Index

   

Prey Lewd - 

Chapter 1    Bowls of Rice and Hash

Chapter 2    Counter Culture

Chapter 4    Cheap Wine Nights

Chapter 5    Hipster Highway

Chapter 6    The Blue Coyote

Chapter 7    City of Angels

Chapter 8    Saigon Dazed

Chapter 9    The Acid Aphrodite of the Sunset Strip

Chapter 10  "I buy, you, pay, G.I."

Chapter 11   Sunset Stripped

Chapter 12   White Rabbits & Purple Haze

Chapter 13   Body Counts

Chapter 14   Age of Aquarius

Chapter 15   The Psychedelic Shop

Chapter 16   War, Peace & Narcotics

Chapter 17   The Death of Hip

Chapter 18   Bombed in Berkeley

Chapter 19   Death of Hip 

Chapter 20   The Clown Princess

Chapter 21   On the Road

Chapter 22   Canada, Oh Canada!

Chapter 23   The Commune of Hobbits

Chapter 24   Thus Spake Zarathustra

Chapter 25   The Wolverine and Beaver

Chapter 26   My Lai Massacre  

Chapter 27   You Don't Need A Weatherman

Chapter 28   Bend Over America

Chapter 29   Chicago: Takin' It To The Streets

Chapter 30   NewYork Pizza and Heroin

Chapter 31   Leave the Guns, Take the Eggrolls

Chapter 32  In the Vortex of Violence

Chapter 33  Bong Time In Canada

Chapter 34  Folk Fest on the Island of Mu

Chapter 35  Spaced Out in Canada

Chapter 36  The Darkside of the Sixties Moon

Chapter 37  Acid, Mud and Rock and Roll

Chapter 38  Body Bags & Rolling Papers

Chapter 39  We Blew It

Chapter 40  Body Bags

Chapter 41  J. Edgar & The Hooverettes

Chapter 42  Pest Control

Chapter 43  From Sea to Shining Sea

Chapter 44  We Have a War to End

Chapter 45  The Moratorium March

Chapter 46  We Blew It

Chapter 47  Kids Do the Damndest Things

Chapter 48  The Road to Alcatraz 

Chapter 49  Toronto Gives Peace a Chance 

Chapter 50  Broken Treaties & Altered States

Chapter 51  The Village Massacre 

Chapter 52  Sex and the Occupation of Alcatraz

Chapter 53  Vietnam to Altamont

Chapter 53  Kent State: Get Out of Dodge

Chapter 55  The Windy City and the Kill Zone

Chapter 56  Murder At Christmas

Chapter 57  When Irish  Eyes Are Smiling 

Chapter 58  The Hit Squad

Chapter 59  All Roads Lead to Detroit

Chapter 60  You Can Go Home Again

Chapter 61  The Fall of Saigon

Chapter 62 Mellow Brick Road to Sanity

Prey Lewd

 

Prey Lewd - 1967

Joey Russo, all of 21,  had arrived in the 95 degree heat and humidity of sexy Saigon at Tan Son Nhat a month before South Vietnam’s National holiday to celebrate the anniversary of the overthrow and assassination of former Prime Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. The Diem regime not exactly a poster child for the democracy we were trying to sell by rammng it down the throat of this small Asian nation at the point of a bayonet.

 

Joey enlisted in Detroit, basic trained at Fort Knox and was an expert marksman with an M-16...perfect fodder for the Fun, Travel and Adventure the U.S. Army was offering as a door prize to all young Americans who were of draft age and unlucky enough to have their number called. Time to choose your prize boys….a body bag behind door number one or Canada behind door number two or prison behind door number 3 on cell block C in federal prison. No help from our studio audience please!

 

Joey however wasn’t drafted. He enlisted.  He was spinning the military wheel of fortune hoping to get stationed in sexy  Germany or romantic  France or swim among the Mod hipsters of jolly old England. Anywhere but up country in Vietnam’s  bush where the rice paddy’s ran red with the red, white and blue  blood of  American soldiers. The blood would mix with the similarly red blood of both North & South Vietnamese in body count battle after battle. Strange how Vietnamese blood is also red. Hard to distinguish which blood belonged to which prostrate body or the irrational rationale for the killings over some Pentagon penchant to play a deadly game of napalm + agent orange = freedom. Tag you’re it!

 

Joey hadn’t  seen any action yet, but was enjoying getting acclimated to life in Saigon.  The language, the chaos of the crowded clogged streets with motor scooters and cabs, the noise and rock music or country music blasting from inside the GI bars and of course, the bar girls, massage parlors and hookers.  Most of all enjoying the bounty of goods available on a thriving black market. American dollars were the Holy Grail of currency.

 

He had gotten settled in and went with some friends to the A-OK club that afternoon, a favorite watering hole he had discovered by accident. Today was National Day...celebrations, firecrackers, singing, and a parade Joey & Company could view from the bars street front patio while enjoying rounds of 33 Beer,  a popular brand for GI’s also called Ba Muoi Ba.  The jukebox was loud and the music of the Byrds flew gently outside to the filling streets while next door, at the Blue Moon bar, the Okie’s and the southern boys in khaki were fired up on a Bakersfield high as Buck Owens “A-11” was competing on the invisible outdoor beer soaked patio stage with Roger McQuinn’s 12 - string mastery.

 

Today a parade, beer and a quick trip to Mama San’s later to enjoy the carnal hospitality of her go go go girls who could make love seem like Celestial heaven on earth. Small framed bodies, pert little breasts and enough sexual action to make any man feel “Numbah One GI” for a short time at least.

 

As “Mr. Tambourine Man”  invited Joey to “take  a trip upon his magic swirlin' ship”
the first explosion from North Vietnamese artillery rocked the street in front the A-OK Club and elsewhere in the city just as the parade was getting ready to get underway.

 

The VC where in the jungles three miles out from city center. The accuracy of their aim was frightening and admirable at the same time. People scattered in all directions as over two dozen shells pelted Saigon with hot metal and shrapnel. As a bonus for the North Vietnamese, an American minesweeper on the Saigon River was sunk … by a mine that missed detection.

 

The streets were filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder and the cacophony of shrill screams of people trying to avoid death at any cost. By the time the smoke cleared….numerous South Vietnamese and five Americans were dead including one officer, not that many grunts would care if a 90 day OCS wonder  2nd Louie bit the dust. Enough of them were fragged in the bush anyway, the folks back home were not notified that they died of “friendly fire”.

Joey and his friends suffered only confusion and spilled beer. They were lucky that day. Because of this unprecedented attack this far south into the heart of Saigon, LBJ called for more troops to be sent to hurry the end of this quicksand nightmare.  “We need to end this war, NOW!” former President and hero of Normandy, Dwight Eisenhower told the media.

 

As for Joey and his platoon….they were already jungle boots on the ground. Within two days he would leave Saigon. Reality was about to bushwhack Joey as he would now go upcountry...all this in the midst of the  attack, a growing national Buddhist uprising, and growing protest against the war back in the states.

 

He dashed off a letter that night to his best friend, Mickey Cusmano in New York City. They went to school together  back in Detroit, Mickey, a member of the SDS which he had joined in Ann Arbor, Michigan before his move to New York,  now was living in Greenwich Village as a journalism student attending classes at Columbia University  by day and organizing against the war at night at the various coffee houses along with his girlfriend, Myrika Christie, an artist and folksinger/songwriter when she performed at the Gaslight Cafe.

 

Mickey read Joey’s letter with alarm. This was his first personal contact with someone in Vietnam who had just experienced the horror of this so called war. Joey was his best friend and Mickey had tried to talk him out of enlisting, but Joey was stubborn and believed in the cause.

 

Now the shit was about to hit the fan in a way that would take four young Americans on a road and moral journey into the abyss of protest. “What would Thoreau do under the circumstances?” he questioned silently. He knew the answer and quickly wrote back to Joey.

 

The times would force them to go  on the run through the turmoil of the Sixties, to Haight Ashbury, Chicago and Canada,  as now Mickey had also that day received his draft notice. He wanted no part of Vietnam. Nor did he want any part of prison for failure to report. His moral compass was being challenged….now he had to find his true moral direction.

Chapter 1 - Bowls of Rice & Bowls of Hash

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2 Greenwich Village: Bowls of Rice & Bowls of Hash

I read Joey’s letter over and over. As a journalism student in NYC I became acutely aware of the horrors of the war in Vietnam, but with Joey’s letter it came crashing home with a fury.  It wasn’t just some film footage on the evening news anymore. It was now real. My best friend was in the mire of the quicksand caused by politics in the Beltway of D.C. I started keeping a journal from that day forward. Today also contained another element that was to change my life forever. My parents back in Detroit  had received my draft notice. I hadn’t bothered to leave my forwarding address with the draft board.

It read in part TO: Mickey Cusamano 3484 Three Mile Drive, Detroit, Michigan. You are hereby directed to present yourself for Armed Forces Physical Examination...blah, blah, blah.”

I was living in an old loft apartment in the Village, close to campus with my girlfriend, Myrika Christie, a young German immigrant student, artist and musician who in addition to being a songwriter, also sang at the various coffee houses on MacDougal Street which was the Bohemian center of the folk music scene in New York and the epicenter of the cities left wing politics. It’s also where we saw Lenny Bruce perform on one of his last “concerts” before he OD’d and crashed dead onto the bathroom floor

The Cafe Wha was her favorite showcase as it was the folk Fort Knox of the  folk music scene at the time. On Sunday’s we would spend time at Washington Square where all the budding musicians and poets and bards and artists and yes, this journalism student would venture to and spend the day, sharing the sunshine discussing music, the war,  Civil Rights, politics, and the draft while the sweet smell of marijuana would fill the air as pamphleteers would pass out mini manifesto’s produced on beat up Gestentner machines. They were from various groups from the SDS of which I was a member to that weeks copy of The Guardian, a radical leftist independent weekly newspaper published  in the city. They were  attacked by the hardhat generation for having Communist sympathies or worse.

At the time I was also writing about the music scene and the musicians who would perform in the clubs for the Bleecker Street Free Press. It didn’t pay much, but for Myrika and myself it helped pay for the apartment, (mice and cockroaches were free), our bags of Basmati rice (We could stretch rice meals from the artist lofts of  NYC to the slums of Delhi on the Yamuna River). Rice with vegetables, rice with cheap grade hamburger, and of course rice with more rice, to go along with a cheap bottle of Night Train or Boone’s Farm wine to go with the seeds and stems in our bag of marijuana.

It was a great scene for two young radicalized lovers. The Sixties were  a plain brown bag holding a cheap bottle of wine that spilled out onto the streets of the south as the Civil Rights movement went on the march and opposition to the war in Vietnam was exploding  there was no turning back...the point of no return had been crossed. In Greenwich Village in hard concrete gray New York, folkies were sounding the alarm through thought provoking lyrics set against an acoustic background soon amplified.


Folk music was not about flowers and clouds anymore..now they were laced with doses of lyrical protest. The Eve of Destruction dawned across the land, you know, the land that is my land, your land, made for you and me.. Folk music blended with poetry in the coffeehouse circuit of the East Village in New York to North Beach in San Francisco.

Folk music was now making statements with music and lyrics. Tame at first in the Fifties, by the Sixties, the merely pleasing vocal harmonies of folk groups were changing, The bards and the poets of peace, love and understanding were on the march for civil rights in the south, against American involvement in Vietnam, wanting to ban the bomb and nix the nukes. Women’s Liberation was in full bloom and bras were burned joining the raging bonfire of draft cards and American flags.

Myrika was frightened I would end up in Vietnam. I was scared shitless. We didn’t want to lose each other.  So that night we made a fateful decision...if we had to we would head as far as we could from Detroit’s induction center at old Ft. Wayne and New York where they would be sure to find me eventually. We had an old VW car that was given to us by a friend and musician who was drafted and answered the call. Hopefully it would take us out of the vortex where my options were to wear the green and pick up a gun and join the fun in Vietnam; go to prison or get our asses north to war resister friendly Canada, or even out west to get lost in San Francisco’s post Beat solar system.  

I wrote to Joey and told him our plans weren’t set in stone as fixed as the sword of Arthur’s Excalibur nor was I Merlin. I could however, make myself disappear. That night Myrika and I  sat down,  and over our bowls of rice and a bowl of hashish, set about planning our grand getaway….beat up VW, writing journals, Myrika’s two guitars, and enough internal  fear to fuel our journey to hell and back...or at least to San Francisco or Toronto!

Chapter 2 - Motor City Mayhem

 

The Motor City Mayhem

Joey and I grew up fast & hard on Detroit’s eastside. We were all  just 11-years-old and the last thing on our  minds was the nightmare of a blood soaked Vietnam that lurked camouflaged in the booby trapped bushes of our future, The Motor City. A blue-collar landfill of socialism and sludge. Home to alien beings in time warp coveralls from the Planet Heavy Metal entered the auto plants, like so many inanimate and lobotomized rag dolls with their heads torn off. Eye sockets, just holes to let in the light and let out the dark. The mondo monotony of the assembly line . . . parts of product, gleaming, laid out in perfect symmetrical rhythm, like long white lines of cocaine.

 

The U.A.W. and Teamsters—Maestros of the Masses and Minions—conducted a surreal symphony of industrial-strength dung as the blue collar-ballet and dance of the drones played to a riveted audience of riveters and riveteers.
The Detroit River, which ran the length of the city, was a melange of "lakers," frighteningly huge freighters that were home to cargo-ladened holds. The lakers kept the life of commerce flowing and breathing freely from steel mill to manufacturing plant, bows slicing through the waters with the ease of a welder's torch in the hands of an artisan cutting through metal. Duluth to Cleveland, and back again, back and forth, to and fro, heave and ho!

 

The Emerald City of the Working Class also had a veneer of pollution, haze, dust and rust: a statically charged steely forest, thick with belching smokestacks, red hot extruded steel and sunset orange iron . . . The collars of the card-carrying blue, proud of the red, white and blue  emptied their black lunch boxes of five-hour-old sandwiches, hard cheese, tomatoes and proscuitto . . . grabbed a quick drink from a silver thermos and waited.

The hardhats of hard hearted Detroit, the unfeeling town without blue collar pity, purity or piety, were only interested in paychecks and parity, not parody, or even supremacy for that matter . . . in space, or anywhere else. The plebian philosophers who later espoused the love it or leave middle finger answer to dissent hadn't risen to the surface yet, like so much bubbling and dangerous volcanic gas.Who cared about one more pin the tail on the donkey commie red star on the Asian map?

The neighborhood of Mack Avenue was another small piece of the ethnic jigsaw puzzle of Detroit: dark, secretive Italians; big, hunkering Poles; oom-pah-pah Germans and enough drunken Irish to fill the ethnic cup to overflowing. "Give us your tired, your hungry and your poor. Your beat, your downtrodden, your drunks and your whores. Give us all you got. Why not?"

Mack Avenue ran the racial gauntlet from the inner core to the outer limits. All the way, eastward through the cacophony of the city's ethnicity. Neighborhoods. Corner BBQ's, soot, smoke and pork, beer and betting parlors, rhythm and blues, old Negro buses cranking along the tired old concrete of Gratiot Ave, Mack and Chene. Blue collars, black skin, white skin, brown skin.

 

The Melting Pot of the Kingdom of Detroit, but when Mack Avenue hit the Mediterranean flashpoint of Three Mile Drive, it was our  world.

An Eye-talian neighborhood to be sure. Fresh baked sweetbreads, fat plates of piled-high pasta and meats, blood-red and delicioso. It had enough bad ass badda-bing and badda-boom to ignite megatons of politically incorrect dynamite. A neighborhood full of vowel-ending names . . . Scalisi, Marino, Vitti, Russo, Cusamano and Bommarito. A raucous, vociferous hand waving Roman Catholic city-state of kids, families, hustlers and wise guys. The perfect backdrop to grow up in and hold onto for the rest of your life.
It had it all, especially the alleys, those damned alleys that were the perfect venue of play for urban kids to knock around and kick the can, or let loose at stickball.

 

We all liked Tommy, the lone Polish kid on the block, who was also one of my best friends. Alongside him was  the neighborhoods wild child, a strange but kid, Jimmy Russo, Joey’s brother  nicknamed Joey the Torch. Joey earned his nickname because of his morbid fascination for packs of matches, the flames they produced and the acrid smell of sulphur.

 

The Russo  brothers, who took great pleasure in holding spitting contests, generally on other people, and they engaged in other similar competitions that usually involved bodily noises and functions. The future held no hope of a Nobel Prize for either one, let alone a highschool diploma.

Jimmy  was destined for a long prison sentence later in life in a Michigan prison for trying to extort money from a downriver Hungarian bar owner, part gypsy, named Ziggy. When he refused to pay up, and started to reach under the bar for his bat, Jimmy  grabbed it from the poor unfortunate Ziggy beat him near to death with it, leaving him crippled and partially paralyzed for life. Ziggy recovered somewhat and testified against him, happy with their incarceration, although his own world would now be a prison of ongoing heart attacks and strokes inside the solitary confinement of a cellblock of paralysis.  Newspaper accounts finished the final chapter of Jimmy’s story in 1970.  He shot a cop cold blooded bang, dead, drop in Akron, Ohio. No reason nor rhyme ever given. Jimmy  wounded by another officer, was rushed waa-waa sirens to the hospital, got patched up, glucose life support, pain pills, lot's of 'em, Darvons and morphine, then stood stoic, as a remorseless hospital junkie at trial. He exited life and was executed in 1985.

We would all play war with toy guns and water balloon grenades, but In child war, there is only victory or defeat for one side or the other. No death camps, no Auschwitz, no atrocities and no real dead to lie there bleeding that have to be mended on the battlefield before being sent home, in pieces, to live out life lifelessly in a wheelchair as a reward for service—with a Purple Heart bedpan medal at the VA Hospital.

At the end of child-battle, the two sides would simply break rank and roles and retreat, armed not with bullets and grenades, but nickels clenched in tiny fists as they raced to the soda fountain for double dips. Vanilla Cokes. Cherry Cokes. Boston Coolers. Vernors and Faygo. It was a sweet toothed unconditional surrender!

Real war was  deep in the steamy, mosquito repellant, boot and flesh rotting jungles of Vietnam. Korea was at a standstill at the no-mans kill zone. Up North it was Pyongyang Poon-tang while down south the Broadway boys were belting out their rendition of "I'm a Seoul Man". Soon the strange sounding towns would shift from Korea to Vietnam...Hanoi...Da Nang...Saigon...Long Wang...Suc Muc Dik.

The year that Vietnam had pulled a rabbit from it's hat and had produced the first unofficial American casualties. Two dead, one wounded, officially. Officially, these were unofficial deaths, of course, off the record, but, real blood nonetheless, and real silence, and of course, real dead, officially unofficial...of course.

 

Joey was now deep in the shit in Vietnam and was not exactly the Draft Boards Poster Child for Patriot of year. Myrika and I contacted Olivia who was Joey’s off and on girl since high school and had also made her way to New York to pursue a career wearing ballet slippers and imitating swans on stage. We were close friends and wanted to let her know we would be leaving soon and why. If there was going to be an eve of destruction I wanted to far far away in some invisible wonderland.

 

Chapter 3 - The Counter Culture Looking Glass Express

 

 

The Counterculture Looking Glass Express
The dark, cold, grey days of a New York City winter were moving over ever so slowly to make way for the inevitable spring rebirth of warm pleasant rain and sunshine of April 1967. The streets of the Village where Myrika and I shared an apartment once again exploded to life with an electric current of eclectic humanity. A Bohemian bolshevism permeated the streets.

From our window we could watch the daily artistic melange of street performers, radical speakers from the Free Speech Movement all blended in a bizarre three dimensional Diego Rivera portrait along with the sinners and saints, hookers, male hustlers and junkies from Thompson Square Park hyped up and hopped up on the hopes and dreams of the next fix of junk or sex.
Today we were in high spirits. Myrika and I had our plans outlined to leave NYC before the draft board could unleash it’s bloodhounds to track me through the chain gang swamps and award me with three hots and a cot in some Federal prison with an oversexed lifer doing time for cannibalizing his family at Easter. She and Olivia, Joeys now 17 year old girlfriend had moved from Detroit to New York and was now crashing with us with dreams of being an actress on Broadway. I promised Joey we’d look after her, and we did. I guess I was overzealous in my caretaking. I managed to get her pregnant. Myrika was understanding about it however. She had her own flings. Joey would not be so understanding when he returned. He was a hot headed dago who had already killed in action.

Tonight some friends would come over to celebrate our stand against the war by defying it. Hell, why not, it was my ass, not theirs. We would get stoned and drunk tonight and in two days hit the highway for California. We had the VW bus cleaned up inside and out and it was more than a camper...it was bong on wheels and we were about to embark through the looking glass of the Sixties.

We lived in the eye of the sociological hurricane. The Village was a Bohemian art colony smack dab in the the middle of the Hobbit infested middle earth of . shops & artisans posing as a fine wine aging in an oak cask. Eventually It became gentrified capitalism and commercialism trying to sell new Caddilacs in a used car lot. Yes, the artists came, yes the tourists came, and yes, the "hippies" came and did what they will do and did in those days...you know, "Spare Change?" You have to remember, it was not a real Utopia. In flesh and lust, it was not a real "woman" but a drag queen on a runway strutting her stuff, attractive maybe, but not the real deal.

Keep in mind, the Spare Change Sixties came on like a dayglo banshee, screaming and screeching. The counterculture was on the move to the beat of a communication breakdown The Military Industrial nation stood naked in a pool of hypocrisy and the new generation, were beginning to move like so many ants across the asphalt expanse of America. The East Village to Haight Ashbury, east coast to the west, the neighborhoods were psychedelic bi-coastal sexual bookends anchored in fog and smoke enshrouded harbors. The ragtag army traveled by thumb, by car and V-dub vans.

The Sexual Revolution was on. It was a time of Yellow Submarines and magic carpet rides. The difference itself was as divided as night and day-glo. The acid poured like rain from a monsoon in New Mexico painting a colorful portrait on a blank canvas in double domes of purple to alter the states of the alter ego's.

 

The Age of Aquarius held forth the promise of Peace and Love. A street hooker hiking her skirt to show you a pay as you go paradise in a cheap hotel room with yellowed shades from too much smoke and bed sheets that have seen more than their share of sexual activity by nameless faceless johns and whores. All yours for a few bucks and the expenditure of fluids.
The counterculture promised a new Utopia offered up to us as a virgin is stripped and sacrificed to appease some ghoulish tribal god or King Kong.. The decade turned on, tuned in and dropped out at a furious pedal to the metal high speed race going from Zero to Sixties on the drag strip of free love, drugs and revolution. In time, the peaceful revolution went from Jekyll to Hyde with the pipe bomb politics of the Weathermen.

The Summer of Love would eventually end with the Death of Hip and the runaways would all go back home to the Midwest from whence they came beat and spent, wondering, where the fuck was this Utopia? Where was the revolution? Who gave me crabs?The Gilded Age of the Hip was tarnished by the gunning down later of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and the Chicago Police Riots of '68. The Hippies were replaced by Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman and other Yippies of the Youth International Party. Meanwhile, the dogma laden Students for a Democratic Society didn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, they saw it coming and it was Mark Rudd and his vandals that stole the pump handle and packed if full of explosives.

The hipsters of the '50's and the Hippies of the '60s shared common heroes from Kerouac to Ghandi, and shared their heroes personal quests of civil disobedience and public drunkeness. It was a tightrope walk of cultures that met and morphed into a wonderful bastard child of pop counter culture.

For myself, Myrika and Olivia it was time to load up the sociological bus, inhale deeply and take a magical journey aboard the Looking Glass Express.

Chapter 4 Cheap Wine Nights

While Myrika and Olivia went to Ben Wong’s store around the corner from our apartment to pick up a few gallons of cheap wine, beer and  a few blocks of mozzarella cheese for the gathering of the degenerate tribe that evening, I hoofed it over to Washington Square Park to score a bag or two of weed and some acid that had been making a grand appearance in greater numbers lately.

The lava flow of the Vesuvian Sixties didn't race down a Mediterranean mountainside. Instead, it flowed through the inner mind with heat and hot sexy colors performing their ballet of bubbles.The weed seeds of the counterculture of the spare change Sixties were planted a long time ago in a compost pile of history that goes back thousands of years. The early American Colonists were no stranger to cannabis and we can trace the nation’s hemp lineage from Washington and Jefferson to Cheech and Chong!

LSD was sanctified to a higher level by the high priest of the Garden of Chemical Eden, Timothy Leary, and one man, and many pranksters, took it even further, to a chemical roadshow that ate asphalt from the psychedelic colors of the west coast to the grey east of New York City and it's teeming tenements and lofts of the East Village. Timothy Leary was the high priest of LSD, turning on, tuning in, and dropping out while dropping acid by the bucketful.


Drugs and a human rights, civil rights and sexual revolution were all  storming the Bastille...the bastion of straight America. If the Fifties were sociologically antiseptic with Madison Ave. ring-a-ding ding martini lunches, Leave it to Beaver and consumerism cranked on overload, the Sixties were by comparison a plain brown bag holding a cheap bottle of wine that spilled out onto the streets and on the march. There was no turning back as the point of no return had been crossed in Greenwich Village in hard concrete gray New York to San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury.

I wrote Joey in Vietnam that Myrika, Olivia and I were going to head west to California. He wrote back saying he was due to return to Oakland after his tour of duty in Vietnam ended in two months. He’d be home stateside for a 30 day leave before he completed his military duties. He’d meet up with us on the coast.  He didn’t know Olivia was pregnant nor that it was my kid growing inside her like a watermelon fertilized by his best friend.

By the time 8 P.M. rolled around the entire gang of human refuse as we called ourselves were getting our wine soaked weed buzz on and dropping acid and eating cheese that soon began to sing and dance. I swore it was Gene Kelly singin’ in the rain...but then again it may have been the acid.

Keeley, an androgynous female poet with short jet black close cropped hair (and sometimes Myrika’s bed partner) was the first to offer up a toast. “To the future...your future in California as you leave your past behind in New York!” Which was all Peter Kopek, our resident fag poet as he referred to himself proudly, “There you go you cantankerous whore. Stealing from Kerouac again!  I wouldn’t let you give me a blow job if I was bursting at the seams with a full tank of semen while you recite Oscar Wilde’s “De Profundis” while you play with your own tits.”

The strange thing was...I think Keeley and Peter made a great match. Both perfectly bitchy and caustic, not just to each other, but aimed their barbs at anyone they chose depending on their moods, but seemed to take great delight in parry and thrust antics designed to draw verbal blood from each other. She somewhat manly in bearing and he a mincing marvel of  boy-man.

The rest of the group included Corinne, our resident evil folksinger who was determined at all parties to pick up her guitar and regale us with downer songs of death and disaster.  If we were in a benzedrine mood, she was a musical barbiturate. If we were in a 78 RPM frame of mind, her needle would be stuck at 33 ⅓.

Collin Murphy was a hulking mick from Dublin who we suspected had IRA ties and had to hide out in the melting pot of New York. He was one hell of a writer and fancied himself the next George Bernard Shaw. Limericks with a degree of tongue in chic tongue in cheek bawdiness were his specialty when not writing his novel regarding sex crazed Catholic  leprechauns from Ulster or the Easter Rebellion.

The rest of gang was an assortment of both genders and cross gendered cross dressers, bisexual street hustlers and young male and female  junkies who had certain other talents from the artistic to the carnal pleasures and  ready to go to bed with man or woman or both which suited the rest of the group perfectly. “I’ll trade you two haikus for an ass fuck!”

Soon the acid took center stage in my mental theater  massaging  me with  fingers of hallucination. I transported to a  vacant alley while empty eye sockets stared at me. Soon was in a grey building could now eavesdrop on those silent screaming voices a mental wards  victim’s head. Victims imprisoned in wheelchairs, straightjackets and hopped up on narco midnight pills while  injections of sweet dreamy morphine ran like a river.  

Soon I was aboard a clipper ship circumnavigating  Polar Ice Caps, past giant icebergs, round and round the Cape we go, circular explorations they were, easy to negotiate, except for those 90 degree corners of fleeting reality that appeared only as more hallucinations obscuring what they really were.  I found a broken mirror in my stateroom but it only  fired back olfactory warning shots over my  head and as I ducked I could see the pile of neon lipstick tubes lying in the bottom of an empty William Holden swimming pool, empty except for Holden floating on top with a bullet in his back, on the fading estate of old Sunset Boulevard. The drugs finally shielded me from the visions of bright lights emanating from a very secretive Left Bank French underground, thick with homosexual transexual mascara that penetrated deep into the bowels of the cabaret underworld of a bereft Berlin.

Finally the party settled into a studied quiet, as Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” rotated suggestively on the turntable. Soothing us and creating an atmosphere ripe for sexual forays as we all paired off in the dark of the 3 A,M. wee small hour of the morning. Olivia was asleep early as she didn’t drink or do drugs...ever. “Just as well” Myrika said. “She cares for that child, your child, I guess OUR child, the three of us.” She was right. A  Sixties child of our private little family unit.

Soon the highways would call to us...luring us west as sure as  Greek Sirens lured ancient sailors to a rocky reef and death. In fact, there would be no Sirens awaiting us. Instead a mixture of Wonderland and OZ  and a utopian lamasery called Shangri-La.

Tonight however, Myrika and I floated to our bedroom and there we made love until the first blazing ray of sun rose over Hudson River. With each  movement of our well oiled sweating bodies against each other in harmony and wet unison, I could picture a naked Salome dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils. We fell asleep in each other’s arms and slept until noon...satisfied and deeper in love….

Chapter 5 - The Hipster Highway

 

Early Saturday morning we loaded up the VW camper bus with canned food, powdered milk, cheeses, wine, marijuana and a small amount of acid stashed for easy tossing should John Law get curious. We also had a ‘57 Buick of a reel to reel recorder of Myrika’s as she wanted to record sounds of the city from whatever apartment we would happen to be living and then using the impatient car horns, voices, sirens, screams, groaning of city buses, clanging bells of cable cars and the Chinese created cacophony of Chinatown's confusing Confucian gongs and dialects. Sounds she would use as background for her improv guitar playing. We also had a practical cargo of flannel shirts for cool evenings, hiking books, cookware, wooden matches, Zig Zag rolling papers, canteens, sleeping bags and of course boxes of Tampons.

We were almost done and ready to get underway by 8 a.m. leaving the Village in the rear view mirror heading west to L.A. and then north along the ghost coast to San Francisco. There we would once again make our nest, thanks to money earned from my drug sales and Myrika’s coffee house gigs.

We decided to straight line it to Chicago first and pick up Route 66, or what was left of it after the Interstate system devoured some portions of the Old Girl. From there….L.A. to check out the scene before heading north to the new Utopia we hoped to find.

San Francisco in our mind, sight unseen would be a perfect alignment of black holes in the impermanent firmament of inner and outer space acting as the Mason-Dixon line between hipster cool and establishment squares. Where we could enjoy the obscene scene we hoped would inject us with hep cat cool getting a rush out of Sahl the Mort, the rabble rousing Rabelais of the atomic revolution while a the past generation of the beat goes spinning way out, far out of groovy Kerouac control plowing furrows of Burroughs allowing the nightlight of nightlife to illuminate those dark wino alley corners hiding it’s stash of hi-fidelity infidelity.

Our VW camper was packed tighter than an expertly rolled joint. In fact with a group of those in need of weed the bus would fill with a cloud of exhaled heaven. We’d pick up the occasional hitchhiker with hopefully a few bucks for gas to help out.

The main problem was driving through some of those farming community small towns. It was like having a bulls-eye painted on you that for some reason attracted every short haired John Wayne cop in every small town you went through, as well as state cops and sheriffs on the main highways who would run interference as they protected this land is not your land longhair, it’s OURS.

Our camper looked like a big fat rolled joint with tires and windows. Someone on a three day acid run would see us and we were sure would try to shotgun the tail pipe. Speed freaks didn’t care for our camper I was pretty sure. . They thought they were evil dragons sent from the past hell bent on eating all the meth available on the street and leaving only granola behind to cook in a spoon to shoot up, which would be like injecting Post Grape Nut Flakes into your veins. You could sell a handful of Fruit Loops to a speed freak by telling them they were hand painted Dexedrine pills laced with Darvons and Bella Donna and they’d go cuckoo for Coco Puffs!

We were ready to sail the asphalt seas in our own Yellow Submarine (Captain, Captain, Full Speed ahead!) Across the American Heartland following the trails first blazed by Kerouac and Cassady, the Lewis and Clark of finger poppin’ on the road dharma bum road trips. We be left with an indelible impression of America by the time we made “landfall” in Los Angeles.

The nights were crisp with soothing cold air, night air, open windows, Olivia’s rosary hanging like a bobblehead of Jesus on a cross from the rear view window, cool air supplied by the cool night, a jazz cat in Harlem kind of cool, sunglasses in the dark, dank room at 1 a.m. wee smalls kind of cool. The open road, opens wide, as Kerouac's ghost rides shotgun with us next to a manic Neal heading west coast blues west on asphalt trails tanked up and gassed up and jazzed up with a full tank of gas and an AM radio to amplitude us through the night with bouncing signals traveling like bullets ripping through flesh in the night

Midwest America, 1967 ..it hasn’t changed much even today. Long stretches of corn and haystacks, some square, some round, grain silos dot the landscape, corrugated metal skyscrapers reflecting the shine of the full prairie moon, saucers from another planet ready to take off, dominating a small agricultural town, rich in ag, poor in culture.

 

Radio station farm reports, drawling voices slow on the draw, folksy wisdom spewing forth like milk from a cow’s full udder. Some little piss ass station creeps into the dial position and it's some Friday night football game between two teams you've never heard of but damn it, one team won a championship in 1956 and their name is on the town water tower to prove it. It's small town gospel once you've made it to the water tower. It's a veritable Book of Revelations that the town swears by.

Stopping off for bite to eat in the Middle of the Midwest we’d stop at our share of burger and booze joints just as a horseshoe pitching contest gett underway at a place with a parking lot full of pick-up trucks and mud and gravel and half a flickering neon sign that says "Bar" where they sponsor the local little league team with mismatched shirts and dirty ball caps and that guy’s wife carries on with that girl’s husband when given the opportunity, in between the shots and rack 'em ups of the ladies pool tourney, then they drink and smoke, flirt and touch and end up in the parking lot in the front seat of a pickup truck with bra and panties removed, followed by orgasm and finally by regret and fear of discovery and reprisal.

Saturday ends drunk, and Sunday begins with a hangover...and then...fire meets brimstone, and the faithful cram into a wooden church no bigger than an outhouse to praise the Lord and grab the brass ring of atonement..for those shut in, as they are called, there is the radio. Along with the grain silo's every now and then..the tower of a lonely AM radio station sitting just off the dirt road somewhere where Swap Shop is king and you can sell dogs, tractors, winches and tires. The polka show airs on Sunday morning, right after the church service (paid for by the congregation).

Just because it's Jesus, there ain't no free pass...even in radio!

Chapter 6 - The Blue Coyote

Our camper bus, lovingly christened “The Blue Coyote” after a song Myrika was writing, was groaning past Chicago on old highway 66 and heading south through the amazing fields of maize and cows that define Illinois. Soon ahead St. Louis where the Cardinals were gearing up for the ball season  minus Stan Musial. It was spring 1967 in America and baseball was still the national pastime.  

We spent three days on the road until we finally hit Oklahoma and the wide open road in the path of Woody Gutherie and Will Rogers. We’d been sleeping on the sides of roads, but now we were in the land of campgrounds, peyote and the ghost trails of Geronimo. Eventually we crossed the border into New Mexico’s enchanting pastels and Myrika was composing  photographs with her keen eye  aided by her Leica rangefinder camera. She was one with that machine as she was with her guitar. Olivia kept resting as the baby grew inside her, and we did everything to attend to her comfort.

LA was dead ahead. There was a scene happening there we wanted to inhale and absorb before heading north to the promised land of San Francisco. Southern California, is the Pacific coast playground of the rebel without a cause hot rod car culture and Surf City, where, the Beach Boys had promised not to long ago that  there are two girls for every boy. The City of Lost Angels, home to lights, cameras, action! Hollywood! The Sunset Strip!

San Francisco to the north, is where Haight Ashbury was the gravitational center of a new spiritual and political universe spinning out of control in a psychedelic orbit. California Dreamin' was becoming an eight mile high rolling paper reality with it's non-stop influx of youthful immigrants from the middle west middle class seeking an upbeat Upton Utopia that turned out to be as disorienting as an opium dream at best.

In two more days we finally  arrived in Death Valley, in California  near the end of the day so decided to park it and camp it. In those days you could pretty well just pull off the side of the road and set up our rustic version of Xanadu and rule the realm. We made it to Bad Water which is about the limbo pole low as you can go in the continental United States at a basement foundation depth of 282 feet below sea level.

We unloaded the sleeping bags, cook gear and food, along with one of the kites Olivia brought with us, three bottles of wine and flannel shirts for later in the evening and a pit dug in the sand to sufficed as fire pit. I  got the camp stove fired up, black beans and rice ready to be transformed into the eighth wonder of the gastronomical world and as the sun began to set we started the small fire, broke out Myrika’s  guitar and my harmonica,  strumming away on her  Gibson to her own tune, and me playing along on harmonica, as best I could, to a desert blues tune she was creating. We also  smoked a few bowls of NYC weed, who the hell ever knew where it came from. Harlem most likely so all and all...pretty righteous, brother.

Sunsets have a mystical sense all their own, but a desert sunset framed by the changing hues of the  mountains is a Billie Holiday command performance at Kennedy Center. We talked and at times, not talked for timeless hours witnessing the sky darken itself into coal black, revealing the stars turned on as stage lights on opening night, filling the galactic auditorium with a band of diffused light that crossed the sky.

The Milky Way was now Broadway and we had balcony seats for the big show. We heard the first note of the coyote chorus around 11pm and Myrika dashed for her tape recorder, which was one of those old, solid as a '57 Buick reel-to-reel portable jobs with pro model microphone, and watched her as she hoped for the best in capturing the call of the wild.

The rest of the evening was spent emptying the cheap bottles of wine, watching the dying embers of the fire and basking in the glow of the camp lantern hung on the open side door of  the Blue Coyote..

Myrika and I opted for  sleeping on the desert floor that evening with it's surrounding silence, organic surface and night scents enticing as a fine wine. Yes, life is a cabaret old chum, but it's also at times a delightful Cabernet. By the way, we never did fly that kite that night.

One of the highlights at night was the influx of AM radio signals that reached out across the dial like the tentacles of an analogue octopus. Fading in and out, one in particular was a strange gumbo of country, gospel and preachers. "Mansion in the Sky" would segue into "Walking the Floor Over You" by Ernest Tubb followed by a real fire and brimstone preacher whose voice would break as he hit crescendos in his plea to his audience to seek salvation.

We all were in a pleasant frame of mind...the music stopped….I turned off the radio truck driver call in show and fixed the sleeping bag Myrika and I would share. While I was getting our bedding ready she had shed her clothes and was dancing on the soft sand, the full moon caressing her young body as it glistened invitingly in the moonlight with a background chorus of coyotes howling their approval, or so I imagined laughing. She certainly had mine. She was as intoxicating as the day we met. Our bodies firm and sweating  in creative love making. When it came to sex...she had a Masters Degree. Her bodily scent was  Honeysuckle and Lavender all rolled into one. When I was making love to her it was a Garden of Hedon!

We made love in the moonlight...and I was permanently fixed her orbit. I was at her command. Even the coyotes seemed to obey her on cue….soon we fell asleep in each other’s arms, flesh to flesh, our sweat and scents melding together marking each other as a wild animal marks it’s territory. We were one in perfect lustful harmony.

Tomorrow...the sun will rise...and L.A. would wait to swallow us whole…...

Chapter 7 - City of Angels

 

 

In the hazy mental  gauze of the post-acid morning we packed up the camper  after a breakfast of cheese and bread along with strips  of beef jerky Myrika had created back in New York. She was as good in a kitchen as she was in bed. We made sure Olivia ate the apples and other fruits we had thought to bring along to feed  her and my fertilized baby seed growing in her warm safe womb. We also made sure she had all the powdered milk she could drink.

 

We would miss the austere surreal environment of the desert surrounded as we were with the sweet sounds of silence and the backdrop concerto of coyotes howling animal arias from the surrounding foothills. It was a soft pastel setting of peace and contentment. If the desert could be likened to a soft tranquil painting by Monet, L.A. would prove to be a jumbled mixed up portrait by Picasso.

 

“We’re packed Baby,” Myrika called out loudly in hopes of hearing an echo bounce and reverberate off the walls of the Panamint Mountains that graciously allowed us to share the deserts contentment. “Alright, let’s get on the road. I’d like to make L.A. by tonight,” I answered. I got behind the wheel still on edge and wondering…were the authorities after me yet for not reporting to duty. Silly question. The war machine always needs fodder to feed itself! The trip actually took two days as I could push the old VW camper very hard so spent the first night after Death Valley in Victorville at a mom and pop campground. We had picked up two hitch hiker along the way who had no money but shared their week with us. In fact when they got off in Barstow we gave them a few bucks to hold them along the way on their way to Bakersfield to the north.

 

Joey was due stateside from Vietnam in 3 months so we wanted to be settled in San Francisco, Frisco, SF, Ess Eff, whatever you call it by then, but first a couple of L.A. to check out the music scene. Maybe I’d get some interviews of groups emerging and write a piece or two for the  Village paper I wrote for back in the city for the hell of it.

 

After two day we finally arrived in the City of Angels. LA revealed her perfectly milky urbane breasts. Each one a giant crystal ball that required gazing, fondling and rapt attention. The breasts also acted as mammarial maps with each perfect mound a 3-dimensional, perfectly round topographic map, showing the underground system of the city, backing up with strange human sewage of pill poppers and train hoppers, junkie's and junkettes, whores and queers. Hustler's and hookers with too much eyeliner.

 

Mere human facades covered in cosmetics resembling ghetto grafitti. with bleeding psyches escaping  into the noir mist of night alleys, tripping over the wino's lying on asphalt beds with broken bottles for pillows.

We found out soon enough that the mean streets of LA have a beat, cadence, all their own. Keeping time to a combination of improvised jazz notes, that lead, not follow. It's arms and loins spread wide to welcome the uninitiated and eat you alive, dangerous sex you can't avoid with a crucifix or morals. Quicksand drawing you in deeper, deeper yet into a cold, damp bottomless well of vice.

Southern California was also hotrods and surfboards, beach bums and beach bunnies, The Pendleton shirt, the frat shirt, and penny loafers were worn with pride during beach blanket bingo's with lot's of bongo's on the beach keeping time with the pounding surf as the California sun would set gently below the Pacific horizon. Beach bonfires roar to life, accompanied by small transister radios and even bigger radios with big songs filling the California night. The Little Surfer Girl was proclaimed Queen of the Beach, while the Midnight Cowboy was stranded in the fog of New York streets.

I laughingly claimed later on an acid high in Haight Ashbury taped by Myrika on her ever present reel to reel  tape recorder held deep in the underground of our corner apartment to have tripped out on acid with Huxley and Hoffman and I  saw walking and talking brooms while on purple double dome. This whole psychotic episode explains why a mouse, a talking one albeit, would make friends with a sputtering duck with no pants. I also jokingly claimed to have banged Betty Boop at a cartoon bangers ball. Step right up, I began yelling as  a carnival  barker, "There is no admission charge at the doors of perception...it's all free to a willing and paying public, as long as they're buying it, and the best part, ladies and gentlemen, all perceptions come without a guarantee, just "as is." is all, so buyer beware, very aware."

