I Talked Cockrell out of Going NAKED!

The year is 1970


I got the ink off my face from being tattooed by Chewbacca. It's Spring - I was smitten and twitterpated like Bambi; still very much in love with "being in love" with Andrea, though still desperately wanting to know what this thing "love" is really all about.

I must put aside this quest momentarily and go with our Venice, Boy Scout Troop to Camp Slauson in Malibu for an early work-trip in preparation of summer!

Basically, it's a testosterone thing! Smelly kids that don't really shower, but once a week or so, herded into the back of our (now) infamous Troop 32 "Scout Bus" - a converted moving van that Ralph Nader would have said, was, "unsafe at any speed" because of the noxious carbon monoxide fumes that got sucked into the back.

Usually by the time we got to our destination whether Idaho or Malibu, we were like a bunch of wild hyenas who had already fought each other and were foaming at the mouth and ready to take on any other pack of wild animals.

I don't think there was anything about this particular "sweaty-toxic-smelly-fighting-work-trip that would get me closer to understanding the meaning of love.

Conceding on giving up on my quest for the meaning of love temporarily, I figured that this whole Boy Scout thing was just a way to even the playing field.

My next oldest brother up from me, was 4 years older than me and it went up to 9 years from there.  It wasn't easy fighting against a herd of 20-something-year-old Hippies. At least this way I got to fight against guys who were at least in a 4-year range of my age group!





Tommy Blaser couldn't go, because of the Hippy his mother thought we had killed with the pennies on the railroad track, but Jeffery Lennon anxiously anticipated the "Snipe Hunts" and was fully invested in whatever mayhem our troop would bring to the otherwise tranquil Boy Scout weekend in Topanga.
     
On the top of our list was Troop 34!  Boy, were they in for a surprise!

I had to reason with Dego and Steve and "Melvin Pervis" and "Mosquito-Bait" and Conklin and nix the idea of raiding the other troops in the middle of the night as the "Naked Angels." I think Cockrell (not a nickname btw) just wanted another venue to show off generous male endowment - like He had in Idaho last summer. Embarrassed, as a late-bloomer, I convinced the guys to go on the midnight raids in our underwear...AKA "THE WHITE ANGELS"

All of us swore to secrecy about the the snakes I had stolen from the cages upstairs on the third floor of my house of which we had no intention of releasing back into the wild... we had more sinister motives that involved the boys in the Mar Vista Troop!



(Pictured couple years later with Ray and Steve and Me - with the notorious "Scout Truck" in our front yard!)


Stay tuned until next time!  Havoc at Slauson

Normal isn't what it is all cracked up to be... Remember "You only dance on this earth for a short while."

The Pit of Despair and the Hippy Oxymoron

On Saturday, I saw one of the strangest sights I've seen in a long time. The lazy hippies were industriously working in the backyard.  Ha!  It was ironic... these guys digging a hole in the old sandbox play area.  It must have been important. They probably wanted to grow more "Mexican Tomato Plants" or something like that.  They seemed to be having a good time, but knew that I wasn't included in what-ever-it-was they were doing. 

At 12, I was still too young to be inducted into the ways of my older brothers and the hippie Wolf Pack! I wanted to feel a part of the tribe, but knew that was still a couple years off.

My leg was healing, I had returned to school and to kickball at recess and was interested in fitting in with my 7th grade friends and being noticed by the little cutie-pie I had my eyes on.  

My brothers were busy growing hair and burning draft cards and smoking.  I was a tenderfoot in the Boy Scouts and just tying to find my way through the world, trying figure out what life was all about and where I fit?

