Protective Custody; Fire; the Fight with the Mad-Man!

Sept 1, 1969  (continued)

At the Lennon house things got crazy that night. Gunshots had been fired...so the Secret Service detail - frantically scrambled into action calling all the Lennons to take cover downstairs in the add-on that was now a family room.  The gunshots they heard (or what they thought were gunshots) were not far from the Lennon house and posed an imminent threat.

BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM... the loose windows at our house rattled from the series of gunshots or explosions or from whatever was going on across the street.

The noise woke up everyone on Harding, on Grandview, on Naples, on Coeur d'Alene, on Angelus Pl and even those on Crestmore... One giant explosion followed by other loud pops that sounded like gun shots.

AGAIN, this was in the wake of the Charles Manson murder spree and right after the murder of Bill Lennon.

A detail of Agents were stationed in the Lennon house for their protection from the murderer who was still at large and considered extremely dangerous. In high alert they drew their weapons and called for backup. These trained Officers were not about to take any chances and locked-down all 22 of the Lennons who had been staying in the Harding House under protective custody.

Meanwhile, black ugly smoke had begun to billow and blow in a slow ominous crawl from the Fraternity House that was now a  blazing inferno eastward on the slight ocean breeze across the Tripps and the Nargies - over the Saint Mark's nunnery (the convent) - over the Daniels - over Bob and Jeanette Lennons house that soon engulfed the Lennon Sister's house on the way to the Smiths, Saint Marks Rectory that moved slowly east across Lincoln Blvd.



Was this a ploy? Was this Chet Young or followers of Charles Manson trying to create a diversion to "smoke-out" the Lennon clan on the corner.  One of the officers on duty at the Lennon house, went outside to investigate only to be ambushed on the front lawn of the Tripps (which was directly next door the the grand turn-of-the-century house that was now ablaze in flames). The officer who had been tackled was now engaged in a life-and-death hand to hand combat on the lawn directly next to something that looked and sounded just like something you'd expect to see at the war zone in "Vietnam."

In the violent altercation, there was a tussle for the officer's gun, - the poor policeman looked like he was outmatched by the crazy guy who had attack him and wrestled him to the ground.

My dad, who had served in World War II, and I had both jumped up in a flash - he because of his service in the War and me because of  the PTSD from my service as baby boy to the Dahlin-hippie-Wolf-Pack.




I threw off my boxing gloves...(that's another story),climbed out my window, onto the carport roof and beat all of my other brothers outside. They thought the gun-shot-noise was my Staff-Sergeant dad beating the ceiling with a boom handle because it was street cleaning day and buried their heads...(Blog Post - 7/1/2013  street cleaning circus PS this is the true story for all you Venetians who want to know the real history of why they began street cleaning in Venice)

Who was the mad man on the Tripp front lawn?  Manson and his murderous cronies had still not been arrested yet and Chet Young was still on the loose!




Find out next time... One thing for sure - Harding Avenue was definitely not Mayberry and there was always something crazy going on... only this time there was a fight on the lawn between an officer and a crazy dude, people trapped upstairs in the burning inferno and now things had gotten really scary that Don Blaser had run outside in tightie-whities.

What's going to happen with the Lennons?
Does Don Blaser know he has no clothes on?
Will the hippies trapped in the "Fraternity House" get out alive?
Will my brothers sleep through all this excitement?
Will Leland or Tommy Blaser be blamed for this?

The Secret Service and Gunshots on Harding!

I have been trying to write the unbelievable, bizarre, incredible, "too-crazy-to-be-true" stories of my growing up years in chronological order the best I can remember.  I began this blog about a year ago - beginning by telling about my first day in 5th grade (as my class moved up from one end of Saint Marks grammar school to the other end of the school building) in Sister Godzilla's class.















That first day of 5th grade was after my wild family let the monkeys out of the LA zoo - 5/3/13
                   It was after my brothers had learned how to harness  electricity for inventive forms of sibling and
                      neighbor torture, which also happened to include the occasional visiting nun - 4/26/13
               ...It was also the summer my family left me at behind at Salton Sea that ended in a high speed                              Highway Patrol chase to Indio - 5/27/13                                                                                                ...It was after nearly a dozen broken bones and having my leg nearly severed completely off


I continued to work my way through stories about our notorious neighborhood pranks and dangerously stupid UFO launchings that almost burned down the Lennon Sisters house on the corner, fishing for the old grouch next door, and the improbable meeting of a lifetime that led us to cross paths with the President of the United States (LBJ) while on one of our wild adventures across country - 9/14/13






With 30,000  visitors from 86 countries around the world to my blog, I am now in that chronological telling of the history of the world - or the history of Venice or the history of Saint Marks or the history of Harding Avenue in the summer of 1969, just after having my 13th birthday.



