Rite of Passage
In the late 1960s, Markland rented a place on Valentine Street which runs along the northern rim of Echo Park, and looks 350 feet down on the Los Angeles River, Glassell Park and Cypress Park. The view from his place was expansive and unobstructed all the way to the San Gabriel Mountains. Once or twice a year since he moved in, he would entertain himself and rattle nerves from Atwater Village to Pacoima. He would have done it more frequently but he damn sure didn't want to get caught. Most evenings the weather conditions were suitable with an on-shore air flow, light-to-moderate, and moving northwesterly from Dodger Stadium out to the San Fernando Valley.
When the weather and Markland's frame of mind came together, he would pull out three of the large plastic bags from the dry cleaners that he had stashed away. The bags came with holes in the top. One for the hanger, and the others I assume were to allow the garment to breathe. He would tie a knot in the bag below the holes, fill the bag with gas, then tie off the bottom of the bags and trim off any excess plastic on the outside of the knot. He did this on the back patio, where the house shielded him from the street and neighbors. The gas came from the clothes dryer. He disconnected the flex line from the dryer and ran it out to the patio through the vent opening.
Tying off the bottom of the bags would include inserting a foot-and-a-half long Jetex brand fuse, with only a few inches inside the bag. The rest of the fuse was outside the bag, and had a cigarette with a couple of small washers, taped to the end. He would lift one of the bags up above his head, holding on to the cigarette. The bag would float upward since the gas was lighter than air, and the washers kept the cigarette hanging straight down below the bag. He used a lit cigarette to light the end of the one taped to the fuse, and then released the bag. The bag would rise slowly, drift out over the 350 foot drop, and begin to travel out toward the valley. You could see the glow of the cigarette in the night sky at first, but as it rose and moved away, you would eventually lose sight of it. The three bags would be launched a few minutes apart.
The burn rate for a Jetex fuse when vertical, was approximately 45 seconds per inch. The first explosion would come seven or eight minutes after the release of the third bag. The flash was first, impossibly high above Glendale. The sound followed like a sonic boom, delayed by a second for every mile it had drifted from Valentine Street. Markland's theory was that if people came out after the first bang to see what was happening, they'd get bored and give up after a minute, then go back inside before the second bag blew. They would repeat the cycle a second time, and would be back inside before the third bag blew. At this point they would either forget it altogether, or come out and stay out, determined not to miss the next one.
The explosions took place long after the eleven o'clock news and the newspaper had gone to print, so the stunt escaped any media attention. This was consistent with the low profile he had maintained while at school. Despite Occidental being small, over the four years we both were there, I couldn't remember having heard a single word said about Markland. He seemed to be the quiet and serious type who kept to himself. I got to know him when in the summer of 1967 we were hired on to work the Upward Bound Program. For eight weeks, about a hundred high school kids from the lower income neighborhoods of Los Angeles, lived on the Occidental Campus, and attended classes to provide some exposure to life beyond the confines of their respective barrios and ghettos. The first time Markland and I realized we were kindred spirits was when we took the kids on a trip to the beach. Most of them had never been before. The two buses pulled into the Huntington State Beach parking lot, the doors opened, and all one hundred kids who had been cooped up for more than an hour, emptied the buses and charged toward the water yelling, hooting, laughing and making one hell of a racket. The predominantly Caucasian crowd sunning themselves on the sand, looked up and panicked, the 1965 Watts riots still fresh in their minds, as a black and brown hoard descended upon them. Thirty seconds later the Upward Bound crowd had settled on the sand well short of the water. There was a completely empty, forty-yard wide buffer zone on both sides of the kids, as everyone in their path had run for their lives. The visual spectacle of this had Markland and me laughing and talking about it the rest of the day.
We quickly became good friends and regaled each other with tales of dastardly deeds each of us had performed during our years at Occidental. Often voiced were comments such as, "You did that? I always wondered who it was." This conversation prompted inquiries along the lines of, "Did you ever go here, or there, or ever try doing this, or that?" After the demonstration with the gas bags one evening, Markland became adamant that he must take me on the Cyclone Racer at the Pike and a sea plane to Catalina.
