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 Reluctant Reptile Wrangler

When I was down at the Dahlin House for my Brother's Memorial service I gained a couple more stories and felt that this would be a good time to tell you this one.  This funny story was told to me by Jack Cano (pictured to the left). We walked from the backyard around to the front yard to the exact place where this particular event took place - some hundred million years ago when dinosaurs and hippies co-existed.

(Pictured below is Jack telling me the story)

Just in case you haven't been following along with the blog from the beginning; the back drop for this humorous incident began years earlier when the Dahlin boys began their rather extensive reptile collection.  We had cages built into the walls of the older boy's third-story bedroom and cages built into old TV consoles we had converted into desert habitats. We had rattlesnakes and king snakes and garter snakes and the infamous Iguana Del Diablo (blog post 8/1/2013) up on the third floor. We had the alligator (BLOG post 11/1913), a giant bullfrog and a snapping turtle out back in the pond and our rather illustrious collection of four legged reptiles down stairs in the converted TV sets.

Most normal people sat around their TV sets in the afternoons watching cartoons or Bewitched (or the crazy Smith girls around the corner who had their eyes glued on Tom Jones in his glittery jacket and tight pants - Gross!) but the not the Dahlins. We were far from normal!

Instead, we sat around (like in the picture above) crammed in front of one of our gutted TV sets and watched the crazy world of the big, ugly, black chuckwallas, leopard lizards and horny toads climb around the desert habitat as if we were watching TV.  I remember one time how one of the hippies came in from the "Hooch Hut" from out back with eyes at half-mast, practically glazed over and desperately wanted to see what everyone was watching on TV and adjusted the TV antennae... saying "Dude, what channel is this bro?" Thinking we were all watching a miniature version of Godzilla.

As you know, we had inmates escape all the time - NO, not the hippies- but members of our precious reptile collection....i.e. Iguana Del Diablo...our alligator (that's another story). Our cages seemed to be especially vulnerable to snakes of all sizes and color and it was unusually upsetting to the entire neighborhood whenever a rattler managed to make a jail break. though this was a frequent occurrence at our house, I'm not gonna lie - whenever a rattler got out it freaked us out also.

On this particular occasion the glazed eye'd hippies were watching another episode of mini-Godzilla - feeding the Chuckwallas some meal-worms when one of them shot out past the foul mouthed mynah bird in the entry and took a flying leap off the front porch. This time the prehistoric creature did not head across the street to the Tripp's house (I guess, Iguana Del Diablo must have told it that it was not a good place to hide), instead it slid under a car and eluded the Wolf Pack who had been running around like the Three Stooges only there were about 16 of them. "The 16 Stoodges" Wow I'd see that in a theater.


After a short while the Wolf Pack had lost interest and most had staggered on back to where they come from.  Karin and I were still playing outside and that is when we saw it!  The grouchy old lady next door was out gardening in the front yard grouched over a hedge she had been was trimming with some rusty hedge clippers that were so old I sure Noah and his kids had used them way back in the day.

And there right below her bent-over-behind was the chuckwalla. I think that old lizard mistook her butt for a big rock or something. I was afraid for a couple reasons. Chuckwallas liked to squeeze themselves in tight places between rocks....do you know what I'm trying to say? I could see that thing making a run at her moo-moo and trying to fit himself in a spot where the sun don't shine.  I really didn't have too much against 'O Enda and although I knew that it couldn't end well for her, I figured if that chuckwalla ended up where I thought it might, It certainly wouldn't end up well for the escaped felon - the poor thing.




So Karin and I hatched a rescue plan...she would distract the old lady and I would wrangle the giant ugly behemoth.

Just as we put our plan into action, Jack Cano was coming back from Ralph's liquor store with a six pack and saw the whole thing. Karin tapped Edna on the shoulder and looked up with those puppy dog innocent eyes of a 6-year-old and I flung my weaselly little body right under Edna's butt, rolled across the ground and came up with chuckwalla tightly clenching to my chest with one hand and holding its jaws shut with the other hand.  I walked away wiggling and squirming and wrestling with Godzilla scratching at my chest and Edna turned around and snarled, "What's wrong with him?"

Karin looked up at her and said in reply, "That's just Mark...everyone says he's special!" smiled walked away.  Legend has it that Jack dropped his six pack and had to make another trip after trying to describe everything he just witnessed to Karl.

Just another weird day on Harding Avenue!





Here is to you Smith Girls!

For you android users
Tom Jones: What's New Pussy Cat

Bob Dylan's secret track: Markie D...Not As It Should Be!

Longest Day Ever Continued:

We now pause for station identification...  

You would think that with being left behind at Salton Sea and nearly erased (blog post), shot with arrows, electrocuted, knocked-out three times a week by being squeezed on the temples (blog post), living in a house run by the inmates of the asylum-  i.e the WOLF PACK (that's my Viking older brothers); betrayed and shoved into the hamper of death(blog Post), chased by Jerry and having to throw-up everyday (as a sole means of self-protection) that the poor little guy, Markie D, would end up psychotic, if he somehow managed to survive at all.
 




The Dahlin's made the Addams Family appear normal!











         As you can see- they had nothing on us!






Add to that -  the trauma of being singled out by the Nuns at the Catholic school, who took a special interest in paying back the last-born-male of this dysfunctional tribe for all the torment that his brothers had inflicted over the past ten years.

It doesn't take rocket science or a advanced degree in psychology to understand that it was no wonder that by the end of the first week of fifth grade - he had trust and focus issues, learning disabilities among other things. He had developed a slight stutter and other speech problems, he was afraid of the dark, gross smells and deathly afraid of suffocation.

Other than all this, the poor little was doing okay - having fun as long as he stayed on the run.

Bob Dylan was so intrigued by his story, that he wrote a bootleg song that was on the secret track of  Another Self Portrait album - simply titled: Markie D.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO759kxMCL8&feature=youtu.be 

Click on link (above) to listen!

I guess it's no wonder that the little guy's brain didn't work like it should be....  

Getting back to our regular programing: Next time "The Great Escape"