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

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.

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