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

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

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