Those Wild and Crazy Dahlins: THE VIDEO

This VIDEO will be the front door of my blog for a short season to debrief any misconceptions about Markie D and his Family. On handheld devices and mobile apps - most people do not see the column that exists to the right of each New Post. Today we are a happy, healthy, bunch of high energy people who love each other and have a great legacy of open hearts.  Enjoy the Video...

And in the next couple of Post, I will be sharing another one of the most classic Dahlin Stories where we lose half of Venice in a storm at Salton Sea.

But since it was just my father's birthday on September 1st, I think I will put the link to his tribute here.  

Carl Dahlin "the Mayor of Venice."

Enjoy Markie D.

FREE LOVE - The Invention of Bungee Jumping - only different! pt 3

The conclusion (continued) I wanted to be cool. And I wanted to fit in. And I wanted to be like them and to be liked by them. From the stories I heard, I knew that we would be scrounging around in the manzanita and the rugged western chaparral of the Santa Monica mountains and scurrying around on the rocks like blue-bellied fence lizards.

As a junior hippie, I thought I looked cool in my dad's army coat, which also added a thick extra layer of protection should I actively engage in the "lizard life."

Me and my Army coat and my rope...I was set!

Delighted in all the circumstance of feeling like I belonged and like I was doing something important, I smiled as I proudly carried the rope among the throngs of brothers, hippies, and Harding-ites up the windy mountain road of Tuna Canyon.


Like Issac on a outing with his father and blissfully carrying his firewood to the top of Mount Moriah... I too carried the rope with great honor - ecstatic to be included in this right of passage as a ritual of induction into my tribe.

I belonged.
I was loved.

Overwhelmed with the joy of acceptance, I bounded up the hill with a bounce in my step and a smile that I knew would hurt my face muscles the next day.

Eyebrows popping up and down, I shot glances at all the cute hippie-chicks communicating the hopefulness of connecting in a new way: a way that was no longer that of the "annoying little brother."

Flea-bait and Monkey-boy snarled.

Taking a left turn off the asphalt road we burrowed between scratchy manzanita shrubs that covered the entrance of a secret dirt trail.

I was let in on a secret... this was a big deal!

I was there with them... my heart pounded... as I imagined Issac's heart beat with the similar joy of being with his dad - carrying his special load of firewood up the hill.

Up we scurried to the sacred place... to arrive at an opening of the hippie temple of free love and nature worship.




Out came the freshly picked herbs from the"Mexican tomato plants" in the backyard of our Venice house and Zig-Zag paper. The industrious hippies rolled and licked edges of the paper and rolled some more that had obviously evolved into quite an art-form.


I watched the long inhales and ritual of breath holding and the passing of the "joint" ceremony as if a type of holy communion.


It came to me. I held the "Mary-Jane-cigarette" in my fingers just liked I had watched them do. CHOICES. I could puff and not inhale, but having no formal catechism for this sacred ritual - I declined my first hippie communion.

I basked in the warmth of Southern California sun, family, in community and in finally belonging to my people-group.

Uncharacteristically kind, Flea-Bait offered me a drink of his 7-Up!  The Fates and the gods were smiling. I took a gulp and chocked on the vodka I wasn't expecting. I gagged a couple times to the delight of the hippies as the stuff rocketed through my nostrils and furthered entertained the hordes of hysteric hyenas who uncontrollably laughed at my retarded vomit reflex.  

I felt sad to be the object of ridicule, but pasted a phony smile on my face - with the optimistic hope that I was there for more than shear entertainment. The joint reached my fingers again and I stared at the wet tip that had been passed around from lip to lip, I looked around the circle of rock dwellers and wondered what diseases I could possibly contract by making contact. They didn't see my stomach heave. I smiled and passed it along.

Giggling and laughter and incoherent stories (that I pretended to be interested in) went on for some time. I still held out hope that they liked me and that I belonged.

I don't know why I brought the stupid rope!

Finally, we headed back down the trail, under the secret entrance and back onto the asphalt road. They laughed and told more stories and made up words and called each other names and I smiled and pretended like I was one of them. I was numb but a couple of the hippie girls smiled at me - making me feel a bit more human which may have redeemed the whole trip.  

