"Trash Towers" Dahlins and The Eight Wonder of the World!

It was 1969 and a lot was going on... the US is making progress with the Apollo Program and it isn't too long now until mankind would walk on the surface of the moon. Tommy still thinks the moon is made of cheese and Jeffery thinks that our astronauts will be shot by laser beams from the green aliens that live on the dark side of the moon.





The Vietnam war in is full swing - I've got one brother in the Army and one in the Marines and three that sent their draft cards back to President Nixon.  There is a long hair that doesn't like the short hair for being such a rich one, that will not help the poor one and so on and so on and Scooby dooby doo-bee.

Probably worst of all was the fact that the Beatles decided to call it quits!  I don't know why they did it. I don't know if they had gotten around my brothers and the Mexican Tomato Plants had gotten to them- or if it was Yoko Ono... or if it had something to do with their new manager... or if it was just too much money or too much fame - but it didn't matter...it felt like the world was coming to an end.
Oh, sha sha, - even The Beatles couldn't figure out how to live together.

No more tours.. and they weren't jumping with joy like they used to. IT WAS OVER!


Now that all SIX of my big brothers were of legal driving age our front yard...our street and backyard were full of cars and trucks and dreams. They had brought home junkers they hoped to fix up and junkers they hope to cannibalized and strip for parts for the ugly heaps that they hoped would run someday.  Kurt even brought home a friend from his water polo team who brought project cars home to our house because this wasn't something that happened in Malibu along the beach where Mario lived. Our family kept growing and the clutter just kept stacking up.

I kind of felt sorry for Mr. Blaser next door. He liked his house like the "Father Knows Best" house on TV. He wanted everything spic and span - tidy and neat and the poor guy lived next to the Dahlins!
Our backyard was a primordial graveyard of old cars parts, decaying boats, travel trailers —that had no travel left in them, carcass’s of prehistoric washing machines and outboard motors that haven’t had pistons in them for ten years. 






We failed to tame the encroaching ivy which had an insatiable appetite and had consumed an entire patio and other structures that had been gobbled up for archaeologist to unearth in the distant future. The ivy and the bamboo had become perfect ways to camouflage the hippie crop of Mexican Tomato plants that were hidden in the far back behind all the junk and protected by mini-Godzilla the dreaded Veloci-Raptor.   

Even more to Mr. Blaser's dismay was the power and vitality of the bamboo the boys had planted. Different strokes for different folks. Bamboo is literally a fungus that cannot be killed by anything short of a nuclear blast. That stubborn bamboo grew up through old rusted barbecues, a bazillion used Schwinn bicycles, ancient baby strollers, red and rust wheels from abandoned Soap Box Derby - go-carts...cabinets - lots of cabinets (cabinets people had thrown-out that my dad had rescued from the jaws of the garage trucks on his notorious pre-dawn trash-run days - free cabinets that he hoped to hang in the carport someday... someday... someday!) along with bumpers, carburetors and other sundry car parts. It looked like this junk had been lifted up as sacrifices to some pagan god on an altar of bamboo (Asherah Poles I think they were called in the Old Testament). 



Before the Watts Towers, was the Eight Wonder of the World in our backyard; The Trash Towers of Venice - which rivaled the "Hanging Gardens" of Babylon.        

Perfect! Right? Every adventurous 12-year-old's dream.... image the go carts I could assemble and the magnificent forts a kid could build back there...except!

Except for the Veloci-Raptor!  No one in their right mind could enter the backyard without being armed with a whip and a chair like a lion tamer.  

But me and Veloci-Raptor had a good relationship ever since the older boys buried me in the pit and tried to kill me (Blog Post 2/27/2014). There is a yellow one that won't accept the black one that won't accept the red one, that won't accept the white one or big brother that won't accept the little brother. Different Strokes for Different Folks... why can't we live together?  

That's what I wanted to know so I started in my backyard and I developed mental powers that made me like Saint Francis that gave me a special way with animals. I could look at them in the eye and show them that they were loved and it's as though I could speak right to their heart and they understood me. Everybody was looking for kindness - even animals! I could be right, I could be wrong. 


Since the Nuns at Saint Marks had it out for me and my older brothers had it out for me...God had given me this gift with dogs and babies and the mini-godzilla that roamed our backyard...UNTIL ONE FATEFUL MONDAY MORNING on Trash Day! 

That is when the magic wore off and I became an everyday people. 

Until next time... and the bloody showdown at the Dahlin OK corral.     OH Sha Sha... don't hate the rooster, just hate the bite! 

for you android users Everyday People Sly and the Family Stone

Reptile Dysfunction

So the liner of the old "above-ground" pool had been removed and my hippy brothers were determined to make use of the 4 foot metal enclosure for a pond and reptile habitat.

