Holy Indignation at Cockrell's "Full Moon!"

(Here is what I didn't tell you last time). While the top brass from the other troops were all on one side of the scout bus (which was stuck on the bridge) talking things over Pinky Parlette and our two scout masters, Cockrell pulled down his pants and pressed his bare-bottomed ham-cheeks against the porthole window on the other side - "mooning" the Boy Scout "cake-eaters" on the other side.

12:00 noon: This grotesque, teen-ritual took place out of sight of the fretting leaders on the other side who where trying to figure a way of getting the truck unstuck. A small percentage of the boys - clapped and cheered because they thought it was funny (as most normal adolescent kids should). The rest, cringed in holy indignation, as if this wasn't something that guys this age were supposed to do and acted as if we had broken one of the Ten Commandments of Boy Scouting or something sanctimonious like that.

Little Wiener was on the inside of the Scout Bus and was watching the "Cockrell-show" from the front side and was a little too happy about it - which creeped out Jeffery and the other kids who had lost interest in tormenting poor Ray. Everyone agreed that Little Wiener's excitement earned the little twerp a pink-belly. It had been about two weeks since his last one and he was due for another one!

3:00pm: Anyway, several of the kids from Troop 34 broke the guy code by snitching on Cockrell to their Scout Master when they returned to "camp-regular-kid."

4:00pm: Cockrell got called into a court marshal tribunal which had sanctioned him to solitary confinement inside the cabin tomorrow while the rest of us "got to" hike to "Fossil Ridge."

5:00pm: Jeffery Lennon was so upset about the whole thing that went around calling the snitches, "bottle-feeders," and incited the rest of the kids of our troop in agreeing that these mamma's boys deserved no less than the full wrath of Troop 32 (for which we were prepared in advance - hence the snakes).

8:00pm: After dinner and just before the snipe hunt, we began making plans and decided that this would be the inaugural Camp Slauson "White-Angel Raid" like we did at the National Jamboree last summer at Farragut State Park in Idaho (only this time with underwear on). Cockrell was so upset in what he felt was unjustified persecution that it had somehow earned him the right to go on the raid naked tonight and pleaded his case. Senior Patrol leader, Ray Vandenmark, had to calm him down and talk him out of going in his "birthday suit" all over again. (I'm telling you - this kid just wanted to have his pants off all the time. He had the mind of an eight-year-old in the body of a 22-year old - I'm not sure that is the best mix).

8:42pm: We gathered the ropes, the snakes and waited until after midnight, while Jeffery anxiously walked around in circles, rubbing his hands together like a kid at Christmas - doing a personal chant "down with the bottle feeders, down with the snitches."  He was so excited - he wasn't too far away from earning his own "pink-belly."

So we had crossed the bridge, crashed into a tree, crushed the front of the truck, skewered Ray, Cockrell had exposed himself and we had upset the Boy Scout cosmos. By now, Jeffery was sure that this was going to be one of the best camping trips of his life (that wasn't saying much - he never went camping with this family).  He was thrilled, but sad that his cousins Tommy Blaser or Michael or Kevin or Kippy Lennon weren't here with him to enjoy the more "Dahlin-side-of life."

9:30pm: We did the dreaded snipe hunt - and it appeared that even Jeffery liked being out late at night, in the dark, crawling around in bushes and snapping his thumbs inside a brown paper lunch sack. "A man who protest too much, gives himself away."  Apparently Jeffery had bought into the legendary snipe hunt "hook, line and sinker" by vehemently defended his claims that he had actually caught one of the fictional bird-related-rodents which had subsequently managed to escape by eating a hole in the bottom of his brown lunch bag.

I hated the insidious, late-night ritual and hated that Jeffery wasn't the least bit scared - perhaps it was because he was too excited about the raid to think about things like Albinos or Zombies or rattlesnakes that lived in the bushes. On the way back from the snipe hunt we tackled Little Wiener, wrestled him to the ground - pulled up his dirty uniform shirt and with a hundred hands patted his soft, white belly until it turned a bright shade of pink! Every "newbee" got one on their first camp out. He had already gotten his fair share, but seemed to keep earning one every time he acted like one of those namby-pambies from Mar Vista or Santa Monica.

12:33am:  16 of us kids sneaked out with nothing on, but our tight, white undies and some duck tape on our chest and back in the symbol of a cross - we looked like some bizarre tribe that was ready to participate in the crusades...only different... or a mutant group of Scots under William Wallace (we were just happy to be going into battle to defend the honor of our troop - and happier that we were near naked - and happiest about the plan).

Like a bunch of squeaky mole rats we took the rope and tied it to the front tent stakes of Troop 34's tents and wound it around from tent to tent 4 inches above the ground. We had another group doing the same thing over at the campsite of the troop from Santa Monica.  We had Little Wiener and Mosquito Bait doing the same thing at our campsite so it wouldn't be so obvious who perpetrated the crime. Lastly, we had two members stealthily sneak into a fourth camp and leave it completely untouched excepted for lots of evidence that was planted to frame them: i.e. end rolls of duck tape... pieces of rope... and other such paraphernalia.

