Grumpy Cat and the Christmas Lights

After Thanksgiving it is a tradition for "normal people" to put up Christmas lights. Though we lived in Venice, we had families on our block that liked to consider themselves on the fringe of normalcy and engaged in this annual yuletide ritual like the Blasers, the Nargies, the Tripps, and of course - the best Catholics in the world - the famous Lennon Sisters who lived across the street.


Mr Blaser, right next door, was a perfectionist and needed to have his strings of lights "high and tight."  They had to be perfectly straight and symmetrical... AND if you could believe it or not EVERY ONE of his light bulbs had to light up - or it was considered a high crime against the civil order of a 1st-World culture. (pictured above Tommy, Mrs Blaser and Grandpa).

(Pictured is Frank Nargie, the Mail Man). He and his wife Ida, spent an inordinate amount of time with their extensive "Annalee" doll collection and put up grandiose miniature city display inside their house that took up the entire living room).

 (Pictured Ida with collection)  

At this time of year Bob Lennon, the Vasquez family, and the Tripp family were busy with putting up Christmas lights as if they really didn't live in Venice, but were instead normal and  "All American"...like the families portrayed on TV: for example the Cleavers; Ozzie and Harriet; My Three Sons and Father Knows Best!

 (Pictured Leave it to Beaver)

 (Pictured Father Knows Best)

 (The Lennons - just look at 'em)

We, on the other hand, were completely out of the range of what normal Americana looked like!

 

 (Our front yard with the Lennon house in background)

 (Our Backyard: clearing bamboo for more marijuana plants )

(Even a trip to Kings River was a mob event - 17 of us pictured here). 

 (In the street...) our cars and bare feet.

 (At Tuna Canyon in Malibu) 

 Somewhere

  our house

The normal people at the corner - their house 

 



The Normal People in their backyard

             On the other hand - there was us. 

 While the Blasers had a new Lincoln Continental parked in their driveway, here is a couple pictures of our driveway 

...everything at our house was an event. Nothing just happened that was normal or in the way that regular people did things. Everything was a gang activity that eventually included water balloons, BB guns, ropes, makeshift straight-jackets, that eventually turned into a dog fight... and if you were lucky - it didn't include Electricity or a Water hose and a Pit.

Everybody knows that it is absolutely mandatory for all Catholics to leave their Christmas lights up until the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th - the time we celebrate the visitation of the wise men. HOWEVER...if we finally got around to taking our Christmas lights down- it was usually late summer and about a month before we had to put them back up again...the big advantage was when we didn't take them down at all. 

Now that the guys were older, they were all too busy pruning the "Mexican Tomato Plants," harvesting the buds and hanging out in the hippy hutch in the backyard to be of any help in doing anything constructive.  

ONCE AGAIN the arduous task of putting up the annual lights would probably be incumbent upon me and Pinky...  (Pinky shown to the Left).












...sometimes I could get Karin (my little sister) to help, but she was 9 and didn't know how to tie a square knot - which was absolutely essential to success of this enterprise.







Today, besides what they were smoking out back, the greatest stumbling block to get any of my hippie brothers to help -  was due to the spontaneous fiasco that was taking place in the dining room when a member of the illustrious Wolf Pack clan discovered that  Lazarus "the Miracle Cat" (gag me) had brought a rat into the house and began to play with it...


The Disgusting Cat would let the poor rodent go and as it raced across the room for freedom and the scaly feline would pounce on it and bring it back to the starting point. Each time, Lazarus the cat would let the rat get further before the eventual pounce.

  This cat and mouse affair brought all of the hippies into the house which incited a wild betting frenzy.

Betting on the fate of this besieged rat turned out to be of more importance than helping little brother with the annual duty of putting up the Christmas lights.  RIGHT!?

I could hear them below hollering, screaming, some cheering on the rat others the cat... meanwhile some of us had more important things to do then to be wasting time betting on the life a rat.

I always voted for the underdog, so I was hoping the rat would eventually make its escape. Downstairs where all the revelry was taking place in our Mutant Zoo:  Johnny, the pigeon, was flying overhead, the spider monkey played with itself as it watched from the high wainscoting, and the foul mouthed Mynah-bird cussed at the boys for being locked up in its cage in the entry.

Grumpy is not even the word to describe the cat's disposition after losing the rat. With claws fully extended, the Grumpy Cat was downright fit to be tied and began throwing himself at the hippies in a tantrum.



I laughed! They deserved it!

I didn't think any of them heard me laugh. I had experienced the consequences of their wrath too many times to know that it wasn't a good idea - and tried to bottle up my secret jubilation inside.

I thought I had gotten away with it...but...little did I know that the older boys had retreated to the hippie-hut out back, the dark ivy cave we called Wall Drug, and began conspiring.  

Meanwhile, in order to begin putting up our Christmas lights meant that I had to face three of my greatest fears...





One of those had to do with the rope I threw over my shoulder that I was going to use to pull up the strands of lights to the tippy-top of the house...

To be continued...

AT ANY COST: The Induction Malfunction

As they tied the Boy Scout handkerchief around my eyes I could smell the salt air mixed with the dust of the backyard of the old Venice Scout House. With my eyes blindfolded my senses buzzed. I could hear the sound of the lone engine of the “Venice Short Line” that slowly chugged down West Washington Way and could also smell Alan, who hadn't bothered to bathe or use deodorant in about a month, and fought back against my urge to vomit.  In this initiation process, two Patrol Leaders spun me around trying to make me as dizzy as possible before pointing me in the direction of the backdoor that finally creaked open.

