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"

Silent Night - Geeze-Louise! Who Came Up with That?

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace

Silent night, holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight
Glories stream from heaven afar
Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ, the Savior is born
                                                        Christ, the Savior is born... SCREeeeeeeeeeeeEEECH! 

 

WAIT A MINUTE..pull the needle off the record player... "Silent night?"...Who came up with that? Yeah, everything could have been bright, but calm? Come on, I know I'm only 12, but I'm not stupid enough to buy that!  

 

About 6 months ago, Tommy and I were around the corner and this hippie couple were having a baby at home. Let me tell you - (after that experience - I don't recommend it), there was nothing silent night or calm about it.  The lady was screaming and the long-haired-hippie husband ran around like he was being attacked by our Veloci-Rooster.  He was shouting out for us to boil hot water and was frantically getting newspaper and towels and she was laying on the ground holding on to a door handle - grunting and pushing with her face turning red.  He was hysterical and ironically begging her (in hippie speak) to be calm...!  

 

"Like, mellow out, man."  "Don't be sweating it, you know...it's all right." "Think of flowers and peace and love...man"  and other stupid stuff like "far out and out of sight"

 

This really bugged me. Firstm he calling his wife "man." Second, he's telling her not to sweat it and all his psychedelic-groovy talk didn't help much - (this was no easy thing and she was sweating it big time). 

 

The baby started coming out and she began freaking out and then screaming and then he tried to calm her more and then she turned on him and said that this was all his fault - and then took one hand off the door handle - and them swung and knocked the hippie dude to the floor, and then she began yelling at him for being on the floor and then said she needed him. 

 

Then the big sissy began crying because he was watching a  miracle unfold before his eyes... I don't know if he was smoking that hippie herbal stuff - like my brothers grow in the backyard...but, like the dude was totally out of it and me and my 9-year-old friend practically delivered the baby ourselves. 

YUCK...there was water and some blood and like this gross extension cord thing and it was wrapped around the babies neck. The baby was blue and the mom was scared and I had to get the dead-beat hippie-dad to do something. Finally, after I knocked some sense into him, he unwound that cord thingy and the baby turned pink and then he spanked the baby in the bottom like we see doctors do on TV and the baby started crying... and everyone was happy and started crying again.

"Sheeze-Louise," there was nothing silent about this thing and there was nothing calm about this baby's birth...either. Everyone was nervous and on edge. It was messy and it was loud!

 

As I sit here and look at my Nativity set,  I can only imagine what it might have been like a couple thousand years ago in a barn...with cows mooing... and angels making a raucous overhead and shepherds and sheep... and all the other pieces that gathered on that blessed occasion that are part of our family's nativity set.

Now listen, I'm not saying it wasn't a "holy and glorious night" but it probably was not like the romantic notion of a "hallmark" moment in the song  "Silent Night."

 

I only have 50 cents to my name for mowing Frank Nargie's lawn, but if I had to bet... I would bet it all! Yep, I would bet all 50 cents that it was anything other than a quiet peaceful night when two frightened parents...real people were having a real baby in the worse circumstances possible.   

I know there was this whole "God-thing" going on...but these were real people having a real baby.  I'm sure they were concern about germs and about that cord thingy.. don't tell my Catholic friends, but Mary was likely going through a lot of pain like every other mother... and Joseph was probably concerned like every other "Father-type" person.  After a long journey...weary from traveling while pregnant and exhausted, she might not has had the resolve NOT to scream at Joseph - most likely she was acutely in-touch with her pain and emotions as any real lady having a baby would be.  There was no family, no help, the nervous dad-to-be was probably freaked out.  The baby probably came with a lot of pain and Joseph probably spanked the new born Jesus (just like hey do in the Western movies on TV) and thankfully baby Jesus started crying.

