Venice Zombies And Little Billy Gates pt 1

Star Date: July 17th 1969 (continued)

Unfortunately, Boy Scout troop 186 from Seattle got the unlucky pick of the short straw and had to set up camp next to us.  AND, what made things worse is that this snooty group of "cake-eaters" arrived in one of those expensive travel-coaches and didn't have to poop behind bushes and wipe off with pine cones like we did.

This automatically made them the ire of "THE KYBO PATROL." Ronnie and a couple of the kids from the Flaming Arrow Patrol overhead the Seattle kids whispering some snide comments about having to set up camp so close to the troop from Venice - and that was all it took.

Don't tell Ronnie and Chronister and Cockerel this, but in reality, the "The KYBO Patrol" looked like dirt bags and smelled even worse! When I heard all the plans for retaliation, I felt sorry for "silver-spooners" in troop 186.

They had a kid named Billy, who was a year older than me, and petitioned his scoutmasters that his troop show off the type of skills representing the Indian culture of Seattle that required the use of brains. The freshman with glasses wasn't so much into hiking and knot tying and other normal boy scout stuff. The Scout Masters liked his idea and ran with it.

In a demonstration of  Indian tracking skills, they created a 100 foot long sand course that had to be interpreted. I didn't dare tell the other kids in my troop, but I actually liked it.  It had foot prints and pokes and various paw prints and all kinds of things in the sand that told a story.  At the beginning of the Troop 186 "skills demonstration" a kid handed each camper a piece of paper and golf pencil to write down their observations. You had to identify the foot prints of various animals that crossed the path and the ones the tracker was following - get this -  they even had an owl scat (don't know where they got that?), but I dug it and felt like I did pretty good at it (no, not the owl poop - I dug the course)!

The thing I guessed right was the part about how it was a barefooted Indian who used his bow as a hiking staff which had made the round indentations and how he was followed by a three legged companion.

At the end, you had to turn your paper into the little brainiac nerd, Billy, who read your interpretation and gave you a grade. The little nerdy kid was impressed that I got the part about the limp and the staff and the three legged dog and gave me the highest score so far. Obviously, this made me feel good about myself and couldn't help, but like the scrawny, little four-eye'd geek from a rich suburb of Seattle, who had signed my "Indian tracking sheet!"    

HOWEVER, it was the owl-scat thing that triggered the vindictive imagination of the KYBO patrol which would take place - later that night, well after dark.

In the meantime, it was a historic day for the Boy Scouts as we heard Jesse Owens speak to all 35,000 of us who gathered in the massive Friendship Arena, but even more cool than that - was that Neil Armstrong sent a message to us from space on the way to the moon.

WHAT!?

“I’d like to say hello to all my fellow Scouts and Scouters at Farragut State Park in Idaho at the National Jamboree there this week and Apollo 11 would like to send them best wishes.”  


Never before in the history of mankind has anything like this ever happen for the Boy Scouts and I was there!  And, never before in the history of the Boy Scouts of America has anything as terrifying as what the KYBO patrol did later that night ever happen before...and unfortunately, I was there!

NEXT: THE VENICE ZOMBIE ATTACK!
                               Check in next time to see if little Billy Gates will make it out alive?

Hello Muddah... Hello Fadda... you thought it was bad the last time I wrote... Well you won't believe this.

         Wait until you hear about what "Dego" did!

I guess I should add this to my: "You know you're from Venice If"  list.

Venice Invades the Boy Scout Universe!

I don't know what was worst...the Dahlins headed out of Venice to the zoo (post 5/3/2103) or Troop 32 headed to Farragut State park in Idaho to meet up with 35,000 other Boy Scouts.

In the words of the robot on Lost in Space "Danger Will Robinson"

Stardate: July 6th 1969

Captains Log: We had our heavy-duty, 1959 Chevy moving-truck converted into a "scout bus" by cutting the back doors in half,  installing some porthole windows and hard wooden benches along the sides. This left the center floor section open for transporting all the tents and backpacks and camping gear and for staging cage fighting. Miraculously, no one had fallen out of the back doors on any of the trips to Camp Slauson or Josepho so far, but we came close a couple times.