We would spend a day traveling along Santa Monica Boulevard, shooting out to sea, see, the ocean blue, where the highway ends and Pacific poetry begins, her gentle waves a sonnet on the sand. Her riptide was her heartbeat and her surf, her soul. This was the city...he lustful city of lost angels, with broken wings and no auto repair shop to fix them. It's L.A! A cinematic version of a tribe of chromatic Black Dahlias, double-breasted dykes dressed as three-piece men with fedora's cruisin' the back alley pages of pulp fiction novels, (cheap novels mind you) printed on a mimeograph with that get high ink smell that anarchists love so much just before an assassination.

 

The Sunset Strip. What a trip. Let’s see that persons  a pimp, and that's his whore walking into room 4 for the payoff of his cut of her work after a beating for holding out on him, a lousy thirty bucks. These were cheap whores so every penny counted. Fifteen dollar blowjobs and twenty five dollar fucks. Making a living on her knees and on her back earned her a place to rest her head.
Blood, sweat and tears erupted from the Madonna in quiet pain for her lost children of the tarnished nights. Street slaves to addictions and sex, beaten into submission with whips of real and imagined humiliation.

 

The scene on the Strip of 1967 where you could be anybody's little baby, for a few bucks, and a little da-do-ron-ron and Vaseline. The neon a-go-go was real gone, with white thigh high boots, bleached blonde boys with jeans too tight lining the street under the lights on display in a butcher shop window. Meat on a hook. Young Troy Donohues from the plaid and proud mid-west, machismo melting away like a glacier in a receding Ice Age leaving the farm boy exposed for the broadway show tune he has just become, bending over to take a big bow to massive applause from the invisible audience who sweat as nervously as he does. On the other side of the street, in the shadow of the crosstown bus lights, stood hollow eyed, tender young runaway girls, aging rapidly and repeatedly, learning how to not wear makeup, vamping, badly at first and coming out looking like sad-eyed Emmet Kelly not-so-funny-are-we circus clowns with tiny cleavage as they pad their small cup training bra's trying to appear older than their 14 years to attract willing customers to come in under the big top to enjoy the show.

The steamy street beat had a ferocious bongo-city intensity, as bands played the clubs up and down the Strip. The Doors, The Byrds, Frank Zappa, Sonny & Cher...it was a scene where, yes, yes, the beat goes on, 24 hours a day. Oh give me a home where the Buffalo Springfield roam. "Tamborine Man, hey, Mister," as he  conspired at the back table with some inventive mothers of invention.  Over in the corner, over there, there's a man with a gun over there....beware he says dressed as a Mongol, and laughing like a Lithuanian lunatic. We didn't realize it at the time, but we were jumping overboard into swirling waters, the tempest tossed seas of LA sleaze...an ocean of sex and violence that would suck us initially  into a vortex of vice to a rockabilly backbeat.

Chapter 8 - Saigon Dazed

Joey was relaxing after a week in the bush hunting down VC north of Saigon. They had come close in the past bombings and they had to circle the wagons. He was shacked up at his girlfriend Nhung’s apartment on the second floor above a local bar floor in the crowded black market district with the constant clatter of chatter below on the streets mingled with the whirring motor sounds  of a thousand Vespa motor scooters and the European cars that jockeyed for space on the packed streets. The smell of the fish market on the street two doors down mixed with the scent of marijuana and opium that was constantly being smoked in their apartment.


Sometimes he thought about Olivia back home in the states and was lonely for her and her alone. Then when he thought about leaving Vietnam and going home, he strangely began missing Nhung who was lying naked in his arms. Confusion was tormenting him. Even with all the blood and death he had witnessed, he felt a conflicting sense of self  in Vietnam. He felt he belonged here.

He leaned over on the bed and reached for the half pack of Marlboro’s sitting on the wicker table to start the morning with a smoke and then sex with Nhung before taking a shower together. He had to report in by 9 to see where his jungle boots would take him today on patrol if any, and Nhung had to be at work at the bar where she was a dancer. That’s where they met and where he fell in love with her gentle soul, dark long black hair and huge brown almond eyes. She was not a comfort girl or whore, but only danced for money for her family who farmed outside of town with her six brothers and sisters all at home except for her older brother who was in the South Vietnamese army and killed in a skirmish during Operation Deckhouse Five along the Mekong Delta in January.

Joey was getting restless. His initial you’re in the army now patriotism had faded and feelings of being involved in a brutal invasion permeated his psyche. He was an avid reader of the Ally Newspaper, an underground anti-war GI paper that was distributed at great risk by active duty GI’s to others. I also sent him articles from California newspapers and U. S. magazines that told the story that the time’s were changing and support for the war was weak. Too many bodybags showing up on the evening news after dinner on American television along with inflated body counts and footage of wounded GI’s and napalm burned children and villages. Any day that could be Nhung’s family.

Soon Joey would be back in the states , away from the blood and napalm and horrible cries of the wounded screaming “MEDIC!” He once had a dream of being the victorious war hero returning to ticker tape parades reminiscent of V-E Day when war was do or die…

He knew from news accounts things were different now...demonstrations in the streets, changing the clockwork of the pendulum from Pentagon to Peace. The Flower Power Generation was blooming amidst the war and suffering in Asia as by wars end 50,000 plus American lives, not to mention the untold tens of thousands of Vietnamese were  spent to feed the hypodermic needle of the junkie needs of an American war machine  addicted to “democracy, our way or the highway” delivered by B-52’s.

Democracy is a noble, he thought deep in his heart,  but forcing it down a people’s throat it's a diluted illusion, , similar to taking pure grade heroin and cutting its potency in order to stretch the softer product in a further effort to increase volume and thus, street profits. In Joey’s mind and a growing number of jungle rats in uniform, Uncle Sam was the proverbial school yard pusher of low grade democracy to countries who don't want it.

Dick Gregory, Black activist and comedian stated in an interview in the Black Panther newspaper in Oakland  regarding Vietnam.."Shit, I don't know why we have to shove democracy down the Vietnamese throat at the point of a bayonet. In my old neighborhood, if something was THAT good, we'd steal it!"


To America, the Viet Minh was  a vixen that gave the Pentagon a massive erection. She was explosively sexy in a Pentagon sort of way and was a mighty morsel that fed the wheelchair bound wounded living on giant gulps of morphine and its subsequent dreams. She was a tempting tasty treat of a whore, hard to resist for that crazy uncle from out of town, the one that no one talks about in the family and is the one shunned at familial gatherings.
"Youbetcha! Why, it's jes' my crazy old Uncle Sam. Hell, he had spent decades pimping out Lady Liberty as a soiled dove, and political prostitute  in war after war after war from the brothels of Montezuma to the whorehouses of Tripoli," A tip of a Panama Red hat and a bust your balls Panama  Canal greeting as Teddy of the Big Stick Tribe yelled "Bully, bully" all the way home. Sans a redcoat revulsion and revolution, sans the twin's WWI and II, America has for the most part been seen, analyzed and concluded by "foreign" eyes, as the Ugly American.

He wrote to me in confidence about Nhung and to see what could be done about getting her to the states. He already applied to the military authorities who were less than eager to help. He also wanted me to track down the War Resisters Organization in San Francisco so he could volunteer his services to the cause. He had misjudged the times and his heart, his compass too was off course and still faced another year in service. Now he said, he would fight the machine and desert if he had to. He heard Canada had opened her arms to draft resisters and army deserters. He asked for my opinion about how to tell Olivia that Nhung was pregnant by him….I had my own problem trying to figure out telling him Olivia was pregnant by me. While he was in the mud and humidity of the jungle fighting for his life, I was drinking wine and fucking his girl, although I would hardly think that would matter now.

Yes, the times were a changin’ and so were we.

 

Chapter 9 - The Acid Aphrodite of the Sunset Strip

 

 

The Acid Aphrodite of The Sunset Strip

We lived in the camper for a week behind a gas station on La Cienega Blvd until we found a small apartment we could afford to move into. It was perfect. We paid by the week so there was no long term lease involved so would be free to head north on the Coast Highway to San Francisco when we pleased.

Our savings from New York was starting to run low so we picked up a few bucks on the street where Myrika played her guitar for any donation that would fall from the sky from friendly pedestrians who didn’t cringe at the sight of three raggedy humans who looked as though they were dropped off by a spaceship from a distant solar system. Olivia was the perfect “prop” with her pregnant belly showing every so slightly, but enough to garner smiles to go along with the clink of change in the coffee can and the occasional rustle of dollar bills floating down into the aluminum well of plenty. I would go around the corner and panhandle enough to score a few joints, a pack of smokes we would all share along with a bottle of skid row’s most fabulous Thunderbird wine. Good for what ails ya!

The apartment was pure dive when we moved in as the former residents, junkies from what we were told, left us with a treasure trove of empty cigarette packs and cellophane wrappers, creating a landfill out of the apartment floor space, along with empty beer bottles with labels partially removed. The kind of removal you do when you're half-ass drunk and start peeling them off half-assed. The kitchen sink was full of greying orange peels, turning into fuzzy grey mold similar in texture to northern exposure moss in a woodland.

I did manage in the weeks to come to buy a record player that was probably stolen. It was a deal...or a steal depending on how you looked at it as the guy I bought it from threw in some Mexican records of Mexican musicians we never heard of with black vinyl grooves filled as full as a giant Rio Grande pinata with Tex-Mex tejano music, with guitars and accordions giving the apartment somewhat of a Mexican-German beer hall sound when cranked up.

I had met one of those Hollywood queens on the street one night and  not being shy engaged him/her in conversation and let him cop a crotch feel for a few minutes in an alley. Anything for a buck. Whenever we needed extra cash Myrika and I would hustle the street and go trolling for dollars.

I took the few dollars I got for holding still and scored a huge bottle of pills from a hipster on Pico Blvd. It was a trophy score!  A Mason jar full in fact, the amount and kinds that truck drivers usually keep next to them on 18 wheel runs from Dayton to Cheyenne, or Memphis to Denver. Yellow ones, and blue ones, and green ones, bennies and little dexies we would  down by the handful and pass around like M&M's except they didn't stand a chance of melting in your hands, but could melt the mind after 72 hours straight running on an empty tank of mental fumes. Taking these and smoking a joint only accelerated the high to a plateau, where you could catch your breath before the next leg of the climb up chemical Everest without breathing tanks or yaks or a trusted Sherpa. A couple of days later, no food in your belly from not eating, your stomach would sucker punch you from the inside and throwing up bile was inevitable. Then you run out of gas, come to a halt and sometimes forget your own name and who you are.

We began selling the pills and made enough to score small bags of weed to in turn sell in small amounts. The drug sales got larger and we got richer and pretty well known and accepted on the Strip for being honest and never shorting anyone.

One night when I returned to the apartment from hustling late at night Myrika yelled from the small bedroom to wait there. She had a surprise. I love a surprise, but this was totally unexpected. My blonde Nordic Viking made her grand entrance. All five foot 10 of her, a real Redwoodesque beauty. My blonde bombshell had morphed! She exited from the bedroom, into the living room.

Strikingly beautiful in a neo-Beat California way, black capri's, straight black hair, (you know that West Virginia coal mine kind of black), cut short, Keely Smith-ish, framed by pure white alabaster skin, as white as those statues found in ancient Greece are white. Her eyes? Yes, two of them, no more, no less, and blue, blue  piercing pools to drown a man alive in.

She looked me  over, up and down, her Bacall to my Bogart, with Olivia her partner in hairdressing crime smiling happily.  Myrika was stark naked  with her long yellow Germanic locks no longer flowing past her shoulder,  smiled, hungrily, flashing pearl and oyster teeth, her hair now dyed jet black and short with those blue eyes contrasting her smile, framed her artwork face, a black and white desert O'Keefe.

She lit up a joint, and passed it to me, I had already smoked three of them on the street and had two of the bennies so I was feeling no pain, and the higher I  got, Myrika became Aphrodite, and it made me, and I could see by Olivia’s face her also,  flesh hungry just looking at her. She put a finger to her lips, shush like, hush-hush, and handed us each a little pill. This one was purple in color, and she held it in her fingers, a high priestess consecrating a holy sacrament, body and blood of Christ and I and Olivia being good Catholics  knew what to do as we knelt before her and stuck our  tongues out without prodding, a very Catholic Dominus Vabiscum move as she placed the holy communion on our  tongues for  to swallow.

The acid took hold amidst the whirlwind of Hollywood and within 20 minutes my  ankles began to tingle and we all decided to hit  the strip after Myrika got dressed where we entered the most amazing light show on earth, well, to us anyway it seemed that way,  The city lights became crystalline, defined, a nebula of giant and dwarf stars. LA had a feel, a smell, more of a scent really, and a spirit.  The Sunset Strip trip was beginning to open like the peeled back top of a can of sardines in mustard sauce. The town that used to belong to Mickey Cohen and the corpse of the Black Dahlia was post-beat-pre-hip and as the colors seemed to blend together, it was all a Dick Tracy yellow viewed on an empty screen of a console TV without a cathode.

Everyone on the street knew us by now. In addition to scoring and selling pot and acid we also sold speed, mescaline, peyote and anything else we could get our  hands on.  

The street cacophony of music, voices, traffic, laughter and radio's was a tonic. It was so vibrant, and as the acid continued its ascent, it was the last piano note of Day in the Life of Sgt. Pepper, it went on for days. I walked holding hands with Myrika and Olivia. Music and radio's, pop music, pop charts, pop goes the American culture, Beatles, Stones, Byrds, Dylan, all rotating in vinyl, blaring from apartments, bars and radios along the Strip The acid was now painting artful brush strokes .

Words lost meaning, and Myrika’s skin took on a sabatier effect, turning her into black and white with not enough pixels, the very same as looking at the color comics in the newspaper with a magnifying glass and seeing each individual tree in the forest. Words spelled themselves out audibly, big black block letters, dangling from participles that dangled themselves from multi-colored hangmen's nooses.
Footsteps were liquid as each step sunk me lower into the ground, quicksand surrounded by killer ants in the amazon and decaying dinosaurs beneath the tar pits. Myrika held my hand tighter as this was a trip aboard LDS airlines. Fasten your seat belt and extinguish all cigarettes. Hold on tight as you fly the friendly skies of blue smiles for miles.

The street was bouncing up and down, keeping time with the heartbeat of the street. It was alive, by Gawd, alive and well. We all felt it  

That night, I was re-born, chemically at least. The back alleys of childhood in Detroit were clear in memory. Those damn invisible pirates, weren't all that invisible after all! They did exist, as  dazzling swashbucklers with big sashes and buckles to swash about.

Back in the apartment around 1 A.M. we were back In bed with the older Myrika  leading the charge into her valley where rode the 600. It was almost morning, and would be one of those LA mornings, orange and hazy, eyes to burn, and it got into your throat making cigarettes taste like shit. The smog was a  shroud of freeway death, of exhaust, of industry, of poisons yet unknown along with the unknown source of it. It was a cloud in a shroud that fill the windpipe and plug it as though it were old lead plumbing pipes with too much silt and sludge built up backing up everything in it's u-jointed path.

I drifted off to sleep after a cigarette I couldn't taste...like a cigarette should...and when I  awakened from a deep sleep, Myrika  was already in the kitchen fixing coffee, toast, scrambled eggs, and a big platter of Canadian bacon. She was stark naked standing there smiling with a wooden spoon in one hand and joint in the other, the acid still in my system, I was about to have breakfast with the acid Aphrodite, the Sandoz Queen of the Amazons, I a mere lilliputian.

She handed me a joint and put some grass in the scrambled eggs along with garlic salt, pepper, and a chopped onion. I  took a puff, and grabbed the cup of coffee and dexadrine she handed me swallowing it down, the breakfast of champions, and Tim Leary would be on the next box of Wheaties!

Chapter 10 - I Buy, You Pay G.I.

 

 

 

“I Buy You Pay, G.I.”
By the beginning of 1967, there were almost a half a million young American troops in South Vietnam along with 800,00 plus  from South Vietnam, South Korea and other allied forces.  America’s civilian and military leaders were starting to think big. This, they believed, would be the year to crush the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies, who had now infiltrated the south.

Joey Russo, could smell the blood in the air, so as all red blooded American boys in uniform needed  to do to relieve the tension he would dive deep into the sexual abyss of anything goes Saigon enjoying the celestial pleasures by plunging into the nightlife of nightclubs where the B-Girl battle cry was “Hey G.I. I buy you drink. I buy, YOU PAY! Add to this the amazing cabarets, massage parlors and whore houses. It was the Land of Asian delights, both diverse and perverse. A smorgasbord of sexual activities unmatched in this or any other universe. Saigon  at night is very much alive. Pulsating music in the clubs, Asian angels gyrating and dancing while the strip club hawkers and black marketeers not to be confused with Mouseketeers or Rocketeers or first or second or third level tiers or even tears for fears. The whole scene makes North Beach at night look like a bad wet dream. Saigon  was the real thing. No rules...and it took no prisoners as an evening of delightful debauchery, followed by a couple hours sleep and then, and he never knew in advance, hit the jungle trails for a recon mission.

In between the sexual foray’s Joey had been training in the art of “Savate” or French kickboxing where his talents in the use of near deadly force using only and feet as weapons were legendary in throughout Saigon’s fight club scene. Dark smoke filled clubs in back alleys with South Vietnam banknotes called ‘dongs’ exchanged hands along with U.S. dollars as gambling was an integral part of the competition.

Joey always tested himself by taking on the most accomplished Vietnamese fighter, win or lose, do or die. Even if his cut face flowed with warm blood clouding his vision he carried on. It gave him the fortitude to be the point man on patrol where any minute from a sniper’s bullet from a MAT 49 or a newer Soviet made rifle. Joey had among other things a death wish he carried with him in the jungle as a junkie carries a monkey on his back.  

I could tell the changes in him from his letters and wondered how he would adjust to life back in the states. My other concern was the fact that he intended to desert the military high life and work with the War Resistance underground, not knowing then that I would also be swept up  in it in my own flight from the draft board.

The politicians in Washington  had begun planning for the big push with an ever increasing arsenal of death dealing weapons. It was the Willie Wonka Chocolate Factory of blood and guts.  Special  operations were designed to eradicate the enemy from around  Saigon.  Plans that would involve hundreds of thousands of soldiers, lead to the deaths of thousands on both sides, and bring soul shaking doubts about the war effort to a boil back home to mom and pop alike.

One of the first battles of the new agenda would occur at a village called Ben Suc, a Viet Cong-controlled village. Joeys unit on what many thought was a cake wake erupted in  firestorm of  small-arms fire pinning the troops down, but within a few hours, Ben Suc was under American control, and South Vietnamese troops were brought in to interrogate all men between the ages of 15 and 45 utilizing tactics that would make Gen. Patton cringe.
The troops determined that 30 villagers were Viet Cong. In their search of the area beneath the village they discovered a network of Viet Cong tunnels. By the end of the day remaining villagers and livestock, water buffalo being the holy grail of the village were relocated  When they were gone, the commanders ordered a large hole dug in the center of the village, and thousand f  pounds of explosives were detonated to destroy both the village and the tunnels beneath it. In a flash... Ben Suc no longer existed.

Operations intensified and over the next twenty days Joey and 30,000  fellow grunts in other units were responsible for  a “body count” of 750 Viet Cong and 280 prisoners . According to the nightly newscasts stateside, only seventy two Americans and eleven South Vietnamese were killed. The Pentagon body counts were later to be found inflated and weighted in our favor to keep the war fervor at a fever pitch until a time when Walter Cronkite would smash the pinata of illusion wide open.

Back in Saigon, now a short timer due to leave for the states, he resumed his R and R of sex and savate with a side order of drugs. In Vietnam there was no drug problem. In fact there was never a problem in finding it. It seemed to fall from the  heavens.

Joey wrote saying it was the strongest he had experienced. There was some laced with opium bits that was a real Alice in Wonderland experience. If they weren’t on patrol Joey and his friends would  sleep  until noon. Then like vampires, the  nights were spent in a sexual whirlwind. The clubs were stacked side by side like a sexual traffic jam on the LA freeway. The massage parlors and whore houses were also cheap and plentiful. Joey claimed .these girls were artists in the truest sense stretching your  canvas tight while they worked on creating masterpieces in the gallery of carnal arts.

My job now was to track down the War Resisters Organization, which I would do through a California chapter of the SDS on campus. Now I was doing recon of a different sort.  I, along with Olivia and Myrika decided it was also time to confess to him about Olivia’s pregnancy and my part in it, but Myrika had second thoughts. He was in a war zone, a hot zone and didn’t need any distractions that would dull his senses to react to danger. Better to wait until he came home then tell him when safely on U.S. soil….then the only possible casualty of war would or could be me...Hold on the body count Mr. Cronkite. We may have one more to bag and tag!

 

Chapter 11 - Sunset Stripped

 

 

 

 

If the grit stained streets of the dope and prosciutto infested Greenwich Village in New York City was filled to capacity with the leftovers in a  doggie bag of the Beat Generation, then the Sunset Strip in 1966 was the placenta of the next generation, our generation of peace symbols, LSD and free love being dispensed from a Gatling gun.

The Sunset Strip was  Sherwood Forest complete with Myrika, Olivia and  myself as two maidens fair and one hell of a merry man! The street scene itself was a colorful mixture of fresh Midwestern faces, fresh flesh prey really for the  nefarious predatory vultures who cruised the Strip luring  all the naive sexual carrion it could eat.

When a runaway ended up on the Strip, it didn’t  take long for the termites to start attacking the wood. Young girls and boys would be "befriended" and taken care of with a roof, food and plenty of booze and drugs, then before you can drop your drawers around your ankles you're knee deep on the street whoring for drug money or to make a pimp rich, while he kept you pumped with narcotics, your only reason for living  now was to get loaded, by having sex to earn your high, and avoid the the beatings by your pimp... and the beat goes on, and on, on, on.

Most of the Strips population at night was a forest of fags, johns, teenyboppers, and frat brats. Beer and grass and  an occasional piece of ass. The scene on the Strip was seamy, there is no question about it.  Pop culture was changing, experimentation in music, drugs and sex were keeping beat with the incessant movement of the times. East coast, west coast, there were a bevy of bi-caostal bisexual Eves that held out the forbidden fruit to the young Adams from the midwest...along with bisexual Adams ready to snake the Eves!

Myrika said years later in one of her writings back in Berlin before her death, “Life for the three of us transformed itself into a colorful sexual carnival and a carnal circus of sideshow belly dancers,  jugglers, mimes, barkers, sawdust, and  .25 cent peep show ladies with pink hair and purple eye shadow in too tight corsets, looking for all the world like Warhol's Divine or Joe Dellesandro in full trash bag drag. In general, we were surrounded by a cast of mysterious Russ Meyer misfits, which was OK as we were too!”

Then one night in November of 1966, our world exploded as the Strip ignited into a blue  inferno of police and riots. It began for us on that fateful Saturday as Myrika and I were at the local supermarket buying food when we were handed a flyer being passed out along the Strip inviting people to demonstrate later that day regarding a newly imposed curfew on the strip of 10 P.M. for all those under 18 years of age.

Let’s face it the Strip was alive with human electricity at night with eclectic crowds taking in the street scene, scoring drugs, hustling sex and immersing ourselves in the music at places like Pandora’s Box.
The schizoid dichotomy of the Strip brought two cultures to a line in the sand. It seems the “other” establishments were complaining about the phalanx of hipsters and noise, so the city of L.A. clamped down and imposed a 10 P.M curfew for those under 18, (Olivia was all of 16)  which didn’t go over well with those of us on the street out to sample life to it’s fullest. Hell, we were immortal after all.

The PR shit really hit the hip fan  when when just mere hours before the scheduled protest one of the rock 'n' roll radio stations announced there would be a rally at Pandora's Box, a club at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights. The Los Angeles Times reported over  a thousand  demonstrators made a show of force. (Later we found out that in the protest that night were  celebrities such as Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda who by the way was  handcuffed by police).


The mainstream unhip media referred to the reaction of the street people to the curfew  as  the "hippie riots", where police and street denizens on the Sunset Strip met in a head-on collision, a clash of cultures, law enforcement with billy clubs smashing skulls and arresting those who got in their way.

Police and sheriff's deputies tore into us and started making arrests. The only good that emerged was the song, “For What It’s Worth” written by Stephen Stills when the Buffalo Springfield were regular performers at clubs on the Strip...everyone thinks it’s about Vietnam...WRONG...Stills performed it at a club on the Strip a month later dedicating it to the Strip and the riots. Like Chicago in ‘68….it was more a police riot than anything else...doughnuts and steroids of today are a reminder of what can happen when a badge goes bad.

As the riots erupted, I quickly grabbed Myrika and Olivia and ducked into a doorway of the nearest store still open. Fortunately it was a head shop festooned with peace symbols and lava lamps and Pandora Box posters of upcoming shows. The smell of incense mixed with the drifting tear gas, while the music of the Seeds, “Pushin’ Too Hard” blended with the sirens and screams filling the night outside. The store owner took us to a back room and then closed up shop hoping his windows would still be intact in the morning.

I left my Nordic Viking and the pregnant Olivia behind and went out to survey the situation so I could dash off a piece to send back to the Village paper I wrote for when living there. I felt like a foreign correspondent...Walter Cronkite smack dab in the middle of a new Berlin on LA’s version of Krystal Nacht.  

I was no longer seeing a Grant Wood Sonny & Cher portrait of tranquility. It was now Dantes Gestapo Inferno….after that it was black, dark, as I was clubbed from behind and left to lie there in my own blood. Myrika witnessed it from inside the store as she was never one to stay safely where I asked her too. In a flash she ran out to my side after the shopkeeper reluctantly unlocked the door of Fortress Rolling Paper.  Together they managed to get me staggering inside to safety. I was bandaged by Olivia  and began in time to come around to a fair level of lucidity and refused to go to the hospital for further treatment.

During the battle still raging we left by the stores  back door  utilizing the alleyways to blaze our own Northwest Passage to the safety of our small apartment. My head was throbbing. Pistons pumping pain as though I was a railroad spike being set in place by John Henry himself.

“You know Myrika, it’s only gonna get worse...I say we make plans now and get to San Francisco. They have a music scene you can get into I’m sure and someone up there probably can use a hack writer. Besides...it’s not safe for Olivia and sure as hell don’t want Joey coming home from the jungles to do battle on the Normandy Beach of L.A.!!”

We all three greed hap, hap, happily...soon we would leave Southern California with its Mouse named Mickey to a land inhabited by white rabbits and grateful deads.

Chapter 12 - White Rabbits and Purple Haze

 

 

 

 

 

 

White Rabbits and Purple Haze

If you're going to San Francisco....leave the driving to us....
There was  something intoxicating about cruising  the coast highway loaded on a variety of uppers and good Mexican grass, similar to the feeling experienced after consuming and downing a cheap bottle of bum wine. Myrika summed it up best, “You know Mikey, this coast highway, its like being in a suppository working it's way up north through California!”

I told you she was the creative one of our merry trio.

Night was falling, the sun was sinking, and all three of our hearts were racing. Leaving L.A., hey, hey. That in itself filled us with the joy  a person who has just experienced an epiphany of life-changing proportions. The sight of the silver full  moon high in the sky over the Pacific Ocean at night was surreal and real at the same time.

The camper  talk subdued to murmurs soon enough.  Amazingly how people, can in time dissect their lives open as though frogs in a high school science lab. Guts and all. Soon, the talk subsides, the highway lights and traffic thin and dim as we sped along the beach coast of California. Modern day Joads searching for the green grass beyond the invisible mountains.

Droning silencio of midnight...the ho-hum hum of  rubber tires gripping the roadway, followed by a gentle rocking to-fro motion of the loaded camper riding the asphalt range mile after concrete mile, and all is quiet on the far western front. The ride pursued a course of magnetic compass needle north, up the coast road, past Monterey, where Steinbeck got drunk and wrote and won a Pulitzer prize writing about displaced Okies, dustbowl storms and rivers of immigrants setting sail on the high seas of Highway 66.

We three  young people were on a similar voyage to a better life.  Me as Tom Joad, Myrika the gentle Buddha poet, and Olivia, the Madonna

The coast was swept with wind, bent trees yearning for the horizon twisted like old crones who have lost their hair and their youth, trying to reach out for the past but never within reach.

L.A. had long ago  receded on the riptide of asphalt as the camper rode the crest of the wave to San Francisco.

The first golden sliver of dawn was rising over the Sierra's to the east. The snowy mountain tops  visible from that distance with the sun bathing their still snowy peaks in morning glow, just as it did to the sandy coastline of California. San Francisco was not too much further north while Olivia and Myrika began to stir from a deep slumber  The stirring was a gentle awakening to a new dawn.  Myrika sleeping next to me in the front seat with her head on my shoulder. We were  all three young souls, not lost, not found, exploring and finding, in our own personal age of discovery, discovering each other and the world at large and at small.

As the broken day of daybreak broke, San Francisco was looming in the foreground. Due north, the compass spun wildly, wobbly, and eventually gently rocked back and forth on its pivot and settled straight ahead deadhead dead-a-head towards San Francisco.

Soon we were in the city watching the  bay roll by, like an old drunk falling down concrete steps, and soon, her majesty majestically welcomed the the wandering waifs into the protective cloak of the folds of her satin gown.The camper inched itself around her outer city edges before penetrating her high-rise inner canyons, then finally, in an asphalt orgasm, the camper went deep into her , and with a sudden shudder,

We stopped near the Marina District...more beach….I  reached inside the camper, grabbed our back packs,  then we walked  into the foggy, but clearing morning of our first city by the bay day.

San Francisco was the white washed, Victorian art colony of poets, writers, prophets, painters and other ungodly un-gods. The fog was patchy, but you could see sunlight in the fabric of that breaking patchwork quilt with holes punched in it to give a striptease peek of the feather dancer hidden behind the curtains.in a private fantasy booth leered at by dockworkers with coats over their laps who've been in the shipping holds too long coming down with hangovers, a hangover from breakfast at the little bar on the wharf. in an area they called the "fish docks."

The Bay Bridge view from the Embarcadero was an erector set of heavy metal steel girders. If it were human, it would have powerful biceps moving traffic  along on upper and lower decks, blood flowing into the heart and back out again, cars as silly putty in a sea swarming with tail-lights like little fish feeding on kelp turning a vein of fluid traffic as thick as plasma, inching along to go to work, go back home, and die eventually, with most life spent in traffic jams listening to Stefan Ponek on KSAN radio.

Even the traffic nuances of noise were different from those of southern California, where it was frenetic with short circuits, yet in the  north of California's golden mane, it was gently rolling like two bodies in a waterbed in heat, and in motion, going up hills and down hills, as you topped a concrete peak and began a motorized descent, the bay laid out in front of you, a geographic paint by numbers.

We walked across the busy thoroughfare of Market Street and past a trolley car station where tourists lined up, an Upton Sinclair portrait of Chicago packing houses at the turn of the century, where immigrants toil in filth, livestock blood and brains, but these were vacationers, this time waiting to board the ultimate symbol of the city, it's trolley, it's tourist tiara. In the distance there was Lombard Street, a plumbers snake of a street, making it's way down the automotive tobbagon hill, one way away from heaven, downward towards the direction of hell, past garden courtyards, sweet, fragrant gardens wafting as you weaved on a downard spiral to the base and eject somewhere near North Beach. Coit Tower standing phallically erect, from any position in the city.

LA had a gasoline and oil smell to hit, along with a smoggy smugness to it. San Francisco, on the other hand, had marked its neighborhoods with the scents of foods. Chinatown, Tong-town, Mexi in the Mission District, Korean and Japanese in their quadrants, bbq in the Fillmore and of course, the delightful dago scents of North Beach. The North Beach District was beats, boobs and booze. Tit's and poetry mingled with the prose of topless dancers who performed their own kind of literary ass art with thongs disappearing in their backsides and tassels sparkling like the Fourth of July pink and brown, nipples large and small, each one dancing tirelessly, erotically and with a faint smile on their faces and fainter traces of beaded sweat, as sweet as honey, running down their upper inner thighs, a sensuous waterfall cascading in rivulets from a topless tropical forest.

Daytime uppers and nighttime downers.San Francisco's sensory overload was dizzying, The bay sparkled brilliantly as the sun assumed it's lofty place in the sky above all else on its hydrogen powered solar throne. As it rose, it drew arching angles, as it did, it deepened the hues of the waters blues and greens.

There were parks with flying kites in them with strings held fast in little hands. One park, the Washington Square park, had music, people lying on blankets, harmonicas and guitars playing and people in animated conversations. The big church across from the park looked over everything protectively, a benevolent dago old world Godfather, and as it was a Sunday morning, parishioners were exiting the church newly sanctified, confessed and saved  for another week. A religious tune-up by catholic mechanics who hoist you up on the rack and inquisitively pry into your sinful deeds of the week of the weak, checking to make sure your brakes are in good working order to avoid a head-on crash with mortal sin...venials are ok, minor damage, but mortals..look at the word itself…

We spent the day exploring  and decided that night to sleep on the beach at the marina behind large rocks where we wouldn't be noticed. Camping out in the city is no different than tossing a sleeping bag on the ground. We had a mess kit, plenty of matches and there was plenty of kindling about for a small fire that wouldn't attract attention, or at least not a lot of it. So as the day headed for it's demise, and the night would take over we set about setting up camp on the beach on the bay to watch the sunset set, the stars appear in the sky overhead one by one, and the city itself with it's diamond lights coming on the darker it got, it's own form of stars twinkling, then the dance of Aphrodite as the fog enveloped the city protectively at the end of the day.

Tonite we would eat, Myrika and I would make love in the fog, and sleep as children do. Tomorrow, we would awaken, pack up and hit the beach...North Beach, where the beat goes on with offbeat poetry howling at the heels of Ginsberg...all ready now to herald in the tie-dyed Sixties that was about to emerge and overpower and meld with the beat generation. beatniks battening down the hatches in North Beach as the Hipsters of the Haight were about to mutiny and take over the ship...sailing it into the waters of protest, LSD and Vietnam.

Chapter 13 Body Counts

 

 

 

 

Body Counts

Joey Russo had seen his share and more of blood, and wounded in the jungles up country  and in the myriad rice paddies while engaging in fierce firefights in Vietnam. Air support brought down a rain of napalm, bullets and rockets, the proverbial death from above, on enemy combatants and civilians alike. War in it’s frenzy can’t and won’t  distinguish the difference. It is blind to the misery caused and seeks only victory at any cost of lives. Even collateral damage is acceptable to the generals in the Pentagon as well as the VC generals in the  underground tunnels that lay secretly hidden  along the Ho Chi Minh Trail….the famed yellow brick road that led to Saigon to ultimately unmask the American Wizard of Oz.

 

Joey had written me often about these matters and how the war had changed him, but one day soon after Myrika, Olivia and I arrived in San Francisco, I received a letter outlining two events that were a 1966 prelude to the horror of the My Lai Massacre of 1968. I shared it’s contents with Myrika and Olivia over a bottle of wine to dull the impact of his words.

 

December 15, 1966

Letter to Mickey Cusamano, San Francisco, California

Mikey, It’s been a horrible six months here in paradise. So much killing I forgot why I even enlisted. I thought I was joining the white knights of some noble round table, but General Westmoreland, (we call him Waste-more-land) ain’t no King Arthur. The Vietnamese of the north are fighting for their country, like Washington fought the Red Coats. The South Vietnamese, poor bastards are trapped in a vice between the two. If they are suspected of helping our team, the VC kill them, if we suspect them of helping the VC, hell, we kill them.

 

A few months ago, events happened that made me physically ill and is why I want OUT of this war, the army, the damned planet if I could. You know my plans to desert and appreciate you helping set things up back in Frisco with the underground. I hear Canada is nice this time of year. (Laugh!) Don’t let the draft board find you...keep on the move and please don’t tell Olivia the contents of this letter. She is fragile as you know.

 

There are reports, though not official, heard from friends in recon groups who know these things. They told a couple of us about the torture and murder of civilian South Vietnamese involving our guys and some Korean troops together who wasted a village called Dien Nien in October.  Civilians were shot and killed while the wounded were tossed like garbage into the village rice paddies left there bleeding and drowning, when troops stood on their heads holding them underwater until dead.

 

On the same day they also massacred civilians in Binh Tai in the same way. Altogether something like 500 people in both villages were killed. Most of them were old men, women and children as young as one year old. Earlier reports are circulating, but not talked about, that similar activity happened at Binh An, Binh Hoa and Tay Vinh villages. This is a bad year for South Vietnamese civilians. If this is freedom, I’m sure by now they don’t want it! I suppose old Huntley and Brinkley aren’t broadcasting about these. If they did they’d probably end up in the Potomac River face down with bullets in their backs. I don’t know how we can ever win the “hearts and minds” of these people while we act like animals.

 

I’ve also seen the worst side of our troops. When our guys end up in body bags we place their personal belongings with them for their families to have when they get their son, husband, father back. We caught a few of our guys robbing the goddamned bags stealing the dead guys watches, jewelry,  money, anything of value. We caught one one night and he was given a reprimand for the Lt.

 

Two days later in the bush on patrol the mother fucker  was fragged (killed by a grenade) during a firefight. It was tossed by one of the guys in his own platoon on purpose...that’s how we deal with rats over here. It’s called friendly fire..now someone can rob his body bag...I hope!

 

See ya soon in Frisco Mikey. Take good care of our ladies and tell Olivia I want to marry her as soon as I get back! I have a 5 day R & R coming up and going to Thailand to get some weed and poontang. It’s the only good thing about this war. Fuck democracy, give me the pussy!

 

Peace,

Joey

Chapter 14 - Age of Aquarius

 

 

 

 

Age of Aquarius

We awakened refreshed to one of those marvelous  fog enshrouded San Francisco mornings, with Pacific waves lapping gently on the soft beatnik marina sand shore. I was the first to rise and shine, still feeling the lingering effects of the cheap wine of the night before. My first good be prepared Boy Scout campers duty after  splashing cold water from the Ess Eff bay on my face was to start a small kindling fire to brew the morning tea to go with the last hunks of the sourdough bread before we began our foray of exploration to North Beach to take in the tawdry lewdness of this modern day Barbary Coast and all the  vices it could offer.

After a minimalist  breakfast and freshening up I double checked the camper, stashed our sleeping bags and cookware inside before we got underway on foot. It was a wonderful walk to Columbus Avenue. Wherever you looked Coit Tower was a beckoning beacon high on the hill, while the tiara of the Golden Gate Bridge was always visible from the opposite direction. The seagulls, winged mariners of old, harbingers of land ho ahead,  marked their sky territory with inhuman laugh-cries  accompanied crescendo of the clanging San Francisco  trolley car bells guided you  forever landward. The North Beach  Italiano scents of sausage and cheese lured you into her lewd bosom of topless bars,  Beat literature book stores and the broken glass wine soaked alley running along the City Lights bookstore.

It was a sensory compass the likes of which we had never felt or experienced before. North, south, east, west...all clear now, without compass to mark the direction. James Fenimore Cooper would have had a field day writing about this. I was now the Last of the Mohicans, the pathfinder and the path we were embarking on would lead straight into a verdant garden of radicalism, LSD, sex and protest, although no one was protesting the sex, or the drugs..just the damned war, among other things. Just check the menu of civil and human rights, and choose one from column A and one or two from column B. No eggrolls. No Egg Drop Soup.

Further away, the wharf of fishermen was also coming to early morning life with fishmonger stalls opening to fill the air with marine cuisine for the tourist and locals alike later in the day while Market Street, downtown became frenetic with busy people with busy skirts, busy suits and busy briefcases in hand filled with, no doubt secret documents of a business nature were descending on the city, the human flood of corporate lemmings of big and small business to be absorbed in tall buildings and fastened securely to their seat in cubicles no larger than a jail cell in Turkey, but nearly as interesting.

San Francisco was refreshing after the grey of New York, the rust of Detroit and the corn fields of the rectangular states of America’s mid section. She was exciting  as a cheerleaders breasts are to a young man.  The city by the bay had a different scent about her altogether, more of a natural  musk, the kind that is produced right after great sex. Myrika didn't quite know what to make of it, but see she and Olivia were absorbing it in great gulps and gasps. Let face it,  L.A. was like a pair of cheap capri pants and leopard skin designed sunglasses, but Lady Frisco, ah, she was different. She left you breathless, bra-less and flawless, naked and exposed to the public.


The day was promising to be bright with light from sun and life. The three of us held hands as we walked past Sts. Peter and Paul, the big baroque church at Washington Square Park. Massive, imposing waiting to be blessed by Cardinal Richelieu himself.  If it ain’t baroque….Don’t fix it!



Yesterday was Sunday alive with the discharge of the  bells of Sts. Peter and Paul  were being rung loud by an invisible Quasimodo hunchback as a high mass ended and the faithful faithfully emerged from the large carved wooden doors that opened out to the street and overlooked the tiny patch of park that welcomed the parishioners view. Large dago's of the mostly Italian congregation walked out with wives and daughters in lace dresses, white gloves, and hats and see through veils, typical Catholic dress designed  to hide all sins, big and small from God's eye.

Today however was Monday, and it was a normal workday in San Francisco, so we walked over into the small park and sat on the grass, now free from the cold morning dew and let the sun rejuvenate us while across from us sat a poet reading aloud from a piece he had created probably the night before in some starving garret in his imaginary Paris on the Left Bank, only it was not in Paris at all, but here in America where even in the land of the richest nation on earth, poets and artists still have the freedom to be hungry even amidst the plenty.

The poet spoke and flowers flowed from his mouth, then the words formed rainbows in my imagination. The words, the words. They always stuck with me.  Later, as a writer I would tell of a dream sequence based on a trip to a small Mexican village in search of drugs, and in the dream, words fell from a pinata, forming sentences, paragraphs, and thoughts, all based on the memory of that poet in the park in San Francisco on a warm spring morning across from the church around the corner from the deli with sausages and cheese and wonderful sourdough bread.

Soon a flute player joined in on a solo at the other end of the small park, and on the park bench along the back section, an old beat bum from the slum grumbled loudly as he pulled his worn tattered stained blanket over his head to block out the sound more than the cold.

After the morning’s poetry read/flute sole we were off to explore. Cutting through the Beach, we ended up in Chinatown with its tongs and wongs and Chinese songs played on lute like instruments, serenading us as we walked past the shops with dead upside down chickens, paper lanterns, finger puzzles, umbrellas with scenes of swans painted on them, cages with colorful birds from paradise, rich filled  vegetable stands, banks from the old world of Asia with secretive doors and wafts of foo young and young foo, noodles from the factory in the alley and of course, the kookie fortune cookie. There was also the obligatory Chinese laundry  which are as famous as the fabulous Chinese opium dens used to be in the Old West and the far-out East.

After a few hours we headed back to the small park where we overheard another pair of young lovers talking about a place they called the Haight. Scary sounding name, this Hate, but as we listened longer to the conversation we realized...this was the fabled El Dorado we had heard about.

We listened intently as the other couple were discussing their new apartment in this "Haight" area that they would be moving into and how cheap it was. I thought, maybe now we could get off the streets, stop crashing in the camper  and become landed gentry in our  own apartment. In 1966 the apartments were dirt cheap, $15 - 20 a week in the Haight for  a two roomer and I knew I  could make that and more in a day selling weed, or in a week panhandling.

