FREE LOVE - The Invention of Bungee Jumping - only different! pt 3

The conclusion (continued) I wanted to be cool. And I wanted to fit in. And I wanted to be like them and to be liked by them. From the stories I heard, I knew that we would be scrounging around in the manzanita and the rugged western chaparral of the Santa Monica mountains and scurrying around on the rocks like blue-bellied fence lizards.

As a junior hippie, I thought I looked cool in my dad's army coat, which also added a thick extra layer of protection should I actively engage in the "lizard life."

Me and my Army coat and my rope...I was set!

Delighted in all the circumstance of feeling like I belonged and like I was doing something important, I smiled as I proudly carried the rope among the throngs of brothers, hippies, and Harding-ites up the windy mountain road of Tuna Canyon.


Like Issac on a outing with his father and blissfully carrying his firewood to the top of Mount Moriah... I too carried the rope with great honor - ecstatic to be included in this right of passage as a ritual of induction into my tribe.

I belonged.
I was loved.

Overwhelmed with the joy of acceptance, I bounded up the hill with a bounce in my step and a smile that I knew would hurt my face muscles the next day.

Eyebrows popping up and down, I shot glances at all the cute hippie-chicks communicating the hopefulness of connecting in a new way: a way that was no longer that of the "annoying little brother."

Flea-bait and Monkey-boy snarled.

Taking a left turn off the asphalt road we burrowed between scratchy manzanita shrubs that covered the entrance of a secret dirt trail.

I was let in on a secret... this was a big deal!

I was there with them... my heart pounded... as I imagined Issac's heart beat with the similar joy of being with his dad - carrying his special load of firewood up the hill.

Up we scurried to the sacred place... to arrive at an opening of the hippie temple of free love and nature worship.




Out came the freshly picked herbs from the"Mexican tomato plants" in the backyard of our Venice house and Zig-Zag paper. The industrious hippies rolled and licked edges of the paper and rolled some more that had obviously evolved into quite an art-form.


I watched the long inhales and ritual of breath holding and the passing of the "joint" ceremony as if a type of holy communion.


It came to me. I held the "Mary-Jane-cigarette" in my fingers just liked I had watched them do. CHOICES. I could puff and not inhale, but having no formal catechism for this sacred ritual - I declined my first hippie communion.

I basked in the warmth of Southern California sun, family, in community and in finally belonging to my people-group.

Uncharacteristically kind, Flea-Bait offered me a drink of his 7-Up!  The Fates and the gods were smiling. I took a gulp and chocked on the vodka I wasn't expecting. I gagged a couple times to the delight of the hippies as the stuff rocketed through my nostrils and furthered entertained the hordes of hysteric hyenas who uncontrollably laughed at my retarded vomit reflex.  

I felt sad to be the object of ridicule, but pasted a phony smile on my face - with the optimistic hope that I was there for more than shear entertainment. The joint reached my fingers again and I stared at the wet tip that had been passed around from lip to lip, I looked around the circle of rock dwellers and wondered what diseases I could possibly contract by making contact. They didn't see my stomach heave. I smiled and passed it along.

Giggling and laughter and incoherent stories (that I pretended to be interested in) went on for some time. I still held out hope that they liked me and that I belonged.

I don't know why I brought the stupid rope!

Finally, we headed back down the trail, under the secret entrance and back onto the asphalt road. They laughed and told more stories and made up words and called each other names and I smiled and pretended like I was one of them. I was numb but a couple of the hippie girls smiled at me - making me feel a bit more human which may have redeemed the whole trip.  

THEN THE ATTACK!

I was used to fighting and knew that it would have been easy for me to hold off about five or six of them in their present inebriated condition.

AND I DID!  

But there was too many of them. About 20 of them held me to the ground as they took the rope off my shoulders and removed dad's Army jacket. At first, I panicked wondering if this was going to be another "naked" thing... like they did before in the attic. Only this time it was wide open in public and in front of about hundred people and was fearful that I should have had hair under my arm pits and didn't and began swinging my fist and got one of them in the face and drew blood and everyone kept laughing.

