I'm getting to the "Great Fire of 1968," but since it is close to Christmas I think I'll take a couple post to share what Christmas was like at my house on Harding avenue in Venice California.
I have tried to tell people about Christmas at my house...but find that there are really no words adequate to describe the level of chaos that took place every Christmas right after Christmas Mass. I will try, but (I can guarantee you), I'm not even convinced that Hollywood with a big budget would be able to portray on the big screen the scene at our house at Christmas. Whatever I do here... however, I portray this... no matter how much flourish and embellishment I add...use your imagination, multiply everything by 10 and it'll only get you close.
Remember the Wolf Pack began as somewhat normal children. We did things that other normal Catholic families might do for our family Christmas traditions.
We had a manger; a nativity set with Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus! We went to bed at night dressed in pajamas... we woke up at 11:00 pm and dressed for church. We went to midnight Mass and came home to find that Santa had filled our living room with presents and toys. Oh what joy!
It is quite possible that we even read the Christmas story from Matthew or Luke's gospel...said, "Happy birthday Jesus" and unwrapped our presents like regualr people. It is likely that we did that. I have some great pictures that would support this rather civil and ordinary Christmas proceedings. (I submit the picture on the right as evidence to support these claims).
I'm the baby on the front of the rocking horse.
(On the left) I'm the baby crawling on blanket.
Look at how adorable and how normal we once were...
We are the model of the perfect Catholic Family...
The Nuns at Saint Marks Convent would be proud and we might even put the Lennons to shame... could it get any better or cuter than this?
Now it is important to remember that at this amazing time in the evolution of the Wolf Pack (before the boys turned into wild animals and began devouring flesh and turning on one another) I was a mere baby and have no such recollection of this sweet and reverent demeanor.
By the time my memory kicks in (at about 6 or 7) the older boys are teenagers and had been growing more and more out of control.
By 1968 with the addition of the "Mexican Tomato Plants," the Veloci-Rooster, the alligator, the hippie-"girlie/man"-cave, the pond, the mosquitoes, the fleas, the snake cages, the stacks and stacks of old decomposing
National Geoprpahic magazines... the addition of cars out front, trailers, boats, car parts and also with the additional members (we kept adding to our clan) Christmas was no longer the idealistic picture seen above.
By this time in our history Dooh-Dooh Pants had gotten involved in the Boy Scouts and dad helped out every year with the Troop 32 Christmas tree lot. We sold trees that started at a dollar-fifty that went all the way up to $3.50 for the most expense Nobel Firs on the tree lot. The Blasers next door always managed to buy the best looking tree - I think one year they even paid $5.00 for their perfectly shaped tree.
My dad would never be caught dead paying that kind of money for a Christmas Tree. He made a dollar donation to the Boy Scouts and somehow managed to bring home a tree worst than Charlie Brown's. Mom wasn't too keen about that and dad would usually bring another tree home from the Boy Scout lot that was twice was bad that no one wanted to buy. As a clever and frugal Swede, he would use old twine to tie the two trees together. Sometimes he drilled holes in the trunk of the first tree and stuck branches from the second tree into the holes to increase the foliage on the incredibility sparse stick he brought home in the first place (This hole-drilling thing only took place on the particular Christmas' when he could find the electric drill motor, find the drill motor chuck and find a drill bit - the convergence of all three was indeed a rarity).
But the good new was: TINSEL! Tinsel had to be Swedish invention or by thought up by someone from a culture that was also defined by frugality and use of imagination. You could buy a ton of tinsel for like a buck at Pick and Save and gob it so thoroughly on the branches that you could hide any manner of hideous tree underneath. And that's what we did .
The more kids, the less money spent on the tree; the less money spent on a tree - the more tinsel we packed on the thin and meager branches. Sometimes, I wondered if Charles Shutlz visited our house and got his idea for "Charlie Brown's Christmas."
I wouldn't be surprised if we were his inspiration.
Anyway, the rambunctious boys were growing up and took all the youthful energy they had for climbing and fighting and channeled it together along with smoking the hippie-stuff out back and melded it into the craziest, the loudest and the rancorous frivolity known in the history of mankind!
But by the time I had a brain, I'm sure that whatever was taking place at our house on Christmas was much different than what was happening over at the Famous Lennon Sisters' house across the street. I happen to know as fact that the events at our house on Christmas was totally different from what was happening next door at the Blasers.
Deductive logic would conclude that a Dahlin Christmas frenzy had to be completely different from just about anything that was taking place at most homes around the world with those who were celebrating Christmas.
My mom had a dream. Her dream was that we could be more like the Lennons, (which I sure looked more like something in the picture on the right) My Mom spent considerable energy describing the rules for engagement as if was a military briefing on how we were to open presents when we arrived home from Midnight Mass.
She had a perfectly good image of organization...of cooperation... and of this quiet and peaceful present exchange which she hoped would be a bit more subdued than the lurid din of an active battle zone in Vietnam.
At 11:00 pm Mr. D would bang the ceilings and walls with the handle of broom, and like the staff sergeant, he would begin shouting out commands for the troops to get dressed for war...ummm... I mean for church. The regular high-octane hullabaloo would break out in the mad scramble as the hippies were trying to find pants to wear, because my mom band jeans with holes in them. As usual we fought over socks and I had to sniffed around the floor of Flea-Bait's room looking for stinky old socks to wear that no one wanted to touch (they were shiny and stiff and hard and stood up all by themselves).
This 50 minute scramble usually involved a lot of screaming, name calling, booger flinging (that was my favorite -I hope you noticed the tone of sarcasm - because boogers always activated my heightened gag reflex) along with Dooh-Dooh-Pants passing potent gas that had the power to empty entire rooms .
My mom's vision for a serene and sacred evening was usually shot to "H E double hockey sticks" before we even left the house for church (that was one of her words). By the time we rounded the corner in front of the Lennon house, she would be shouting words like this all the way down the street right up to the moment the 14 of us darkened the doors at Saint Marks church, 10 minutes late for midnight mass looking slightly better than drowned rats, but not much better than refugees who had just escaped through dirt tunnels from a prisoner of war camp.
I will try my very best to paint as accurate a picture as possible - knowing how daunting that task really is.
So until our next time together in my blog titled:
The Hand
Merry Christmas
God jul
Wesołych Świąt
¡Feliz Navidad!
Crăciun fericit
С Рождеством
З Різдвом
Весела Коледа
Joyeux Noël!
Καλά Χριστούγεννα
Buon Natale!
חג
שמח
Chúc
mừng Giáng sinh
As I said last time, I prayed for normal - but with the alligator, the attack rooster, the monkeys at the Zoo, the resurrected cat, with Iguana Del Diablo, the rattlesnake escapes, the Ouija board and the crop of well taken care of "Mexican Tomato Plants" anything to do with normal was well behind us. I always thought that normal lived next door to us or across the street at the Lennon Sister's house. 
us - irregular
(continued) The morning I got back to Saint Mark's grammar school from the zero period for advanced math at Saint Monica High School - wouldn't you know it, but the very first person I bumped into was Andrea! Literally. I literally ran into her like a car wreck. 
While suspended from school, I intended on dreaming up ways of getting back at Chewbacca then eventually heading over to the Venice Police station to play football when the regular kids from Saint Marks and Venice High school got out.
