Stupid Teens, Tricycles and Deadman's Curve.

Huffing and puffing I walked up the sharp incline towards the Moore house with the limp bloody-body over my shoulders and a tricycle in each hand. 

Mike, Louie, Alex and the others ran out of the Moore house and gently lifted the dead carcass from my burdened shoulders. “How are we going to tell Mr. Moore that James died,” asked Mike as tears welled up.

FLASHBACK 

Last night was the big hike to the Moon Fire Temple at the top of the Santa Mountains in Topanga. Marylee, Theresa and most of the Water Polo groupies finally went home in the wee-hours of darkness leaving a remnant that spent the night on Moore's living room floor.

James tried to explain to me the intricacies of the detailed mechanisms and gear-ratios in the cuckoo-cuckoo clock when all I was trying to comment about, was the annoying noise it made. 

I pretended to understand, but couldn’t sleep. 

The worry of being smothered, the sounds of raspy-slobbery snoring, the smell of armpits and bile-beer-burps haunted me. I laid awake and thought about the mechanical parts of the cuckoo-cuckoo clock and about my new tribe. Friends. Acceptance and belonging.

“Cuckoo,” screeched the irritating rooster SIX TIMES as it sprung forth from the little doors on someone’s annoying invention for keeping time—like fingernails on a chalkboard.

The sun was coming up when I finally fell asleep.

The creatures sleeping next to me began to awaken like that small rooster—emerging from the cocoon of slumber with all manner of irksome gurgles and farts and groaning from partying too hard the night before.

The restroom was full. So a small contingent of us went outside into the rustic chaparral of the Topanga hillside and relieved our bladders. Louie pointed to the pile of tricycles.

Epiphany.  

Someone had the brilliant idea of racing the tiny three-wheelers down Tuna canyon road. It was brilliantly ridiculous! Wonderful and dangerous. If someone could get killed doing it, then it was precisely something the Dahlins would do.  

I’ll never take credit for it, but I may have been responsible for flaming the foolish idea into becoming a very irresponsible reality.

With too much enthusiasm, eight of us threw the trikes into the back of Mike Moore's truck. We road in the back of the truck and fought like brothers over dibs on tricycles all the way to the top. 

Past Saddleback ridge—past the dirt road leading into the Moon Fire Temple we arrived at the spot where we could see Ojai on one side and the expanse of the Pacific Ocean on the other.

Since seven of us were Water Polo players and swimmers and practiced practically naked everyday, Mike Broneau suggested that we do the crazy ride in Speedos. 

More Insanity!



Since a member of the football team, Alex Delgadillo, was with us, we decided not to discriminate against those who wear shoulder pads, butt pads, tights and who do not wear Speedos.

Flip-flops and shorts it was.

Two hours from the time I would arrive with James over my shoulders → we shot out of the back of that truck and down the hill in a “shotgun start” like the Le Mans.

Poor Louie Coda was stuck with the pink tricycle and the frilly-sparkly-things that dangled from the ends of the handlebars.

Reaching speeds of up to forty, some of the guys began to freak-out and gave up after barely surviving the first outside turn.

Six of us regrouped and started the race all over again. 

Kevin McCaffrey, Broneau, and Coda sat on the trikes while James and I decided to stand on the back axle. 

Our idea was better. There was no way to tame the little peddles spinning at a bazillion-miles-an-hour. Mike almost got run over as he careened around a corner to find he was on a crash course with an oncoming station wagon of a driver who managed to swerve at the last second – almost killing Louie in the process.  

Mike Moore picked up the rest of the crew—the smart ones who quit—and took them back to the house leaving just James and me to finish the fateful ride to the bottom.

After a near head-on with a Buick, I put my foot on top of a rear-wheel in an effort to slow down and tumbled, skidding head-first into the dirt bank. This is when I knew we were in trouble. I waited for for James to catch up. He crashed into the same hill. I told him that for the rest of the harrowing thrill-ride that neither of us should attempt to slow the trikes by putting a foot on one of the rear wheels. I told him my plan would be to try and ride-it-out by steering my trike up a steep hillside instead. 

He was the genius and waved me off.

I jumped on my Le Mans race-car and sped away followed close behind by James. I gained distance on him and could no longer see him behind me. I came to a sharp corner, “Deadman’s-curve,” as it will be solemnly known from this day forward—and feared I would not make it out alive. Like a toboggan-racer at the Olympics, I banked my trike up the side of dirt grade at almost ninety-degrees and made it out unscathed.

