Dark Side of the 60's Moon by Mike Marino (beginner reading books for adults txt) 📕

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 - 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 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