They weren't interested in pulling my clothes off and embarrassing me in front of God and country... they had different plans. I knew exactly what Issac felt like when his father put him on the woodpile. They slipped my arms into the sleeves of the coat as they put it on me backwards and tied my sleeves behind by back like a straight jacket.  They bound my hands in the rope and tied it around my body three or four times.

This was planned from all along. I wasn't there because they liked me or accepted me or as if this was some sort of "right of passage" for belonging... I was like the guy who had been invited to dinner by the cannibals - I was dinner.

  I WAS THE MAIN ATTRACTION! 
   
About 20 of the betraying hippies grabbed the length of rope in front of me and another 20 grabbed the length of rope behind me. First it began with a game of tough-of-war. One team of delirious hippies pulled the rope as hard as they could up Tuna Canyon road and one team pulled downhill stretching me out in the middle. My adrenals began pumping epinephrine and endorphins into my nervous system that turned off regular human emotions and my pain sensors. I went to my safe place (like I did at the betrayal of the hamper) where I  had no feeling what-so-ever (this was my drug fix).

The game morphed, of course, as they got more inventive and I felt nothing. Walking down the hill, tied up like a wild beast, we came around a bend in the road. I was scrapped along the rough rocky sides of the cliff - and with my hands tied - I no defense against the sharp claws of the scraggly bushes.

More Laughter!

Then in the opposite bend of the road, they discovered that if they held the rope tight enough, they could hold me suspended in mid air - feet dangling helplessly above the 300 foot drop.

More Laughter! I wanted to think it was because they were having fun and not just because they were laughing AT ME!  I didn't know how to act! In my sickness of desperately wanting to belong - I laughed along with them like I was enjoying the torture - and I didn't know if I was suppose to be enjoying this or not. Or if they wanted me to put up a fight or if I should go on pretending it was fun as a way of making them feel they weren't getting the best of me.   I hated it, yet loved the fix.

ANYWAY...making the way back to the cars and the psychedelic painted VW van with the peace sign and words "Make Love not War" painted across the side like a billboard... they scraped me along the side of a hill again.  "Swedes don't cry" I told myself and I didn't.  And I never did - not once.. not when I broke my arm and not when I chopped off my leg and not now.

And the troglodytes dangled me over the ravine until struck with the bright illumination of a new iteration of the game when Flea-Bait and his group holding the rope uphill ran towards me. Down I free-fell to the end length of the rope and crashed into the side of hill.  This caught on quickly with both groups.

                     Isaac - Abraham - The knife!

            I knew what he felt like.

Then the angel!  The angel stopped Abraham... I prayed for my angel.

NO ANGEL. No Rescue.

Both groups of marijuana influenced hippies ran together and charged apart... that sent me down the hill again and up against the sharp rocks and the prickly thrones of the bushes with no defense as my body grated up the side of the hill like cheese against the side of a cheese grater only to be dangled in mid air again and to do it all over.

Again and again.  And laughter and laughter and more laughter.

Finally one of the hippie chicks finally had enough and  took pity. She broke rank and pleaded with the crazies to stop (must have been some nurturing mothering instincts kicking in).

Everyone talked about it all the way home - and with scrapes on my face - a bloody lip and nose and with bush rashes and gashes on my torso - I forced a smile and pretended to laugh with them as they laughed at me.

This was going to be another great story to tell!  We invented Bungee-Jumping...only our rope was not a bungee and had no elastic to it.  I'll laugh when I hear the story being told at family gatherings and I'll be sure to laugh when I tell the story AS IF I was part of the story and not the object of ridicule in the story.

In the mean time, I'll wait for the next chance to feel like I fit in - like I belong and yet am also frightened by knowing that I am so desperate to be connected and to know what love feels like - that I'll put my self at risk to find it.  

I don't know what's wrong with me... less human... more robot...broken... I'll probably say yes the next time.

I held out hope that this embarrassing story doesn't make it back to any of the friends at Saint Mark's. Some of them still think I'm a regular kid and do regular kid things like they do. I know that I am not an example of what it means to be normal by any stretch of the imagination, but am so afraid that Andrea or the other kids might see me as damaged goods and want nothing to so with me.

