Hippies, Skunk Weed and Baseball!

I apologize to my faithful friends and followers world over...this has been an extremely busy and very trying week at my house, where nothing has gone according to plan.

Now, I want to get back to the story of Markie d.

Laying in bed wondering if I'd ever walk again, I figured that my less-than-illustrious little-league baseball career was over. By this time in seventh grade all my friends had moved up from Minors to the Majors - expect for me. "Gherhing the Great" had grown an inch over the summer and now I was officially the shortest boy in the seventh grade class at Saint Marks School. Heck - as far as I knew, I might have been the shortest seventh grader in the whole world.

              That's Gherhing the Great on the far right.   →

The people in the league let me stay down a division even though was too old, because I was so small; I knew it and I knew everyone else knew it too. The most embarrassing thing is that they nominated me to play in the All-Star game and I had to show up pretending that I was something, when I knew I just a skinny, little fraud in a hand-me-down uniform that was too big.


Oh well, before my accident at McIlliot's pool, I played first base in my first and last "All Star" game and got some kind of trophy. I don't know if I really earned it or not, so I hid the trophy away from my family in the big, o' steamer-trunk buried under junk in the front room on the second story - where the "John the Baptist" fox furs had been decaying for the past billion years (Video blog post...Oct 28 2013).

Since no one in my family came to see me play in the all star game - I guess my secret was safe. 

By this time, my leg was healing and I could crutch myself not only to to the bathroom and back, but had finally gotten enough strength to go back to school. Because of this new gift of mobility I was lucky enough to join the family downstairs for our annual catastrophic upheaval of joking, name-calling and inevitable food fight -  known in other normal households by another name - "Thanksgiving."

After much of the chaos in our house had calmed down to the mere roar of a War-Zone, Dooh-Dooh Pants flung moist turkey dressing on my neck that he had pulled out of his mouth. Not knowing exactly what the brown, icky, stinky stuff was, I couldn't crutch quick enough to the toilet and vomited all the way to the bathroom. That was the creme de la creme... the climatic crescendo that delighted the entire Wolf Pack. Thanksgiving was now complete at our house.

Everyone laughed. Laughing at people was what they liked to do best of all (that's why I didn't dare tell them about my trophy- they would have made sure to totally humiliate me).  

Crutches were kind of cool. Horrible for school, but really good for defending oneself against older brothers who tried to torture me. They were lucky that I was too busy hobbling to the bathroom on those wooden weapons than to use them for my protection. Trust me - No, trust "Flea-Bait!" He could tell you that I was a lot better with those old wooden crutches than I was with a wooden baseball bat any day.
         
Wolf Pack be warned.   Yeah, I know I sound tough, right? But the older boys didn't take my threats very serious when it was always like 10 against one.. and especially now that they had bigger fish to fry!

The bigger fish was the Veloci-Rooster!   

The hippies had to figure out how to get back to the Mexican Tomato Plants and to Wall Drug without being attacked. If the cunning bird of prey allowed them free access to the ivy cave, it was only because the fowl thing was setting a trap on them like he did with the "The Chicken Lady"

Only...only they were usually high on the loco-weed when they discovered their exit (their means of escape) had been completely cut off.

It was funny! At least dad and I thought it was. We sat in the house and rolled with with laughter when they tried to negotiate with "Tomahawk attack helicopter" as if it were one of them.

"Hey, there little fella. Its like, it's all good...happy, happy?" They asked  "Like dude, man it's all groovy...you know...we're all one with the same cosmic universe man!"

"Bro...like, it's all copacetic...man."  

"Yeah dude...bro...peach and love and granola and flower power man"  Kjersten, dad and I couldn't help but laugh, because we knew what was going to happen next.

They thought they had talked the vigilante bird (with the "sidewinder missiles") down with all their mellow hippie nonsense.

"Like man...we're just like you. You want to be understood like us...you know man - Love is where it's at."

The next second, under attack,  we hear 7 of the hippies screeching in pain and laughing at each other at the same time. And then falling, and then stumbling, and then laughing at each other, and then screaming, and then begging their bird-friend-brother child-of-the-cosmos to stop. Oh my goodness, this was better than the Star Trek episode a couple weeks ago when William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols shared the first interracial kiss on US television.

The skunk smelling boys would desperately rush up the back steps - pulling and pushing each other to get in the back door to safety, then seeing us they would walk in and act calm as if pretending like they weren't just out back in the hippie-hideout of Wall Drug smoking it up.  And the funny thing was, I don't think they knew what just happened.  I think that "what-ever-it-was" they were smoking, made them forget EVERY TIME. And every time it was the same: they would emerge from the hollow - try to talk down the crazy rooster with razor-sharp talons having forgotten the results from the last negotiation failure.

