Sorry to keep you hanging. Where were we?
Oh yeah, a bunch of dirty, hungry, ornery, smelly kids and two cranky parents just pulled into the parking lot of a Catholic Convent in the inner city of Detroit.
(A never before seen picture recently discovered before the start of the trip - Disneyland parking lot - monorail in background).
We had been fighting and farting and starving all the way across country in order to visit our Swedish relatives in the suburbs of Detroit. My parents thought they could kill two birds with one stone: 1) We could pay a visit to my mom's only sister, who was a catholic nun; AND 2) They figured that the layover and the food stop might minimize the potential havoc and destruction upon arriving at aunt Sally's house. My dad was trying to spare his brothers and sisters the plague of the locust.
"What could possible go wrong at a convent...for Pete's sake?" My dad said, making his case for the stop at the Convent! I saw my mom roll her eyes... remembering that this was the last thing the captain of the Titanic said just after striking the iceberg.
The infestation of Dahlins hovered across the ground like a dark cloud as the Viking clan approached the concrete steps of the red brick building. Nuns rushed to the large front door for greetings and pleasantries, but mom frowned with worry, thinking of the death cloud in Genesis in the Jewish Passover. She took two deep cleansing breaths and apologetically gave her sister a hug.
As the dark cloud....I mean as the Dahlin clan ascended the stairs for the formalities, Puke-Breath was suitably satisfied and pleasantly distracted with his hands fishing around inside his pockets to make sure "everything" was still in order after the long journey. Not wearing any underwear, he was confident that he was immune to a surprise "wedgie attack" and gave no thought to Gustav's inquisitive investigation of the tropical fire ants that swarmed under the tires of the Ford Econoline van.
One of the little buggers bit (or stung or whatever- Fire Ants - do) Gustav's hand and he leaped with joy shouting "Eureka!" like Archimedes and seemed as happy as Benjamin Franklin when he had harnessed lightning at the end of that kite string.
Everyone was too busy to pay attention to the fact that Gustav had scooped up half the colony in the Folger's Coffee "pee-pee" can, trapping them inside by snapping on the plastic lid.
Mom and Dad hadn't stopped at a phone booth to warn the nuns of the exact time or hour of our arrival- and being unprepared, the black and white clad - agents of God's mercy on earth - scrambled to throw together a meal with leftovers from the food program. Like a bunch of cowboys on a cattle drive, the nuns stoically herded us through the wooden, double sliding-doors into the large dining room.
If you ever been in a convent you know that there are three distinct characteristics of a Catholic "Nunnery." 1) There was always a distinct smell that was a little bit musty mixed with moth balls and something like million year-old mildew...as if you could smell the dirt from the actual sandals of Jesus and other 2000-year-old relics that have been preserved from the Holy Land. 2) They were always quiet as though loud noise was forbidden and unholy. When the nuns walked you couldn't see their feet move under their long black robes, it appeared as if they floated across the floors like ghost without making any sound what-so-ever. Holiness and quietness seemed to go hand in hand. 3) Nuns never hurried. They moved slowly with a sense of deliberate purpose and never let their emotions show. It is as though they were in the boat with Apostles being buffeted by the angry storms on the sea of Galilee and had learned their lesson long ago. Since that embarrassing outbreak of panic and emotion, they weren't going to let anything ever again - ruffle their holy feathers.
(And just for the record, to this point in history - they have succeeded).
Dahlin kids scrambled and ran between legs and hung from the mantle and the wainscoting...mom couldn't scream at us, because it was forbidden (under clause number 2 above), boys fought for position at the smelly oak table which was probably from the "Upper Room." When dinner came...before grace was even finished, we attacked what was set before us like vultures on fresh road kill. I want to apologize for our behavior, but when you're that hungry - no one is about to succumb to the social norms of using utensils. Why use a fork, when you can bury your face in a plate of spaghetti and suck in gobs of wet noodles and shove fists full of bread into your mouth from one hand and scoop globs of butter into your mouth at the same time with the other.
Don't judge us! Seriously, knives and forks are just a worthless waste of time when you're starving to death. Dad was kicking us under the table and mom was giving us the angry-eye, "under the pain of mortal sin" stare - which seemed to say that if God didn't strike us dead that she would kill us later for this. She had a PHD in "Whoopology" and we're all sure to get a whooping later.
When things seemed like they couldn't get any worse... Puke Breath, who had been sitting next to Gustav, jumped from his chair and began screaming holy murder. He began patting his bottom and reaching into his pants - which we all thought was normal! I thought it was kind of rude for him to be checking in on his private parts in front to the nuns and all, but the teenager just went crazy and began running around the dining room crashing and breaking things like a Tasmanian devil.
Remember last year when the meat-bee went down his cast and he rolled
around on the shore of the Kings River like the demonic? Well, this was ten times worse!
Nuns grabbed crucifixes and thought it was time for an exorcism. Sister Mary Catchatore pulled her skirt thingy up, exposing her Government-Jack-Boots and gave chase while clanking her heals on the hardwood floor in an unholy manner. She and three of my brothers managed to tackle Puke-Breath bringing him to the ground. He rolled and flung himself wildly as one nun threw holy water on him to see it if the devil would come out, but nothing worked. While Sister Catchatore had him pinned to the ground he reached down, unzipped his pants - forgetting that he had no underpants on and pulled his pants off. There he lay squirming and worming stark naked as the day he was born. Horror! Shrieks filled the once hallowed halls. Mom and Sister Dominique ushered my two sisters out of the room that had now been defiled.
His butt had a million red ants running to take cover with at least a hundred small inflamed blisters. He begged for mercy as embarrassed nuns - a little too enthusiastically rushed to his aid and picked them off his bare buns one by one. Gustave, just so happened to have an empty Folgers can for them to deposit the evil little critters into. "How convenient!"
If that wasn't bad enough, the late-blooming 13-year-old was in such misery, that he rolled over on to his back happily exposing all of his boy parts to the frantic and - much too helpful nuns. Speaking of worming and squiring, his worm was infested with the nasty little beast as the jolly nuns did their sacred duty in picking the Fire Ants off of his little pink poo-poo.
They figured this was the very least they could do to help the poor little boy.
Aside from everyone in the universe seeing exactly just where he was on his beginning journey into manhood, poor Puke-Breath was a miserable wreak the rest of the trip. He had bites everywhere and I mean everywhere!
Fearing we might come through town on our next visit, the Bishop asked Aunt Mary to leave the convent and was sent to the inner city of Kansas Missouri.
Because Puke Breath couldn't sit, he had to stand in the back of the van for the entire rest of the two weeks we traveled back across country. And Sister Dominique and a couple nuns wrote a song about this little incident.
Rejoicing over the fact that the Dahlins came and left in Il ne parle que du bon Dieu - which is French for "In a Ford Econoline van" and speaks about how "One day the ants forced the boy to crawl
Dominique with just one prayer
Made him hear the good Lord's call"
Hey I'm only 7 and my French isn't that good! But that is what my big brothers told me the song was all about.
"Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. " ~ Mark Twain
It was there that my hippy brothers bought a Wall Drug sign to hang on the ivy in the far reaches of our Venice backyard to designate the hippy man-cave.
