Alien Abduction and the FUN in dysFUNction

(1972 continued from the last Post in Video Format)

With our family, every event whether a birthday party or family vacation was anything but ordinary. 

It was usually crazy and borderline insane. 

Letting the monkeys out of the zoo, releasing fire ants in a convent, getting caught skinny dipping by the President of the United States, electrocuting a nun or two, alligator wrestling, rattlesnake wrangling, marijuana growing, skunk-sack terrorism, swat team evading, hot rod racing, draft card burning or death-evading—we put the fun in dysfunction.

This trip was no exception. I left off last time with the mysterious disappearance of 6 older brothers and 11 other hippies from Venice and Santa Monica.

Like Gilligan aboard the S.S. Minnow, the older boys left for a “three-hour tour.”  They set out halfway across the Salton Sea, away from the view of my parents, on a reefer-madness excursion and never came back!  

I doubt their disappearance was related to pirates. Everyone has heard of The Pirates of the Caribbean but not Pirates of Salton Sea, so I ruled out capture by pirates. 

The note the Sherriff left (stuck on the side of our VW van) said they had drowned in the storm, but our side had been perfectly calm so we weren’t buying that explanation—there must have been something more.

Mom, dad, Mary, Tony Druliner and the few of us who were left behind, sat quietly around the campfire in solemn contemplation until the red glow of the embers faded as dark as the night sky.

I still think it was an alien abduction. Salton Sea would be the perfect place. Everyone knows there is life on other planets. Just about every day in the LA Times and the National Enquirer there are hazy pictures of UFOs and preposterous abduction stories told by some old geezer about how his wife got sucked out of the pickup truck on a lone country highway late at night. 

I could only image the field day aliens would have with a bunch of hippies from Venice. The extra-terrestrials would most likely prod, poke, physically probe, psychologically peruse and project them back to planet earth like the story of the farmer’s wife who now sits docile in a chair and does little more than drool.

We woke up to the warm, yellow glow of the sun’s rays that spilled over the mountains to the east and with the usual morning breeze.

With this mysterious thinning of the herd, I got to eat my half-piece of bacon and grease-soaked-toast (seasoned with crunchy particles of wind-swept sand).

No one complained (a rule in our house).

Dad said that the sand was good for us, like rabbits that needed to chew wood to sharpen their teeth. He said, the finest restaurants intentionally aged beef, that old cheese was gourmet, that burnt toast was good for the digestive track and that mealworms in our oatmeal added protein and that we should be thankful. 

Back in the fifth grade, Sister Godzilla was teaching math. After going over fractions, she pointed her bony finger at me and told me to stand up.

“Mark,” she said, “your parents have ten kids. Suppose your mother makes a pie and cuts it into equal slices so that each of you gets a piece…what percentage or fraction of the pie do you get?”

I stared into outer space and scratched my head.

“Well,” she screamed, “how much?”

Carefully I said, “none.”

Kids laughed

“None?” she bellowed.

I shrugged and said, “My mother doesn’t make pies, and if she did, by the time it got down to me, there wouldn’t be any left.”

With an irritating sound, she scratched, 1/10^th on the blackboard and pointed her crooked finger to the classroom door. “Go to MOTHER SUPERIOR’S OFFICE right now young man.” 

I digress.

All of that to say, I was happy for my half-piece of bacon and crunchy toast that was sharpening my teeth (all the better to eat carrots with—I guess).

We drove a short distance to the Salton Sea Marina and called the Sherriff’s office from a pay phone.

My dad dialed the number for Bob’s Playa—Ria Resort.

“Yep, we gots all them hippies here,” said the voice on the other end.

A resort, I thought.

“How many survived?” dad said.

“Dun-know…fifteen to twenty…maybe.” I could hear the voice say.

Initially, dad was relieved. Then began writing directions and notes. "What?" he half-yelled. "Where? 

“The boat’s broken. We've got to go pick them up?” He said, covering the mouthpiece of the receiver, looking at me. 

Dad was in shock. We had to drive all the way around to the east side of Salton Sea somewhere near Bombay Beach.

Mom was happy (I think) and dad began grumbling under his breath and doing calculations in his head without the use of his slide ruler and began adding things up out loud.

Bacon was eighty-three cents a pound—cut in half that added up to 3.4 cents a mouth.

We bought bread from the day-old bread store on Washington Blvd—five loaves for a dollar, which was just over a penny a slice. He was proud of how he could feed us all breakfast for about a nickel a person.

Gas had been holding steady at about thirty-six cents a gallon and it would cost us about $3.60 to drive all the way around to the east side of Salton Sea towing the trailer to pick up the “hairy-mole-rats” he called them.