"No crying he makes"  Who came up with that nonsense?  Of course he cried, and the parents wanted him to. Add to that - cows...mooing... and angels singing... and shepherds visiting... then along comes a drummer boy playing his drum and the "Wise guys" who are on the way... this certainly doesn't add up to quiet night at all - bet my 50 cents.

It was real! God came in human flesh...wholly and fully human in every way. This is what makes the story so Amazing! God become human... with human feelings and human desires...having to feel pain and temptation just like us. It is the humanity part of who He that gave him the capacity to wholly identifies with us and it is the humanity part of His God-appearing in human form that gives credence to His perfect obedience. As God we would expect nothing - but perfect obedience...DUH! Hello? But, as fully man...He had to struggle with pain and food and hunger and sleep and prejudice and temptation and mistreatment and false accusations...and not give in to hate and pride and payback and His own selfish desires. 

In His humanity, he didn't want to go to the cross! Sister Edith (you know the Nun with the "head-tones"), told us the part of the Bible where Jesus prayed and said something like 'Father, I don't want to do it... is there anyway that I don't have to go and suffer on the cross - I don't look forward to having to suffer that much pain...and endure that much humiliation...but Father I will trust you instead...and be obedient to your will!" Wow... that was some pretty heavy stuff.  Can't say that I get it all, but let's not take away His humanity (or Mary's of Joseph's) from the Story - That's what makes it so great!

Noisy night, holy night
craziness, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and loud 

Please won't you sleep
Please won't you sleep

Noisy night, scarey night
Mary screams, Joseph freaks
Two real people, trying to figure it out
afraid until they see His face
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth "

Noisy night, holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight
Glories stream from heaven afar
Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ,a real baby is born 

Christ, the Savior is born. 

There! I fixed the song... this is more like it - bet my 50 cents!

Meanwhile the Wise Men are on the way, which we'll celebrate in a couple days on January 6th - in what we call the "Feast of the Epiphany."  In the mean time I might have to share with you the wrapping paper debacle that continued from this Christmas morning for many more years to come, which added to my PTSD.


Oh, and here are my neighbors (the Lennon Sisters) singing "Silent Night"  (I told them, that although I had delivered a baby, that it was okay for them to sing it this way) and so they did!

The origin of the Christmas carol we know as Silent Night was a poem that was written in 1816 by an Austrian priest called Joseph Mohr. On Christmas Eve in 1818 in the small alpine village called Oberndorf it is reputed that the organ at St. Nicholas Church had broken. Joseph Mohr gave the poem of Silent Night (Stille Nacht) to his friend Franz Xavier Gruber and the melody for Silent Night was composed with this in mind. The music to Silent Night was therefore intended for a guitar and the simple score was finished in time for Midnight Mass. Silent Night is the most famous Christmas carol of all time!

The GREAT Escape, Well, not exactly?

Where were we after Bob Dylan tried to get in on the act... I have to admit it was nice of him to be taken in by the Markie D thing... Thanks Bob for putting me on track 3! (Oh, last post - if you want to hear it).

Anyway, by now it's close to 4:00pm Saturday September 10th 1966, Mom and JERRY took off in a blur - rushing Chewy to the emergency room at Saint John's Hospital in Santa Monica (thank you guardian angel for looking out for me - that broken arm sure came at the right time - see blog-post "Flying Leap 8-12-2013).  

So far today: You've met Honking-Slurping-Pooping Jimmy, witnessed Chewbacca and the rattlesnake electric therapy, saw me get attacked by a garter snake and Chewy loose Iguana Del Dialbo with the subsequent choas at poor Mrs. Tripp's house. Then there was 'O cool-Johnny Gillemot being a teenage under-aged driver wreaking his mom's car...the staged accident with Gherhing the Great, the Helms Bakery heist, the awful discovery of Jimmy's "fort-warming" present, hopeful Jerry "TT" chasing the boys up the third story only to have them escape out the window...me trapped in the second floor sun-room and trying to leap to death...only to be caught by Jerry and saved in the nick of time when the Wolf Pack had electrocuted Chewy (who was on his way down the "fire-escape" pole) only to break his arm in two places and was now being rushed to the hospital by my mom in Jerry's car.

