Muhammad Ali and I Go Down!

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO….!"

I screamed loud enough to be heard by the neighbors―loud enough to be heard by the Lennons on the corner!  

said Joey

asked Kippy

"What's wrong with you" dad asked examining the front page of the LA Times staring down at the horrific results of the FIGHT OF THE CENTURY. 

Without having to turn to the sports page it was right there in the headlines. Ali had lost!                                                                                                                                                   "It can't be" I said. "Impossible."                                                                                                                                                       My dad was surprised, but not shocked like me.  

They wondered...  Hide your wife. Hide your kids.                                                                                                                          

   Hamper                                                                   Electrocution                                                 Veloci-Raptor 

"But we had a contract...he promised to knock Frazier out in 6 rounds"

Dad furled his brow and stared incredulously at me. "Vad är fel med dig?" he said in Swedish. 

  

Dad didn't get it. "This can't be!" 

He set his paper down and raised a brow as if waiting for my answer. 

"You don't get it." I said. And he didn't. "That might as well be me in there." 

               Another blank stare.

"What chance do I have now of becoming anything more than moldy bread."

I got this look like I should have been committed to the insane asylum at Camarillo.

Obviously he didn't know what Muhammad Ali said about moldy bread and penicillin.

"We had a contract," I said waiving my arms. "He promised me that I was destined not to be moldy bread"

My poor father had no idea what I was talking about. "Come here and let me look at your tongue," he said.

I did and then realized that he was looking into my eyes. I knew what he was doing. He was scared. He thought that maybe I had discovered the Mexican Tomato plants in the backyard and had started puffing on the "Mary Jane." He was afraid I had turned to the dark side... 

"Dad...No! Tony Alva...whatever..."  He was more confused than ever. 

Ali's victory was my victory. This fight meant that I could become someone and now I have no chance. I felt like everyone kept lying to me. First it was Phyllis Diller now it's Ali. Adults and their promises and their Prophecies just can't be trusted.  

The Blasers next door heard the scream.                                                                                                        "What's the screaming," said Tommy in alarm pulling on his grandpa's shirt.  
                                                                                         

 "It went the full fifteen," my dad said.

 It was me. I had been knocked down.











"Unanimous decision." He continued.


 I felt sucker punched. "ughhhh!" Not by Frazier, but by Ali.










  thought one of the neighbors

"Ali...Ali...Ali...Ali...how could you do this to me?" I said walking away talking to my dog, Poochie.

Poochie was minding her own business, enjoying the warmth of the sun―trying to stay out of it.                                                                                            
I was rejected by Andrea and the world had just shifted off its axis. Bent I'm telling you.

I turned around and my Dad's eyes were still trailing me. He watched for a little bit and said something else in Swedish, "Galen!" 

It's been less than a month and the city was still recovering from the big Sylmar earth quake that hit back in February.

Frank Nargie the mailman who lived across the street said he was outside when it hit and saw our big old house rock back and forth. He said he thought it was going to fall over. Two of the boy on the third floor got knocked out of their beds and another rattlesnake got loose. I remember feeling like I was on a ship being tossed back and forth by a storm. 

It was tragic. Fourteen people were killed. Two Hospitals collapsed. Governor Reagan declares a State of Emergency and appealed to President Nixon for Federal aid. 

                                                                               

"Earthquake―Smearthquake" I felt like I had been rocked from my foundation and in a personal state of emergency. Who do I appeal to?  I tried God and that didn't seem to work.

Who could I trust?

I swan and improved on my times in the Butterfly. But I still sucked. In my first race I was so terrible that a guy with a broken arm and plastic bag over his cast beat me.

                                                                                                                                         

I finished my first swim season at Saint Monicas, but  really didn't care a whole lot  about competing. It was pretty simple―I had given up on the notion that I could discover what true love was about and settled on finding friendship and fitting in. 

Distance and distrust was best.   

I wanted to fit―belong―find my place, not win gold medals. Kurt the "big Saint Monica's scoring champion" was up at Humboldt University and becoming more of a hippie. I could never be like him―why try! Ali lost. Adults are not to be trusted. I realized that life was easier as a robot and decided to withdraw into my own world where it was a little safer.  

More aftershocks...then the "Hensheys Incident of 1971" in Santa Monica!

  and off to Dachau ...but why?  

Hensheys picture credit: Facebook post by Michael Hayasi "You know you're from Santa Monica If" group May 2016 

     

To Toke or Not to Toke - The Law of the Jungle

Captain's Log: Star-date 1971  

To smoke or not to smoke?  That was the question (this is where I left off last time).

Tony Alva offered me an olive branch or a “peace pipe” of acceptance. 

I was in.

By smoking his doobie I could freely roam the ruins of Pacific Ocean Park pier. This certainly took the edge off the feeling that I had been rejected by Andrea—my one true love.  

