Shirtless, Dirty and Back to Alcatraz

Between intervals at swim practice, James Moore pestered me with instructions on how to deal things that I would never need to know.

Why on earth (for one minute), would I ever need instructions on how to deal with a charging bull. 

Turns out I was wrong as I describe the worst trip ever and nine million reasons to be happy.

I had just finished one year in high school but I have already known James Moore for two years—we spent a year together in 8^th grade in advanced math.

He came from Corpus Christi in the Palisades and I came from Saint Marks in Venice and we met each morning for zero period in Santa Monica at Saint Monicas—thatwas fall of 69 and spring of 1970.

Can you image me in advanced anything?  Neither could I. 

But somehow geometry came easy to me – it was visual, numbers didn’t lie or talk back and was not nearly as complicated as girls. It’s people that I had the hardest time figuring out—add to that this little thing called love—wow, was I lost!

Anyway, James was brilliant and his mind was full of all kinds of useless data that he stored up in the depths of his gray matter like a giant filing-cabinet.

Atwater polo and swim practice he would come off with ridiculous things like – how to identify a mail bomb or how to foil a UFO abduction.

UFO! Serious? I figured that might not be so necessary for me, but could come in handy for Joey Lennon or Kippy Lennon since we almost burned down their housewith the launch of one of our infamous Dahlin UFOs of flaming death.

Charging bulls—forget about it.

Anyway that’s what I thought until Venice Troop 32 decided to take an ill-fated trip to the Sacramento Delta’s for summer camp. (I laugh to myself as I use the “ill-fated” boy scout trip, because everything we did turned out to be ill-fated—like the time our troop from Venice sabotaged the National Jamboree,like the White-Angel midnight raids on Troop 34 at Camp Slauson in Malibu and like the time the Scout Master decided to drive over the bridge).

This inglorious group of optimistic misfits piled in the back of the Scout Truck (if you can call it that). It was actually diabolical experiment, where we were used as lab rats by scientist to observe the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning. Hence the MMA cage fighting, the mooning, and peeing out the back at passerby’s. I’m sure that if we were tried in a court of law we would not have been convicted due to the toxic fumes we were subjected to and inhaled the entire way.  

SACRAMENTO GET READY. With Karl’s new boat in tow we headed toward the Deltas—fighting—mooning little old ladies—and peeing out the back.

  

We took the old ‘59 Johnson motor off of the decrepit wooden boat that PatGhering, Karl and I almost died in (off of Marina Del Rey) and put the tired motor on a boat that actually had fiberglass.

Dude, we were moving up—Beverly Hills style.

Anyway, I felt dad would let me be the one who was responsible for the “new” boat, but he made Ray in charge.                    You heard me right—Ray—not me!

We got to the Delta’s and Ray took off in the Dahlin-boat speeding by the rest of us who felt like trapped rats on top of the houseboat. There he was, smug, zipping by as we were tortured by the smell of the septic tank vented out top where we slept and were forced to hang out every second of every day.   
 

                Me       

Steve Kissel 

We were not allowed to go down inside the houseboat to escape the heat of the day—shade, comfort and cooler temperatures were reserved for the scoutmasters and leaders.

I wanted my dad’s approval and thought he would have said I was the guy to be in charge of the Dahlin boat and felt disappointment and that disappointment led to bitterness. I wanted his blessing but it went to Ray, instead.

So I started a rebellion that ended with me either pealing potatoes... (picture to Left)

... or serving time in the BRIGG – aka – the KYBO –  the bathroom – the outhouse. 

No, not just an ordinary outhouse, but an outhouse in which the contents were constantly being sloshed back and forth by wakes and snotty-nosed-kids on top rocking the houseboat back and forth and what-not. Needless to say with my superpowers—I lost mostof the food contents of my stomach as I puked out the window every three minutes.

Then the accident. Yes, another accident. I think the Scoutmaster thought boats should behave like cars. Hello, cars have brakes. We were cutoff coming around the corner of a delta “T-intersection” and I guess he thought after throwing the 52-foot behemoth in full reverse that he could simply step on the brakes. It doesn’t work that way – it has something to do with math. I didn’t know the formula – but I did know that it had something to do with weight and velocity and force and momentum involving inertia (in other words a boat does not have four wheels making contact with the ground and does not stop like a car).  

He threw the engine into forward but it was too late.

The Scoutmaster reversed the boat into a low hanging branch that plowed through the back door–which kept plowing through the back door, and the wall, and through a couple bunks and about ten feet through the houseboat. We were skewered right up to the kitchen.

In my rebellion, I loved it! It served everybody right.

