Venice Invades the Boy Scout Universe!

I don't know what was worst...the Dahlins headed out of Venice to the zoo (post 5/3/2103) or Troop 32 headed to Farragut State park in Idaho to meet up with 35,000 other Boy Scouts.

In the words of the robot on Lost in Space "Danger Will Robinson"

Stardate: July 6th 1969

Captains Log: We had our heavy-duty, 1959 Chevy moving-truck converted into a "scout bus" by cutting the back doors in half,  installing some porthole windows and hard wooden benches along the sides. This left the center floor section open for transporting all the tents and backpacks and camping gear and for staging cage fighting. Miraculously, no one had fallen out of the back doors on any of the trips to Camp Slauson or Josepho so far, but we came close a couple times.

This half-open, barn-door (at the rear of the truck) arrangement had its advantages and disadvantages.

ADVANTAGE 1) On one trip, Charlie climbed out of the back of the truck onto the tongue of the trailer and slid himself onto the fender of the little cargo trailer, we were pulling in order to appropriate something we "desperately" needed inside the truck that was a matter of life and death.  Like a spider monkey, Charlie, climbed up on top of the little white trailer and slowly scooted himself very carefully towards the rear. I voted against the rope. I kind-of-felt like Charlie would have been better off without a bowline tied around his waist. I figured that if he fell off without the rope then at least he might have a chance of survival, but with the rope - it would be like being dragged behind a horse at 57 miles per hour on hot rough asphalt (not a good ending - if you know what I mean)!  Believe it or not, Charlie actually made it inside the trailer grabbed the bag of marshmallows and made his way back into the back of the "Scout Bus" without the scout masters being none-the-wiser.

ADVANTAGE 2) Another thing this particular arrangement afforded us on long trips, was that we could stand on the bench seat and hang our talliwackers out the back, when some small-bladder'd tenderfoot had to take a pee-pee between potty-stops!

ADVANTAGE 3) This gaping hole in the back end also allowed us to "full-moon" passerby's, especially if there were pretty girls and grandmothers in the cars trapped behind our slow-moving, smog-belching, billboard of a truck  - representing the Boys Scouts of America (Hey, I was twelve and at least we thought it was pretty cool - though, I'm pretty sure our scout masters might have felt differently - had they known).

DISADVANTAGE 1) Potential for falling out of the back - especially when leaning out to take a leak or when "giving the moon" to an old Mormon grandmother from Utah.

DISADVANTAGE 2)  Was the fact that carbon monoxide FUMES blew into the large open back. Carbon monoxide poisoning includes light-headedness, confusion, headaches, vertigo and can lead to the toxicity of the central nervous system. This might EXPLAIN WHY we sent a Boy Scout crawling out on top of a trailer on the freeway, pee'd on the cars behind us, indiscriminately exposed our bare butts to grandmas and fought with one another all the way to Idaho.  And... it might also explain why we always looked like dazed, refugee-rats whenever the truck finally rolled into a rest stop.




The other normal Boy Scout troops did not travel like us... they had air-conditioned travel-coaches with a restroom on board and drove through McDonald's on their way across country.












Although the carbon-monoxide poisoning could be blamed for a lot of things, in our case, however, I don't think the toxic fumes we were breathing could be blamed for mass constipation. I think that was due instead, both to the menu, and to the fact that the Scout Master's son never rinsed the pasta which ended up sticking to the insides of our intestines like the heavy paste on paper mache!

It's not like something we compared notes on.  "Hey, Kissel..have you taken a poop yet?"  That would have been ridiculous.

But, after 4 or 5 hot, sweaty days of traveling and camping the two scout master finally put two and two together when everyone began to moan and groan about stomachaches which they figured was more than just the ordinary toxic confusion, vomiting associated with minor carbon monoxide poisoning that was driving us all mad.

AND SO... the night after the infamous spaghetti incident, on the very same day I rescued David Cockerel from drowning in a small muddy lake outside Rock Springs in Wyoming...is when the proverbial "poop would have hit the fan" except for there was no poop and the scout masters came up with a diabolical plan.

I'll have to leave you hanging on this one... and come back and share how this interrogation tribunal got us a Highway Patrol escort... (well, kind of anyway)... to the embarrassment of the Entire Boy Scout Universe and to which (I'm sure) Lord Baden Powell was rolling over in his grave.  

AS I leave you until next time-  there are many of you right now saying, "Oh, this guy is just making up stories for sensationalism!"

I guarantee that every single bit of this is the "Straight Up TRUTH!

And I would ask, or dare anyone who is reading this - especially if you were a member of the illustrious Troop 32 from Venice California to weigh-in and corroborate these stories for the rest of the disbelieving world - at least for those in the 78 countries who read this BLOG!

Until next time...  Du är älskad!

Wolf Pack and Trouble in Outer Space.

(Sing this humming and snapping your fingers to the Addams Family theme song - it'll make more sense that way).   

"They're Hairy and they're kooky,

Mischievous and spooky,
They're altogether ooky,
The Dahlin Family."

