The Veloci-Rooster and What Does the Fox Say?

It was October 1968 and I laid in the old hospital bed (that had been moved upstairs to my room) recovering from the big accident at McElliots' pool that should killed me.  My leg had been stitched together and looked worst than Frankenstein's face. Most of my leg was still numb felt like they had installed a metal plate inside my leg behind the 97 stitches that ran a zig-zagged path from above my knee all the way up my left thigh.

President Johnson had said that he would not seek re-election which made all of us Dahlins really sad, since we felt like we had bonded with him a couple months ago along the shore of that muddy Texas river. My dad said that the biggest laugh the President had during his time in the White House was when he pranked us with the bit about snapping turtles (Blog 9/14/13).

Everything was was going pretty good with the Apollo 7. It was still orbiting around the earth at this time, which was pretty important for the United States, because we had been so far behind the Soviet Union in the Race to Space!  We need some good news from all the bad news. JFK's brother, Robert Kennedy's assassination in June and Martin Luther King Jr's assassination 2 months before that - along with Vietnam war protest, the marijuana plants hidden in our backyard, the fleas in my bedroom and the crazy-attack Rooster, "El Pollo-Loco" the boys were about to bring home.  We desperately needed something positive to cheer about.   I did!

In the meantime my faithful and loyal dog, Poochie, laid on my bed and chewed his butt because of all the fleas. By taking down the pool, (seen to the right) we had gotten rid of most to the "mosquito problem" that we created in California when we had traveled back east with my Dad's "Sugar Water" invention in our hair(blog post 9/21/13). But now our house had become infested with fleas instead. 

Don Blaser next door had hated our mosquitoes and was even more passionately opposed to our migrating fleas that ended up on their perfectly groomed collie. 



Everyone wanted to blame my mangy mutt Poochie, but my dad said he thought the fleas were from the hippie-commies that my older brothers had evolved into.      

Here is a picture of them.

Oops sorry - wrong picture! 







Here's a couple pictures of the evolution of my sibling wolf-pack.
 

 



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                                                                   to This

I could be wrong, but I think they are picking fleas off each other in this picture...I wondered if that is why they launched the rockets so far away from Venice, so that none of our fleas would make it abroad the Apollo rocket-ships. Image having to live with a couple inside your space suit.  "No Sir," someone in charge of NASA probably said, "lets put the launch pads in Texas or in Florida."  
 
Anyway, at midnight they sent Syndrom and Cosmo and Ulrich over the chain-link fence at the toxi-water, drainage-ditch (near where they converted the marsh lands into what we call the Marina Del Rey) to fetch that great, big, ugly, killer rooster!  And from the story, Four Eyes came back and reported to me - it sounded like the dreaded Veloci-Rooster got the best of Ulrich and his "Small-Man" crew.

I not going to lie. When he told me the story, I thought all 97 stitches were going to pop!

That crusty old bird (if you can call it that) herded all three of the boys into a corner and took flight into an all-out air-assault.  He boys cowered together as the bird repeatedly struck them with it's sharp 4 inch talons.  Under the influence of hippie-herbal "Mexican Tomato Plants" the Viking Tribe on the outside of the fence thought this was the funniest thing had they ever seen.

"Reefer madness!...Reefer madness!" one of them kept shouting between hearty guffaws.
"Ha..ha...can you dig it bro"

 While the rooster attacked, the three trapped boys screamed like little girls that made the guys on the outside of the fence -  laugh even harder. "That bird is going ape on the little spaz'es...Ha...ha..ha"

"Dude...far out... groovy"

Smoking the cannabis may have made this funny for the guys on the outside, but for the three trapped monkeys on the inside it apparently didn't do anything to numb the pain

"In your face" Ulrich screamed angrily.

"Hey...hey...hey...hey...hey―" said one of outsiders in reply...until interrupted.

"Cheese it! The Cops!  The motley crew took cover until the patrol car passed and then sent a couple of guys over the fence who bagged the bird from behind, while it was distracted withdrawing blood from the angry "little-man" crew.

As Four Eyes related all the juicy details of the story... he told me about the boys conversation once they had gotten back from this latest escapade and regrouped at Wall Drug at 2:00 in the morning.

The three boys were still whimpering and whining from the 68 bloody pock-marks inflicted by the Veloci-Rooster that had been released in the Dahlin backyard.

In a sing-song voice, Primo said, "Cock-a-doodle-do, says the rooster. "
"Ow ow ow, says the little man crew..." Weltz added in perfect sync.

"Poochie goes woof" said another keeping pace with the song.
"The cat goes, meow"
"The bird goes, tweet"
"And mouse goes...squeak"

"Yeah, but what do the stupid dweebs say? ow, ow ow!" They all laughed at their cleverness

Chewbacca (who really wasn't paying attention) said, "Yeah... man... but what does a fox say?"

The hordes of hippies stopped dead in their tracks and couldn't come up with an answer. 
"Idiot" Ulrich shouted in an attempt at payback.
Chewbacca swatted him in the head

Laughter... then the boys started making up stuff.
"Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!

Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!
Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!"

"Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!
Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!
Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!"

"Joff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!
Tchoff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!
Joff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!"

"What does a fox say?"  They mimicked Chewbacca... and they all laughed again until they were bent over in tears.

When Four Eyes told me this part of the story, I told him this was the stupidest thing I had ever heard.
He said, "Yeah... but knowing your people, it'll probably become a song some day."
"My people? What do you mean by my people ?"  I hoped he was talking about hippies and not Swedes.
When he saw the intent look on my face, he stuttered (backtracking) and said.. "Oh...oh...oh...not Swedes, but probably hippies."