For those of you with androids   TV's first interracial kiss

I'm getting to the story of the "Great Fire" of '68.  I'm just setting the stage for the events leading up to it.    

  

"Long-Hair Hippy Commies" and Markie's Death

11:21 AM

The phone rang like 20 times before one of the hippies finally decided to answer it.  Normally, no one in our family would answer the phone – that was Joan’s job.   Joan was my mom.

Our living room and dining room were filled with the delirious Wolf Pack that had been back in the hidden ivy hangout we called "Wall Drug" communing with the herbs they secretly grew under the code name of “Mexican tomato plants” 

So our house was filled with the likes of this group...(including "Pinky" pictured far left).

 and this motely crew...

And this bunch...

along with this heterogeneous collection...

...all except for Bob of course.  He was in Vietnam! 

             And I'm not talking about a vacation. 

You see, my older brothers (that's all my brothers- by the way, if you haven't caught on by now), no longer used the affectionate and intimate designation of “mom” and “dad.” Instead, they called our parents by their first names or with titles, like - Joan and Mr. D.  I think mom and dad had come to terms with these labels that expressed a distance in relationship. This remote detachment was safe for the unfeeling Wolf-Pack because it was a declaration that there were no demands on their relationship other than existing under the same roof as hostile roommates. 

 

I don’t think my parents minded that too much because it represented a separation of values. Although we were all born democrats, my parents were conservative “Kennedy Democrats”  - you know - a strong America… less government… programs that care for people… but not giving away our future by putting the yoke of debt around the necks of generations not yet born – through wasteful government spending.  Though the world had changed a lot in the last five years since Kennedy’s assassination, their political views remained unchanged and they considered the motley – long-haired, draft-card-burning crew as “dope-smoking commies.” 

 

I think a couple of the Lennon boys were present –  and if I had to guess, they probably still called their parents "mom" and "dad."

Anyway, Chewbacca finally answered the phone and couldn’t make out what Kjersten was saying through all the blubbering sobs and stupid stuff about a leg being cut off and someone dead by the side of the pool. This phone called was just a nuisance to him so he kicked Flea-Bait in the butt and told him to tell Joan she had a phone call – half thinking she might have already been eavesdropping with her little suction-cup-bugging-device she used for wiretapping every conversation the boys had with their girlfriends.

In our house, no one ran up the stairs anymore to tell someone when they were wanted on the phone.  It was viewed as a frivolous waste of energy.  Our communication system was standing at the foot of the stairs and screaming as loud as you can – making sure to use derogatory nicknames that the Wolf-Pack invented –so the Steadmans and the Tripps across the street could hear.

“Hey Puke Breath, phone’s for you!” Or  “Lardo…Pick up the phone!” or “Dooh-Dooh Pants…” they would scream at the top of their lungs while hitting the wall with a broom like dad does on street-cleaning day, and then they would top that off with something really nice like, “You stupid idiot you got a phone call.”  

  

Kindness was not generally found among the list of adjectives used to describe our family.

“Joan”Flea-Bait yelled, hoping to please the older boys.

"... pick up the phone!”

Flea-Bait felt his job was done and Chewbacca had set the receiver down, forgetting about who was on the other end and the urgency of the call altogether. 

Like most typical Saturdays (ever since the zoo incident), Mom had locked herself in her room. Trying to drown out the noise from the raucous below, she turned up the volume on a rerun of Gun Smoke.

11:30 am

When the episode was over, she picked up the phone to call Ida Nargie, who lived across the street, for gossip only to discover the sobbing and the tearful pleas of Kjersten still begging on the other end of the line  hoping someone would eventually walk by and pick up the abandoned receiver.  

“Please!” cried the desperate 9-year-old.  “Someone help us. I think he’s dead!” were the first words mom heard. 

“What Kjersten?” she panicked ―freaking out.  “What’s going on?”

“Mom” Kjersten said almost undecipherable through huge sobs that interrupted her words. Mom could hear the frightful crying in the background from the other kids at the pool.

Choking back the word she dreaded to say. in a battle between lips and brain, her brain finally won as she spit out the foulest tasting words a 9-year-old might ever have to experience. “Mom” she bellowed, “he’s dead.” More crying!  More tears!

Shock! “Kjersten, who’s dead?”  Mom asked, screaming through the receiver in order to get Kjersten's full attention.

 “Markie!” she answered as the flood gates of words began spilling.  It’s Markie… there was a booger and vomit and Ulrich and then there was cold water... and then a pushing match and…and…and…and Ralph went one way and Markie went the other―”

“Kjersten, slow down and just tell me what happened.” 