THEN THE ATTACK!

I was used to fighting and knew that it would have been easy for me to hold off about five or six of them in their present inebriated condition.

AND I DID!  

But there was too many of them. About 20 of them held me to the ground as they took the rope off my shoulders and removed dad's Army jacket. At first, I panicked wondering if this was going to be another "naked" thing... like they did before in the attic. Only this time it was wide open in public and in front of about hundred people and was fearful that I should have had hair under my arm pits and didn't and began swinging my fist and got one of them in the face and drew blood and everyone kept laughing.

They weren't interested in pulling my clothes off and embarrassing me in front of God and country... they had different plans. I knew exactly what Issac felt like when his father put him on the woodpile. They slipped my arms into the sleeves of the coat as they put it on me backwards and tied my sleeves behind by back like a straight jacket.  They bound my hands in the rope and tied it around my body three or four times.

This was planned from all along. I wasn't there because they liked me or accepted me or as if this was some sort of "right of passage" for belonging... I was like the guy who had been invited to dinner by the cannibals - I was dinner.

  I WAS THE MAIN ATTRACTION! 
   
About 20 of the betraying hippies grabbed the length of rope in front of me and another 20 grabbed the length of rope behind me. First it began with a game of tough-of-war. One team of delirious hippies pulled the rope as hard as they could up Tuna Canyon road and one team pulled downhill stretching me out in the middle. My adrenals began pumping epinephrine and endorphins into my nervous system that turned off regular human emotions and my pain sensors. I went to my safe place (like I did at the betrayal of the hamper) where I  had no feeling what-so-ever (this was my drug fix).

The game morphed, of course, as they got more inventive and I felt nothing. Walking down the hill, tied up like a wild beast, we came around a bend in the road. I was scrapped along the rough rocky sides of the cliff - and with my hands tied - I no defense against the sharp claws of the scraggly bushes.

More Laughter!

Then in the opposite bend of the road, they discovered that if they held the rope tight enough, they could hold me suspended in mid air - feet dangling helplessly above the 300 foot drop.

More Laughter! I wanted to think it was because they were having fun and not just because they were laughing AT ME!  I didn't know how to act! In my sickness of desperately wanting to belong - I laughed along with them like I was enjoying the torture - and I didn't know if I was suppose to be enjoying this or not. Or if they wanted me to put up a fight or if I should go on pretending it was fun as a way of making them feel they weren't getting the best of me.   I hated it, yet loved the fix.

ANYWAY...making the way back to the cars and the psychedelic painted VW van with the peace sign and words "Make Love not War" painted across the side like a billboard... they scraped me along the side of a hill again.  "Swedes don't cry" I told myself and I didn't.  And I never did - not once.. not when I broke my arm and not when I chopped off my leg and not now.

And the troglodytes dangled me over the ravine until struck with the bright illumination of a new iteration of the game when Flea-Bait and his group holding the rope uphill ran towards me. Down I free-fell to the end length of the rope and crashed into the side of hill.  This caught on quickly with both groups.

                     Isaac - Abraham - The knife!

            I knew what he felt like.

Then the angel!  The angel stopped Abraham... I prayed for my angel.

NO ANGEL. No Rescue.

Both groups of marijuana influenced hippies ran together and charged apart... that sent me down the hill again and up against the sharp rocks and the prickly thrones of the bushes with no defense as my body grated up the side of the hill like cheese against the side of a cheese grater only to be dangled in mid air again and to do it all over.

Again and again.  And laughter and laughter and more laughter.

Finally one of the hippie chicks finally had enough and  took pity. She broke rank and pleaded with the crazies to stop (must have been some nurturing mothering instincts kicking in).

Everyone talked about it all the way home - and with scrapes on my face - a bloody lip and nose and with bush rashes and gashes on my torso - I forced a smile and pretended to laugh with them as they laughed at me.