(picture to right of normal classmates doing things regular kids do...Cathleen and Andrea and Regina and Theresa and Pam and Marilyn and Patty)




And so I carried the rope and so Issac carried the firewood and so I wondered what I would volunteer for next time and wondered if I was slightly retarded and so I smiled and so Jeanette Lennon walked across the street and asked me why I was always smiling and I didn't have an answer - except that like Joseph in the Bible - I had a dream...and I smiled and shrugged my shoulders... and felt like I wanted to give her a hug. Only I was 13, and 13-year-olds don't do that... and just said to her, "another day in paradise" and I put the rope away in the boat.      

(Pictured to left with scares on face still healing).

Painting above “Abraham and the Sacrifice of Isaac” 

by Henry Seabright
The Illustration Art Gallery

   

The Hippie Fest in Tuna Canyon: pt 2 There are no Strings on Me

(continued)
Everyone was assembling on the front lawn of the Harding house.

Zit King and Chewbacca and Primo and Booty and Mad Dog and Flea Bait and Monkey Boy and Face and Chewy and Kleghorn and Herkamer and Lardo and about ten other guys and all the hippie girls who liked all the hippie boys who had been christened with mean-spirited nick-names.... AND ME!

One time everyone thought the earth was the center of the universe which was challenged when Galileo insisted that the earth was in orbit around the sun...BUT GALILEO was wrong. Once again, my house was the center of the universe.

And I was invited to step into that universe. For today, my older brothers called me by my real name.

I felt like Pinocchio - you know the wooden marionette who had seen enough hardship and been through enough adventure to finally go through the right of passage of becoming a "REAL BOY."

That was me.
                         AND

This was my initiation - my "right of passage" for belonging - my acceptance into the Wolf Pack, where I finally got the chance to metamorphose into a "Real Boy" and become part of my tribe.

"Hi-ho the me-ri-o...there are no strings on me"


Though I wasn't quite out of Saint Mark's grammar school, I was close to graduating and would be at Saint Monica's High School in the fall. Maybe they thought, I was close enough and had been through enough already to have earned my stripes so that I could join the brotherhood.  I had grown my hair as long as the nuns at Saint Mark's would allow and I could put my bangs in my mouth (that was a pretty big deal for Saint Marks).








I had finally quit using the "Sugar-Water-Gel" invention of my dad's that made me attract mosquitoes and that made me look like I had leprosy in the 6th grade (stiff sugar-water hair pictured below)

I wasn't sure that I was ready for all of this hippie stuff, but I at least willing to give myself over to considering this tree-hugging, Vietnam-war-protesting, draft-card-burning, antiestablishmentarianism "long-hair"enterprise of theirs.

Bodies jumped in to the front and into the truck bed of the Borrego (that's the 60' Ford plumbing truck - pictured to the right), into Chewbacca's 57 Ford, into Tom's 56 Chevy hot rod, into a couple VW beetles (that had to be push started - of course), into Kris' 63 Econoline van and a brightly colored VW van painted with flowers and giant peace symbols.

"Come on Mark. Come in this car with us"
"No, come with us Mark!"

They weren't fighting me. They were fighting over me...my stars were finally aligning (like that new song The Age of Aquarius by the 5th Dimension).

       Peace Harmony and Understanding

They wanted me to come! As I scrambled for the van that had the prettiest girls, Flea Bait yelled, "Oh, and don't forget the rope."  I was important... they wanted me and they gave me something to do.

This was bound to be the best day ever. (I was in charge of the rope. If only Andrea could see me now)!  I sat between Vicky and Judy and happily hummed Pinoccho's little ditty...to myself thinking how ironic it was that I was carrying the rope.

HA!

I may have had a large rope slung over my shoulder - but for today at least there were no stings on me.

I've got no strings

To hold me down

To make me fret, or make me frown

I had strings

But now I'm free

There are no strings on me

Hi-ho the me-ri-o

That's the only way to go

I want the world to know

Nothing ever worries me. 