The Haight held out her hand enticing us with art, culture, literature, music and yes, dope, and lots of it along with cheap living. They had poster shops, incense coming from just about every window, and a huge park where people gathered on weekends in small groups to play guitars, flutes, (those damn flutes again) and just enjoying an uncrowded alternative existence.

We quickly raced back to the camper so we could head to the Haight.  Before we did, I stopped at a small Chinatown shop and  bought Myrika a small necklace. It was a blue stone on a leather necklace, and it was simple and as beautiful as she was inside and out. It was a symbol of our new life together as the Sixties came alive...a time of psychedelic prophets, pseudo-peace (What was Vietnam, chopped liver?) and lust disguised behind a mask called love. Riding shotgun with Flower Power, was a heavily loaded weapon with buckshot pellets of gloom and doom. The revolution of the rucksack was already in rocking motion, fueled by "On the Road" and "Dharmabums", yet, this new generation of boomers were beginning to flower to power, fueled by the Kerouac Gospel set forth as ten commandments in Jack's books, looking for salvation in his words, and the key to paradise, Sal, but now these young disciples, sheep being led to a slaughter, were being kicked out of the temple by Jesus Jack.

We found directions to the neighborhood and the camper bus lumbered through the veins of the city  that had a scent and an air about it, no doubt about it, and we were drinking it in like  kids on a hot day downing in ice cold Kool-aid. Soon...we were there...and without knowing it entered the world beyond the looking glass, to lay our heads down on a surrealistic pillow.

We parked a block away from Haight St. and started to walk down the hill towards the main street below as it had traffic going in both directions and appeared to be the busiest street around the area.

Ashbury Street connected to Haight St.  as smooth a transition as  a needle going into a junkies arm at Haight. As they hit Haight and hung a west coastie left the panorama of the street unfolded before us.

Later on, within the year we  would see  "luminaries" on the street and meet some of them, but not all. John Lennon, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roger McGuinn, Eric Burdon, Ashleigh Brilliant, along with the local bands playing at the Fillmore and in the park. The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother, Country Joe, Santana and others.

There was that curious colorful bus that only went “further” and the Diggers who fed and clothed the neighborhood absolutely free of charge, utopian usurpers to the crown in mime makeup. Hells Angels and Motorcycle Ritchies, coyotes named Peter, magic men, mad men, and mayhem. Runaways, speed freaks, LSD, mescaline, grass, lava lamps, patchouli incense, the Psychedelic Shoppe, Tracy Donuts, 1090 Page Street, the Panhandle, Golden Gate Park, Park Station Cop Shop, mellow yellow, purple hazed and double dazed days dazed in a daze. There was free food, a free store, a free clinic, free sex, free love, free crashpads, and freedom period. The Family Dog was man's best friend, and Bill was no graham cracker.

The park filled on Sunday's for music, bubbles, kites and drugs. Bare chested and bare breasted the young of the day were mere prey for vultures who would circle around on the periphery waiting to strike, but this was 1966.  The crowds hadn't arrived yet. It was an old neighborhood that had seen better days decades ago, but now, tawdry, old and in the way. The paint was peeling from the old Victorian homes, now apartments, like cheap lipstick and too much eye-liner on an old whore who smelt of too much perfume, the kind an old aunt wears when she comes for holidays. The buildings had many coats of paint on them, the sidewalks were cracked in places, and the stains of spilled pop or beer stained the concrete squares, a baptism of holy carbonated alcohol. Probably old chewing gum too, fossilized for posterity until discovered by archeo's and ologists in the future who can read the past with tea leaves in a Japanese cup in 7 stages.

The street wasn't yet crowded with wannabe's and neverwillbe's as it ultimately would be in '67. The pseudo-hip and neo-beats falling from the sky like broken shards of office windows from collapsing skyscrapers, impaling the street culture below and enveloping everything in a cloud of grey dust, smoke, bricks and mortar, steel and then, more glass.

In 1966, the Haight was more communal and quiet with art mostly, and dope, lots of both. Musicians practiced in hidden Victorian apartments, artists painted and mimes acted out on the street. It was life as theater and theater as life, lines blurred pleasantly and the senses weren't yet under siege as they would be the following summer. The summer of love....love hurts.




We were oblivious to all the politics swirling around us like a stew. The tumultuous times would soon catch up with us  albeit in different ways, but for now.... This was also the period that I began writing furiously in my daily journal, without realizing it I was documenting the times from my own personal perspective without even realizing it. Later it would culminate in my first book, "The Roadhead Chronicles" where the vivid realities would take the shape of words and the Woodstock Nation of peace and love would degenerate into bloody Altamont and peaceful protest would end with a hail of National Guard bullets at Kent State leaving a generation in shock. Vietnam would end, but with 50,000 young Americans dead, and soon the social involvement of the Sixties would end with the birth of the digital age and the assault of cable, video games, internet, and cell phones, and the death of effective social activism.

But...for now...there were more pressing problems...where to get some food to eat and where to sleep for the night.

Chapter 15 - The Psychedelic Shop

 

 

 

Our first few days in the Haight were spent getting our bearings, but as for housing, we were lucky. We had the Camper. We’d park on a side street near the Panhandle Park so it was quiet at night, at least by Haight Ashbury standards.

The fog at night would roll in on cue across the Golden Gate in a shrouded parade of giants and dwarves leading a contingent of sideshow freaks in a sea of fluffy white, cotton candy from a Pacific coast big top circus waiting to envelope her children for the night, to hide the world they inhabited and to hide what they do in the dark from prying eyes.

In the first afternoon of our arrival, we walked into a poster shop, lured by the strains of strange far off the beaten path eastern music to sit among the sitars and Satyrs of the hip, inhaling giant Catholic lung full's of incense. Inside there stood a gentle bearded sage behind a retail counter, that could have been an altar in another time and world described by the scribe Pericles. The sage, we got to know, Jay Thelin, was surrounded by a Sistine ceiling and a Berlin wall of pulsating posters that glowed in the dark, adorned with colorful imagery of buffalos and buddhas.

A beaded curtain opened in the back to a blacklight lit room laden with lava lamps moving the mind along in a psychedelic flow, in harmony with  the mantra of Indian sitars raising the virgins to dance in melancholia as twing twang emerged from a stylus on a vinyl race track located on an old record player. Inside the room behind the beads, on the floor were people sitting, leaning into each other, staring and not speaking. The three of us sat down in an open area and leaning into each other, exhausted, fell asleep and drifted off led by the muse of the music, the lamps, the incense and each other’s scent into a stroboscopic dream.

He could see we were new and tired so he filled us in on the Haight.

“If you're looking for a place to stay there are a lot of crash pads around that will take you in for a night. maybe two-three, and there's the free store. They have anything, well, most things you'll need, like books, clothing, cigarettes, anything. They also have a bulletin board with listings of places to stay, and there’s a  donut shop down the street that’s loaded with cheap eats, open 24 hours and has a jukebox, so maybe that will help get your compass bearings set.”

We thanked him for the information and the chance to rest. This would not be the last time we’d fell from the sky and crash land behind the beaded curtain. "What's behind the beaded curtain Johnny?" It was a psychedelic game show, a quiz show, and no one, absolutely no one, anyone, knew the answer, nor cared. The answers didn't matter. It was the questions. They were the keys to the inner kingdom. The present alone was of value and counted as taxmen of old counted gold coins as tribute from peasants to royal gentry, until the gentry were gently (in revolution, the term "gently" is all relative, don't you think?) overthrown and murdered in dark basements of old castles.

The past, sat with a Bhuddha stance, in Buddha silence, a rusted out Buddha car in a Colorado field with parables to tell and fabled songs to sing as they keep silent, rusting away.  watching over the east-west, north-south highways shooting for the rest stop of enlightenment, and another tank of gas.. and the future?

It hadn't decided to exist yet, so it could be a custom tailored envisionment, cut to fit like a Chinese suit in Hong Kong, and just as shiny, the kind bankers and pimps used to like to wear in the suburban 1950's while crowning themselves with Sinatra hats with a little bands holding a decorative feather, and the band circled the brim, rings of Saturn with moons and debris.

We would unwind at the Psychedelic Shop numerous times before we scored an apartment, But for now, we three were one,   floating free in a mandala, joined at the hip in the land of the hipsters. Haight Street itself was an arterial flow of abject abstraction, not objectionable in the least, at the most, it was a small wisp of smoke from the campfire of time that would soon burn out altogether.

Art, music, literature, street theater, mimes and jugglers. A psychedelic circus under a pharmacological big top with big tabs and bigger pills and monster joints and mescaline, peyote and acid trips, lightly fantastic with fantastico fantasy's turned inside out into realities. It had a "Fantasia-esque" surreal appeal to me given  my  addiction to non-conformity. There was an air of bizarre individuality with a communal lisp to its voice.

As we walked down the street one of the many pharmacological mobile merchants approached us about scoring some acid and speed. The combination was too much to refuse so we forked over the money and scored two tabs of acid and four hits of speed. What the hell, it was almost dinner time, well past dinner time in suburbia in fact, so we dropped the acid and went into the doughnut shop, Tracey’s Doughnuts, we had heard about.

It was wafer thin and the counter was lined with cheap vinyl clad stools on silver pedestals and you could barely walk between the stools and the wall without bumping into someone or something. In the back of shop, along the right side corner was a jukebox, Bob Dylan playing for a quarter, and everyone did agree...everyone must get stoned and were and then some, and as you veered to the physical and political left of the jukebox, (jukeboxes are notorious Bolsheviks) along the wall it went straight again to the bathrooms and a back door to the outside where drug deals were made in the narco shade of night.

The acid we dropped earlier, the strawberry kind, later sunshine bursts and double domes of purple haze would embrace us, but the current tab, looking like a St. Joseph aspirin, but with more kick than a Catholic took hold, so we decided to spend the night there drinking coffee, talking with others, tripping and taking speed until dawn.

We’d left for an hour walking down Haight St. around 10 p.m. The acid propelled us along the glistening streets of the Haight, small puddles rehlecting stars, moon and neon joining hands, many hands, many colors, many explanations. The world was a fish-eye lens projection, the faces took on a topographical look, and your own eyes looked down from above watching you watch them, a trick with mirrors no doubt, mass reflection hallucination.

Eventually we become landed gentry by renting an apartment at the corner of Haight & Ashbury, ground zero of  the counterculture in a second floor walk up apartment above a store.

We did the crash pad scene before that when the Camper got cramped. Those  were another story altogether. When new arrivals stepped off the rucksack boat they mustered and piled though the imaginary Ellis Island in Haight Ashbury, One of the prominent ones was at 1090 Page Street and it wasn't unusual to find people crashed out in the foyer, lining the steps.

In the basement, was the  daunting Dante's Inferno of junkies mainlining in the Shooting Gallery as it was called,  and there was always a pot of stew or some type of food brewing laced with acid and speed, free for the taking. Stained mattresses from previous explorers lined the floor along the walls and couples merely rock n' rolled and balled until the cows came home and left their own juice as sexual graffiti to mingle with the sex of the past, giving it continuing life as the mattress fed itself from the human passions that let loose and jettisoned love and lust.

Within a month, Myrika and I  were selling drugs, which were cheap and plentiful. We  were getting tired of living on the streets and in the camper, so in between furiously writing in my journal, I landed a part-time job to write for one of the underground weeklies in the area. News from the Haight and that sort of thing that paid $10 a week plus would sell the papers to tourists on the weekend, hawking them on the corner.

That and selling drugs began to add up and we  opened a Bank of America savings account, how establishment is that, and soon had enough saved up for a month for our apartment. The little flat was up a flight of stairs  on the left. As you reached the top you made a 180 and there was the door to the $15 a week apartment. It had traditional Victorian Bay windows in the living room which was almost circular in design, and you could sit there stoned and view the street procession at the corner of Love and Peace for hours. To the right of the apartment door as you entered was a small 10 x 10 bedroom. The bathroom was down the skinny hall on the right and the back area was a communal kitchen with hotplates and a beat up old refrigerator. There was a beat bed in the bedroom, but Myrika and I would roll out my  sleeping bag in the living room so as not to miss a beat of the anthropological concert below, and allow the pregnant Olivia to have the bed for which we did buy sheets and blankets for.

It  was a dive, but it was our dive that would be shared off and on with a cadre of characters from the street over the next year. Old beats, new hip, black jazz cats, and young kittens, marijuana, speed, LSD, mescaline, peyote and the damndest mixtures of each you could imagine. I even got an old record player at the free store and started a record collection, mainly of local bands and Beatles.

Change however was in the air, as 1967 loomed on the Haight horizon. The streets were starting to get crowded, the noise louder and the drugs a torrent of Niagra Falls. It would be the year of Charlie Manson, Hells Angels, the Grateful Dead, the Great Society, Big Brother, Jefferson Airplane, and every band around in town...the venues...Filmore, Avalon. The state was set for the curtain to rise and fall on the Summer of Love..and the Death of Hip.

Chapter 16 - War, Peace & Narcotics

 

 

 

 

 

 

War, Peace, Narcotics

Joey Russo was now homeward bound from the bloody jungles of Vietnam to rejoin his three best friends in San Francisco to toss himself into the wilderness of the anti-war movement after a brief two stopover in Hawaii on military transport. Eventually he made clear to me that he and Olivia would be heading north to Canada. Deserters from the army are high on the Pentagon hit list along with increasing the Viet Cong body count. Sharing a Leavenworth prison cell and hard labor were no comparison to a cabin in the Canadian Rockies among a community of kindred souls...fellow deserters, draft dodgers, CO’s and others who chose to leave it rather than love it. Besides, they may not smoke marijuana in Muskogee, but Vietnam was another story. They had opium too...how lucky is that?

Just before heading off the island of Oahu Joey called me in San Francisco, and after talking first with Olivia laying out his plans, he asked for me to pick up the phone where he described Honolulu to me in vivid Polynesian  technicolor commentary.

The Hawaiian islands made the  midwest look bleak, dusty, dingy by comparison.

“I tell ya Mickey, I swear even nuns here on the beach would strip  and dance bare chested pleasing pagan statues. Hell, even the goddamned priests would cast aside their frocks, rosaries and piety, and shed their pale skin like the snakes of Eden.”

I began having my own visions of island living, fueled of course by a hit of Strawberry acid I had dropped a half hour prior. I pictured Honolulu hula girls stacked like a great cord of hardwood outside a cabin in a Michigan forest. Honolulu's finest babies, goddesses really. Nubile all. Big beautiful saucer sized brown eyes, with matching, inviting "soft to the touch" cop a feel breasts with  nipples standing tall and proud at full colonial attention for my personal inspection. Muses descending from sky thrones of soft clouds placing  a scented boa of intoxicating Kapiolani flora gently over my head.

Honolulu. Bitchin' surfs up dude paradiso! Soon in my mind’s eye  I would kick off my imaginary  sandals while the soles of my feet, still midwest tender, would turn into a fiery bottom spanking red outrage. In time, they would harden and toughen, as tough as a Cherokee Indian Nation tanned leather hide, and I would be able to brave the hot beach sand as easily and as religiously as the most devout firewalkers in all of transcendental India.


My mind looked lovingly at Myrika reading  one  of her books of poetry by her favorite poet, Ranier Maria Rilke , the existential modernist. Joey and I talked for a long time about times galaxies and light years away. An inner black light flashed on and off, and on again, crackling the already frayed mental wires causing memory banks to spark to life, traveling back months, eons ago. A time before optimism, principles and innocent passions.

Joey and I compadres and brothers of flashlight tag and marbles since we were 6 years old. Now we were both on the run from a war we didn’t believe in. Our lives had changed from play war “bang you’re dead” to real war.  The fantasy alleys composed of bricks and children's dreams were no longer safe for invisible, invincible pirates, cheap plastic cowboys and bendable rubber Indians. We now viewed them as dark, dank walled-in avenues of crumbling brick, littered with broken bottles, shattered dreams, death pale skin and collapsed veins from too many nightmare junkie spikes of war machine narcotics.

The longer we talked, the nostalgia inside was building  and turning to dreams of Michigan and what had been home. Those magnificent Michigan days in the fall with the forests and low hills of the Upper Peninsula would be on fire, ablaze with a visual symphony and beatific wildfire of deep reds of maples and the subtle yellows displayed by the shoreline birches. In the Straits of Mackinac where two giant great lakes meet in whitecap, wind tossed copulation, bone chilling winds would now in December be charging in from the Arctic north, a gift from the Yukon, would eminate  from the loins of invisible and impossible gods sitting high on impeccable thrones. The howling winds would cut and slice through the region like the frozen blue flame of an out of control blowtorch through the thin human skin as they increased in intensity and mush-raced down full throttle from Henry's Hudson Bay in the far north, a land inhabited by incredible Inuits and naughty Nanooks.

The plaid sky paintings of the Great Lakes were hung with great care on the gallery wall to be savored by critics and the proletariat alike, soon vaporized and in a puff of smoke were replaced by the very Vishnu visions of his current reality.

War? Peace? To serve or not to serve? To embark on a new journey or face a prison stretch.  Both feelings were converging in me as two rivers colliding at the same time. Nothing was making sense, and everything was out of place on the shelf. Books were upside down and the spines faded, torn and tattered. All the titles were jumbled letters and completely illegible, however, the pages were still intact and readable, but still not making any sense whatsoever.

Chapter 17 - The Death of Hip

 

 

The Death of Hip

Joey arrived stateside aboard Fuck the Army Airlines for what the brass thought was a temporary leave before yet another bloodbath My Lai tour of Vietnam. He wasn’t sure who the real enemy was in this political football bowl game, but he was pretty sure, he was on the wrong team.

I picked him up at the bus station in San Fran and would begin our foray into times that were changing faster than a pit crew at NASCAR. I was already wanted by the Feds for draft evasion and Joey would soon join the ranks of military deserters. I still hadn’t told him yet about Olivia’s pregnancy and my willing participation in it...in her. Hoping he wouldn’t have a battle fatigue flashback and kill me on the spot...Peace and Love Brother, remember? This is after all the age of Aquarius!

During the Summer  of '67 the sexual revolution was full tilt boogie. The Haight became a cabaret and costume ball in a crowded back alley bazaar in Tunisia with baskets and dead chickens hanging on hooks. Eric Burdon sang of San Francisco nights, while Scott McKenzie penned the anthem of the Aquarians, with the youth of America flamboyantly festooned with a colorful cornucopia of flowers taking root in their psyche, not to mention, their hair.

It was the Sixties....after all...revolution for the hell of it...art for the hell of it...fondly, Jane found a home in Hanoi, street people were digging the diggers and human beings at a be-in believe in the drug deity of all things hallucinatory.

The four of us would spend our time walking the Haight. We knew every concrete square by name. The Haight had a cacophony to accompany the personal epiphanies experienced by the un-experienced when they became experienced. I personally  enjoyed the Bedouin tent confusion of the streets with it's harem girl and harem boy bacchanal and carnival atmosphere.

Sometimes, I found myself staring down at myself from a rooftop, or just peering back into my own eye sockets.  The acid was a mirror reflection, and mixed with mescaline and smoke, you could be Peter Pan doing Wendy after she finished with seven dwarves.

The purple hazed and double dazed days were days of wine and roses, underwater gardens of strange fishes tended to by Joe, from the country, and all the heat was canned, but survival, like creativity is the mother of invention, so fug it, said Col. Ed Saunders. Mr. Hoffman's first bicycle ride on acid, made Sandoz pharmaceuticals suitable for the subterraneans, while Owsley Stanley became the Henry Ford of colorful dreams on the streets. Orange Wedge, Purple Double Dome, Strawberry, it was all about colors and perception, just ask Jim the Morrison, and the literary hustler Huxley.




The Summer of Love... the streets became clogged and crowded with weekend "hippies". The Diggers were dishing out free food in the park, music was in the air, performed mainly on the stage of the flatbed truck, the dope, she was plentiful and the sky was a zillion rainbows with prismatic balloons floating overhead and inner mind.

To most, this was the beginning of something wonderful, spectacular and spiritual. It was peace and love, while Vietnam raged on unabated, peace and love not withstanding. Timothy Leary preached to the muddled huddled masses to turn on, tune in and drop out, while wearing flowers and kaftans, but over on Cole street on the other side of the garden, was a deadly apparition called Charles Manson seeking out a sect of the weak to help him become the Jesus of Mass Murder.

The political skies were darkening and within a year, another Kennedy and a King would be brought down, and flower power would give way to billy clubs on the streets of bloody Chicago.

The Woodstock Festival in 1969 would fade as Altamont muscled its way into the fray with beer bottles, knives, and pool cues and a death at the hands of Hells Angels, and the peaceful marches of an earlier time would end with the events of deaths on the campus of Kent State. A president would not run for re-election and one was impeached...no wonder we never voted in any election.. Do the math....It's one, two, three, what are we fighting for....equals = four dead in Ohio!

With that in mind, it's no wonder the Haight fell apart at the seams it seems. Acid clashed with heroin, the young spare changers were weekenders of the street, by the street or for the street people of the Haight Ashbury of the Altered States of America. Sexual promiscuity, redlining drug use of acid, grass, mescaline, hashish, Bennies and Dexies, opium, cocaine and a touch of heroin mein herr on occasion.

 

The Haight became a packed Turkish prison cell. No room to move, Greyline sightseeing eye-dog buses barked and chased cars through the social excrement of the enclave, cameras snapping photo's. semi-automatic as fast as a National Guardsman could shoot students down on the commons at Kent State, while tossing tear gas canisters.
The hard core pushers elbowed their way into the fabricn while mental illness and poisoned dope bad trips carved a scene of R.P. McMurphy meeting Alex and his Droogies at Lobotomyland.

The Haight had lost it's shine, it's armor of surrealness, transforming into something, everything, sinister, and by summer’s demise, Hip Was Dead....the Haight was past tensed, The streets took on a meaner demeanor, and da meaner it got, the less we enjoyed it anymore.

Once you cross the threshold, and step through the looking glass...your ass is grass, Amigo.

Chapter 18 - Bombed in Berkeley

Bombed in Berkeley

The Haight was getting ready to implode in June of ‘67 as the war in Vietnam was setting American cities on fire. Joey was now AWOL for over four months, or in military parlance, he was a deserter. We had delayed contacting “The Resistance”  long enough.  Best boogie now or we’d both be sharing a prison cell with what Arlo Guthrie termed, Mother rapers...Father rapers...all kinds of mean nasty people from the Group W bench.

I had made contact with “The Resistance” as it was called through one of my SDS contacts Berkeley. We were driving across the Bay Bridge to meet with them on how to get he and Olivia to Canada safely.

As we cruised along the bridge,  I managed to bring up a subject we had avoided for months. “I’m glad you weren’t too upset with me Joey, about Olivia and all. We didn’t plan it, honest. It just happened.”

“It’s OK, done, forgotten. Besides in Saigon I was not exactly a saint. I was made at first when you two told me, and it took four joints and Myrika to calm me down. In a way, I’m glad it was you, and not some stranger I never knew who only wanted a piece of ass.  I figured with you two, it was much deeper. She is a great girl, a little young  for either of us, but, well, glad it was you. We don’t mention it again OK?”

“It’s a deal.” I said. “I thought for sure when we told you, you were gonna kill me!”

“Don’t think I didn’t think of it!”

We never mentioned it again.

After our initial foray into the “underground” our SDS contact put us in touch with a David Harris who formed the organization in his Palo Alto commune run by he and his folk singing wife, Joan Baez.

We attended a Resistance rally in the spring of  67 at Kezar stadium in San Francisco David  told the us and a monster crowd,  “This war will not be made in our names; this war will not be made with our hands; we will not carry rifles to butcher the Vietnamese people and the prisons of the United States will be full of young people who will not honor the orders of murder."

Another Resistance organizer Lennie Heller spoke at the same rally telling us, the assemble  “The only way out is the hard way. That means incurring personal risks. That means attacking the machine with your minds, your bodies, and inevitably with your lives. The Resistance will carry on its struggle in jail and out. Our bodies might be locked up, but we would continue to organize.”

Earlier in ‘67 the SDS had adopted a militant draft resistance program. Local representatives at the National Council meeting voted to take on the state. At that point SDS had moved to a radicalism that defied the power of the state in a way associated  with the anarchist movement.” It was a powerful organization as they were on university campuses with 400 plus  chapters across the country, from a little seed planted in the People’s Republic of Ann Arbor followed by the Port Huron Statement.

It had been almost a decade since the first American Marine died in Vietnam. America was divided with almost  60% supporting  the war. General Hershey, no relation to the Hershey Kisses family was  the head of the Selective Service System. In an interesting  memo Hershey stated the need to develop more effective human beings in the national interest. Sieg Heil Mein Furher! Look in the sky, it’s the Luftwaffe...It’s a B-52...It’s the German Superman.   Mario Savio said “I’m not Jewish but, nothing affected my consciousness more than those pictures,” of “heaps of bodies, mounds of bodies,” in the concentration camps at the end of WWII.

We rolled in Berkeley and went to the Resistance office on Telegraph Ave., parked the camper and went in. We were greeted by a Mr. Will Rogers. I kid you not. Will Fucking Rogers. We were now entering the “underground” and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and we wanted to be his neighbor.

“Mickey, Joey, welcome. David called and set this meeting up so I will assume you’re not NARC’s or Sen. Joe McCarthy’s offspring,” he jested with a smile that would not only light up Broadway at night, but his affable attitude transported you at once on a magic carpet ride of trust. A trust I envied, but could never feel. To me, around every corner there were FBI agents with seeing eye dogs armed with the teeth of Saber Toothed tigers ready to rip me from limb to limb.

“Mickey you want to write for us. Terrific. David says you are a journalist.”

“Well, I suppose, in a sense. I do freelance work for my old employer in New York, The Village Paper, and I also write for the San Francisco Oracle and the Berkeley Barb. So whatever I can do to help.”

Will  was beaming again. “I have a perfect project, if you want it. There is an underground military newspaper called, The Ally. Goes to servicemen and women on bases around the globe, at great risk I might add. But, it would be great to see the anti-war movement, the Resistance covered on a regular basis. Give the guys some hope, and perhaps change a few gung ho minds.You know, dilute that John Wayne - Merle Haggard shit. Let them know what’s happening on campuses today, in the streets, the class struggle,everything to to in effect get the real news to them instead of what Stars and Stripes is shoving up their ass.

I was sold. “Done!”

“Good. Excellent. Now as for a ticket to Canada. That is the tricky one. We have an underground in place in cooperation with the Quakers. Safe houses, documents to slip you across the border, and can even assist with getting a job up there. There are whole communities set up. We can get you, Joey, and I believe her name is Olivia up there safely.”

“So what’s our next step?”

Will laughed that Will laugh. “We’ll have you contacted in the Haight by one of our best people, regarding the Canada thing. As for you Mickey, I’ve already contacted the Ally paper publisher and he’s ready for you to start writing. Write what you normally do for the others. They, we, want to show the troops we support their efforts at resistance, and the more the merrier. STOP THE KILLING!”

At that point we heard a large crash as the plate glass window in the office was shattered followed by an explosion the shook the building, sending office debris in all directions. I was hit by a flying stapler in the head causing blood to flow.  Pieces of desks and chairs were on the move by the force of the impact while the contents of one of the file cabinets caught fire.

Screams punctuated the air amidst the smoke and confusion. Other staffers were injured as well. Joey immediately, although wounded on his left arm, began pulling people from the debris, yelling for first aid kits, and rendering what care he could.

The damage was caused by a homemade pipe bomb, which I found out was only one of many across the country at Resistance offices from the East Coast to the West.

Will was unconscious so we immediately had one of the volunteers call for an ambulance or two. We also knew the cops would respond, hell they probably were responsible for the bomb. If not them, then the FBI or some lone right wing wing nut.

Either way, Joey and I had to get out fast. One military deserter and a draft dodger with the heat looking for us. I put the Ally paper editor’s name and number in my pocket and we booked out the backdoor, around and down the alley to the camper to get back across the bridge to the Haight, but first we would head down to Palo Alto to inform David and the others at the commune on what happened.

Myrika and Olivia were at a kite festival in Golden Gate Park and wouldn’t expect us back for hours yet.

America was at war with itself. It was my first taste of how brutal it was going to get. As for Joey, he may be home from Vietnam, but he was certainly back in the shit!

Chapter 19 - Death of Hip

 

 

 

 

October 1967 Death of Hip

Joey and I were still licking and patching our wounds after the Berkeley bombing.  We were sitting in the apartment back in the Haight cleaning out the pieces of glass that acted as storefront shrapnel imbedding themselves in our skin allowing rivers of blood to flow.

By the time Myrika and Olivia returned from treasure hunting at the Salvation Army Store with paper sacks filled with faded shirts and skirts, we were cleaned up, but looked as though we were dogs left out in a storm. Ragged, tired and pissed.

“What happened???” Myrika screamed and dropped her bags as she caught first sight of the bruised and battered degenerates sitting on the floor by the window, two not laughing Buddha’s who had seemingly lost their enlightenment...or rather...had attained it through the harsh realities of the times. Buddha never got bombed!! Stoned maybe, but not Buddha Bombed!

We explained the day’s events to the girls. Olivia started to let loose a flood of warm wet tears that ran like tiny rivulets down her face. Joey jumped up to hold her in the comfort of his arms as Myrika ran to me holding me against her chest. I could feel her heart racing fast, as her sweet German girl scent filled my being with happiness….and made me want her on the spot. I wanted to fuck her right then and there naked on a raft sailing into the sunset on the Pacific Ocean with a course set for Aku Aku so I could worship her as a mystical stone goddess on a green hilltop overlooking the turquoise waters of calm.

“Look gang, we have a real problem now,” I managed to utter, once my raft had returned to port. “That bombing is gonna bring the FBI into the investigation. There are already FBI shoes on the ground in the Haight looking to infiltrate anti war groups and organizations, which means, Joey as a deserter, and me dodging Uncle Sam’s call to action could get caught up in a large net. Also….also..I hate to say this, but if they stop Myrika...well...her visa is long expired...they’ll deport you, Baby.  As for Olivia, she hasn’t broken any laws, but….BUT...she’s pregnant and underage….I could get nailed for getting her pregnant!!”

Silence followed. The room was still. Silent. We had all reached the end and needed to find the rabbit hole and follow some invisible mad hatter to some invisible world of sanctuary.

Joey’s was the calm voice amidst the hurricane of fear that enveloped us all.

“We should be meeting our Resistance contact in a few days about getting us all to Canada. Will mentioned a commune somewhere in the southwest as the jumping off point. I say we hang tight, keep low until then  and get the hell out of here. Christ we’ll all end up on a milk carton!! Have you seen these horrible people, if so, please shoot on sight!!”

He was right. Besides, the I was beginning to hate the Haight...it had morphed overnight.
The Flower Garden was filling with weeds choking it and sucking it dry. Pimps looking for free love prostitutes, GI’s and straights looking for free love or a fight, whichever came first. Rapes were now common along with assaults of all forms. Even the Diggers newspaper said on the front page…”Rape is as common as bullshit on Haight Street. Some affected are as young as 14”
Venereal disease and vaginitis were epidemic and keeping the Free Clinic busier than the rubber room denizens of a mental institution. The murder rate and incidents of physical assault soared. Robbery and burglaries became commonplace. The weirdest event from a standpoint of irony was the robbery of the Diggers Trip Without a Ticket FREE store!! Robbing a free store?

Heroin and downers were replacing LSD and Mescaline. Violent crimes were up and in an article in the Berkeley Barb,  when police arrested a local Haight Street heroin dealer, they found a suede bag in his car. The bag contained the severed arm of a drug dealer who had been murdered.

The frosting on the Haight cake of demise, was the arrival of Charles Manson who gathered the local Hashbury  dregs  of young men and women who would make up the weirdest Brady Bunch family to ever wield a butcher knife.

Soon on the Hippie Om Horizon, the Haight would shut down. It’s heartbeat missing a few beats as it’s arteries hardened ready to draw it’s last breath. That would all culminate in an event called  “The Death of Hippie,” with a somber carnival of masked participants carrying a coffin with the words "Hippie, Son of Media" on the side. According an article in the Digger Papers, “The event will be  staged in such a way that any media outlet that simply described the happening would unknowingly transmit the Diggers' message that Hippies were a media invention. This was called "creating the condition you describe.”

We lit up a joint and began to talk out our plans. Canada was within reach. We were going for the goal from the 40 yard line with the full federal government team running offense. If our playbook didn’t play out...Myrika could be booted back to Berlin while Olivia would be ripped from our group ending up in some Catholic home for wayward girls with butch nuns mad about 14 year old girls.

As for Joey he’d be leaving for Leavenworth, and I’d be in a cellblock with deranged serial killers waiting for me drop the bar of soap in the shower!

As the marijuana we had lit was filling the room with it’s fragrance, someone knocked on the door. Cautiously I got up to answer it. “Who’s there? Friend or Foe? Fiend?”

A gentle female voice answered from the other side. “My name is Carol...Will Rogers sent me from Berkeley.”
I quickly opened the door...Alice had arrived to show us the way to Wonderland...Canada and freedom!!!

Chapter 20 - The Blonde Bombshell of Revolution

 

 

 

 

As I opened the door, I swear an unholy light blinded me. Carol, our Resistance contact was radiant. Not the usual butch Soviet look of a rugged female soldier defending Stalingrad against Nazi hordes. She was beautiful and tall, as tall as Jack’s Beanstalk. She  was also well groomed just as  I imagine Seabiscuit or any thoroughbred is and ready to be raced..and win!  She smelled of fresh spring flowers popping out of warm moist forest ground, not that stale Haight Street panhandle spare change stench musk masked by too much patchouli incense scent  Her hair, a flowing, glowing  Fort Knox of  yellow complimenting her pink shorts which were short, revealing thighs of wonder, veritable bear traps.

Myrika, ever vigilante made her way to the door, pushing me aside.

“Come in Carol. We didn’t expect you so soon, but we are anxious anyway. When do we leave, where do we go, papers, documents,” she blurted out in a spasm of quizzical confusion.

Carol entered and shut the door behind her. I could tell by her look staring at Myrika there was a future foray of foreplay waiting in the wings between the two of them. Myrika also had great taste in choosing her females for fun and frolic. They sometimes included me as well. To us...three is not a crowd...how the hell do you think I knocked up Olivia?  She was the meat to our sandwich.


Carol  put a finger to her lips, shush like, hush-hush, and reached deep in her jeans to pull out stash of  little pills. These were purple in color, and she held them up in her hands, a high priestess consecrating a holy sacrament, body and blood of Christ and we knew what to do, and stuck our tongues out without prodding, a very catholic dominus vabiscum move as she placed the holy communion one by one on our longing tongues.

She certainly knew how to make an entrance! This meeting was a “high” mass and would be the chemical incarnation of the Sandoz pharmaceutical Christ incarnate. We also had a bottle of pills, a Mason jar full in fact, the amount and kinds that truck drivers keep next to them on runs from Dayton to Cheyenne, or Memphis to Denver. Yellow ones, and blue ones, and green ones, bennies and little dexies we would  down by the handful and pass around like M&M's, and they didn't stand a chance of melting in your hands, but could melt the mind after 72 hours straight running on an empty tank of mental fumes. Taking Carols communion and smoking a joint only accelerated the high to a plateau, where you could catch your breath before the next leg of the climb up chemical Everest without breathing tanks or yaks or a trusted Sherpa.

She explained that the FBI had planted undercover agents in the Resistance as well as the SDS, Civil Rights groups, Black Panthers  and any other group J. Edgar Hoover deemed was a compost pile of drugged out commie fag pinko peace queers. Things were getting hot for the underground so we had to leave by the weekend. Destination...the desert of New Mexico to the Solstice Commune near Santa Fe It was desolate, guarded and protected and was the Go! Square on the Monopoly board of the underground railroad to Canada. We’d cross over in the town of Nelson in the Canadian Rockies in British Columbia with forged documents. From there we’d be resettled in small communities scattered from Vancouver to Montreal. Carol would travel with us to New Mexico, get us settled in and turn us over to new handlers.

We spent the week packing up and having the camper checked out, gas, oil, tires, as well as food supplies, coffee, sugar, cheeses, powdered milk, fruit and veggies...we’d hit roadside stands along the way south from San Francisco until we we veered east near Bakersfield.

Myrika and I were excited as we’d camp at Big Sur again. Romance and the Pacific Ocean and a campfire on the beach are cleansing experiences. Highway One blazes a spiritual and artistic trail through the wild wilderness of offbeat culture that defines the state of California. It’s the road that calms the soul as it winds through the majesty of the giant redwoods in the north. It hugs the Pacific Ocean all along it's serene journey. The journey itself is a trip in itself, but the road eventually leads to Big Sur, a place that has today as then became an enclave for writers, painters, and others with an artistic gleam in their eye, who have surrendered to its seductive powers and charms for well over a half a century.

Big Sur is an attractive oceanside Muse for the artisan, and for those that are just looking for self discovery and seeking the inner sanctuary of contentment that Mother Nature provides through her sexy  massaging of the senses. Yeah, when it comes to artistic expression and inspiration, Big Sur is sexy as hell!

Something about Big Sur that causes a writer and his words to reach a literary climax together and after getting spiritually laid by the Muse of literature, the writer, now rejuvenated, would furiously pound the keys and the words would spill onto the page as fast as the spring snowmelt in the Sierra's.

Camping on the beach the Pacific Ocean is spread out before you as a Neptunian canvas masterpiece.  Big Sur is a place of rejuvenation, where your soul and spirit emerge and take you to places miles deep on a journey to the center of your innerself that you never dreamed existed. It's a place on earth where you don't have to seek for Mother Nature...Mother Nature will find you. Creative inspiration will surround you in her protective shroud of creativity and will massage your spirit.

That Saturday morning, I returned the apartment keys in the land lords mailbox and we all climbed aboard our “magic bus” to embark on one hell of a yellow brick road ride.

Chapter 21 - On The Road

 

 

As we rolled out of San Francisco that weekend, the United states was on overdrive and  overload. There were deadly riots in American cities across the country, including my home of Detroit that left 43 dead in it’s wake.  The ghetto’s were exploding as America was imploding. Over 35,000 anti-war protesters marched on the Pentagon, 647 were arrested. The other bad news was the U.S. was eliminating draft deferments for those of us who violated the draft laws by burning our draft cards or, get this, interfering with military recruitment to gain more bodies to fill those Made in America bodybags.  I wonder if I had burned a bra, would they still allow me to have sex?

Our instructions from the Resistance office were clear. Drive normal. Most draft resisters and military deserters and/or AWOL were caught during traffic stops on routine checks where their names would pull a Jack in the Box pop up  from some Feds vs. Reds basement. We also were told to be careful in small towns. We already assumed that as we didn’t feel like ending up buried in a levee on the banks of some Old Man river as those three civil rights workers did in the deep fried south by some Ku Klux Klan chapter with more bullets than brains.



Cruising fully loaded in the camper south, down the coast  of California we were indeed loaded as well, or as they say in elite F. Scott Fitzgerald circles, we were in high spirits. In fact, we were quite stoned in spirit watching the pulsating panorama of the Golden State pass undulating here Pacific Coastline erotically as it whizzed by the camper windows.

Myrika was sitting damn near on my lap in the front making driving a sexy experience. She made baking cookies or even popping a cork on a wine bottle damned near orgasmic.
Joey, Olivia and our new found guide through the anti-war underground, Carol sat behind us singing songs of protest. Don’t get me wrong, I was a huge ban the bomb, how many roads kind of guy, but  If I heard “Blowin’ in the Wind” in close quarters one more time I’d probably enlist in the French Foreign Legion and retake Algeria!!

The coast highway, Highway One, has the innate beauty, ethereal elegance and maddening Nordic mystery of an Ingrid Bergman. We were traveling not just on a road, but through  the Sixties as the decade oozed, ebbed, and flowed, high tide, low tide undulating in a volcano of  lava lamps on steroids.  The post-Kerouac, post-Beat mid-Hip  rucksack revolution was literally, on the road as were we. These were the tie-dyed days of wine and acid doses, never mind the roses...we’d probably smoke those too.

We’d take our leisure getting to the New Mexico Commune, taking time to get high and have sex in campgrounds or those magical hidden secluded spots of the road outside Barstow, California to Winslow, Arizona to our final destination in New Mexico.

At night, we would revel in the galactic art gallery of a crystalline clear sky full of stars. Listen to the symphonic sweet howl of a coyote in the distance while sitting by our small cook fire sculpted with available scrub and creosote bushes. Eventually we’d settle back in the night, Myrika strumming her guitar while I  belted out on  an old beat up harmonica I found on the sidewalk in North Beach, It was one of the few possessions I carried with me on my treks and to be honest I wasn't Paul Butterfield, but the coyotes seemed to howl back at it, and that was all that mattered at the time.


Our journey would take us  south from the Bay Area until we came to the road east taking us  to Bakersfield, hop onto Highway 58 past Tehachapi and on into Barstow. The desert route offered cool and crisp nights under the canopy of the heavens, but not cold enough to transform you into a hypothermic poster child.

We were careful driving on the open road. Too many Highway Patrol cruisers out looking for longhairs.  Even going through small towns, the local police were worse. They viewed anyone with long hair and jeans with suspicion as Bolsheviks or worse, liberal Democrats!

Had to be careful, on our part too when it came to hitch hikers we might pick up. You never know who'll pick you up at night especially,  and I we hadn’t  even seen "Deliverance" yet!



Setting sail  in the high seas of the desert  we probably looked dressed like Bolsheviks, after all sun and sand was not for the Eddie Bauer chic. A good pair of hiking boots, an old flannel shirt, denim pants and a canvas pack does not a fashionista make, but traveling light and sturdy was a holy mantra.

Camp cooking along the side of the road can be a rustic four star affair, depending on your outlook and state of mind. The desert is sparse in wood so at times getting enough kindle can be a problem so to circumvent that I picked up an old collapsible Sterno stove.
Sterno, known as "pink lady" to the bums and winos of skid rows everywhere, is liquid fire in the desert and the trusty little contraption can claim the title of the Mini Cooper of camp cookery. It's a classic.

It took us almost a full week to reach Santa Fe. The old camper was not a Grand Prix machine by any stretch of anyone’s imagination. Before we’d reach the commune I stopped at a pay phone to check in with the family without giving away our location. Joey and Olivia did the same.

We were ready to enter the Twilight Zone of the Revolution...the sign post ahead..Canada, eh?

Chapter 22 - Canada, Oh Canada!

 

 

 

We had crossed over the Arizona  state line heading east into the red rock cleavage of New Mexico two days ago with Sante Fe dead ahead,  I had mixed emotions. We made it this far but,  would some mentally John Wayne deranged New Mexico sheriff’s deputy who was a mental patient  cross between Barney Fife and a mass murder who missed out on being a Gestapo goose stepper during the big war now see his chance to grab the brass ring by stopping a VW camper full of obvious commie pinko deviates who would disappear from the face of the Earth only to be discovered decades later buried in the sand, mummified pharaohs. Remember….it is a dry heat down there...mummification is as natural in the desert as shrinking heads is deep in the Amazon jungles among forgotten tribes of blow gun proficient marksmen you only see in National Geographics.

Carol had leaned forward towards the front seat while Joey and Olivia pulled a passion pit Saturday night at the drive-in movies display of copping feels and inserting tongues in each others mouth to see who could outdo their opponent.

The war in Vietnam was increasing in U.S. troop strength as were  the consequent number of dead G.I.s who would not be returning home to work the back 40 at dads farm in Kansas or marry the next door neighbor girl  whose pigtails he used to pull in school. Some would never see that son or daughter, now one year old grow up and give him grandchildren.