This was going to be another great story to tell!  We invented Bungee-Jumping...only our rope was not a bungee and had no elastic to it.  I'll laugh when I hear the story being told at family gatherings and I'll be sure to laugh when I tell the story AS IF I was part of the story and not the object of ridicule in the story.

In the mean time, I'll wait for the next chance to feel like I fit in - like I belong and yet am also frightened by knowing that I am so desperate to be connected and to know what love feels like - that I'll put my self at risk to find it.  

I don't know what's wrong with me... less human... more robot...broken... I'll probably say yes the next time.

I held out hope that this embarrassing story doesn't make it back to any of the friends at Saint Mark's. Some of them still think I'm a regular kid and do regular kid things like they do. I know that I am not an example of what it means to be normal by any stretch of the imagination, but am so afraid that Andrea or the other kids might see me as damaged goods and want nothing to so with me.

(picture to right of normal classmates doing things regular kids do...Cathleen and Andrea and Regina and Theresa and Pam and Marilyn and Patty)




And so I carried the rope and so Issac carried the firewood and so I wondered what I would volunteer for next time and wondered if I was slightly retarded and so I smiled and so Jeanette Lennon walked across the street and asked me why I was always smiling and I didn't have an answer - except that like Joseph in the Bible - I had a dream...and I smiled and shrugged my shoulders... and felt like I wanted to give her a hug. Only I was 13, and 13-year-olds don't do that... and just said to her, "another day in paradise" and I put the rope away in the boat.      

(Pictured to left with scares on face still healing).

Painting above “Abraham and the Sacrifice of Isaac” 

by Henry Seabright
The Illustration Art Gallery

   

The Hippie Fest in Tuna Canyon: pt 2 There are no Strings on Me

(continued)
Everyone was assembling on the front lawn of the Harding house.

Zit King and Chewbacca and Primo and Booty and Mad Dog and Flea Bait and Monkey Boy and Face and Chewy and Kleghorn and Herkamer and Lardo and about ten other guys and all the hippie girls who liked all the hippie boys who had been christened with mean-spirited nick-names.... AND ME!

One time everyone thought the earth was the center of the universe which was challenged when Galileo insisted that the earth was in orbit around the sun...BUT GALILEO was wrong. Once again, my house was the center of the universe.

And I was invited to step into that universe. For today, my older brothers called me by my real name.

I felt like Pinocchio - you know the wooden marionette who had seen enough hardship and been through enough adventure to finally go through the right of passage of becoming a "REAL BOY."

That was me.
                         AND

This was my initiation - my "right of passage" for belonging - my acceptance into the Wolf Pack, where I finally got the chance to metamorphose into a "Real Boy" and become part of my tribe.

"Hi-ho the me-ri-o...there are no strings on me"


Though I wasn't quite out of Saint Mark's grammar school, I was close to graduating and would be at Saint Monica's High School in the fall. Maybe they thought, I was close enough and had been through enough already to have earned my stripes so that I could join the brotherhood.  I had grown my hair as long as the nuns at Saint Mark's would allow and I could put my bangs in my mouth (that was a pretty big deal for Saint Marks).








I had finally quit using the "Sugar-Water-Gel" invention of my dad's that made me attract mosquitoes and that made me look like I had leprosy in the 6th grade (stiff sugar-water hair pictured below)

I wasn't sure that I was ready for all of this hippie stuff, but I at least willing to give myself over to considering this tree-hugging, Vietnam-war-protesting, draft-card-burning, antiestablishmentarianism "long-hair"enterprise of theirs.

Bodies jumped in to the front and into the truck bed of the Borrego (that's the 60' Ford plumbing truck - pictured to the right), into Chewbacca's 57 Ford, into Tom's 56 Chevy hot rod, into a couple VW beetles (that had to be push started - of course), into Kris' 63 Econoline van and a brightly colored VW van painted with flowers and giant peace symbols.

"Come on Mark. Come in this car with us"
"No, come with us Mark!"

They weren't fighting me. They were fighting over me...my stars were finally aligning (like that new song The Age of Aquarius by the 5th Dimension).

