Where we Buried the Body

(Continued from the last post about the hippie we murdered and from the post before that about my sex education).


Anyway, running away from the Kingdom Hall on West Washington Blvd, I was very concerned about becoming emotionally attached to my captures. This is something that happens to Swedes don't ya know... There is no name for it yet, but trust me in the couple years it will be a diagnosed syndrome named after something Swedish - maybe after me or maybe after a city in Sweden like Stockholm!   Just saying!



Afraid of having positive feelings and have empathy towards our kidnappers - I didn't look back and ran straight up the street to the Troop 32 Boy Scout house followed closely behind by Tommy and Jeffery!

There we met up with the likes of Ray Vandenmark and Alan Scout, who were the two Senior Patrol Leaders on the infamous "Boy Scouts from Venice" raid on the National Jamboree in which we nearly killed that nerd kid, Bill Gates, from Seattle and were forever banished from returning to a Jamboree. Anyway, all the same hoodlums who were on that 1969, "fighting-cage-on-wheels," "diarrhea-revenge" road-trip were all there. It was a pretty derelict group and I had earned everyone's respect by fighting my way to the top (Special forces training, care of all of gnarly fights with my big brothers - thank you very much Wolf Pack!).

The grungiest kids were from the  "Golden Triangle" area of Venice whose parents were pretty persnickety by thinking they were better than those of us north of Washington Blvd as though they had somehow been annexed into the new Marina Del Rey. Even though they wrote Marina Del Rey on their outgoing mail - it was still 90291 and they still had Venice DNA, despite how much they pretended to be "Beverly Hills yacht owners."  Even though Steve Kissel was from that area - he was pretty cool and didn't smell as bad as some of the other kids.

Anyway, we get to the troop meeting late when the patrols were already outside in the backyard for the group activity.  I don't know what they did for the group activity over at Mar Vista Troop 34...(if I had to guess) probably something a whole lot tamer and a whole lot cleaner than what we were used to - crocheting maybe..hehehe.  We assembled out back in the dirt lot of the small property that was located between West Washington Boulevard and Washington Way (confusing right... "Sheeze" I guess someone ran out of names when they were naming all the streets in Venice) for a game of "Steal the Bacon."  This was a universal Boy Scout tradition...however, THIS WAS VENICE!  This was not like the normal kind of Steal the Bacon they played over in Mar Vista or in Beverly Hills or in little Billy Gates' troop in suburbia Seattle...  NO... this was knock down and drag out.

I loved it; it was Viking style.  Like something that took place on regular basis in our front yard (only with kids closer to my age).
                         









However, poor Tommy had the wet spot on his jeans and no matter how hard he tried to hide it, as soon as he got dragged across the dirt yard a couple times, it collected dirt that acted like a beacon - a neon sign in Vegas that said "Look, I Pee'd my Pants!"



The boys mercilessly "stop-drop-and-rolled" poor Tommy. When he got home, I got called in to testify about jumping off of metaphoric ten-story-roof and how I shouldn't have encouraged him to jump.







I did want to tell Mrs. Blaser that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Pope and the Catholics should all be proud... but that might led to having explain about the hippie we might have killed, so I kept my mouth shout about the railroad tracks, the pennies, the guitar...about the Kingdom Hall incident and just said,  "Yes, ma'am!"  afraid that she would ask us to show where we buried the body.

Jeffery kind of liked the thrill of the whole thing and wanted some more...He signed up to go to Camp Slauson in Malibu next week with us and decided to help me with my big plans of payback for Chewbacca. I warned him in advance by asking how he did with snakes and dead things. He said he wasn't sure, but wanted to give it a try. They run a tight ship over at Bob and Jeanette Lennon's house, but Jeffery sneaked over and that is when we put into play       "PLAN: X Y Z!"

AT ANY COST: The Induction Malfunction

As they tied the Boy Scout handkerchief around my eyes I could smell the salt air mixed with the dust of the backyard of the old Venice Scout House. With my eyes blindfolded my senses buzzed. I could hear the sound of the lone engine of the “Venice Short Line” that slowly chugged down West Washington Way and could also smell Alan, who hadn't bothered to bathe or use deodorant in about a month, and fought back against my urge to vomit.  In this initiation process, two Patrol Leaders spun me around trying to make me as dizzy as possible before pointing me in the direction of the backdoor that finally creaked open.