While the Scoutmasters brainstormed the solution (that didn’t seem to involve any of us lab rats), Steve Kissel and I escaped. We climbed out across the large branch of the oak tree and into freedom. We ran wild in some farmer’s cornfield. Playing hide-and-go-seek, we picked ears of corn and threw them like hand-grenades at each other.

Eventually, knowing that we would have to come back to giant houseboat Shish-Kabob we felt we had better bring back a peace offering as a penance for leaving Alcatraz.

Shirts stuffed with corncobs and walking down a slopping field we encountered a bull blocking our path. Turns out that the bull was as insane as the attackveloci-rooster in the Dahlin backyard.

Giving us fair warning the angry beast snorted, stomped his foot and headed in our direction.  The odds were stacked against us. We were at least 500 yards from a fence in any direction.

What the heck did James Moore say about dealing with a charging bull? What was it? What did he say between laps of 200-yard-freestyle? 

UGHHhhh…Mark can’t you remember anything?

First we split up. Maybe one of us would live to tell about it. The bull charged Kissel. I was free and knew that he would most likely die. I decided to take my treasured peace-offering and began firing them at the charging thousand-pound-predator like hand-grenades. One solid whack to the noggin worked! The bull stopped short of killing Kissel—looked at me with those crazy rooster-eyes and headed in my direction.

Running zig-zags, throwing corn over my shoulder, depleting my resources, I figured by some kind of subconscious math calculations that I could not beat the bull to the fence and that I was a goner (in other words the bull could run faster than me).

Steve ripped his shirt off, ran in my direction and began doing the bull-fighting “Toro” dance. By golly it worked. Stupid bull. Now Steve was in trouble, so I ripped off my shirt and ran to the bull like a brave Matador waving my boy scout shirt as if it were a red cape. The ignorant brute could not resist the temptation and took off in my direction. This time, however, closer to the fence I tossed my shirt giving Kissel and I enough time to leap over the fence.  We somersaulted straight into a lush blackberry bush—and we commenced to roll headlong down the dirt grade. 

Never mind that fact that we looked like bloody refugees–we lived to tell about it.

Dirty, shirtless, bleeding and scratched, blackberry stains from head to toe, we climbed back across the oak limb into the houseboat. We ended up taking turns for the duration of the trip in solitary confinement in the stinking-hot poop-sloshing Brigg. I puked my guts out–but this time it was worth it.

This would go down in history as the worst summer camp ever.

The only highlight of the notorious Delta-trip was that at night we made up mean songs about Ray and his boat with the 35 horse-power motor that refused to start after the second day. I was happy about the callouses he had from futilely pulling the starter rope—some nine million times.







(Paddling the boat back) 

              (Towing it behind the houseboat)

With plenty of time to think in the KYBO—I realized that I just wanted dad’s approval and that none of this was Ray’s fault. It fueled the bitterness I felt from the primal yearning for belonging. 

Fitting in was easy. I was good at it. But fitting in, is the enemy of belonging.* Fitting in means you shape yourself to meet others expectations, but belonging means that you are accepted for you are, warts and all.  

I couldn't wait to get back to Venice once again and back to my friends for a new school year at St. Mos. I don't think I'll tell James Moore about my bullfighting career, but I do think I will share some of the stuff I know - stuff from Venice that really matters like shoving potatoes in the tailpipe of a car  (next time). 

*Brene Brown "The Gifts of Imperfection"
KYBO Boy Scout acronym for bathroom or outhouse - Keep Your Bowls Open (no joke)

Phyllis Diller Girls and Alien Abduction

Circa 1971: You know that old couple in the rusted Ford truck rolling down a lonely two lane highway at night and they get sucked up by a tractor beam and abducted by aliens―well that's me.

I'm trapped in a car with a bunch girls and going completely out of my mind. The station wagon was crammed packed full of all the girls on our street―headed to Saint Monica's High School.

This is my new Monday to Friday morning ritual―purgatory.

The clamorous ride from Venice to Santa Monica was a cacophony of high-pitched girls all talking at the same time broken up with intermittent cackles, ear piercing screeches and singing―if you could call it that.



They carried on multiple conversations about boys along with the occasional whisper-speak in code with me in the back completely invisible―not understanding a bit of it.

Contributing to the din of noise from Mimi Lennon, Sally Lennon, Theresa Blaser, Theresa McCarthy and my sister Marylee was Debi Gas who flipped back and forth between radio stations about every ten seconds. KRLA...KHJ...sound-bites of familiar voices Wolfman Jack, Robert W. Morgan and Rick Dees and tantalizing morsels of songs―none longer than 8 seconds.

Being bombarded with fragments of The Jackson Five ABC; Simon and Garfunkel Like a bridge over troubled Water; BJ Thomas Raindrops are falling on my head―I felt like one of those humans who had been abducted by aliens and whose brains were being blasted by gamma rays.