Hi-ho the me-ri-o

I'm as happy as can be

I want the world to know

Nothing ever worries me.

I've got no strings

So I have fun

I'm not tied up to anyone

They've got strings

But you can see

There are no strings on me.  

Off to the hippie destination of choice in Malibu - TUNA CANYON...(shown above) and I was included.  After this adventure I would probably have to go to the Surprise Store in Culver City (the Army surplus store) and buy my own $2.00 pair of used jeans.  They liked me!    They chose me!   For I was becoming one of them.    

  

We parked at the turnout on a hairpin curve and piled out of the cars.

With a sense of importance, I happily carried the rope as we headed to the sacred place of hippie worship.

To be continued... Looking  back on this, I wondered if this is what Issac felt like when he marched up the hill with his dad, Abraham, tasked with the important job of carrying a stake of firewood?

The Infamous "Tuna Canyon" Story part 1: The Quest to Belong

This next part is the lead into one of the classic Dahlin stories which happens to include just about every hippie in Venice and every twenty-something aged person on Harding Avenue. It is a story that is told over and over and over again at every Dahlin function... like the Salton Sea Story.. or the LA Zoo monkey story... or the Good Friday story... or the Fire Escape Pole story... or the Del Diablo story... or the Edna and the Whiffle Ball story... the UFO Story... the Albino Camp stories... McElliot's Pool or of being electrocuted or the story of electrocuting a nun...       

Every man who came back from the military had a nickname. And so it was part of the DNA of my parents generation to give nicknames to friends and to those who fought with you in the trenches.  I never knew my dad's military nickname, but he was the best at dishing out inventive pseudonyms to just about every person he had come in contact with. Jack Underwood, for example, became "Underwater."
Every person who had the last name of McClain or McCelland or McCarthy was called "Mac." Every Ferguson was "Fergy." 

Dad had christened the people in his real estate office after some personality trait or character flaw... "Slim," "Bubbles," and "Liver Lips."  

For the hippies in our neighborhood who hung around our house he gave them names like... "Hercamer Skeeziks," "Kleghorn," "Freeloader," "Sleepy," Girly-Man," "Quaker," "Spongecake" and list goes on and on.  

It was the normative cultural practice at the time. 

And so, this is why all of our friends had a tag-line as a nickname: "Primo," "Sleezy," "Booty" "Pinky," "Monkey boy," "Face," and why my brothers had given each one of us a childhood nickname. This endearing practice quickly degenerated in our house from and were tossed around like hand grenades - meant to inflict harm.  

You could probably figure out the meaning of the insult behind each of  these new names launched by my older brothers (this part doesn't take rocket science).  

In order, our nicknames looked something like this...

Brothers:

            "Zit King"

            "Girly-Man" (BTW, this has nothing to do with being effeminate - only the length of hair). In the                                         early years he was affectionately called, "The Crip." The Crip was the shortened                                         form of The Cripple, because of all the broken bones he had together at one time.                                         Later he was just called "Chewbacca." 

            "Mad-Dog"   

            "Puke-Breath" (if not self-explanatory - he wore a retainer and had the world's worst breath)        

            "Dooh-Dooh-Pants" My 4th or 5th oldest brother(depending on if you counted "Mad-Dog or not)                                                     began early on with this name (because he was always cutting the cheese                                                       and smelled like he had poop in his pants ). This made it easy to find when                                                     we were playing Hide N Seek. 

                                       Then he was called "Lardo" at about 13, because he may have been a                                                               whole 10 pounds over weight! "Lardo" was the shortened form of                                                                "Tub of Lard"(The crueler the better)!    

            "Flea-Bait" (making fun of his short stature). 

Sister: 

             "TQOTW"  (poking fun of her sense of self-importance).

Me: 

          "Marky Sparky" the mailman across the street, Frank                          Nargie, called me this, ( I wished that one had stuck).  

                   My brothers however, has a long list... 

           "Hyper-Boy" "Mosquito-Bait" "Rubber-Band Man"            "Retard... aka 'Tard" (that's the short list...but you get                                                         the idea).