 

My heart jumped with anticipation about the secret induction ceremony into the Venice Boy Scout Troop 32. We were not the saints we had been years earlier. 

At twelve, I was youngest, smallest, weakest member of the Dahlin Wolf Pack. I was in by blood, but didn't really feel like I belonged.

I wasn't old enough to smoke with them in the hippie "hooch hut" out back or hang out with them when they went on those notorious hikes to Tuna canyon in Malibu. 

All I was to them was a toy, a thing to punch, or knock out, or electrocute, or bury, or shoot, or embarrass in front of friends and to experiment with.  

I lived in the same house, drove in the same cars, but always felt like an outsider looking in.    

I hoped this Boy Scout thing would be different, like a new tribe – a brotherhood where I might feel accepted and as though I belonged - crazy right? This is probably the same thing “Squeaky” Fromme was thinking when she signed up for the Manson Family. 

My head was still spinning when the Junior Assistant Scout Master put a dollar bill in my hand and whispered in my ear that I should not lose it, "at any cost."  Still reeling and off balance I ran into the door jam and eventually stumbled into the scout house that was dark and lit only by candles. Waiting inside were all the potential members of my new tribe. 

Walking through the short, dark corridor and into the center of the dilapidated old house on Washington Way (that had been purchased by the Venice Lions Club and giving to our Troop), I could feel the intensity of those anxious, sweaty, smelly boy scouts who had been just as eager as I was for this induction initiation.  Before reaching my destination someone grabbed the dollar bill out of my hand. I could smell the fiend and had every honorable intention of getting the dollar back “at any cost” (but figured that socking the kid in the face who stole it was something that I had to deal with later).

The handkerchief was pulled off eyes and I stood stunned before a tribunal of Senior Patrol Leaders and the two Scout Masters – Jim Serosi and Lyman Tapp as the entire troop looked in.  I don’t know why, but I felt like one of those Christians in the coliseum getting ready to be burned at the stake. 

“Mark Dahlin” said the skinny Scout master, “You were handed a dollar bill, were you not?”

“Yes sir,” I said nervously, yet with intense pinpointed eyes that I think might have frightened him.

In an effort to bail out the other leader, the heavier Scout Master continued, “Where is the dollar bill now, Mr. Dahlin? Will you produce it for us?” 

Biting my tongue and clenching my jaws, I had a couple options and I didn't want to blow my chance of finally belonging. If I said I dropped it, it would be a lie. Did they want a liar in the troop? Probably not! If I told the truth and said that someone stole it from me, then it would be like ratting-out one of my new tribal members and who would want a snitch to belong to this new brotherhood that I was so desperate for.

At home no one listened to me anyway, so blaming someone else was totally out of the question. Besides, the dollar bill was given to me and it was my duty to hang on to it. I had one job and I failed. I looked around the room at all the solemn eyes that stared disapprovingly in my direction.  I wanted in! I saw Steve Kissel, and Ronnie, and James Humphries, and David Cockrell, and Phillip Aylala, and Chronister and Dego, and Mark and Alan and Ray and had to figure a way to fix the mess I had gotten myself into. Then I remembered the words, “At all cost.”  Was that a challenge or permission to do whatever it took?  Maybe that’s what they wanted, I thought?  Maybe this whole thing was a test and felt that this new tribe wanted to see what I was made of. 

I looked around at the “Pillsbury Doughboys” and the “Theodore Cleavers” and the “regular” kids from regular families that hadn't been raised by a pack of wolves like I had. 

I looked at those soft kids who hadn't had to fight everyday and who hadn't been though the same crud I did… and did what any member of a Wolf Pack would do among sheep. I smelled the stench of the kid who stole my dollar bill, grinned at the two Scout Masters and hurled myself onto about six members of the Flaming Arrow Patrol. 

Down we went into a massive dog pile of flailing arms and legs. I had Ronnie around the neck in a choke hold and squeezed him until his fingers loosened the grimy grip he had on the coveted dollar bill. Phillip, a wrestler from the Venice High wrestling team, (who outweighed me by 50 pounds) was on my back and was unsuccessfully trying to peal me off of Ronnie.  

“At any cost”

“At any cost”

“At any cost” …were the words that kept going through my head.

