The Elephant Man, The Wolf Pack, The Plague

Continued from last time: The Manhunt!  or "How not to take a Family Vacation (again)"

“Leaves of three, let it be! Leaves of three, let it be! Leaves of three, let it be! Leaves of three, let it be!” 

The crazy mantra from the Boy Scouts got louder and louder as it kept playing over in my head. 

This just might have been the worst idea I ever had. WHAT IF I GOT POISON OAK?  I had seen the ugly and debilitating effects of the toxic plants on my brothers enough times to know how horrible it was and how long it lasted.   

For protection against the predator Wolf Pack, I jumped into the middle of a scraggly poison oak plant. And bolted downhill with two torn branches of the poisonous red leaves - full throttle - chasing a retreating army of 40 hippies.       

                                        It all made sense to me: David verses Goliath. 

He ran headlong into the giant who stood in front of him. My five smooth stones happened to be - weaponized sprigs of  toxicodendron urushiol...i.e. poison oak waving violently in my quivering fist like a mad man.  

"Hippie anti-venom…  hippie anti-venom… hippie anti-venom"

 I screamed all the way down the hill chasing siblings and their friends who scurried like frightened cockroaches. 

My dad, Mr. Sasson and Red took cover, locking themselves inside the station wagon even though it was a hundred degrees out. 

I did victory laps about the camp and tied the insidious branches to my head like antlers and continued to terrorize the viking brood. 

In a evil taunt I even laid in a lounge chair, arms folded under my head, as if tempting the universe to take it best shot.  BAD IDEA! BB's began flying. But it was a pump gun - so I took off directly into enemy fire knowing that "reloading" was hard to do on the run and swiped an assailant who was caught off-guard in the panic of pumping the Daisy rifle. 

A new tacit... I hid in the bushes for hours and didn't move. As the haughty Philistines began trickling back one by one - I lulled them into a false sense of security.  

THEN ATTACKED. Who was the blood-thirsty zombie now - Huh?  YEAH - ME, the little vampire fish.  

I got two of them when called off by my dad who sought to broker a peace treaty. 

All of that to say  ... that by the end of three days - The Plague of red rash... itch... boils... oozing... leaking... swollen arms and legs and other unmentioned body parts... had taken it devastating toll. 

Fortunately for me; it turned out that the itch on my forehead was an irritation from the twine.

ALL WAS WELL! And it got better.   

On the way home... we looked like a traveling circus with at least three of my brothers so severe that they were mocked by the others and one who was so grotesque that he was affectionately called "The Elephant Man."  

One stop, at a gas station in Big Sur, the owner had called the police who forced us out of the store and escorted out of town with lights and siren. 

I would love to post those pictures, but they have been banned by the Federal government... Okay, not by the Feds, but essentially banned by older brothers who later burned the incriminating evidence. 

Crusty-pink hippies were running around Venice coated in dried Calamine lotion while one recuperated on the hospital bed in the dining room and Chewbacca was quarantined in a room in third floor - naked - with a fan blowing over the aforementioned (unnamed) body parts. 

Of course it was bound to be an adventure - it involved the Dahlins ...and that's the way it was. 

I was none-the-closer to knowing what true love was all about - but for three weeks I had a spring in my step and a huge grin on my face!

        "Ahhhhhh.... the smell of Calamine in the morning."   

                       Just another day on Harding Ave...  

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 Mutant Micro Venice Zoo (Hippies Included).

Now, that Chewbacca fell in love with this "miracle cat," Lazarus, our house was only getting wackier and wackier.   Along with our motley tribe of long-haired hippie-types (AKA the Wolf Pack), the dreaded Veloci-Rooster in the backyard, the snakes held captive in the cages on the third floor, the mice we bred for snake feeding, a Mynah bird that cussed like a drunken sailor in the front entry, a billion guinea pigs, turtles, a giant frog,the Iguana Del Diablo (blog 8/1/13), a bazillion rabbits (that kept multiplying), chickens, and Poochie the Wonder dog - we now had this ugly, black, almost-hairless, scabby cat that was now added to the menagerie at my house.

We had a micro-zoo of mutant animals - including my brothers who were becoming more and more full-fledged hippies!