Jerry was gone! That was all that mattered!  Can I get an AMEN?

Gherhing the Great was intrigued by Gustav's legendary  RAT KILLER!   If the name doesn't make sense to you, it's probably because you don't know that a big-block Chevy motor (427's and 454's) were affectionately called "Rat" motors.

Well, Gustav was a Ford guy (sorry all you Chevy guys)! And like Dr. Frankenstein he stole..oops... he acquired a Ford high-performance 427 and made a monster of a Chevy destroying beast out of 56 Ford business coup (MUST SEE BLOG POST "Hair, Hippies, and Hot Rods" July 4th).  Gustav was a genius with an exceptionally high IQ and put Ford parts together in a way that baffled even the Ford engineers in Dearborn i.e. his Ford was a Chevy "Rat" killer!  (Rather a "RAT" Annihilator)!

                   It's alive!

Rumor had it that it was a Holman and Moody built motor... but this was his own creation that beat everything he came up against. He was a legend at Lions Race Car Track and on Van Nuys Boulevard where the silly valley-boys who purchased brand new 409s and went cruising on Wednesday nights to impress the ladies.  

Here is some home video of Lions Drag Strip from 1966.  ANYWAY, O' Gherhing the Great couldn't keep his paws off the Rat Killer as he climbed underneath and checked out every inch of it, while the Wolf Pack was in the house laughing about runnin' off 'O Jerry and about Chewy's broken arm. Gherhing discovered that the sheet-metal indentation in the trunk where the spare tire usually sat, was cut away and only had a piece of fabric glued in its place. Guess what "Gherhing-the-not-so-great" did? He talked me into climbing into the trunk of my brother's race car!  How many times can I say, Bad Idea!

BAD IDEA!
BAD IDEA!
BAD IDEA!


Yeah, we crawled in! Of course Gherhing began monkeying around with his racing harness and floor shifter and other junk until we heard Dr. Frankenstein (That's Gustav) come walking back in the direction of infamous RAT KILLER! We knew we were in trouble and climbed back into the trunk area and hid as quietly as we could in the stripped down, bare-metal, grease-smeared compartment.  I gulped as though it were a Déjà vu...the tin Hamper of Death, only this didn't smell like diapers - it smelled like gear oil which was nearly as bad to my super-sniffer and was bound to be a hundred times faster. I socked Gherhing in the stomach just as Gustav fired up the monster.   

In retrospect, I'm pretty sure Gustav knew we were in there, but had pretended not to notice us. Slowly, he moseyed on down Harding Avenue not to draw the ire of good 'O Mr. Lennon and turned onto Venice Boulevard heading east. We were tossed back and forth as the motor rocked the car from side to side as he sat at the light at Lincoln Boulevard at idle. Then, just as if he was at Lion's drag-strip...he revved up his "stall-torque converter" to 4,000 RPM and as the light turned green he punched the pedal to the metal with the Tachometer needle pegging the red-line at 8,000.  With his wrinkle-wall tires that had been screwed to the rims the front lifted off the street and we shot off like a rocket launch. ONLY!

Only, Gherhing and I were like astronauts on a horizontal takeoff that had not been strapped into the rocket! Gustav's car was a true 10 second 1/4 mile hot rod. In order to achieve that, you had to reach something like 157 miles-an-hour in that short distance. Oh Yeah! I think Gustav knew, we were in there...and when he hit the throttle, Gherhing and I shot back into the rear of the trunk and were pinned against one another and to the metal, held in place by 11-year-old, bone-crushing, lung-suffocating, lips-folding-back, tear-producing, pee-pee-making amounts of G-forces and heavy metal thunder! 