My little gray-cells were moosh by the time we rounded the corner at Ocean Avenue and turned right onto Wilshire Boulevard where Lawrence Welk was in the initial stages of building his Welk Towers.

I smiled as we passed looking into the giant hole filled with all of the busy construction equipment. Let me tell you, bulldozers and cranes were easier to understand than high school girls suffering from estrogen overload. I also smiled because I felt connected to that construction-site on top of the bluffs in a weird sort-of-way―LENNONS

Not only did we have two Lennon cousins in the car ride but we also had one of the younger Lennon girls. Although we could literally call her a Lennon sister, she was not technically a "Lennon Sister."  The four oldest Lennon girls had performed on TV every week on the Lawrence Welk show for nearly 15 years and the girl who is busy flipping the radio stations―her older brother was married to DeeDee Lennon.

As far as I was concerned that new high-rise going up was mine (well, maybe not mine, but it certainly had something to do with my street in Venice―of which I boast).

If you don't know who Lawrence Welk is, go ask your Grandma. She could tell you. Everyone over 60 watches the guy with the bubbly champagne music who began his show every week with the words, "Wunnerful wunnerful" in his thick German accent.

Anyway, I hoped my brain could recover from my journey through purgatory so that it can function by  4th period at least. Phyllis Diller made a promise to me and it wasn't working out so well.

She told me that I would be the Mayor of LA and that I would marry Andrea. You see every year at Saint Mark's grammar school, Phyllis Diller would show up and read her prophecy for all the graduating students.

Only Phyllis Diller was my mom in costume. With her hair ratted and the cigarette thingy in her hand she looked and sounded just like the famous comedian.

Darn you Phyllis Diller...ah...mom!

I've been in high school five months and haven't been able to say a single word to Andrea. I was too shy, too timid and felt so dimwitted that I couldn't even figure out what to say when I got near her―lips unable to form coherent words. 


I thought playing water polo and hanging-out by the pool in my speedo would give me a chance. But No!

Come on dumb prophecy! Do what you're supposed to do.

My heart leaped every time I saw her, but I had no idea how this boy―girl thing was supposed to work. Nervous and scared I began to think that it had to happen either through osmosis or that she had better do something. Take charge. Be on the advance because my brain had been gamma-rayed by aliens and turned to jello every time I get within 20 feet of you Andrea.

COME ON PHYLLIS DILLER!

COME ON ANDREA! Marilyn? Theresa? Do something―help us out here. I'm too retarded.

I had been blown-up, electrocuted, the oxygen had been cut off from my brain, wrestled alligators, left behind at The Dead Sea been fired as an Altar-Boy and my self-image is so low I could stand up and walk underneath a wiener-dog.

HELP ME. I am in a quest to find out what love is all about and can't even say hi to a girl!  RIGHT?

               (pictured―6th grade, when I first fell in love)








I'd sue Phyllis Diller but she was my mom―what? Ughhhhhh  Can't even get that straight.

Dig your hole Lawrence Welk. I've got hormones problems, brain issues and have my own pit that I'm trying to dig out of and besides I've got to head off to swim practice with Phyllis Diller's step-son! (pictured here in this Saint Monica swim team photo).            

 THE IRONY of it all.






BTW the picture on top of this post (at least temporarily) was the end of a fishing trip with Dad. With fishing poles in hand this was the moment the older boys concocted the plan to catch the biggest land-shark in the history of the world (photo credit Donny Blaser)






Wolf Man Jack (photo credit) Facebook post

Welk Show (photo credit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lawrence_Welk_Show#/media/File:Mancinimercer003.jpg

Wilshire and Ocean 1970 (photo credit) Posted in "You Know Your From Santa Monica" by Michael Hayasha

The Hunger Games and Thanksgiving at the Dahlins

Thanksgiving at the Dahlins

After doing the "marble thing" a couple more times and throwing up in both instances, my dad realized that his speech-improvement-method wasn't working out so good for me. He didn't like the smell of vomit on his dress-shoes. And Kurt never did figure out why his baggie of precious marbles smelled like barf.

It's November 1970 and my first season of water polo had come to an end at Saint Monica's. I had to change in and out of my speedos under my tee-shirt to hide the fact that I was still waiting for stupid puberty to finally have its way. Mom or Dad―I don't know whose genetic predisposition I inherited for being a late bloomer, but it was definitely a curse.









I began building new friends on the Water polo team with Loui Coda,

Kevin McCaffery,




and that genius nerd from Topanga who was in my advanced math class a year earlier―James Moore.

And also the kid who played football "Pickles." This was my nick name for Alex Delgadillo who fed me lunch every day i.e. the pickles on the top of his daily lunch-hamburger and who also helped me do my history homework for Brother Michael's class.  Speaking of pickles Thursday is Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving is a big day in the Dahlin House.