Du, du, du, du..snap snap

"Their house is an Aslyum
When people come to see 'em
The inmates are a screa-um.
The Dahlin Family." 

That's just my family by the way, add to those numbers the Harding Avenue Gang and the Wolf Pack had numbers to be reckoned with.  On one hand, think of the damage that could come from assembling an unruly crowd of that size. Entire small countries have been toppled by less. On the other hand (on a more positive note) - the vast number of hippies in our Venice Tribe also lent itself to the possibility of...say...putting out a fire - should something go awfully wrong. I said "positive" not "realistic"!


Q. And what is "Murphy's Law?"
A. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong!

Problem was, that chaos always seemed to reign over order, and boy, did we cause a lot of problems.

While everyone in the neighborhood was gathered in our dining room (the room with the hospital-bed and bumper-pool table), Gustav my oldest brother and the oldest Blaser-boy from next door came up with a brilliant plan. What you have to remember is, that during this time in the sixties, everyone was all jacked-up and excited about exploring outer space and landing on the moon to gather green-cheese.

As I mentioned before, a new TV show came out two nights ago called Star Trek "Going where no man has ever gone before" add that to a couple TV shows which had already been out now for about a year, 
My Favorite Martin and Lost in Space, it was plain to see that rockets-to-the-moon and space travel were indeed on the forefront of everyone's mind.   

Every stupid fifth-grade-boy in the world already had the twisted theme song from Lost in Space memorized, so they could they could inflict silly grammar-school torment on a smaller kid. They would sing, "It's about time, it's about space, it's about time to..." SMACK "...slap your face" slapping their latest victim in the face at the opportune moment - then laugh at them for falling for it, and then running away in order to avoid adolescent retribution.  I probably don't have to tell you that the Wolf Pack (though, far too old for this kind of thing), was particularly fond of the ending part. The part where they slapped a younger sibling (like me) in the face.

300 slaps! You'd think, I would have caught on, right?   Duh!

Anyway... we were in the middle of the "SPACE RACE" with the Russians and they were winning. They had already landed a spacecraft on the moon and the United States seemed to be falling behind - landing on the moon seemed to be light-years off at a distance at our snail's pace!  This was all part of the Cold War and we were losing!

When we were still using monkeys, I wrote a letter to Washington asking if they wouldn't mind using any of my brothers in their rocket experiments. I told them it would be okay since they weren't a whole bunch smarter then chimpanzees (Oh, I made no mention about letting the monkeys out of the zoo). 

When we started to use real-live human-beings, I wrote another letter asking again - if they wouldn't mind using any of my brothers. I told President Johnson that they wouldn't have to feel too sad if we lost one of them should something bad happened, since I had like 28 big brothers. My dad said we had plenty to go around if something should ever happen to one of us (that's why I didn't think they cared if  they had left me at Salton Sea - I'm the second from the right in this picture - Oh and that was about a third of the group that were crammed in the station wagon and trailer, also pictured in the background. Blog Post: May 13, 2013). 

I never got a letter back from the President or from NASA. That was a disappointment!

Anyway, at this time we were sure there was life on Mars and it seemed like every week some hick-couple in an old Ford pick-up, out in the middle of the boondocks, saw a flying saucer - we called 'em UFO's - that's short for Unidentified Flying Objects.

It was always down an old, dark, two-lane highway,  far outside the city boundaries with no witnesses, where the aliens always seemed to abduct poor Clem in his jump-overalls or his wife Ethyl.

In pictures printed in the front page of the newspapers the UFO's looked like Frisbees, blurry footballs, a hat and one even looked like a cigar, but everyone was sure Martins had antennas and lived among us.

The Viking Tribe leader figured out a way to venture smack dab into the middle the UFO craze. They got dad's Polaroid camera, gathered up all of the necessary equipment and were destined to make local newspaper history.  This was one story, that we hoped would make it on  the front page of the paper, unlike all of the other times we ended up there, only to the embarrassment of my poor mom and dad.

Sending Donny next door to borrow a dry-cleaner bag from his dad's closet, the Dahlin's put all the other necessary stuff in a pile on the front sidewalk now officially deemed "Area 51"

McDonald straws, birthday candles and of course a Style Queen, hot-air, hair-blower for the initial lift off.

Although the original plan did involve UFO's, it didn't originally include a fiery crash landing on the roof of the Lennon house. We took our extensive resources and laid them out in  "Area 51." Little did we know, however, that in the very next hour or so we would have a "Roswell Incident" on our hands that endangered the entire Lennon family.  


Kids NEVER TRY THIS! EVER EVER EVER.

Until Next...

God Bless

上帝，造物主。

Gud velsigne

God zegene

Dieu vous

Бог благословит

Gud välsigne

Dios te  bendiga!

 

You Just Picked the WRONG DAY Billy!