Carol laid out the game plan for us in as crystal clear a fashion as she could.
“In your case Mickey it won’t be too bad once we get you and Myrika across the border. We’ll even give you a language translation book from Berlitz so you can understand basic Canadian. Words like “Eh?” which has multiple meanings,” she laughed.

Myrika was curious about once we were in Canada. “How much danger of arrest will be in, I mean how far underground do we have to go?”

Carols response? “You, Myrika will have to be careful. You’re already illegal here in the U.S. with your expired Visa, but we can work on that too. It’s not as easy as you think. The Canadians are still mixed on the feeling about deserters and draft dodgers flooding the provinces.”

(By war’s end, 30,000 of draft resisters and deserters had left the country to Canada, as well as Sweden, France and even parts of Asia)

“Draft evasion by a U.S. citizen is not a crime in Canada, so far, but desertion by a U.S. citizen,  as in Joey’s case is complicated. Although not technically a crime Desertion is a crime in Canada, for Canadians, and the Canadian military strongly opposes condoning U. S. desertions. So far, the Canadian government maintains the right to prosecute  deserters, but pretty much leaves them alone and even instructs border guards not to ask questions regarding their military status!”

 

I chimed in as loudly and as excited as Quasimodo in a bell tower in Paris. “What about giving us the full run down, what to expect before we get there. How prepared are we going to be or are we just gonna cross over and be rewarded with a year’s supply of Canadian beer and Vancouver pussy?”

“You’ll receive full pre-immigration counseling at the commune. Do’s and don’t’s while enjoying Her Majesty’s colonial hospitality. Once there we have our Canadian counterparts and Americans already there who will assist you with work papers, drivers license, housing, that sort of thing. There are many communities already established to..well.. absorb you. I think a nice arts colony would be ideal, and Mickey, you can write about the resistance from a new standpoint, without of course, blowing our cover.”

Well, it all sounded kosher and saved me from showing up at Fort Wayne in Detroit wearing lace panties carrying Liberace albums under my arm.  I could even prick my arms to simulate hypodermic injections and be super junkie from the Cass Corridor ghetto.
(Side note, later it was found that those who left the country faced imprisonment or forced military service if they ever returned home and yes, the good old red, white and blue continued to prosecute draft dodgers after the end of the Vietnam War. Some of us  returned to the U.S. from Canada after a 1977 pardon, but half stayed behind having become fully Canadianized, whatever that means.)

 

New Mexico….gateway, in our case to the Great White north via the Pacific Left Coast route to Vancouver. I couldn’t wait to buy a truckload of plaid shirts and get Myrika a Maple Leaf bra!

Chapter 23 - Commune of Hobbits

 

 

We rolled ragged and tired into the Solstice Commune early the next morning an hour after one hell magnificent fireball of a sunrise only New Mexico in it’s infinite turquoise tranquility can offer. The Sangre de Cristo mountain range surrounding the region was a geological crown of thorns living up to their most Jesuit of names, The Blood of Christ.

The commune, a world unto itself lay near the forest east of Santa Fe itself, desolate, yet near enough to the commerce of the city itself. As the tired old camper limped into view of the early communal communion with nature, enjoying the gratification of another day rising as beautiful as a prospector’s sourdough starter just before he was about to strike the Mother Lode of silver in a New Mexican mine.

At first sight of us, and a honk of the horn, they all came running towards with childlike smiles beaming bright as headlights on an 18 wheeler. Flower power was in full bloom here with golden hair muses and bearded satyrs, both sexes festooned with beads and flowers.

It was a real Life Magazine photo op. We were all dressed in faux military field jacket and Digger Free Store/Salvation couture to complete our war torn wardrobe.

Myrika leaned over to whisper in my ear quietly, “We’ve stumbled into Tolkien’s world, darling. Don’t piss off the natives. That wise old one looks like Gandalf.”

“Yeah, but this ain’t Middle Earth and you’re not Betty Boop Baggins either,” I said with a slight snarl to my voice, but a wink of my eye.

“Hey, Frodo, wanna fuck later?”

“Jesus, Myrika you are one horny hobbit, but, yes, maybe we’ll get a private yurt where we can have  sex while doing yoga after feasting on Kama Sutra granola bars.”

Carol was laughing now, thankfully. “Alright you two. Be nice. I agree it’s a little bit stone age, or should I say “stoned” age, but believe me, they know what their doing. If you can get past the Mama’s and Papa’s look they are your best chance to get to Canada and all the snow you eat.”

She was right of course. We woke up a sleeping passed out Joey to join us greeting our new friends. “Hey, Joey, wake up,” I reached back shaking him vigorously. “We made it to Disneyland, Amigo. The Seven Dwarfs want to meet you. Hi Ho Hi Ho!!”

We exited the camper slowly and were introduced around by Carol. We met a cornucopia of girls named Sunflower, Sunshine, Moonlight and Starlight. The males of the species wore equally as “earthy” names. Hell, we met a Mountain Dave, one Jupiter, a Thunder and one Mad Hatter. Not one was named Larry, Moe or Curly. You’d think there would be at least one Groucho or Harpo. These people must have named themselves from the Andy Williams songbook, but not one goddamned person was named Moon River!

“Welcome, friends.” spoke Zarathustra, the communes spokesperson. “Carol and Will sent word and we’re looking forward to helping you. The struggle against the war can be dangerous, but we are all soldiers here. Soldiers with a cause. To end the needless bloodshed and profiteering of corporate America. Peace Brothers and Sisters.”

He wasn’t a human being. He was a recording...a pamphlet….a walking manifesto….a Gestetner Gandhi smoking  grass.

I extended my hand in greeting. “Thanks, Zarathustra. (Honest, that was his chosen name!) “We’re glad to be here and anything we can do to help out here. Uh, I assume everyone here enjoys a little weed every now and then, if so we brought plenty and some acid also unless you’re all on the wagon,” which of course was responded to by a torrent of laughter from the commune.

“It will be most welcome...we rely on deliveries from our sources in Albuquerque or visitors. We do have wine, plenty of wine mi amigos y amigas! Today and tonight we celebrate...tomorrow we begin getting you ready to pass into a brave new world without war and killing. Canada...the Peaceful Kingdom.”

Joey, mumbled “Beats a POW camp in Hanoi,” in his usual skeptical manner. “I’m good with it Mickey, or should I call you Thor or Zeus?” laughing.

“Whatever you want to General Patton! Got ya prick!”

We both laughed. We had too. It was a very granola fiber enriched experience we had through circumstances stumbled into, feeling like paraplegics in a foot race with Kenyans!

Two of the caftan garbed commune girls let us to what would be our Xanadu for the week. It was not a yurt, but one of many wigwams. (There is a difference between a wigwam and a tipi by the way) Wigwams are larger, quite roomy and comfortable, but  not portable, whereas tipi’s are smaller and can be moved somewhat easily during hunting migrations.

Who knows, someday you might see Wigwam Motor Homes and Tipi Fifth Wheel Trailers made by Airstream rolling down the highways as whole tribes head to the Grand Canyon or some vortex defying Mystery Spot where water runs up while the kids feed the two headed deer in a cage out back behind the tourist outhouse by the statue of Paul Bunyan or concrete dinosaurs.

As we four took or place in our wiggy wigwam, Carol went off to join the tribal elders of the commune, and later would spend the night banging Zarathustra while he spake. Who the hell spakes during sex?

We unrolled our sleeping bags, marked our turf in the closed confines and rolled a fat one to consecrate our dwelling. Pleasantly stoned, Joey took the unstoned Olivia by the hand and led her outside to stare at the mountains.

“Should we join them?”  I queried Myrika.

“Yes, lets meet our hosts too. Be sociable. Oh, and just call me Golden Thighs, OK, Thor?” she said laughing.

“Fuck you Golden Thighs!” I coughed out as the last hit on the hot roach burned my throat.

“Any time, Thor. Bring your biggest hammer, and nail it!

Chapter 24 - Thus Spake Zarathustra

 

 

 

Feeling sufficiently  mellow to mingle with the minions of the newly discovered Middle Earth, Myrika and I emerged from our wigwam feeling the eight miles high freedom of butterflies emerging for the first time with brilliant cloaks of dazzling lepidopterist technicolor ready to take winged flight to the nearest patch of nubile flowers to violate and pollinate. I had already pollinated Olivia so it was time to forage for flora and leave her fauna alone! My pistil had been sidetracked by too many stamens, while Myrika enjoyed this pistil packing pistolero as well as any  sexy stamen willing to let loose some pollen producing estrogen to sweeten the sweating up of the sheets.  

We found Carol and Zarathustra sitting cross legged, guru style by a small fire quaintly brewing tea as this  commune was serious about the Japanese Tea Ceremony to enjoy the company of friends, and a moment of purity. It was a  ritual steeped in tea and spirituality. I guess a 17 syllable whiz bang Zen haiku would be better to share at this moment in frozen time with the group than some dirty Irish limerick about a naked virgin and a horny Turkish sailor in a bar in Belfast! There was a girl in Cape Cod...who thought all children came from God, but it wasn’t the Almighty that crawled up her nighty, it was Roger the Codger by God!

“Please, join us,” Zarathustra invited us sincerely to share the dirt on the ground with them. All that was missing were some camels, an ornate tent with thick rich rugs to sit on, dancing slave girls and boys, Prince Feisal and Lawrence of Arabia in this confusing scene of The Samurai Goes to Ancient Persia.

“We want to thank you for all your doing for us. You are most kind,” Myrika said with her slight German accent that made my heart race faster than a Mercede’s on the Autobahn.

Carol spoke up first. “Here, enjoy the tea. We’ve all been talking and there has been a slight change of plans. Please, hear us out.”

My guard was now up...as solid as the Berlin Wall behind an Iron Curtain with concertina wire. The old East Berlin Game show. “So Johnny, what will you choose Door Number One, Door Number Two or what’s behind the Iron Curtain?”

“I’ll go for the Iron Curtain, Mr. Barker.”

Insert audience goes wild here.”Congratulations! You’ve won a life sentence in Spandau Prison in West Berlin...all expenses paid!”

Just what were these changes? I was on edge.

“Most embarkation points we’ve been using to get resisters to Canada have become known. The British Columbia route is being watched carefully by the FBI and border patrol according to our people in Seattle. Plattsburgh, New York region and some others have also been under surveillance as well. Anyone attempting those routes are likely to be caught this side of the border, then it’s three hots and a cot for 20 years or forced military service with  a one way ticket to the sun and fun of Saigon wearing jungle boots and a sniper’s target.”

I was getting as wound up as a cheap wrist watch made in Guatemala.

“We want you to go to Canada and work for the Resistance as guides on the railroad at a new point of entry. You’ll be compensated to a degree and you’ll be working with us to stop this war. Hear me out. We know you are from Michigan and know the area. We want to set up an “entry station” to Canada from the Upper Peninsula to Canada’s St. Joseph Island then to Sudbury across the river in Ontario where they’ll be taken from there to by our Canadian counterparts to other communities. This can be done  via Michigan from the town of Detour on the peninsula to Drummond Island and then to St. Joseph Island.  We have someone in place to get them from the mainland to Drummond. You two would work and live on St. Joseph Island, safely in Canada, getting them from Drummond to St. Joseph.

It was a lot to absorb, but, the thought of being within striking distance of Michigan yet safe in Canada was tempting, not to mention we’d be ardent activists giving the finger to the U.S. Government and save a few lives at the same time.

“What’s the plan,” I asked anxiously as Myrika nodded alerting me that it was a go as far as her little passionate heart was concerned.

Zarathustra laid it out before us with as fine and direct an explanation as Rand McNally does with a road map. “St. Joseph is rich in art and tourism. We already have a small home for you two to live in and work as artists for your cover. We’ve arranged with  a publisher of a fine leftist civil rights/anti-war magazine sending a letter that you are employed by them and you will have a work permit. Myrika, as a singer,  we also have a letter coming stating you were hired to be a singer and art director responsible for hiring talent at the local coffeehouse, The Folk  Review Club. You will have a work permit stating you are a U.S. citizen along with all the other forged documents. Both jobs will pay, not much I grant you, but your housing is free. A French Canadian financier owns it and will take care of all the bills. No love lost between Quebec and Ottawa, eh?”

Myrika and I nodded to each other sealing the deal. One question remained. “What about Joey and Olivia?”

Carol once again, the voice of calm in the eye of this hurricane. “We’ll get them across at another new station we’ve set up at Niagara Falls. They will be be taken, once on the Canadian side to Toronto to blend in. That crossing is so busy in both directions, and we own one of the border guards on the other side. A little U.S. green goes along way in corrupting officials. We need you two to get setup immediately and getting all four of you settled at one crossing is suicide. We’ll fill them in later, we wanted to get this in motion first. Lives depend on it.”

We understood so to celebrate  I  pulled out a joint from my jacket and along with a few hits of mescaline Zarathustra had we fastened our seatbelts. What a grand adventure lay ahead.  I felt I was the reincarnated Robert Rogers leading Roger’s Rangers in search of the Northwest passage.


More Americans have probably crossed north of the border into the benevolent bosom of the commonwealth, seeking escape from the draft during the Sixties and the vacuum of Vietnam. Whole communities  sprang up there, with these exiles still expatriated and who have since mingled, intermarried and intercoursed with the fine stock and supply of Canadian women to propagate babies with questionable American genes.

Chapter 25 - The Wolverine and the Beaver

 

 

 

We spent the winter at the high desert mountain commune learning our jobs as facilitators to help stop the big mean green military machine from destroying one more Vietnamese village and decimating the families of American GI’s where the American Dream had been rudely replaced by a fine  fashionable body bag and a real John Wayne  21 gun salute preceded by a letter or telegram “We regret to inform you…

Michigan was to be the newest “station” on the War Resistance underground railroad. Northern Michigan to be exact, far from the busier border crossings in Detroit and Port Huron. Myrika and I were now not only keeping ahead of the Feds and arrest, but would be in our minds, the Robin Hood and Maid Marion of our own Sherwood Forest in the Upper Peninsula ferrying resisters  of the draft and a few AWOL soldiers to the sanctuary of a new life in the Great White North of beer, poutine and maple leaf poontang.

We loaded up the trusty camper that first breath of spring in 1968, and left New Mexico with our own forged documents and list of coded Canadian contacts “on the other side” who would work with us as well as a source in Detroit who forge documents for us for our “passengers”. Hell, we were the Anti-Army Amtrak..all aboard….you’re bound for Glory on the Woody Guthrie Express.

The four of us, all on the run for the border enjoyed the trip from New Mexico to the Great Lakes. We’d enter Michigan through Wisconsin into the Upper Peninsula. Safer than traveling the length of the more populated Lower Peninsula where an overzealous  state cop could pull us over and find out he hit the gravy train and a rise in rank and pay for arresting on warrants, one deserter, one draft dodger, on illegal German immigrant and an underage pregnant female. We all knew the Mann Act would have us in Chuck Berry’s prison cell. We could probably say we’re from the south and she’s my cousin. They do that down there, Officer. Hell, Jerry Lee Lewis’ wife was kin and only 13!

We traversed the length of Badger Wisconsin, home of cheese and Packers, crossing over  into Iron Mountain, Wolverine Michigan, known mostly for its pasty’s, bocce ball tournaments, and Italian cuisine. Believe me growing up Italian on Detroit’s Italian eastside as I was, wherever there is at least two dagos you’ll find bocce ball! As for the pasty’s, you can thank the 19th Century Cornish miners who flocked to Michigan from Cornwall, England. I used to confuse them with the pasties strippers wore at certain clubs in the North Beach strip clubs in San Franfreakingcisco.  I’ve had both and both are tasty.

Northern Michigan would be a culture shock for Myrika, my Berlin bunker babe who was heretofore only familiar with the Greenwich Village beat  coffee house finger popping bongo scene in New York City where we met while each of us was enjoying a summer day on the campus of Columbia University. Her visa had already expired and it was a matter of time before the feds would catch up  and send her packing for West Berlin to a small apartment with a stunning view of the Berlin Wall, barbed wire and Checkpoint Charlie.

Michigan’s northland is a Twilight Zone of unemployment, hunting, cinder block bars, hookers from Flint and Saginaw plying their trade quietly  in motor homes parked in the bar parking lots during hunting season at places like the Black Bear Inn, along with fist fights over pinball games and pool tables for no reason. The Northern Michigan male is always in rut and loves to show off his antlers after 10 Pabst Blue ribbon beers.

It’s  a wonderland of nature, bears, whitetail deer and wolves as well as the elusive food stamp which by the way is the official coin of the realm, while cold hard cash isn’t wasted on such mundane items as food and diapers.  Instead you try to earn just enough money to repair the chain saw for firewood season, or a new set of truck tires, or to buy a brand new auger for ice fishing.  These are  hearty souls of legend who are plaid and definitely proud and say things like "eh" to give a hard core Canadian reason to pause. It's Fargo, before there was a Fargo.

It's venison, shotguns, hunting tags, blaze orange, knotty pine, and ladies pool leagues all tight jeaned and camel toed,  hunching over a pool table showing a full round moon stretching the denim fabric beyond it’s limits, even tighter than the male imagination, leaving nothing to the imagination, and Lawdy, how she could handle a pool cue! Imagine the carnal possibilities Billy Bob...

It’s the promised land of knotty pine, white birch and yellow perch. Deer heads in the buckshot headlights look  mounted on the unemployed pine walls of the local  bars and bowling alley dives. They kept gaze from above, glass eyed gods of the art of taxidermy over the pool tables with the incessant cracking collision noise given off by the cue ball as it successfully sought out it's next ball/victim and sent it bleeding and slashed into corner pocket hell. A Jack the Ripper eight ball serial killer, if ever there was one.

It was a land of plaid shirts, tackle boxes, shotguns, beer and ammo, along with smoked meats and smoked cheese. Wicker swings on the porch and fireball sunsets. Black bears feeding at the dump, seagulls swooping overhead, all played out on a stage of trash, with an appreciative automotive audience in attendance at a command performance at the Carnegie Hall of Carnivores.

Myrika was mesmerized. Olivia was relaxing, glad to  back home in Michigan once again, while Joey and I, ever fearful of Johnny Lawdog kept our eyes peeled for any state troopers or sheriffs who may take offense to a hippie camper defiling their beloved Highway 2 along the shore of Lake Michigan as our compass was leading us east to St. Ignace and then onward to our new home and contacts on St. Joseph Island with work permits and jobs.

We were now firmly in the trenches of the anti-war resistance. Lock n’ load!

Chapter 26 - The My Lai Massacre

 

 

 

We were getting settled into St. Ignace which would be our temporary U.S. base before the four of us headed for St. Joseph Island, to begin the journey of our lives as “political refugees” from the belly of the beast in America. Plans had changed somewhat as well.
I had decided that Joey and Olivia would cross over into Canada at Sudbury, but not together. Too risky. Joey and I would scout head or in Joey's Airborne words, recon by boat from Detour Village in the U.P.the find the best deserted landing beaches on the southside and east side of St. Joseph Island then enter as simple fishermen who got lost in the dark in case we were discovered inadvertently. Simple mistake. We’d make our way to town with documents and fishing poles in hand.

Later Myrika would bring Olivia over posing as two females on a shopping lunch spree at the dock in Hilton Beach. Olivia would then meet up at our safe house where Joey I would be waiting. Together we would take them separately to disappear across the bridge into the bowels of Sudbury as two happy faux Canadians where they would be taken to an exile community and safety by our Canadian contacts.

This was 1968… a year that saw beauty and the beast. The beast of General Westmoreland’s military might was dealt a deadly blow to the propaganda balls when the NVA and Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive which filled American television sets across the land from sea to not so shining sea anymore.

American forces retaliated with blood in their eyes including the poster child of wanton murder at My Lai. On the morning of March 16, 1968, soldiers of Charlie Company, a unit of the Americal Division's 11th Infantry Brigade arrived in the hamlet of My Lai in the northern part of South Vietnam. They were on a search and destroy mission.

The unit met no resistance in My Lai, which had about 700 inhabitants. Indeed, they saw no males of fighting age. They only found villagers eating breakfast. Over the next three hours they killed as many as 500 plus Vietnamese civilians. Some were lined up in a drainage ditch before being shot. The dead civilians included fifty about 3 years old or younger, 70 between the ages of 4 and 7, and twenty seven senior citizens in their 70s and 80s.

It was also the year the South Vietnamese went hell bent for leather to clean house in Saigon. I still have the photo saved of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a suspected Viet Cong on the streets.

The year was the Rolls Royce most expensive one in the Vietnam war not to mention the deadliest. In all, according to government documents, “27,915 South Vietnamese (ARVN) soldiers killed and the Americans suffering 16,592 killed compared to around two hundred thousand of the communist forces killed. The deadliest week of the Vietnam War for the USA was during the Tet Offensive specifically February 11–17, 1968, during which period 543 Americans were killed in action, and 2547 were wounded.”

It was the year Walter Cronkite said “the war is lost…..” It was lost a long time before that but now the God of Journalism called the game over.

That was the beast….the beauty occured in March in Ontario where Myrika and I made the journey to the town of St. Catharines south of Toronto in Canada’s Niagara Region where Joey and Olivia settled and had just given birth to my child. A baby girl they named China Moon. We arrived late in the day as the sun was setting in the west, gently so as not to disturb this new life that had entered a world of violence.

Myrika gave Olivia a hug a kiss that is the code of females bonded for life. A melding of souls that gave off a light so bright it would blind the devil himself. Joey and I did the manly short hug thing reserved for drunks in a bar after one to many and afraid to show any inkling of emotion, lest others question our masculinity. We’d rather die of an overdose of macho than to let that feminine soft side out of the cage running rampant through the streets!

 

I walked over to Olivia, who was breast feeding baby China. Both could be porcelain dolls on a shelf protected by invisible angels. The babies eyes were closed feeding hungrily on the young Madonna inner calm, peace and contentment known only to newborns or opium addicts in some Chinatown back alley.

Her ample breasts were filled out, milky white and eager to feed this new life who had entered our lives. Joey was beaming. I was a fish out of water. “When she’s done feeding, hold her Mikey. She’s yours as she is all of ours. Our bond. The root system of our family garden.”

I broke into a smile. A small tear started it’s trek down my cheek. Myrika came and kissed it away. She always said, “when you cry I will catch your tears”

This child China was life and love in a world of hate and killing as the year would also culminate in the death of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Violence would erupt in Mayor Richard Daly’s Chicago during the Democratic Tear Gas Convention where Yippies and Hippies and a candidate named Pigasus would meet Mr. Billy Club head on.
The killing in Vietnam would continue as would riots in American cities as the flames of protest grew with the intensity of a social firestorm…

But for now my world was one of calm and overwhelming love for Myrika, Olivia, Joey and a baby named China Moon. Vietnam was a million miles away from my thoughts that night. My only concern now was to protect a mother and child from that world of violence.
Myrika took me in her arms as I began crying uncontrollably. My heart was ready to burst with pride and love for these people around me.
So much for macho…...

Chapter 27 - You Don't Need a Weatherman

 

 

 

1968 proved to a prophetic year of political epiphanies for we the proletarians. Not only were Myrika and I keeping the torch of Canadian freedom alive for the American war resistance underground, but had picked up a few extra’s on the side. We had helped one Black Panther escape to Canada where I wasn’t sure how an Oakland, California Black  Panther would acclimate to a snowbound winter with Canada Geese, moose and Mounties. He said it beats a bullet in the back or solitary confinement in Soledad prison.

One other byproduct that blossomed into friendship was secured when we were asked by our Canadian counterparts to help Liam, an Irish Republican Army fugitive on the run from Mi-5 and Scotland Yard who had made it across the pond to Canada. Our job…get Liam across the border into the United States where he could be absorbed into the Stay Free Maxi-Pad of Irish Micks in Boston or Chicago. He chose Chicago. (we stayed friends for years, keeping each other’s secrets from Mi-5 in England and America’s FBI and Hoover’s  drag queens dragoons.)

The SDS was splintering and the Weathermen were foaming at the revolutionary mouth while Hip was DOA, but YIP was alive and well and placed the Chicago Democrat Convention smack dab in the street theater highbeams. We figured we’d take a break, get Liam to Chicago and in the process take part in was sure to be the Godzilla of all protests. My new daughter China would be proud of pop.

We loaded up the aging camper in St. Ignace where we kept her stored, hidden in a large garage by a friendly local radio DJ who also had “forgotten” to answer the call for the draft and was our Michigan contact, part of the conduit of the Underground Railroad. The next morning at dawn’s  early light, minus the rockets red glare,  we crossed the Macinac Bridge  headed south and west for the Richard Daly Dachau domain of Chicago. It was a Graham Nash moment in retrospect. We planned to get Liam safely there, march peacefully in protest while I filled my notebook with Pulitzer Prize winning data to fashion an article or two of the event for the San Francisco Oracle, the Berkeley Barb, Detroit’s Fifth Estate newspaper and The Ally anti-war military newspaper, all of whom I did columns for. My literary mushroom was expanding.

1968 in Late Great Altered States of America. The Red, White and Screwed. It was an era that ripped the bra off of Lady Liberty to reveal her fake tits and hypocrisy. It would be a politico warning shot fired over the head of a disheveled establishment. The tattered flag that represented a faded American dream was emerging from the chaotic mushroom cloud of Flower Power. That year alone in April brought about the assassination Martin Luther King...in June, Bobby Kennedy never made it to Chicago.

Chicago would ignite a  law and order police meltdown. The Vietnam War was a raging drunken baddass biker in a bar loaded up on too many bennies and dexies. The Black Panthers and Angela Davis had "gone to the top of the mountain" too, and realized it was the perfect spot for a sniper.



The Elections of '68 in and of themselves were a farce, a frightening drama unfolding eventually between two nominees from both parties. Democrat Hubert Humphrey had an irritating voice that largely worked against him. Nasal and high pitched he sounded more like Truman Capote going into labor.

On the other side of the two faced political coin of the realm was Republican Richard Nixon. Never trust a politician with a perennial five o'clock shadow and the jowls of a rabid bulldog.

The only viable candidate it seems was an actual pig, named Pigasus nominated by Phil Ochs and whose nomination accepted by Jerry Rubin. This "people’s" nomination took place during the riots and both Ochs and Rubin, along with the pig were arrested by Mayor Daley's goon squad in blue on an obscure still on the books livestock ordinance violation! Ok, too many police pig puns I can get drowned in here..Pig Puns..Pig Pen..see?

The counter convention of the people was planned by many factions of the American Left but the clown prince's were the Youth International Party or Yippees along with the SDS. Eventually the riots culminated in more blood flowing than Lake Michigan.
This was the police riot that subsequently defined the American meltdown of the American wet-dream, and many were now thinking of bullets over ballots.

"Free Huey" and "Burn Baby, Burn" had become the new bestselling militant mantra, pushing "We Shall Overcome" from the top of the Civil Rights pop music charts...and the hits kept on a'comin'. Michigan had spawned the Students for a Democratic Society on the heels of the Port Huron Statement, and from that seedling, sprang the Weathermen...and by the way, you really don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.


The revolution was on....but we never expected to be in the crosshairs.

Chapter 28 Bend Over America

 

 

Five hours out of Mackinaw City the trusty camper was cruising into the the shadow of the Detroit skyline. We had called my parents to meet us at the Big Boy restaurant on Jefferson Ave. by Belle Isle. Belle Isle! Serene island in the middle of the Detroit River where kids fly kites, families BBQ, and young naked teenage  lovers rip it up in the back seats. I wanted to see them one more time to introduce them to Myrika and to let them know I was OK and not to worry...I was living in Canada now with two sets of I.D. One American and one Canadian. I was Claude Rains’ “Invisible Man” in either direction of the border, to or fro.

By keeping my folks in the dark as to my whereabouts I was safe from any slip ups when the Feds come knocking on their door. Reassurance was all I had to offer. Not much I grant you.

They took to Myrika immediately. As for Liam, he was introduced as  a friend from Ireland who was attending City College in NYC on his way home, location undisclosed for obvious reasons. I left out the part about his role in the Irish Republican Army shooting of a British soldier in Belfast. Probably a Protestant with a hard-on for anything Catholic. Besides they’d be more upset at the word “republican” as they were die hard Democrats who revered St. FDR and St. Jack Kennedy, the patron saint of holy virgins.

We enjoyed a typical Detroit Big Boy dinner of a double decker burger, massive amounts of fries with my proverbial side order of dipping mayonnaise, “Bring Out The Hellman’s, and Bring Out The Best” they say and sing and jingle.

Conversation was centered on the war. Joey’s name came up along with Olivia’s. We went into mime mode and disavowed any knowledge as to their whereabouts, or my planting a newborn garden in Olivia’s womb.

Dad was truly a Hubert Humphrey man. “I was watching Cronkite earlier. He’s disgusted and lets it show. I mean the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong launched attacks  with something like 20  separate attacks throughout South Vietnam. Over 600 Viet Cong, supported by elements of two North Vietnamese divisions, attacked the provincial capital, capturing several government installations. It’s getting so we’re about to meet OUR Dunkirk. Glad you took your stand son.”


I never felt prouder. If pop approved, I made the right move. As he always said to me, “Point your moral compass in any direction and you won’t get lost. You’ll always find your way.”

Mom was not very political. She was more interested in this rather tall blonde who had hijacked her son’s heart and soul.

“Myrika, such a beautiful name. What part of Germany are you from?” she inquired.
I answered before Myrika could speak. “She’s Hitler’s illegitimate daughter born in a Berlin bunker and escaped after the war making her way through Soviet infested Russia on the Siberian Railway. When she came to lands end, she swam across the Bering Straits, guided by polar bears and ended up in Alaska. From there she hitched a ride with some Eskimos to New York.”

“My son the asshole.” Yep, that’s my mom. She taught me how to use my mouth to get in trouble.

Myrika had to laugh. “I am from Berlin, yes and am a student, well a  journalism student. Photojournalism. I want to make difference in  world through my eyes and my lens.”

“Mikey, you have quite a woman there, son.”

“Thanks Pop. She plays guitar and writes music too...she is INCREDIBLE!!”

Liam just took it all in. He was a fugitive, traveling with two other fugitives and having dinner in the Murder Capital of America with a nice suburban Italian-Canadian couple.

“Liam doesn’t talk much. He’s here on a mime scholarship from the St. Patricks Relief Fund sponsored by Queen Elizabeth. Her boy Charlie is a mime too.”

Even Liam had to laugh and open up the socializing door a crack.

After dinner we all parted company. The Red Sea of Moses would see us shacked up for the night at the Bel Mar Motel on Jefferson Ave. The only downtown motel with fake palm trees indicative of the Detroit equatorial tropical atmosphere. OK, it was a dive. In Detroit, that’s referred to as ambiance.

We’d get a good night’s sleep amid the sounds of police sirens in the background and the restful sound of occasional gunfire from Belle Isle. A warning to Windsor Canadians to stay on that side of river..or else.

In the morning. Breakfast at Tiffany’s...or Big Boys, whichever came first. Then….On to Chicago where we’d deliver our Irish mime into the hands of the IRA underground...then Myrika and I would hit the Convention streets and write and photograph what turned out to be pure carnage on a scale I had never seen before. America was coming apart at the seams. The establishment put on it’s law and order condom, and we the people were about to take it in the old red, white and blue ass.

Bend over Free Speech America! You’re about to be fucked….

Chapter 29 Chicago: Takin' It To The Streets

 

Al Capone’s old Chicago! Thick ass Eye-talian pizza! Urban blues Butterfield nightclubs and historically, Upton Sinclair’s Slavic meat packing plants side by side with those corrupt  rail baron railroads. We blew into  the Windy City  at 6 P.M. or so, Wednesday, August 21, the day before  American Democracy would begin it’s descent into the establishment toilet. Please don’t squeeze the Charmin!

The VW camper guided us on fumes to the intersection of 107th and Western, the Southside epicenter of the Windy City’s leprechaun infested pot of gold neighborhoods where the sympathies for the IRA and Sein Fein were damned near a religion. I could image old Pat O’Brien in priestly garb giving holy Hollywood benediction to Michael Collins and the Free Irish Republic. It was ground zero for ice cold Guinness, warm ale and dirty limericks about farmers daughters and errant sailors on shore leave.

We pulled up in front of O’Neill’s Irish flag draped pub, where we had instructions to meet Liam’s contact in the Irish underground, Willie Tennant, who was standing outside the pub chain smoking Players cigarettes and joking with a crew of street toughs who would drop a dago mafioso without batting an eye.   From inside the pub the music of Clipper Carlton wafted through the smoke making it’s way from the Wurlitzer inside to the streets. All very Gaelic.  The only thing missing was the Miss Irish Potato  Festival Queen and a few New York City Westies with meat cleavers in hand.

“Here ya go Liam. Godspeed and good luck. We’ll be around for a few days and you have our address in Michigan if you need us.” We shook hands as friends and he was graced by a kiss from Myrika.

“You are good people,” he said excitedly. “I shall never forget you. If you, my friends need anything, you know we’ve got your back. A few micks and a dago can do a lot of damage. slán abhaile, my friends!”

“Sla’n abhaile, You be safe too Liam.” We headed away as Liam was absorbed into the fabric of his country’s revolution as we headed into ours, headquartering in a resistance safe house. We would refresh, regroup and relax that evening by drinking with our new friends at a blues club listening to Buddy Guy’s guitar and Koko Taylor’s “Wang Dang Doodle.”

Tomorrow my notebook and Myrika’s camera would begin filling the pages and film frames of the debacle to follow. It wasn’t long before first blood was drawn. The blood of Dean Johnson, a seventeen-year-old Sioux Indian from South Dakota was  shot dead by Chicago police. Police say he pulled a gun. We went  along in a Yippie-organized memorial march later in the day. The mood was set. There would be no turning back at this point.

The government meant business as 6,000 National Guardsmen were  mobilized while at
Fort Hood, in the Lone Star State of Texas,  3,000 soldiers are mobilized for riot-control duty in Chicago. Bravely,  about 100 soldiers held a demonstration and  refused the deployment. The following morning  forty-three African American soldiers are arrested for refusal.  It got even worse as around 5,000 troops from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Fort Carson, Colorado, arrive in Chicago.  That Saturday, the Feminist group, Women Strike for Peace hold a women-only picket at the Hilton Hotel, where delegates are staying. The Daly machine imposes a city wide curfew. The park is packed and as curfew loomed, poet Allen Ginsberg was om-ing and chanting as he and head Fug, Ed Sanders lead people out of the park.

The rest of the week saw speakers speak from Tom Hayden to Bobby Seale. The arrest count for Convention Week was nearly  at 700, including those who would later be identified as the Chicago Seven. A number of demonstrators sustained injuries, with hospitals reporting that they treated 111 demonstrators. The on-the-street medical teams from the Medical Committee for Human Rights estimated that their medics treated over 1,000 demonstrators at the scene. Meanwhile across the Pacific Ocean during Convention Week, 308 Americans were killed in combat and 1,144 more were injured in the war in Vietnam.


Regarding the riots, Mayor Daley said,  in a press conference, “The policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder.” OK, he’s not Socrates by any measurement on any scale.

Along with the bloodletting Myrika and I were most interested in a free concert by Detroit’s MC5. Friends of mine I had met at the Grande Ballroom back in Detroit.  It was Sunday, August 25th at an event called “The Festival of Life” in Lincoln Park  Myrika and I  along with 5,000 others went to hear  the Five  and some local local bands play. Chicago Police in true Gestapo fashion refused to allow a flatbed truck to be brought in as a stage. All hell breaks loose  in which several are arrested and others are clubbed. Police reinforcements arrive.

The MC5 were also scheduled to play a free concert outside the convention hall, and they did amidst  the chaos of the democratic process. They had been invited by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin to kick out the jams, and kick them out they did, right in the balls. Just as they were finishing the cops moved in and the Five began removing their equipment as fast as they could. Having been through many riots before, they didn't need a crystal ball to know what was next on the "to protect and serve" agenda. The MC5 have the distinction of being the only band to actually perform a free concert amidst the melee and police riot that subsequently defined the American meltdown of the American wet-dream, and many were now thinking of bullets over ballots.

By the end of the week, we were ready to pack it up and head back to St. Joseph Island, our very own Canadian Shangri La where we would never grow old or die young in an Asian jungle. The revolution was on....soon Flower Power would wilt at the new realities of the American Dream gone rancid as the Weathermen pipe bombs would replace Jerry Garcia bongs. Even John Lennon said later in life regarding the Sixties…”We Blew It!”

Chapter 30 New York Pizza and Heroin

 

I filed my convention stories with  my magazine editors.  Chicago ‘68 filled the newsprint hungry front pages of the American newspapers. As featured cover stories with photos to enhance the printed words that cascaded from Rolling Stone, Time, Life, Look, and Newsweek. Living room rabbit ears across, pre-cable America brought the violence of the Chicago streets into the tranquil homes of Mr. & Mrs. 9 to 5, thirty years and out, Mid America and hardhat blue collar bars across the street from assembly line factories from Cleveland, Ohio to Detroit, Michigan.

Myrika, unbeknownst to me, from Chicago  had phoned my parents to let them know we were still alive and well. A breach of security in my book, but I could never be mad at her, so I  bit the bullet. She did find out that a postcard  had come to my parents house from Olivia postmarked from Canada, saying she, the baby and Joey  were  going to be in NYC and could we meet them there. Urgent!

Jesus Christ, Joey! Stay in Canada. Now I was fuming. I already endangered Myrika and myself  by going to Chicago in the first place during the boys in blue hunting for hippie season. One arrest and a warrant would have shown up and I’d be on my way to boot camp or a prison shower, and Myrika would be winging her way back to the Fatherland. Now this shit. If Joey was caught crossing the border, one slip up, a rubber hose treatment and we’d all be fucked.

“Well, Baby,” I said to Myrika. “We don’t have much of a choice. Back to New York I guess!” I only hoped the camper wouldn’t conk out somewhere in Pennsylvania. I don’t remember ever hearing about an Amish auto repair shop along the way, and renting a horse and buggy was out of the question!

We drove hard, day and night in two and half days with two rest breaks of short hindered sleep we were in the Big Apple’s bowels heading for the college campus where we knew Joey and family would be camped out at Peter Copy’s apartment in the Village.

We parked a few blocks away. Ever try parking in New York? You take what you can get. Peter answered the door, along with some of the old gang in the background wearing some serious looks, and stoney silence.  Olivia was sitting in a corner on a thick chair looking anxious, while baby China was asleep in her arms/

“Mickey,” she cried out. “Joey needs you!”

Myrika and I looked at each other, puzzled, perplexed, unnerved.
Olivia told us Joey had gotten into hard drugs and was turning mean. Not working. Stealing money from his employer in Canada and was caught in the act, so he decided to head back to the Briar Patch of the East Village.

Peter filled us in. “Damn his ass. He stole some painkillers I had and some weed. He’s  whacked out on the street selling the shit. His ass is gonna get us all busted! Talk to him Mickey. Please, talk to him! For God’s sake! If it wasn’t for Olivia I wouldn’t have let him in.”

I hit the streets with Peter heading for Times Square and Tompkins Park. Joey had to be in one of those places. Hustling, doping, blowing it for all of us. We did find him. He looked a wreck. A mess...in fact, he looked like a Times Square bum on the down and outs and hyper and nervous. We approached him slowly.

“Joey!” He looked anxiously, then broke into a smile of sorts. The kind of friendly smile you see on face of a dog with rabies before it takes you down.

“Man, Mikey. Good to see you. Looking good Amigo!”

“You’re not looking so good, Joey. What the fuck are you doing? You could get us all busted asshole!”

Fire flashed in his eyes. I could see there was no reasoning with him. “Peter, we’re gonna have to kill him,” I said half joking.

I wrote about my first impressions in my journal the next day once we got Joey crashed out on Peter’s kitchen floor. It made it’s way onto the pages of the Village paper I was still writing for under the heading, “Obituary of a Hustler”

“I could see Joey had narcotics  pouring from a fast flowing syringe in some dark beat zen corner of Times Square where only the hipsters dare go, ergo, go go go, while he inhales coke up his nose while nodding his head to a tome of  beat prose  with a loaded .38 in his hip hipster pocket firing a cartridge of white powder and lead aimed true and sure leaving a body cold in the alley face down, ass up one more fix should do the trick to give that electric jolt stimuli to the nervous system erasing fear creating words making rhyme for no reason, the counter-balance to an unbalanced society’s sobriety with sobriquets like word bouquets ready to adorn the unborn prom queen before she starts menstruation and has to be home to engage in sexual activity with her brothers who work the high wire under the big top while clowns strip off in the center ring….he began a life as a street hustler and began his love affair with hypodermic needles. He was a soldier, a deserter  who  wore the feather boa posing as  a no-profit prophet and a profligate purveyor of licentious literature that was driving him into uncharted territories. From Michigan to Canada...from Canada he eventually  found his Garden of Needle Eden and  the Yellow Brick Road to the Times Square quadrant where he reveled in revelry with male and female prostitutes, sex seeking sailors and junkies with needle tracks that would turn a dark green not from envy and would eventually lead them to death by overdose when flying monkeys would fill the syringe with a hot shot.”

Olivia put China to sleep on a soft pile of blankets in the back bedroom. China had a full belly of Olivia’s milk. Contented. Oblivious. Myrika sat on the couch holding Olivia close, not as lovers do, but as sisters who are awash in an ocean surrounded by sharks trying to console each other and live another day.

Peter and I went out on the second floor fire escape to share a bowl and pow wow on the latest development that was engulfing us all. If Joey kept on his current crash course, what would happen to Olivia and China. That was easy. Both would live with Myrika and I on our safe haven island in Canada. We’d all be fine. I’d look after the four of us, I told Peter.

“What about Joey?” Peter asked as I knew he would. I had an answer ready.

“Should have left him in Vietnam!”

Chapter 31 Leave the Guns, Take the Eggrolls

 

Leaving the frenetic vortex of the drug and poetry addicted Village in New York City in early October was a pure joy. Early fall had begun and once past the mafia playground of buried bodies New Jersey, the Pennsylvania Poconos countryside was an Amish nuclear explosion of color. (I heard the Amish had actually split the atom first during a wild buggy party at the E=mc2 club. Einstein told them he had good information the Mennonites were planning to take over their furniture business and occupy the villages and turn all the kids into the Children of the Corn!)

The trees whizzing by the van were  in full autumnal regalia, regaling us visually with a stunning carpet of Soviet communist reds, Irish leprechaun golds, and real Donovan mellow yellows, all  laid out before us as if in peasant tribute to Julius Ceasar, conqueror of Gaul.

Michigan, drawing us with her gravitational pull  was not far away once we hit the hills of hillbilly northern Ohio with its ridgerunner roadside fresh fruit & vegetable stands along the two lane shores of Lake Erie.  We had to get back to our work at St. Joseph Island,  as more and more draft resisters were bucking the system. Canada’s safe haven opened her arms wide, while at the same time turning her head to look the other way. We were one of the main conduits to freedom so the Resistance was depending on us.

Our first stop in Michigan, however had to do with a passed out problem in the back of the camper, a problem named Joey. We would head to the drug rehab center, SHAR House on Jefferson Ave. located downtown on the shores of the Detroit River across from Windsor. Canada...so near, yet so far. I hadn’t heard of an junkies swimming across the English Channel. The Detroit River would be even tougher. Ever try doing the breaststroke while dodging gang bullets? It’s a contact sport in the Motor City. Hell, it’s the Olympics!