“Let’s see:

     The campsite                    free

     Lettuce                             free   (Compliments of Frank Nargie)     

     Sunscreen                         free   (dirt we smeared on for protection)

     Cheese                              free   (Compliments of Frank Nargie)

     Corbina                             free   (Today's fishing)

     Toilet paper                      free   (Stolen from Indio)

     Bacon                             $1.66  2 lbs

     Bread                              $1.00 5 loaves

     Three tanks of gas        $16.20

     Gas and oil for the boat $2.56

     Birthday Party               $3.00

     Phone call                       a nickel

        Sub Total                  $24.52

  Unforeseen expenses  +   $3.60

                 Total                $28.12

 

Hmmm. This somewhere around a twelve percent increase I figured, “Take that Sister Godzilla!”

 

Dad looked over at me like I was crazy. “Silence is golden.” He was in no mood. The waste of $3.60 was killing him especially since we missed the turnoff down the dirt road to Bob’s resort.

Backtracking, we discovered that Bob's Playa-Ria Resort used to be the Ski Inn and it never occurred to them to change the sign. 

Hmmm. Resort?

The word Resort was an oft misnomer for trailer parks at Salton Sea. If a campground had an outhouse and water hook-ups for trailers it was the Life of Luxury.

Since we flopped out in the middle of nowhere where we camped it was free but had no amenities like an outhouse. We had to hike to a tumbleweed and take a poop in the sand or find an old tire or chair that might suffice.

Driving through Indio dad always stopped and stole a phonebook out of phone booth.

Mom was charged with allotting two-pages-per-person every time we needed to head to a tumbleweed to take care of business.  

The lucky people got the Yellow Pages, which served as a twofer: it provided reading material while squatting and ultimately used for—toilet paper.

This morning I got blessed with a sheet from the “N” classified section about surviving a Nuclear attack.

I checked for rattlesnakes before bearing my naken backside to nature. Reading my toilet paper I contemplated the mysteries of eternity, Nuclear attacks and bomb shelters, which took my thoughts to the Lennons who lived across the street and the Beauty Queen (Miss Santa Monica) who lived directly behind us. 

I wondered if the famous Lennon Sisters or Cheryl Arnold ever had a chance to camp like us—shucks, the things they missed out on I thought and wiped with my Yellow Page.

Back to the story

We loaded the boat on the trailer and packed up the Wolf Pack. Nineteen of us couldn’t fit in the station wagon so Dad made some of the wet hairy hoard— hide in the boat for the ride back to camp on the west side of the immense inland sea.

The citizens of Bob’s resort had never seen anything like this before. They lined the dirt road and waved good-bye. With the invasion of the Venice hippies on the night of the awful storm, the trailer park residents pooled their resources and made a spaghetti feast. Some were happy and some were sad to see the Wolf Pack leave.

As we left, Bubbles cried. She was in love with Karl.

Comma Jumpers.

Like every story, the boys began talking over each other and jumping in on comas, unwilling to wait their turn.

  

The wind

The waves

John crawling under the bow and crying

Kurt bailing

Water to the gunnels

Erick, screaming, "We're all going to die"

They feared imminent death like the 12 disciples on the Sea of Galilee.

 

Bubbles was a 26-year-old girl in a polka-dot bikini (twice the size of Pinky Parlette) and had two missing teeth. Charlie said, “She was so big, she could kick-start a 747.” 

Meanwhile, Tony fell in love with a girl named Sharon. She gave him some story that she was Sharon Morris, heiress to the Philip Morris tobacco company.

I think he believed it, but come on? Hmmmm. At a trailer park, at Salton Sea?

Oh, that’s right it was a RESORT. 

I watched to see if they were drooling—signs of alien abduction.

Looking deep into the portholes of their soul, I tried to see if they were still human.

The jury was still out.

When we arrived at our campsite on the other side, those in the boat began telling the story, rehearsing the narrative as if a badge of honor in surviving another glorious Dahlin-near-tragedy!

Circling around the outside the raucous story-telling circle I carefully examined for puncture wounds on the back of the neck, like in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Had they been abducted?

 

Should I be on guard for an Alien uprising?

With all that long hair, it would be nearly impossible to check for signs of Alien spinal implants.

Dad charged each of the aliens  oops Dahlins, Blasers, Lennons, Grants, Masons, Irvines and the other hippies from Hollister Avenue a nickel for the trouble and the added expense they caused.  

"Mexican tomato plants" He mumbled sarcastically under his breath!

As for the lettuce and cheese, the mailman across the street began raiding the dumpster at the Safeway store on Grand Avenue.  

He brought home boxes of lettuce, vegetables and old cheese to share with the neighborhood. 

The aliens didn’t like it much, but dad insisted, "It’s good for you. It'll put hair on your chest." 

Dad extracted his $3.60 from the refugees and we finally made it back home to Venice with, yet, another life and death adventure-story to tell.  

It's practically a shame what normal people miss out on! 

Bob Dylan sings the Markie D song 

"One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity...." Albert Einstein 

Anyone care for a carrot?

To Toke or Not to Toke - The Law of the Jungle

Captain's Log: Star-date 1971  

To smoke or not to smoke?  That was the question (this is where I left off last time).