I didn't particularly care too much about grades. I didn't care too much about sports. I wasn't too motivated by anything except for survival and desperate to discover the meaning of Love. My life sounds like an old song from Sam Cooke

"Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology

Don't know much about a science book

Don't know much about the French I took

But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me too

What a wonderful world this would be

Don't know much about geography
Don't know much trigonometry

Don't know much about algebra

Don't know what a slide rule is for

But I do know, one and one is two
And if this one could be with you

What a wonderful world this would be"

                                                                         Android users Sam Cooke Wonderful life

I'm not sure that I had heard the word "Love," ever mentioned in my house. I called it the "L Word," because I was too embarrassed to say it in front of people or that I might get beat up if I used it. 

It was a foreign concept - and I figured that at the rate we were making progress on our NASA mission to land on the moon, that earthlings would know more about the foreign object some 239,000 miles away in the sky and conquer it - before I knew about this foreign concept that was right in front of me. I knew that the truth about love was out there somewhere - I heard about it... longed for it, but just couldn't quite make contact with it other than my brief encounters with Irene on Fridays (post 7/15/13 "20 Minutes with Irene").

Anyway, we had a great big area in our backyard that used to be a sand-play area. With the Veloci-Rooster defending its dominion territory, it has long since been forgotten.  But the long-hairs bagged the dreaded raptor(Blog Post 12/3/13) and had locked the hideous beast up in the chicken coop and now the hippie-types were working harder than I had ever seen them work before (many of them were not known for their sense of drive and ambition - other than Anti-War demonstrations). There they were stirred in delirious ecstasy digging a hole to the center of the earth for no apparent reason.

                            How do you spell OXYMORON?

I had no idea whether they were digging for lost treasure...archaeological finds from ancient ruins...remains of dead pets we may have buried there or old carburetors; no matter what their intended purpose - they were happy and passionate.  It was cute to see hippies -  both working and happy - that's not a sight you see everyday.   After watching the show for a while, I decided to make my way inside for lunch where I had to beat off the mangy cat - put up with with a few choice cuss words of the foul-mouthed Mynah-bird and find something in the refrigerator that wasn't covered in moldy green fuzz (which my dad claimed was good for us because it was penicillin). 

I had found some bread, cut off the green spots and popped it in the toaster when I heard the fire alarm clang on the back porch stairs.  I heard a thousand foots steps making their way inside the house, but smelled the brood before I saw them come around the corner. Bounding in my direction, I saw the hopeful gleam in their eyes, and the sudden light of epiphany about the purpose of the pit caused me to gulp in terror as my life flashed before my eyes.   

EXTRA, EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT IT: Baby Brother dies in Pit Accident!  

Accident my foot! I jumped, scrambled over the table, took out two of the hippies... went through the legs of a third - shot under another table in the dining room like a greased pig, stepped on the cat's tail and knocked over the Mynah-bird's cage before being brought down by four of them.  I could usually hold my own against about 3 or 4 of them, but not 15.  They tied me up, dragged me outside and I knew I was going to die. 

Conclusion: To a Dahlin Christmas (the nightmare on Harding Avenue).

(continued) 1:40 am Christmas Morning...during the unwrapping frenzy at the Dahlin house.


While crumpled wrapping paper was whizzing overhead, Pinky was sitting in his large overstuffed chair busily cracking the nuts in his Christmas stocking and putting the shells in one of the ten ashtrays that decorated the eclectic living room comprised of "Early-American-Thrift." 

The pile of colorful paper continued to accumulate to about waist deep and at precisely 1:43am the "Zombie Hand" of the" Ghost of Christmas-yet-to-come" sunk its sharp claws into Pinky's left ankle (I'm pretty certain it wasn't Casper the "Friendly Ghost."

Pinky shot up like the botched-launch of a missile fired from a submarine. Up he shot. Head dizzy from sedentary low blood pressure, the colossal human being spun on one leg as if he could come crashing down in any direction.

Leaning one way, the Wolf Pack made a mad scramble in the opposite direction to extricate themselves from the impact area of the seismic catastrophe. Then Pinky swayed the other direction which caused the troops to move again from one side of the room to the other. Like something out of a Three Stooges movie, this comical clambering took place three or four times before he finally blacked out and landed backwards into his chair with a giant crack that could be heard around the world. Cracked walnut and hazelnut shells scattered into the air like the fallout from a bomb and spread a layer on the wrapping paper and sifted through to the floor.