I had been to the pike a handful of times in the fifties. Judy Parker had grown up with my parents and stayed in touch over the years. Her son Maxim and I got along and I would sleep over sometimes at their house in Los Alamitos. Judy had been through five husbands, each of which was a career officer in the Navy or the Air Force. Once in a while, Judy would let Maxim and I take the bus to the Long Beach Pier where the Pike was located. The Pike opened in 1902 and later that same year could be reached by street car from downtown Los Angeles. It grew over the years to where it held over 200 amusements – carousel, salt water taffy, bumper cars, fortune tellers, thrill rides, carnival pitch and skill games.
Unfortunately, the close proximity to the naval shipyards helped turn it into a dark and dreary place. Hookers, tattoo parlors, girlie shows and free-flowing liquor created a place where a throng of sailors and locals would carouse and imbibe. To quote Wikipedia:
A side effect of mass inebriation and intoxication was that every pocket and corner of the entertainment zone had on it at one time any number of bodily fluids.
I don't think you can truly appreciate how fitting a description these words provide unless you had seen the place. When Maxim and I were at the Pike we were always reminded of the part in Pinocchio where he goes with Lampwick to the underworld called Pleasure Island. With the opening of Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm, the Pike's days were number and it was finally demolished in 1979.
The Cyclone Racer was a roller coaster and the big attraction at the pike. It was built in 1930 at a cost of $140,000. It was wood, all wood, rose to 110 feet, and extended out over the water on pylons. Riders would experience a top speed of 50 miles per hour, G forces up to 3.6, and face descents of 50 degrees. I had never been on a roller coaster of any kind. The ride was two-thirds of a mile in length and took one minute and forty-five seconds to complete. I screamed like a young girl continuously for the first thirty seconds. Then I just put my head between my knees and waited to die. Markland was ecstatic. My instincts told me nothing that made those kinds of sounds and shook that violently was going to stay together. My instincts were correct, they tore it down less than a year later.
From the Pike we drove a few miles to the launching area for the last remaining daily sea plane commuter business in the world. The Catalina Channel Airlines at one point carried up to 1,000 passengers a day between Long Beach and Catalina Island. The flight was twenty-three miles and took only fifteen minutes; the other option was a two-hour ride on the ferry. The plane of choice was a 1937 Grumman Goose. The airline had started with ten but was now down to it's last one. The landings are difficult to gauge as the plane comes in with a series of bounces off the surface of the water, not unlike skipping a flat rock out over a lake. There's little a pilot can do if the bounces take the plane further than anticipated, sending it into the dock and landing area. Prior to our flight, nine planes and seven passengers had not survived the landings since the airline had been in business.
We entered the plane from a door in the rear that was extremely small. The plane held eight passengers and the inside was a display of impressive craftsmanship. Other than the seats, the inside was finished in wood with detailed inlays and dove-tailed joints. It was what you would find on an expensive vintage schooner. My admiring of the interior was interrupted by a crew member who instructed us how to put on, and keep on, inflatable life vests. I honestly thought she was kidding at first. We taxied out away from shore to attempt to take off. These sea planes could lift off of the water only if headed directly into the wind, and a wind of sufficient strength. It took us seven passes to get airborne. The most alarming aspect of this was the takeoff. There had been no mention of the fact that when the plane began to power its way toward lift-off, the water would come up over the little porthole windows we were looking through. Markland got a real kick out of that.
We made both the flight over and back. A week later, I was called into the Upward Bound Program Director's office. Marguerite Archie was a very talented lady. She seemed the perfect person to manage such a program. She knew that Markland and I had become friends. She told me that he had died. He had spent the weekend at his parent's home and was found on the floor of his bedroom Sunday morning. Evidently he had long suffered from an allergic condition that would sometimes cause his throat to swell and cut off his breathing. This time it had been fatal. This was something he never bothered to mention.