You know that ride at POP (Pacific Ocean Park) where it spins and the floor drops out and you stick to the walls - well, this was like that - only 10 times more. Gherhing was stuck to me and I was stuck to the back and I could feel his warm pee-pee seeping into my pants and my lips felt like they were going to peel all the way back over my head like a zipper. Yeah, Gustav got us good... but then it got worst!
 


Sirens!   The Venice Police Department Tried to catch the Rat Killer!   Good luck with that one!

Gherhing and I got flung to one side, (squealing tires) then the other...(burning rubber) then the other... then upside down... then twisted... then another turn down Glyndon and my face was in Gherhing's wet pants...WET PANTS? PEE! Hello! I vomited and it sprayed the entire trunk space of the Rat Killer...Gherhing and I kept getting thrown around in it like we were pieces of chicken being coated up on the outside by throw-up! Gherhing - threw up! What took him so long?  It was GROSS! I threw up again just after Gustav made a screeching right turn and my warm vomit of oatmeal and spoiled milk went directly in Gherhing's face. Gross and double gross!

Gustav spun the car around one-hundred-and-eighty-degrees slamming on the brakes perfectly parallel parking between two cars on Vienna Ave. He jumped out through passenger window of the car and just walked away - whistling like nothing had ever happened. By then, four Cop cars came careening around the corner and sped on past as Gustave just waved nonchalantly. Gustav was already a couple blocks away when one of the police cars came back.  An officer looked inside as Gherhing and I were peeling ourselves off of the froth and begged him to arrest us.

He wasn't too happy and stood with his arms indignantly folded waiting for us to emerge from the hole we had previously climbed into. I held my hands out to him expecting him to hand-cuff us...but when he took one look at us...or was it... when he took one whiff of us...he gagged - ran for his car and told us to get home. There was no way he was taking us back to the Venice Police station. I was hoping for a good meal! We walked over to the Tikker's house and sprayed each other off with the water hose. We hooked our little fingers and I made a promise not to tell anyone about how he pee'd his pants!  I still think it was a bad idea, but Gherhing the Great thought this was THE BEST DAY EVER! 

We walked back to Harding just in time to get in on the Wolf Pack's awful prank on the little old lady next door! 

Poor Edna... and even worst - poor, poor, poor Hutch! (As Steppenwolf would later say) The Wolf Pack "...was born to be wild"     

 Oh and also we got back in time to watch as the Wolf Pack nearly burned down the Lennon house!

 

Bob Dylan's secret track: Markie D...Not As It Should Be!

Longest Day Ever Continued:

We now pause for station identification...  

You would think that with being left behind at Salton Sea and nearly erased (blog post), shot with arrows, electrocuted, knocked-out three times a week by being squeezed on the temples (blog post), living in a house run by the inmates of the asylum-  i.e the WOLF PACK (that's my Viking older brothers); betrayed and shoved into the hamper of death(blog Post), chased by Jerry and having to throw-up everyday (as a sole means of self-protection) that the poor little guy, Markie D, would end up psychotic, if he somehow managed to survive at all.
 




The Dahlin's made the Addams Family appear normal!











         As you can see- they had nothing on us!






Add to that -  the trauma of being singled out by the Nuns at the Catholic school, who took a special interest in paying back the last-born-male of this dysfunctional tribe for all the torment that his brothers had inflicted over the past ten years.

It doesn't take rocket science or a advanced degree in psychology to understand that it was no wonder that by the end of the first week of fifth grade - he had trust and focus issues, learning disabilities among other things. He had developed a slight stutter and other speech problems, he was afraid of the dark, gross smells and deathly afraid of suffocation.

Other than all this, the poor little was doing okay - having fun as long as he stayed on the run.

Bob Dylan was so intrigued by his story, that he wrote a bootleg song that was on the secret track of  Another Self Portrait album - simply titled: Markie D.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO759kxMCL8&feature=youtu.be 

Click on link (above) to listen!

I guess it's no wonder that the little guy's brain didn't work like it should be....  

Getting back to our regular programing: Next time "The Great Escape"