Dark Side of the 60's Moon - Mike Marino (best novels to read in english .txt) 📗

you need us.” We shook hands as friends and he was graced by a kiss from Myrika.

“You are good people,” he said excitedly. “I shall never forget you. If you, my friends need anything, you know we’ve got your back. A few micks and a dago can do a lot of damage. slán abhaile, my friends!”

“Sla’n abhaile, You be safe too Liam.” We headed away as Liam was absorbed into the fabric of his country’s revolution as we headed into ours, headquartering in a resistance safe house. We would refresh, regroup and relax that evening by drinking with our new friends at a blues club listening to Buddy Guy’s guitar and Koko Taylor’s “Wang Dang Doodle.”

Tomorrow my notebook and Myrika’s camera would begin filling the pages and film frames of the debacle to follow. It wasn’t long before first blood was drawn. The blood of Dean Johnson, a seventeen-year-old Sioux Indian from South Dakota was  shot dead by Chicago police. Police say he pulled a gun. We went  along in a Yippie-organized memorial march later in the day. The mood was set. There would be no turning back at this point.

The government meant business as 6,000 National Guardsmen were  mobilized while at
Fort Hood, in the Lone Star State of Texas,  3,000 soldiers are mobilized for riot-control duty in Chicago. Bravely,  about 100 soldiers held a demonstration and  refused the deployment. The following morning  forty-three African American soldiers are arrested for refusal.  It got even worse as around 5,000 troops from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Fort Carson, Colorado, arrive in Chicago.  That Saturday, the Feminist group, Women Strike for Peace hold a women-only picket at the Hilton Hotel, where delegates are staying. The Daly machine imposes a city wide curfew. The park is packed and as curfew loomed, poet Allen Ginsberg was om-ing and chanting as he and head Fug, Ed Sanders lead people out of the park.

The rest of the week saw speakers speak from Tom Hayden to Bobby Seale. The arrest count for Convention Week was nearly  at 700, including those who would later be identified as the Chicago Seven. A number of demonstrators sustained injuries, with hospitals reporting that they treated 111 demonstrators. The on-the-street medical teams from the Medical Committee for Human Rights estimated that their medics treated over 1,000 demonstrators at the scene. Meanwhile across the Pacific Ocean during Convention Week, 308 Americans were killed in combat and 1,144 more were injured in the war in Vietnam.


Regarding the riots, Mayor Daley said,  in a press conference, “The policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder.” OK, he’s not Socrates by any measurement on any scale.

Along with the bloodletting Myrika and I were most interested in a free concert by Detroit’s MC5. Friends of mine I had met at the Grande Ballroom back in Detroit.  It was Sunday, August 25th at an event called “The Festival of Life” in Lincoln Park  Myrika and I  along with 5,000 others went to hear  the Five  and some local local bands play. Chicago Police in true Gestapo fashion refused to allow a flatbed truck to be brought in as a stage. All hell breaks loose  in which several are arrested and others are clubbed. Police reinforcements arrive.

The MC5 were also scheduled to play a free concert outside the convention hall, and they did amidst  the chaos of the democratic process. They had been invited by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin to kick out the jams, and kick them out they did, right in the balls. Just as they were finishing the cops moved in and the Five began removing their equipment as fast as they could. Having been through many riots before, they didn't need a crystal ball to know what was next on the "to protect and serve" agenda. The MC5 have the distinction of being the only band to actually perform a free concert amidst the melee and police riot that subsequently defined the American meltdown of the American wet-dream, and many were now thinking of bullets over ballots.

By the end of the week, we were ready to pack it up and head back to St. Joseph Island, our very own Canadian Shangri La where we would never grow old or die young in an Asian jungle. The revolution was on....soon Flower Power would wilt at the new realities of the American Dream gone rancid as the Weathermen pipe bombs would replace Jerry Garcia bongs. Even John Lennon said later in life regarding the Sixties…”We Blew It!”

Chapter 30 New York Pizza and Heroin

 

I filed my convention stories with  my magazine editors.  Chicago ‘68 filled the newsprint hungry front pages of the American newspapers. As featured cover stories with photos to enhance the printed words that cascaded from Rolling Stone, Time, Life, Look, and Newsweek. Living room rabbit ears across, pre-cable America brought the violence of the Chicago streets into the tranquil homes of Mr. & Mrs. 9 to 5, thirty years and out, Mid America and hardhat blue collar bars across the street from assembly line factories from Cleveland, Ohio to Detroit, Michigan.

