pick and Save cologne to overpower his odoriferous mass. I was at least glad to have some help and tried my 13-year-old best to be kind to Pinky.


For me, hygiene became a psychotic game of epic proportions. I quit taking baths since the Alligator incident i.e. the Reptile Dysfunction , and as a 13-year-old boy desperately waiting for puberty to set in, I was deathly afraid of being caught naked in the shower by my callous older brothers. Even greater than the fear of being spied on by a member of the wily Wolf Pack was the fear that they would try to humiliate me by dragging me outside naked... or tying me to a tree or shoving me back into that Hamper naked and intentionally leaving under a random car to be discovered by a neighbor.   NO WAY!

I wouldn't put it past any of them and was desperately terrified. I had to strategically pick my moments, when no one was home and the times I thought it was safe to use the shower in the same bathroom that had the broken door.

I don't exactly know why my brothers felt that the baby brother had to be ridiculed, made fun of...or tormented to no end? I do believe the dark, spiritual matter of the universe (i.e the Ouija Board and the Paranormal Ooze) had something to do with it. I think that same invisible substance was like a pandemic plague that was the cause of hate and racism and bullying of any kind. Though, I might like to say things like "it was us who opened the portal to the underworld with our seances" this darkness had already existed and was everywhere!

I liked everything about my family, the loudness, the fun, the craziness - all of it.. it was the dysfunction that made us so special with which we derived our identity as much as we did from our Viking heritage. My dad was funny and my Mom even dressed up like Phyllis Diller and did a comedy routine at Saint Marks every year.

As I said before, my house being exactly in the middle of our block on Harding Avenue was the perfect metaphor for our family being the center of all the hippie craziness that existed in the universe- this part I liked! I like the fun and laughter. I had a bunch of great stories that not many other people on the planet could even begin to relate to... like, letting monkeys out of the zoo.. illegal trailer rides... high-speed police chases... the veloci-rooster... electrocutions... Milk Wars... alligator wrestling... rattlesnake escapes... Albino hikes... Ouija board and secret room discovery... and our UFO Madness where we nearly burned down the Lennon Sister's house at the corner!














I even had some Dahlin Pride about the MEXICAN TOMATO PLANTS that gave us celebrity renown in Venice.

The only thing I didn't like, was being made to feel like I was an outsider. I really don't think there was some evil conspiracy to make me feel like I was an expendable object at their disposal to be played with like a cheap child's toy.

It's just that all of my brothers were older and as they continued to evolved more and more into hippies - their world was a world in which I didn't fit. There was no coherent plan put into place to torture me or to make me feel like I didn't belong, it is just that at 13 - I didn't belong to their hippie, refer madness, draft card burning world yet. I was an outsider and at this point - the perpetual underdog.



One thing that I learned from these feelings of  being singled out and excluded was that everyone liked to be treated with some measure of kindness. I did. I didn't want to be punched with fist of fury but touched instead with tenderness and kindness...an occasional hug would be nice and some edifying words of encouragement -  welcomed.

Love!

I guess?

I never heard the word, but knew this lofty and evasive concept had to be true somewhere out there in the universe.

Even though I was a goof ball at school, I tried especially hard to treat the underdogs kindly (the kids who were easy targets for the bullies). I felt deep down inside my psychotic hot mess - that it was my duty to stick up for them - even at personal risk.


Being the perpetual underdog, I had a real soft spot for the those who were being treated poorly or unjust. Peter Parker's uncle told him that, "with great power comes great responsibility" and I knew that with my heightened justice sensors and fighting for "the least of these" could get me into trouble and often did (like the time I tried to protect Bill Gates from the Naked Zombies) and Harry from Terry's evil Prank).

Though I felt like a loner in a big family, I did not feel alone! I did not wallow in self-pity or in misery because of either my "retardation" (my brother's called it) -  or because I had this secret knowing that I was being prepared for a very special destiny. Somewhere deep inside I had this intrinsic knowing that I would find the meaning of love someday and that everything I was going through now was a part of the process in shaping me for that day!

There was no need to feel sorry for me - I figured that if evil could exist than so must the corresponding antithesis of perfect good!