We’d drop Joey off to get clean, see invisible rats, ghosts or one legged whores. Who cared. At least  we hoped that would be the case. If we tried getting him across the border in his current addicted state, we’d all be singing, “Nobody Knows the trouble I’ve seen….” in a cell with only a pot to piss in or at least a broken toilet. Jail ain’t the Holiday Inn you know. I don’t think my cellmate would be Bing Crosby serenading me with Irving Berlin tunes either.

The only problem we had was getting Joey from point A in New York  to point B in Detroit without a “junkie needs a fix” incident. He’d probable mug us and shoot up the last of our Sterno which I was saving to fend off tribes of violent wino’s we might  encounter in the urban kingdom of the Skid Row flophouses we would have to negotiate on Michigan Avenue...home of Tiger Stadium, the neon Jesus Saves flops, hookers and biker bars.

We were jam packed in the camper. Me, Myrika, Olivia, the baby China, and Joey...the William Burroughs hypodermic  poster child. Peter Copy and I devised a plan.

We’d score enough smack in New York and keep Joey jacked up and  loaded on the trip. We also had plenty of weed and some opium balls, but those were party favors for the rest of us. God help us if we ran out of junkie juice before reaching the Motor City.  I had no intention of having Dr. Jekyll Joey become Mr. Heroin Hyde.

We were enjoying the countryside fly by but, the country itself was turning mean and ugly. Already this year, Bobby Kennedy was shot dead in California, (can’t blame that one on Detroit, eh?) while Martin Luther King was gunned down supposedly by a redneck loser with a rifle in Memphis.

As for the carnival going on at Vietnam Amusement Park... after three-and-a-half years, Operation Rolling Thunder would come to an end soon. In total, the campaign had cost more than 900 American aircraft. Eight hundred and eighteen pilots dead or missing, and hundreds  in captivity. Nearly 120 Vietnam People's Air Force planes have been destroyed in air combat, accidents, or by the ever popular friendly fire. According to U.S. estimates, 182,000 North Vietnamese civilians have been killed. Twenty thousand Chinese support personnel also have been casualties of the bombing. Leave the guns...take the egg rolls.

Chapter 32 Into the Vortex of Violence

 

The Cold War was heating up behind the Iron Curtain. In August of this year,  eight Russian’s staged a demonstration on Moscow's Red Square to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring when Alexander Dubcek tried loosening the Soviet noose from around his country’s neck. In true police state fashion, the demonstrators were beaten up and taken to a police station, ultimately they received harsh sentences up to several years in prison. Gotta love Lubyanka Prison, the Riviera of Torture. They should be fair and give them a choice...spin the wheel…”I’ll take Siberia for $500, Mr. Trebeck...and the Yugo!”

In Paris, students and workers took to the barricades in the spirit of true street fighting fashion men and woman. Berets and firebombs meet police batons and water tanks.


1968 would also find a change in our own personal situation, fortunately, a change that held the promise of a positive direction.

Our rather wealthy French Canadian benefactor, Mssr. Levesque, had in addition to owning the safe house we were living in on St. Joseph Island, had recently bought two small deserted islands in the Canadian Manitoulin chain a across from St. Joseph.  One was reserved for his private use….the other, for our Resistance operation. Much safer than operating on St. Joes. We already had plans we were formulating on the trip to turn the island into a base of operations for our underground work...as well as an art colony commune where the draft resisters and military deserters could come and while grooming them for entry into Canada and a new life could pose as guest artists, musicians and writers...in other words we would operate and hide...in plain sight!

It would also host “real” artists who could live on site and follow their own creative compass while contributing to the colony sharing duties. The public would also be invited to our covert commune to enjoy music and theatrical productions for a small fee which would help fund our operation. It was a perfect cover.  Setting up as an art colony to  cover for American political escapees. Housing, Yurts, wigwams, log lodge,  a store with artists, writers and musicians  works for sale. We’d also have our own newsletter, sound studio, printing press, and of course an outdoor amphitheater for live productions and films in the round. I’d still be writing for the underground mags and we’d produce Myrika’s music for sale.

We would also enjoy visits by musicians, folkies who knew about us and did benefits on site to raise money...Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and Tom Paxton for example who we knew from our days in the Village and in San Francisco. We’d feature Saturday night showings of two films as regular events….Fantasia and Reefer Madness Midnight Movies. A stoners paradise.



What we didn’t know is that Mssr. Levesque was also a member of the Quebec Separatist Movement and along with his IRA ties, we’d be shuttling members of those groups, that seemed to be bomb happy, to safety on either side of the border. Another group that would eventually benefit from our naivete’ were members of the Weather Underground who enjoyed gunpowder power more than a bottle of fine wine and movie!

A break off branch of the SDS, the Weathermen meant business. According to newspaper accounts as regards the bombing of the United States Capitol,  they issued a communiqué saying that it was "in protest of the U.S. invasion of Laos". For the bombing of the Pentagon, they declared that it was "in retaliation for the U.S. bombing raid in Hanoi". For the bombing of the United States Department of State building, they justified it as it was "in response to the escalation in Vietnam".

We were in too deep by then….my own moral compass would spin out of control. For now we were excited to get the colony set up and we were even more excited. We had made two calls after we dropped Joey off like a bag of dirty laundry. It was set...my parents and Olivia’s would join us in Canada for Christmas on St. Joe. We didn’t tell them about our island colony we had now named….Mu...after the mythological continent that disappeared at the dawn of history.

I felt they would be more comfortable at the island resort on St. Joe than on a buffalo hide in a wigwam or one of the yurts we planned on building for housing. Besides I didn’t want to field a lot of questions about the pamphlets lying around or some of the guests who may look like they just stepped out of the pages of the book “Lord of the Flies!”
Chapter 33
The warm wet Spring of 1969 had springed, spranged and sprung while the tempest of turmoil of  1968 was receding in the rearview mirror of the dust and grime of history.

On the star light, star bright side of events, we all spent a wonderful Bing Crosby Christmas with my parents and Olivia’s parents on St. Joseph Island. It was as tearful saying “hello” to each other as it was to say “goodbye”  after the last package had been opened and the mistletoe had been exhausted.

Olivia’s parents were there, and badda bing badda boom, took to baby China with open arms, and the best part is I’m still alive as her dad didn’t come charging at me  with any hidden Medieval King Arthur weaponry when he was told I was the father. In fact he said he never trusted that “Joey character anyway!” Both sets of parents were equally confused, however, rightly so,  as regards to the trio of Myrika, me and Olivia as a “couple”. Yeah it was weird, but better than admitting to them, Joey, her real boyfriend, was one step away from a rubber room seeing invisible drunken dragons. “Daddy!!” I can see it now. Ah, and then there was Myrika? She was a Billboard Top Ten smash hit all around. Mom loved her immediately and dad gave me a somewhat lecherous thumbs up. I know what was on his mind me thinks.

All that goes up, including feelings of joy, are subject to some form of gravity. Once the holiday had expended itself, it was time to bid adieu, adios, goodbye, and get our asses back to work. 1969 would see the largest number of draft notices delivered to non-deferment fodder for Uncle Sam’s killing fields. The Garden of Democracy, you realize has to be fertilized every now and then with the blood of the young. A rice paddy is not the Garden of Eden.

We had been setting up our Resistance headquarters on a small deserted hunting preserve  in the Canadian Manitoulin Island chain thanks to Mssr. Levesque who bought it for our purposes and another island, small for himself as a private residence. The island we were to occupy was home to a dozen or so broken down weather beaten winter seasoned last of the Mohican log cabins with resident raccoons, bats and small field mice, all of whom would be  served an eviction notice! Fuck Rent Control!

The crown jewel of the small island acreage was a dashing rustic and  rather large log lodge with 15 guest bedrooms, living area, office space, kitchen and a massive  deck patio overlooking the water, the dock and the new Chris Craft boat we would soon come into possession of.  We commandeered the lodge for our base of operations, clearly and safely in Canadian waters.

As a precautionary measure we kept the safe house on Saint Joseph Island as our information center as that island would be a quicker transitory point to get our people in and out. The small island, we named Mu, was for education of our political refugees and the solitude would work to our advantage. We were the halfway house in this expanding drama.

We were introduced to and made a deal with members of the Quebec Separatist organization to work together at the St.Joe  house using it for our printing press and central communications center. We would run it jointly producing false I.D., work papers and other necessary documents for draft resisters and military deserters to safely move into Canada and guide them to communities where they would be able to live and work without fear of the U.S. Government. We would also provide the same as needed for French Canadian Separatists who had to exit the great white north for the former colony now known as America. We would also aid them in getting IRA and Sein Fein members on the run from Britain into the U.S.

Quid pro quo as they say.

Setting up camp on the small island was  a fortunate turn of affairs as aid and much needed help came from the Michigan chapter of the American Indian Movement. The same people affiliated with the national group  who, in November of this same year would be occupying Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay in a standoff with the U.S. Government.

Danny Two Horse was our choice for co-administrator of MU. An Ojibway Indian from St. Ignace, Michigan who along with other members of the tribe helped our small handful of war resister volunteers who decided to stay and help out. Together we worked in concert giving  the cabins and lodge a makeover. In time we became adept as students in constructing wigwams. These would act as temporary housing  for our resistance people heading into Canada as well as AIM members who were on the FBI hit list for Native American activism and needed to make it to Manitoba! Danny also assumed the role of spiritual leader of our art community. He was after all a member of the Native American Church and could get peyote to us easily enough as our psychedelically delicious sacrament as his converted heathens who now see the light...and colors. He would also be our source of LSD and marijuana and speed I had coming in from my friends in San Francisco. I’d send the money and menu list. They’d mail it to Danny’s on the rez and he in turn became the Marrakesh Express for a cut of the products. A small price to pay for room service.

By the time we were fully operational we were actually a two way swinging door escape route for activists in either direction from Black Panthers, AIM, Quebec Separatists, the Weathermen, the IRA, Sein Fein, draft resisters and military deserters.

We arranged for lumber to be shipped over for the construction of a small stage and amphitheater to rehearse theatrical productions,  music and spoken word projects, while Mssr. Levesque, who owned the island, arranged for electricity to be brought in. In addition he also purchased a number of powerful generators in case of failure. You know...the show must go on! Break a leg...or go to jail...give my regards to Broadway.

As for water, we’d boil the lake and river waters, dug and installed a small well, and had a system of cisterns set up for collection of rainwater for our organic garden and other grey uses. Plumbing...forget it! Good old fashioned outhouses for the guests and composting toilet for we, the Lords of the Manor who would headquarter in the lodge.

The operation expanded by the beginning of summer when Levesque purchased ten acres of land on the souther tip of St. Joseph Island. There would be our large stage for concerts, live theater and films to be shown to the general public for a nominal entrance fee.  The gift shop would feature items from small self produced books by our writers,  art by our artists and music from our musicians for profit. Fifty percent of the profits to be retained by the artist while the other fifty percent would keep us afloat, food, utilities, maintaining our organic gardens and recycling center. (also would pay for our covert and overt activism projects)  

AIM and the Quebec Separatists would also have products in the store with 100% of profits going to their organizations. It was a win win situation. Liam, who we had helped escape the long arm of the London law was busy getting money donated for the IRA and for us. We didn’t expect it, but we were now in the middle of Breakfast in Belfast, it was a welcome cash flow. We also received money from the SDS and Black Panthers. It help to grease the palms of the gatekeepers.

We ready to receive our first flurry of border crossing brigands, a group of five draft resisters from Cleveland. The Safehouse kicked into gear producing five sets of forged documents for Canada’s newest citizens.

We are also preparing for our first festival open to the public on St. Joe...Island Days complete with fake palm trees , musical artists, mimes, jugglers, and clowns, a live theatrical production, food and soft drinks along with Canuck beer and  a wine bar featuring Sudbury’s finest vino. We could jump in the water and stay drunk all the time. We’d open our arms to alms and spare change to Canadians and Americans to join us...and help fund us….even funny shaped Canadian quarters were welcome.




On the small island of Mu we would present a double feature Midnight show two Saturday nights a month for our staff and guests of prime counter culture films and classics. Our first offering would be  “Reefer Madness” and  “Fantasia” for the more open minded. Kids, go to bed now...mama and papa stoner need some bong time!  

 

Chapter 33 Bong Time in Canada

 

The warm wet Spring of 1969 had springed, spranged and sprung while the tempest of turmoil of  1968 was receding in the rearview mirror of the dust and grime of history.

On the star light, star bright side of events, we all spent a wonderful Bing Crosby Christmas with my parents and Olivia’s parents on St. Joseph Island. It was as tearful saying “hello” to each other as it was to say “goodbye”  after the last package had been opened and the mistletoe had been exhausted.

Olivia’s parents were there, and badda bing badda boom, took to baby China with open arms, and the best part is I’m still alive as her dad didn’t come charging at me  with any hidden Medieval King Arthur weaponry when he was told I was the father. In fact he said he never trusted that “Joey character anyway!” Both sets of parents were equally confused, however, rightly so,  as regards to the trio of Myrika, me and Olivia as a “couple”. Yeah it was weird, but better than admitting to them, Joey, her real boyfriend, was one step away from a rubber room seeing invisible drunken dragons. “Daddy!!” I can see it now. Ah, and then there was Myrika? She was a Billboard Top Ten smash hit all around. Mom loved her immediately and dad gave me a somewhat lecherous thumbs up. I know what was on his mind me thinks.

All that goes up, including feelings of joy, are subject to some form of gravity. Once the holiday had expended itself, it was time to bid adieu, adios, goodbye, and get our asses back to work. 1969 would see the largest number of draft notices delivered to non-deferment fodder for Uncle Sam’s killing fields. The Garden of Democracy, you realize has to be fertilized every now and then with the blood of the young. A rice paddy is not the Garden of Eden.

We had been setting up our Resistance headquarters on a small deserted hunting preserve  in the Canadian Manitoulin Island chain thanks to Mssr. Levesque who bought it for our purposes and another island, small for himself as a private residence. The island we were to occupy was home to a dozen or so broken down weather beaten winter seasoned last of the Mohican log cabins with resident raccoons, bats and small field mice, all of whom would be  served an eviction notice! Fuck Rent Control!

The crown jewel of the small island acreage was a dashing rustic and  rather large log lodge with 15 guest bedrooms, living area, office space, kitchen and a massive  deck patio overlooking the water, the dock and the new Chris Craft boat we would soon come into possession of.  We commandeered the lodge for our base of operations, clearly and safely in Canadian waters.

As a precautionary measure we kept the safe house on Saint Joseph Island as our information center as that island would be a quicker transitory point to get our people in and out. The small island, we named Mu, was for education of our political refugees and the solitude would work to our advantage. We were the halfway house in this expanding drama.

We were introduced to and made a deal with members of the Quebec Separatist organization to work together at the St.Joe  house using it for our printing press and central communications center. We would run it jointly producing false I.D., work papers and other necessary documents for draft resisters and military deserters to safely move into Canada and guide them to communities where they would be able to live and work without fear of the U.S. Government. We would also provide the same as needed for French Canadian Separatists who had to exit the great white north for the former colony now known as America. We would also aid them in getting IRA and Sein Fein members on the run from Britain into the U.S.

Quid pro quo as they say.

Setting up camp on the small island was  a fortunate turn of affairs as aid and much needed help came from the Michigan chapter of the American Indian Movement. The same people affiliated with the national group  who, in November of this same year would be occupying Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay in a standoff with the U.S. Government.

Danny Two Horse was our choice for co-administrator of MU. An Ojibway Indian from St. Ignace, Michigan who along with other members of the tribe helped our small handful of war resister volunteers who decided to stay and help out. Together we worked in concert giving  the cabins and lodge a makeover. In time we became adept as students in constructing wigwams. These would act as temporary housing  for our resistance people heading into Canada as well as AIM members who were on the FBI hit list for Native American activism and needed to make it to Manitoba! Danny also assumed the role of spiritual leader of our art community. He was after all a member of the Native American Church and could get peyote to us easily enough as our psychedelically delicious sacrament as his converted heathens who now see the light...and colors. He would also be our source of LSD and marijuana and speed I had coming in from my friends in San Francisco. I’d send the money and menu list. They’d mail it to Danny’s on the rez and he in turn became the Marrakesh Express for a cut of the products. A small price to pay for room service.

By the time we were fully operational we were actually a two way swinging door escape route for activists in either direction from Black Panthers, AIM, Quebec Separatists, the Weathermen, the IRA, Sein Fein, draft resisters and military deserters.

We arranged for lumber to be shipped over for the construction of a small stage and amphitheater to rehearse theatrical productions,  music and spoken word projects, while Mssr. Levesque, who owned the island, arranged for electricity to be brought in. In addition he also purchased a number of powerful generators in case of failure. You know...the show must go on! Break a leg...or go to jail...give my regards to Broadway.

As for water, we’d boil the lake and river waters, dug and installed a small well, and had a system of cisterns set up for collection of rainwater for our organic garden and other grey uses. Plumbing...forget it! Good old fashioned outhouses for the guests and composting toilet for we, the Lords of the Manor who would headquarter in the lodge.

The operation expanded by the beginning of summer when Levesque purchased ten acres of land on the souther tip of St. Joseph Island. There would be our large stage for concerts, live theater and films to be shown to the general public for a nominal entrance fee.  The gift shop would feature items from small self produced books by our writers,  art by our artists and music from our musicians for profit. Fifty percent of the profits to be retained by the artist while the other fifty percent would keep us afloat, food, utilities, maintaining our organic gardens and recycling center. (also would pay for our covert and overt activism projects)  

AIM and the Quebec Separatists would also have products in the store with 100% of profits going to their organizations. It was a win win situation. Liam, who we had helped escape the long arm of the London law was busy getting money donated for the IRA and for us. We didn’t expect it, but we were now in the middle of Breakfast in Belfast, it was a welcome cash flow. We also received money from the SDS and Black Panthers. It help to grease the palms of the gatekeepers.

We ready to receive our first flurry of border crossing brigands, a group of five draft resisters from Cleveland. The Safehouse kicked into gear producing five sets of forged documents for Canada’s newest citizens.

We are also preparing for our first festival open to the public on St. Joe...Island Days complete with fake palm trees , musical artists, mimes, jugglers, and clowns, a live theatrical production, food and soft drinks along with Canuck beer and  a wine bar featuring Sudbury’s finest vino. We could jump in the water and stay drunk all the time. We’d open our arms to alms and spare change to Canadians and Americans to join us...and help fund us….even funny shaped Canadian quarters were welcome.




On the small island of Mu we would present a double feature Midnight show two Saturday nights a month for our staff and guests of prime counter culture films and classics. Our first offering would be  “Reefer Madness” and  “Fantasia” for the more open minded. Kids, go to bed now...mama and papa stoner need some bong time!  

Chapter 34 Folk Fest on the Island of Mu

The road leading up to summer was a busy highway of political escapes, in both Can-Am directions. June however held the promise of blessed relief as our volunteers were busy day and night rehearsing for our once a month Summer Saturday festival at our compound campground on St. Joseph. We planned it for months as meticulously as the invasion of Normandy,  promoted the hell out of  it in English, French for sure,  and I think in Swahili and Farsi, or so it seemed. We  got interviewed in the local papers and radio station about the first ‘Can-Am Green Fest” we were putting on.

D-Day had finally arrived and we had busy since the day before installing the sound system for the bands and solo artists to perform; stocking the gift shop with books of poetry and non political fiction produced and written by our Resistance members; t-shirts we had printed up in Windsor for the event with our logo, a Forest Goddess who strangely looked like Myrika in a giant solar sunburst; set up the concession stands and had security in place. We were ready for the rush...gates opened at 9 AM for the day long affair and our welcome committee smiled and greeted….and took the cash destined not for Jerry’s Kids or Red Cross relief efforts in Bangladesh. Jerry’s Kids would have to wait… there was a war in Vietnam we had to end first.

Entertainment on the music stage included performances by a young Delaney and Bonnie. A bluesy duo with enough angel  rasp in Bonnie’s voice to slice through concrete and silk with finesse. Folk singers Phil Ochs and Texas McGill would perform solo and in a trio backing up Buffy Ste. Marie.  Other local folk singers would take to stage performing a gentle mixture of Bill Monroe bluegrass with a dash of songs from the Woody Guthrie songbook. Joe Hill himself would be right at home.

We had local artisans from Canada giving demonstrations on glass blowing. Kites for the kids to fly and an open area for the little aeronauts  as we had plenty of wide open sky without hungry trees lurking and ready to pounce on the high flying “space ships”

The actors and actresses were rehearsing up until showtime for the production of “No Place to be Somebody” written by an old bartender friend of ours back in Greenwich Village. Later he would be the first African American playwright to receive a Pulitzer, and "No Place to be Somebody" was the first off-Broadway play to receive the award!
The play explores racial tensions in the current civil rights era story about a black bartender who tries to outsmart a white mobster syndicate.

The actors of all the plays to be presented would take  their positions according to direction and the vision of the playwright and as one in unison with others, would breathe life and form into the script, giving wing to the words they spoke that came from the mind of another and placed on paper as the words spilled forth from the keys of a typewriter and many copies were made and bound and passed around to actor, actress and stage hands to prepare for the opening night curtain to rise into the air above their heads, and reveal an auditorium filled with anticipation to inhale the cerebral smoke of great art in the tradition of George M. Cohen and George Bernard Shaw or Ibsen.

Ours was an activist compost of hungry actors and actresses, and equally hungry activist writers who wrote one act plays. Most had a subtle social message. The rest of the  group consisted of four other writers. Emmett Coin who went on to become a filmmaker in Toronto; James Bogner who won numerous accolades and awards including Michigan's Black Poet of the year; Debbie Bodo, a Canadian actress who did go onto semi-fame as an actress on small big screen productions.

On a smaller stage for smaller kids we had a Punch and Judy show put on by a troupe from Kitchener, Ontario who specialized in puppetry and marionette madness. We decided to hold on the more ribald “Lolita” puppet show they performed at Chicago’s “Playwrights Theater Club” where the marionettes performed a rather lewd production of illicit seduction until a more appropriate and private time.

Roaming the grounds throughout the day would be colorful clowns, sorrowful mimes and juiced up jugglers from Canada’s  “Ecole nationale de l humour” as well as “Ecole Omnibus” out of Montreal. That’s when I met Mary Bungert, a female clown of the first order. a novelty at the time, who wore green corduroy pants, just a little short of the ankles, a red shiny shirt, the likes of which he had never encountered before, luminescent, a blazing fireball of nuclear flash-flame red in the sunlight, and colorful balls juxtaposed stop-action in the air with the blue sky as a theatrical backdrop.

She would leap into the air not missing a beat or a ball falling to the ground. On her head was perched one of those Chico Marx hats, and the clown emeritus, Emmett Kelly himself must have done her makeup. Her act alone  created an  undulating illusion of colorful imagery of a big top extravaganza replete with an Asian elephant parade, elastic ladies with short sparkling costumes precariously perched and perfectly balanced on the sinewy backs of galloping  Arabian horses as they raced around the  a ring...In swore, watching her I could hear pipe organ music stolen from a roller rink in some small town in Iowa playing  as the kids on site were  gorging on cotton candy and popcorn.

I have to admit, I was mesmerised and stopped in my tracks. Mary controlled her juggled balls, and they responded to her obediently in flight, gently floating in  a perception of slow motion, three rotating at once, always airborn with another always ready to replace it's space in time. The balls were yellow and red and blue and left tracer trails in their wake as they rose and fell smiling all the time.

Myrika was taken with her as well. Later, after the festival that evening  she would return with us to our small island hideaway lodge and for the next five days we  would be immersed and spent in a tempestuous menage a trois tryst before she had to bid adieu  for a job at Coney Island sideshow circus act. She would visit us often on her off time and even accompanied us to Woodstock Music and Art Festival coming up in August. Nudity, music, marijuana and mud. Who could ask for more?

Chapter 35 Spaced Out in Canada

 

 

Our first fest was a success no matter how you cut it. We managed to endear ourselves without endangering ourselves with the community. Unaware we were an underground group dedicated and sworn to toss a cog into the American war machine, we merely came across as a group of bearded bards and possibly slightly demented Druids from another sphere.

We cleaned the festival area and  returned to our small island enclave where Danny Two Horse, our Ojibway nation gatekeeper had our twin feature flicks and midnight stoner premier ready to race threaded through the projector while the patrons partake of popcorn and pot. All of our volunteer war resisters may be on the run from the law, but when it came down to getting high and watching  “Fantasia”  and “Reefer Madness” there was no fear.

“Myrika, you will now bear witness that there is such a thing as dancing brooms and rodent wizards!” I declared as if I was mighty Merlin the Magician himself. Poof, the magic dragon!

She pulled me close to her and gave me a kiss that made my mouth water and a hurricane form in my equatorial region. She could produce a Category 5 storm in my pants faster than a tornado can level a trailer park in Kansas.

“First, my love,” (in Germanic broken English) “Mary and I will  check on Olivia and China. They had long day and must be exhausted. Save  little grass for me, OK?” She knew I’d save Mt. Fuji for her if she asked for it. I also had figured out Myrika and Mary would probably fool around together under the big top before returning.

“Hurry back. Trust me, Baby….this is not Dumbo and some lame Los Angeles dwarfs, Baby. It’s full of  dangerous dancing dinosaurs, macabre mops, beastly brooms and flying flaming fairies all set to a musical backdraft bigger than the flash from an atomic bong bomb in Bonn  or even that  Family Dog light show when we were at the Fillmore  listening to Inna Gadda Da Vida on purple double dome last spring when I forgot my own name! It’s a Saturday morning cartoon for kids on Cheerios, amphetamines and marijuana dancing  a fandango while mescaline and acid do  a mental tango.” I tried my best movie review to entice her, but her reply was typical Myrika.

“I bet,” she began, “Snow White turns into a pile of cocaine and Sleeping Beauty takes a hot shot of heroin, while Mickey joins the SDS on LSD and takes to the streets of Chicago in  with a gang of dancing brooms.”

I added to her description of what would be one hell of a fucked up marvelous flick. “Yes and the Seven Dwarves become the Chicago Seven Dwarves and go on trial for Fucking up Beethoven, and Donald Duck gets banned in Sweden for not wearing pants!”

Her laughter faded into the wigwam where Olivia and China were already fast asleep, which left only one thing for her and Mary to do. Jesus, I thought. I wonder if Mary will remove her clown make-up first before they got hot and heavy? Maybe I should have a trapeze installed for future forays into big top foreplay. It’s only an idea.

Danny by now had the projector set up and we were waiting for everyone to get mellowed out first before we unleashed “Fantasia” under the blanket of stars and galaxies above a coal black sky.

I passed the bowl back to Danny who was as silent as a cigar store Indian contemplating the spirit world. Feeling I was floating on a raft drifting towards Aku Aku, I queried him. “Ever think about fucking a space alien, Danny?”

It was a perfectly  logical question, I felt. Outer space has beckoned humankind as tempting as any short skirted street hooker flags down a customer in a Cadillac on a Saturday night. Space is Sexy! Seductive! Seducing! Who doesn’t want be an astronaut enjoying sex in a gravity free space station floating aimlessly with the cosmic Kama Sutra co-ed of your choice? “Houston...we are having the time of our life.”

His response was typical of him. Honest and quizzical, as if he were deciding which Klatu Barada Nicto Trojan rubbers to purchase at the duty free store in Canada.

“It depends. Which planet is sexier than the rest? I guess it depends on your sexual persuasion. Probably if they were from Venus, I hear it’s a hotbed of Apache females so, I guess if you can breathe in an ammonia heavy atmosphere then fire up the old rocket booster. Remember, Mickey, Native women are  lovers! We Indians are also into lacrosse. We invented it by the way as a means of attacking forts and scalping ya’ll when your guard is down, so from that viewpoint I’d take a chance there would be hot to trot naked  Iroquois roller derby babes with buffalo skin bikini’s on  Mars!”

We both felt no pain and laughter ushered forth from us. Hell, we were so stoned, we’d laugh at anything, even The Diary of Anne Frank. I could picture a bevy of three breasted blue and orange  beauties on Saturn. A sexy planet with all those accessorized rings.  It has to be the most flamboyant of the planets  screaming  FASHION STATEMENT! It’s actually a planetary  runway with ten moons! Some moons are rated PG and others are rated, well….if you’ve seen “Deep Throat” then you’ll prefer the moon Pandora just for her box alone…

For the gay liberation  crowd, they’ll clap hands in glee when they take in Uranus (so to speak!) It would have to have  a cabaret nightlife to die for. Plenty of piano bars with sequined Liberace impersonators from the Outer Limits of Uranus and the Lesbian Review from the Torrid Twilight Erogenous Zone from the Venusian Vagina Vector.
After a time Myrika and Mary emerged from our canvas quarters, slightly disheveled with looks of great satisfaction on their faces. The clown make-up slightly smeared and some of it left traces on Myrika’s face. I guess clowns mark their territory too.

Both joined us as we fired up another joint, Mary digging into Danny’s arms while Myrika took her rightful regal position at my side, her arms around me. I could detect that faint feminine perfume of secreted musk sex produces. It was addicting. Intoxicating. Kept me locked in her emotional cage...a prisoner for life chained to her heart, imprisoned in her soul, a slave at her feet.

We were silent and heard and felt only our hearts beating...then the projector switch was thrown on...it was showtime. Mickey and his dancing brooms were about to emerge on the screen...while Myrika and I worked out way back out of sight in the bushes behind us sheltered in the white pines.

There we began making  love during the musical score of Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the Fuge in D Minor with a mutual one on one  oral orgasm crescendo during “The Rite of Spring”... Igor Stravinsky would be proud.

Chapter 36 - The Dark Side of the Sixties Moon

 

 

Midway through 1969, we began to see flower power wilting, but it’s full prophesy hadn’t kicked us in the balls yet. Our Can-Am Fests continued as did our midnight movies. Cultish to be sure, but political messages began to infiltrate our happy hunting ground of wigwams, yurts and log cabins. We would air films of a more serious nature such as “Salt of the Earth” and “Our Daily Bread” focusing on labor strife and poverty. We did managed to mix in a series of silent movies of bootleg Lon Chaney films as the deformed  Quasimodo, bell ringing outcast that we all identified with,  and the equally deformed, yet organ proficient, “Phantom of the Opera.”

Something on a much larger scale was out of whack. A wobbly planet out of alignment. An aberration called Joey Russo. Junkie deserter who was released and stamped CURED by the SHAR House drug rehab program where house residents dwelled in their own never never land where Peter Pan walked perilously on Lou Reed’s wild side with a chorus of colored girls going..do do d do….

He found his way to our island enclave after making arrangements by phone with us. Danny Two Horse had the distinct displeasure of delivering he and a friend he met at a Resistance meeting in Detroit on the campus of Wayne State University.

Myrika was busy helping Mary the Clown and Oliva the New Madonna and child, find firewood for tonight’s bonfire of the vanities. I decided to lie down on the grass near the beach and await Joeys second coming. The sun on my face, the waves lapping gently on shore. Closing my eyes I let the intoxicant of pine, sand and juniper fill me. Sensual smells that permeated the wet woods that surrounded the hunting lodge we had since painted red. The red was no ordinary American red either. Nor a communist red that appealed only to Slavs. Naw, it was that deep, rich, dark, pumping blood red you see in photographs of log lodges buried ass deep in the blowing white snows of blonde Scandinavia with whole villages of Scandinavians, also buried ass deep in the same snows, yelling with accents for more snowshoes. That kind of red.

The early morning sounds of the navy of early morning Canadian fishermen from Manitoulin Island and American fishermen from the Les Cheneaux islands of the coast of the UP had launched their  fleets of Johnson and Mercury motors to depth charge full speed ahead and damn the friggin' torpedoes urgency in their quest for the nazi fish just below the surface. Bass battling battleships chasing a silent service U-boat wolfpack of smallmouth looking to evade capture and sink the Lusitania first. I could picture Old “Papa Hemingway” Man and the Sea flashing back, like old yellowed pages in a forgotten book.



I  was deep in daydreaming,  waiting for Joey to arrive,  and getting restless as the Johnson outboard motor droned closer and closer to the dock. I, we, all of us didn’t know how he had changed, if at all. Myrika, Mary and Olivia and a few of our volunteers formed a greeting party. Probably with the same apprehension the Indians felt when Pilgrims landed wearing funny hats and carrying bibles.  

“Mickey! Ahoy!! He yelled.

“Ha, welcome aboard,” I returned.

Hugs all around, manly ones, you know,  “we hunt and fish and fuck in bars”  type hugs for we  men, and “gee, I’ve not had a woman or been able to get it up for months” hug for Myrika and Mary. Olivia stood aloof apart with China in her arms. You could tell her veil of tranquility was ripping to shreds.

“She can’t stand him, Mickey.” Myrika informed me as if I didn’t know.

“Play it cool, Darlin’. We’ll pop him over the border as though he is an American  suppository going into Canada’s ass and be done with him.”

Her eyes widened, “I don’t trust.  He could blow  whole thing for a fix. Besides, who’s  other guy with him. We don’t know him.”

Obviously, I felt because of her being from Germany, she suspected everyone of being a Gestapo agent hell bent on rounding us all up for a ride on the Zyklon B express to a gas chamber in Poland.  

His travel companion, Paul, was introduced as a draft resister from Toledo who hooked up with  the Resistance which  gave him a clearance pass which  he produced, all in order.
“Damn good to see you, Joey. Paul, welcome...we’ll get you guys settled and go over the game plan. First..Food!! Let’s get some chow in you two.”

Danny Two Horse took them to a cabin and we gave them time to freshen up and meet later in the mess hall.

Something else had happened recently that sent a helter skelter clockwork orange chill through the core of the counterculture. The mantra of peace and love had been violated and rape by the madman mantra of Charles Manson. Manson’s cult kill five people in movie director Roman Polanski’s Beverly Hills, California, home, including Polanski’s pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate. Less than two days later, the group killed again, murdering supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in their home.
Helter Skelter had replaced All You Need is Love...and the sun was setting on Flower Power, as the Dark Side of the Sixties Moon was emerging from the horizon.

Manson had gathered a dark cloud of looser humanity around him in the Haight on Cole Street, where he kept them pretty loaded on LSD, held orgies with abandon, making a mockery of the concept of "free love" and indoctrinating them with the Mantra of Manson. What do you expect from a person who had at this point spent half his life incarcerated in some of the finer prison cells America had to offer. How he managed to check out without a psyche evaluation is beyond me, and not committed to a dog pound to be put down as a rabid freak.

He believed in his concept of Helter Skelter which he felt was the impending race war which would prime the pump and get the revolution kicked into high gear.
Manson had listened to the Beatle's "White Album" and proclaimed that he would be bigger than the Beatles. To get ready to join in the BBQ of racial hatred and battle, the family moved into a small yellow house near LA that Manson named, "The Yellow Submarine" and the impending conflagration was dubbed..."Helter Skelter" and he was ready now to enter the recording studio to record his own coded album that would trigger the events.

That was California. With any luck they catch these people, (we didn’t know at the time who they were of course) and kill them on sight….so much for peace and love from me. I only had to deal with speed freaks and junkies before and the stray homosexual making passes at me. (As I told Myrika, what the hell...it’s good to have sex appeal no matter who gets off on it!)

Danny Two Horse pulled me aside. “I’ll get a couple of my guys over here for a few days to help me keep an eye on them.”

“Christ, Danny, it’s not General Custer you know.”

“We’ll make sure of that Kemo Sabe” he said with laugh.

“Just tell Tonto their from Toronto, pronto!”

Turns out my Indian brother had more visionary insight into matters than I gave him credit for and save my paleface ass from going down in flames...Woodstock was coming up and damned if I wanted to miss out on rain, mud and bad acid!

Chapter 37 Acid, Mud and Rock and Roll

 

 

The camper, now renamed Flashback, in honor of Senor Owsley,  was as loaded up as we were about to be now that we had taken a speed ball and weed snack attack to launch our chemically powered pharmaceutical selves to the Woodstock Music & Art Festival in Upstate New York. Myrika, myself, and Danny Two Horse along with his girlfriend, Kaylee Abinaw, a Chippewa beauty,   V-Dubbing and smoking doobies kicking asphalt while Joey, Olivia, Baby China and the stranger in a strange land, Paul, Joey’s new found shadow who was creeping us all out would remain behind at the lodge.

We left Victor Abinaw, Kaylee’s rather large no bullshit Indian brother in charge of the compound. He was a Chippewa Indian friend of Danny’s, and was also member of AIM, the American Indian Movement.  He and two other hulking AIM members would keep an eye on Paul and Joey. I left instructions, as if needed, to shoot first...ask questions later if either or both proved to be obstructions, i.e. informants. Danny was more succinct. “Remember, Little Big Horn….No Prisoners!” Damn I like Danny’s style. Kind of Gandhi goes rogue!

We were heading south across the Macinac Bridge beelining it for Ohio... hang a left at Toledo and then fullsteam ahead for Joe Cocker, Ten Years After and Santana among others. We had provisions of smoked white fish, Pinconning cheese, meat jerky, tea and rice and wine.

“Excuse me waiter, but which wine and marijuana go with rice and beans?”

“Very good, Sir. Might I suggest our finest bottle of Chateau Rothschild Ripple, or perhaps a perky Annie Greensprings. For marijuana our chef recommends a righteous Panama Red topped off with a dessert bowl of Heavenly Hash and a speed ball aperitif?”

Perfect waiter. Bring it on. We were ready for The Woodstock Music and Art Fair. We were ready for three days of magical mud, death defying drug intake and Sixties sex. It was billed as an "Aquarian Exposition of Three Days of Peace and Music" to be held on a 600 acre farm in upstate New York. In all, 32 acts performed and by the end of the festival, more than 500,000 attendees had tie dyed their way by bus, foot and thumb to be at the "vortex" of the counterculture for this Kodak moment in time, freeze framed forever in the history of rock and roll music.

Acid flowed as freely as venereal disease in a Bombay whorehouse... free love and sex left a vaginal imprint, as wet and thick as the torrential rains that added to the wilderness wildness of things. It was a moment in time captured by the counterculture, and is legendary as a peaceful assemblage of near half a million young souls and spirits in unity. So many people descended on this strip of sacred agricultural ground that Arlo Guthrie yelled, "The New York Thruway is closed, man!" and Country Joe McDonald did his own calculation of the crowd by announcing.."There's about 300,000 of you fuckers out there!"



This was the culmination point of no return for the Sixties. 1969...we had more than a garden full of guru's that turned out to be more of a compost pile of wannabe weeds. It all started with...Yogi! No, not Yogi The Bear or baseball’s Yogi the Berra. Yogi, not Yoda to you Seventies and Eighties kids.  

This was the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the bearded mystical entity that had the Beatles and the Beach Boys sitting at his  feet and in the process.. Made holy sacred cow India Hip! Ravi Shankar music and George Harrison's sitar explorations mixed audibly as a musical perfume fornicating with the scent of patchouli. A typical Sixties aroma that made up for the tell tale you’re busted odor of marijuana coming from apartments in the Haight.

Meanwhile, the banana peel smoking Sunshine Superman, Donovan donned long flowing flowered robes and boarded the TM Orient Express for a visitation with the Hipster of Transcendental Meditation, the Mahareshi. Soon the floodgates were open, Marianne Faithful, the Stones, Mama's and Papa's, Eric Burdon...the entire Sixties Rock and Roll Bus Tour rolled into the the Mahareshi's bus depot. All tossed away their blue jeans and field jacket stage wear in exchange for long robes and gowns that were left overs from some drag queen show in North Beach.

If the Mahareshi could have held sway a bit longer, Fredericks of Hollywood would I am sure come out with a full catalogue of Yogi Wear. The boots were gone replaced by what Merle Haggard referred to as "unmanly footwear" the sandal.

Then there are the Moonies. Founded as a "religion" by the Korean version of P.T. Barnum, Sun Myung Moon who I believe was born in the small village of Suc Muc Dik, or Long Wang, managed to mangle the minds of countless loose screws. And who could forget the Krisna's who bring to mind to me not a higher state of being, but a scene from the film "Airplane" where Robert Stack decks a gowned goon in the terminal. Peace brother!

I don't think I could pull off the gown look, but damn, those Krishna's loved the peach chiffon look while aggressively panhandling from passerby at airports and other terminals. I've even seen them at Greyhound stations. C'mon if you're riding the 'Hound for $50 bucks cross country you're either broke or just released from one the many mental institutions in this country leaving your meds behind in the alley. Now the voices are real, eh? Tambourines and finger bells...all trying to be Mr. Tambourine Man in time and tune with the times.

While we were reeling and rocking as Wavy Gravy grooved on stage talking about hamburgers and bad acid, Dr. Henry Kissinger was playing political peace talk poker with the North Vietnamese in Paris, while the NVA and Viet Cong launched a new offensive of over 150 targets in South Vietnam while Dr. Henry ate pastries at parties. The U.S. death toll was on the rise as Ho Chi Minh declared “fight on until the last Yankee is gone!”  

That was our philosophy as well in a way regarding our ammo of choice...drugs….stay stoned until the last pill is gone…

Chapter 38 - Body Bags & Rolling Papers

 

On the road to Woodstock the highway was paved with rolling papers, song and our six dollar a day festival tickets.  Myrika, always blue eyed and smiling,  busted out her trusty Gibson guitar as we folk sang our way onward to mirth, music, mud and art in a soon to be farmers field of mud and rock and roll dreams. To borrow a phrase from the song, “by the time we got to Woodstock” which is actually Bethel, New York, we were mired in a traffic jam to equal the embassy evacuation of Saigon at the wars “peace with honor” big kick finish.

When we  arrived at Alice’s festival wonderland, we spent an hour finding a berth for the camper where we would headquarter in between a Jimi Hendrix waa waa Star Spangled Banner and a Joe Cocker arm flailing gonzo extravaganza, interspersed with Wavy Gravy clowning around and Chip Monk’s deep as the ocean voice warning us about the brown acid while preparing us for the musical assault of The Who.  Christ, good thing we brought our own….deep grape purples, orange sunshine and strawberry….if acid were a fruit, we were organic as hell before it was popular among the Granola Generation of today.

All went well, even during the rain deluge cast down upon us sinners had descended on us. Rain chants, rain chants, cowbells,  tambourines, bongos, and bongs... keep the rolling papers dry at all costs. Don’t let Carlos Santana get electrocuted before “Soul  Sacrifice” and Ten Years After blasts off with “Going Home”....I still do a pretty mean air guitar rendition of both on my invisible highly prized 1947 Gibson I can’t afford. I can dream can’t I?

Elsewhere during that August we  saw an increase in protests against the war fire up across the so called LBJ bullshit Great Society of the  United States in urbane New York City, lights, cameras, action Los Angeles, the American Beltway Reichstag of Washington D.C, and other urban concrete jungle  battlefields to demand that the United States withdraw from its attempted rape of Vietnam.

The National Mobilization Committee, the Student Mobilization Committee, and the Socialist Workers Party were among the groups that helped organize the demonstrations, while Quakers held sit-ins at draft boards and committed other acts of civil disobedience in more than 30 cities across the Woody Guthrie empire from sea to shining sea.

In Vietnam, Ray Kopek, another friend of Mickey and Joey’s from Detroit was in the middle of a fierce firefight near the border of Cambodia. The rain had been torrential for days, and keeping your sanity while fighting blood sucking leeches and mosquitos the size of B-52’s was draining. The foxholes were filled with thick mud and the blood and bodies of the not so grateful dead. RPG’s were ripping the jungle and bodies apart as neatly as a butcher slices a fine lean cut of meat. Later we found out, much later, Ray had checked out that same day, one of many KIA  body bag casualties of American democracy’s misguided efforts to force feed a country a political philosophy she barely understands the mechanics of herself.

