The Helm's Bakery Heist and Jimmy's Stinking Suprise!

The long day...continued: Saturday 1:00-2:00pm (The Day the Sun Stood Still)

Harding avenue was littered with people since the siege of the devil iguana that had embedded itself into the Tripp family wall furnace without formal invitation (last blog post). This jumble of activity was about typical for a nice September Saturday afternoon on our street. As the hordes headed back across the street towards my house ("Hotel  Crazy" blog 7-26-13), the skinny kid around the corner, Johnny Gillemot... AKA Gillamonster... provided the next bit of entertainment that my brothers managed to leverage into the "Helms Bakery Heist" of 1966. 

Gillamonster came barreling down our short street in his momma's '63 Nova. Never mind that fact that he only had his learner's permit. Not having a driver's license didn't stop people from driving back then, but he had a crowd and was determined to make the most of it.

Hoping to show-off, Gillamonster pulled right up in front of our house, put the Chevy Nova in neutral, revved the motor as high as he could and with the accelerator pedal stomped to the floor he jammed it into drive. He intended to lay rubber all the way down the street (did you see that I put in the word, "intended").

Rookie move! Instead of  the hairy burnout and squealing tires and black tread marks and tire smoke  - all we heard was the loudest clunk of metal cracking and snapping and clanking this side of the Titanic hitting the iceberg. 

Crack!
                                                      ...went the drive-shaft as it blew up the universal joint at the rear differential. The drive-shaft did a couple clanking revolutions before the front yoke slipped out of the spleen and shot out from behind the car like a missile from a mortar-launcher. Traumatized and humiliated, the Gillamonster would have to explain to his mom about his ill-fated "Joy-Ride" in her stolen Chevy Nova that now laid incapacitated in the middle of Harding Avenue.

Since my oldest brother, "Gear-Head" Gustav was there, he decided that he would have some sympathy on the embarrassed teenager and cannibalize one of the cars in our fleet of broken down vehicles we had parked down at the corner - (You know the ones dad made us move every Wednesday and Thursday for street cleaning - see blog post 7-3-13).

While the car was stranded, it was just too much temptation for the rest of the idle Wolf Pack. Mrs. Gillemot's broken down Nova provided the perfect opportunity for prank on a grand scale. They hoped to stage an accident as a diversion and grabbed me for their latest scheme. This time, however, I put up a struggle since I had served my time in the diaper-pail-of-death under Edna's old Buick (blog post 6-5-13). "Pick me. Pick me. Pick me" Gherhing the Great begged, jumping up and down - waving his hand in the air like he was in school, desperately wanting to be part of the staged pandemonium.

While Gustav went to work, Gherhing the Great was scooted under the front wheel of the disabled Nova. Totally getting into it he volunteered to let the boys tear his shirt open as they spread ketchup over his chest and around his head. Mr. and Mrs. Steadman looked through the slats in the blinds and shook their heads in utter disgust. 

That is when I heard the familiar chime of Herbie's Helms Bakery Truck. The boys scattered and hid behind cars and trees and bushes and our busy block suddenly looked desolate like something right out of the

Twilight Zone  

Playing along, the Gillamonster slumped over the steering wheel of his mom's car with ketchup on his forehead and with some dribbling from his mouth as though he was unconsciousness from the fatal atrocity. 

Herbie wheeled his Helm's Bakery truck behind the accident scene and vaulted himself to aid the young bleeding victim which laid contorted under the front fender of the car. 

Back in those days... right down Venice Blvd was the World Famous Helms Bakery.  They had fleets of delivery trucks that delivered bread, donuts and pastries right to your front door.

On the top shelf were the cream-filled eclairs...we never got to have the cream puffs because they were just too expensive -  forget expensive, they cost money! Oh, you can bet the Blasers and the Lennons had Helms donuts and stuff like that, but not us... not until today!

Just like in the good old days of the Wild West we staged a holdup. As Herbie examined the dead body of Gherhing the Great, the boys silently slithered out of their hiding spots and slipped into the Helm's delivery truck  

Chewbacca and Donny and Tom and Kleghorn and Puke-Breath cleared out the exclusive top shelf of the sweet, cold-goodness of cream-filled eclairs and disappeared just as fast as they had appeared. 