       Peace Harmony and Understanding

They wanted me to come! As I scrambled for the van that had the prettiest girls, Flea Bait yelled, "Oh, and don't forget the rope."  I was important... they wanted me and they gave me something to do.

This was bound to be the best day ever. (I was in charge of the rope. If only Andrea could see me now)!  I sat between Vicky and Judy and happily hummed Pinoccho's little ditty...to myself thinking how ironic it was that I was carrying the rope.

HA!

I may have had a large rope slung over my shoulder - but for today at least there were no stings on me.

I've got no strings

To hold me down

To make me fret, or make me frown

I had strings

But now I'm free

There are no strings on me

Hi-ho the me-ri-o

That's the only way to go

I want the world to know

Nothing ever worries me. 

Hi-ho the me-ri-o

I'm as happy as can be

I want the world to know

Nothing ever worries me.

I've got no strings

So I have fun

I'm not tied up to anyone

They've got strings

But you can see

There are no strings on me.  

Off to the hippie destination of choice in Malibu - TUNA CANYON...(shown above) and I was included.  After this adventure I would probably have to go to the Surprise Store in Culver City (the Army surplus store) and buy my own $2.00 pair of used jeans.  They liked me!    They chose me!   For I was becoming one of them.    

  

We parked at the turnout on a hairpin curve and piled out of the cars.

With a sense of importance, I happily carried the rope as we headed to the sacred place of hippie worship.

To be continued... Looking  back on this, I wondered if this is what Issac felt like when he marched up the hill with his dad, Abraham, tasked with the important job of carrying a stake of firewood?

How Not to Exact Revenge

(Continued from last time: The Kingdom Hall, the Hypothetical Hippie and the old Venice train)

PLAN: "XYZ"

After getting rolled in the dirt and being embarrassed, I'm not too sure that Tommy had much of an interest in being a member of the Troop 32 ruffians.  Jeffery, on the other hand, was looking for something that pushed the edge of the envelop and was a little beyond the pay-grade of being a Lennon. He could wet his appetite for dangerous living by hanging out with me at my house, "Hotel Crazy," and cut his teeth on adventure by joining The sickness of this rowdy troop from Venice.

BUT FOR NOW - it was all about PAYBACK! My older brother, Chewbacca, had drawn all over my body with a Marks-a-Lot and derailed my chances of finding out about love: HE HAD TO PAY and I had a plan!

When Jeffery sneaked over to my house, he was as giddy as a little kid the night before Christmas with the thought about handling snakes and dead things that were being preserved in our freezer.

The house was quiet because hippie Wolf Pack was out back in the ivy cave smoking it up and mom was locked in her bedroom. Like paleontologists, the first thing we had to do was chip out one of the two dead Diamondback rattlesnakes that were frozen in the glacier of the refrigerator frost (that we had found at Leo Carrillo state park in Malibu) .

Picking away at the thick ice crystals with an ice pick and a heavy metal spoon we scooped out loads of the snow and began eating the stuff.  Chipping away at the snake skins, Jeffery and I shoved gobs of the delicious fluffy white refrigerator snow in our mouths...gobs and gobs of it ...and even made snow balls and threw them at Chewbacca's gross pigeon that lived on top of the refrigerator.

Jeffery was in heaven - nothing like this would ever take place at his house.  We threw freezer snow balls at the flying one-eye'd" parasite carrier and shoved more of the fluffy frost into our mouths UNTIL...

...UNTIL I got a bite that tasted like it had made contact with the dead rattler... I guess it could just have been tainted with the rancid blood of old chicken but my overactive mind conjured up snake guts that incited my superpowers; heaving and gagging I ran to the vomitorium.  Jeffery laughed and continued to dislodge the old rattler carcass from the freezer as he listened to me throw up my guts in the bathroom.  I was a hot mess





So much for payback. Chewbacca, was already winning and he was out back getting high with Bob Dylan and friends - It's not like Bob Dylan was out in our backyard. It's just that they were just doing what Bob said, "Everybody must get stoned." They were smoking the infamous "Mexican tomato plants" which gave us time to lay our devious little trap.






