Myrika and Kaylee, this fine day, (for us anyway, not Ray Kopek and company) were sexy,  stoned and curious, not oblivious and wanted to make love in the mud. We did have our tent set up and Danny Two Horse and I decided, why not.

“Can you keep it up in the storm,” Myrika shot at me with a Berlin grin.

“I will be King Arthur’s sword. Just call me Excaliber!” I exclaimed and claimed bravely.
Then added, “Do you want an erection as strong as the Berlin Wall or merely  to cream in your bootleg American jeans?”

Kaylee couldn’t resist jumping in as both her and Myrika had bonded  with a volcanic girl  crush intensity recently. Close quarters in a small camper removes all inhibitions, in fact can spawn a decent level of exibitionism for we hedonists in sheep’s clothing.

Danny Two Horse, who could enter and leave a spiritual realm at will shape shifting, or so he claimed,  wondered aloud adding to the growing sex as comedy routine.

“Ever fuck a Communist? You know, one of those Moscow mama’s?”

Myrika, no stranger to living on the other side of the wall from Communist East Berlin had a ready answer.  “Das Kapital is not exactly the Kama Sutra and the ABC’s of the KGB do not add up to a capitalistic romp under the hammer and sickle bed covers. You could have a go with a steamy Socialist from the Ukraine,  but a vagina from the Volga will out perform a Democratic Socialist every time.  The Communist lover does it for the party!”

I get it, I added, “Your hammer and her sickle can make sex one of the most exciting experiences since East Germans tried to jump the Berlin Wall to freedom. Does the Communist girl  use protection, like red star sponges  to block the little sperm spies from  her Motherland Motherland?”

“Look Mickey,” Myrika chastised sarcastically,  “if you’re hot to Trotsky for sex in the Kremlin...you may find a willing Commie in a closet..but until then you’ll have to find red star gold star vaginas in Vietnam….North Korea...China...or Cuba...oh...or Madison, Wisconsin!”

“I got it,” I lied poorly, “The next time I  run into a commie bombshell..don’t say Fuck You….say it loud and say it proud...FUCK ME!!!”

Now I had this acid fantasy of fucking Myrika in Red Square during a May Day Parade!

 

Chapter 39 - We Blew It

 

After three tie dyed spare change days of Woodstocking we fired up the V-Dub “Flashback” camper for  the long, jam packed highway back to Michigan and ultimately our Canadian Island enclave. We’d been away too long and had to get back to work. Fighting against the draft and neutralizing the American war machine was not a 9 -5 Brooks Brothers suit gig you know. It was torn frayed  jeans and faded army field jackets.

We made it to Detour Village in Michigan’s UP, stored the camper in Danny Two Horse’s garage and fired up the Johnson outboard on our Chris Craft boat and wound our way through the bass laden maze of Michigan’s  Les Cheneaux Islands to the sanctuary of our island in the Canadian Manitoulin island chain. There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, even if that home was an anti-war stop over assembly line for on the run political enemies of the state, or the Commonwealth of Canada, or even Scotland Yard.

Kaylee’s brother and some of the other members of the Michigan chapter of the American Indian Movement kept watch of things while we were in the spirit world of rock and roll...Gimme an F!!! We had them  especially keep a wary eye on Joey and the mysterious Paul he brought with him.

After the usual “thank you’s we’ll take over from here” social graces were given, Olivia came running down to the dock to greet us. Baby China was in her arms smiling and drooling as babies will do. Wino’s do that too after a night with the Pink Lady of Sterno. So do mental patients  suffering from one too many alien abductions and anal probes.  

“Are you worried, and thinking what I’m thinking?” Danny asked. “I don’t trust that Paul dude. Out of the blue he shows up. He asks too many questions from what I was just told as far as I’m concerned.”

“I know what you mean, but, it’s Joey who worries me too. Damn junkie gonna get us all busted one day. Paul? Dunno yet. We’re back now so  we’ll dig a little deeper then figure out what to do.” Paper or Plastic? Bullet or Bludgeon to death?

Myrika, ever the optimist was a gentle Japanese wind chime in the breeze of of trust compared to my “fire when you see  the whites of their eyes” sarcasm and wariness.

“Olivia, where’s Joey? I thought he’d at least bring a beer or two for the wandering gypsies,” I queried masking my suspicious nature.

“He and Paul went to the mainland for supplies and probably a pub or two. They do like Canadian beer,” she replied. Hell who doesn’t I thought to myself.

Myrika took Baby China in her arms and reminded us we had work to do.
“Remember, we have a rehearsal now of the two new plays you wrote. First show is in two weeks on St. Joe’s during the Saturday Fest you know. Go on, go...grab the others and go. Olivia, Kaylee and I will get us unpacked.”

We rounded up our motley crew of hangers on draft dodgers who came and decided to help out around the place and act in the productions,  and believe me it was welcome help indeed. Within a month we’d have to get them to Canada as winter was coming in a few months and we couldn’t risk getting a lot of “passengers” over. The lake would freeze but wouldn’t be safe for an army of snowmobiles for awhile yet. Besides, we only had two old Arctic Cat machines that needed fixing up. Our winter transportation to and from the U.P.

By late afternoon we were, scripts in hand, thespians awaiting the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd. They plays had subtle anti-war messages we were trying to impart disguised as “art” for arts sake.

The rehearsal curtain rose, tattered and faded we had commandeered from an old movie theater in Sault Ste. It had weathered many performances but they had taken their toll on the fabric and it was not a brilliant hue anymore. The actors had taken their positions according to direction and the vision and were ready to breath life into the script, giving wing to the words they spoke that spilled forth from the keys of my typewriter. The Sixties was a stage show of sorts, a hallucinogenic lightshow , colorful..tie-dyed peace and love giving  birth to a sexual and political revolution although it was changing rapidly.
A factor of violence was emerging and soon  gunpowder and pipe bombs were becoming the latest leftist fashion statement. Our plays were to extol a peaceful revolution...an evolution if you will. No bombs….just bongs..

Rehearsal was under way when suddenly we heard the sound of an outboard motor of an RCMP boat patrol. At first I thought it was Joey and Paul in our only other boat. Surprise!
Danny was the first to intercept them. Cops….great. At least they were Canadian cops. No itchy trigger finger. Calm, reasoning, trustworthy. Lt. Sayer, was the first to holler a “hello” in greeting.

“Lt., we weren’t speeding were we,” in my meager attempt at let’s keep this light shall we response.

He laughed, his two cohorts smiled. “That’s a good start,” I whispered to Danny.

“We came by to welcome you. We were at the festival a few weeks ago and I was pretty impressed. Americans and Canadians make a hell of a team, eh?”

There’s that damn Eh thing again, I thought. I’m surprised they don’t spell the country C-Eh-N-Eh-D-Eh...now that would make sense. I also sensed they were there for more practical reasons than acting as the Provincial Welcome Wagon, such as checking the place for anything amiss...a stash of bombs perhaps, a mound of Mao’s “Little Red Books” in the children’s library hidden among the shelves of heroin behind the librarian who was actually a white slave prostitute sold to us by a Chinese Tong gang member.

We gave them the Canadian nickel tour with a dose of nervous mindless chit chat, careful not to blow our cover with a slip of the tongue.

“You’ve done wonders with the island, I must say and your festival is a right good piece of neighborliness. We’ll come by every now and then and if you need any assistance, please don’t hesitate to ring us up.”

We thanked them, warily and waved as the boat patrol returned to the land of Dudley Do-Right. I had a feeling they were on a recon mission. I voiced my opinion to Danny who not only agreed, but felt the missing Joey and Paul had something to do with it.

“Well, Danny. Now what?”

Things were now starting to spin out of control. We had to do something fast about our two problems. We did find out from Joey, when we got him alone at AIM headquarters in Michigan that he had talked. He had been busted again for drugs and part of his deal was to spill his guts about the underground anti-war resistance to the FBI, and  Of course, we were the centerpiece.

“He’s got to go...and the FBI prick too,” Danny said as did the other AIM members.  We told Mr. Levesque, our benefactor and himself a member of the Quebec Separatist Movement who the Canadians really got their cookies frosted over, agreed….Joey had to go….Paul had to go...where? How?

Danny suggested turning them over to the IRA or Black Panthers….I suggested the Westies gang in New York the most vicious gang around...the Mafia hired them for their ultra dirty work….Christ, peace and love were getting fucked over by an emerging violence ...as John Lennon said years later about the Sixties social revolution…”We blew it!”

Chapter 40 - Body Bags

 

Joey and Paul made sure they were away from the island while we were paid a visit by the modern day version of the Redcoats are Coming...the Redcoats are coming. They would return the next morning claiming they hooked up with two Rhodes Scholars working their way through college as hookers. Enough Foster’s Ale would make you think a manatee was a mermaid on the make, but we knew better the real reason. Avoidance or guilt on Joey’s part for setting us up to topple like a house of marked cards. Paul, being, we suspected FBI would not feel guilt, but pride that he was undercover and making Mademoiselle Edgar Hoover one happy old queen.

They checked into the Provincial Hotel in Sudbury where a restless night’s sleep brought vivid flashback nightmares of the ghost of Vietnam past to the surface. In the last few months of duty in Vietnam before he deserted he was on detail to guard the body bags of dead comrades before they were shipped stateside for burial by family. You’ve seen the T-Shirts? “I’ve been to Miami, and all I got was this t-shirt.” In this case it read “I’ve been to Vietnam and all I got was this lousy bodybag!”

Joey had written in a letter to his grandmother before coming stateside on the leave leading to his desertion, that some of the other GI’s would rob the dead bodies of valuables. Money, watches, jewelry, Zippo lighters, any and everything that worth pawning or trading with the locals for some guys 14 year old sister for a gang bang.

One night Joey and Lt. Baldwin were on duty when they caught sight of  two Newark, New Jersey dagos, Sp-4’s going through the bags and laughing while they relieved the corpse of one fresh faced kid, all of maybe 19 from the farmlands of Kansas or some place where they play football in high school under Friday night lights as a religion.

Army protocol called for arrest and court martial, which Joey and the Lt. would see that they met their fate...stockade and hard labor cleaning latrines. In Vietnam the saying was “we’re in the shit” and in this case these two caught in the act were truly in the shit.

Lt. Baldwin, with no complaint from Joey, took both thieves to the second floor of the vacant building next door to the storage area. Without going into detail, it turns out they couldn’t fly from the second story window when being forcibly tossed out breaking a leg and an arm respectively after being wounded by fire from Lt. Baldwins .45 and Joey’s M-16 for attempting to escape! Someone had to speak for the dead.  

The next morning, after their wounds were treated and admitted they did indeed “try to escape” (they knew better than to veer from Lt. Baldwin’s report of events)they were taken before the company’s First Sergeant, Sgt. Starr.


This Starr marched to a different drummer..a military drummer. He had served in WWII..you know..the BIG ONE..as those guys with all the pins on their ball caps that reminds us to remember the Arizona while dousing themselves in booze at the VFW reliving the war one bullet or bomb at a time while getting bombed by an invading army led by Rear Admiral Jim Beam.

Sgt. Starr ran a tight ship too. His favorite phrase when he didn't believe you was "Aw, Horseshit!" Those two words were like a wall of words...those two words..said it all...it said.."you’re in my rifle sight and I'm ready to fire so don't fuck up!"  He was one step away from being Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now” living up river, severed from the military command. In Vietnam, according to Joey’s account Sgt. Starr was ten feet tall and bulletproof.

Back at the island Danny and I were discussing matters when one of the AIM members came ashore with news. Under the Treaty of 1868 at Fort Laramie  between the U.S. and the Lakota, “all retired, abandoned or out-of-use federal land was returned to the Native people who once occupied it. Since Alcatraz penitentiary had been closed on March 21, 1963, and the island had been declared surplus federal property in 1964, a number of Red Power activists felt the island qualified for a reclamation.”


The government however had other plans, so activists secretly were planning an occupation of the island in November. University student leaders of the Native American Student Organization at the University of California, Berkeley, with a larger group of student activists were lighting the fuse.

“I thought that was old news.” I mentioned as a matter of fact.

Danny Two Horse passed a lit joint my way, we didn’t have a peace pipe, so this was the next best thing,

“It is a continuation,” he explained. “Yes, in 1964, a small group of Sioux demonstrated by occupying the island for a few hours. The entire group was no more than maybe, 40 or 50 people, including photographers, reporters and a lawyer representing those claiming land stakes. Here’s the best part, our people offered  the federal government the same amount for the land that the government had initially offered them way back when...47 cents per acre, hell I can’t believe they turned down  $9.40 for the island. We even told the Feds  would be allowed to maintain and use of the Coast Guard  on the island. Pretty fucking generous if you ask me. Anyway the protesters after being threatened that they would be charged with felony.”

I could see it now. I guess I better have the camper checked out...looks like we’d be heading west once again. Myrika would go along to photograph the scene and I’d do my journalism schtick and whip up articles for my columns in the leftist magazines and underground papers I wrote for.

“Shit Danny, we’ll get busted one of these days. The Feds will be all over us on this one. Oh hell, you only live once.

“Yes,” Danny said wisely as a young punk version of a Lakota medicine man.”But in the spirit world you live forever...and you are allowed 10 young horny virgins for sex and other pleasures. It’s a good deal my paleface friend!”

Danny’s version of “heaven” sure beat the hell out of my Catholic vision of winged cherubs with holy chastity belts and eternal infinite celibacy!

 

 

Chapter 41 J. Edgar & The Hooverettes

 

The age of Aquarius was traveling faster than Tom Swift’s rocket ship going from high atop Cripple Creek to shit’s creek in under 1960’s seconds. The anti-war  movement was in the government crosshairs of the FBI. For every action there is a reaction.


England had her Queen. We had J. Edgar Hoover as a dangerous drag queen on a mission to purge the counter culture. His idea of giving democracy’s “enemies” an enema would blaze a blood soaked bulldozed path through honest protest igniting a firestorm of a backdraft that consumed the nation.

Hoover said  "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country are the Black Panthers” so he took the bullshit by the horns supervising a  counterintelligence (is that a governmental oxymoron or what? Counter Intelligence?) program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, and even assassinations of its leadership. The Panthers however, weren’t gonna take it in the ass. They had guns too, locked and loaded. They also had the Black Panther version of Sonny and Cher in the persons of Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver….who by the way was no relation to white bread shit on a shingle Beaver and Wally Cleaver.

As the Sixties waned into low tide of the dreaded disease of the  Disco infected Seventies, the Weather Underground had cast aside the peace pipe of Flower Power in favor of pipe bombs.  The discovered that gunpowder could and would be much better at  blowing up a building. A stick or two of dynamite was replacing a few spiritual sticks of Buddhist sandle wood incense.

In 1971...ka-boom, they bombed the Capital….1972 pop goes the Pentagon….by 1975 the State Department felt the shatter of explosives. The Weathermen were determined revolutionaries, not kids joyriding drunk  in  a stolen car.  They were the bastard child spawned as a splinter group of the SDS, which also began life in the People’s Republic of Ann Arbor, Michigan.  They had one agenda and that was  to destroy the American system. Conversely,  the FBI was out to destroy them. I blame all the violence erupting in the Seventies on Disco and K.C. and the Sunshine Band. You don’t need a weatherman or a sunshine band to know which way the wind blows.

The times were ripe for gays and lesbians and those ever popular switch hitting bi-sexuals to come out of the closet, bathhouses, public restrooms and piano bars  in an attempt to gain their civil rights faster than Liberace could tickle the ivories. In June of 1969, the Stonewall Riots officially began as cops raided the Stonewall Inn in New York’s  Greenwich Village. The riots were a series of violent demonstrations between  police and members of the Gay Community leading to the Gay Liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States.. (I remember watching Johnny Carson whose guest was noted gay singer, Monte Rock the III. Dressed resplendently in feather boa he was asked straight out, no pun intended, “Monte are you gay?” His response, priceless…”John,” he said, “I’m hilarious!”)

Ban the Bomb and Burn the Bra! The Women’s Liberation movement was also getting fuel injected especially by former cottontail Playboy Bunny, Gloria Steinem who brought sex appeal (OK, I’m a chauvinist pig..so sue me!) to the movement.

Rosie the Riveter would have been proud.  New York women organized a demonstration at the 1968 Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City. The feminists objected to the commercialization and racism of the pageant, in addition to the way it judged women on "ludicrous standards of beauty."  Today every August around the world women celebrate Go Topless Day and march and parade around topless displaying  nuclear nipples atop magnificent weapons of mass erection. It beats the hell out of Moscow’s May Day Military parade!

By 1969, the more radical feminist group, Redstockings, organized an abortion speakout in New York City where women could talk about their experiences with what was then  illegal abortions. The feminists wanted to respond to government hearings where previously only manly men had spoken about abortion deciding for women on the issue.  After this event, speak-outs spread across the nation; Roe v. Wade struck down many restrictions on abortion four years later in 1973.

Canada was not immune to the new violent turn in politics. Remember the line from the Doors, “We Want the World, and We Want it NOW!!” Even Canada, the French Canadians anyway were locking and loading.  The Front de libération du Québec (Put that all on one business card)  was a separatist and Marxist-Leninist (reminder, we aren’t talking Groucho and John here) paramilitary group in Quebec, a militant part of the Quebec sovereignty movement.

It conducted a number of bloody attacks for years which totalled over 10o plus violent incidents which killed eight people and injured mucho more. These attacks culminated with the bombing of the Montreal Stock Exchange in 1969, and with the October Crisis in 1970, which began with the kidnapping of the British Trade Commissioner. Ironically, during the  negotiations for his release, Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped and murdered by a cell of the FLQ.

Even Canada, yes, Om Mantra Canada had had enough. A federal crackdown ended the crisis and resulted  with a small number of FLQ members being granted refuge in Cuba. They had traded pastries for tacos, and snowshoes for cigars.


Darby O’Gill and his little people locked themselves behind closed doors in the Emerald Isle in 1969, the year  the Provisional Irish Republican Army or the IRA, not to be confused with a retirement program or a Gershwin,  began an armed paramilitary campaign of bombings and sniper attacks in Northern Ireland and terrorism in England, aimed at ending British rule in Northern Ireland in order to create a united Ireland. As Paul McCartney sang….Give Ireland Back to the Irish.





Then of course, our dear friend, sexy slinky Vietnam... The U.S. Army finally brings murder charges in 1969 against Lt. William Calley concerning the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai Village in March of 1968. (You’ve seen “Platoon?”) You get the idea except there was no Willem Defoe/Sgt. Elias around to punch Sgt. Barnes)

October ‘69 brought full tilt boogie  the 'Moratorium' peace demonstrations held in Washington and several U.S. cities which infuriated the  American conservatives including then VP Spiro Agnew  who called the protesters engaged in their Constitutional right to protest as Communist comprised of  (I remember this phrase well) "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals." This from a moron under investigation for tax fraud and other dark secrets...as a lawyer, he was eventually disbarred!) Talk about impudent...


In November, Tricky Dicky Nixon took to the vast wasteland TV tube asking for support from the silent (shhhh) majority  for his Vietnam strategy. He stated “the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris. North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that." Speaking of which he was correct...Nixon did indeed humiliate America and the office of the President all by himself. His ship of state had sprung a Watergate leak...perhaps he should have called a “plumber”.


The anti-war movement was on a roll and by November, The 'Mobilization' peace demonstration drew an estimated 250,000 in Washington for the largest anti-war protest in U.S. history.

Ah the good old days...by Autumn Myrika, Danny Two Horse, Kaylee  and I would be joining the tribes occupying  Alcatraz, but first there was a march on Washington that we would also be involved in.

Meanwhile, back In the present we had an FBI informant (Joey)  and an undercover agent (Paul) in our compost pile. We contacted our IRA friend Liam in Chicago and Mr. Levesque our contact with the Quebec Separatist Movement. They had certain expertise in matters of this nature. We had pests...it was time to call the exterminators….

Chapter 42 - Pest Control

 

Danny Two Horse offered a few suggestions on handling our Joey, the informant, and Paul, the FBI “rat” problem. After a few bowls of hashish and a couple of hits of speed...it made sense. That is, until the high wore off and reality sank in. I always hated coming down. If only someone would perfect the one way trip...other than brain damage and mental illness and a reservation in a rubber room loaded up on Thorazine...Thanks for the memories...and the tranqs!

The plan was to turn them over to anyone of our allies. I can see it now. Liam and his Irish Republican Army playmates would opt to insert a grenade in both their arses and give them a Belfast enema. Then of course, there were always the Black Panthers. I could envision a militant Huey “Kunta Kinte” Newton  roasting both Joey and Paul like Christmas chestnuts over an open fire selling tickets to a Bobby Seale Burn Baby Burn BBQ Bash.

We could have the extermination deed done in Quebec where no one would ever guess. The only problem there is they would have to be killed in French and in English. There was always the Mafia. We didn’t have any dealings with them but, being a Wop myself and growing up in an Italian neighborhood in Detroit I knew a greaseball dago made guy would whack a person for a slice of pizza and a canoli...badda bing...badda boom…

We could also turn them over to the American Neo-Nazi Party by simply telling them they are the Schwartz Brothers, a famous FBI team known as the Oy Vay Brigade and they said “Hitler was a cross-dressing Hebrew rabbi  in disguise and gave blow jobs to Jews for free!”

Of course, with the southern fried Civil Rights ya’ll movement in full toothless swing, we could always turn them over to a group of  backwoods banjo playing Ku Klux Klan lynch mobs claiming they were really Sidney Poitier educated Northern Negroes disguised as white folk here in Birmingham to ride the bus in the front seats, drink from a whites only drinking fountain, piss a whites only toilet and gang rape white women while listening to “We Shall Overcome” sung by James Brown.

Then again, we were running out of options...we were out of ideas of groups who prize secrecy and white sheets and burning crosses. We were down to seeds and stems. The Hell’s Angels, the Boy and/or Girl Scouts or a Catholic Girls Cheerleading Squad or a group of nuns with severe PMS reactions.

There’s always the Gay community...they were militant in those days. We could turn them over to them. If it were a Black Gay group,  they could play “drop the soap in the shower” followed by “pin my tail in the honkey.”

We eventually decided on a two pronged plan. Joey, the Junkie...we’d keep him hopped up and lit like Times Square on New Year’ s Eve in a cabin high up in the Yukon as close to the Arctic Circle we could find. He would be talking to polar bears about quantum physics for all we cared and mate with penguins and take one for a wife. He would be out of the way at least...and soon his supply would include a hot shot..we'd make sure of that and he would die of natural, well, natural drug related causes. No witnesses, no one would even find the body until the spring two years from his DOA date. He might leave behind a widowed penguin but, chances are she won’t spill the beans...one problem down...one to go...Mr. FBi, Paul.

We’d keep him on the island, force feed him speed balls and acid and opium for 30 day straight until he was completely paranoid. Then we’d take him to Washington, D.C. to the FBI building with an unloaded FBI weapon and plenty of methamphetamines and acid in him to power the Starship Enterprise... Then we would inform him that the building was the Communist Headquarters of America and he had orders to kill J. Edgar Hoover, who was in reality, Joe Stalin in drag guarding Lenin’s Tomb which was hidden in the executive men’s room. Either he would be arrested and a blithering idiot who would be admitted to a mental ward as delusional or...shot dead...either way worked for me..




The Alcatraz Occupation lasted for nineteen months, from November 20, 1969, to June 11, 1971, and was forcibly ended by the U.S. government. The Occupation of Alcatraz had a direct effect on federal Indian policy and, with its visible results, established a precedent for Indian activism.

The first nationwide Moratorium was followed on Saturday, November 15, 1969, by a second massive Moratorium march in Washington, D.C., which attracted over 500,000 demonstrators against the war, including many performers and activists. This massive Saturday march and rally was preceded by the March against Death, which began on Thursday evening and continued throughout that night and all the next day. Over 40,000 people gathered to parade silently down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

Chapter 43 - From Sea to Shining Sea

 

The death dealing deal was sealed! We all agreed we had  no other recourse except to neutralize Joey the ass kissing narco needle junkie and Paul, J. Edgar Hoover’s little snot nose  agent. Paul was no Sean Connery James Bond, by any means. No Turkish cigarettes, no martini’s shaken or stirred, Pussy Galores or buzzing beehive bevy of other buxom Bond babes lounging around the French Riviera casino pools.  We had to take care of this rat informant extermination business in a hurry, but first, Myrika and I would have to let Olivia in on the plan that would surely change to course of the river of her life.. In effect, we would be erasing Joey from her life. Prick that he was, she was still his girl even though the baby was mine...a product of a night of wine and weed during a threesome with her and my Myrika.

“How do you think she’ll take it, Babe?” I asked Myrika in an almost pleading give me absolution get me off the hook sort of way.

“You and Joey both fucked her, but your little rascal scored a hit. China is such a sweet baby, and Joey seems like he’d rather hit the needle than change a diaper. He’s no good for her or the baby. I think it will be OK. Want me to talk to her?”

“Yeah, would you...please. I’ll take the hit if she puts up any resistance.”

Myrika just smiled that melt your heart make your knees weak and give me a hard-on smile of hers and went to see Olivia as she would be alone. Joey and Paul were down on the beach scrounging drift wood and downed timber from the treeline for a fire tonight.

I turned my attention to Danny Two Horse who had been viewing and listening intently to the recent exchange between Myrika and me. He approved of the direction the compass was pointing. “We have to get this going Danny. We have to leave soon for Washington for the march. Should be as big as Woodstock, amigo! I also want Myrika and Olivia along. We can drop China off at her mom and dad’s house in Detroit. Olivia will arrange it.”

Danny, ever the organized medicine man of our Anglo-Native group also reminded me we had to be in San Francisco taking part in the planned Native takeover of the former federal prison Alcatraz. We would be joining tribes from  across the nation as part of a Michigan contingent. Myrika, a German national photographing the event for publication to accompany and enhance the written word of  my articles from inside the protest I would be  banging out on my portable typewriter for my magazine clients as I would also be doing at the second Moratorium March on D.C. She and I and Danny had a full plate of events roller coasting at once, overlapping, overlaying, over under sideways down as the Yardbirds would say and sing.

Myrika came back with Olivia, both smiling, yet I could see a faint tear stain on Olivia’s face which I could understand.
“It’s OK, Mickey.” Olivia said forgivingly. “I know it has to be done. He’s changed for the worse. He doesn’t care about me or the baby, and he would sell his soul, and maybe me and the baby for a fix.  I have you and Myrika and Danny as my family now. Most of all, China has a good man for her daddy now.

Danny was grinning too, he was indeed  family and now it was official.

“Not bad Kemo Sabe,” he joked. “She will have a cowboy and an Indian for protection. Deadly combination, yes?”

I had to laugh. “As long as I ain’t General Custer, my friend!”

The plan was put into play. Within hours I placed a call  asking for a  meeting with Mr. Levesque who would have the honor of kidnapping our FBI shadow keeping him in a Separatist hideout in Montreal conditioning him for a month on acid. We’re talking about  the good shit too, from Toronto, along with a cornucopia of the best of Can-Am pharma karma. When ready we would transport him to D.C. with us when we attended the Beltway Bash of Peace and turn him loose in J. Edgars playhouse of fear and suspicion with his service revolver full of blanks and  his muddled mind with a full metal  jacket of  paranoia.

Danny on our end would take care of Joey luring him to a meeting in Ontario with members of the Munsee Delaware tribe who would then escort him to a small village in the Northwest Territories called Inuvik smack dab inside the Arctic Circle where he would vaporize himself on a steady supply of junk for a week or so, until he would climb the Everest of overdose with a speedball hot shot we would supply.

These Munsee Delaware people were not native to Ontario, but had migrated there after the American government forced them out of their own homelands. Their descendants still live in Ontario today and friends of the Ojibwe and Huron tribes in Michigan as well as Ontario. Driven from their homelands in the states, they had a score to settle. Joey seemed the perfect FBI informant symbolic  Little Big Horn offering.

The die was cast, the marked deck of cards were  stacked and Operation Fuck You was underway within the week, as we got Flashback, our trusty camper road ready for another from sea to shining sea trip from east to west..to Washington D.C. to march for peace...then to the west coast and Alcatraz to declare war on the cavalry!!

I told you, the Sixties were a schizoid placenta of a Picasso rendering of politics. The country had gone from Camelot to the Great Society to the Silent Majority and  was spinning out of control now ready to Kick Out the Jams, Motherfuckers!!

Chapter 44 - We Have A War to End

 

1969 was already a year of atomic powered speed in science, protest and politics. In July the U.S. had taken one small step for man, and one giant step for mankind, OK, lets not forget womankind either or let’s just bust the PC pinata wide open….HUMANKIND.

Outer space has beckoned we Earthlings as tempting as any short skirted street hooker flags down a customer in a Cadillac on a Saturday night. Space,  a sexual galaxy filled with planetary orbs and orgasms. Sure. Space is Sexy! Seductive! Seducing! Who doesn’t want be an astronaut enjoying sex in a gravity free space station floating aimlessly with the cosmic Kama Sutra co-ed of your choice? Houston...we are having the time of our life.

Now, this year, we’ve been to the Moon and managed to get our moon rocks off, so what’s next? Venus of course is a hotbed of Amazonian Females. Venus is for Lovers!

If extreme solar system sports spots tickle your macho or macho-ette fancy then make it Mars! It’s an Arctic wonderland for solar cross country skiing and ice fishing for 3 headed man killing bass. Think dodgeball is fun? Try ducking a rain of thousands of small meteorites. It’s about as fun as dodging a cinder block dropped from a freeway overpass during rush hour.

Saturn is the most flamboyant of the planets surrounded by a large ring the screams FASHION STATEMENT! It’s actually a planetary runway with ten moons! Some moons are rated PG and others are rated, well….if you’ve seen any porn in a darkened theater then you’ll prefer the moon Pandora just for her box alone…

For the Gay and Lesbian crowd, they’ll clap hands in glee when they take in Uranus (so to speak!) It has a cabaret nightlife to die for. Piano bars aplenty with sequined Liberace impersonators from the Outer Limits of Uranus and the Lesbian Review from the Torrid Twilight Erogenous Zone from the Venusian Vagina Vector.

Round out your space trip to trippy little Pluto. The forgotten planet.  The sad planet. The Hubert Humphrey Planet. If you’re a senior citizen and prefer a dry heat, then Mercury is for you. It’s the closest rest home planet to the sun. Each day on Mercury is equal to 58 days on Earth. You never sleep anyway so you can still make it to the early bird special..anytime you please! Parking is a breeze with plenty of handicapped jet pack parking spaces available.

We were pedal to the metal eating asphalt to get our asses to Washington, D.C. after dropping Baby China off at Olivia’s parents house in Detroit. Ohio was whizzing by as it should. By November 15 was when the Moratorium March on Washington would kick in. Myrika and Olivia were planning the route getting all Rand McNally with myself at the hipster helm of the camper, Flashback  leading the way followed by Danny Two Horse and two rather burly Indians from AIM guarding the whacked out jazzed out Paul who was FBI on LSD whose mind was now MIA and soon would be turned loose with an empty gun in FBI headquarters and soon DOA in his psychedelic quest  for invisible Commies and “red” planet Martians hanging around the water cooler.

Paul was so hopped up on LSD and speed that was given to him daily I’m sure he was walking through a psychedelic minefield of funhouse mirrors diminishing his mental state into a barrel of oatmeal where flying dragons, invisible giant insects and hallucinatory hobgoblins were his constant companions. After 30 solid days of this, I was sure it would even confuse Confucius after a day of meditating on a plane of spiritual medicating and levitating over the Yangtze River.  If he were lucky and merely committed to a mental ward he’d attain Nirvana if they  gave him a bag of colorful balloons to play with in his cell.


“I wonder how Joey is doing,” said Olivia.

Ah,  Joey. I forgot about him what with all the excitement surrounding the upcoming protest march and pulling the plug on Paul.

“Probably walking on snowshoes thinking the North Pole is a pile of smack!” I answered sardonically. “Or he’s looking for Santa Claus and his hidden meth lab. He’d probably roll an elf in a dark alley for some pixie dust to shove up his nose!”

Bad attempt at humor as Myrika gave me a gentle shot in the ribs and shot me a look that said, show some compassion. “I’m sorry Olivia, just in a mood I guess.  Sorry.”

“It’s OK, Mickey. I’m glad to be rid of him, but this way seems so final.”

“It is Olivia. Very final and has to be. He could land me in prison for a few years or a body bag in Saigon. No thank you. Besides, I have you and China to take care of, well with Myrika’s help.”

We fired up a joint as we crossed the Pennsylvania state line as we made our way to the East Coast. In two days we’d be on the Mall in the shadow of the Washington Monument with as we found out later with over half a million radicals, activists of all races, and vets against the war. Folk singers would folk us and speakers would speak to us. It was Woodstock without Joe Cocker or the Jefferson Airplane. We Shall Overcome would be sung in unison and acid would flow freely. At the same time some 18 year old American and his 18 year old Vietnamese counterpart would buy a bullet and breathe their last breath. Guns don’t kill people...Politicians kill people!

“Well, me dear ladies. If all goes well. We’ll be back home by Christmas, after this march and the Alcatraz thing. We’ll be stoned in the Canadian snow...home again.”

The thought of Christmas on acid with Myrika, Olivia, Danny and the whole gang, was a rush. The tree alone loaded with those classic bubble lights imitating a Fillmore light show blinking turning the cabin into a Karma filled kama sutra beaded curtain incense filled harem of holiday cheer with the turntable spinning with the Seeds ‘Pushing too Hard’ to create a blue moody Moody Blue’s Magoo version of Johnny Mathis singing ‘Hey, Joe’ you’ll shoot your eye out kid, with that gun in your hand. Soon the stockings hung with care begin to stare back at you and the toys begin to talk in tongues and Alice appears in her Wonderland Wonder Bra with her designer Cheshire Cat thong running screaming “I’m late...I’m late .. I missed my period and got pregnant on a date!”

First things first, damn it. We had a war to end……..

Chapter 45 - The Moratorium March

 

 

Washington D. C. in November can be one of those frosty fall is in the air plaid shirt and hiking boots kind of place. Flashback, the ageing yet spritely camper was coasting us into the Beltway Political Bordello of D.C. where the hookers are the American public getting fucked by their own Congressional district pimps  the White House a mere whorehouse  for the pleasure of special interests.

LBJ, Hey, Hey, was sent packing back to Texas where he couldn’t bomb anyone in Cambodia, Laos or Vietnam. He could get deliriously  drunk and send troops by mistake into Oklahoma to quell some non-existent fully fantasized Indian uprising or hunt down Pancho Villa in El Paso while singing Marty Robbins songs about cantinas and senoritas.

Now we were going headlong  into the Nixon era kickback compound of Bebe Rebozo the Clown and the Peanut Rogues Gallery of future Watergate poster children. “Do not try these break-ins at home kids, we are professionals!”

We were ready to join the Moratorium and bring the walls of Jericho tumbling down marching and singing selections from the Pete Seeger songbook. Turns out Nixon was trying to checkmate us. According to released documents and an article in The Nation magazine,  “In 1969, as the anti-war movement was reaching a peak, Richard Nixon's White House staff debated what they could do to "show the little bastards" what kind of man they were up against. They were concerned about what would be the biggest antiwar demonstration in US history on Nov. 15, 1969, when half a million people came to Washington D.C. to demand that an end to the war in Vietnam.  Documents from the Nixon Library provide fascinating details about the debate within the White House staff two months earlier about how the president should respond. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, at the time an influential member of Nixon's inner circle, suggested that the president could "take away the day" from the protesters if he would "close down" the White House "in sympathy." "That will show the little bastards," Moynihan said. He knew the kind of talk that impressed Nixon.”

The Mother of Moratorium Marches was set for the coming Saturday. We arrived on Wednesday and set-up shop on Theodore Roosevelt Island park, across a bridge in the Potomac River. We weren’t the only ones. It was a carnival cornucopia of the counterculture. We were among friends...we found a spot where we could berth Flashback and allowed room for Danny Two Horse and his behemoth pick up truck camper he named T-Rez, the Motor City dinosaur. He would meet up with us later, after dropping our FBI psychedelic rat at a Resistance safe house in Largo. They’d keep him stoned until we were ready to unleash him at FBI Headquarters during the height of the March on Saturday.

As Abe Lincoln said, “A little bit of revolution is a good thing.”

We all sat up after Danny and company returned and invited our neighbors over for some some hash and weed. Being perfect guests, they provided some righteous mescaline to go with the guitar playing of Myrika who sang “This Land is Your Land” in German followed by four more hours of laughter and manic munchie mania.

Myrika and Olivia looked perfectly beatific in the light of the campfire. Angelic warriors, and I wanted to make love to both of them right there, except for the fact, Olivia had fallen under the spell of mescaline mind massage and had taken a liking to one of our new friends at the campground. A likable enough good looking young Navajo young man from Arizona.

Danny and Kaylee were visibly getting ready to ‘skin the buffalo’ as Danny liked to refer to sex. They’d be rocking T-Rez all night long...I had no doubt. Even the two AIM guards who came along seemed to have connected too with a pair of two thin like Twiggy thin paleface twins, they later recalled referring to them as the Pick-up Sticks.

The fire’s embers were glowing...voices reduced to murmurs and everyone appeared paired up for the night. Myrika was already wet where it counts, I could tell by her musky scent that always rose from between her thighs and gave her away. When it came to that scent I was a bloodhound on her path. She could tell I was ready to lay down with her in an opium filled hillside on the way to the Emerald City!

Tomorrow was Thursday, the night of the March of Death preceding Saturday’s Moratorium Mother Fucker of a march on the White House. As Myrika and I let our naked bodies sweat merge with each other as her moist loins became a river of no return I was about to navigate, I had to wonder. Was Richard Nixon fucking Pat Nixon this fine sensual night or had his campfire expired long ago? I wonder if Pat had a river of no return...or was she the Bonneville Salt Flats? Not sure, but pretty positive Henry Kissinger was doing the Beltway Bop with some southern Senators debutante daughter impressing her with hand puppets and pop corn. I could hear him now, “If vee fuck now, I gif you lollipop!”

 

 

Chapter 46 - We Blew It

Todays Gen X for the most part aren't looking for answers anymore that might be blowin' in wind my friend. Bob Dylan has been reduced to the status of an interesting icon and curiosity of an era of protest when music by the bards lit the path of protest from Joe Hill and Woody Guthrie to Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan. Today, they occupy space on the protest pedestal as "a before my time" scraggly old folkies whose "folk you" days are long gone. Dylan and Ochs and Baez and Seeger are as interesting to today’s youth as my collection of vinyl records is to a visitor from outer space. OK, I admit it, maybe the vandals did steal the handle.

Or so my Casey  Jones riding my train high on cocaine thoughts were racing along Thursday as we busied ourselves getting ready for tonight’s March against death just hours away. We had no idea what to expect. Would the cops start beating our heads bloody like ripe  melons? Would Nixon surrender and turn himself over to us for judgement? Would Henry Kissinger actually admit he was Adolph Hitler’s illegitimate love child from a tryst with Hermann Goering? Would Gen. Westmoreland, or as we affectionately referred to him as Waste-more-land,  admit he was a Viet Cong secret agent and liked to lead the troops in battle in drag dressed as Jane Fonda? It’s America...anything is possible.

All day we prepared for the “March against Death,” which would begin as the sun began to set on  this fine revolutionary evening. We joined the crowd of 40,000 plus rucksack revolutionaries for the big parade of which not one of 76 trombones were visible. We were  as silent as surreal serial killer Richard Speck was when stalking student nurses in a Chicago dorm as we made our way  down Pennsylvania Avenue to the war machines White House. We were each handed large placards with the name of a dead American soldier or a destroyed Vietnamese village written in bold letters. We were symbolic pallbearers now.

Christ, first there was the death of hip in the Haight, now the march of the living to honor the dead by placing the placards  in makeshift coffins. All quiet on the Beltway front that Thursday, but the winds changed on Friday when all hell broke loose. Not even sure how it happened… what sparked the chaos...whose fuse was short. When we reached DuPont Circle that Friday evening the police bomped us with tear gas and charged the crowd.  The weirdest part was that we also marched without problems Friday afternoon to the White House to see if Tricky Dicky wanted to come out and play...Red Rover, Red Rover, Let Nixon Come Over. I guess the cops only like to bloody up the peace queers in the cover of darkness.

Myrika was first to notice a very unusual sight. She nudged me and Danny Two Horse pointing in the direction of some uniformed cops flashing peace symbols on the inside of their jackets in a show of support. She got pictures and I jotted it down in my notebook. Should the shit hit the fan...look for the peace police!

We were trying to keep this peaceful. No more Chicago’s please. Any more brain damage by police batons and bad acid and I’d end up in catatonic world of Cheshire cats and drooling banjos!

Danny said, “We have to do our best not to react to any catalyst. We will win by following a spirit path of peace. Remember, both Gandhi and King led by example, as did Moses when he said..Let My People Go. Gandhi got independence and King had a dream. Both men had what a leader needs to lead and inspire others to action...commitment to a cause...conviction of purpose...and the heart to see the battle through to it's conclusion. We must remain united!”

My reply was quick and not without irony. “Yes, and both were shot dead! Lincoln if I remember said, ‘United We Stand, Divided We Fall’ and took a box seat at Ford’s Theater where he never made it to the final curtain. Look Danny, the spirit world aside, I like what Thomas Jefferson said, ‘The people should not be afraid of their government. Their government should be afraid of it's people!’

“Geez, no wonder you guys bit the dust at Little Big Horn!”

Today, nobody wants a dose of Quinn the Eskimo anymore. Woody Guthries land is no longer your land or my land. Instead it belongs to the corporate interests and politicians who rape  and violate the environment on a daily, hourly basis. Organic mantras of peace, brotherhood and sisterhood have been sucker punched by the behemoth corporations. The peace symbol has become as dinosaur extinct as tie-dyed Grateful Dead bears, while peaceful protest or protest of any kind is stuck in negative neutral of the American left today.


Once we had cleared the area that Friday, we were highly animated. Tomorrow was another day. (You can tell I thought I was in ‘Gone with the Wind’) On Saturday, we were still buzzed from the night before at the camper with our newfound comrades in tear gas, once you shared tear gas together...you are brothers and sisters of the canister.

Saturday we Myrika and I were hand in hand, holding tight to each other as  we all assembled on Pennsylvania Ave. once  again along with over 500,000 other demonstrators against the war, including   Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, Arlo Gutherie who probably brought in a couple of keys, to Ed Saunders and the Fugs.  President Richard Nixon said about the march in the Washington Post  "Now, I understand that there has been, and continues to be, opposition to the war in Vietnam on the campuses and also in the nation. As far as this kind of activity is concerned, we expect it; however under no circumstances will I be affected whatever by it."

Imagine standing with half a million demonstrators across from the White House where  Pete Seeger led us all in singing John Lennon's new song "Give Peace A Chance", Pete’s  voice above the crowd, yelling, gently, as Pete will do  "Are you listening, Nixon?", "Are you listening, Agnew?", "Are you listening, Pentagon?" between all of us singing, "All we are saying ... is give peace a chance"

Later, violence erupted when police used tear gas again on some of the more radical elements  who had split off from the main rally to march on the Justice Department. That crowd of about 6,000, led by  the Youth International Party or Yippies, threw rocks and bottles and burned U.S. flags. Almost 100 demonstrators were arrested. So much for Lennon’s pleas for peace.

