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

negotiate,but nada happened. The activists were adamant that they would “settle for nothing less than the deed to Alcatraz Island,” while the government maintained that a land transfer was impossible.

Myrika and I would stay long enough to get the story going while Danny Two Horse (who would send along updates to me) and company would stay along with the influx of Native American college students and activists flocking to swell the  population of Alcatraz to more than 600 people. An Indian  council formed, and the island soon had its own clinic, kitchen, and even a nursery and grade school for its children. The most ironic part of this equation was forming a security force dubbed the “Bureau of Caucasian Affairs” a direct dig at the “Bureau of Indian Affairs” While the government patrolled the bay waters, Indian security forces  patrolled the shoreline to watch for intruders. They even set up a small broadcasting station to broadcast radio updates under the banner of “Radio Free Alcatraz.”

This was 1969...by early 1970, many of the movement’s college students and organizers had to leave Alcatraz to return to school, and they were often replaced by vagrants who cared more about living rent free than fighting for the protest’s original cause. “Our biggest problems are freelance photographers and the hippies,” one spokesman told a reporter. “They stay and eat up our stores, then leave. Then we have to clean up after them.” Soon, drugs and alcohol banned on the island by movement leaders were taking it’s toll as well
Alcatraz takeover.

Government officials had had enough, as did some of the Movement participants, the time had come for   the occupation to end which it did on June 11, 1971, ending the 19 month protest, when armed federal marshals pulled a Normandy Landing on the island and removed the last of its occupiers.

 

After a month of taping interviews, photographing daily life during the occupation and writing articles for the underground press Myrika and I bid farewell to Danny, Kaylee and the new friends we had made who were staying behind, meeting up with us later back on the island in Canada...

 

We were on the move again, this time to another massive counter culture concert. John McCloud, our good friend in Berkeley who had been babysitting our camper, “Flashback” had her gassed and ready to hit the road again. He would join myself, Myrika, Olivia and her boyfriend by following us  in his camper, the one   he named “Badwater” in honor of a camping trip we made to Death Valley two years before.  

 

Along with John, his lady, also named Olivia would join us for the what we felt would be a few gentle days of the waning age of Aquarius  and what we felt was another Woodstock...except this one, the Altamont concert would prove to be one of not peace, love and understanding...but rather murder, mayhem and chaos as the Ninth Gate of Hell would unleash its legions of leather jacket angels as Jumpin’ Jack Flash introduced himself...after all...he was ‘round ‘when Jesus Christ had his moments of doubt and pain….”

As for Alcatraz? Today, I’ll be a son of a bitch..it is a goddamned tourist attraction...and I have the t-shirts to prove it!

Chapter 53 - Vietnam to Altamont

Trang was holding his position, barely breathing as the VC waited in ambush to open fire on the platoon of U.S. grunts who were unlucky enough to pull recon duty that morning. As Trang stood motionless in the finest of Viet Cong foliage camouflage from foliage that hadn’t yet been been defoliated he double checked his AK-47. Locked and Loaded ready to fire and kill.

 

Lt. Talpas, leading point for his platoon of “recon rats” as they called themselves, was wary of the road ahead through the dense underbrush knowing any moment he or one of his men could get a leg blown off from a land mine, or any other number of booby traps the VC were experts at. Either way, no matter what, come what may, a fire fight was sure to follow. The question then was how many, and who would end up dead or wounded.

 

Thousands of miles away in California finishing touches were being put into place for the upcoming concert at  the Altamont Speedway attended by 300,000 hip and not so hip attendees mixed into the show featuring a line-up that included the Grateful Dead, Santana, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Jefferson Airplane and others, headlined by the bad boys of rock n’ roll, the Rolling Stones.

 

The promoters miscalculated one very important item. Concert security. Instead of freshly pressed uniformed state troopers or sheriff’s deputies, someone had the great idea of hiring the Hell’s Angel to act as the 82nd Airborne of the Altamont show. Rolling Stones management actually made the deal on recommendation from the Grateful Dead who had used them before, albeit not for a show this large. Besides it was said in a later interview by Sonny Barger in Rolling Stone, "We don't police things. We're not a security force and we go to concerts to enjoy ourselves and have fun." Payment for services rendered was to be in beer. It was a recipe for disaster on the counter culture horizon.