I had a premonition!  A thought. A bad feeling that James would try use that small wheel to brake his speed. At forty-miles-an-hour, I carefully looked over my shoulder a couple of times and never caught a glimpse of James.

Knowing something bad had happened I ran my purple batman-trike up a dirt embankment and sprawled headlong across dirt and rocks into the prickly manzanita bushes (that I had become so familiar with prior to last night when I was used as a rope-toy by the Wolf-Pack).

I left my tiny trike and walked up the hill towards "Deadman's curve" to find an empty tricycle in a bush and no James.

Eighty feet further up I discovered the lifeless body of my genius friend.

I checked for vitals, wasn’t about to do mouth to mouth, and slung his carcass over my shoulders.

Making my way back to Banium Drive, I trudged up the sharp incline towards the Moore house huffing and puffing with exhaustion. 

Broneau, Coda, Delgadillo, McCaffrey, and Reardon sprang out of the front door like that cuckoo-clock rooster. Mike cried wondering how we were going to tell Mr. Moore what we had done. 

I felt like a soldier coming off the battlefield with a wounded comrade, someone please take a picture, I thought.   

So, it didn't happen exactly the way I said in the beginning. However, I did have both tricycles in one hand and supported James who had his arm slung across my shoulders. AND I did walk all that way supporting him and those two tricycles the entire distance. 

I felt like a hero. 

OKAY, HE DIDN’T DIE! But he could have. He had a gaping hole in his kneecap that exposed the bone underneath. Blood ran down his leg and the grotesque wound was mixed layers of flesh, dirt, asphalt and rocks. He couldn’t walk and needed to go to the emergency room.

We got in trouble with everybody—the Moore's, Coach Palma, parents, and were brought in before a tribunal of the Dean, Waldo Autobelly, and Priests and the Principal at Saint Monica’s high school.

I was a part of something. A new tribe. I couldn’t wait to do something stupid like this again—being a Dahlin—being from Venice—and being from Harding Avenue, danger was right in my "wheelhouse." 

The next chapter of this ongoing epic saga is where six of my older brothers along with nine other hippies from Venice died in a storm on the Salton Sea. Unlike this story, I had no power to save them, but was thankful—for once—that I was not included in that fateful and disastrous, “Three-Hour Tour” across the giant inland sea in our leaky, wooden boat.  

Just another day in paradise. 





Pictured here with Pat Lennon and Bruce Grant is the infamous wooden-boat → there under the Palm tree, next to the green MG, behind the piece of plywood, parked behind the sailboat and the paint thinner can. 


...and the bonus video below explains it all 

The Night I killed a Hippie and the Pope was Proud

(continued) Tuesday Evening: Though my brain had been consumed in thoughts about sex (now that I knew something), I managed to apply some unused gray matter to come up with a plan at getting back at Chewbacca for marking up my body. However, I would not be able to employ my devious plan at the moment, it would have to wait until after my Boy Scout meeting - because snakes have this propensity for crawling away. I would have to put the ooze inspired plan of payback into action after coming back from my Boy Scout meeting tonight.



In an effort to recruit by neighbor buddies, Tommy Blaser and Jeffery Lennon, to join troop 32, I invited them to come me over at the scout house by bribing them with some "Dahlin" deviousness. I told them that we could put some pennies on the railroad tracks that ran along West Washington Blvd.

I know this temptation of dangerous living was out of their normal comfort zone and was attractive to the male psyche that is naturally Wild at Heart.

 *

Between you and me, I think Steppenwolf was on to something and believe that is why so many people liked hanging out our house - because we were so out of control. People could come over to our house, handle snakes, fight against our attack rooster, get close to danger with our alligator, get electrocuted if they wanted to or not, smoke marijuana, maybe even come close to a confrontational encounter with the cops and then return to the safety of their normal lives.

That's why our house was such a popular hang out spot in Venice! It was the center of the universe!


With my pockets filled with pennies and my two friends filled with mischievous optimism we headed down Woodlawn towards the railroad tracks at West Washington. We wanted to make the most of it knowing that the train inched along the tracks with less and less regularity - but this was going to be our night.