Sis Lennon (mother of the Lennon Sisters) prepares a home cooked meal every single day, 364 days of the year EXCEPT for Halloween. This is when all the Lennons would meet and set up for the haunted house -- the only day the Lennon's ate McDonalds and the only day Aunt Sis did not cook. 

By this late stage in our house and with the various coming and goings of the Wolf Pack, however, Thanksgiving was just about the only day of the year that my mom cooked! She got up early and stuffed the giant bird while working hard all day in the kitchen with Mary and Karin: 

Mashed Potatoes, green beans, yams with marshmallows, and canned cranberry―a true feast even bigger than the one that takes place in Whoville at Christmas.  I would spend two days cleaning up the first floor―sometimes raking everything from the entry, living room, and dining room into a ginormous pile and sift through the rubble. Setting up a piece of plywood on the pool table in the dining room and moving the hospital bed to the backyard―we were ready for Dahlin-sized festivities. And when I say festivities, I mean the hilarious festival and comical cacophony of chaos―that made for such a great day.  

What contributed to the magnitude of this Comedy of Errors was not only the shear madness of the Dahlin's trying to out do each other in the competition of story-telling by adding flare and personal embellishments to stories like Salton Sea or the daring rescue attempt at Kings river  President Johnson and the snapping turtles, Tony chasing our runaway alligator down Harding Avenue or, of course,―the monkeys and the infamous day of the Dahlins at the LA zoo but was also due to the extent the guest list.  Or should I say the lack of a guest list.

Invites were a free-for-all which drove my mom crazy. 

Mom always hoped we could do something "normal" for once. She gave us the "Why-couldn't-we-be-more-like-the-Lennons" speech so many times that most of us could repeat it word for word―sometimes a Dahlin sibling would even lip the words in perfect sync behind her back. 

She so desperately wanted us to open presents one at a time like the Lennons while the onlookers gave a nod of appreciation and soft golf-clap before the next gift was opened but had giving up on that, knowing that our Christmases were doomed to look more like a free-for-all of sharks on a whale carcass as we came home from midnight mass―jumped into the pile and began shredding them to the bone faster than a plague of locust. 

BUT at Thanksgiving, she still had one goal which was to control the mayhem by attempting to control the the number of people.

Dad and Mom

Nana

Tony and Patti

Karl and Laura

Bob

Pinky

Kris and Vicky

Kurt and Irma

Erick and another Vicky  

Mary

Mark

Karin 

Gigi

Bruce

Susie

John Masson

Tom Wetlz
Nick Pappas (a Republican hippy - Go Figure-  no one in Venice is Republican)... 

         ...and the several seasonal stragglers who were bound to show up.  

26 was the absolute maximum number of mouths mom was planning to feed this year. Dad thought that 26 was only a suggestion, since mom didn't invoke the "under-pain-of-mortal-sin" clause. He proceeded to open his mouth by inviting everyone he came in contact with two days prior to Thanksgiving meal.  

When we were out in front wrestling we could hear mom scream..."And who else..," followed by some words good Catholics weren't supposed to say.

My dad invited his best friend Pat Lennon to stop by for The Hunger Games. (pictured to the Left)

He invited the homeless stalker in our neighborhood―Jim Andel. He invited his lonely hermit-friend Roy Spengemen, Jack Underwood got an invite along with the spooky dude in the black "Quaker" hat, who we called, "The Quaker" (pictured below with hands in the air).                                                                                                                  









The Alligator was safely locked away up stairs and behaving like a Good Dinosaur. 

Walter Daniels would eat at home and come by―Nick Pappas was sure to show up and Terry Walker who would eat at the Lennons  was sure to show up for the fun-filled food-feeding frenzy.

The Dahlins at Thanksgiving was the greatest show on earth.   

It meant the hippies would assemble in the backyard in the hutch-hut to get their munchies on. It meant wrestling in the front yard. Touch football in the street with Tommy Blaser and Jeffry Lennon AND VIKING CROQUET(you don't even want to know).  It also meant that Kurt would silently pass gas and crop-dust - clearing an entire room in less than 2 seconds.

It meant an occasional food fight...laughter, lots of fun and nobody wanted to be left out. I wondered what a normal thanksgiving looked like at the Coda mansion in Brentwood at the Arnold's who lived behind us or at James Moore's house who lived at the top of Topanga―those poor people.

We were the craziest house in Venice and every regular person in all the normal families wanted to be at our house.

Happy Thanksgiving... to the 55, 630 people from 92 countries who have checked in and visited this blog!


  from Markie D

Picture credit - Poster for an 1879 production on Broadway, featuring Stuart Robson and William Crane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Comedy_of_Errors