(Pictured to left is 900 Harding Ave. Venice. CA. circa 1965 i.e. "The Fraternity House")




My last posting has to do with the tragic death of Mr. Lennon and the pursuing turmoil it presented to the Lennons as well as to our neighborhood with the confusion that was stirred up by media frenzy linking the murder of Bill Lennon to the recent La Bianca-Tate murder spree of Charles Manson and his cult followers. Turns out that the murderer, a disturbed psycho, by the name of Chet Young, had also expressed murder threats against President Johnson back when he was in office.  Thus, necessitating the invasion of the Secret Service to our street for protection of the Lennon clan.

What I found out in my visit to Branson last summer from Joey Lennon was the key to solving the timing of the Great Fraternity-House Fire. He and Billy Lennon told me the events that took place while they were in protective lock-down by the Secret Service that shed light on the exact timing of that event.  I had previously put this event in my blog early in 1969 (for choosing 1969 I get a B+  because no one I had talked to - who lived on Harding during the big fire - could agree on the exact year - let alone the exact time that it happened).

Joey and Billy Lennon, however, knew exactly when that fire took place. It was almost 45 years ago to this exact day.

Most of the Lennon family - including all of the Lennon Sisters, their husbands and kids had all come back to live in the big house on Harding Ave for their protection - because Chet Young had gotten away and was still on the loose.  From across the street where we lived, it looked like a hundred Lennons were crammed in there at the time- but what does a 13-year-old know...none-the-less, it was a big number that exceeded the number of Venice hippies, friends and strays who were crammed in my house.

Since I shared my memories on the big fire I have heard some stories of others who have shed more light from their perspective (including the Tripps, who lived right next door, and an actual person who told me about how they were trapped inside on the second floor of the fraternity house at the time of the fire).

Now what I would like to do, since there are many new people to my blog, is to paste all of that together with the new information in its correct chronological time frame that took place within weeks of the Bill Lennon murder during the time of the invasion of the Secret Service to our street on Harding Ave (at this exact time 45 years ago).

At the Lennon house things got crazy that night. Gunshots had been fired...so the policemen and Secret Service detail frantically scrambled into action calling all the Lennons to take cover downstairs. The gunshots they heard (or what they thought were gunshots) were not far from the Lennon house and posed an imminent threat.  BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM... the loose windows at our house rattled from the serious of gunshots or explosions or from whatever was going on across the street.

To Be Continued.

PS if you are reading this and have memories of that night, I would very much like to hear your recollection - value your input and would like include your memory of the event in the upcoming continuation of the big event - so please share in a comment below or on FACEBOOK and I'll add it into the story.

I'll Never Forget You Mr. Lennon: The Day that Rocked Venice

Star Date August 13th 1969

The bummer about my birthday being the middle of summer is that every time we took a family vacation it qualified, both - as my birthday party and as my birthday present. We would be grinding the volcanic pumice between our teeth that had blown into a piece of toast soaked in bacon-grease and someone would break out into a horrific rendition of happy birthday that sounded more like cats fighting in an alley.

  "...happy birthday dear Karl and Mark. Happy birthday to youuuuuuuuu."

The Dahlins were definitely not Lennons and nobody in my family could carry a tune nor cared to.

I was born on my second oldest brother's birthday.

 Being 6 and 7 and 8 and 9 and 10, I always complained. I wanted to have a "real" birthday party like all of the other "normal" kids at Saint Marks. But we were always gone to Kings River or Salton Sea at that time of year for our family vacation and my parents would say, "This trip is your birthday party" even though we were going to be there any way. It just didn't seem fair. Nothing was worst than the time they left me behind me behind at Salton Sea on my 11th birthday - you talk about a surprise party...boy was that unexpected birthday present(post 5/13/130. From then on, I figured I was lucky if they brought me back home to Venice with them - presents or no presents.  

Well this year, since I went on the Boy Scout Jamboree, our vacations for the summer was over and it looked like I would get a chance to be at home for once on my birthday and was anticipating a regular, good-old-fashioned birthday party.  I figured that I would get to have my friends over after Mass on Sunday and like my other brothers and sisters and like "regular people" do, we would have ice cream and cake and I would get to open some presents. To me, this was just as monumental as the astronauts landing on the moon a few weeks back.          
                                      "Markie D was going to have a real live birthday party.
                                       Markie D was going to have a real live birthday party.
                                       Markie D was going to have a real live birthday party."