We heard the clatter of the train and hurriedly ran down to where "X marks the spot." After some coaxing I got Tommy to join me and Jeffery in strategically lining up our soon to be copper souvenirs on the cold metal rail and took cover. Our imaginations were on overload from all the stories we had heard about pennies being shot out and piercing through cars and killing people. This was bound to be one of these events where Mrs. Blaser would line us up and have the, "If-Mark-were-to-jump-from-a-ten-story-building, it-doesn't-mean-that-you-have-to-Tommy" speech.  

Anyway, the slow train was coming down the tracks and we hid behind some old car so that we didn't get killed and as the train passed, shucks, no copper missiles shot in our direction and the train didn't derail. It was kind of a bummer that no one got hurt - to a Dahlin it always made the story better. A couple pennies had fallen off, two were missing and one indeed had been transformed into the thin-oval, squished-copper memento that we had hoped for.  

That's when we spotted the guitar - an abandoned guitar in the bushes on the other side of the tracks.

The strings were intact and there was no reason to throw a perfectly good guitar away... UNLESS...one of our pennies shot out and killed the owner. Our imaginations ran wild and we began telling a story that grew like Dr. Seuss' kid on Mulberry street.

It was a hippie who owned the guitar chasing fortune and fame on his way to Hollywood when he suddenly got hit by a copper bullet and died. "It might have been Bob Dylan" Tommy said. I thumped him on the noggin and said, "No, Bob Dylan is still alive - don't you know anything? Don't you know about the birds and the bees and sex and stuff like that?"

Turns out they did - darn it!

Building the story, Jeff said, our hypothetical hippie was singing a love song to his hippie chick and in the middle of his ballad, he was so focused and enamored - looking deep into her big brown eyes- that he didn't see the train coming and WHAM! He shouted causing Tommy to jump! We all laughed, but then went silent for minute thinking that we may have been responsible for killing someone as though we were at the guys funeral or contemplating a life sentence in prison.  We search for blood - couldn't find any and picked up the lonely guitar. 

Half of the irony of this whole thing was that begin related to the Famous Lennon Sisters (and though it seemed as if every single Lennon in the history of the world could sing) neither Tommy and Jeffery could sing a lick. That's understandable for us Dahlins - none of us...not one of us could sing - expect for my Dad. And none of us - not one Dahlin had the raw talent for playing an instrument...of any kind (even though my older brother could play a folded leaf). Hence the mountainous stack of old instruments that cluttered the entry into our old house near the cussing mynah-bird. The other half of the irony was that it was me, of all people, who brought the gift of music to the younger generations of Lennons, like Kippy and Michael, with my air guitar renditions of silly songs that I performed in the Blaser's backyard. Kippy and Michael did not want to appear on the Lawrence Welk show - NO... they wanted to be a rock star like Markie D.     

Anyway, as the oldest member of our impish adventurers, I picked up the guitar and began an imitation of the last love song of the murdered hippy for my two cohorts.  I had the boys in stitches, but this wasn't enough. Adrenaline was pumping through the veins of our pre-pubescent bodies and felt like we needed to find more trouble. 

"AH-HA" came the collective epiphany when we looked across the street and saw people in suit and ties entering the old  brick-faced Kingdom Hall building that was mostly hidden by thick green overgrowth. The door was open and we were attracted like mosquitoes to the light. After the doors shut we went over to put on a show or I went went over, strumming the guitar to put on a show for Tommy and Jeffery AND of course this had to be authorized by the POPE since this whole Jehovah Witness thing had to be a cult not sanctioned by the Catholic Church (I knew that when I stood in front of Mrs. Lennon or Mrs. Blaser at the inquisition... I could roll my eyebrows into the look of innocence and claim to be fulfilling my duty as a canonized saint for which - it was Tommy and Jeffery's catholic-bound duty to jump off the 10 story building with me. How could the best of Catholic mothers reason against the POPE). 

Facing my audience (of two) with my back to the front doors, I wailed in the loudest version of the "Kingdom Hall Blues." I had the kids in stitches and think Tommy pee'd his pants...when the doors swung open and a hand shot out and collared me. 

My days were numbered. Two other men came around behind Tommy and Jeffery and the three of them invited us in. INVITED US IN?  They escorted us in with phony smiles. It was more like a kidnapping. We were ushered down front of the little building and directed to sit in the front pew. We were trapped like rats! This is what must have happened to our long lost hippie friend. This must be how they recruit - they leave things as bait and they make prisoners of their captives until you put on a suit and tie and become one of them. 