Tony Alva offered me an olive branch or a “peace pipe” of acceptance. 

I was in.

By smoking his doobie I could freely roam the ruins of Pacific Ocean Park pier. This certainly took the edge off the feeling that I had been rejected by Andrea—my one true love.  

In that second, I thought about love and how desperately I wanted to know the feeling that other people feel. When Andrea wrapped herself around the neck of that surfer-dude from Santa Monica my dreams were now dashed like a shipwreck being tossed back and forth on an angry tide on the jagged Santa Monica breakwater rocks.  

This kid inhaled and held it out to me. 

If I was going to toke on a joint for the first time—it should be with the Wolf Pack.  

Smoking pot just might be my way in.

Maybe my older brothers and the other Harding Hippies would accept me and want me around for something more than just a play toy or to experiment with some newfangled trap of some sort.   

Waving him off, Tony frowned, shrugged his shoulders and passed it along. He and his tribe allowed me to slip away from the domain of his rat’s nest unharmed.  

POP was nothing like it's glory days.  

The walk home to Venice was a good time to think. I paused under the 200-year-old Banyan Fig tree at Hollister Ave and Neilson Way and eventually crossed over at “Heroine Park” at Main Street and Westminster.

I walked down Washington Blvd that was nothing more than a bunch of old vacant and rundown buildings behind the ghetto.

I thought about visiting Dego who lived on Electric, but decided to head back to Hippy Central at my house—via the Venice Troop 32 Boy Scout House near the railroad tracks.  A bounce returned to my step. 

Even though I had a dark secret I was not a victim.         I had friends. 

I belonged to a group of water polo players and swimmers at Saint Monica’s. 

I belonged to Troop 32. Heck yeah, we were the most disorderly Boy Scout Troop in the world, but I belonged and had fought my way to the top of that kingdom hierarchy. 

  

So Andrea chose another…so what?  I had a best friend next door and the craziest family in the animal kingdom.  

 

Still?

I wanted to belong to my own pack at home. I wanted to be accepted by my own and protected.  

Maybe Tony Alva was on to something. 

Maybe the way to join my brother’s club was to be become a reefer-smoking-junior-hippie. 

But, what if I said yes and what if I took a hit and what if they still rejected me—what then?

 

I wanted in—I think?

NOW this is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the sky,

And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.      

As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;       

For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

Walking up Crestmore Ave Mrs. Gass saw me talking to myself—arguing with God really, but she didn’t know that.  I smiled and waved. 

God is this too much to ask for?

I nodded to Leland as I rounded the corner and eventually made it home to the most exciting house in America or in California—certainly in Venice. 

"Hi Mrs. Mcclain"

"Hi Mrs. Tripp"

"Hi Mrs. Blaser"

    yep—yep I could hear Mrs Nargie.

It was late and by this time, the backyard was bound to full of a menagerie of Lennons, Blasers, Grants, the H Club, Kleghorn, stragglers and strangers.   

I was finally home to scheming hippies and hibernating turtles. Home to the infamous Veloci-Raptor who made war with a Catholic nun. 

Home to vagrant carburetors and leaning towers of a half-century’s worth of decaying National Geographic’s. Chickens outside of cages and rabbits inside poorly constructed ones. 

Cars on blocks—three sailboats and a 1956 MG cohabitating under the palm tree. 

Rusted bikes with missing wheels, outboard motors in trashcans full of water, lawnmowers that I don’t think ever worked and several tools we borrowed from the Blasers (borrowed in the loose translation of the word). 

And lots of cars that didn’t work and trucks used as trash barges.   

I was home. Home to the snakes, the chuckwallas, the Iguanas, Leopard lizards and two new kittens on the porch. 

Best of all, I was home to my favorite person on earth—my little beagle Pooch.  Now, all I would have to do is go to the back and smoke some hooch. 

Yes I was home, but with a hole in my heart and contemplating my future being spurned by Andrea and being apart.

Home without a girlfriend or Pack –tree trunk forward or back—no strength—no place in the jungle in a law as old and as true as the sky, no way to prosper—and feeling like I wanted to die. 

Why Andrea? Why?

I took two steps and stopped and couldn’t bring myself to go back—there was someone I feared in the Pack.

I strapped on my boxing gloves and lay down in bed—I pleaded or fought or yelled at God and told Him it was His fault and then asked for His protection against the evil we had unleashed into the world.   

Next Stop: The Venice BSA Infection spreads to the Sacramento Deltas via the concentration camp at Dachau... and who let Lyman drive the houseboat anyway?   

And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.  

Images credits: 

Kids running at ruins of POP Facebook post (don't know who to credit)

POP ruins: Facebook post the rise and fall of Pacific Ocean Park 

POP bubbles: Facebook  Photos of Los Angeles by Bill Gabel

POP in its Glory days Postcard: Facebook (don't know who to credit) 

All other pictures: mine