Someone accused us of stealing one of the monkeys that we let out of the zoo and thought we had smuggled it home, but that wasn't true.  The monkey we presently had came from the new neighbors across the street. Somehow it was turned over to me and was now baby sitting the thing indefinitely.  Monkeys were kind of cool - because not everyone had one, but this one sat on the wainscot ledges around the first floor. The monkey was a boy and was obviously happy that it was a male. The depraved - naked little primate, flaunted his male parts to everyone who dared entered our house.   "Gross!"

By feeding the nasty looking cat (that had cheated death) on the kitchen table, and allowing the ugly thing to walk all over the counter tops - Chewbacca surrendered complete authority and power to the insidious cat to rule over the rest of us mere mortal human beings.  I think Chewbacca's brains had become a conduit to the planet where the far superior Cat Species were sent to earth from - to subject humans to their rule. It might have had something to do with the tinfoil pyramid that Chewbacca wore on his head while smoking the leaves from the "Mexican Tomato Plants...out in the hippie cave in our backyard called "Wall Drug!"

My brothers thought all this was groovy - while, I on the other hand, was down right embarrassed. Embarrassed by the monkey with dangling male parts; embarrassed by the zombie cat that walked unhindered on the top of the table and had absolute authority to lick the butter and open containers of sour cream; embarrassed by the swearing Mynah bird; the mess and junk and stacks of National Geographics magazines; embarrassed by the cars outside on blocks and boats parked on the lawn; and by the fact that the police department made routine visits with warrants in hand - but this was my family and my house and my story and I had to make the best of it.


The good news for my brothers was that with the Fraternity House burned down to the ground, which meant that we had inherited more parking for our armada of hot rods, trailers, boats, broken down cars and old trucks we used as trash barges.  

Hum...? Possibly a motivation for arson - BUT I don't think my brothers burned down the fraternity just so that we could park more of our cars.

All the hippies were accounted for and had alibis - so, I still have to find the perpetrator of his horrible crime - that could have easily been murder.

I understand all of this might be hard to imagine... and that I often compare my house to The Addams Family or The Musters, but there really is no comparison!  This was the 60's, this was funky Venice California, this was hippie-ville... this was my house... this was the Dahlins...where truth is indeed stranger than fiction.  

To turn a chapter...With all this going on at home, I thought that maybe I would take a try with the Boy Scouts in order to escape from time to time. I was inducted into my older "way-overachieving-Eagle-scout" brother's troop.   Troop 32.

By the time I joined the troop in 7th grade - the troops only two eagle scouts had graduated away and we resembled something that look more like F Troop (a show on TV).  At Camporees and camp outs we were a band of notorious little thieves that cut the tent strings of other boy scouts and pelted our enemies with dirt clods.

My Family:

The Lennons who lived across the street.

 

As you can tell, we were definitely not normal... by any stretch of the imagination.  Next time "The pit of despair!

                   EXTRA EXTRA read all about it!

28 Half-Naked Aborigines...and the failed rescue attempt!

(continued from last post Part 2) We packed all 28 of us half-naked, blonde-haired, Venice Aborigines into that old 1959 Volkswagen van, strapped down the over-sized paddle-board on top and headed for a glorious week at the Kings River. 

We weren't really aborigines and there really wasn't 28 of us. It just felt like there was 28 of us in that over-sized VW sardine can...and with our platinum blonde hair, tan bodies and in our half-clad state of dress, we were called that by a lady at gas station in Porterville when she found out that we were from Venice.

"Those children will grow up to be hippies" she said, glaring at us with flared nostrils and one lifted eyebrow of utter disdain. 

"Roy, I hope that's not prophetic" mom said to dad as he pushed down hard on the gas-pedal, leaving that stuffy lady chocking in a cloud of smoke from our poorly adjusted carburetor.   

We had spent the first couple days splashing around in a calm tributary that lulled us into a false state of security. 

There is my dad with nine of us. Just look at that!  Tell me that doesn't seem like 28 kids?

I'm the little pudgy one - right in front of my dad's knee.

 

 Swinging on ropes

 

 Water fights... 

Good old fashioned, safe - fun in the sun. 

Next, we loaded up for a day's excursion for a fishing trip below the Pine Flats Dam. 

