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

meager attempt at let’s keep this light shall we response.

He laughed, his two cohorts smiled. “That’s a good start,” I whispered to Danny.

“We came by to welcome you. We were at the festival a few weeks ago and I was pretty impressed. Americans and Canadians make a hell of a team, eh?”

There’s that damn Eh thing again, I thought. I’m surprised they don’t spell the country C-Eh-N-Eh-D-Eh...now that would make sense. I also sensed they were there for more practical reasons than acting as the Provincial Welcome Wagon, such as checking the place for anything amiss...a stash of bombs perhaps, a mound of Mao’s “Little Red Books” in the children’s library hidden among the shelves of heroin behind the librarian who was actually a white slave prostitute sold to us by a Chinese Tong gang member.

We gave them the Canadian nickel tour with a dose of nervous mindless chit chat, careful not to blow our cover with a slip of the tongue.

“You’ve done wonders with the island, I must say and your festival is a right good piece of neighborliness. We’ll come by every now and then and if you need any assistance, please don’t hesitate to ring us up.”

We thanked them, warily and waved as the boat patrol returned to the land of Dudley Do-Right. I had a feeling they were on a recon mission. I voiced my opinion to Danny who not only agreed, but felt the missing Joey and Paul had something to do with it.

“Well, Danny. Now what?”

Things were now starting to spin out of control. We had to do something fast about our two problems. We did find out from Joey, when we got him alone at AIM headquarters in Michigan that he had talked. He had been busted again for drugs and part of his deal was to spill his guts about the underground anti-war resistance to the FBI, and  Of course, we were the centerpiece.

“He’s got to go...and the FBI prick too,” Danny said as did the other AIM members.  We told Mr. Levesque, our benefactor and himself a member of the Quebec Separatist Movement who the Canadians really got their cookies frosted over, agreed….Joey had to go….Paul had to go...where? How?

Danny suggested turning them over to the IRA or Black Panthers….I suggested the Westies gang in New York the most vicious gang around...the Mafia hired them for their ultra dirty work….Christ, peace and love were getting fucked over by an emerging violence ...as John Lennon said years later about the Sixties social revolution…”We blew it!”

Chapter 40 - Body Bags

 

Joey and Paul made sure they were away from the island while we were paid a visit by the modern day version of the Redcoats are Coming...the Redcoats are coming. They would return the next morning claiming they hooked up with two Rhodes Scholars working their way through college as hookers. Enough Foster’s Ale would make you think a manatee was a mermaid on the make, but we knew better the real reason. Avoidance or guilt on Joey’s part for setting us up to topple like a house of marked cards. Paul, being, we suspected FBI would not feel guilt, but pride that he was undercover and making Mademoiselle Edgar Hoover one happy old queen.

They checked into the Provincial Hotel in Sudbury where a restless night’s sleep brought vivid flashback nightmares of the ghost of Vietnam past to the surface. In the last few months of duty in Vietnam before he deserted he was on detail to guard the body bags of dead comrades before they were shipped stateside for burial by family. You’ve seen the T-Shirts? “I’ve been to Miami, and all I got was this t-shirt.” In this case it read “I’ve been to Vietnam and all I got was this lousy bodybag!”

Joey had written in a letter to his grandmother before coming stateside on the leave leading to his desertion, that some of the other GI’s would rob the dead bodies of valuables. Money, watches, jewelry, Zippo lighters, any and everything that worth pawning or trading with the locals for some guys 14 year old sister for a gang bang.

One night Joey and Lt. Baldwin were on duty when they caught sight of  two Newark, New Jersey dagos, Sp-4’s going through the bags and laughing while they relieved the corpse of one fresh faced kid, all of maybe 19 from the farmlands of Kansas or some place where they play football in high school under Friday night lights as a religion.

Army protocol called for arrest and court martial, which Joey and the Lt. would see that they met their fate...stockade and hard labor cleaning latrines. In Vietnam the saying was “we’re in the shit” and in this case these two caught in the act were truly in the shit.

Lt. Baldwin, with no complaint from Joey, took both thieves to the second floor of the vacant building next door to the storage area. Without going into detail, it turns out they couldn’t fly from the second story window when being forcibly tossed out breaking a leg and an arm respectively after being wounded by fire from Lt. Baldwins .45 and Joey’s M-16 for attempting to escape! Someone had to speak for the dead.  