I have no idea what the guy was saying about Jehovah (Who-ever that was) and how he had two sons: one Michael and one Lucifer - it was all too complicated, especially since the three couldn't stop giggling. Tommy made sure to keep showing us the wet spot on his the front of his pants near his taliwacker. He was doing a good job of messing up their Mass...or what-ever-it was and this is when I decided to drive a nail in the coffin and make a run for it. 

I picked up my (murdered-hippie love-ballad) guitar, jumped up right in the middle of center isle, faced all the people, strummed away and put on the performance of a lifetime.  THEN RAN!  I ran out of the doors with Tommy and Jeffery closely drafting behind.  Mrs. Blaser should be happy because we knew that THE POPE WOULD BE PROUD!  

After boy scouts tonight - it would be Chewbacca's big surprise!    Bwahahahaha.  

Kipp, Tom, Jeff, Kevin, and Michael on the front stairs of the Harding house.  

* "Born to-be wild-steppenwolf-45" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Born_to-be_wild-steppenwolf-45.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Born_to-be_wild-steppenwolf-45.jpg

The GREAT Escape, Well, not exactly?

Where were we after Bob Dylan tried to get in on the act... I have to admit it was nice of him to be taken in by the Markie D thing... Thanks Bob for putting me on track 3! (Oh, last post - if you want to hear it).

Anyway, by now it's close to 4:00pm Saturday September 10th 1966, Mom and JERRY took off in a blur - rushing Chewy to the emergency room at Saint John's Hospital in Santa Monica (thank you guardian angel for looking out for me - that broken arm sure came at the right time - see blog-post "Flying Leap 8-12-2013).  

So far today: You've met Honking-Slurping-Pooping Jimmy, witnessed Chewbacca and the rattlesnake electric therapy, saw me get attacked by a garter snake and Chewy loose Iguana Del Dialbo with the subsequent choas at poor Mrs. Tripp's house. Then there was 'O cool-Johnny Gillemot being a teenage under-aged driver wreaking his mom's car...the staged accident with Gherhing the Great, the Helms Bakery heist, the awful discovery of Jimmy's "fort-warming" present, hopeful Jerry "TT" chasing the boys up the third story only to have them escape out the window...me trapped in the second floor sun-room and trying to leap to death...only to be caught by Jerry and saved in the nick of time when the Wolf Pack had electrocuted Chewy (who was on his way down the "fire-escape" pole) only to break his arm in two places and was now being rushed to the hospital by my mom in Jerry's car.

Jerry was gone! That was all that mattered!  Can I get an AMEN?

Gherhing the Great was intrigued by Gustav's legendary  RAT KILLER!   If the name doesn't make sense to you, it's probably because you don't know that a big-block Chevy motor (427's and 454's) were affectionately called "Rat" motors.

Well, Gustav was a Ford guy (sorry all you Chevy guys)! And like Dr. Frankenstein he stole..oops... he acquired a Ford high-performance 427 and made a monster of a Chevy destroying beast out of 56 Ford business coup (MUST SEE BLOG POST "Hair, Hippies, and Hot Rods" July 4th).  Gustav was a genius with an exceptionally high IQ and put Ford parts together in a way that baffled even the Ford engineers in Dearborn i.e. his Ford was a Chevy "Rat" killer!  (Rather a "RAT" Annihilator)!

                   It's alive!

Rumor had it that it was a Holman and Moody built motor... but this was his own creation that beat everything he came up against. He was a legend at Lions Race Car Track and on Van Nuys Boulevard where the silly valley-boys who purchased brand new 409s and went cruising on Wednesday nights to impress the ladies.  

Here is some home video of Lions Drag Strip from 1966.  ANYWAY, O' Gherhing the Great couldn't keep his paws off the Rat Killer as he climbed underneath and checked out every inch of it, while the Wolf Pack was in the house laughing about runnin' off 'O Jerry and about Chewy's broken arm. Gherhing discovered that the sheet-metal indentation in the trunk where the spare tire usually sat, was cut away and only had a piece of fabric glued in its place. Guess what "Gherhing-the-not-so-great" did? He talked me into climbing into the trunk of my brother's race car!  How many times can I say, Bad Idea!

BAD IDEA!
BAD IDEA!
BAD IDEA!


