09.20.69

We decided to go out to a beach called Rocky Point.  It's just a few days away from autumn, but that doesn't stop Californians.  Neither does the fact that the sun went down hours ago.  We roll up in the van and get our party started.  Fred and Daphne dance to something heavy on the moonlit beach.  Shaggy gets a fire going in a sand pit.  He's going to be cooking something soon, I just know it.

I bust out my surf board and hit the water.  I catch a wave and feel the wind on my face.  Everyone is having a great time.  I doggy paddle out to do it again, and end up touching something in the water.  Out from the murky depths comes a glowing, moaning, ghost-of-a-man in a diving suit, covered in slime and seaweed.  I about-face, hit the shore, and don't stop until I've practically tackled Shaggy.  They all think I'm damaged, as usual, until they turn around.  The disgusting diver continues to plod along the shallow waters.  We hide behind some rocks, unsure of what really just happened.  Everyone (except Shaggy) was either brave enough or curious enough to peek out and check.  The diver is gone.  We're still all scared as shit.  No beach party tonight.

09.18.69

The gang and I were hanging out with each other all day, every day.  And when I say gang, I mean my friends and I, the vigilante sleuths of Mystery Inc.  The police however, had their own definition of gang, and usually did all they could to bust us up.  Maybe if they'd spent more time solving crimes instead of hassling us, we'd all be better off.

We were at a party and all of a sudden, for no reason, people were making mad dashes for the door.  The pigs were running down hallways, everyone was jumping ship.  I snuck out the back with some girls, only to find some cop right on my tail.  It was all a blur.  I ran like hell.  Tree, bush, telephone pole.   Tree, bush, telephone pole.  Tree, bush, telephone pole. Tree, bush, telephone pole.  At some point I was just like "Fuck it," and I hid in one of the bushes until I saw the Mystery Machine coming down the block.  I flagged them down and we all got out of there.

09.14.69 (con't)

After sunrise we meet up at the museum, knight in tow.  Mr. Wickles is the curator there and gives us some information.  Prof. Hyde White was bringing the suit of armor from England, a simple delivery for an upcoming exhibition.  White's disappearance has him worried.  He tells us about the Black Knight, and how legend has it the thing comes alive every full moon.  Damn.  Mr. Wickles considers closing down the exhibition.  Closing the show?  Velma explains the crowd would destroy the place and Wickles would get his ass kicked.  All true.  Wickles glares at us while telling some dudes to put the Black Knight in the medieval room.  I follow along, out of curiosity, and find some fucked up looking glasses on some statue.

We took off shortly thereafter.  Fred's van is good enough for the five of us, but the only windows are in the front seat, and I never get shotgun.  Velma continued to be perplexed by the Knight and Professor White.  Shaggy and I continued to be hungry.  Shaggy speaks up about lunch, and like a starving sidekick, I pipe in too, which is when Daphne notices my weird glasses.  I'm thinking about the deli, Shaggy has a look in his eye like he's feening for something as well.  Fred takes us to the fucking library.

A little research tells us the glasses originate in England, and they're used by olde school jewelers, scientists, and archaeologists.  We decide to break into the museum to find out more info.  This is what's great about working as a team.  Fred holds a ladder to get Shaggy into a second story window, while the rest of us watch out for pigs.  They've nailed Fred for outstanding parking tickets.  They've given shit to Shaggy and me for just standing around with our hands in our pockets (well, Shaggy was), so you know they'll come down hard on us for this.

Another great thing about being a team is we get to split up and cover more ground.  Fred and Daphne go off to some dark corner while Shaggy, Velma, and I look for clues among the paintings and the statues.  Instead of finding information, we find that Black Knight, alive and clanking, coming straight at us.  I was out of there so fast my legs were more like circles than limbs.  Not sure what happened to the others, but at that point I didn't care, especially when I stopped for a breath a realized I was in the fossil room.  Found a great bone to chew on, only to be hounded by that damn Black Knight again.  I circle back to find Shaggy, and we discover a blank spot on the wall where a painting should be.  We go find the rest of the gang, tell them about this new layer in the mystery, and head back to the blank spot, only to find the painting is back on the wall.  I'm about to have a nervous breakdown. 

We find drops of paint on the floor, a trail of it leads to a sarcophagus.  Secret door?  Fuck yeah.  Inside we find a room full of finished and half-finished paintings.  The Knight appears and we scurry like rats again, finding places to run and hide.  Shaggy and I get inside a World War II bi-plane.  I didn't think it was real, let alone operational.  And even then, you would think there would be no gas in it, right?  I accidentally flip a switch and the plane sputters to life, (barely) flying around the room and crash-landing into the Knight.  The Knight's helmet comes off, and inside is Mr. Wickles, the curator.  Our haunted armor was really a dirtbag smuggler, forger, and black market con man.  He sold museum paintings and created fakes.  Good enough for the county yokels, but they wouldn't fool Professor White, who needed to be disposed of.  A bit later we find White tied up in an Indian effigy.

We solved our first case officially as Mystery Inc.  We nailed the bad guy, rescued the good Professor, and put an end to that Black Knight full moon bullshit.  Let's eat.   

09.14.69

We grabbed Fred and Daphne as we entered downtown, they were pasting flyers to a telephone pole.  We found Velma at home.  All of us got in Fred's van to go back to the scene.  It has become our team's major mode of transportation at this point.  Fred painted the van with a wavy design and orange flowers.  Apparently some skinhead spray painted a swastika on the side of it while Fred was at the supermarket last week.  He covered it up with a paint job of his own, so now it says "The Mystery Machine" on the side.