In that second, I thought about love and how desperately I wanted to know the feeling that other people feel. When Andrea wrapped herself around the neck of that surfer-dude from Santa Monica my dreams were now dashed like a shipwreck being tossed back and forth on an angry tide on the jagged Santa Monica breakwater rocks.  

This kid inhaled and held it out to me. 

If I was going to toke on a joint for the first time—it should be with the Wolf Pack.  

Smoking pot just might be my way in.

Maybe my older brothers and the other Harding Hippies would accept me and want me around for something more than just a play toy or to experiment with some newfangled trap of some sort.   

Waving him off, Tony frowned, shrugged his shoulders and passed it along. He and his tribe allowed me to slip away from the domain of his rat’s nest unharmed.  

POP was nothing like it's glory days.  

The walk home to Venice was a good time to think. I paused under the 200-year-old Banyan Fig tree at Hollister Ave and Neilson Way and eventually crossed over at “Heroine Park” at Main Street and Westminster.

I walked down Washington Blvd that was nothing more than a bunch of old vacant and rundown buildings behind the ghetto.

I thought about visiting Dego who lived on Electric, but decided to head back to Hippy Central at my house—via the Venice Troop 32 Boy Scout House near the railroad tracks.  A bounce returned to my step. 

Even though I had a dark secret I was not a victim.         I had friends. 

I belonged to a group of water polo players and swimmers at Saint Monica’s. 

I belonged to Troop 32. Heck yeah, we were the most disorderly Boy Scout Troop in the world, but I belonged and had fought my way to the top of that kingdom hierarchy. 

  

So Andrea chose another…so what?  I had a best friend next door and the craziest family in the animal kingdom.  

 

Still?

I wanted to belong to my own pack at home. I wanted to be accepted by my own and protected.  

Maybe Tony Alva was on to something. 

Maybe the way to join my brother’s club was to be become a reefer-smoking-junior-hippie. 

But, what if I said yes and what if I took a hit and what if they still rejected me—what then?

 

I wanted in—I think?

NOW this is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the sky,

And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.      

As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;       

For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

Walking up Crestmore Ave Mrs. Gass saw me talking to myself—arguing with God really, but she didn’t know that.  I smiled and waved. 

God is this too much to ask for?

I nodded to Leland as I rounded the corner and eventually made it home to the most exciting house in America or in California—certainly in Venice. 

"Hi Mrs. Mcclain"

"Hi Mrs. Tripp"

"Hi Mrs. Blaser"

    yep—yep I could hear Mrs Nargie.

It was late and by this time, the backyard was bound to full of a menagerie of Lennons, Blasers, Grants, the H Club, Kleghorn, stragglers and strangers.   

I was finally home to scheming hippies and hibernating turtles. Home to the infamous Veloci-Raptor who made war with a Catholic nun. 

Home to vagrant carburetors and leaning towers of a half-century’s worth of decaying National Geographic’s. Chickens outside of cages and rabbits inside poorly constructed ones. 

Cars on blocks—three sailboats and a 1956 MG cohabitating under the palm tree. 

Rusted bikes with missing wheels, outboard motors in trashcans full of water, lawnmowers that I don’t think ever worked and several tools we borrowed from the Blasers (borrowed in the loose translation of the word). 

And lots of cars that didn’t work and trucks used as trash barges.   

I was home. Home to the snakes, the chuckwallas, the Iguanas, Leopard lizards and two new kittens on the porch. 

Best of all, I was home to my favorite person on earth—my little beagle Pooch.  Now, all I would have to do is go to the back and smoke some hooch. 

Yes I was home, but with a hole in my heart and contemplating my future being spurned by Andrea and being apart.

Home without a girlfriend or Pack –tree trunk forward or back—no strength—no place in the jungle in a law as old and as true as the sky, no way to prosper—and feeling like I wanted to die. 

Why Andrea? Why?

I took two steps and stopped and couldn’t bring myself to go back—there was someone I feared in the Pack.

I strapped on my boxing gloves and lay down in bed—I pleaded or fought or yelled at God and told Him it was His fault and then asked for His protection against the evil we had unleashed into the world.   

Next Stop: The Venice BSA Infection spreads to the Sacramento Deltas via the concentration camp at Dachau... and who let Lyman drive the houseboat anyway?   

And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.  

Images credits: 

Kids running at ruins of POP Facebook post (don't know who to credit)

POP ruins: Facebook post the rise and fall of Pacific Ocean Park 

POP bubbles: Facebook  Photos of Los Angeles by Bill Gabel

POP in its Glory days Postcard: Facebook (don't know who to credit) 

All other pictures: mine 

  

Hormones. Hodads. Harding: Nothing Makes Sense

The more I try to make sense of the world, it seems that the more nothing makes sense.