The whole troop was on the floor fighting. It was a regular bar-room brawl. Yelling and screaming and making threats to cancel the National Jamboree trip planned for July, the Scout Masters and Senior Patrols Leaders pulled kids off one by one until they got down to Ronnie and me.

Leaving Ronnie’s limp body on the ground, I quickly stood my feet, straightened my uniform, smiled at the two men in charge, saluted and said, “I believe this is the dollar bill you guys are looking for.” Pleased with myself. I smiled as though this was all in the course of ordinary business, like it was straight out of the scout handbook or something. 

It took a tribunal, several phone calls to parents (and seeing that my dad was the President of the Lions club and Troop treasurer), I was admitted to my new clan. Pshaw I didn't get what all the fuss was about…this was like just an ordinary day at my house.  After all this was not your ordinary Boy Scout Troop –this was a Boy Scout Troop from Venice California and a Boy Scout Troop that was now infected by the youngest member of the Dahlin Wolf Pack.  

Just so you know, this long-held, sacred ‘rite of passage’ for Troop 32 was abandoned and exchanged for something much different, more friendly and a little tamer...JUST IN CASE another kid from Harding Avenue every decided to join the Troop. 

Our dysFUNtional troop was now headed out of Venice and into the the Midwest! 

 Beware World! 

Moon Landing and Diarrhea part I    

Jesus. Venice. And Night of the Living Dead!

Venice was not just a place, but an identity - something that is inescapable part of you. Good or bad, being from Venice gave you both pride and cringe.  Though only 12, by 1969 I had been across the country and back 3 times and seen my fair share of the "Purple Mountain Majesty and Fruited Plains."  Everywhere we went, "tourist" (we called them, derogatorily), were the people living in their own towns who look at the long hair of my brothers and invariable asked if we were from Venice. I learned early on of the stigma of being from Venice that gave my brothers such pride.  It was like that part in the Bible where it talked about Jesus being from Nazareth that said, "Can anything good come for Nazareth?"

Every time someone looked at my family and asked if we were from Venice, it was as if  they were saying, "Can anything other than hippies, free love, drugs Flower Power and Jim Morrison come from Venice?" We thought that was good, but it appeared they didn't share that sentiment. They might well have said to our face, "Can anything good come from Venice?"  So I guess I understood how Jesus felt when he heard those words.

The once glamorous Canals that hadn't been filled-in, began to rot and stink and the formerly cute bungalows of Abbot Kinney's dream were now run down shacks full of pot smoking hippies, unemployed artist, and raucous parties of the flower children of the sixties.

Several weeks after I broke my arm playing football in the street, I had been outside in my cast. Although it had Andrea's treasured signature, as well as some other seventh graders, it smelled and was pretty disgusting already. I was didn't give much thought to that fact that I had only been wearing one shoe when an older couple slowed down to a stop in front of our house and gawked. The old geezer cracked his window a couple inches, as if the air on Harding avenue was unsafe to breathe, and called me over.







His wife was holding some kind of Hollywood, or Beverly Hills, or Celebrity map or something and stared at our house - eyes wide in disbelief and mouth hanging open in shock.




















With cars and boats and more broken down cars and broken down boats and creaky stairs and hippie brothers hanging out on the porch, the couple from Nebraska carefully whispered through the cracked window asking if my house was a hippie commune?



I said, "No, I live here!"

"With your Parents?" they asked, incredulously.

"Yeah!" I said.

"Poor parents" the man muttered.

"Where's your other shoe" the lady asked.

"What other shoe? I asked

"The one your missing" she snarled, thinking I was being a disrespectful smart-aleck.

I informed her, "I'm not missing one."

"Then why are you only wearing one shoe?" her husband barked at me as he took over.

"Oh, this old thing isn't my shoe. I came outside barefooted and found this decroded thing in the flowerbed."

I looked inside the window to see if our house was on the tourist map as a place of interest for being a hippie commune as they rolled up the window and sped away - only to screech to a halt in front of the Lennon Sister's home two houses up the street. I ran down the street towards them in my older brother's size 11 shoe and frightened the poor couple like I was one of the dead bodies in "Night of the Living Dead."

I can't really say with certainty whether our house was on  that map or not, but certainly this couple went back to where they came from telling their neighbors about what they saw on Harding Avenue and wondering if anything good could come from Venice?"






Pshaw... "fer sure" We have the Famous Lennon Sisters across the street and right behind us was Cheryl Arnold who was Miss Venice, and Miss Santa Monica, and Miss LA...SO TAKE THAT... tourist!