As John Lennon said later in an interview as did Peter Fonda’s Captain America character in “Easy Rider” ‘Man...we blew it!”

The Alcatraz Occupation lasted for nineteen months, from November 20, 1969, to June 11, 1971, and was forcibly ended by the U.S. government. The Occupation of Alcatraz had a direct effect on federal Indian policy and, with its visible results, established a precedent for Indian activism.

Chapter 47 - Kids Do the Damnedest Things.

 

The sexy Sixties were whacko weird as hell, but, on the other hand  more fun than target shooting  with Helen Keller after spinning her around five times to disorient her. Duck and Cover!! One of the stranger things to transpire was Art Linkletter blaming LSD for making his daughter leap to her death from an upper apartment window. He came out guns blazing, a real John Wayne schmuck blaming the psychedelic culture. “Dirty hippies!!”  the Berkeley Barb newspaper in the Bay area had a retaliatory monster headline…(for real! I still have it in my archives) “Hey, Art. Kids do the damnedest things!” Turns out she didn’t take  LSD that night according to friends there with her, but mental problems of her own pushed her to suicide regarding issues with her family and her failed acting career...but the Barb headline did add some stoned comic relief in a bizarre bong sort of way.

Now, back in D.C. the Sunday morning after the Moratorium March, there would still be throngs of milling subterranean creatures of the field jacket and jeans sub-cultue counterculture still  in town keeping the cops, congress, and the FBI edgy and tense.  Perfect conditions to grab the doped up FBI undercover agent, Paul, from the local safehouse we had placed him in until we were ready to inject his messed up mental state of  mind from a month of constant daily doses of  LSD and speed, a real hipster breakfast of champions into the FBI building tripping out looking for pinko’s & communists with only a .45 loaded with blanks while he himself was loaded on a full metal  jacket of LSD 25.  What fun!

We picked him up and drove back downtown to the haunted house of J. Edgar Hoover. Paul was babbling stoned in the backseat about how he had served bravely with Sgt. Pepper’s lonely hearts club artillery platoon in the Napoleonic Wars and how they all got wasted on Bonaparte Purple Haze on the corner of Haight-Austria before hitting the Fillmore in Waterloo in colorful uniforms riding unicorns.  We almost believed him. Sounded plausible the way he explained it, but then again life was a lava lamp to me in those days, and even an atomic explosion could pass as a light show at the Fillmore on any Saturday night.

We rolled the camper to a stop a block away from the FBI building where Danny Two Horse and I eased our psychedelic Lee Harvey Oswald onto the street and walked him across to Hoover’s Pee Wee’s Playhouse while Myrika, ever the perfect gun moll, kept the motor running while acting as lookout.

We made double damned sure Paul had his secret agent decoder ring and pistol in hand while we  filled his head now substituting as a chemical pinata with final instructions to go in and be tough. Take no prisoners, take no bullshit and bring the J. Edgar imposter to justice. We basically wanted Paul to come off as a deranged mental defective so anything he might tell them about the inner workings of the War Resistance would be taken with a grain of salt and he would be institutionalized at some happy farm upstate drooling and playing solitaire with a “talking” mouse that would visit him nightly in his cell.

We didn’t really think he would be shot dead outside Hoover’s office door by five agents with live ammo. We waited in the doorway of a building across the street when all of a sudden...all Hoover hell broke loose. People were running from the building, unarmed clerical help no doubt. We could hear numerous shots coming from the lobby area along with the obligatory high pitched screaming and “drop your weapon” commands that usually accompanies such goings on.

Later reports showed that Paul fired blanks first at what he felt were KGB agents taking over Washington. The FBI agents working that day didn’t recognize him as he was from the Detroit office anyway. They thought he was some damned hippie/yippie with a gun having traded the flowers in his hair for a .45 automatic. Yep...Jerry Garcia had become Dirty Harry!

We had delivered Paul to his final reward. Now he could infiltrate the Pearly Gates and inform on subversive angels under St. Peters command and get the goods and blow the whistle on the Virgin Mary, a real film noir gun moll if ever there was one. St. Michael was really Humphrey Bogart and God himself was the Maltese Falcon!

We got in the camper, aimed her towards the setting sun...California...and Alcatraz. The tribes were gathering to take over the island and Myrika and I would cover the story from the inside while Danny Two Horse, his girl Kaylee and Danny’s friends in his car would carry the sacred spear of the Michigan Ojibwe tribe.

As ‘Flashback’ cruised away from the FBI building..I couldn’t help but feel guilty having set up Paul for assassination...oh hell...Kids do the damnedest things!

Chapter 48 - The Road to Alcatraz

On the road to Alcatraz was not exactly a schtick filled slapstick vaudevillian Bob Hope-Bing Crosby musical comedy extravaganza replete with Broadway show tunes with Carmen Miranda and a head full of tropical fruit.

We had one stop to make first before we joined the Tribes for the occupation of “the Rock” as it was called by everyone from Al Capone to Machine Gun Kelly. It was no longer being used and was unofficially up for grabs, or so it seemed on the surface by the Native Americans who were re-grouping for  gathering of the tribes. Fuck up this treaty “Great White Father’ who lives in Washington and the mystical white buffalo will gore your ass!

Danny Two Horse wanted to stop at the Ocqueoc Indian Reservation in Michigan on our way westward ho from the Moratorium march in Washington in order to pick up a rez buddy, Jackson Anoki Begay who didn’t want to miss out on any of the promised death wish action  of the Alcatraz occupation either. He’d hitch a ride with Danny, Kaylee and Danny’s two swarthy co-horts  in Danny’s old school heavy as a ton of bricks Buick, yet he would be storing  his small amount of gear, knapsack, sleeping bag, peyote (we hoped!)  in our camper, “Flashback.”

Olivia  had invited her new found Canadian lover, Martin Bouchard, along for the ride riding  with us. I imagine they would be making love along the way which got me to thinking of putting up with some form of intense loud vocal Canadian moose mating call imitations in the wild signalling orgasm which could be a distraction to my own no holds barred American red, white and blue tag team fornication forays with Myrika.

We didn’t have much time to spare if we wanted to be in on the Alcatraz protest from the gentlemen start your engines cultural diversity dragstrip starting line.  When we finally arrived at the Mich-Rez there were armed sheriff’s deputies and reservation police roaming around patrolling the roads leading away from the entrance. I also spotted one suit and tie type with a blue windbreaker with the letters F-B-I on the back in big bold intimidating letters. Damn...there’s no getting away from these pricks. They’re everywhere in numbers greater than venereal disease in a New Orleans whorehouse.

We drove slowly, cautiously onto the reservation, with Danny taking point to lead and get us  to his friend, Anoki Begay’s run down outhouse of an abode of grey cinder block walls and a very un-stylish home beautiful sheet metal roof that would be at home if it were attached to a quonset hut in a Phillipine village, where when it rained the drops added a flamenco dance sound bop..bop...bop..bang...bang... loud enough to drown out the sounds of the War of 1812 overtures cannonade even if the cannons themselves were fired off live from the adjacent bathroom.

We were definitely an item of curiosity to the Marshall Dillon’s in squad cars who couldn’t take their gaze off of us. We didn’t hurry as we didn’t want to excite any itchy trigger fingers with a lust to draw Indian and Hippie blood just yet.

It didn’t take too long to find ourselves at Anoki’s  front door. I noticed there was no “welcome” mat awaiting us. It was a foxhole-esque compound straight out of an Audie Murphy movie, not a home with 2.3 kids roller skating happily about being chased gleefully by their friendly  mixed hound dog , Ol’ Blue.

Pulling to a stop Myrika noticed peering eyes were watching us from inside the makeshift hovel followed by  the door bursting  open and out popped Anoki,  a deranged Jack in the Box puppet with a pop goes the weasel Jimmy Stewart Winchester rifle in hand motioning for us to hurry inside.

“I don’t know what’s going on, Myrika,” I cried out. “Hurry, let’s hustle!”

We were introduced to Anoki briefly and sat down to a cold beer in hand as well as being handed a weapon. Myrika seemed in her comfort zone with the cold steel rifle in hand  exciting her flesh. I made a mental note to let her have her way with me in the future, her favorite Myrika on top of me while she would be dressed in a Catholic school girls plaid skirt, barefoot holding me at gunpoint. Now, that’s entertainment. She liked role playing anyway, but we hadn’t played Viking invasion with a fair amount of rape and pillaging for a month now.

Anoki finally spoke and addressed our misfortune  at arriving when we did

“Bad timing, my friends. Bad day. The FBI is here trying to bust some of the guys from the American Indian Movement, accusing us of making bombs to use on federal buildings. Bullshit! They also accused my chief, Running Deer of shooting up the Indian Affairs office here on the rez earlier today!”

“Jesus, Danny,” I whispered to my peaceful friend from the UP, “What the hell do we do now? Your friends have to work on their social skills a little bit. Guns and Bombs? Christ, we’re dead I tell you. DOA, dormant, no more breathing or fucking...that kind of goddamned dead!”

While I contemplated an early demise ala St. Valentines Day Massacre, Myrika and Kaylee were busy in animated conversation on what course of action we should all take. After all, we were just dropping by to pick the guy up and head west. Now we appeared to have stumbled into the modern version of the OK Corral...and believe me I was not the Lone Ranger, Danny Two Horse was no Tonto and Myrika sure as hell wasn’t Annie Oakley!

We dared to leave the safety, well, relative safety of what can only best  be described as a shack to venture out onto the porch and into the gathering dusk and dust to kept a watchful eye out for an attack. We  were now armed men and women.  Danny, myself and Anoki sat on the porch  watching the sun begin to set and a cloud of dust building up on the dirt road that led straight to where we were enjoying a home brewed beer. Myrika joined us while inside the others were loading weapons.

As the dust and vehicles got closer we noticed two unmarked cars  in hot pursuit of a rusted out  pickup truck belonging to one of Anoki’s friends, Jimmy Eagle, yet another activist upsetting the government apple cart on the reservation.

“It is a nasty color isn’t it?” Anoki asked as if my answer would explain the origins of the universe.

I had to laugh. He was right. That was one ugly truck.
Anoki  took a swig from his beer, then with the seriousness of a wise old medicine man said, “We call it shit-brown. Yep. Here comes old shit-brown. No other words can describe it or do it proper justice,” he nodded in affirmation of his own internal epiphany.

“Yep, shit-brown,” I agreed. It was one hell of an ugly truck.

Ol’ Shit Brown was being chased by another vehicle. One  of those funeral black unmarked except for obvious government license plates cars with black wall tires. They were in full chase mode.

Turns out they were FBI and probably would get a "what the fuck" award for heroism and bravery beyond the call of duty, on a level of those lauded in the capture of Bonnie and Clyde. That is if  they could bring in shit browns driver Jimmy in...dead or alive I suspected.

As the pursuit proceeded closer to Anoki’s where the beer was now getting warm, the two FBI agents in the chase vehicle were  coming  under heavy fire from rifles blasting  from Shit Brown’s two passengers.  The two agents were unable to return fire from their .38's. Why, I have no idea. Fire at me and I'll find a way to fire back. I guess those .38 specials weren't so special after all. Mayday calls were issued and as another agent vehicle arrived to join the chase he too was subject to intense fire. Soon, the pick-up truck arrived at Anoki’s with  the FBI  right on their tailgate.

At that point with the three FBI agents stepping out of the cars everyone inside Anoki’s came outside armed and with angry looks that I could see culminating in disaster. It was Custer’s last stand all over again!

We found out earlier that day,  law enforcement had  shot  a ranking local member of AIM, who managed to elude capture after he was wounded. The FBI claimed that he and another AIM member, Anoki, in fact, had shot two FBI agents dead and their bodies were removed from their vehicles and dumped in a small quarry pit, while the vehicles were torched.

“You know Danny, this is not good. If they find out I’m ducking the draft and working for the resistance, I’m dead meat, Amigo,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. Safe all these months underground now I had walked into the jaws of the FBI. Myrika, was also at risk of being deported on her expired visa. Either way if General FBI Custer wins this stand-off...we’re all going to prison!

Things were getting tense as more lawdogs showed up and by 6:30 the dinner show got underway as the FBI began firing into Anoki’s  house where we had all started to retreat. It was time for a firefight and we had makeshift protection behind overturned tables, chairs, a large couch and even Jimmy’s prized color TV was ready to put its cathode ray tube life on the line!







Bullets created a barrage of gunfire spraying the building turning the door into Swiss cheese . We returned fire to the phantoms in the growing dark of dusk advancing slowly but deliberately when we heard a car start up out back. It was then I noticed...Danny had flown the coop and was heading out to get his Buick and Flashback fired up for an escape...real old west jump from from the roof and into the saddle Range Rider stuff.

Anoki  was hit in the shoulder, I took a bullet grazing my  arm and the large  TV, Anoki’s pride and joy that dominated the corner of the living  room was now DOA after a shotgun blast inflicted serious injury to every GE tube inside.

The FBI agents  were now advancing  on the porch when out of the stark landscape...we could hear cars and trucks rushing to our stonghold...reinforcements were coming! An army of Native American pickup trucks with armed passengers in the back beds and on the running boards firing at the agents and deputies who were now on the offensive and scattered as we emerged from Anoki’s returning lead and catching them in crossfire as they scrambled for their cars and beat a hasty retreat.

We had arrived earlier at the OK Corral...now we were victorious at the Little Big Horn!
Nice to be on the winning side!

Chapter 49 - Toronto Gives Peace a Chance

While we were   steamrolling across that crazy patchwork landscape of flat rectangular states that define the Midwest on our quest to reach the golden bikini clad beach bunny coast of California, Joey was now a prisoner of king heroin in Toronto, having been taken there by our contacts with the Quebec Separatist Movement. Joey had become a liability to the draft resistance movement as soon as he turned FBI snitch to avoid a lengthy stay in Michigan’s Jackson prison. We had already orchestrated the demise of the FBI infiltrator, Paul, that Joey so willingly brought into our operation. We wanted Joey out of way and the French Canadians had the perfect plan. In all, in an effort to save lives…..we were willing to sacrifice two lives, including one belonging to my best friend since first grade. The moral compass was spinning wildly out of control.

Joey was taken to an area called Yorkville in Toronto, the Canadian version of the Emerald City, Greenwich Village and Haight Ashbury all rolled into one monster bowl of hipster holy hipness, but decidedly with a definite Canadian flavor to it, awash in a counter culture of  hipsters, folkies, runaway, pimps, prostitutes and enough white powder dope from southern France packed aboard sinister Algerian freighters shipped in to sink the Bismark. Seems, Joey, following the heroin brick road fell in with a group of Canadian bikers called the Vagabonds whose forte was dealing drugs and beating people up for the hell of it. Two things they didn’t need a college degree to excel in.

The ribald spirit of revolution was running rampant on a full tank of youthful exuberance in Toronto as it was everywhere in those days through nonconformity, creativity, drug and sexual exploration. Toronto  was Canada’s underground  ground zero. Music? You betcha as they say in Ontario...Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn, Buffy St. Marie,  and Neil Young to name a few gravitated to its nucleus.



The summer of ‘69 also brought one hell of a peace rally/concert to town, partly funded by those madcap marauding band of motorcycle misfits, the Vagabond motorcycle club. It was the infamous Live Peace in Toronto Concert with John and Yoko, Eric Clapton and Klaus Voorman among others. The show almost went up in smoke, however when John and Yoko decided at the last minute to stay in bed and fuck for peace. Clapton was pissed off by all accounts and reamed their  collective asses. Look, John, you can fuck Yoko anytime, but don’t fuck over the fans or the peace movement. Peace in Vietnam now...a piece of ass later.


By this time Joey was living on the streets. He would fly high at night with a jet stream fix in his arm, a communist sympathizer now and a junkie...in an ocean of heroin
on streets full of Chinese restaurants, one room bars with one broken stool, deep within the loins of the tenderloin.  



By the day of the Peace Concert Joey  was dog  weary at the end of that day as he made his way to the concert walking it seemed upwards against the downward flow of a thousand liquid rain children freely falling from the skies, as other children had broken free from the split apart pinata and spilled out, falling and bouncing down the street  where  he carefully dodged them artfully as he stumble walked in a drug stupor.

Joey stopped to shoot up in some vacant alley carefully unwrapping his works kit tied gently with ribbon, a child unwrapping a doll in the early morning of a snowy Christmas, he would prepare himself for the injection, a prize fighter, a pugilist warming up in the locker room to step into the ring of addiction and shoot up while humming syringe hymns with Lenny Bruce junkie juice flowing hot and steamy as if he were at a pharmaceutical convention, with unconventional doctors  wearing togas stolen from New York City bath house locker rooms while dancing to the clack clack music of a typewriter with keys that stuck and ribbons that were worn and faded.

It was almost showtime...Peacetime and by now Joey was  propelled by a warm fuel injected injection, veins rising to the surface of the skin, magma breaking through the earth. The cooked cuisine railroading itself through the bloodstream, Michelangelo was careful, not to knock over a marble statue, Joey was careful not to collapse a vein, or shoot in vain.

Most of Joey’s veins were a bruised swampy green and black-blue bruised too, weaker and harder to raise, a limp pulp, even with a gentle spank, have to use the bottom of his feet soon, but they too already bore the scars, but soon...soon...the heroin heroine claims her right, right to the brain. Nodding and smiling, casually laying back in the rickety chair, the junk microwaved in the bloodstream, so warm it's global warming swarming over you in layers melting your personal ice caps, arctic and antarctic.

Soon .the effects of the drug wear off, a tired old flying horse coming in for a crash landing, Baron von Benzedrine and the Goddess Aphrodite Amphetamine rush to the scene to the rescue all mixed up in a baggie cloudy with powder or a dark brown bottle of an old prescription that belonged to someone else in the basement of an old Victorian owned by an old Edwardian, where junkies would line the walls sitting on the floor until too much speed makes your insides ache, until your hunger returns for a curtain call...after you vomit a vile bile and it is standing room only at the shooting gallery and the turntables turn the tables, but the song is scratched on the vinyl, making that shhhing sound as the needle refuses to go forward, or backward, and enjoys being in neutral.

A month later,  post Peace we got the news in a letter from Mr. Levesque….Joey had OD’d and DOA before you could say...Give Peace a Chance. He never did find peace of mind...or in Vietnam that day….

Chapter 50 - broken Treaties and Altered States

The Native American tribes were on the move once again, although this time the ‘Trail of Tears’ crowd would be heading for Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay to “liberate” ‘The Rock’ from those pesky pelicans who roost and crap all over the place  and  the Civil War prisoners, Capone era gangsters and lighthouse keeper ghosts  whose disembodied spirits, the current residents reside, roaming the empty mess hall and cliffs seeking parole or a full pardon from their earthbound spectral prison.

 

Although the Altered States of America were were in the fuel injected dragstrip fourth gear of the societal revolt mode, Vietnam had it’s own fair share of societal and religious upheavals  that began with the buddhist monk barbeques, where in protest some torched themselves in  1963 making a political point and the cover of Look Magazine at the same time. Apparently, Sdidhartha Gautama Buddha wasn’t in a laughing mood anymore. In May of that year, South Vietnamese police shot unarmed civilians in Hue who were protesting the recent ban on displaying the Buddhist flag. No, the Buddhists  were not shot by million dollar rich NFL football players taking a knee contrary to what you may think, so leave the Steelers and Cowboys out of it. They wear football jersey’s not, military uniforms. The is better.

 

In November,  after six months of tension and growing opposition to the Diem regime, generals of the Vietnamese army, with the aid and assistance of the CIA  orchestrated a coup d’etat, which led to the collapse of the Diem government which included the arrest and no appeals assassination of President Ngo Đinh Diem. He was eventually replaced by U.S. supported Nguyen Van Thieu, not an easy dictator to get along with either, but what the hell..he was our guy after all and that’s all that mattered. I remember Dick Gregory referring to “elections” there as being decidedly one sided or what Dick called...the Thieu Party System!

 

On the flipside of the Pacific coin, America has its own history of broken treaties with the Native American tribes that included backstabbing by the Great Emancipator, Abe “Make America Great Again” Lincoln. In 1862, the Santee Sioux of Minnesota grew tired of waiting for the money they had been promised for the sale of  acres of land to the federal government in 1851. Appeals to by now President Lincoln fell on deaf ears. The Indians were hungry and facing starvation with the upcoming winter. They were pissed and decided to revolt.

Lincoln refused to pay the owed money, and assigned General John Pope to put down  the uprising. None of the Indians tried were given any semblance of a defense. Their trials lasted approximately ten  minutes each. Adult males were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death with the only evidence against them being they had been present during a "war" which they themselves had declared against the government.

The authorities in Minnesota asked Lincoln to order the immediate execution of all 303 males found guilty. Lincoln offered a compromise. They would cut the list of those to be hung down to 39. In return, Lincoln promised to kill or remove every Indian from the state and provide Minnesota with two million dollars in federal funds.

 

Where the hell is FEMA when you need them?

 

All that and broken promise by broken promise by subsequent administrations reached the boiling point  and part of the reason for the Alcatraz takeover being the one we were about to get embroiled in. Again, if Feds relinquished the property...the Natives could have it, but went back on the deal.

 

The Native Americans even offered the federal government the same amount for the land that the government had initially offered them when they hijacked it originally  at 47 cents an  acre, this amounted to $9.40 for the entire rocky island. The government was not amused and the protesters left under threat that they would be charged with felony.

In the early morning hours of November 20  89 American Indians, including over 30 women, students, married couples,  singles, and children children, set out to occupy Alcatraz Island.  Remember this was not Cuba setting up Russki rockets to bomb Ft. Lauderdale and ruin Spring Break, but the Coast Guard set up a blockade preventing  most of them from landing. By the time we arrived there were close to
400 protesters, including us. Native and non-native people brought food and other necessary items to the people on the island.

Today it’s a tourist attraction and damn it...I have the t-shirt to prove it!

 

We caught a ride at night slipping past the blockade on a fishing boat of a friend who worked for the Resistance in the area. Myrika had a full backpack full of black and white film ready to capture those occupation Kodak moments  in the best tradition of Dorothea Lange whose photos of the Depression Era gave a human face to the misery and plight of the Dustbowl devastation of the human spirit and soul.

 

I had my notebooks and portable typewriter and paper ready to write the great American novel as the LSD version of Upton Sinclair. Olivia (who had Cherokee blood in her)  and her Canuck lover were ready to do whatever they had to do to help the cause. Danny Two Horse, Kaylee and the Native entourage we had picked up were there to add muscle to the takeover if need be. Hell, we had already survived an FBI shoot out back at the rez, we were old pro’s by now ready to take on the 7th Cavalry.  

 

It would turn out to be a defining protest in our lives. Along with ourselves we would eventually be joined by Jane “Barbarella” Fonda, Marlon “the Wild One” Brando, Anthony Quinn, Dick Gregory, Buffy St Marie and yes...Jonathan Winters! Even more interesting was the fact that Creedence Clearwater Revival gave the Occupation $15,000 to buy a boat, aptly named, Clearwater to transport people and supplies to the island.

 

We were underway on the dark waters of the night time bay, holding Myrika close to me, she holding me as we became one facing more adventure.

“You wanna fuck in a teepee again?” she asked in her best raspy Kathleen Turner voice.
I happily replied “Of Course!”

“Good,” she said with a grin. “If you would have said NO, I’d have to scalp you where it counts and you’ll never wax your woody again!”

 

Damn I love this woman!!!

Chapter 51 - The Village Massacre

 

 

Trang was only 16 when his entire family was wiped out by American GI’s in the village of My Lai. He managed to hide out in the jungle amidst the confusion of gunfire, screaming women and children. The jungle he hid out in had it’s own dangers. The jungle was home to snakes and of course, hungry hunting tigers. Every once in awhile some unlucky villager who dared brave the dense, humid heat and dark of the jungle would never return.

It was a fact of village life.  Now dangers to the small villages included napalm agent orange and worse, GI’s who had snapped or as we say today “went Postal”.

 

Trang stayed hidden for two very long, hungry days in the dangerous dense foliage fearful of being captured and shot at such a young age simply for being Vietnamese.

When he did finally emerge from hiding when all was quiet he  found only burning huts and the stench of  dead bodies strewn about, including his mother, father, two young sisters, aged 9 and 11. He also found the bullet ridden body of his girlfriend covered in blood and mud, probably the victim of rape by the platoon. He was walking among ghosts now. The town was erased. Even the livestock were slaughtered. There was nothing left.

He sat on the ground and began to cry his body convulsive, shaking, words not forming, hatred replacing sorrow, revenge rising to the surface as he sat alone in the world now surrounded by the bodies of his loved ones.

 

“Why, why” he said through his tears streaming down his young dirty cheeks...tears as thick as the Mekong River flowing in flood season.

 

He would only later after the war was long receded in the geo-political rearview mirror the “Why?”

 

The military machine of the Pentagon was getting frustrated at being stalled in neutral in the Vietnamese war. That and the fact the protest movement on the streets of the States was gaining momentum. An avalanche of anti-war protests were setting cities on fire. It wasn’t much help that returning Gi’s from Vietnam were joining  ranks with the radical elements, while others were getting spat on as they walked down Main Street in uniform.

The generals,  in their let’s get this cluster fuck under control, three star wisdom decided what Americans  needed now was a bigger body count of Vietnamese to show we are close to victory.  The American public was  tired of playing on  Country Joe’s game show trying for prizes if only they could be “first one on the block, to have your boy come home in a box.”

 

Young Americans, just out of high school some of them,  were bobbing in the rice paddies and Vietnamese rivers, Halloween apples in body bag rubber rafts, and as they went into boot high muddy jungles full of Vietnamese patriots on opium, well, these American boys (patriots from the other side that also claimed righteousness, got shot down, shipped back home to be buried six feet deep in hallowed home own ground. Tri-fold flag, "Here tell he was a fag," said someone in the back row far from the open grave. "Maybe he was, but, goddamn it, he was an American fag! Now buried, wrapped like a sandwich in an American flag baggie. Damn he could shoot them commies, left and right, bang, bang, you're dead you red! Damn shame it is, but we have to draw the line, pinko's or faggots? Cain't have neither one amongst us, so just as well they kill each other...what did ol Merle Haggard say, oh yeah, if you don't love it leave it goddamn it! Now that is as American as it gets boy! Damn that Haggard, he he, he shore knows how to sing a dang song that makes sense!"

 

Fill the young American troops minds with a mixture of  anger with angst, add a dash of red, white and blue patriotism, and you have the makings for one killer cocktail of a psychosis for the creation of the American killing machine who will go out waste a village of women and children, and all in the name of Old Glory, God and Country.

 

Go ye forth, and forget about multiplying, instead subtract, take the life of the enemy, who is whoever we say it is and for whatever reasoning we can drum up or make up or think up and kill them dead. Better dead than red! Kill a commie, kill Cong, kill raghead, kill, kill, kill, kill Bill!!

To motivate troops to aim and shoot (no pun intended)  for a higher body count, competitions were held between units to see who could kill the most. Rewards for the highest tally, displayed on "kill boards" included days off or an extra case of beer. Their commanders meanwhile stood to win rapid promotion. Very quickly the phrase - "If it's dead and Vietnamese, it's VC" became a defining dictum of the war and civilian corpses were regularly tallied as slain  Viet Cong. Civilians, including women and children, were killed for running from soldiers or helicopter gunships that had fired warning shots. (3.8 million Vietnamese died including 2m civilians between 1955-1975.)

Trang never forgot March 16, 1968, when U.S. troops under the command of Lt. William L. Calley Jr. carried out the village massacre in young Trangs village of about 500 unarmed men, women and children.

 

After an aerial assault, Lieutenant Calley’s 1st Platoon of Charlie Company led the attack on My Lai. Expecting to encounter Vietcong soldiers, the platoon entered the village firing. Instead, they found mostly women and children who denied that there were Vietcong soldiers in the area. The American soldiers herded the villagers into groups and began burning the village.

The New York Times provided an account of the massacre from a survivor in its Nov. 17, 1969, edition: “The three death sites were about 200 yards apart. When the houses had been cleared, the troops dynamited those made of brick and set fire to the wooden structures. They did not speak to the villagers and were not accompanied by an interpreter who could have explained their actions. Then the Vietnamese were gunned down where they stood. About 20 soldiers performed the executions at each of the three places, using their individual weapons, presumably M-16 rifles.”

“Lieutenant Calley gave explicit orders to kill and participated in the execution of unarmed villagers standing in groups and lying in ditches. There were also accounts of soldiers mutilating bodies and raping young women. Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson watched the massacre from his helicopter. Realizing that civilians were being killed, he landed his helicopter near one of the ditches and rescued some survivors.”

 

Trang was now 17 and still hiding in the jungle, only this time he was armed with a Russian AK-47 and a machete sitting in the thick growth around him. He was now a Vietnamese irregular, he was now Cong, Charlie, VC.

 

He was not alone this time, but was part of a group of 20 others hiding invisible waiting to ambush the American patrol spotted a few miles away heading in their direction. Soon they could hear the Gi’s walking softly, wary of booby traps as they made their way quietly 300 yards away now  within sight, soon within the VC kill zone. Most of Trangs comrades had seen many of their loved ones die from mines, bombings and napalm...now….well...Paybacks are a bitch in any language...

Chapter 52 - Sex & The Occupation of Alcatraz

 

True to form, Myrika was a Bavarian propelled,  fuel injected sexual whirlwind on our first night “incarcerated” on the “Rock”...someone said someday Alcatraz  will become a tourist attraction. At the time I thought someone had slipped him a dose of bad acid.

 

Myrika had a great idea, or as Ken Kesey said, “sometimes a great notion”

“Mickey, did you ever make love in a prison cell?” she asked with a devilish wink in here deep as the ocean blue eyes that were so large they could hide a flotilla of U-boats ready to sink merchant ships heading for England during the war/

 

Myrika had a thing about getting off in different places from a lean-to in the woods to a room full of beads and incense with a small audience to applaud her performance., and believe me her performances were standing room only!

 

“In a prison cell? Well, no Babe. My sexual proclivities have never leaned towards having  a 300 pound serial killer on the bottom bunk get in rut after shower time!”

 

She then Myrika’d me with that smile of hers. “I know that, but here we are...Alcatraz...prison cells. Let’s do it, c’mon. Maybe we can fuck in a famous person’s cell!” Her voice was so full of excitement I had to laugh, and with her mind made up, I knew I would lose any argument against the idea, besides, it did have a rather kinky edge to it I have been known to enjoy.

 

“OK, maybe we can do it in Baby Face Nelson’s...or Machine Gun Kelly’s or wait a minute. I got it...Al Capone’s. No, wait, wasn’t he the patron saint of syphilis or something?”

 

We..well, she decided, patron saint of all things genital or not we’d jazz up the sperm count while doing the bootleg boogie, with orgasm being her vagina hijacking a load of  my prohibition “booze” during the sexual version of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Great, now I could say, “I got my rocks off on the Rock.” Hell, if boatloads of camera toting tourists from Kansa and Japan were in the forecasted future, that slogan could be a best selling t-shirt. The only thing missing that night was a decent pair of handcuffs, a blindfold for that ever popular solitary confinement feel and a prison guard uniform.

 

Tomorrow we begin our journalistic foray…but for tonight...animalistic foreplay was the soup du jour!

 

I had already made preliminary notes on the Occupation. The  background or canvas as I referred to it. In all, the takeover would last 19 months and only end when the Indians would be evicted by the Feds, who became what you might say fed up with the whole thing.  

 

In a nutshell Indians of All Tribes claimed the island by citing the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868 between the U.S. and the Sioux. The treaty returned to Native peoples “all retired, abandoned and out-of use federal lands.”

 

When Alcatraz closed in 1963, the government  declared the island as surplus federal property opening the door for Red Power activists to reclaim it. In a manifesto they released  they stated their intentions “to use the island for an Indian school, cultural center and museum.”  They also claimed Alcatraz was theirs “by right of discovery,” and sarcastically offered to buy it  in 24 dollars glass beads and red cloth, the same price that they  received for the island of Manhattan.

 

Government officials  journeyed to the island on multiple occasions to negotiate,but nada happened. The activists were adamant that they would “settle for nothing less than the deed to Alcatraz Island,” while the government maintained that a land transfer was impossible.

Myrika and I would stay long enough to get the story going while Danny Two Horse (who would send along updates to me) and company would stay along with the influx of Native American college students and activists flocking to swell the  population of Alcatraz to more than 600 people. An Indian  council formed, and the island soon had its own clinic, kitchen, and even a nursery and grade school for its children. The most ironic part of this equation was forming a security force dubbed the “Bureau of Caucasian Affairs” a direct dig at the “Bureau of Indian Affairs” While the government patrolled the bay waters, Indian security forces  patrolled the shoreline to watch for intruders. They even set up a small broadcasting station to broadcast radio updates under the banner of “Radio Free Alcatraz.”

This was 1969...by early 1970, many of the movement’s college students and organizers had to leave Alcatraz to return to school, and they were often replaced by vagrants who cared more about living rent free than fighting for the protest’s original cause. “Our biggest problems are freelance photographers and the hippies,” one spokesman told a reporter. “They stay and eat up our stores, then leave. Then we have to clean up after them.” Soon, drugs and alcohol banned on the island by movement leaders were taking it’s toll as well
Alcatraz takeover.

Government officials had had enough, as did some of the Movement participants, the time had come for   the occupation to end which it did on June 11, 1971, ending the 19 month protest, when armed federal marshals pulled a Normandy Landing on the island and removed the last of its occupiers.

 

After a month of taping interviews, photographing daily life during the occupation and writing articles for the underground press Myrika and I bid farewell to Danny, Kaylee and the new friends we had made who were staying behind, meeting up with us later back on the island in Canada...

 

We were on the move again, this time to another massive counter culture concert. John McCloud, our good friend in Berkeley who had been babysitting our camper, “Flashback” had her gassed and ready to hit the road again. He would join myself, Myrika, Olivia and her boyfriend by following us  in his camper, the one   he named “Badwater” in honor of a camping trip we made to Death Valley two years before.  

 

Along with John, his lady, also named Olivia would join us for the what we felt would be a few gentle days of the waning age of Aquarius  and what we felt was another Woodstock...except this one, the Altamont concert would prove to be one of not peace, love and understanding...but rather murder, mayhem and chaos as the Ninth Gate of Hell would unleash its legions of leather jacket angels as Jumpin’ Jack Flash introduced himself...after all...he was ‘round ‘when Jesus Christ had his moments of doubt and pain….”

As for Alcatraz? Today, I’ll be a son of a bitch..it is a goddamned tourist attraction...and I have the t-shirts to prove it!

Chapter 53 - Vietnam to Altamont

Trang was holding his position, barely breathing as the VC waited in ambush to open fire on the platoon of U.S. grunts who were unlucky enough to pull recon duty that morning. As Trang stood motionless in the finest of Viet Cong foliage camouflage from foliage that hadn’t yet been been defoliated he double checked his AK-47. Locked and Loaded ready to fire and kill.

 

Lt. Talpas, leading point for his platoon of “recon rats” as they called themselves, was wary of the road ahead through the dense underbrush knowing any moment he or one of his men could get a leg blown off from a land mine, or any other number of booby traps the VC were experts at. Either way, no matter what, come what may, a fire fight was sure to follow. The question then was how many, and who would end up dead or wounded.

 

Thousands of miles away in California finishing touches were being put into place for the upcoming concert at  the Altamont Speedway attended by 300,000 hip and not so hip attendees mixed into the show featuring a line-up that included the Grateful Dead, Santana, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Jefferson Airplane and others, headlined by the bad boys of rock n’ roll, the Rolling Stones.

 

The promoters miscalculated one very important item. Concert security. Instead of freshly pressed uniformed state troopers or sheriff’s deputies, someone had the great idea of hiring the Hell’s Angel to act as the 82nd Airborne of the Altamont show. Rolling Stones management actually made the deal on recommendation from the Grateful Dead who had used them before, albeit not for a show this large. Besides it was said in a later interview by Sonny Barger in Rolling Stone, "We don't police things. We're not a security force and we go to concerts to enjoy ourselves and have fun." Payment for services rendered was to be in beer. It was a recipe for disaster on the counter culture horizon.

 

It was time for the White Rabbit to meet the Angels of Hell as it fell down a rabbit hole of violence…

 

Myrika and I and our rag tag rucksack entourage arrived the night before and with our press passes in hand were ready to cover the festival and enjoy the colors that only good LSD can paint for a tripper. Unfortunately, the Hell’s Angels “colors” gave a grave tinge to the acid rainbow that soon painted everything black as the afternoon progressed into early evening.

 

Myrika and John, our photo emeritus duo were busy snapping away with their Nikons to capture the crowd and acts on stage...great shots by the way Myrika got the Flying Burrito Brothers. She and I were allowed on stage off to the side thanks to our press credentials from all the right left wing underground magazine rags.

 

Soon  time was nearing for the Rolling Stones to take to the stage. Fights between the Angels and the crowd had already started early in the afternoon...beer and LSD and speed will do that...and when the Jagger swagger took over on stage it seemed to escalate.

 

Back on the not so Roy Rogers happy trails to you Ho Chi Minh Trail, Trang was nervous, but knew his nervousness would evaporate as his bullets would seek revenge for the mass murder of his family and his village at My Lai. The Americans would pay in blood and limbs for it.

 

Lt. Talpas was also ready for anything and was looking for a fight, as were his troops. They had been in the bush so many times and had seen so many of their friends die in battle, they too wanted revenge, retribution, justice.  Little did they know how close they were.

 

Within a second...all hell on earth broke out.  One of Talpas’ men hit a tripwire which set off an explosion that killed young private McCarthy instantly while three other young men were wounded by flying shrapnel and flame. Cpl. Ehrig was blinded and half his face was burned beyond recognition but he was alive, if that can be called living.

 

Trang was wounded, but alive. The war was his weapon of vengeance. As for Lt. Talpas? He was blown into another dimension, a victim of a rocket propelled grenade fired from the lush almost serene jungle setting. Normally it would be a scene from rain forest paradise, now it exploded into Dante’s inferno.

 

At the same moment in time as Trang fired his first shot,  half a world away Jagger launched into song…."Please allow me to introduce myself...I'm a man of wealth and fame," It was all the crowd needed as a fight broke out among the assembled around the stage front. Jagger asked for calm, and the Stones did manage to get through that number. But, gasoline had already been tossed on the raging fire. It was during the song "Under My Thumb" that an 18 year old concert goer, Meredith Hunter ended up under Hell's Angels fists and boots as he tried to climb up on stage during the set. He was grabbed and told to get lost, which he did, but then decided to return, more loaded, and angrier than ever by all accounts, and this time, a Billy the Kid wannabe, started pulling a revolver out of his pocket, intent unknown, and while most would back away from this type of situation, to a Hell's Angel, it's party time.

 

The Angels were now in Special Forces mode and one of them grabbed Meredith, knocked the gun aside and stabbed him five times in the upper back. Other Angels joined the biker version of the Bristol Stomp and Meredith already dying, was beaten to death. The Hells Angel who did the stabbing was later arrested, tried and found not guilty as it was determined to be self defense. An autopsy found that Meredith was loaded on amphetamines and was living proof..Speed Does Indeed Kill!

 

The Dead wrote songs about Altamont including "New Speedway Boogie" and "Mason's Children." Rolling Stone Magazine later stated, "Altamont was the product of diabolical egotism, hype, ineptitude, money manipulation, and, at base, a fundamental lack of concern for humanity.” The article covered many issues with the event's organization and was critical of the organizers and the Rolling Stones. One Rolling Stone writer stated, “What an enormous thrill it would have been for an Angel to kick Mick Jagger's teeth down his throat.”

 

Woodstock and Altamont were warning flags. One was a mud bath, the other a bloodbath.

 

There were other warning signs on the hip horizon. and carried to schizophrenic extremes as Timothy Leary's peace and love mantra would soon be overshadowed by events that would take the tie-dyed generation from Kaleidoscopic beauty to a bright, deadly Clockwork Orange, as Charles Manson was ready to take center stage and the Flower Power skies were darkening into a thick dark black, as deep black as dried blood in a L.A. mansion where the final nail was pounded into the coffin of Peace and Love.

 

Altamont was over...a dark stain on the mattress of Make Love not War….Vietnam was not over and wouldn’t be for a few more years, a few more deaths, a few more villages shot up, a few more rapes and atrocities by both sides.

 

Altamont and Vietnam….both signaled the end of an era and the dream of peace and harmony.

Chapter 54 - Kent State: Get Out of Dodge

We left California after the deadly Altamont - Rolling Stones - Hell’s Angels debacle “shaken, not stirred” as Ian Fleming had his 007 character, James Bond order his literary martinis in his spy novels. John McCloud, my best friend and his Olivia returning to Berkeley, now referred to as Berzerkley, while Myrika, our Olivia and I and the others were hightailing back to Michigan and our ultimate destination, our resistance headquarters island snug and safe in Canadian waters. Along for the ride this time, Martin Bouchard, Olivia’s new Canuck fuck we had picked up along the way and was now part of our traveling medicine show.

The grand social experiment of the Sixties was coming apart at the seams in America by 1970. The SDS, once a bastion of pure protest marching in the streets and a campus take over or two suffered from a inner friction that splintered into fractured factions morphing into the much more violent Weathermen. where bullets replaced ballots and bombs for bongs. They were dedicated to engage in guerrilla warfare against the U.S. government” and a belief that underground guerrilla warfare was the best way to engage the “machine” to bring it to it's knees.

In 1970 alone they hurled three gasoline-filled Molotov cocktails in front of the home of Supreme Court Justice John M. Murtagh, who was presiding over the pretrial hearings of the members of the Black Panther Party over a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores.

Prior to that bombing, Molotov cocktails had been thrown at the second floor of Columbia University’s International Law Library and at a police car parked across the street from the cop shop in the Village. But wait...there’s more. They also bombed the Army and Navy recruiting stations/booths on the Brooklyn College campus.

Once back in our log lodge in the sanctuary of our Canadian island home we tried to make sense of all...Altamont and the Rolling Stones and Hell’s Angels combo meal turned a music festival into a “paint it black” moment.

Then as spring began springing across the Midwest with flowers beginning to emerge from the ground to signal “new life” - a renewal and affirmation of peace and the return of peace signs, love making not war making, creating a new utopia where sunshine supermen and women lived in harmony, “wearing their love like heaven”.

As May rolled around a peaceful protest was planned on the campus of Kent State in ridgerunner Ohio. The war in Vietnam was in full tilt boogie mode so maybe one more march would save some lives. Instead… four young students were shot dead, nine others wounded. The twenty nine Ohio National Guardsmen had fired over 60 rounds in 10 seconds or so..leaving the campus a killing field...My Lai had come to America. In combat when killed by your own people it’s referred to has “friendly” fire. Kent State was a massacre.

 

The war in Vietnam had by spring spilled over into Cambodia increasing the body counts on both sides. Later it would absorb Laos as well.

We were all silent when we heard the news coming from Kent State. Danny Two Horse who had returned eventually from the Alcatraz occupation was the first to break the silence.
“Is it over, Mickey? I mean is this how it ends, after everything we strived for? Where did it go wrong?

I had no answer. Myrika was unusually silent. Olivia was rocking China to sleep sitting by the campfire. All I could hear was the snap crackling of hardwood breaking up in the fire and Olivia humming a lullaby gently under her breath. I could only feel the clutch of Myrika’s fingers holding onto my arm tightly. Otherwise I was numb.