1:02am: When everything was set... and all of our mole-rats in underwear had returned to our camp and put their clothes back on - over the duck-tape tribal markings, I turned a snake loose in one of the tents of the guys from Troop 34. At the same time, Kissel was busy loosing the other harmless garter snake in one of the tents of the guys from the Santa Monica troop.

We ran like "H   E  double toothpicks" back to our campground and waited! AGAIN...Cockrell had asked if he could be pretend to be sleeping in the tent naked, so that when the mayhem broke out he could run around like a chicken with its head cut off in full view of all the scouts at Camp Slauson. That idea was quickly squelched and the two other boys in his tent decided they would sleep outside under the stars.

1:15am: Giggling, in hushed excitement and whispers - We Waited!

And, I do have to tell you this: it worked out better than than anything we could have imagined - EXCEPT for poor Ray (the luckiest and the most unlucky person in the world).

1:37am: "The screech that was heard around the world!"



             (Pinky pictured in his Pajamas)

(p.s. no snake was harmed. Unfortunately, I can't say that about Ray and some of the boys in the other camps - hehehe).

Whose Brilliant Idea was this? Pit of Despair!

There is a crazy lady out there named Margaret Sanger who says that "The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of it younger infant members is to kill it." I hope nobody listens to her. Buried in this pit with cinder-blocks going up around me, I pray that my tribe hadn't been listening to her gobbledygook - if they had, then surely this was the means for my family to lovingly downsize.

The amused hippy clan was sweating and moving and stacking as they continued to build this concrete block Igloo of Death around me.  The only consolation I had was knowing that the Veloci-Rooster could no longer peck out my eyes if they released it from the chicken coop - at least that I was spared from.  With the bandanna around my mouth I couldn't scream for help and being buried up to my neck in this pit, I was completely defenseless and helpless.  In the words of Lee Dorsey, "Lord, I'm just so tired. How long will this go on?"

Little did they know that I was taking names, for if they murdered me, I would come back as a ghost and haunt each one of them.  Where do people come up with ideas like this?  Where in the world did Joseph's brothers (Joseph was a younger brother of a large family in the bible - he was the guy with the coat of many colors)... where did they come up with the idea of putting baby brother in a pit, making him out to be dead and then selling him off to the "Salton Sea-ites" (I think it was Salton Sea-ites - it was some people group like that).  WHY?  

Did the evil inspiration for this come from smoking the leaves of those "Mexican Tomato Plants" in those funny shaped cigarettes. Was it jealously?  Anger? I didn't do anything to them. Was it a feeling of powerlessness and the need to feel powerful so the Wolf Pack had to pick on the weakling of the bunch to feel that way?
I don't know.

The Devil?
I don't know.

The heart?
I don't know.

Some kind of insecurity?
I don't know.

Mass hysteria?
I don't know.

Agent Orange?
I don't know... Wait - this one I do know. Couldn't blame "agent orange" because none of these hippies ever went to Vietnam - they all burnt their draft cards - remember?

All I do know is that an 87-pound 12-year-old was no match for 15 long-hair draft-card-burning anarchist and that I'm stuck in a pit.  As I have said, I have survived being buried before, but this time - things were different. This time it was getting more and more out of control and getting more and more complicated with the ominous stacking of those nasty old blocks.

I just hoped that I had as many lives as that stupid cat, "Lazarus" who was inside the house watching my doom from the kitchen window - "lucky cat."



Around and up went the bricks - this was WORSE!

They were puffing on those hippie-cigarette thingies happy and evil. Working hard and enjoying every moment of it. With all the dirt that was piled up around me and with the pressure around my chest so great I could barley move my rib-cage every time I gagged (because of the rag over my mouth) and when my body convulsed in fear.

I was a Swede and I would not cry!  Though my insides ached from betrayal and from being cut out of the pack - (disowned, I guess) I was trained not to show weakness.  I was glad my eyes didn't leak, because I don't dare allow them to see me as a victim.  This would only make them happier!   No! I would not grant them that satisfaction... instead I was determined to die like Sir William Wallace - known to be Brave Heart.

I would let them murder me and though my inside person was a 12 year-old-boy desperately longing to find the meaning of love - disappointed, abandoned (once again), and betrayed by my own people - My outside person would die like a man!  I would not betray the Viking code...I would not cry!  I would not allow them that satisfaction.

HA! I win!

The next part of their evil  master-plan came in the form of a old yellow tarp!   A big piece of moldy plastic that was used to protect all the decaying boxes of National Geographic magazines from the seldom rain was now being proudly paraded around the backyard as a athlete would triumphantly display their country's flag after wining an Olympic gold medal.

I was deathly afraid of suffocation and thinking about what they might used this decrepit old yellow piece of plastic for, and it completely freaked me out.  It couldn't get any worse...right?  Well it did.  Little did I know how brilliant the Wolf pack was. Evil can be very brilliant, if you don't believe me - ask Hitler.

Could it get worse? I didn't think so, but it did. The yellow tarp was thrown over the top of the "Igloo of Death"  And that wasn't the end of the diabolically brilliant plan, there was more!  Much more!

"Lord, I'm tired and scared and hurt and was wondering if you can tell me how much longer this will go on?"