We both signed in relief - that I didn't have to hit him with the crutch next to my bed. Then we both laughed and said together "Yeah, like that will ever happen!"

"Jinx" I said first - which had stopped him from talking!  'Yeah,'  I thought 'like anything even remotely as stupid as the drug induced "Fox Song" could ever happen!' Right?

Now that we have acquired the dreaded Veloci-Raptor,  I guess I should probably tell you about the incident with the poor, poor, unsuspecting "the Chicken lady" and her two children.

What Does a Fox Say?

Friday Fish Stick Fiasco and the big scare.

It was only Friday on  Markie D's first week of fifth grade. His first week of surviving...Chewbacca's new invention of the "Template of Doom" (blog post June 26, 2013) and having to survive Sister Godzilla was coming near an end, but there is still a lot more that takes place between now and Monday morning. Yet to come is: Friday Fish sticks fiasco...Albino camp raid...poop in the fort...Jerry and the fire escape...another broken arm...the run-away-Iguana...and the near burning down of the famous Lennon sister's house - and that is just in the course of the next day and a half.

It is no wonder that dad was always off selling Real Estate and mom had locked herself in her bedroom.

Mark had just finished dancing with Irene and had been re-energized enough to face another day. The rattlesnake flag was hoisted high up on the peak of the steep roof and the neighbors were in a tizzy. It wasn't exactly like the scene from Frankenstein...where the townsfolk angrily gathered their pitchforks, shovels and lanterns and marched with malice to Dr. Frankenstein's castle. Never-the-less, the neighbors were frightened and most of them locked themselves inside their house in fear of discovering the poisonous snake that had escaped. Believe me, they would have marched, if they weren't afraid of  the deadly snake and retribution of the mischievous Wolf-Pack.

The Lennons on the corner, were on special alert...and their house was put under curfew... it would be sing-along Friday and they would be enjoying the new-fangled fish sandwich from McDonalds. As Catholics, we were not allow to eat meat on Friday and a couple years ago a McDonald's franchise owner in Cincinnati Ohio invented a thing called the McFilet-O-Fish Sandwich...that finally made it our new McDonalds - last year in 1965. 

Vatican II changed that a little bit, but..uh..uh... if the Lennon's weren't going to eat meat on Friday then neither were the Dahlins. The only difference was, we could buy a whole box of Fish Sticks for the same price as a couple of those 15 cent fishy-burger-thingys. You can bet the Blasers and Lennons ate those expensive McFilet-O-Fish sandwiches... but not us...we were condemned to Van De Kamps frozen fish sticks.

Look at that thing - pretty gross, right?


Here's the rub! I hate fish, it's really not a matter of hating them, it's more a matter of throwing up every time the taste of fish enters my mouth... and you can probably guess that the Wolf Pack would capitalize on this weakness. But after throwing up on all of them last night - haha ((blog post "Vomitous Thursday" July 11 2013)...they might think twice about doing something stupid tonight. RIGHT?

To be safe, I hid away in the new fort Tommy, Jeffery, Robert Smith and I had been working on in the backyard. With all the car parts and boat parts and old wood and junk my dad collected, our yard was absolutely the best backyard in the history of the world for building forts - I mean think about it...you couldn't really hurt anything. Anyway we had dug about a four foot pit and put a roof on it. It was really groovy! We put a old van seat in it and a sink we found in a camper and pretended like we had a living room and a kitchen. I closed the lid of the clubhouse-fort and hid from the fish and from the Wolf Pack... I was safe.. everything was copacetic and I was feeling groovy - man.




I chuckled as I heard the hordes inside fighting over the fragments of pressed fish - parts, and as soon as it became apparent that I wasn't there to taste test my dad's milk experiments(blog post July 13th), I could hear them yelling my name.

For sure, I wasn't about to give myself away as I hunkered down quietly and listen to the raucous inside.

"Mark! Mark..where are you?"
"Yeah, you little drip...where are you hiding?"


On and on it went until they sent Flea-Bait and his cohort of little angry men on a search and extraction mission. Flea-Bait found me and the three of them dragged me up the back stairs and into the great big dining room where the Wolf pack was howling with laughter. They knew what touching my lips with fish would do...(they got a taste of it yesterday) and took extra precautions as they made me sample the milk!

This time someone snuck a chuck of fish in one of the sour tasting bottles of milk, which made me gag and heave as they shoved me through the door into the back hallway (near the bathroom). BUT NOT until! NOT UNTIL I managed to hit Flea-Bait... with some warm deliciousness of fish-milk. I smiled like the Grinch on the way out.

Yeah... it was Friday and everything was indeed groovy, man...and getting better!

Seconds later, one of the older boys heard something that frightened the beegeebies out of the Wolf Pack. "Rattlesnake!" someone yelled. Boys and girls and hair - all of them began screeching like third grade girls at a camp fire ghost story.

People shoving and pushing and standing on couches and on chairs and on the table..and on each others shoulders. Chewy blurted, "Ave Maria!" 

"Someone sound the alarm!" Tony shouted out the command. On the back porch was an old rusted fire bell that Kleghorn began clanging by pulling on the attached rope.  the whole house was up in arms. The rattlesnake was somewhere in the room; under the table, under the piano, by the back door, somewhere... they had all heard it slithering around. More screaming, more fighting, more name calling, more mayhem!

Smirking in shear delight and hiding under the back stairs Markie D shook the old baby rattle... and hummed a few bars of his and Irene's song.

"I got-a wings.. all God's chilluns...we got-a wings." (must see blog post July 15, 2013: Its Friday)

And tonight was the big surprise at the Albino Camp.      Oh yeah!