“Fuck if I know, Danny. Fuck if I know.”

Myrika and I retired to our room. Neither one in the mood for making love nor war. The world was off it’s axis wobbling dangerously and erratically through our collective mental cosmos. The camp was quiet all night long...soon the dawn would come. Daylight would bring new hope or we felt in our hearts.

 

A new dawn..Christ, we already went through the dawning of Aquarius, how many more damn dawns would we have to endure. Woodstock was a brilliant sunrise, Altamont was an eclipse that poked the social solar system of the counterculture in the eye blinding it. Peace was being pissed on. Protest marches were becoming a shooting gallery where the innocent were mere metal targets at a carnival to be shot down so some rube could win a teddy bear for his girl who has already been to bed in the storage shed with half the patrons at the local bowling alley.

The morning did come as promised. What we didn’t plan on was the arrival of 20 Mounties who were there to place us under arrest. We were awakened to yells and jostling by Canada’s finest who herded us all outside to the central campground area.
We were stunned, not stoned, which would have made it even more surrealistic. Orders were called out, “Everyone, line up over there. Thank you.” We did. Remember we had just gotten the news about Kent State. Hopefully the Canadians were more reasonable and they were there to serve up a breakfast of poutine and bagels.

I held the trembling Myrika...Olivia clutched China protectively in her arms as only a mother could do. Don’t mess with a mom and her cub!

 

Once we were quiet and somewhat settled, their Captain explained what was going on.
“We don’t much disagree with your purpose here, and yes we know you are here merely as a conduit for draft dodgers and the like. We also know you are helping the more violent members of the Quebec Separatist Movement, shall we say, escape apprehension. Not to mention that we slso have information you have helped members of the Irish Republican Army evade capture here. So...you have a choice, I want to fair with you. You have become an embarrassing thorn in our side and must ask you to leave, back to your own country and leave Canada immediately. Well, let’s say within 24 hours. Or….face arrest here and a not so pleasant stay in one of our prisons as our guests.”

We were being told to “get out of Dodge” by a Canadian Wyatt Earp.

 

We all just looked at one another, and could see the consensus by the looks on the faces of the others. We wanted to avoid prison at all costs, Canadian or otherwise.

“Um, we’ll pack up and leave. I appreciate your frankness, Captain and understand. We’ll leave by the morning. We have to pack up things, arrange for transportation,and things like that.”

 

“I quite understand, Mr. Cusmano. Very well then, I’ll leave some men here to help you if you don’t mind and thank you so much for being reasonable,” the Captain confirmed.
The day was spent packing up papers and all our gear. We decided to head to Drummond Island in American waters off the coast of the Upper Peninsula. We’d be safe there until we regrouped and established ourselves elsewhere, only this time we would be carefully watched...we had made the Canadian Police Hit Parade.

Danny used out boat to go ashore to get help to implement the move. More boats, manpower, etc.

It was nice while it lasted, but now I had to inform the Resistance that this route to freedom was now blocked off.

As the day progressed, Olivia came to us in a frantic state. “Have you seen Martin? I haven’t seen him all day.”

I laughed it off. He’s probably half way to Ottawa by now. Probably took off fast when he saw that the Redcoats were coming,” I laughed.

When Danny returned from the mainland, he had a look on his face I had never seen before. It scared me, as after all, Danny had an in with the all knowing all seeing gods of his tribe’s spirit world. His face said something was tremendously wrong.

“We’re fucked, right Danny?” I asked sheepishly.

“I think more than we know!” was all he replied.

Chapter 55 - The Windy City & The Kill Zone

 

 

We were now ass deep in the murky muck of the stateside quagmire of the Vietnam War. The Canadian Mounties were ousting us from the country as easily and without thought  as a broken down wino heaves an empty bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 wine into a dumpster  in a Detroit alley in the Cass Corridor, or rather,  the Mama Cass Corridor as I refer to it.

 

We had our marching orders to leave the relative safety of arrest free Canada for the “stop or I’ll shoot bang I gotcha” United States where draft dodging and the resistance movement was a sure ticket to three hots and a cot in a beautiful scenic cellblock condo in Leavenworth Prison. Was Leavenworth worth it? The only other option they would put on the table was to have me report for duty and get inducted just in time to spend next Christmas in a casket where the dog tags and body bags were hung by the chimney with care.

 

Danny Two Horse returned from St. Ignace that evening after dark to sound the alarm. What alarm? What could possibly go wrong? We leave Canada and head to Drummond Island or Bois Blanc Island. What’s so difficult about that?

 

Unfortunately for me, he had that tell-tale look on his face would in another era of of six guns and tomahawks of mass destruction convey a warning of an Anglo ambush by General George Custer and his Rin Tin Tin blue coats just beyond the ridge over yonder as they used to say

 

“Slow down amigo. What’s wrong?” When Danny was angry and worried, I panicked inside. He was Mr. Spirit World Nothing Can Hurt Us. The embodiment of the great “no-thing” of Eastern philosophy. Danny was Buddha, but didn’t even know it. I knew it and that was enough. This time however, the Laughing Buddha was replaced by a pissed off Geronimo ready to storm Fort Apache.

 

“Everything. Everything is wrong!” he managed to blurt out.

 

I hate when everything goes wrong, awry, gone south, in the toilet or up in smoke unless it’s some mighty fine weed or a distant smoke signal inviting me over for a beer and pipeful to go along with an orgy in a wigwam.

 

“The Feds. They’re all over the place on Bois Blanc and Drummond. It’s a fucking trap!”

 

Myrika came out on the deck when she heard us talking and she could sense when something was about to blow up in our face. Even from a distance. Those Germans were uncanny. She could sniff out fear or lust in a man or woman and take advantage of the situation. Fear or Lust? Either one meant you were hers period.

“Goddamn it,” was my best reply. The goddamned Mounties won’t arrest us so they  toss us to the lions? Is that the game?  Shit, if the  Feds pick us up they’ll find warrants for sure then it’s off to see the prison wizard in some fed pen. Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

 

Danny ever the realist brought focus to the blinding moment of fear. “Believe me, Mickey. They have already done their homework. They already want you. Not so bad you avoided the draft and military service, but you work for the Resistance and that is what they want you for. You’ve made the hit parade!”

 

The shit parade you mean.

All told, there were approximately 100,000 of us draft card burning commie pinko fags making tracks and blazing James Fenimore Cooper trails to the Great White North in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Fortunately, but with trepidation we were accepted by Canada as the social refuse of their Marlon Brando “Ugly American” neighbor to the south. We were accepted as legal immigrants while many of us chose door number two...to live and hide in plain sight in the U.S. with false identity documents which were easy to obtain. Hell, It’s even easier today.  Got $300 bucks or so?

 

Canada  labelled draft dodgers as immigrants, not as refugees  and most became Canada-ized and stayed after the war was over. No Manchurian Candidates in the bunch.

Most  settled in larger  cities to be absorbed in the big Canadian sponge such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The  total number of “immigrants” mushroomed toward the end of the 1960’s, so people in Canada began working for organizations helping dodgers find work and settle in and acquire a taste for Canadian beer and marry Canadian women.

In the end,  25,000, give or take a few of us, were indicted for civil disobedience, almost 9,000 convicted and 3,000 jailed. Many of us were caught and stood trial, one after another, an assemblyline of dissent that would make Henry ford proud. Most were ordered to report for induction, then charged with disobeying that order by not reporting, duh, but there were so many of us, as numerous as  cockroaches in a New York tenement apartment that it was impossible to prosecute more than a fraction of us.

 

I was formulating a plan on the wing without a net, a trapeze artist in tight fitting bulging pants without a net or a jockstrap. “OK, by dawn, before dawn get “Flashback” gassed up. We’ll be ready early, pick us up with as many boats as you can scrape up. We got a lot of shit here to move and take with us. We’ll attempt a landing at Detour Village by St. Ignace and we’ll leave from there and head out.”

 

“Where will we go, Mickey?” Myrika asked. “Not sure yet, but wake Olivia now and help her get packed and ready. We have a long night ahead of us. Damn! Damn! Damn! Let me think this out. Danny, gonna miss you my friend.”

 

“Don’t say goodbye, We will always be connected…” he laughed. “It’s the Indian way!”

 

Then I had an after thought and wanted to talk to Danny alone. As Myrika went indoors to get packed, Danny and I walked down and along the beach.

 

“I want you to get a message to that fuck head Martin. Gotta be him that us up. Probably FBI who couldn’t do anything while in Canada, so set this whole thing up. Here’s my plan, you’re in the clear. They can’t touch you so tell him we’ve gone to Chicago, play dumb like we don’t know it was him. We left without him because we didn’t want to get him in trouble, some bullshit like that. Tell him we’ll be at the pub Liam hangs out at in three days and we’re gonna have the IRA fugitive, make sure you say “fugitive” help us escape to Ireland.”

 

Danny was confused, “Why? That’s not where you’ll really go is it?”

 

“Chicago? Yes. Ireland, No! I’ll set it up with Liam’s people too, they hate the FBI as much as we do.  Remember Joey and the other FBI guy? What’s one more accidental killing. Hell, we could get the Panthers or the Weathermen to do this but the IRA is much more, you know, efficient. Martin fortunately doesn’t know we had the other two eliminated so he’ll fall for it. OK? We need him out of the way permanently.”

 

Danny smiled, “Got it!”

 

That night was a sleepless one, but we were ready. Our flotilla arrived while the Mounties were at the other end of the island not realizing we had moved everything overnight under cover of darkness to the western point of the island where we would embark from.

 

From there we would meet up in Detour Village in the UP of Michigan, load up and head for Chicago and wait for the trap to snap on Martin. They’d probably toss the body in the Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day as a sarcastic final nail in the FBI informants coffin. From there, Myrika, Olivia, Baby China and myself would head back to Detroit and as they say, go underground and hide in plain sight with new identities until the war had ended, or a meteor crashed into earth throwing it off it’s axis on a collision course with Mars, or when Hell or Flint, Michigan freezes over.

 

It was a fine line to engage our balancing act  on. If caught we all faced prosecution, but at least not for murder. Besides, why is what we did called murder? Nixon and company were wasting villages and civilian lives everyday in Vietnam...while our government was sending young American “not old enough to drink or vote” men over to Vietnam to die uselessly everyday against their will. What we did, while at war with the American draft system

would be called “murder’...what the Pentagon and White House were doing was called “patriotism” with a four star general posing as God on Our Side….Go Figure.

Chapter 56 - Murder at Christmas

 

Christmas 1969 was looming on the horizon with all its candy canes and M-16’s, mistletoe to make love, and napalm to make war. The time of good cheer and chestnuts roasting on an open fire, as well as a Vietnamese village up in flames getting an unwelcome visit from Santa and his recon unit elves.

 

We were on our way to Chicago and a clandestine meeting with our Irish Republican Army cohorts. Little brogue speaking Santa helpers to arrange for the early holiday demise of one more FBI undercover agent. What the hell, this too was war on the home front and all is fair in love and war, yes? Why am I asking you anyway? I had Myrika for the love and sex portion of the equation. I also had the IRA, Black Panthers and the Weather Underground for the war aspect.

 

I chose the IRA for this job. The Panthers would make a garish poster and manifesto of the killing bringing much unwanted attention to it. The Weather Underground would, not being the most subtle of revolutionaries, make Martin the FBI grinch. disappear noisily by shoving a grenade up his ass for a fragmentation enema and brag about it in the underground press complete with photos...bang...Panthers or Weathermen..either way too much heat and turning over every rock investigations from Hoover’s G-men in tights surely would occur and all they had to do would be to follow the breadcrumbs to Hansel and Gretl, me and Myrika...No thank you!

 

They could pull off an assassination and disappear into some void where neither Scotland Yard or FBI would dare tread. They also had a resume going back to the Easter Rebellion to rely on. When it came to revolution, these were straight A students who were also the football team’s first string. I imagine the cheerleading squad was just one Riverdance away from the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. Pom, poms kaboom!!! “OK, team, this time go for the Ulster Ulcer play..and score, score, score!”

 

On our way to the Windy City we stopped first in Detroit to deposit Olivia and the baby, China at her parents house. I didn’t want China growing up in a world where she might confuse at an early age the smell of gunpowder for baby powder. Myrika and I both did not want Olivia involved in any way in the assassination plot in. She was now 17 and the mother of my baby, OK, Myrika claimed extended family parental rights as well as did Olivia. OUR baby. Just a happy trio of sex partners in crime.

 

Once we got into Chicago we headed for the Irish neck of the woods for O’Bannions Pub where we’d find the already briefed Liam, thanks to Danny Two Horse and the phone call he made the day we left St. Ignace. We were racing own Michigan’s mitten heading south on the interstate with a brief stop at Tony’s of I-75 truckstop. It is the undisputed gastronomic carousel ride of cholesterol. Even if you’re a 90 pound weakling, after a full breakfast of 5 sausages, 6 strips of thick bacon, three eggs, hash browns and sourdough toast lathered in Boysenberry jam and a hot cup of java thicker than the lava pouring from an Icelandic volcano you were now felt ready to haul an 18 wheeler with bald tires going full speed full of explosives over a mountain pass with a 30% grade and defective jake brakes in the blizzard of the century.

 

Soon, an hour and half later, the Motor City stop we were on I-94 heading east to Christmas in the land of Capone.

We were beat when we rolled into the parking lot at O’Bannon’s that night. It was pure pleasure to emerge from”Flashback” who was also feeling the strain. We entered the pub and the warm glow of the bar and the strains of a local balladeer in the middle of a sing a long made us feel like family. They were singing the song, “Michael Collins”and “The Tri-Colored Ribbon” with heart and feeling.

 

Liam burst into a wide grin and rushed across the room to greet us. I hated to disturb an Irishman in his favorite pub during a game of darts. That’s like pulling a dago away from a bocce tournament to see a full moon. A switchblade maybe, but not a full moon.

 

“Aye, ya made it folks. Got your message and all is ready for Mr. FBI rat. No problem.”

 

“Do we owe you, Liam? How much?” I asked hoping it would be cheap..our reserves were nearing E for empty.

 

“Not a thing, Lad. Not a thing. You saved me ass in Canada and got me here safely and now it’s my turn, our turn actually. All the boys know about what you all did...ha..but no names were mentioned, of that I can assure you. We got a call today from Danny boy, and our FBI target headed out yesterday and should be nosing around here by tomorrow. Christmas Eve! He’s in for one hell of present ha.”

 

Liam had a way of making even a hit job full of mirth and merriment. Gawd, I love the Irish.

 

With that Liam introduced us around to the gang then Liam grabbed Myrika while a sweet bonnie lass grabbed my ass out onto the dance floor for a rousing step dance extravaganza. It was Riverdance and I was feeling as if I were the Lord of the Dance or at the very least the Lord of the Flies, but that’s another story altogether we won’t go into here, there or anywhere.

 

Myrika was stepping high, her sweet Nordic ass fuel injected., and I was not surprised. The part of the Germany she came from was fraught with beer barrel oom pah pah tubas and polka folk dancing along with had a wonderfully deprave history of cabaret and fishnet draped boy and girl dancers wearing too much lipstick and moulin rouge.

 

I had an Irish lovely take me by the hand and get into the Gaelic spirit of the dance. I was Michael Collins himself or some other Irish hero..O’Toole or O’Shaughnessy...the Irish mick and Italian dago are very similar. The only difference being the Irish have the vowel at the beginning of their name, while we Italians have it as a caboose at the end of our name.

 

By midnight we were danced out, Guinnessed out and Irished out. One more chorus of “Oh, Danny Boy” bringing the room of burly blokes to tears and I would tear my tarantella heart out. We would crash at Liams place in the spare bedroom and rest up for the Christmas Eve killing where visions of FBI sugar plums would stomp on my head.

 

Murder at Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year.

Chapter 57 - When Irish Eyes Are Sniling

That night I had a dream. No, I won’t break into a Martin Luther King I’ve been to the mountain monologue as it wasn’t that kind of dream. I am quite sure it was brought on by the thought that in the morning the new day would begin as a typical snow Tiny Tim picturesque Christmas Eve minus the kid on crutches.

 

This would be the day of reckoning where an FBI agent who had infiltrated our ranks was driving head on to Chicago to meet the almighty at the hands of the militant ex-patriot IRA members in the back room or alley of O’Bannion’s Pub. The almighty in this case not being the omnipotent J. Edgar Hoover.

 

Two other “rats” had been exterminated at my request and at a distance. This time I would be closer to the action, front row seats perhaps, box seats, first base, watching Liam hit a homerun out of Wrigley Field.

 

In my dream, all jumbled up, Santa was a hired killer. So this is Christmas and what have you done...killed a man, and now on the run. Gawd, Christmas should be one of happiness and light, not death.

 

Sitting up in the dark quiet morning I was day dreaming  of the Picasso-like juxtaposed marvel of my grandparents adorned Christmas tree with the jumbled tangle of lights and the  visual cacophony that comes with Christmas and family.

Ornaments affixed with tiny hooks, the precautionary measure to providing them safety from falling from their temporary holiday season evergreen (plastic substance of some sort now was beginning to  replace the  Norman Rockwell ideal mid-century merry Blue Spruce monolith as well as the Griswold Family Christmas Tree that can electrocute a cat in under 10 seconds flat.

I see the Christmas tree in front of me as a skid row mission, offering shelter for homeless ornaments who for 11 months out of the year, spend endless days and cold nights in a storage box under a freeway overpass. Ornaments emerge from Ornament Rehab for Christmas with a holier than thou attitude hogging attention, a free mission meal and a little town of Bethlehem rosary while the mission dispenses gruel and God in equal measure.



Christmas is meant for cheer…hell, it’s the Dallas Cheerleader of all holidays. To some, however, the tree itself, the Christmas carols, is enough to chamber a bullet and shoot yourself in the head. It’s the season of suicide hotlines, ambulance sirens racing to the rescue of someone who prefers to be not disturbed. Look past the glimmer of bubble lights, a joyful and wondrous invention, and the tree is dark beyond the front layer of Liberace lights. Peer deep enough and you can see a dark forbidding alley strewn with empty bottles of cheap booze , and the bubble lights are now replaced by syringes and needles. The junkie will cook his lovin’ spoonful with hurried, yet meticulous care, as much care as is given to the basted beast sitting in it’s own Auschwitz oven filled with dressing without the Zyklon B garnish.

Joyeux Noel replaced by mental and physical pain so fierce at times suicide happens….Imagine ….the Suicide Season at the mall. “I’d like to see something in this season’s suicider fashion… None of that off the rack Sears crap either...and I’d like it gift wrapped please. Just charge it, thank you.

I’d rather grab the mistletoe and hide the Smith and Wesson.

 

Myrika was just awakening hearing me stir. I loved that moment when she first wakes up. Her voice is raspy, very Kathleen Turner. Her blonde hair ruffled and the musk she emits from sex the night before has a gravitational pull that even a fast moving comet couldn’t break free of its grasp.

 

“Wake up, Baby. We have a busy day ahead of us. Liam is expecting Martin to be at the pub this evening. We have a lot to do.”

 

Myrika moaned gently, softly. “Come to bed. One more for the road, OK. C’mon Mikey, I want it. Get in here,” she said demandingly. Getting in here meant getting in her.  

 

While my Brer  Rabbit was otherwise engaged inside  her briar patch, out of the blue she blew me away.

 

“I want a gun too, can we get one, please?”

 

My eyes went wide, my mouth dropped and my mind was on autopilot at this.

 

“What the hell for? Are you crazy???”

 

“No, I just want one to feel safe. All those guns in the bar last night wre, I don’t know kind of sexy, you know what I mean? I want to play with it, feel it, kiss it and lick it.”

 

“Damn, Myrika. They turn you on, don’t they? Son of a bitch, they make you horney!”

 

She smiled slyly and pulled me in tighter and deeper inside of her.

 

“Yeah, they do. When you’re off someplace and I get lonely I can use it to, you know make me come.”

 

“You want a gun, a .38 to use as a dildo?? Damn girl. What if there’s a bullet in the chamber you forget to remove so it’s empty? Then what?”

 

Her fixation was deeper than I thought. Laughing she explained. “That’s the fun part. The not knowing, the unknown, the rush. Feeling the cold steel inside of me warming up. The gunpowder smell, the  trigger cocking and then cumming.”

Great! She wanted to play Russian Roulette with a sexual twist!

 

She dug her nails into my back hard, leaving marks that would last for days. She had a habit of getting rough with sex. Sexual activity with her had one battle cry.
A dog may be man’s best friend, but a man-pet is a Female’s best friend!

 

Where Myrika was concerned, make no mistake I had no choice.

 

Forget Dirty Harry! I could hear Myrika now. “I know what you're thinking, Mickey.  Did I come six times  or only five? Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a Vagina Magnum, the most powerful hymen in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?”

 

Now I was ready for another go at her.

 

“One more, baby. OK?”

 

She smiled broadly…”OK, Honey...Lock n’ Load!”

 

There was plenty of time to kill  Martin, but right now Myrika’s pleasure came first. After all this was Christmas Eve. While the rest of the world was searching for peace on earth, I had the ultimate piece in bed with me...and yes, I was a punk feeling lucky!

Chapter 58 - The Hit Squad

 

We spent the day at O’Bannions Pub in the basement annex where I’m sure many a stool pigeon had been Sein Fein’d in the name of St. Michael Collins, the patron saint of weapons and gunpowder procurement for the the Irish Republican Army during the Irish Civil War in the early 20th Century. His portrait loomed large over over O’Bannions mahogany bar as if keeping a watchful eye on the patrons ready to alert them to imminent danger perpetrated by  those sinister fiddle playing Darby O’Gill little people who might be undercover leprechauns with Union Jack undershorts and loyalties.

 

“Liam, we are getting close, aren’t we?” I queried nervously. I had never actually taken part in an assassination. This was a first for me.

 

Liam only laughed, “Me boy, it’s like the first time you had a go with a young lass. Ha. Once you get the first time out of the way...hell, it’s easy.”

 

First Myrika wanting to masturbate with the cold steel of a pistol barrel with one in the chamber...now Liam equating a killing with teenage angst filled orgasm. What was I missing? I wonder what Myrika would feel taking a double barreled shotgun inside. Christ, that would be the sexual equal of shooting fish in a barrel!

 

We kept quiet and listened intently to Liam and the St. Patrick Murder Incorporated hit squad discuss various methodology, the art of the kill. They discussed with the same intensity as a group of German physicists discussing molecular density in a weightless environment while prisms bounce light waves around with the ease of ping pong balls at a Chinese tournament.

 

“I think the .22 is best Liam. Small hole, base of the neck. Not much blood splatter and the bullet will be nearly untraceable,” Ian McMurphy, a tall redheaded ginger with a facial scar and 14 confirmed kills in old Killarney represented by individual tattoo markings on his arm  explained in an educational matter of fact sort of way.

 

“Naw, too dago. Those Guinea’s use those all the time. Besides we want to make a statement to other undercover cops or stoolies. I say blast ‘em with a shotgun. Whole head comes off like a pumpkin being smashed on Devil’s Night. Or if a belly shot, too many holes to plug up so chances of not bleeding to death are minimal.” Liam always the practical one explained further. “Besides do you realize the cost of shotgun shells over a bullet? Shotguns are noisy as hell. Someone’s bound to hear it even if we let loose with a dozen bagpipes and 20 Celtic drums.”

 

“I know,” cried out a quiet moody looking lout by name of Pat O’Malley. “Garotte! Silent and no mess to clean up. That or a knife, mates. Strangulation by garotte is a tradition. We should honor tradition. Of course a knife works too. I helped Mickey Featherstone and the Westies in New York get rid of that union leader that way. Never found him yet, or even the pieces left over. You know Mickey likes chainsaws!”

 

I kept silent as the reality of the situation escaped me. I was in my mind watching the Marx Brothers, Autopsy  Night at the Coroners! These guys were discussing murder theory as though they were two New York cabbies arguing over which route is faster, the Tri-Borough Bridge or the Lincoln Tunnel, or worse, two mafia types arguing the merits of a Cadillac Seville over a Lincoln Continental while stuffing their mouths with mama’s homemade cannolis.

 

The decision was made at last. The .22 caliber route was chosen. The Yellow Brick Road to Execution was now charted out. Just in time too. Word was sent down to the basement that the FBI guy was in the building. Myrika spotting him arrive called out to him to join her at the table she had in the corner. That was the signal for me to make my appearance and lead the sheep to slaughter. I dashed up the stairs and entered the dimly lit bar room.

 

“Martin,” I called out as if he were my long lost brother. “Man glad you made it. How are you? How’s Danny? Hows...hows...hows...a waterfall of nervous bullshit was falling from my mouth. We hugged as two ”friends” will do, had a few drinks then sprang the trap.

 

“Man, c’mere. Let me look at you. Olivia’s here and wants to see you,” I lied convincingly. “Got her in the downstairs office. You know, incse some Mick cop walks in and spots her with being under age and all. Wouldn’t be a pretty scene. C’mon I’ll take you too her.”

 

We started towards the basement door off to the side of the bar, bartender acting as lookout and with his .45 under the counter as bouncer in chief. Fuck with him and I guarantee a lobotomy by bullet awaits you.

 

Myrika wanted to come with us. I could tell she was getting off on this too. Jesus H. Christ. Good thing she wasn’t present on the Grassy Knoll at the Kennedy assassination. She’d probably orgasm on the spot singing, “Happy Birthday, Mr. President!”

 

We descended into the basement abyss. When we reached the bottom of the stairs, Martin asked, as he should, “Where is she?”

 

“Uh, Martin, there’s been a change of plans.”

 

At that moment two large Irishmen stepped out from the shadows  grabbing him and holding him down, while Liam placed the barrel of the .22 against the base of his skull and let three shots ring out.

 

The noise was muffled by the jukebox upstairs blaring aloud with the Clancy Brothers singing about some battle in Belfast accompanied by gales of Gaelic laughter and the ceremonial clinking of mugs of ale.

 

I just stood there. Paralyzed. I’d seen dead bodies before, at funerals, but never watched the process of crossing over the line of death and life demarcation before.  Was now as guilty as if I pulled the trigger myself.

 

Liam was excited as a working class hero who takes pride his masonry or carpentry skills. “A job well done, Mickey. We’ll dump the body in the river. The boys are already in the alley with the car. Ha Ha...taxi service. Where to, Mate? Oh the river you say. Should we take the Dan Ryan or I-94? Ha. Another rat exterminated. Thanks again Mickey. We’ve eliminated a potentially dangerous situation that could have landed you in prison and me and the boys back in British hands. Both situations not pleasant, eh? OK, drinks are on the house...upstairs everyone!”

 

So with the jovial jocularity of a New Orleans funeral combined with an Irish wake we made our way upstairs to join in the din.

“Myrika, are you OK,” I asked to be comforting.

 

She had a smile and look on her face I had never seen before, and could catch the faint musk smell she gave off between her legs when excited.

 

Oh Oh...I knew that look. She was reloaded again. A cold steel pistol barrel for a dildo was one thing, but this was downright scary when a cold blooded murder lit the fuse of her libido.

 

“Jesus, Myrika. Now? Where?”

 

“On the Bar!!!”

 

Goddamned girl! Sex on a bar in a crowded Irish pub with bagpipes blaring Amazing Grace!

 

“Let’s get in the camper. You can work my bagpipes over in there instead!!”

 

Two is company, 43 is a crowd!!

Chapter 59 - All Roads Lead To Detroit

 

 

Nothing like a murder to get your blood flowing. My blood was flowing out of fear...Myrika’s  blood was excited sexually.  Never witnessed this in anyone before. Menstruation for her must be a real rush and a half! The pub patrons had been ushered out the door before the basement killings. Closed for repairs or some bullshit excuse was given, but in this neighborhood, my guess is they knew the drill when the IRA and Irish mob went into the basement.

 

So while the upper floor bar area was temporarily vacant, Myrika and I hopped up on the slick wet beer spilled mahogany bar wrestling to get our pants off to have a go at her pot of gold. She was already wet and I was already ready. Like a damned  Boy Scout except had me by the balls. Always had, always will.

 

Until that night, I had never had sex on a large Irish pub bar with mirror in the background. Something about a public setting and the afterglow that accompanies a murder well done of an informer that makes the senses race and Myrika’s nipples rising into peaks of majesty  in a crescendo, with  her areola singing a sexual  aria while the vulva was ready to join in the harmony of eruptus clitoris with the Labia Tabernacle Choir leading the parade into the inner sanctum. She had one rule of thumb, I wasn’t allowed to let loose until the length of time it takes to listen to both long versions of “Inna Gadda Da Vida” and “Light My Fire” together!! She kept it sustained as if by magic for said length of time, then with a few flexings of tightened muscles in her delta region she could signal the all clear with a hearty “Thar she blows!” Moby Dick was ready to breach and spout!!

 

She was moaning and speaking German, words I didn’t understand, but as she pushed my head lower onto her belly and I exited her down below, she pushed my head and face even further south. Probably near where Munich would be on a map, I suspect. This was her favorite geography lesson for me. She was a great teacher, and I was a willing student. We both loved sexual academics and quid pro quo oral essays and forays. I could clap her erasers all semesters if she held me after class had climaxed!

 

When we finished, well, when I finished, she always seemed to have massive aftershocks that needed quelling. Having sex with her was 10 on the Richter scale. She could level the entire Pacific Rim with one orgasm! Her fucking vagina was a weapon...a certified “ring of fire!”

 

We got dressed slowly and let ourselves out of the back door of the pub and into the camper. I always felt sorry for “Flashback” after Myrika and I would have sex. If only “Flashback” could meet a nice Airstream trailer with a large hitch. Then I felt she would be a “happy camper”. You know what they say about Airstreams...once you’ve had an Airstream, you never go back!”

 

I fired up the engine while Myrika rolled a fat joint that would make Lenny Bruce cringe and we headed into the dark Chicago night heading back to Detroit. There was no turning back to Canada, our island, our resistance work. Our cover had been blown so we’d take root in my familiar Detroit along with Olivia and Baby China as we forged a new life ahead of us hoping to still stay one step ahead of the feds and hoping this goddamned war would end to stop the flow of more bloodshed

Chapter 60 - You Can Go Home Again

 

Once back in the safety of the womb of familiarity of the so called Motor and Murder City, which somehow seemed appropriately named after our own recent voyeuristic participation in the elimination of a federal agent, we set about establishing ourselves as other than who we actually were. Hiding in plain sight from the hands of Hoover’s FBI and the the entire Military-Industrial Complex and it’s complexities.  

 

I had some media background as an underground journalist and rock and roll bon vivant, so in the course of time found radio work across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario. Which Detroiters always referred to as a “suburb” of the Greater Metro Detroit area. Just don’t tell any mountie red blooded Canadian that or he’ll cut your beer supply off at the pass!

 

Myrika, with her every increasing mania for art and music, was our artistic as well as sexual nucleus as we formed the Experimental Theater Workshop and Art Gallery in an old brick grand dame of a building that used to house the Fur Trading Company in Detroit in the 1800’s when beaver was king. It was a Katherine Hepburn majestic brick structure  in the Greektown neighborhood of downtown Detroit. The rent was cheap and the place was spacious enough to house an art gallery of Myrika’s photography, and other photographers in the area  as they became aware of our presence. There was room for a makeshift stage for our theatrical presentations and was used as a platform for jam nights on weekends, BYORP of course, bring your own rolling papers, where local musicians would play together or solo around the gravitational pull of Myrika’s musicianship.

 

In an apartment a few blocks away in the shadow of the Greek Orthodox church that loomed over the area, Myrika, Olivia, Baby China and myself made our home. The post industrial warehouse look suited our renaissance  motif of recording equipment, of reel to reel recorders, Sennheiser microphones, headphones, amps, Martin guitars, turntables, monster speakers forging  electro friendships with a complex assortment  of darkroom supplies...Ilford photo paper, chemicals, pans, trays and film.

 

We sectioned off portions of our “spaceship” as Myrika called it into living area, kitchen and constructed from scrap plywood two sleeping rooms...one room  for Myrika, Olivia and I. The extended family that sleeps together makes love together, I always say,

and one room as a nursery for Baby China.

 

I already in the past had gotten Olivia pregnant in a passionate moment driven by undulating  lava lamps, mescaline and weed. Baby China being the blessed by-product of our sexual attraction to each other. In our new setting, we’d find out pleased later that Myrika  too would get pregnant. I felt as though I were Fletcher Christian on my own fugitive island hiding out with the two grass skirt loves of my life.

 

One of my newly acquired  friends, Larry was an artisan and owned a leather making shop next door to our gallery. A real Wyoming cowboy sort with short beard and handlebar mustache. We’d get stoned some nights and head into the dark night of downtown wino alleys on rodent recon patrol armed  with his two .22 pistols where we would send Mickey’s relatives to Disney Valhalla. They would perch on dumpsters and metal bent garbage cans and were easy targets. Had to be careful though as one night one of Larry’s stray bullets grazed the leg of Crazy Stella, a local Greektown fixture who had live here for 40 years running a restaurant and bakery until her husband died I’m sure of an overdose of Baklava cholesterol taking it’s toll by clogging his arteries thicker than rush hour traffic on the John Lodge Freeway  on a Friday afternoon.

 

My parents, and Olivia’s knew where we were and would visit with a maze of routes taken that would have made the trailblazing last of the mohicans proud. Of course such precautions had to be taken. I was wanted for dodging the draft and my left wing resistance and journalism work...Myrika as a visa expired foreigner they would want to send back to Berlin from whence she came. We had a solution for that. We arranged hastily to get married on Belle Isle, a beautiful island in the Detroit River downtown.

 

As for Olivia, she was underage at the time of her pregnancy, that was our secret. She was mature for her age Your Honor, Honest. I thought she was 39 not 16. OK son, case dismissed..now about this draft card shit!

 

We went about our lives, or rather our one shard life as we viewed it. We made money at the gallery with rentals and performances and I was working on air at the Canadian radio station so that along with my growing writing career was all money in the bank.

 

The 60’s had made room for the emergence of the ‘70’s and life was good...no it was great. By 1975 two major events happened that gave a new direction to our lives...one….Myrika gave birth to our daughter, Alexia, or Alex as we called her...the other was the Fall of Saigon.

Chapter 61 - The Fall of Saigon

If the Sixties were  a cosmic dose of a lovin’ spoonful and a deep throat psychedelic lollipop of protest and pot, free love, free war, free death, then make way ladies and gents...I give you...ta da... the Seventies bringing with it the age of Disco and bubblegum pop on the music battlefield while some of us held out in the Canned Heat and Janis Joplin trenches trying to shield ourselves from the Disco Ducks and the Bee Gee’s weapon of pop “I could be dancing” destruction.  American Graffiti was revved up and ran over the Easy Rider faster than TV Tommy Ivo on the dragstrip, leaving Dennis Hopper  in a jumbled mangled wreck of  redneck retribution once again. The only well defined line of of decade decadence was the Kent State Massacre in 1970.  Gentlemen, start your engines!

 

While Myrika and I were forging a forgery of a life in our underground  enclave of Detroit...Springtime 1975 in Saigon was about to bloom and boom.

 

Tranq, now 21 had been with the Viet Cong ever since his family and village had been erased from the topo maps  by U.S. troops, but now revenge and victory were close at hand for him.  April in Vietnam brought more than spring showers. In fact, the pre-monsoonal final offensive was activated for the North Vietnamese capture of Saigon. Named the Ho Chi Minh Campaign, target date for show down show time was May Day, 1975.  

 

Each battle that spring brought the North Vietnamese  closer to the walls of Amer-Asian Jericho as the South Vietnamese forces, outnumbered and outgunned retreated from Xuan Loc, the last line of defense before the North would penetrate Saigon and her defenses. The South Vietnamese ARVN  forces were ordered to retreat and withdraw to Saigon on April 21. President Thieu resigned the same day reading the grafitti on the wall then fled to Taiwan. A true leader! See Thieu run. Run Thieu. Tea for Thieu in Taiwan.

 

Trang was in the front lines of the frontal assault. As a foot soldier he walked alongside the North Vietnamese Chinese supplied battle tanks at Bien Hoa as they headed out on the Yellow Brick Road to Saigon making a clean sweep of any South Vietnamese ARVN troops along the way. This was retribution for Tranq’s family, his fiance and his village.

 

By April 27, 100,000 plus, giver or take, North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong had Saigon surrounded as refugees fled the city spilling  southward from a political  pinata that had  just burst open. Outnumbered again by North Vietnam, the  ARVN forces  didn’t have a chance in hell or Hanoi to hold out. The North Vietnamese shelled the airport closing down any hope for fleeing civilians  to escape by flying  the friendly skies. They were trapped in a Kissinger Headlock.

 

Trang could taste victory. He taste closure. He could taste blood as chaos and panic lit the fuse of hysteria among Saigon’s civilian population. American helicopters were now instead of strafing rice paddies and villages were in full EVAC mode trying to get as many South Vietnamese, US Officials and foreign nationals to safety as possible. For the pilots and Marines still at the embassy, not one of them wanted to be the last American killed in Vietnam. Better to take your chances of dying in a car wreck on the Dan Ryan in Chicago or a drive by shooting in Detroit.  

In the United States, South Vietnam was unanimous….the country was  doomed. President Gerald Ford had given a televised speech on April 23 declaring an end to the Vietnam War and all U.S. aid.

 

The EVAC operation continued around the clock, as North Vietnamese tanks breached defenses on the outskirts of Saigon. As Morning dawned on April 30, the Marines uttered their last Semper Fi and were whisked away by helicopter from the U.S. Embassy, Now left unguarded,  the civilian population crashed the gates of the embassy….but unlike Woodstock it was not a free concert they would be attending. Instead...the American Dream forced on the Vietnamese was over. The nightmare was about to begin.

 

Tranq was swelling with pride as his troops on April 30 entered Saigon and quickly overcame all resistance, capturing key buildings and installations. A tank from the 324th Division crashed through the gates of the Independence Palace that spring morning and the Viet Cong flag was raised above it.

 

America had lost its first war..,and over 50,000 of its young men. The war that divided America as well as Vietnam from My Lai to Kent State was over...time to give peace a chance.  

Chapter 62 - Mellow Brick Road to Sanity

 

The war in Vietnam officially ended in 1975...20 years later in 1995, Myrika and I had opened a larger live theater and performance venue  in Downtown Detroit in an area of old converted industrial brick buildings dating from the early 20th Century Motor City. We placed the venue, aptly Stage Fright  next door to the Juke Box Bar we had purchased 3 years prior.

 

My writing career was doing  well, off and running and money coming in steady flows, along with the cash from various radio and TV shows I was hosting in the Motor City. Myrika was producing records of many local Motor City acts and was known as Ms. Rock and Roll. That and her own art career along with my income was fueling our rocketship...Olivia eventually met a stockbroker, ten years her junior who knew nothing of her past nor had a clue as to what the 60’s were all about..Olivia said he was a member of the No Zen Gen…..today they live in Chicago and love the pizza and the Cubs. I eat Greek pizza  have season tickets to the Tigers.

 

The turning point in our lives came when we saw light at the end of our tunnel of plight in 1974 while still underground buried hiding under assumed names. That was the year President G. Ford offered amnesty to those who evaded the draft during the American Vietnam adventure in defeat.  He also granted amnesty to those in the military who deserted their duty while serving. However, the amnesty came with certain conditions, namely that those involved agreed to reaffirm their allegiance to the United States and serve two years working in a public service job.

 

Not bad...but by 1977 President Jimmy Carter made it crystal clear.  During his presidential campaign, Carter had announced his intention to pardon those who had failed to register for the draft or left the country to avoid service. In a televised debate with incumbent Ford, Carter proposed to implement a blanket pardon, in contrast to Ford’s more selective clemency plan. Carter interpreted pardon as meaning that what you did, whether it’s right or wrong, you’re forgiven for it. And his advocacy of  a pardon for draft evaders was to bring about an end to the divisiveness that had ripped the fabric of our country to shreds as a result of the Vietnam War.

 

On his second day in office, January 21, 1977, he followed through on his promise.

The pardon was unconditional and wiped criminal records clean, but it only applied to civilians, not the estimated 500,000 to 1 million active-duty personnel who went AWOL  or deserted during the war. Many supporters of Carter’s decision thought they too should be forgiven by the government in an effort to heal national wounds.

 

Finally we could emerge from the dark, assume our natural born names again and not live in fear of Leavenworth. Myrika, now married to me had taken the oath to  become a citizen and was safe from deportation. The war was finally over on all fronts, Asian and at home.

 

At first, Olivia , Myrika and I enjoyed a not so PG Rated threesome of a relationship of sexual and spiritual harmony in a spinning  orbit in a  world of our own making with the occasional guest from outside the orbit invited into the sexual inner sanctum to share in the cerebral and carnal carnival of near bi-sexual  joining of  the flesh feast creating more positions and combinations than the Kama Sutra could have ever imagined. All we were missing was a trapeze and circus music! Riding crops were Myrika’s fetish so she usually was the Ring Master .. ”step right up ladies and gents..it’s show time under the big top!”

 

Danny Two Horse and Kaylee eventually got married and had two little warriors to carry the sacred tribal pipe and to act as the storytellers for future generations of the noble race of Native Americans keeping traditions alive. I was best man and Myrika was the maid of honor. She told me I looked almost acceptable in a beaded shirt with Kokopelli fluting about the design. Myrika, was radiant as a blonde vision with leather fringed shirt with the Goddess of Fertility design that drove me into a dream world. Danny and Kaylee… two angels who had descended to Earth among us mere mortals...we loved them as brother and sister. We had gone through so much together. The bond was infinite.

 

Liam, remember Liam? Our IRA fugitive. He was eventually tracked down by the FBI, arrested and turned over to British authorities in Canada for transport back to Great Britain’s  notorious Maze prison. The Maze was the home to some of Northern Ireland’s most deadly terrorists making headlines for the hungers strikes and protests which turned it into a powder keg political prison in the Eighties.

Today the hell hole of  H-Block is deathly quiet with only a few signs of its bloody and brutal past. The massive jail, located beside the M1 out of Belfast, has housed thousands of Republican and Loyalist terrorists since it was built on an old airfield in the early Seventies. It was closed in the late Eighties with prisoners transferred to all points of the compass.

 

Liam  escaped during transfer  with three other inmates only to end up in fragments two months later while placing a bomb at a Belfast police station. It went off early. St. Patricks Day would never be the same again.

 

Baby China, the child I had with Olivia, had graduated from the University of Michigan with degrees in political science and journalism. She now produces documentaries exposing human trafficking of children and women worldwide. Her live in lover is a former female law student, now ACLU member she met on campus during the Art Festival. She has her own small practice in Ann Arbor in a second floor walk up which Myrika and I pay for until her practice reaches warp speed...or paying clients...whichever comes first.  She specializes in Immigration Law and Civil Rights.

 

Alexia, the daughter Myrika and I produced, had just turned 20 in 1995. She followed her own compass direction. She, like her mother is a musician and artist living the bohemian life in where? Yep, where Myrika and I met. The Village in New York. she is a beautiful young woman and has fallen in love with a young writer she met...oh gawd! History is about to repeat itself!

 

I always told her to beware of writers, artists, musicians and other degenerates...unless...unless...you want to live life on the border where sanity meets insanity...she, like her mother and I, chose “life to the max”...the Mellow Brick Road to Insanity wins every time….

Imprint

Publication Date: 11-28-2017

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
This is dedicated to all those who were drafted and resisted the war effort...as well as those who were drafted and served in Vietnam...and especially in memory of those who answered the call to duty and died....