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

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