Baby Sister: 

                 She was so far down the food-chain, that she didn't get                    a proper derogatory nick-name...the poor thing. She                        was the only person in our family called by their real                        name ... 

          "Karin." 

   

Following suit (since the Boys Scouts of America was a para-military organization), every kid in our troop had a nick name. Only, most of them had been corrupted by the same viral infection of our human nature (I don't know - maybe it had something to do with the creeping influences of the black ooze) that always seemed to make things flow downhill.

After the infamous camping trip at Camp Slauson we called our skewered and dangling, Senior Patrol Leader, Ray, "Lucky." "Lucky" was intended as a ironic jab and was more sardonic than it was sarcastic, employed in a way to make fun of the poor guy... who was indeed the unluckiest person in the world.

Behind his back, we called our Scout Master, Mr. Degotbee.  Degotbee was the phonetic pronunciation of the acronym, D G O T B, which means "Don't Go Over The Bridge" (which he did). 

Here I am, a 13-year-old late-bloomer and easy target. Not only do I feel insecure in my place in the world, but feel like an outsider in own family desperately trying to fit in.

I'm short for my age...don't have one strand of hair under my arm pits... I'm not a dope-smoking hippie and just don't fit in with the older boys...ie. The Wolf Pack. 

I am not welcome in hippie hooch-hut out back... I am too young to be invited to the hippie parties on Hollister ave in Santa Monica. 

I am not old enough, big enough or good enough to be part of the Venice Pinners softball team.

                       And... I didn't surf! 

I don't have my scuba certification like the rest of the older  boys and just don't belong! 

One time they took me on a scuba trip and tied me to the inner-tube they floated offshore as a marker (I made it "more visible"- they said laughing and "if carried away by a swell or wind, then it would be no loss. We tried to get rid of you at Salton Sea, but that didn't work - remember?"). 

They said things they thought were funny... and used cruel nicknames that deeply cut the heart of a little kid, who had longed for a sense of belonging in his own tribe.           THEY DIDN'T KNOW ME.

They told the Salton Sea story as a joke and laughed at each embellished rendition around family gatherings... to newcomers. I laughed too. But it made me feel like the biggest crisis in a life a nine-year-old was of no concern to them - it hurt! 

Here's the weird thing... the more I felt like I didn't belong - the more I felt like I needed to belong. 

That's why I said, "yes" to everything. "Yes, I'll go into the hamper."  "Yes, you can bury me in a pit."

"Yes, I'll hold this wire."  "Yes' I'll stick my finger in this hole." "Yes, I'll do underwater laps." 

And..."ARE YOU KIDDING ME? OF COURSE, I'LL GO ON A HIPPIE HIKE TO MALIBU CANYON WITH YOU GUYS! And the desperate (maybe even psychotic) 13-year-old said, "YES, I'LL GLADLY FIND A ROPE AND BRING IT."

Which brings me to another infamous story, a Dahlin classic. A story I pretend to laugh at and is used as a from of subtle torture at family gatherings!

Here is how it Began...   

Poochie laid out on the warmth of the soft, tar street as cars began assembling on the driveway and on the front lawn on a perfect Saturday morning.  

Hippies! Hundreds and thousands of them.  Maybe not hundreds and thousands... but 30 or 40 would be no exaggeration... gathered on the front lawn of the Harding House...  

     AND Markie D  WAS INVITED!  

 ....and I was even called by my real name...   

They liked me... everything was good in the world.  

                                            I Belonged!  

                                                                                                                                                              At least I thought so... 

                 

Conclusion: The Psycho Revenge and the Unluckiest Man Alive

Have you ever seen cockroaches scurry around at night after turning the lights on and watched the mad, frantic dash for cover before they were squished by the giant shoe?  That's exactly what we looked like - only different. We were wearing underwear and had tribal markings duct-taped across our naked upper torsos scrambling for cover in our tents.

Seriously, though the duct tape- was the personification of cool!