 

My heart jumped with anticipation about the secret induction ceremony into the Venice Boy Scout Troop 32. We were not the saints we had been years earlier. 

At twelve, I was youngest, smallest, weakest member of the Dahlin Wolf Pack. I was in by blood, but didn't really feel like I belonged.

I wasn't old enough to smoke with them in the hippie "hooch hut" out back or hang out with them when they went on those notorious hikes to Tuna canyon in Malibu. 

All I was to them was a toy, a thing to punch, or knock out, or electrocute, or bury, or shoot, or embarrass in front of friends and to experiment with.  

I lived in the same house, drove in the same cars, but always felt like an outsider looking in.    

I hoped this Boy Scout thing would be different, like a new tribe – a brotherhood where I might feel accepted and as though I belonged - crazy right? This is probably the same thing “Squeaky” Fromme was thinking when she signed up for the Manson Family. 

My head was still spinning when the Junior Assistant Scout Master put a dollar bill in my hand and whispered in my ear that I should not lose it, "at any cost."  Still reeling and off balance I ran into the door jam and eventually stumbled into the scout house that was dark and lit only by candles. Waiting inside were all the potential members of my new tribe. 

Walking through the short, dark corridor and into the center of the dilapidated old house on Washington Way (that had been purchased by the Venice Lions Club and giving to our Troop), I could feel the intensity of those anxious, sweaty, smelly boy scouts who had been just as eager as I was for this induction initiation.  Before reaching my destination someone grabbed the dollar bill out of my hand. I could smell the fiend and had every honorable intention of getting the dollar back “at any cost” (but figured that socking the kid in the face who stole it was something that I had to deal with later).

The handkerchief was pulled off eyes and I stood stunned before a tribunal of Senior Patrol Leaders and the two Scout Masters – Jim Serosi and Lyman Tapp as the entire troop looked in.  I don’t know why, but I felt like one of those Christians in the coliseum getting ready to be burned at the stake. 

“Mark Dahlin” said the skinny Scout master, “You were handed a dollar bill, were you not?”

“Yes sir,” I said nervously, yet with intense pinpointed eyes that I think might have frightened him.

In an effort to bail out the other leader, the heavier Scout Master continued, “Where is the dollar bill now, Mr. Dahlin? Will you produce it for us?” 

Biting my tongue and clenching my jaws, I had a couple options and I didn't want to blow my chance of finally belonging. If I said I dropped it, it would be a lie. Did they want a liar in the troop? Probably not! If I told the truth and said that someone stole it from me, then it would be like ratting-out one of my new tribal members and who would want a snitch to belong to this new brotherhood that I was so desperate for.

At home no one listened to me anyway, so blaming someone else was totally out of the question. Besides, the dollar bill was given to me and it was my duty to hang on to it. I had one job and I failed. I looked around the room at all the solemn eyes that stared disapprovingly in my direction.  I wanted in! I saw Steve Kissel, and Ronnie, and James Humphries, and David Cockrell, and Phillip Aylala, and Chronister and Dego, and Mark and Alan and Ray and had to figure a way to fix the mess I had gotten myself into. Then I remembered the words, “At all cost.”  Was that a challenge or permission to do whatever it took?  Maybe that’s what they wanted, I thought?  Maybe this whole thing was a test and felt that this new tribe wanted to see what I was made of. 

I looked around at the “Pillsbury Doughboys” and the “Theodore Cleavers” and the “regular” kids from regular families that hadn't been raised by a pack of wolves like I had. 

I looked at those soft kids who hadn't had to fight everyday and who hadn't been though the same crud I did… and did what any member of a Wolf Pack would do among sheep. I smelled the stench of the kid who stole my dollar bill, grinned at the two Scout Masters and hurled myself onto about six members of the Flaming Arrow Patrol. 

Down we went into a massive dog pile of flailing arms and legs. I had Ronnie around the neck in a choke hold and squeezed him until his fingers loosened the grimy grip he had on the coveted dollar bill. Phillip, a wrestler from the Venice High wrestling team, (who outweighed me by 50 pounds) was on my back and was unsuccessfully trying to peal me off of Ronnie.  

“At any cost”

“At any cost”

“At any cost” …were the words that kept going through my head.

The whole troop was on the floor fighting. It was a regular bar-room brawl. Yelling and screaming and making threats to cancel the National Jamboree trip planned for July, the Scout Masters and Senior Patrols Leaders pulled kids off one by one until they got down to Ronnie and me.

Leaving Ronnie’s limp body on the ground, I quickly stood my feet, straightened my uniform, smiled at the two men in charge, saluted and said, “I believe this is the dollar bill you guys are looking for.” Pleased with myself. I smiled as though this was all in the course of ordinary business, like it was straight out of the scout handbook or something. 

It took a tribunal, several phone calls to parents (and seeing that my dad was the President of the Lions club and Troop treasurer), I was admitted to my new clan. Pshaw I didn't get what all the fuss was about…this was like just an ordinary day at my house.  After all this was not your ordinary Boy Scout Troop –this was a Boy Scout Troop from Venice California and a Boy Scout Troop that was now infected by the youngest member of the Dahlin Wolf Pack.  

Just so you know, this long-held, sacred ‘rite of passage’ for Troop 32 was abandoned and exchanged for something much different, more friendly and a little tamer...JUST IN CASE another kid from Harding Avenue every decided to join the Troop. 

Our dysFUNtional troop was now headed out of Venice and into the the Midwest! 

 Beware World! 

Moon Landing and Diarrhea part I