I had just turned 12 and was used to cleaning up the mess left behind from car parts and junk scattered throughout the universe of my disorderly home. (There is something about the 2nd law of Thermodynamics and Entropy Increase...that Irene, our once-a-week house keeper, and I worked very hard to push against constantly).

Trying hard to contain the mess was part of my nature, but the need for order or hard work just didn't seem to be on the cosmic menu for the herbal loving - easy going, carefree lifestyle of Haight-Ashbury influenced children of the 60's.

To see all the "long-hairs" out in the backyard with shovels in hand and sweat on the brow was quite the enigma and a demonstration of the commitment they had to this "pond" project of theirs.

Another paradox was the unusual care and attention to these particular plants that they were cultivating out in the very far reaches of the backyard.  To walk over clutter and and pay no attention to the disastrous disorder of our  house was more inline with their blithe character than was care, concern and cleanliness or anything that hinted of a modicum of elbow grease. So shocking was the paradox of this new found work ethic, that my Dad had to ask about this meticulously attended garden which had been deliberately hidden behind stacks of decaying Saint Mark's carnival booths (stored for centuries in our backyard).

"Mexican Tomato Plants," they told my dad!
 My dad raised a suspicious eye-brow and walked
 away.

I was curious as to why these beloved "tomato plants" got so much attention - especially since the dumb things never grew tomatoes.     What's up with that?    

Not only did my older boys water, weed and meticulously prune the leaves, but they also imported a 3 foot, mutant, wild eye'd, attack-rooter with 4 inch razor sharp spurs to guard the cursed plants.

Life use to be good for an imaginative kid in that great big 'O backyard of ours, but now it was a nightmare with that Veloci-Rapter of an guard-rooster hunting down and attacking anything that came near those precious plants.  

My dad always seem frustrated that the older boys just didn't seem to care much about anything having to do with keeping the place clean, so I did the best I could to try to please him. 

Only problem was that I think it made them mad and is probably why they tied me up and buried me and shoved me in that hamper of death...(blog 6/5/13) and maybe even kept their mouth shout when my parents left me behind at Salton Sea (blog 5/27/13). .

Anyway, the pond was near completion and at twelve I was up to taking a shower about once a week- whether I needed to or not. Today, however, no one was home and I felt that it was safe to take a bath. Usually that wasn't a good idea, because there was no handle on the door to the bathroom with the bathtub near my parent's room. You never knew who would walk in or what kind of torture they might put you through - like throwing hot or cold water on you or bring friends in to look at you naked.

None of that was fun!

I hadn't been in the bathtub in months and thought I'd give it a try. I turned on the water and let it run while I stripped down. I slightly pulled back the shower curtain and stuck one foot in the bathtub...
             ...do you remember the scene from the horror flick, "Psycho" - in the shower scene with the crazy-scary music?    Well, this was like that!

 Insert music from your head here...

No one was home and our house was scary enough.  I told you before that it was haunted by ghost or demons or other-world stuff that wasn't too good for a person my age. And so it was easy to be a bit jumpy...and afraid of noises and things that go bump in the night. So as I stuck my foot into the tub and was looking at the faucet to adjust the water temperature... something splashed inside the tub and grabbed a hold of my ankle. Okay this is the point where - if I wasn't just a kid - I probably would have had a heart attack and died. Something was alive in the tub. A dead corpse - maybe, that had come to life...and this thing (what-ever-it-was - began furiously flailing - the Creature from the Black Lagoon...a monster- LEVIATHAN!

I slipped and fell head-long on top of the cold creature and was eyeball to eyeball with death itself.


I stared into the eerie slit pupil of the alligator my brothers had been secretly storing in the tub awaiting the completion of the pond project.

I don't know who was more scared me or the alligator?  It opened it's mouth in fright.. I screamed and think the Lennons down the street could hear the shriek of my death cry. 

Both of us splashed helplessly flinging water out of the tub as the curtain tore off bar and fell over the top of our two naked bodies. The young cayman had razor sharp teeth, but somehow I managed to free myself without incurring a single wound and ran from the room dripping wet.

One flight of stairs... two flights of stairs.. down I ran.  Scared, wet, I ran down past the foul mouthed mynah bird into a oncoming gaggle of my sisters and her friends just entering in through the front door..

Scared, dripping wet and...oh yeah - NAKED!

Yeah, like they believed me that I just survived an alligator attack! 

That might be "TMI" (Too Much Information) so please just accept it, but don't feel you have to visualize it... I'm still traumatized by this memory - hopefully you won't have to be.

Just for clarity - it wasn't the alligator attack that I was traumatized by... it was the mocking of my sister and her friends who stood there and stared and pointed and laughed at me.

Hey,  it was cold by the time I got down stairs!

That wasn't a lot of fun. What I discovered is that girls can be just as mean as the Wolf Pack.

"An idyllic childhood is probably an illusion."
                              - Martha Grimes

Next time - the fatal accident!