This half-open, barn-door (at the rear of the truck) arrangement had its advantages and disadvantages.

ADVANTAGE 1) On one trip, Charlie climbed out of the back of the truck onto the tongue of the trailer and slid himself onto the fender of the little cargo trailer, we were pulling in order to appropriate something we "desperately" needed inside the truck that was a matter of life and death.  Like a spider monkey, Charlie, climbed up on top of the little white trailer and slowly scooted himself very carefully towards the rear. I voted against the rope. I kind-of-felt like Charlie would have been better off without a bowline tied around his waist. I figured that if he fell off without the rope then at least he might have a chance of survival, but with the rope - it would be like being dragged behind a horse at 57 miles per hour on hot rough asphalt (not a good ending - if you know what I mean)!  Believe it or not, Charlie actually made it inside the trailer grabbed the bag of marshmallows and made his way back into the back of the "Scout Bus" without the scout masters being none-the-wiser.

ADVANTAGE 2) Another thing this particular arrangement afforded us on long trips, was that we could stand on the bench seat and hang our talliwackers out the back, when some small-bladder'd tenderfoot had to take a pee-pee between potty-stops!

ADVANTAGE 3) This gaping hole in the back end also allowed us to "full-moon" passerby's, especially if there were pretty girls and grandmothers in the cars trapped behind our slow-moving, smog-belching, billboard of a truck  - representing the Boys Scouts of America (Hey, I was twelve and at least we thought it was pretty cool - though, I'm pretty sure our scout masters might have felt differently - had they known).

DISADVANTAGE 1) Potential for falling out of the back - especially when leaning out to take a leak or when "giving the moon" to an old Mormon grandmother from Utah.

DISADVANTAGE 2)  Was the fact that carbon monoxide FUMES blew into the large open back. Carbon monoxide poisoning includes light-headedness, confusion, headaches, vertigo and can lead to the toxicity of the central nervous system. This might EXPLAIN WHY we sent a Boy Scout crawling out on top of a trailer on the freeway, pee'd on the cars behind us, indiscriminately exposed our bare butts to grandmas and fought with one another all the way to Idaho.  And... it might also explain why we always looked like dazed, refugee-rats whenever the truck finally rolled into a rest stop.




The other normal Boy Scout troops did not travel like us... they had air-conditioned travel-coaches with a restroom on board and drove through McDonald's on their way across country.












Although the carbon-monoxide poisoning could be blamed for a lot of things, in our case, however, I don't think the toxic fumes we were breathing could be blamed for mass constipation. I think that was due instead, both to the menu, and to the fact that the Scout Master's son never rinsed the pasta which ended up sticking to the insides of our intestines like the heavy paste on paper mache!

It's not like something we compared notes on.  "Hey, Kissel..have you taken a poop yet?"  That would have been ridiculous.

But, after 4 or 5 hot, sweaty days of traveling and camping the two scout master finally put two and two together when everyone began to moan and groan about stomachaches which they figured was more than just the ordinary toxic confusion, vomiting associated with minor carbon monoxide poisoning that was driving us all mad.

AND SO... the night after the infamous spaghetti incident, on the very same day I rescued David Cockerel from drowning in a small muddy lake outside Rock Springs in Wyoming...is when the proverbial "poop would have hit the fan" except for there was no poop and the scout masters came up with a diabolical plan.

I'll have to leave you hanging on this one... and come back and share how this interrogation tribunal got us a Highway Patrol escort... (well, kind of anyway)... to the embarrassment of the Entire Boy Scout Universe and to which (I'm sure) Lord Baden Powell was rolling over in his grave.  

AS I leave you until next time-  there are many of you right now saying, "Oh, this guy is just making up stories for sensationalism!"

I guarantee that every single bit of this is the "Straight Up TRUTH!

And I would ask, or dare anyone who is reading this - especially if you were a member of the illustrious Troop 32 from Venice California to weigh-in and corroborate these stories for the rest of the disbelieving world - at least for those in the 78 countries who read this BLOG!

Until next time...  Du är älskad!