In order for our plan to work we had to thaw the thing, so I made Jeffery put the snake under his shirt - he loved it and thought it was groovy - but I put a rubber band about the mouth of the snake so the fangs wouldn't accidentally poison him with deadly venom.  

With the snake warming under his shirt, we headed up stairs to the third floor bedrooms of the Wolf Pack and to the (not so secure) snake cages!  I didn't want to kill any one really...just put the fear of God into Chewbacca, so I didn't mess with the rattlesnake cages. I did however make a nice soft warm nest right in the middle of Chewbacca's bed.  Pulling back the covers, I carefully placed one garter snake at a time in a pile of snakes I would leave for Chewbacca to discover when he came stumbling to bed.

Where Plan XYZ gets really good is that we were going to take the thawing rattlesnake and place it among the living ones.  My hope is that with all the slithering and movement from the real snakes he would think that the rattler was alive and have a complete conniption fit and go crazy!

When Jeffery put the warm rattlesnake in the mix the other snakes freaked out - and wouldn't you know it - in the panic - one bit me in the arm!             DANG IT!             This payback better be worth it!

I was hoping the Wolf Pack would turn on each other and that a ruckus would break out on the third floor. In the middle of the night I expected to hear the the sweet sounds of this delicious payback!

I climbed into my loft bed near the place where the ooze was released from the pit of hell and smiled as I fell asleep.

And it happened just as I planned!  I heard a screech that sounded just like the girls did when the older boys took them to the Albino camp... I heard the boys yell at Chewbacca...I heard a  wrestling match break out on the third floor. YES!  PERFECT! All was right and good in the world (only Jeffery was home and missing all the fun)... UNTIL...

...UNTIL...I heard my name!  "MARKKKKKKKKKKKKK!" came the bitter sounding screech from the third floor.  "I'm going to kill you. You little twerp!"

Footsteps!  Lots of them coming down the stairs and heading my direction. I was trapped!

The boys grabbed me, stripped me down to my tightie-whities, tied a stand of Christmas lights around my ankles and hung me out the second story window!

Luckily it wasn't long, but there I hung until morning. Mom walked under me and mumbled something about the "pain of mortal sin" and when Jeffery stepped outside his house and saw me hanging nearly naked he knew that PLAN XYZ was an epic fail and that being a Lennon wasn't so bad after all.

When the mom who drove the Saint Mark's advanced-math kids to Saint Monica's in the morning pulled up and saw me hanging there she - burned rubber and sped away to Santa Monica as fast as she could!

My only hope was to pull some kind of Houdini and escape before Andrea would see me in my underwear on her way to school.        This was certainly not the way to exact revenge.            
                                                 YOU WON THIS ONE CHEWBACCA!



I guess it was a good thing My dad and mom had prepared me for this when I was young.

   
So you know what, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" or something...

  ...or SOMETHING!

All I know was that I was still trying to figure out what this love word was all about.  Clueless in Venice!

Karl Dahlin and a Whale of a Terrifying Tale

(Continued from last time)
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale.
A tale of a fateful trip
that started from Harding Avenue
Aboard this tiny ship

Patrick fancied he was a sailin' man
The Skipper brave and sure
The three of us set sail that day
for a Three hour tour
a three hour tour...

The weather started getting rough
the leaky boat was tossed...
all for the sake of a couple fish
The Minnow would be lost.
The Minnow would be lost

The swells had gotten so big that the little motor couldn't even push the boat up what seems like an uphill climb at a 45 degree angle, and I didn't know if we were moving forward or whether we were actually going backwards. Every time we crested the top of the swell we sped downhill like a skier shooting out of the gates of a slalom run at the winter Olympics. Down we sped into a 30 foot trough - assisted by gravity - motor revving into a crash course with a mass of water that begged to swallow us at the bottom.  I held on to the throttle arm of the sputtering motor as Patrick bailed while Karl was busy pressing the gooey Velveeta cheese on to his fish hook, totally oblivious to the fact that we were all going to die!