When we crossed over the bridge, it was a gruesome sight to see a dead cow spinning and bobbing and trapped in the turbulent clutches of the water that flowed over the spillway just below the bridge. Taking it in, my dad slowed on the bride. Obviously that 'O cow was no match for the force of the water that pulled everything under the surface which had managed to float down river and get caught spilling over the cement embankment of the small waterfall. Mom put a bag over my head because she thought I was going to vomit.

"Choke 'em, mom! Choke 'em" Ulrich yelled to mom, urging her to squeeze the bag around my neck.

As we sat there and watch (not me of course, I had a bag over my head - but I could tell) the older boys were even grossed-out with the graphic image of the blood and how the skin was being pealed off that cow as it got sucked back down, then returned to the surface, then back down, and back up, twisting and spinning as if on a bent barbeque spit. 

"Holy cow!" Dooh-Dooh Pants said with a chuckle.  Thump, went Gustav's hand to the back of his head, thinking this was nothing to make fun of.

"Ouch!" screamed Dooh-Dooh Pants a little too loud...as if pleading for dad's intercession. 

"Silence is golden" dad said sternly, as we all paused for a moment of silence when we saw flowers and a small cross someone had erected as a memorial.

Little did we know at the time, that the horrific scene we were grimacing at - was indeed a omen.

Pulling the Micro-bus into the dirt lot, we oozed out of that hot van like a teenager's pimple under pressure. Dooh-Dooh Pants had just cut the cheese and it was more like we had shot out of that thing. 

To the left is a picture of our grandiose paddle-board.  It was as big as a Sherman tank itself, made of plywood and coated in 42 coats of resin...(This time when I say 42...I mean 42), it was as heavy as that Volkswagen van.  Look, that's me and another kid standing on it - in the safe waters of our little tributary.That board could hold 8 of us, if we wanted to pile our bodies that high (we did sometimes, but mostly fights broke out).

The older boys took turns on the paddle board in the big river, below the dam.

Puke-Breath had a cast on his leg, so after the two oldest boys gave the paddle-board a whirl around the main branch of the Kings River it was Dooh-Dooh Pants' turn (he was the fourth born and wanted to do everything the older boys did).  The only problem was that he wasn't as old, or as big, or as strong (and certainly not as smart) as the two older boys. Dooh-Dooh Pants shot out from the shallow shoreline where the water was moving slow and got caught in the faster current in the middle. 

No one thought too much about it at first...UNTIL. Until, Dad began yelling at Dooh-Dooh Pants to paddle the great, big, honking battleship back to shore.

Seeing how Dooh-Dooh Pants was powerless against the swift current, that's when the bolt of light hit us all at the same time. It was just like something out of the Twilight Zone as if  we were all watching the same thing being projected on the screen - something that my dad had already seen. It wasn't a cow that we all suddenly visualized in the spillway blender that was being sucked under and torn to shreds - No! It was Dooh-Dooh Pants whose bloodied carcass we visualized that was bobbing up and down in the deadly vortex below the bridge.

I ran to the van searching for the bag to put over my head...

My dad grabbed the rope that had been used to tie down the board and sprinted for bridge hoping to make it there before Dooh-Dooh Pants drifted underneath. Mom and all of us kids scurried along begin as fast as our little legs would carry us with Puke-Breath hobbling behind and me with that brown shopping bag over my head. I could see down to my feet but that was all and ran into two trees and Puke-Breath once, who hit me with his crutch. 

While he was running dad had managed to tie a slip-knot (he was really good at tying slip-knots). Unfortunately, he had arrived just a half-second too late to lower the rope before Dooh-Dooh Pants shot underneath the bridge flailing and screaming (and if I could wager a guess, he was probably cutting the cheese). 

"Dad, get 'em" Chewbacca yelled, upset about all the coats of resin he painstakingly painted on that giantic board, knowing it was about to be splintered into a million pieces. 

Dad ran across the hot asphalt to the other side of the brige hopeing he could catch Dooh-Dooh Pants on the way out. He lowered the large loop over the railing - guessing - hoping - and calculating to the best of his ability where he thought Dooh-Dooh Pants might come emerging from underneath.

After running into the railing, I took the bag off my head. It wasn't looking too good and mom prayed to Saint Anthony - the Catholic Patron Saint of "lost causes."

I'll tell you the gruesome details next time... Let's just say... it wasn't pretty!

I should have kept the bag on my head!