I had a dream of a bright future!  In the meantime Wolf Pack do your worst - little do you know you are preparing me for an "extraordinary destiny!" Shushhhhhhh...this will be our secret!

Next time putting up the Christmas lights!  



 

Running out of Suspects: The Big Fire and Love...

(Continued from last time).

First, I must apologize to the 30,000+ people who have visited me over the past year on this blog from 86 countries around the world. I want you to know that I appreciate you checking in from time to time to check in on the History of the World (in the 1960's from the perspective of that little kid in Venice - Markie D - that's me)!

You are important to me and I don't want you to feel like I'm neglecting you (I have been busy with another project unrelated to this and am down to my last chapter and am trying to make the final big push to finish it off - please forgive me as I come back up for a breath of air).

This is part 3 of the big fire... Sadly the majestic old lady at 900 Harding Avenue (pictured to the right) had burned to the ground during a very turbulent time not only in history, but what was also an extremely difficult time for everyone on the short block of Harding Ave in Venice.

Venice Troop 32 managed to spread the Venice contagion around the Western part of the United States - that helped shape the future of Bill Gates. Click here for this unfortunate encounter!

 Man had just landed on the moon. The Vietnam War had escalated... rioting on colleges was practically the norm and my hippie brothers along with many others across the fruited plain had burned draft cards in protest.

Civil Rights and race riots consumed our corporate National psyche.  JFK, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had all been assassinated.

This was a crazy time... "It was the best of times the worst of times."

All of this seem to spill over into our neighborhood. We were wigged out over the senseless murder and still grieving the loss of Bill Lennon Sr. This murder threw our tight-knit neighborhood into a tailspin of mourning, loss, fear and suspicion. The murder of the famous Lennon Sister's dad came at a time that Charles Manson and "The Family" had been out on a cultic killing spree of actress Sharon Tate and the high-profile LaBianca murders that convinced the authorities that "Americas Singing Sweethearts" might be the next target and put the entire clan under a protective detail.


Other than the heightened drama that the PTSD flashback caused by returning vet, Bobby Tripp, and the big fight on the front lawn next door to the blazing inferno - the quick action by Mr. Blaser, my dad and my brothers helped save all the Fraternity Members who had been trapped on the second floor of the house that had been engulfed in flames.

But now, it was time to find out - Who! Who was responsible for the attempted murder of at least a dozen college-aged students and was responsible for the Molotov Cocktail bombing?

I had a list of suspects whom I submitted to the Venice Fire Chief.

Poor Jimmy's nuts were still sore from being impaled on the gear shift lever of his new Schwinn Stingray and wouldn't ride me back over to the fire station. So now I was on my own to interview my top arson suspects.

Though Susie was young (as I mentioned last time), she was a prime suspect "in my book." Her older brother (not Bruce pictured here - to the left ) but her oldest Cameron had something to do with it. He ran the infamous Fraternity House and kept telling his little sister to stay away from his hallowed sanctuary of booze and "frat boys" and loose women.

Finding her sneaking in for the umpteenth time, Cameron had literally booted her off the second story balcony, but the biggest factor had to do with the time he dropped her smack dab on her head (which some say caused irreparable damage to her gray matter) either way - whether, brain damaged or not, she certainly had a motive for payback.    

I looked everything I could find out about how to make a Molotov Cocktail and there wasn't much in the World Book Encyclopedia. After interviewing Susie (I certainly couldn't disprove the rumors of her brain malfunction, but I was totally convinced that a "poor-man's hand-grenade" was definitely above her pay grade) and crossed her off my list of suspects.

Johnny Gillamonster (pictured to the right) could have done it!  He had motive and a technical expertise that was at a much more sophisticated level than Susie's.  He had been the paperboy to the fraternity house and had gotten jacked around so many times when trying to collect his paper-route money that he did indeed plan a diabolical payback. This he admitted!  Ah Ha!  I had him.

However, in my rather extensive investigation I discovered collaboration that backed up his spurious alibi of burying a pile of dog dooh-dooh which he took great pleasure in scoping off the Nargie's lawn and delicately placing the stinky, steaming, gooey pile right between the sports section and the funny pages of the huge Sunday morning edition of the LA Times.

Johnny laugh so hard in his recollection of the story that I figured it must be true and satisfied his felt need for revenge.