Ha! Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

With all that said, I guess the thing I want to share next with the world is that fact that my Boy Scout Troop from Venice - Troop 32, had been in steep decline by the time I had been recruited by my Eagle Scout brother and was not the best thing Venice exported: something me and my fellow hoodlum scouts took great pride in.

We raided camporees at night, causing havoc on Troop 34, cutting the ropes on tents and making life as miserable as we could at Camp Slauson in Malibu in the Santa Monica mountains.

Here is a picture of our (converted moving truck) i.e. Troop 32 Boy Scout Truck - that was a not a whole lot more than "cage wresting" on wheels.

You can take the Boy Scouts out of Venice, but you cant' take the Venice out of Troop 32!

Next time: National Jamboree and "Diarrhea 'till Easters"

Mr. Toads Wild Ride: and puberty!

13 is the age a young man enters the "teen-years" which is the typically considered the onset of manhood.  This however, could be a rough age for boys who are behind the puberty curve a bit and embarrassed by the slow assent of follicle development.            Late Bloomers - it Happens!  

This whole "late puberty" thing only served to exponentially compound the embarrassment that my 13 brother faced when he voluntarily exposed himself to a bunch of Nuns in a Catholic convent. I would also be neglect in my duty as an impartial reporter of my family stories if I failed to make mention that those NUNS were slightly too enthusiastic in the opportunity that presented itself to them. 

It reminds me of the time a bear fell into a giant vat of honey and prayed, "Lord, make my mouth equal to the opportunity set before me."        

As usual, with all of us ornery kids, any Dahlin trip, whether it be to the grocery story or across country, had a way of turning into a journey epic proportions. Last summer (1962), was one such occasion. I just finished reporting about Dooh-Dooh Pants' near disastrous brush with death as he careened out of control on a large paddle board heading towards a dangerous and deadly waterfall, had it not been for the swift and comical rescue - which is a classic for the ages.  Bookend that with the story of THE BEE...THE CAST...THE LEG...THE POISON OAK and you have just another inglorious Dahlin vacation.

Every trip was an adventure like something from Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Our next family vacation across the beautiful expanse of the USA, would prove to be no exception.

Let's start from the beginning. In 1963 my parents bought a new Ford Econoline van.

The new van sat about eight of us, so along with all of our luggage, our camping gear and two of us little kids sitting on the warm engine compartment we barely managed to squeeze inside. It practically took a shoe-horn to cram us all in.  

The beauty of this thing is that it could go faster uphill than the 40 miles-an-hour that we were used to chugging along in our 36 horsepower VW van.

BY THE WAY: They've done studies on lab rats in overcrowded conditions that showed they are more apt to get agitated, angry and are quick to turn on one another. One look at my family and we could have saved those scientist lots of time and money.  My dad figured that by the time we had arrived anywhere we were lucky to have the same numbers as when we left! Mom always made snide comments about burying bodies along the way...but I think she was joking.  (that is what made the Salton Sea story blog- 5/13/13 so traumatic, I guess.  Deep down inside I felt I was one of the bodies they tried to leave behind).

Three or four days on a 3000 mile trip... with farts, fighting and grody teenage bodies - I'm not sure "vacation" is the right word to use for one of our excursions. It was more like a precursor for (what has evolved into) cage fighting. Every time the doors opened for gasoline or a pee-pee stop - bodies tangled in wrestling matches poured out onto the asphalt.

If you have been following the blog, then you know my poor dad was a frugal Swede (I don't blame him).  Anyway he perfected a way he could sustain all ten of us on these three week vacations by rationing crackers and cheese for less than twelve dollars.

Never mind the fact that the van didn't have heat or air-conditioning, add the name calling, the punching, the hair pulling, greasy farts, sweaty bodies, we usually ended up at our destination malnourished, dehydrated, missing tufts of hair - dirty and disheveled as if we were some blonde-haired cave-dwelling missing links.


 

We started out like this to the left...  and ended up like this to
                                      the right.


      It wasn't a pretty sight.


The first stop in Detroit was to the inner city to visit my Aunt Mary who was a nun ... Little did Puke-Breath and those Nuns know what awaited them... TO BE CONTINUED.

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm sure about the universe!" 

                                                                                 Albert Einstein