Herbie ran to the Steadmans to use the phone to call the police. Knocking on the door he explained to Mr. Steadman his urgency and when he turned around and pointed to the street Gherhing the Great and Gillamonster had both disappeared. Mr. Steadman looked at him and said, "It's no wonder lions eat their young." Thinking it was just a juvenile prank Herbie, without checking his inventory got in his truck and sped away from Harding avenue. 
 
Gustav managed to get Gillamonster back on the road - with Mrs. Gillemot "none-the-wiser."

Like worms that crawl in and out of dead pirates bones...the Wolf Pack oozed into the holes where bricks were missing in the foundation of our house into the dark clubhouse in the basement. It was there they shared the stolen booty, with Gherhing the Great who got to have a cream-filled eclair all to himself  for payment. Gherhing gave me one measly  bite as we headed to the fort to investigate the damage from earlier when Puke-Breath was hurdled on top by Chewbacca the moment he discovered the rattlesnake in his pants (blog post 7-29-13). 

Before we even pulled the plywood off the top we could smell the foul surprise that Jimmy, the booger-slurper, had left inside earlier. He had pooped in the corner that Tommy and I, pretending, said was the bathroom.  GROSS! I heaved of course...and made Gherhing shovel a foot of dirt inside the entire thing before I could even get close enough to declare it condemned, tear the thing down and fill it in. Hearing laughter we looked up to see the older boys leaping out of the third story window and sliding down the "fire escape" pole with renewed fervor. 

Gherhing had not been down the pole yet and wanted to get into the action. Running into the house, behind the continuous steam of boys who were making their way up the three flight of stairs...THAT IS WHEN I SPOTTED THEIR MOTIVATION. Jerry "TT" had come over for a visit and they had intended on driving him bonkers (blogpost 7-26-13). 

Their plan worked, but at my expense!  Next time "Fire Pole Terrorism" and getting trapped by Jerry!
 
Below is a little video bit of history about Helms Bakery by a very good friend of mine, Victor Leon, of Lion's Automotive in Torrance California.  

John Gillemot served our country in Viet Nam - was exposed to "Agent Orange" and had a rough go at things, but has recently had a major turn around and it doing great.

Thank you Gillamonster for serving our country! 



 

Day of the Iguana. Del Diablo

Saturday 12:00 - 1:00pm, The Long Day continued.  Dooh-Dooh Pants held the diamondback rattlesnake as tight as he could around its neck with one hand and gripped the 5 foot body with the other while rushing back up four flight of stairs. He carefully zigged and zagged around the piles of junk that had accumulated on the steps in the past 24 hours as if they were landmines. By the time he got to the second floor the electrocuted snake had come back to life and began to put up a fight.

Several of us went along with him to the third floor as part of the recon mission to return the deadly viper.  Built into the dormer-walls of the long back bedroom (where most of the older boys slept) was a reptile cage that ran the entire length of the room.

The reptile habitat had been segmented into five sections. One was for poisonous snakes; one was for regular garden-variety snakes, one was for Chuckawallas and leopards lizards (crawly things that we caught at Salton Sea); in one section we raised mice for food; and the final one was for...

                               ...Iguana Del Diablo

Del Diablo was no ordinary pretty-green variety of iguana that you could buy down at Allan's Aquarium on Lincoln Blvd. NO! This Iguana was the oldest, meanest, ugliest looking iguana in the entire world. It literally looked like it climbed out of the pit of hell. The name of this hideous dinosaur came from the smuggler the boys bought it from. 

I think this was the spawn from the lying creature that Adam and Eve encountered in the Garden of Eden.

Anyway... the boys had decided that we had to move the rattlers into the other cage, since this had been the third poisonous felon to escape in the last six months.  Now, that we had to swap all the rattlers into the cage where we had kept the king and garter-snakes; it took the entire Wolf Pack...to juggle the menagerie and to wrangle the other poisonous "sidewinders" from their domicile.

I promise it wasn't my fault! Chewy was the one who began all the trouble - really! I think that's why King Gustav threw the electrical switch when it was Chewy's turn down the "fire escape" (That's not until 3:00 - I'll tell you about that later).

Anywho... Kleghorn and Primo had managed to get a hold of the other two rattlesnakes that were being evicted by the use of a special stick that looked like a Y... and the three boys with the rattlesnakes wisely kept their distant while Chewy, Ulrick and Puke-Breath hunted down the four other occupants of second cage. These four snakes were perfectly harmless, so what could go wrong? 