One by one - The Saint Mark Nuns, the Daniels, the Dahlins, the Nargies, The Manriquez, the Blasers, the Lennons, even Leeland had all come off my list for one reason or another.

I was stuck with one name - the owner who was my last suspect and the Fire Chief said that I was not allowed to "go down that road."

"Ah ha... I knew it... it was the man on the grassy knoll"  i.e. another conspiracy theory that would never be resolved.

At least I tried!  Now I had to get back to the more important things that consumed the minds of 8th grade boys which was to see if I could get one of the girls in my class to broker a relationship with the one true love of my life - Andrea.

I think the Fire Chief was glad to see that I was in love and had decided to moved on... It kept me out of his hair and restored order to the Venice Fire Station.

I can tell you this...love is not as easy as it looks on TV... especially for a 13 year old in the body of an 11-year-old... that definitely had issues in his gray matter!  

Somebody help the boy!

Final Approach: The Eagle Has Landed

Star Date: July 26th 1969.


"The Eagle has landed"

 Man had stepped foot on the moon for the first time in history...I know a bunch of rats will be sorely disappointed, but as it turns out, the moon is not made of green cheese after-all.

I have to admit, however, that I was a little disappointed that we did not discovered a colony of Martins hiding behind some pile of moon rocks. The discovery of Martins would have helped to explain some of the outlandish stories of alien abductions on those dark, two-lane highways in the middle of the desert with the lone couple in their rusty old Chevy pickup truck.


BUT... it also was a bit of a comfort to believe that my rescuers at the infamous "Salton Sea Tragedy" (Post 5/13-27/2013) had not been aliens, but angels instead. From time to time I had wondered if I had been subjected to one of those crazy abduction events in my bizarre desert incident and had been given a mind-wipe before being returned to earth at Gene's Diner at the Salton Sea Marina. (An Alien abduction would account for an inexplicable lapse in time and also for the superhuman strength, I experienced that was way beyond my mere 90 pound frame, to fight off trained wrestlers who were 100 pounds heaver than myself and also the ability to fend off five or six members of the hippie Wolf Pack at one time - who just so happened to be at home in Venice waiting for my return ).

Anyway, Armstrong and his crew had plunged into the Pacific and returned safely to earth 2 days ago as President Kennedy had pledged 8 years earlier!  And, just as they had returned home from outer-space... Troop 32 was about to make the final descent back into Venice in our inglorious spaceship otherwise known as the Scout Truck which we affectionately called, "The Beast."  i.e. The converted moving-truck turned mobile-cage-fighting-on-wheels.  

 As we farted and fought, pee'd out the back and "BA'ed" grandmas all the way home from the Boy Scout Jamboree, I imagined how dull the ride must have been for the pathetic"normal" kids like Bill Gates who had to travel in those luxury buses and couldn't help but thinking about how much fun they were missing out on.

We arrived at our Scout House at the intersection of West Washington Boulevard and Washington Way and disembarked looking like a band of rag-tag, war-torn refugees to the horror of awaiting parents! 

  

I put my backpack on and trekked the few blocks home, wondering what was in store for me when I got there.  Oops... Wait, that's not my house... 

                                                              This is..... 

A lot of scary stuff was going on at this time. Charles Manson and his crew had set up shop not far away in Malibu and were in the middle of a killing spree that included actress Sharon Tate as well as the gruesome murders of the LaBiancas. 

Meanwhile, a deranged fan of our neighbors, the Lennon Sisters, by the name of Chet Young had made threats against the Mr. Lennon, and also against President Johnson, for keeping him away from Peggy Lennon (who he believed to be his wife).  

Not only were things tense in the world, but it seemed to be touching-down right in our city... right across the street...right on Harding Avenue and right in my backyard where the Vietnam War, draft-dodging hippies were hiding out next to the "Mexican Tomato Plants" under tyrannical scrutiny of the dreaded Veloci-Rooster.  

Next time: Another escapee that terrorizes our neighborhood.       

Venice Pride, Bill Gates, and the Moon Landing!