"We didn't want that chair anyway" Gustav said mockingly.

Even though everyone was thankful that Pinky had finally landed, I was still freaked out about "The Hand" and Matilda was still clinging to dad's head with her tiny hands cupped over his squished eyes which made him navigate through the whole episode blind.Her leg caught the tinsel covered tree and knocked it over...into the center of living room adding to the clutter and chaos.

Mom made us sound off one by one until we had discovered that the youngest Dahlin was not accounted for. missing. Kjersten was gone! Panic ensued, fearing that the baby girl of the family had been killed in the latest calamity.

Mom prayed to Saint Anthony!
Dad barked out orders!
The boys shuffled their feet through the massive wrapping pile in hopes of stumbling across something solid that might be a body. Occasionally, words not authorized by the Catholic church were spewed by angry lips every time one of the older boys stepped on the sharp fragment of a hazelnut or walnut shell.


I pretended to look behind the couch from where I was perched, as though, what I was doing was important. I wasn't about to let the Zombie Hand of death grab my leg. When Pinky landed, I could see the scratch marks on his leg and knew that there was something hidden under the paper and I didn't want to find out what it was.

"The Hand" could help itself to one of the older boys for all I care, but not me. No sir, not me! I nearly died two months ago at McIlliot's pool and it was no fun. My leg still ached where they took the stitches out so I was not any any mood to let a monster kill me on Christmas day.

Mom solved the mystery of "The Christmas Boogie man" and "The lost little sister" when she found Kjersten under a pile of wrapping paper in tears. Turns out that Kjersten had gotten buried under the accumulating pile of rubble and was crawling underneath trying to find her way out. Groping about in the dark, she discovered Pinky's ankle and clung on as though her life depended up on it.  Thankfully, when Pinky spun around, it flung Kjersten five feet away under the safety of the coffee table, which had been excavated by mom.

In "The wrapping paper debacle of '65" we had inadvertently scooped up the dog and threw it out with the trash. Since then, we have lost and broken many presents and lots of toys. Everyone was afraid that it wouldn't bode well for my parents if the local paper ran the story about child endangerment for throwing a kid away in the alley in a heap of multicolored wrapping paper.

This year though we lost only four presents, mainly because of the manhunt... we didn't, however, loose any children or throw away any pets. So all in all - other than the crushed chair and a downed Christmas tree it was a good Christmas at the Dahlin house   We laughed and we sang and we were loud.

And one of the Blasers next door heard the raucous at our house, crumpled a wad of wrapping-paper, looked around carefully to make sure a parent wasn't watching and tossed the crumpled paper into the middle of the floor. The words weren't verbalized, but that particular Blazer was getting tired of normal and wished they could be a little more like the Dahlins.

We just came from church and the Priest read  Luke 2:8-11 "And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord."

The way I look at things as a 12-year-old Religious-Philosopher was that if God could send His Son to earth to save people from their sins...then certainly he came to the right house. Surely there wasn't much good to be found in the Wolf Pack, so I figured that God should probably be down at the Lennon house looking for someone who did deserve to be saved - Lord knows we didn't.

But then, maybe that's what love is all about. True love wasn't just loving those who loved you...but loving those who don't care about you, loving those who hung you on a cross and loving people despite the fact that they hate you. God's love is perfect in that it loves those that don't deserve it.  I guess that's what unconditional love is all about.

And that is the message of Christmas - The One true God of the universe, Maker of all things - never giving up on us - relentlessly perusing us with His Love - even when we don't do a darned thing to earn one bit of it.

And maybe - just maybe, there is a little bit of Dahlin in all of us...and maybe not everyone is as normal or a perfect as we think!                                                  Merry Christmas