 

It was time for the White Rabbit to meet the Angels of Hell as it fell down a rabbit hole of violence…

 

Myrika and I and our rag tag rucksack entourage arrived the night before and with our press passes in hand were ready to cover the festival and enjoy the colors that only good LSD can paint for a tripper. Unfortunately, the Hell’s Angels “colors” gave a grave tinge to the acid rainbow that soon painted everything black as the afternoon progressed into early evening.

 

Myrika and John, our photo emeritus duo were busy snapping away with their Nikons to capture the crowd and acts on stage...great shots by the way Myrika got the Flying Burrito Brothers. She and I were allowed on stage off to the side thanks to our press credentials from all the right left wing underground magazine rags.

 

Soon  time was nearing for the Rolling Stones to take to the stage. Fights between the Angels and the crowd had already started early in the afternoon...beer and LSD and speed will do that...and when the Jagger swagger took over on stage it seemed to escalate.

 

Back on the not so Roy Rogers happy trails to you Ho Chi Minh Trail, Trang was nervous, but knew his nervousness would evaporate as his bullets would seek revenge for the mass murder of his family and his village at My Lai. The Americans would pay in blood and limbs for it.

 

Lt. Talpas was also ready for anything and was looking for a fight, as were his troops. They had been in the bush so many times and had seen so many of their friends die in battle, they too wanted revenge, retribution, justice.  Little did they know how close they were.

 

Within a second...all hell on earth broke out.  One of Talpas’ men hit a tripwire which set off an explosion that killed young private McCarthy instantly while three other young men were wounded by flying shrapnel and flame. Cpl. Ehrig was blinded and half his face was burned beyond recognition but he was alive, if that can be called living.

 

Trang was wounded, but alive. The war was his weapon of vengeance. As for Lt. Talpas? He was blown into another dimension, a victim of a rocket propelled grenade fired from the lush almost serene jungle setting. Normally it would be a scene from rain forest paradise, now it exploded into Dante’s inferno.

 

At the same moment in time as Trang fired his first shot,  half a world away Jagger launched into song…."Please allow me to introduce myself...I'm a man of wealth and fame," It was all the crowd needed as a fight broke out among the assembled around the stage front. Jagger asked for calm, and the Stones did manage to get through that number. But, gasoline had already been tossed on the raging fire. It was during the song "Under My Thumb" that an 18 year old concert goer, Meredith Hunter ended up under Hell's Angels fists and boots as he tried to climb up on stage during the set. He was grabbed and told to get lost, which he did, but then decided to return, more loaded, and angrier than ever by all accounts, and this time, a Billy the Kid wannabe, started pulling a revolver out of his pocket, intent unknown, and while most would back away from this type of situation, to a Hell's Angel, it's party time.

 

The Angels were now in Special Forces mode and one of them grabbed Meredith, knocked the gun aside and stabbed him five times in the upper back. Other Angels joined the biker version of the Bristol Stomp and Meredith already dying, was beaten to death. The Hells Angel who did the stabbing was later arrested, tried and found not guilty as it was determined to be self defense. An autopsy found that Meredith was loaded on amphetamines and was living proof..Speed Does Indeed Kill!

 

The Dead wrote songs about Altamont including "New Speedway Boogie" and "Mason's Children." Rolling Stone Magazine later stated, "Altamont was the product of diabolical egotism, hype, ineptitude, money manipulation, and, at base, a fundamental lack of concern for humanity.” The article covered many issues with the event's organization and was critical of the organizers and the Rolling Stones. One Rolling Stone writer stated, “What an enormous thrill it would have been for an Angel to kick Mick Jagger's teeth down his throat.”

 

Woodstock and Altamont were warning flags. One was a mud bath, the other a bloodbath.

 

There were other warning signs on the hip horizon. and carried to schizophrenic extremes as Timothy Leary's peace and love mantra would soon be overshadowed by events that would take the tie-dyed generation from Kaleidoscopic beauty to a bright, deadly Clockwork Orange, as Charles Manson was ready to take center stage and the Flower Power skies were darkening into a thick dark black, as deep black as dried blood in a L.A. mansion where the final nail was pounded into the coffin of Peace and Love.

 

Altamont was over...a dark stain on the mattress of Make Love not War….Vietnam was not over and wouldn’t be for a few more years, a few more deaths, a few more villages shot up, a few more rapes and atrocities by both sides.

 

Altamont and Vietnam….both signaled the end of an era and the dream of peace and harmony.

Chapter 54 - Kent State: Get Out of Dodge