I sang this in my head as I danced up and down the street on Saturday morning in anticipation of having a "real" birthday. Jeanette Lennon looked out her window and thought I was a little crazy, but it was all I could think about. I had arrived: Real friends. Real presents. Real cake.

But when that Sunday morning came the front pages of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the Santa Monica Evening Outlook were plastered with the tragic news of Mr. Lennon's murder yesterday at the Venice Golf Course. My little sister Karin, was over at the Lennon house yesterday playing with Annie in their backyard at the time the bad news had reached them.  Joey came outside to break the news and solemnly told her the second greatest understatement in history "Karin, I think you should probably go." The first greatest understatement being, "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the show?"

Our neighborhood was shocked! I know this wasn't global news. I know this wasn't as scandalous as Chappaquiddick or as sensational as the moon landing - three weeks ago, but this news was just as shocking to us and felt just as bad to our little, close knit neighborhood as JFK's assassination did 6 years ago.  

Sister Edith told us 7th graders, that if we missed Mass, it was a mortal sin and yet none of us felt very much like going this morning and I don't think the Pope was too upset that most of us on Harding Avenue didn't show up for church this morning.

Saturday night dozens of police cars began to show up and by Sunday morning we had cop cars parked up and down our street, along with reporters and a number of other mysterious vehicles.

The murderer had gotten away, but the Lennons knew who the prime suspect was right away. It was that deranged fan, Chet Young, from whom they had been receiving letters from for years. Actress Sharon Tate had been murdered less than a week ago and some of the newspaper people thought this murder was connected to the Charles Manson murders.

Chet Young had made death threats against President Johnson (back while he was still in office) believing that the President should have made Mr. Lennon allow Chet to marry Peggy, one of the four famous singing Sisters.


Since there were so many conflicting reports and since this involved the past President of the United states and possibly involved Charles Manson and might have been part of his serial, killing-spree of famous people the secret service sent a detail to our neighborhood to protect the entire Lennon family.

All of this to say... that I didn't get a birthday party BUT this time it was OKAY!  I was too young and too stupid to know what to say to my friends: Joey and Annie and Kippy. All I knew was that I felt sad for them and for their family. I had really liked Mr. Lennon. At 53 he was way too young to leave us. I remember him and the training he would do with his kids down Naples. I remember him driving down the street in his station wagon and seeing if any of us kids wanted to jump in and go see something that had caught on fire. I remember the time he took us down to the SLIDES at Venice Beach and we climbed under the fence and slid for free!  I remember the cherry bombs and the tin cups he would blow up out of the water in the backyard. I remember him threatening Leland to stop "hot-rodding" down our street. I remember how intense he was and also his sense of humor. I'll always remember some of his shenanigans during the big 4th of July shin-digs in their backyard.  

This was a bad day for Harding Avenue: Sorry friends, I'm going to miss your dad too!  

This was definitely not the "best birthday ever," but one I'll always remember - and one I'm glad I didn't have!  

...I guess we'll never get that race between Danny and Tony, but seeing how tony had broken the land speed record when he chased down that gator (last post) there really was no reason for the "match up of the century."

It wasn't the Somnambulant and it wasn't Bill Lennon

(Continued from 1-18-14) I stood across the street and felt the dry heat of the flames as the old mansion continued to burn. The smell of the smoke did not betray the age of the old place. It didn't smell of new pine, but like old wood mixed with ancient dust that was being incinerated. The chaos of a ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST continued to loom as I watched the all the aimless and dazed half-naked zombies who had been rescued by Mr. Blaser in his underwear - and by my tribe - to which I was very proud, but also a tad bit miffed for making me stay across the street "out of harm's way."



It was dangerous as cars continued to catch on fire and blow up... I don't want to sound morbid - this was indeed another sad chapter in the story of Harding avenue...but I can't lie, it was entertaining to see O' Mr. Nargie behaving like a teenage cheerleader at football game, as he frantically rooted on Bobby Tripp who was on the roof with a garden hose (with very low water pressure) trying his best to keep the Nargie -Tripp duplex from catching on fire.

I made up cheers and began - chanting them to Tommy who was standing next to... as though they were Mr. Nargie's words... who was across the street moving back and forth like a crab and waving his arms up and down for the home team.