We plowed into the bottom as the nose of the boat buried itself into the dark water that crashed over the front.  Karl cast his line and told me to head towards the Venice Pier and barked out orders for Patrick to bail faster as we were ankle deep in water and things were beginning to float in the bottom of boat. Heck, I was beginning to think that a fisherman would be happy to hook a prize fish and be dragged away to a sea burial. Unable to keep up with the leaks and the water that kept crashing over the front, Patrick was beginning to get scared and I in particular did not care how many fish we caught - this was not the way I wanted to die!

The swells, the wind and the current was moving south against us and we were not making any progress. In fear of over using it, I didn't say Sister Edith's "death prayer" yet. I only prayed that the motor would continue to run and that Karl would catch something soon so that we could head back into the safety of the Marina Del Rey Harbor. The optimistic fisherman didn't seem to care about the fact that water in the bottom of the boat had been inching higher and that Patrick was crying and under the front bow screaming Sister Edith's prayer every time the USS Minnow crashed into the bottom of trough between swells. Karl fished, I furiously bailed with one hand as I held onto the throttle arm of struggling old Johnson 35.

The wind and the seas continued to blow against us until we realized that we had hadn't made any forward progress at all...only pushed back between the angry sea and the breakwater... (this is the part of the story where you hear the lady on Psycho scream in terror)... we had to keep the boat pointed directly out to the open sea, just to keep our distance from the gnashing teeth of the breakwater rocks that had eaten a boat or two.

Then it happened (this is the part in the story where you hear the Psycho sound effects of the screeching death knife) - The 'O Johnson motor just up and quit and gave up the ghost.

We were now being pushed dangerously back towards the rocks by the fury of the relentless storm.

Doom, Doom, Doom!  Why weren't we in the Blaser's boat? Why were we here in the first place?

Gherhing the Great, me and the Fisherman were all going to die. Karl had a feisty corbina on the line and he wasn't about to be distracted by something so trivial as death.  We were going to die!



Good bye Tommy, Good bye mom and dad,

Good bye Saint Mark's friends,

Good Bye Frank Nargie










Good bye Ricky Tripp...


...and Dennis Dugan and Jeffry Lennon, and Kippy and all baby brothers


 Good by Lennons - on Harding

and Lennons on Superior Ave 

Good Bye Wolf Pack -

Good bye Monster under my bed...

Good Bye Alligator
Good Bye Monkey
Good Bye foul-mouthed Mynah bird
Good Bye Snakes, lizards, Veloci-Raptor, and Iguana Del Diablo

Good bye Harding Avenue...











...And - Good bye future me...

I'll see you all at the bottom of Davy Jones Locker.

Du...du....du...Just When you think things couldn't get any worse...



 

The Glass, The Leg, and The Whole Bloody Mess!

(continued from last blog) 
11:42 am
Unable to cope with Markie's D death, Ralph walked in concentric circles talking to himself.
 
Pinky was so big, the Wolf-Pack made fun of him saying things like, he couldn't see his feet and that they didn't know how he tied his shoes. That always brought a big laugh from the mean Viking tribe. "Water retention" and "big bones" was his favorite retort of denial.

Knowing it was hard for him to bend over, Joan snapped at Ralph, instead. Interrupting him in the middle of his Catholic "Mea culpas" she barked, "Ralph get over here. Now!"  Without even knowing what she did to Tom a couple minutes earlier, Ralph stood at attention like a mindless Zombie under her control. "Hold this together" she said, putting Markie's leg back together the best she could and made Ralph hold it in place with firm pressure.

Pinky took Kjersten and Annie and Tommy in the other room. He didn't think it was right for 9-year-olds to see a dead body: the glass, the leg, the blood was already too traumatic.

Joan picked up a fragment of the broken glass the size of a John F. Kennedy silver dollar and held it under Markie's nose. She waited a full 20 seconds (that seemed like a year) and became ecstatic when she saw  fog on the glass.  Barking out more orders like the ranking medic of a mash unit, Joan ordered Pinky to fire up the 57 Chevy as she carried the limp body trailed by Ralph (who was covered in blood), as he continued to obey his senior officer and held the dangling appendage together while mumbling Altar Boy Latin.  