After the snakes had been let loose in the tents of the other Boy Scouts, we scurried like those cockroaches- only with chonies on - back to our tents, and pretended to be like other normal Boy Scouts.  Ray and Alan had used an entire half roll of the duct-tape on Cockrell - securely fastening his underwear to his stomach. The last thing they wanted was Cockrell running around naked. We giggled in anticipation and then hit each other and shushed each other and giggled and hit and shushed each other in the thrill of anticipation that couldn't be contained.  

Then it happened!

1:37am: "The screech that was heard around the world."
                   
One 14-year-old from Troop 34 screamed like a 10-year-old girl on the drop of a roller coaster when the snake slithered across his face in the middle of the night (or like that lady in the shower scene of Psycho).

This acted as the ALARM and was exactly what we had hoped for. The terrified screaming woke everyone up at Camp Slauson (everyone, expect for us of course). This was when one of the girls from the Santa Monica Troop also discovered the garter snake that had nestled in between two of them (Did I say "one of the girls"? - darn it, I meant one of boys).

Oh well, Panic ensued. Chaos! Mayhem! When the girls oops boys began shooting out through the flaps like cannonballs, they caught the rope, which the recon-team had tied 4 inches above the ground in snare like fashion. Not only, did the stealth rope trip the first kid out, but it also pulled the tent poles along with them - collapsing the tent and trapping the other kids inside.

Perfect and utter pandemonium - couldn't have worked out any better.  Boys fighting inside the shrouds, that had now covered them in pitch blackness, were frantically trying to claw their way out. The death-shrouds were in a tug-of-war match - anchored to a foot of the stupid troglodytes on the outside who were crawling in the dirt thinking that a Zombie had him by the ankle (which was only the rope he had tripped over and on the way out and was now tangled up in).

Santa Monica - same thing.

Beverly Hills - they just started crying thinking it was a Zombie Apocalypse and paid no attention to the empty rolls of duct-tape and pieces of rope lying in their otherwise, pristine camp.

Thank goodness the noise was so loud that our Scout Masters couldn't hear our laughter.  And on cue, this was when we went into our Oscar award winning act. We emerged from tents screaming and running around as if we were casualties of the same prank. We carefully collapsed a couple of the poles when everyone was out of their tents to make it look like we had been victimized as well, by the troop we had framed. ONLY!


Only, on the way out of his tent, Ray FORGOT!

 Ray forgot that we had tied ropes to the front poles of our tents in a ruse that had caught the poor guy right across the ankle (the unluckiest and the luckiest person alive). Down he went with a thud!  Our Troop 32 cabin was on a hill. Down Ray rolled! Bouncing from one dirt terraced step to another - pulling the tent behind. Poor "unlucky" Ray was sure to die. There was no way he could live through this.


Then  WHAM- Ray shot up into the air like an animal in a hunter's snare.

When setting up the tent, Ray had decided to take a shortcut and tie-off the top peak of his tent to a tree branch. Rolling down the hill to his sure death the branch stopped the tent which suspended the "luckiest-man-alive" in mid air.






Ray proved to be the perfect cover up! There was no way Troop 32 could have been involved in the greatest Boy Scout caper of all time, placing blame squarely on Troop 33 from Beverly Hills.

The laughter we had at Ray, who was precariously dangling from the branch - covered the laughter we couldn't contain at the snitches...the cake-eaters and (as Jeffery Lennon called them) the bottle-feeders from the other three troops.

Unfortunate Bridge Crossing

Branch Cracking

Truck Smashing

Ray Skewering.

Arms and Legs Flailing

Markie D Singing

Cockrell mooning

And Little Wiener Cooing.

Some Kids applauding

Cake-eaters snitching

Tribunal meeting

And Jeffery Seething

Payback Brewing

A Plan Ensuing

Paraphernalia Gathering

And Snipe-Hunt Pursuing.

Snakes Slithering

Boys who need Mothering

Zombies Reaching

And Death-Shrouds Smothering.

Venice Scheming

Mar Vista Bleeding

Santa Monica Weeping

And Beverly Hills Pouting.

Ray Dangling

Our Kids Laughing

Jeffery Proclaiming...

              ...The best Boy Scout Outing! 