Kjersten began bawling again. “And…and…and…Markie flew through the glass wall… and his leg is cut off… and he’s lying in a pool of blood…and we think he’s dead...and we didn’t know who to call. Help…Mom!” she resorted to, desperately pleading in incomplete thoughts and tears.

Joan jumped from her bed, unlocked the five latches on her bedroom door and frantically leaped into action. She raced downstairs parting the red sea of long-hair commies partying below, hysterically soliciting help and trying to find the keys to a car that had more than a bucks worth of gas and that didn’t have to be push started.

  

11:03 am - 30 minutes earlier

Markie wanted to show Ralph who was boss and slipped out of his grip again. Just as Markied had planned, Ralph shot backwards like a rocket ship right into the pool. What Markie failed to calculate into his equation was the 12 foot stationary wall of glass 2 feet directly behind him.

 “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”

Markie shot like the Apollo 7 launched a few days ago and flew backwards crashing through the glass wall. Up to this point, the 12-year-old had proven to be pretty indestructible (he had bested pits, and arrows, and ropes and hampers and lived through Salton Sea, but this time he was no match for the tremendous force of this fatal impact. The plate glass shattered spraying shards and fragments throughout the entire recreation room adjacent to the pool. 

Laying bent over the couch, which was just inside the room behind the glass panel– Markie straddled the galls wall - half in and half out of the room. Thankfully, shock had immediately set in and Markie felt no pain, but neither was his brain capable of  processing the severity of the accident! It wasn’t until he tried to stand up by hoisting himself off the couch that he saw the pointed top of glass, which had been protruding through his left thigh.  

Pushing up off the couch, he staggered to his feet as the glass ripped open his entire leg. 

Blood 

Bone

Blood

Muscle

Blood

Looking down into the middle of his leg, Markie laid down on the cold deck where blood mixed with water and tried to hold his dangling appendage together. He told the other kids a joke to ease their pain and to help Ralph with his guilt. Slipping into unconsciousness he told Kjersten to call home… “EXbrook 8 - 0466” he told his baby sister not sure whether she knew the number.  Closing his eyes, he quietly slipped away  whispering the "dying" prayer Sister Edith Mary taught his 7th grade class.

Crying and hysterical, Kjersten made the call and waited for what seemed like an hour after Chewbacca put down the receiver and had kicked Flea Bait in the butt.   

Feeling helpless, Tommy Blaser and Annie Lennon cried, having absolutely no idea what to do. Things like this just didn't happen at the Lennon or the Blaser house, so this was new for them.

Meanwhile, Ralph was useless. He just walked around in circles crying and talking to himself as if he testifying about his innocence in a court of law.  Either that or he figured that if his excuse was good enough, he could buy some time out of  purgatory, not to mention the guilt he was feeling - having had something to do with the murder of his best friend. 

 "Be nice to each other, while you have the chance. You might not get another one."    Markie D   5th grade 

The Lennons and THE NAKED TRUTH!

                                    Which thou must (though it grieve thee) grant
                                                     I trumped never a man.
                                             But truely told the naked trueth,
                                                  To men that meld with mee,
                                              For neither rigour, nor for rueth,
                                                       But onely loath to lie.
                                                            [Alexander Montgomerie's "The Cherry and the Slae" 1585]

I think it is time to set the record straight.  This blog is a FORUM for me to share all the unbelievable stories that took place while I was growing up in the 60's and 70's in Venice California. Every single story is based on true events and the conflation of stories that have been pressed down...ground up and as if spit out by a blender in a imaginative mixture. 

SERIOUSLY: I ACTUALLY DON'T KNOW IF THERE IS ANOTHER FAMILY ANYWHERE  - THAT HAS HAD A SHARE OF FANTASTIC, INCREDIBLY AND BIZARRE STORIES AS...

THE DAHLINS! 

My family's stories are TRULY like something out of the Twilight Zone and uniquely centered in the tumultuous 60's - when the world seemed to be changing.  My goal is to have fun, make you laugh and to get you to think about the brotherhood of humankind!  It is an outlandish claim for me to begin with the premise that we were the "World's most dysfunctional family."  Certainly we weren't...but we certainly weren't your average family by any stretch of the imagination.

In order for me to highlight how bizarre we were in this imaginative romp, I set the stage by using the contrast between our family and the famous Lennons who lived two houses over - across the street.

