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

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