You think I jest! But, 96.34% of this story is absolutely true.

Just find Jeffery and ask him yourself. He would tell you, "No Reserve. No Retreat. No Regrets"

To me, it was just another lousy day in paradise on Harding avenue. And that's just the way it was... until the next true of adventure of Markie D and growing up on the best street and the best city in the world.

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).

Snakes. Ropes. Zombies and Troop 32

Continued: Last time, we had left off with Senior Patrol Leader, Ray, dangling inside the back compartment of our Scout Bus as if on a rotisserie inside of a BBQ. It was like he had been shish-kabobed by the oak branch that had crashed through the front window.

The chants of "Don't cross the bridge" morphed into "Monkey in the middle" as the toxic-fumed minions began swatting the helplessly flailing arms and feet of our new object of ridicule!  Meanwhile, the "do-gooders" of the other normal troops, grabbed their neatly packed first aid kits and rushed to the scene of the crash hoping to earn accolades and merit-badges.

We were "ill-equipped" for the attention we were suddenly flooded with! I was on top of the moving van(slash)Scout Bus singing about "Tapp crossing the bridge and the skewered Senior Patrol Leader" to the tune of "Like a Bridge over Troubled Water," but the Scout Master from Troop 34 and his flock of rescuing vermin thought my brilliant parody was inappropriate and tasteless.

"Ill-equipped" ...because we had no rocks to throw at the other regular kids (like we had at our disposal at the National Jamboree when Dego and the rest of the boys tried to kill Bill Gates)!
("at our disposal" meant that at the National Jamobree last summer we had both -  regular kids and rocks - lots and lots of normal kids who weren't from Venice and a billion river rocks!)

Behind their Scout Master's back, the pasty cake-eaters sneered and scowled at us with the expression of disdain written on their namby-pamby faces - that irked Jeffery to no end.    He was fit to tied!

FLASHBACK:  Even though we had tamed down the secret-induction "ritual" ever since the brawl of my induction malfunction - it was still very clear to Jeffery in the new "safer" ceremony - that loyalty to the new "people group" was of paramount importance and that snitches and "rats" were not tolerated.

Even though Jeffery Lennon did not start a riot at his induction like I did, he got the message loud and clear.

BACK TO OUR STORY: The kids in Troop 34 needed payback for violating the code! After we ran everybody off and took care of the mess ourselves we eventually made camp in front the best cabin at Camp Slauson. We were TROOP 32, we were from Venice and we were proud!

The planning began.  We found both of the snakes - one by accident, when it fortuitously bit the annoying "Little Wiener." We removed the snake from his arm, Kissel sucked out the pretend venom - and we praised Little Wiener for his contribution in finding the last snake, which had made its way into his backpack. Secretly, we assembled the ropes and the snakes for the midnight caper that would take place after the traditional "snipe hunt."   I hated the snipe hunts.  Supposedly, this charade is to test the resolve of the new kids and put hair on their chest. I've been on snipe hunts some 20 times, but sitting in a bush in the middle of a moonless night in complete blackness still scared the bajeebers out of me (AND I still didn't have hair on my chest).  I could not admit to my new Boy Scout tribe that I was afraid of the dark! I was afraid of being smothered....buried...suffocated...big brothers and anything that had to do with being tied up in ropes.

Oh, and Zombies!  (That's because my family had opened a Porthole to Hades that was channeled through the mysterious space in my bedroom wall).



For a new little "Pimple-Squeeze" like Jeffery - he actually had a very good plan (it was probably better planned than my payback attempt at Chewbacca - that had left me tied up by a rope and dangling from the third story window of our house IN MY UNDERWEAR on a school morning, in front of ANDREA and every other kid at Saint Marks school).

This was either going to be really good, or else, someone was going to end up in prison (I figured that I would probably have to go to confession next Saturday for not offering up a prayer for those soft kids from Mar Vista and Santa Monica).

Cockrell wanted to do the raid naked  - of course - but thankfully, we settled for duck tape and Tighty-Whities!

Next time:  "THE WHITE ANGELS"  True story!