Most everything I said was true...they did have a nice, clean, and orderly home. They did have a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in their large picture window in front. We did have cars and boats and motorcycles and car parts and junk and magazines... and our house really did lean a little to the left! The Lennon Sisters did appear on TV every Saturday night and I think (next to my mom) I was one of their biggest fans. I really did consider them to be the picture of every good and right in the world. 

The Lennon Family were really quite reclusive...but that was only to be expected! I have one teenage daughter and would do everything in my power to protect her. Mr. Lennon had 6 beautiful daughters and did what he felt he had to do to protect them: they had autograph hounds... fans... and crazies that drove down our street trying to catch a glimpse, take pictures and sought autographs. I only pressed in on those differences to highlight how out of control we were in contrast - it enhances our story. BUT, my confession is that those comparisons or contrast were indeed a bit unfair.

I showed the famous Lennon Sisters then I showed us...

Them

 Us

 
I showed them sitting around in their living room together - in the goodness of a very functional family and then I showed pictures of us... (later in years) in all the glory of our hippy-ness. But in truth, the Lennons began to wander off the reservation (and truth be told) at just about the same time we were growing long hair the Lennon boys were becoming hippies as well (I just don't have any pictures of that).

Them

Us

In my broad brush strokes of artistic license... it made us look brilliantly and brutishly VIKING-esque... with all of our crazy antics of shooting each other and horrible pranks over and against the sanity of their house which may have inadvertently put them (or cast them in a bad light) as mam-bee-pambee's.  I want the world to know that nothing is further from the truth.











SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT! 







 
I respect and admire the Lennons for a plethora of reasons:

 1) They are all extremely generous and kind (that is my experience).
                    The Lennon Sisters sang at my dad's funeral.
                    Kippy and the Venice band played at my wedding.
                    Marky Lennon (a cousin, also in Venice) sang at my mom's Funeral
                    The Lennon Sisters invited me and my Water Polo team backstage in Las Vegas
                    They also invited my mom, me and my little sister to the taping of their Christmas Special.

2) Another thing is the sense of deep and meaningful family relationships they nurtured.
                   To this day they still get together for traditions that they fostered years ago.
                   They (very much) still seem to enjoy each others company ( I admire that).

3) Friendship. I paddled outrigger canoes and hung around with Joey in high-school( we were undefeated state champs several years running) and as a founding member of the "Ice Brothers" consider him a good friend to this day. 

4) Smiles. Mimi and DeeDee always had contagious smiles. 

5) Hard working and disciplined (this is something I think they learned from their dad - he was a "man's man)... dreamers of dreams and willing to work hard to make them come true. 

6) Forgiving. Billy should have punched me back in the face...when I blindsided him...but never sought revenge. a) sorry Billy b) Thank you for not beating me up.

7) Strength! Kippy has modeled to me the strength and courage of perseverance. As the youngest boy in the Lennon clan he never gave up on his dream and attacked it with the ferociousness of a pit bull. Today, he and his band travel around the world - despite what-ever setback and obstacle they had to hurdle in order to overcome.

8) My wife! Somehow, I was introduced to my wife through the Lennon-Gass connection! To which I owe a great debt.  Thank you... Dick and DeeDee, Debi...Marilee and Mrs. Gass (and anyone else who conspired in that).  

I love the Lennons and am perhaps one of their greatest fans... and apologize if I paint them in too good a light...and also for my comparisons, which I'd have to admit were intentionally unfair (I'm sure they had their share of dysfunction as well). 

As for the Dahlins...even though we did let the monkeys out of the zoo...have the police department over at our house every couple days...had an attack rooster - instead of a watch dog... grow "Mexican tomato plants"... shoot each other with needle-tipped homemade arrows... have cages full of reptiles and rattlesnakes that kept escaping... an alligator in our backyard pond... electrocute ourselves and one of the nuns from Saint Marks... vacation at the God-forsaken Salton Sea... have a hospital bed in our dining room and have an notorious encounter with the President of the United States. Though I did blow myself up... get shoved in the hamper of death and get left behind at Salton Sea...  I don't think I would had traded my childhood with anyone else... even if tempted by a bite of Sis Lennon's famous chocolate cake.


As for me... I'm just waiting for my next adrenaline fix...and can't wait to see what ambush lies just ahead.

I am convinced that we live in a hard world that is full of ups and downs... success and discouragement...hardships and hurts and  tell people, "It is better to laugh than to cry"

I think laughing at ourselves gives us power over the things that can have power over us...

My advice: "Don't take yourself too seriously.... and if you think I'm weird, at least I have an excuse!"
   