The next morning, after their wounds were treated and admitted they did indeed “try to escape” (they knew better than to veer from Lt. Baldwin’s report of events)they were taken before the company’s First Sergeant, Sgt. Starr.


This Starr marched to a different drummer..a military drummer. He had served in WWII..you know..the BIG ONE..as those guys with all the pins on their ball caps that reminds us to remember the Arizona while dousing themselves in booze at the VFW reliving the war one bullet or bomb at a time while getting bombed by an invading army led by Rear Admiral Jim Beam.

Sgt. Starr ran a tight ship too. His favorite phrase when he didn't believe you was "Aw, Horseshit!" Those two words were like a wall of words...those two words..said it all...it said.."you’re in my rifle sight and I'm ready to fire so don't fuck up!"  He was one step away from being Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now” living up river, severed from the military command. In Vietnam, according to Joey’s account Sgt. Starr was ten feet tall and bulletproof.

Back at the island Danny and I were discussing matters when one of the AIM members came ashore with news. Under the Treaty of 1868 at Fort Laramie  between the U.S. and the Lakota, “all retired, abandoned or out-of-use federal land was returned to the Native people who once occupied it. Since Alcatraz penitentiary had been closed on March 21, 1963, and the island had been declared surplus federal property in 1964, a number of Red Power activists felt the island qualified for a reclamation.”


The government however had other plans, so activists secretly were planning an occupation of the island in November. University student leaders of the Native American Student Organization at the University of California, Berkeley, with a larger group of student activists were lighting the fuse.

“I thought that was old news.” I mentioned as a matter of fact.

Danny Two Horse passed a lit joint my way, we didn’t have a peace pipe, so this was the next best thing,

“It is a continuation,” he explained. “Yes, in 1964, a small group of Sioux demonstrated by occupying the island for a few hours. The entire group was no more than maybe, 40 or 50 people, including photographers, reporters and a lawyer representing those claiming land stakes. Here’s the best part, our people offered  the federal government the same amount for the land that the government had initially offered them way back when...47 cents per acre, hell I can’t believe they turned down  $9.40 for the island. We even told the Feds  would be allowed to maintain and use of the Coast Guard  on the island. Pretty fucking generous if you ask me. Anyway the protesters after being threatened that they would be charged with felony.”

I could see it now. I guess I better have the camper checked out...looks like we’d be heading west once again. Myrika would go along to photograph the scene and I’d do my journalism schtick and whip up articles for my columns in the leftist magazines and underground papers I wrote for.

“Shit Danny, we’ll get busted one of these days. The Feds will be all over us on this one. Oh hell, you only live once.

“Yes,” Danny said wisely as a young punk version of a Lakota medicine man.”But in the spirit world you live forever...and you are allowed 10 young horny virgins for sex and other pleasures. It’s a good deal my paleface friend!”

Danny’s version of “heaven” sure beat the hell out of my Catholic vision of winged cherubs with holy chastity belts and eternal infinite celibacy!

 

 

Chapter 41 J. Edgar & The Hooverettes

 

The age of Aquarius was traveling faster than Tom Swift’s rocket ship going from high atop Cripple Creek to shit’s creek in under 1960’s seconds. The anti-war  movement was in the government crosshairs of the FBI. For every action there is a reaction.


England had her Queen. We had J. Edgar Hoover as a dangerous drag queen on a mission to purge the counter culture. His idea of giving democracy’s “enemies” an enema would blaze a blood soaked bulldozed path through honest protest igniting a firestorm of a backdraft that consumed the nation.

Hoover said  "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country are the Black Panthers” so he took the bullshit by the horns supervising a  counterintelligence (is that a governmental oxymoron or what? Counter Intelligence?) program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, and even assassinations of its leadership. The Panthers however, weren’t gonna take it in the ass. They had guns too, locked and loaded. They also had the Black Panther version of Sonny and Cher in the persons of Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver….who by the way was no relation to white bread shit on a shingle Beaver and Wally Cleaver.

As the Sixties waned into low tide of the dreaded disease of the  Disco infected Seventies, the Weather Underground had cast aside the peace pipe of Flower Power in favor of pipe bombs.  The discovered that gunpowder could and would be much better at  blowing up a building. A stick or two of dynamite was replacing a few spiritual sticks of Buddhist