It is still the first week of fifth grade and it has been about a bazillion years since anything seemed to go right for the poor little fellow.  Having been left behind at Salton Sea; lured, deceived, betrayed, Mark was stuffed in a diaper pail and shoved under the old grouches' car next door and was involuntarily subjected to community shock therapy by the Wolf Pack.

The older boys were slowly evolving into full fledged hippys and Markie D felt like an outsider looking in. He just wanted to feel like he was a part of his own family, but was too young - too helpless - and too much of a target. As the omega male he was easy prey.

Conked, swatted, kicked, tricked, tied, carried, shoved, shot, shocked, humiliated, dipped, bounced, the little guy was this "passive-aggressive" blob of explosive jello.

"Class," Sister Godzilla shrieked. "What percent of the earth's water can be used for drinking?"

Ernestine, who sat in the desk just across from Markie D (a good arms length away), shot her hand up in the air to answer the question. Thinking it was a fist coming in his direction Markie D reacted to the perceived threat -covered his head with both arms and leaned away - thusly falling out of his chair!  

That's probably not the best thing to do in fifth grade (or in brother Michael's class in ninth grade). Fifth graders can be a pretty mean species.  

 

Richard pointed!

The class laughed! 

Mark pretended to be on the ground looking for a lost pencil. No one was buying it. 

How do you spell humiliation!   m a r k i e d. 

 

Sr. Godzilla pinched his ear, yanked him from the floor and dragged him off to Sister Superior's office. 

Markie didn't know who he should be mad at...someone he figured! Sister Godzilla? Ernestine? Richard? His brothers for giving him Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome? His parents, for not protecting him? Himself for being an idiot? God? No, he wasn't mad at God, but boy... all those pent up emotions were brewing and stewing inside and someone was liable to get punched in the face. By the end of school, the little volcano was about to explode - Watch out world! To be fair to the unsuspecting masses that lived on Harding Ave, Markie d should have had a sign around his neck with a big warning: PLEASE DO NOT PUSH ANY OF MY BUTTONS TODAY!

(Please excuse the literary license as I shift to first person)

I will use a pseudonym for my my next oldest brother - in order to protect the innocent or the GUILTY! Ulrich, who was about 4 years older than me, had begun to gather his own crew of angry short people. All of whom suffered from a personality disorder referred to as a "Napoleon Complex" and assembleD them into a club. Their one grand purpose in life was to roam about and beat up unsuspecting little brothers and anyone they felt they could intimidate and subject to their rule by force. Who better than me! Why not? On the way home from school I was often ambushed by attacks from his motley crew who would cleverly be hidden behind cars or in trees.
 TODAY WAS NOT THE DAY!
 Obviously, they didn't get the memo (please don't push any of my buttons) and Billy Lennon picked the wrong day to wonder off the confines of the Lennon compound!

The Lennons (for many good reasons), played only in their backyard (if they chose to go out into the sun and do activities that normal children do)!  The Lennon Sisters at this time, were indeed, quite famous and had stalkers and gawkers who parked outside their house seeking autographs and hoping to catch glimpses of this celebrity Venice family.  Mr. Lennon was no patsy! This guy could fight and could stand his ground in a boxing ring with just about anybody. For some reason, however, he didn't give boxing lessons to his kids. Oh, and another good reason for them not to wonder off the premises is that the DAHLINS LIVED ACROSS THE STREET.


"Warning! Danger, Will Robinson Danger" 

Danger, Wolf Pack, Danger!

Danger, Mini-Napoleons, danger!

Danger, Billy Lennon, Danger!

Today was not the Day!

Billy caught up to Ulrich where the angry, small-man congress had been lying in wait behind the Steadman's Cadillac to pounce on me.  Mrs. Steadman peered out from behind the blinds and yelled to Mr. Steadman..."The Wolf Pack in on the move, honey. Get ready to call the police! My, oh my"

Urich and his punitive jamboree of "no-gooders" jumped out from behind the big white Cadillac - startling me like Ernestine did earlier. Only this time it was intentional and I wildly swung hoping to take out one of the beligerent predators.

ONLY!

Only, it was poor Billy who I cold-cocked in the face. He was an innocent bystander and the only one of them that didn't deserve it.

The angry little-men scattered! Billy gave chase. I ran into the house slammed the door and hid in my room.

50 some years later, poor Billy is still wondering why I slugged him in the face. When you see him, someone please tell him it had something to do the the electrocutions, with the hamper, with Salton Sea.... with the"Pee-pee incident" in third grade and Mrs. Simpson's alligators (that I swear were real), with Ernestine's hand, with Ulrich and his wretched ambushes or with Sister Godzilla. 

Someone tell Billy I'm sorry and warn him that it just might be safer in their own backyard. As for now, I just hope he dosen't send his dad down the street the settle the score.Mea Culpa. Mea Culpa. Mea Maxi Culpa!

Turns out it was Ulrich who inspired the lyrics to Randy Newman's song; Short People which he recorded years and years later.

Oh, and someone should warn Michael C. about tomorrow regarding "THE TOAST INCIDENT" of 1966, obviously he didn't get the memo either.