Star Date: July 20 1969  (continued). THE BIG DAY

It was hot and muggy day at the Boy Scout Jamboree in Idaho. We wanted to hit the pool, but somehow the prior condition of our troop (back in the "Post-Prune" days in Yellowstone with the sudden flashes of diarrhea) made it all the up to the top brass. THE RULING BIG-WIGS decreed that "TROOP 32 be bared from the use of the community pool!"

Listen: It was humiliating to be the only Boy Scout Troop in the history of the world to be cut off from the public pool facilities. Unfortunately, it only served to irritated the infamous KYBO patrol.  The crazy "loons"sought revenge against the entire Boy Scout universe.  After all, we were about to land on the moon and conquer a celestial body in outer space and this is was the best thing they could think of at this historic moment! Man was about to set foot on the moon and they wouldn't let my 20 boys from Venice set foot on the bottom of the pool! Needless to say, Ronnie and Dego and Chronister and Cockerel were fit to be tied. They ended up over by Beaver Bay and began a rock throwing war with three other troops. Kissel, Humphrey and I had to get in on it and defend the honor of Venice!

After pelting each other with rocks we managed to inflict serious damage on two of the kids on the opposing shore!  We got a couple of them smack dab on the head and drew FIRST BLOOD...
                                                                               

YEAH! 

Victory! 

VENICE RULES! 

The only thing that would have made it better for the illustrious KYBO Patrol would have been if it were one of the kids from Troop 186 that we conked on the noggin... and even better than that - would have been if they had gotten that nerdy kid...Bill Gates! Luckily for him, he didn't have to eat glue-pasta like we did on the way.. he didn't have constipation...like we did... he didn't have to eat a bucket of stewed "grandma-prunes" like we did...and he and his cohorts didn't have explosive diarrhea like we did... and were now busy splashing around and having fun in the pool with other normal boys                                  ...LIKE WE WEREN'T!

The good news is we did manage to hit a kid named Charlie Schaupp who was one of the over-achievers in Troop 21.   Yeah!
 
And we also manged to hit one of those kids in the ridiculous red felt hats, who thought they were "all that."       YEAH us!

When brought up before the Tribunal, we denied it of course and had made up a big story about how we took this hike out in the woods trying to anticipate what the moon walk would have looked like.  Ronnie talked about how he pretended to eat the green cheese on the moon and Chronister said something about giant robots that morphed into different shapes on the dark side of the moon - stupid Chronister - who would ever believe that kind of nonsense!

Anyway, none of us cracked under the Waterboarding (just kidding about the Waterboarding part) not one of us cracked under their interrogation and it turned into one of those "he said...she said" type of brouhaha nonsense!

They screamed and yelled and made us recite the Boy Scout pledge to make sure we were really Boy Scouts and not that Zombies had eaten our brains and taken over our bodies.  Don't ask me how, but we managed to pull that one off!  They threatened to take the TV privileges of watching the Moon Landing away from us if we didn't behave for the rest of the day. Thank goodness we didn't do the naked raid as planned.. because they got pretty upset about the "White Angels" and 3:00 am "Pink Bellies"

Dego didn't care about watching, he thought the whole thing was a hoax anyway and was pretty vocal about it, but the rest of us wanted to watch as man walked on the moon.

We got to watch the whole boring hour of CBS coverage on the TV's they had set up all over Farragut State Park...

But the actually landing was very cool.  It was like one of those moments in life like "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" A thing you'll always remember exactly where you where!

Anyway we had a couple days left of making trouble and it is no wonder why they actually invited us NEVER TO ATTEND another jamboree.

I guess (like the Salem cigarette commercial jingle "You can take Salem out of the country, but you can't take the country out of Salem") was true for us... "You can take the kid out of Venice, but you couldn't take Venice out of the kid"  

We made our presence felt, we changed the outcome of history and two days later climbed into the back of that old Carbon Monoxide spewing "Scout Truck" and fought all the way home!

"One small step for somebody and a giant step for someone else - I guess!"


VENICE PRIDE!

Pictured to the right is the rear end of the infamous "Scout Bus"; Eagle Scout Kurt Dahlin on hood of red 1970 Toyota Corolla; Scout Steve Kissel (holding something important in the background) Senior Patrol leader...Ray (leaning in), and Markie D on bike along with other various creatures from Venice in the driveway of the Harding House with Famous Lennon Sister house in background!



Love you