I am short and skinny and look like I’m a seventh-grader.

Impatiently I pray at night for more reluctant hair to show up under my arm pits—infuriated at the practical joke God was playing on me. Here I am, FOURTEEN in high school among towering mature oaks—gorillas with hair all over their bodies. 

I’m in love withAndrea, walk among the apes and have only two freaking hairs under my right arm pit. The small pond of choice at Saint Mark’s has grown into a very large sea at Saint Monica High School. 

I am frightened that Andrea now had the option of picking from the slick-surfers donning mustaches from the Palisades. I am merely minnow in the vast ocean.

It was spring – something was happening in my body that I couldn’t explain other than the fact that I was officially twitterpated.  It is time to take matters into my own hands. I wrote her a love letter (Though Paul Anka and Annette Funicello may see it as nothing more than puppy love – It is real to ME!). Never-the-less, this is a secret to keep from the Wolf-Pack. Couldn’t let my family find out about my secret crush–they would most certainly use this information against me somehow.

I tucked the note into my Pee-chee folder and was determined to give it to her at school.

Lunch.  

At lunch!  

That was my plan. 

I begged AlexDelgadillo for food.  As with our new tradition, he opened the bun on the hamburger his mother made him and handed me the pickles. 

“STOP!” James Moore charlie-horsed me in the thigh, to stop the nervous jitters of my leg that had been driving him crazy. 

“Hyper” I said, as an excuse—never knowing when it was happening.  Everyone had been calling me hyper for so long that I figured I might as well use it as my alibi. 

This. Was. It.

This was the moment of truth. 

I saw her—she looked my way. My heart stopped or my breathing or something.  Shock.  Excitement. Nervous. She still had a thing for me. YES! I still had a chance.

I stood. She walked in my direction. I fumbled pulling the folded paper out of my pee-chee folder. I crushed it in my fist. I breathed—I tried to.  Nervously, collecting my thoughts I took a step towards her and looked down for one second at the hand that held my undying declaration of love for her way back since sixth grade. I looked up as she walked right past me and right up to a guy standing in the ally way between the gym and the music room.

She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking past me. I glared. She smiled and giggled and even tilted her head. TILTED HER HEAD. Did you hear what I just said? You know the tilt girls do when they are “in-like.” She tilted her head to a stupid surfer kid from Santa Monica. 

UGHhhhhh...someone help me please! 

I was ruined. Where were you in the spring of 1971? If you were anywhere on the West-coast, the odds are, you probably heard the sound of my heart breaking?  

Minnow yes—plankton maybe –in a large ocean filled with sharks, hairy apes and giant oaks. I placed one of Alex’s pickles in the love-letter and ate it. The swim-team guys thought I was retarded.  Nothing made sense—not love—not hormones or puberty—NOT girls.

Words I thought I’d never say: “Today I need you Wolf Pack.” I was numb. “I needed to be put in a pit or hung out of a window. I needed to be electrocuted or tied up in a straight jacket and thrown over a cliff. I needed to get into a fight with someone.  I needed Richard to steal my chocolate. I needed Erick and the band of Angry-Little-Men to ambush me.” 

I am a Zombie in need. I was drifting. I needed James Moore to try to hit me in the leg one more time.

Despondent, I skipped swim practice and hitchhiked—home, half-hoping to be kidnapped, and got only as far as POP.

Surf-rats turned skater-rats were hanging out at the ruins. 

Dude it was on. 

Here I was in my catholic uniform completely out of my element right where I needed to be. Two rough looking kids screamed profanity at me and walked up as if I had invaded sacred territory—in surf talk—a “hodad.” This was my day to die. This was my chance to be pummeled, to feel pain, to feel alive.

“Dahlin?” one of them asked.  

I came straight out of the Dahlin cookie-cutter mold and looked just like my brother Karl who, along with Bruce Grant and Jeff Ho, surfed there all the time. I nodded. 

"Cool." Knowing I was a Dahlin from Venice this kid, Tony, offered me a toke of a joint they were smoking.   

                      I had a decision to make. 

To toke or not to toke that is the question?

Oh BTW two years later...  

On March 15, 1972, DJ Robert W. Morgan played the Donny Osmond version of Puppy Love for 90 minutes straight on KHJ in Los Angeles. The LAPD mistakenly raided the station studios after receiving numerous calls from listeners. Confused, the officers left without making any arrests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_Love_(Paul_Anka_song)     (It was right for people to call the cops it was torture)!

Pee chee folder Picture credit https://www.flickr.com/groups/peecheefolderart/pool/

POP picture 1 credit: Facebook post the rise and fall of Pacific Ocean Park 

POP picture 2  credit: Facebook post ?