Although there was condensation on the small fragment of glass, Joan knew that time was of the essence.
Pinky had wedged himself behind the steering wheel and had the motor running. Joan knew that letting Pinky drive was a mistake, but couldn't think of any other way to manage the situation. Laying Markie out on the back seat on a beach towel, she told Ralph to walk the younger kids home.

11:50 am
In the passenger side of the front seat, she leaned over the back and kept pressure on Markie's leg while trying to talk Pinky through driving a stick shift. One time she even shifted the car from second to third with the heal of her right foot, when Pinky's hand got caught between the steering wheel and his belly.

It was a sight to be sure. The way the car lurched and bucked and roared down Lincoln Boulevard towards Santa Monica, it looked like a drunken cowboy on a bunking bronco.

12:20 pm  Blood-drenched Ralph, delivered Annie to the front door of the Lennon Sister's house and it was as if sirens had gone off: Questions...Interrogations...but the only thing Ralph could do was mutter and stutter and look at the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in their front window and kept repeating the, "mea maxima Culpa" thing.

By the time Ralph dropped Tommy off at the Blaser house, rumors had begun to spread like a wildfire around Harding avenue that ranged anywhere from death to amputation.


The hippy Wolf-Pack knew they made the right choice in not going with Joan to the rescue.
"Oh my goodness, what a nuisance"
"How inconvenient... that little twerp!"
"Geez, we still have a lot of partying to do."
"Dude...that would have totally harshed my mellow." 

By the time the sixth needle went into Markie's arm, one of his eyes opened to half-mast and he asked the emergency room doctors, if this had anything to do with Flea-Bait's loogie.  Four of them looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders thinking the kid was reacting to the drugs.  Then more shots. A billion in the leg and lot of them deep. Many of the shots still hurt regardless of how much Novocaine they shot into him.

The second eye opened as Markie was trying to find out what all the fuss was about. He wasn't sewn up yet and inadvertently saw the bloody mess attached to his body that was once a leg. A nurse held his head down and he began asking questions as the guy with the broken arm next to him was released... and then the person with stitches in the forehead had come and gone...and the motorcycle guy with the puncture wound had come and also left repaired.  The stitch after stitch in the deep tissue and layers of muscle didn't hurt much, but this was before they got to the outside layers where the 42 shots of Novocaine had begun to wear off and each one of the 97 stitches on the outside of the leg really did hurt like heck. Markie was no stranger to pain and had been through bows and arrows with needles and the Hamper of Death and thrown over a cliff and didn't think that this pain was worth saying anything to the doctors - and suffered in silence.   

As far as Markie D could ever remember, he never saw anyone in his family cry. Mr. D had always said that "Swedes don't cry and pain will make you stronger."    

1:30 am  '0 dark thirty of the wee hours of the morning: "The Sewing party" was finally coming to an end.

 Even though his leg looked worst than Frankenstein's monster, they managed to put it all back together and save it.

Markie had never seen tears nor had he ever heard the "L" in his house. Oh, the "L" word is "love" in case you were wondering, but reckoned what Joan had done to rescue him, as love. That was all he was looking for as a human being. He wanted to know - he wanted to feel that someone cared.

He missed school for weeks and Joan had her sixth grade class write get well cards. He liked the cards and felt this was also another way of his mother showing she cared.

Two weeks later:   

















                                                       Thank you Tom Colajezzi.










Thank you Perry Halachis.













Thank you whoever you are.



Thank you Mom and Pinky!

And Ralph, stop mumbling - it's okay, I forgive you.

And Thank you Lord, I'm still alive...
                                                     
Oh, and thank you "Weltz" for letting mom "borrow" your car.  Sorry about all the blood in the back seat and your sore jaw.  No one knew Tom's last name before...but the black and blue welt on his jaw provided the perfect nickname. 

Good intentions are one thing but real love is often measured in sacrifice. I think that's all we really want. Isn't it?  To feel as though someone cares and to know that you are loved!  
                                                             
                                                                                           Markie D.