Have you ever said those words out loud and at the very moment they crossed over the threshold of your lips, you knew it was the wrong thing to say - like a jinx! Yeah, like that! Chewy was from Mexico and said he knew ALL about snakes. He pulled the harmless garter snake from the cage like he was an expert and the awesome snake pee'd on him. "Expert" Chewy freaked out and threw the snake at me. I don't like snakes, but had to pretend not to be afraid because we're supposedly undaunted Vikings - remember that part? Well, neither did I.

The crazy snake didn't just land in my arms...NO...it landed teeth first! Both fangs embedding themselves as deep as they possibly could into what little flesh I had on my boney 11-year-old arms. At the time I only knew how to say "ouch" in one language... and so I screamed as the non-venomous viper dangled from my arm. I swung around and the snake swung straight out around me as I did several full revolutions; swinging and biting my tongue - not really sure how the thing was ever going to come off. The snake hit Chewy in the face and screeching, he stumbled over one of the rattlesnake sticks... which tripped the latch on CAGE NUMBER 5.

Iguana Del Diablo hissed and sprang for Chewy's leg, who danced like a...um...ah...I'm not sure what he danced like...because it wasn't very...um... how do you say...not masculine by any stretch of the imagination?! With the black ugly beast-of-hell attached to his jeans, he screamed, and cried, and jumped up and down, and kept shouting "Ave Maria"  louder than the honking noise that booger-slurping Jimmy makes.

Gustav was going to grab the insidious looking creature, but before he got the chance, Chewy shook it off his leg and the "creature from hell" took off running for the stairs. Ulrich slapped Chewy to knock some sense into him as the boys still had to get the rattlers into their new cage and I still had to get free from the garter snake that was still dangling by its fangs which were sunk even further into the tender flesh of my  left arm.

Del Diablo flew down three flights of stairs past the foul mouthed mynah-bird, "Dirty Bird. Dirty bird."
"Shut the front door" Tony yelled to Pinky who was halfway in, but too thick headed to respond quickly. Before Pinky knew what hit him the the devil-lizard tore across the porch and nearly leaped all six stairs to the front yard.               You know what? The Addams Family had nothing on us!

Several of the neighbors had heard Chewy screaming and came out to see what the Dahlin raucous was all about  - this time! As  usual Mr. Steadman yelled to his wife, "No wonder lions eat their young. Lock the doors honey!" The Nargies, the Blasers, the Lennons and the Tripps were all watching the show. "This is better than street cleaning!"(blog Post "Cirque De Soleil," 7-13-2013) Ricky Tripp said, prematurely to his older sister who were standing on their front lawn watching the show.  The demon lizard shot across the street with a bunch of blonde-haired hippy-types in hot pursuit. Turns out that Darlene and her brother Ricky made a big mistake. They forgot to shut the front door.  Before Mrs. Tripp could say, "Bob's your uncle" that lizard hurtled right through that open door and onto that green shag carpet followed by a dozen Dahlin boys and friends. After a clumsy couple circles around the living room turning over tables and knocking over lamps and things and a similar destructive loop around the kitchen, the wicked reptile shot up the small opening into the base of the wall heater and wedged himself there.

The boys tried to flush out the uninvited guest by turning on the furnace to full blast, but the spawn of Satan gave a sinister grin of satisfaction to the pursuing Wolf Pack as it dug its claws into the heating tubes as though it intended on staying for a quite a while.

So we caught one, but lost another one.  Sorry Mrs. Tripps. Chewbacca said they should be thankful it was only DEL DIABLO in the heater and not a poisonous rattler up a pant leg.  I don't think they took any comfort in that at all.

With all that excitement over and the two deep puncture wounds in my arm wrapped in a sock secured with masking tape, good O' Gherhing and Great I decided to head into the backyard to see if we could salvage the fort!

Oh, just so you know - in this picture if you look over the window on your right - you can see what eventually became of the Diamond Back Rattlesnake.

Today when people around the world exclaim, "Shut...the front door!" Now you know where that expression came from.We invented it way back then... and Mrs Tripp could be heard saying it over and over again!

(Ricky Tripp, thank you for this great memory.  Markie d)