We get back to the pick-up, still there and untouched.  Fred ponders why a knight's armor is left out here alone in the middle of the night.  Shaggy cracks jokes and Daphne and Velma investigate the front seat.  We find a delivery slip that says with the name Jameson Hyde White: Prof. of Archaeology, London, England.  The address is the County Museum.  We all look at Velma.  She doesn't know who it is but it's obvious what our next step should be.

It's 2am by this point.  The museum doesn't open until 9.  I can already tell it's going to be a long day.  Shaggy and I look at each other, it's obvious what our next step should be.  We ask Fred to drop us off at a Carl's Jr.

I learned a lot from Shaggy.  Aside from being my best friend, we had a lot in common. We were hungry all the time and we never had any money.  We walked into the place and got a small salad plate.  They had a deal where you can fill your plate, but you don't get to go back for seconds.  I followed Shaggy's lead.  He put the plate on the tray and proceeded to stack a sandwich.  Double stack.  Triple stack.  And then more.  And more.  It was a tower of food.  It was a monument of cleverness, balance, and "Fuck you" to the restaurant chain.  I followed suit.  The manager saw us and he didn't like it, but he wasn't going to do shit about it.  All of our food technically fit on the small salad plate, and we were too fucked up looking anyway.  Forget about it, not worth it.  I learned that you can get away with a lot  of shit if you do it like it's second nature to you.

Shaggy told me about times he was living on the street and eating dog food out of cans and white bread.  He said you balled it up and ate it as fast as you could, swallowing it before too much of it hit your tongue.  I guess there are some things we don't have in common.  I would have used wheat bread, and I would have savored that shit.

09.13.69

This was a great mystery.  Shaggy and I were walking home from the movies and we hear some rustling in the bushes on the side of the road.  A girl and her boyfriend, both on angel dust, pull me into the ditch.  The girl puts a frog on my nose.  It was funny.  Especially when the boyfriend tried to bash in my face.  Eventually I break free and we both make a run for it.

We don't make it fifty yards down the road before a pick-up truck almost hits us from behind.  It only swerves to miss us, barely slowing down.  Shaggy doesn't put up with bullshit like this so he throws his yogurt at the driver-side window.  The truck drives out of sight, but not before we catch a glimpse of something in the back.  Moonlight shining off something, like metal.

About a mile later we catch up to the pick-up.  Just idling on the shoulder.  Thinking it was time to truly ream the driver out, we approach the truck, ready to rant.  The truck is abandoned.  What we do see is a fucking suit of armor, sitting in the driver's seat.  Once again that moonlit glint shines back at us.  Before we have time to shit our pants, the head on knights armor falls off.  Shaggy and I run like hell.

SUMMER

The gang hung out a lot together that June.  They invited me to come along, checking out police blotters and discussing urban legends.  I met with the group, and recounted my experiences with the paranormal here in Crystal Cove.  It was as if I had flipped a switch on some kind of mystery machine.  I told them all about the unsolved cases I knew.  Any of the details I didn't know I made up (usually through pantomime).  They escorted me out to the backyard and I waited.

They came out a little while later and Velma said, "Well?"

I said, "Rell rhat?"

"Are you in or not?"

I was in.  This was pretty much how we formed Mystery Inc.  In a couple days I packed up and quit my job.  Shaggy sold his bike.  I had no idea what was going to happen.  I left my old life behind like a great dane breaking his leash.

SPRING

SPRING: I was living in an apartment in Crystal Cove, California, a coastal town that looks like a gated community, but they just built a gate and let any old scumbags live here.  I walked to work every day which was a paper route at the time.  I was delivering papers for a guy who hired both me and my friend Shaggy the same day we applied.  I was there every morning, sorting, bagging, walking, slinging, etc. The job was ok but our boss stole Shaggy’s bike chain.

I was in an amateur detective group at the time.  Nothing much professionally speaking, three of us with fucked up equpiment.  But we had fun goofing off and occasionally solving a mystery.


A guy gave my friend Fred and me a copy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study In Scarlet.  We read it all the time.  It wasn't heavy because it was in paperback.  Sherlock Holmes was legendary of course, but the scene was surging in recent times as well.  Leroy Brown out of Idaville, the Hardy brothers out of Bayport, Nancy Drew in River Heights.  It was a growing network of DIY sleuthing.  I think the Hardy kids and Drew even did a tour together once or twice.


Fred, Shaggy, and I wanted to go to Los Angeles to meet some like-minded investigators.  We had this idea in mind - we couldn't wait for mysteries to come to us, we had to venture out into the unknown.


So we drove to L.A. and met some people at the Flower Lounge.  This girl Velma was walking around in circles, making this fucked up noise, screaming at the crowd.  Turns out she just lost her glasses.  We hung out for a bit, and Velma was really cool to us.  This girl Daphne was there as well.  Very smart and kind.  I respected and liked them.  We realized early on in our conversations that the girls were from Crystal Cove too.


We considered hanging out more and then all driving back together, since Fred had a van and the girls took a bus.  We all wanted to spend more time together, but I had to work early the next morning.  As I scurried down the hill to my job the following day, I started getting depressed.  People like Fred and Velma were out there winging it and trying to do something with their lives.  We all lived like dogs (probably me more so), but they lived life with more guts than I was by a long shot.