Myrika, unbeknownst to me, from Chicago  had phoned my parents to let them know we were still alive and well. A breach of security in my book, but I could never be mad at her, so I  bit the bullet. She did find out that a postcard  had come to my parents house from Olivia postmarked from Canada, saying she, the baby and Joey  were  going to be in NYC and could we meet them there. Urgent!

Jesus Christ, Joey! Stay in Canada. Now I was fuming. I already endangered Myrika and myself  by going to Chicago in the first place during the boys in blue hunting for hippie season. One arrest and a warrant would have shown up and I’d be on my way to boot camp or a prison shower, and Myrika would be winging her way back to the Fatherland. Now this shit. If Joey was caught crossing the border, one slip up, a rubber hose treatment and we’d all be fucked.

“Well, Baby,” I said to Myrika. “We don’t have much of a choice. Back to New York I guess!” I only hoped the camper wouldn’t conk out somewhere in Pennsylvania. I don’t remember ever hearing about an Amish auto repair shop along the way, and renting a horse and buggy was out of the question!

We drove hard, day and night in two and half days with two rest breaks of short hindered sleep we were in the Big Apple’s bowels heading for the college campus where we knew Joey and family would be camped out at Peter Copy’s apartment in the Village.

We parked a few blocks away. Ever try parking in New York? You take what you can get. Peter answered the door, along with some of the old gang in the background wearing some serious looks, and stoney silence.  Olivia was sitting in a corner on a thick chair looking anxious, while baby China was asleep in her arms/

“Mickey,” she cried out. “Joey needs you!”

Myrika and I looked at each other, puzzled, perplexed, unnerved.
Olivia told us Joey had gotten into hard drugs and was turning mean. Not working. Stealing money from his employer in Canada and was caught in the act, so he decided to head back to the Briar Patch of the East Village.

Peter filled us in. “Damn his ass. He stole some painkillers I had and some weed. He’s  whacked out on the street selling the shit. His ass is gonna get us all busted! Talk to him Mickey. Please, talk to him! For God’s sake! If it wasn’t for Olivia I wouldn’t have let him in.”

I hit the streets with Peter heading for Times Square and Tompkins Park. Joey had to be in one of those places. Hustling, doping, blowing it for all of us. We did find him. He looked a wreck. A mess...in fact, he looked like a Times Square bum on the down and outs and hyper and nervous. We approached him slowly.

“Joey!” He looked anxiously, then broke into a smile of sorts. The kind of friendly smile you see on face of a dog with rabies before it takes you down.

“Man, Mikey. Good to see you. Looking good Amigo!”

“You’re not looking so good, Joey. What the fuck are you doing? You could get us all busted asshole!”

Fire flashed in his eyes. I could see there was no reasoning with him. “Peter, we’re gonna have to kill him,” I said half joking.

I wrote about my first impressions in my journal the next day once we got Joey crashed out on Peter’s kitchen floor. It made it’s way onto the pages of the Village paper I was still writing for under the heading, “Obituary of a Hustler”

“I could see Joey had narcotics  pouring from a fast flowing syringe in some dark beat zen corner of Times Square where only the hipsters dare go, ergo, go go go, while he inhales coke up his nose while nodding his head to a tome of  beat prose  with a loaded .38 in his hip hipster pocket firing a cartridge of white powder and lead aimed true and sure leaving a body cold in the alley face down, ass up one more fix should do the trick to give that electric jolt stimuli to the nervous system erasing fear creating words making rhyme for no reason, the counter-balance to an unbalanced society’s sobriety with sobriquets like word bouquets ready to adorn the unborn prom queen before she starts menstruation and has to be home to engage in sexual activity with her brothers who work the high wire under the big top while clowns strip off in the center ring….he began a life as a street hustler and began his love affair with hypodermic needles. He was a soldier, a deserter  who  wore the feather boa posing as  a no-profit prophet and a profligate purveyor of licentious literature that was driving him into uncharted territories. From Michigan to Canada...from Canada he eventually  found his Garden of Needle Eden and  the Yellow Brick Road to the Times Square quadrant where he reveled in revelry with male and female prostitutes, sex seeking sailors and junkies with needle tracks that would turn a dark green not from envy and would eventually lead them to death by overdose when flying monkeys would fill the syringe with a hot shot.”

Olivia put China to sleep on a soft pile of blankets in the back bedroom. China had a full belly of Olivia’s milk. Contented. Oblivious. Myrika sat on the couch holding Olivia close, not as lovers do, but as sisters who are awash in an ocean surrounded by sharks trying to console each other and live another day.

Peter and I went out on the second floor fire escape to share a bowl and pow wow on the latest development that was engulfing us all. If Joey kept on his current crash course, what would happen to Olivia and China. That was easy. Both would live with Myrika and I on our safe haven island in