"Douse it out...Douse it out...WAY OUT! Keep it back... Keep it back...Way back!  Douse it out...Keep it back...Put it out...WAY OUT!"  I had Tommy in stitches... until I was interrupted.

Pat Lennon looked down at me, shook his head and said, "You're weird!"

The first thing that came to my mind was, 'of course I was - I've been electrocuted...left behind...tied to trees...buried in pits...choked...knocked out...attacked by a rooster...shot with needle-tipped arrows...wrestled an alligator...had to contend with the revenge of Sister Godzilla in the fifth grade and suffered oxygen loss to the brain...OF COURSE I'M WEIRD! Hello!?'

Then it suddenly dawned on me who it was. It was Pat Lennon!  I looked up at him sadly and asked what he was doing here.

"Climbed out of a window and escaped!" he said. "Couldn't miss this."

"Where is everyone else" I asked.

"Danny snuck out with me and is around here somewhere, but everyone else is under lock-down by the Secret Service. When the cars started blowing up, man, they thought it was gun shots and went ape on us."

"Hey, Pat...I'm sorry!" That's all I could say... and probably all I needed to say!  Like I said before this was the third biggest crime to ever happen in the history of Venice California. The first biggest crime happened just a couple weeks prior to this with a bunch of craziness when a lunatic who had been stalking the Lennon Sisters also made assassination threats against the President of the United States. In trying to be sensitive to that event, I'm not going to go into that story at this time... but suffice to say that with a Secret Service detail at the Lennon House and with the entire the family under protective custody we can cross Billy and Joey and Kippy and all the other Lennon's off the suspect list.

1) My Brothers - the Wolf Pack
2) Mr. Blaser and his whitey-tighties 
3) My Dad - AKA Mr. D
4). Mr. Lennon
5) Frank Nargie
6) Rita Nargie
7) Sea-Shell
8) Leeland the hot-rodder
9) Weenie Tripp and Family
10) Johnny Gillemonster
11) Tommy Blaser the Somnambulist
12) Four boys dressed up as girls
13 The Saint Mark's Nuns
14 Walter Daniels
15 The Anti-War Crazies
16 the Owner of the property.

For my brothers...they were out in Wall Drug doing some hippie stuff back there and had not sent up any... UFO's i.e. flaming dry-cleaning bags...recently so it wasn't them. They go off the list (Blog Post 8/24/13). As for the four boys who had dressed up like girls - even though everyone's feelings were hurt, Tommy and I had seen them through the fence in the backyard smoking leaves from their precious "Mexican Tomato Plants" in those funny shaped cigarettes.



1) My Brothers - the Wolf Pack
3) My Dad - AKA Mr. D
6) Rita Nargie
7) Sea-Shell
8) Leeland the hot-rodder
12) Four boys dressed up as girls
13 The Saint Mark's Nuns
15 The Anti-War - peace-loving Crazies
16 the Owner of the property.

My oldest brother, Gustav was out in the Rat Killer racing Leeland and had brought home a pocket crammed full of cash to prove it...so that accounts for all of my brothers and unfortunately, also gives Leeland an alibi.

1) My Brothers - the Wolf Pack
3) My Dad - AKA Mr. D
6) Rita Nargie
7) Sea-Shell
8) Leeland the hot-rodder
12) Four boys dressed up as girls
13 The Saint Mark's Nuns
15 The Anti-War - peace-loving Crazies
16 the Owner of the property.

I pretty sure dad wasn't involve - he had just driven in late from West Covina selling new, all-electric gold-medallion track homes out there so that eliminates all the Dahlins.

3) My Dad - AKA Mr. D

I was now down to four possible suspects, although Ricky Tripp came over to where Tommy and I had been standing and said something about his mother smiling a lot with all the firemen running through their house. I didn't know what to make of that - but I still don't think she set it on fire.

1) Rita Nargie
2) Sea-Shell
3) The Anti-War, draft-card-burning, peace-loving Crazies
4) The Owner of the property.

As for Johnny Gillemonster... I really liked him as a suspect and when I went over to his house with my detective note pad... and  interrogated him... this is when he told me the of story of the dog-poop payback - did jive with me - so I'll tell you that story next time.

In the meantime...Chewbacca had discovered a dead body at the foot of the 60 year old palm tree which turned out to be the only fatality of the Great Fire of '69.  Chewbacca fell to his knees, leaned over the corpse and cried.

Until next time..my friends...Gud välsigne och Hej då