      

Hippies and Mexican Tomato Plants

Whack… slapped the stick, three times on my outstretched rump. Seriously, do you really think for one moment that after all I had been through already, that a couple well placed eraser-bombs and several smacks on my tight little derrière was going to have any effect! I was like one of those used cars for sale that looked good on the outside, but already had a million miles on it.  While still in the "position" (last blog post) I tried my darnedest to pass gas...but to no avail, because I didn't have the superpowers that one of my older brothers, Dooh-Dooh Pants, had who so magnificently mastered. There I was, stomach churning, butt pointed at everyone I wanted to payback, but was unable to channel my gastric juices into a defensive weapon.

The year is 1968 and a lot has happened in the last two years - since the 5th grade. Obviously I lived through Sr. Godzilla, the 5th grade "Templates" (blog Post June 26th) and somehow managed to make it this far.

One brother was in Viet Nam. My oldest brother, Gustav had been Honorably Discharged from the military with some lame excuse like having bad teeth or because he had a rare blood type. Three of the other brothers - the ones who were full-fledged, long-haired, Anti-Viet-Nam-War-hippies, didn't just burn their draft cards, but sent them back to President Johnson to make an even bigger statement...

Which reminds me of our chance - impossible - real-live-encounter with the President of the United States, which took place while we were driving across country on our vacation this past summer. 

TRUE STORY

Who else in the world does this happen to?  Nobody, right?  Nobody, other than the Dahlins! We'll get to that in the next couple blog post... but, seriously... what are the mathematical probabilities of running into the Presidential motorcade in North Texas and having a chance encounter.  It is about the same, I guess of having an alien abduction in the middle of New York City.  (You're going to have to wait on that one. Oh, and add snapping turtles to the story - and it must be something like, 1:100,000,000 to the 120th power).

After what happened to John F. Kennedy... it made you wonder why LBJ, the 36th President, of the United States got out of his protected limousine and pulled his dirty rotten trick on us.

Didn't he know he was messing with the "Wolf Pack." 

By this time the Lennons were beginning to wonder off the reservation and the older boys had also begun to let their hair hang low. Pat and Billy had traversed the chasm of our tarry-asphalt street and engaged in some of the bizarre behaviors of Hotel Crazy at our pad. The virus of the hippy-bug made its way across the street, past the Blessed Virgin Mary that stood guard in their front window and spread the infection in their house. Getting into this long-haired-hippy movement, the older Lennon boys began to fit right in with the Dahlins and embraced "what my older brothers had begun cultivating" in the far reaches of the backyard - hidden behind old cars, boats that refused to float, stacks of decaying National Geographics and  lots of junk that was perfect for protecting their secret garden. My older bothers told my parents were "Mexican Tomato Plants"   Heck, I don't know why they spent so much time out there caring the trimming those plants - didn't seem to do any good. The dumb plants never did grow tomatoes - go figure!  

Last year in the Sixth Grade my oldest brother, Gustav and his girl friend, Patty, took me to Sears and bought me a really cool Tobias suit. This is the famous picture that Marilyn Monroe is holding at the top of my Blog Post (until I change it, of course).
 
My Sixth Grade felt like a"life-sentence"  with hard labor. (more about that later). But, look at how cute this little guy is!

These was my first real clothes, that weren't hand-me-down-down-down-down-downs. This didn't come with blood stains or bullet holes or 17 patches over patches... Just look at him.

LADY KILLER right!

Imagine all those six grade girls drooling all over me! I wasn't keeping count and didn't have a clue.  Look into those precious eyes that seem to be lost in deep thought. What do you supposed I was thinking at that moment? Probably didn't have anything to do with girls.  I'll bet anything that I was too busy contemplating my everyday survival to be a "player."  If I had any inkling that a girl liked me, I was so insecure that I couldn't even open my mouth. I stuttered...and most people didn't know because they thought I was just being funny and a lot of my words didn't come out right. (No one in my family listened so anyone, they all just competed for floor time and had no idea that I had speech problems - except for my dad. He kept telling me that I should learn to talk with marbles in my mouth to help my pronuncification)

And what others thought was confidence was really just nothing more than the artful-dodging of a lonely street rat - still searching for the meaning of life and wanting to hear one word spoken in my HOUSE!

Next Time - The infamous story of amateur taxidermy and the SKUNK STINK-SACKS.

Please, no one tell the Blasers - because I don't think they know how their beloved collie got a hold of these things that he dragged like a crazed werewolf into the house. 


The Beatles have a song. It's been a hard days night... but for me it has been a hard-couple years..and I feel like I've been working like a dog just to survive the pits, and the jalapenos, and the big-bang-burnie, and the fights, and the mosquitoes, and leprosy, and the Veloci-rooster and the alligator...

                                                                    Just how much farther would Markie D make it?