Next the Veloci-rooster and the "Chicken Lady"

Hair Hippies and Hot Rods: THE RAT KILLER

WEDNESDAY MORNING: The Sixties was not only about the Beatles, long hair, hippies, campus protest, Haight and Ashbury, race-riots, anti-war demonstrations BUT it was also about "CUBIC INCHES"  Hot rods, street races and cruising Van Nuys Boulevard.  I couldn't leave this out of what was taking place in my first week of 5th grade. And the story I'm about to tell you is strictly off the record and totally confidential, but I think you need to know the truth.

Last time we left off as the Dahlin Clan of Viking-Hippies were pushing a broken down fleet of cars from one side of the street to the other in a Tow-War with the city.  7:00 am, Mr. D had wakened the brood of wild animals that occupied 2 and a half rooms of the third floor. Two were packed full of junk, but that didn't stop Kleghorn from burrowing in and nesting like a rat on top of one of the other two junk filled rooms.

Tony came barreling down Woodlawn peeling rubber from both rear tires, all the way from Venice Blvd through first and second gear. Tony didn't dare pull a stunt like that down Harding Avenue. Not after the lesson Bill Lennon taught Leland, uh uh...Tony wasn't about to invite a well placed golf ball through a side window of his precious hot rod.

Thank you Mr. Lennon.

The agitated crew of car pushers and tire-taker-off/ers-and-put'em-back-on/ers... jack slinging and lug wrench carrying tribe who had resorted to passing gas and rubbing boogers in each others hair - froze as Tony's legendary RAT KILLER came skidding to a stop inches away from the clan and belched steam into Erick's face as though it were alive. A fire breathing dragon of 750 horsepower.





Tony had been out again to Van Nuys Boulevard sucking the doors off of rich kids who thought they buy a turn key hot rod from a high-Performance pro-shop.  Tony stepped out of the car and emerged from the black cloud of tire smoke and held up a thick wad of cash that he had won that even impressed dad.

Tony is a story teller and everything he says must be scrutinized carefully. I have since learned from eyewitnesses that the racing stories of mythological proportions about Tony and his dreaded RAT KILLER in the 60's are absolutely true.

The part of this story that would be unbelievable (had the Dahlin's not been involved) is how Tony surreptitiously came in possession of the famed motor that stumped the engineers at Ford motor company, when he was finished with his creation.

Tony and dad went for a test ride in a 65 Galaxy at Wright Ford on Lincoln Blvd. They only had one in stock at the time, a red convertible with a 427 that came factory with dual quads (that's 2, four barrel carburetors - for you non-car-people) and a four speed.

With Tony's giddy insistence and squealing like a girl, dad relented and signed a lease.

It was dad's real estate car by day and Tony's off the showroom floor hot rod by night.

Dad, however, complained that the motor ran rough and sucked gas. Tony said, "I could I could fix that for you."

Tony Purchased a '58 station wagon for a hundred bucks from someone who lived behind us in the pink apartments. He took the old 352 from that ancient old Ford, dropped it in the Galaxy and now had the 427 on a engine stand in the little garage he had rented in a ally, on Glyndon, across the street from the Downey's house. Dad was happy...Tony was happier and the next owner of the Ford Galaxy was non-the wiser as he drove his second-owner beautiful car with a tired old 352 off the resale floor of Wright Ford.

Tony was Dr. Frankenstein and the motor on that stand like was his monster, waiting to come alive.  

I tell you more about the car later when we finally get around to Saturday and how me and my bestest Saint Mark's buddy, "Ghering the Great" crawled into the trunk and ended up in a police chase doing 157 miles an hour down Venice Boulevard.

Oh, and please don't tell the guy who owns the Galaxy! This is all top secret stuff! 

Happy 4th of July. (p.s. I know the Steppenwolf song is from 1969, but it just kind of sums it all up - the crazy Dahlin boys were "Born to be wild") And there just might be a little bit of that adventure and wild heart in all of us... maybe that's what drew the normal families to the Dahlin House which was the center of the Universe... at least it was the center of my universe and I was still trying to find my fit and my connection to the Universe!