Yeah, we crawled in! Of course Gherhing began monkeying around with his racing harness and floor shifter and other junk until we heard Dr. Frankenstein (That's Gustav) come walking back in the direction of infamous RAT KILLER! We knew we were in trouble and climbed back into the trunk area and hid as quietly as we could in the stripped down, bare-metal, grease-smeared compartment.  I gulped as though it were a Déjà vu...the tin Hamper of Death, only this didn't smell like diapers - it smelled like gear oil which was nearly as bad to my super-sniffer and was bound to be a hundred times faster. I socked Gherhing in the stomach just as Gustav fired up the monster.   

In retrospect, I'm pretty sure Gustav knew we were in there, but had pretended not to notice us. Slowly, he moseyed on down Harding Avenue not to draw the ire of good 'O Mr. Lennon and turned onto Venice Boulevard heading east. We were tossed back and forth as the motor rocked the car from side to side as he sat at the light at Lincoln Boulevard at idle. Then, just as if he was at Lion's drag-strip...he revved up his "stall-torque converter" to 4,000 RPM and as the light turned green he punched the pedal to the metal with the Tachometer needle pegging the red-line at 8,000.  With his wrinkle-wall tires that had been screwed to the rims the front lifted off the street and we shot off like a rocket launch. ONLY!

Only, Gherhing and I were like astronauts on a horizontal takeoff that had not been strapped into the rocket! Gustav's car was a true 10 second 1/4 mile hot rod. In order to achieve that, you had to reach something like 157 miles-an-hour in that short distance. Oh Yeah! I think Gustav knew, we were in there...and when he hit the throttle, Gherhing and I shot back into the rear of the trunk and were pinned against one another and to the metal, held in place by 11-year-old, bone-crushing, lung-suffocating, lips-folding-back, tear-producing, pee-pee-making amounts of G-forces and heavy metal thunder! 

You know that ride at POP (Pacific Ocean Park) where it spins and the floor drops out and you stick to the walls - well, this was like that - only 10 times more. Gherhing was stuck to me and I was stuck to the back and I could feel his warm pee-pee seeping into my pants and my lips felt like they were going to peel all the way back over my head like a zipper. Yeah, Gustav got us good... but then it got worst!
 


Sirens!   The Venice Police Department Tried to catch the Rat Killer!   Good luck with that one!

Gherhing and I got flung to one side, (squealing tires) then the other...(burning rubber) then the other... then upside down... then twisted... then another turn down Glyndon and my face was in Gherhing's wet pants...WET PANTS? PEE! Hello! I vomited and it sprayed the entire trunk space of the Rat Killer...Gherhing and I kept getting thrown around in it like we were pieces of chicken being coated up on the outside by throw-up! Gherhing - threw up! What took him so long?  It was GROSS! I threw up again just after Gustav made a screeching right turn and my warm vomit of oatmeal and spoiled milk went directly in Gherhing's face. Gross and double gross!

Gustav spun the car around one-hundred-and-eighty-degrees slamming on the brakes perfectly parallel parking between two cars on Vienna Ave. He jumped out through passenger window of the car and just walked away - whistling like nothing had ever happened. By then, four Cop cars came careening around the corner and sped on past as Gustave just waved nonchalantly. Gustav was already a couple blocks away when one of the police cars came back.  An officer looked inside as Gherhing and I were peeling ourselves off of the froth and begged him to arrest us.

He wasn't too happy and stood with his arms indignantly folded waiting for us to emerge from the hole we had previously climbed into. I held my hands out to him expecting him to hand-cuff us...but when he took one look at us...or was it... when he took one whiff of us...he gagged - ran for his car and told us to get home. There was no way he was taking us back to the Venice Police station. I was hoping for a good meal! We walked over to the Tikker's house and sprayed each other off with the water hose. We hooked our little fingers and I made a promise not to tell anyone about how he pee'd his pants!  I still think it was a bad idea, but Gherhing the Great thought this was THE BEST DAY EVER! 

We walked back to Harding just in time to get in on the Wolf Pack's awful prank on the little old lady next door! 

Poor Edna... and even worst - poor, poor, poor Hutch! (As Steppenwolf would later say) The Wolf Pack "...was born to be wild"     

 Oh and also we got back in time to watch as the Wolf Pack nearly burned down the Lennon house!