When Laguna Beach Was the LSD Capital of the Universe

http://lagunabeach.patch.com/articles/watch-when-laguna-beach-was-the-lsd-capital-of-the-universe#video-8703866

Olympic Protester Maintains Passion

Olympic Protester Maintains Passion

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/sports/john-carlos-of-68-olympics-protest-maintains-his-passion.html

By NEIL AMDUR

Published: October 10, 2011

More than 40 years after Tommie Smith and John Carlos ignited the sports world with their black-gloved fists raised on the victory stand at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Carlos says, "I still feel the fire."

Any doubts that time and age have somehow diminished the passion that fueled his track and field career are dispelled with the publication of "The John Carlos Story," written with Dave Zirin and published by Haymarket Books.

"If I shut my eyes, I can still feel the fire from those days," Carlos, 66, says, as early as the second page of a memoir with the intensity and power of a 200-meter dash. "And if I open my eyes, I still see the fires all around me. I didn't like the way the world was, and I believe that there need to be some changes about the way the world is."

Those who thought they knew Carlos as a brash New Yorker may be surprised by some of his more personal recollections, including having an early obsession with swimming across the English Channel and having Fred Astaire as a childhood hero. Carlos says Astaire would show up outside the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem in "top hat, tails, shoes and cane," watch Carlos and his young friends perform dance and acrobatic routines and then reward them with silver dollars.

And there are the poignant admissions that he was embarrassingly dyslexic as a grade-schooler ("in those days they didn't call you dyslexic, they called you dummy") and that he "didn't care a lick if I won the gold, silver and bronze" in the 200-meter final in Mexico (he won the bronze behind Smith and Peter Norman, an Australian).

"Before the race started," Carlos writes, "I made up my mind I wasn't going to test Tommie for that gold medal."

He adds, "I was there for the after-race."

It is that after-race for which Carlos is most remembered. Carlos and Smith bowed their heads while the national anthem played, raising their fists to protest treatment of blacks in America. As a result, they were told to leave the Olympic Village.

The positive reception that Carlos says he is receiving on his book tour is far different from the bitterness and news media backlash that affected Smith's and Carlos's lives after Mexico, and different also from the way their relationship with each other evolved. Carlos's first wife, Kim, whom he married while still in high school, committed suicide in 1977, four years after they split up, an event that led him into depression and still haunts him, he says.

Smith's autobiography, "Silent Gesture," written with David Steele, was published in 2007 and fractured Carlos's relationship with him until they were reunited in Mexico City for a 40th-anniversary ESPN special.

"I understand Tommie a lot better now in terms of who he is, his attitude and his views," Carlos said.

Carlos is less patient with the state of track and field and its assorted drug scandals. "How can you live with yourself and call yourself a champion, when you repeatedly have lied to yourself and lied to society?" he asked. "It's gotten so bad that it's actually destroying the sport and eating out the root of the sport from the bottom, and the bottom is about to fall out."

Carlos was also dismissive of sprinting's current sensation, Usain Bolt of Jamaica, saying, "I don't look at him."

At an appearance Carlos made last week at the Capital City Public Charter School in Washington, a student asked why he had risked his career to take such a controversial stand. Carlos replied, "Because it was so many individuals that were in positions of power that chose to just lay back."

Carlos will appear at the Rosenthal Pavilion in New York University's Kimmel Center on Wednesday night with his co-author, Zirin, and the writer and commentator Cornel West.

Now remarried and working as a guidance counselor at Palm Springs High School in California, Carlos offers his own prescriptions for success and survival. Don't run from the moment, he tells students; in return, he says, they teach him how to stay young.

"I'm where I need to be, or should be, or could be in my life," he writes. "I think as well as I've worked with kids, there are things I don't think I had the opportunity to do in this life. I think God had intentions for me to do more, but yet still I hear the breath of God telling me, 'You did more than most people ever thought you would be able to do under the circumstances, so just keep on keepin' on and we'll see what comes.' When I hear that voice, I tell God politely that he sounds too much like the devil for my taste."

.

Deadheads flock to Monterey for Furthur

http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_19075624

Deadheads flock to Monterey for Furthur

By DENNIS TAYLOR
Herald Staff Writer

Posted: 10/09/2011

If the "Summer of Love," 1967, dissolved into whatever kind of world we live in today, nobody told the Deadheads.

More than four decades later, they flocked to the Monterey County Fairgrounds during the weekend for a two-night gig by a band called Furthur, fronted by Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, two original members of The Grateful Dead.

The fairgrounds has been a sacred venue for rock aficionados since the Monterey Pop Festival introduced much of the music world to Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Otis Redding and other legendary performers in June 1967.

The Grateful Dead was there, too, led by the late, great Jerry Garcia (guitar and vocals), and featuring Weir (guitar, vocals), Lesh (bass, vocals), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (keyboards, harmonica, vocals) and Bill Kreutzmann (drums).

The core of that group stayed together for 30 years, playing cheap or free concerts all over the world, trailed by hordes of fans — Deadheads — who, in many cases, arranged their lives so they could see every show in every city.

"There's a line from a Grateful Dead song that says, 'Once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right,'" said Peter Lull, 35, who lives in Big Sur, Berkeley and Squaw Valley, and says he watched at least 150 shows that featured Jerry Garcia.

"Grateful Dead shows are about the hedonism within the context of community and expanded consciousness. There's a loving awareness among multi-generations

of fans of The Dead — an appreciation of each other that exists within the celebration. (Deadheads) look out for each other and enhance each other's experiences."

Garcia, the heart and soul of The Dead, died Aug. 9, 1995, but remains a messiah figure to the original Deadheads and their descendants, who continue to follow Weir and Lesh wherever they're booked to play.

The scene outside the fairgrounds before Furthur took the stage wasn't just reminiscent of Haight-Ashbury, the famous San Francisco intersection that became the heartbeat of the hippie movement in the mid-'60s — it was the real thing. The vast majority of those milling along the sidewalks on Fairground Road were dyed-in-the-wool Deadheads who would have fit perfectly into the scene at The Haight 44 years ago.

Indeed, some who were actually part of The Summer of Love are still following the music, wearing their thinning, gray hair long and wild over tie-dyed T-shirts. Others are 20-, 30-, or 40-somethings who, somewhere along the line, became mesmerized not so much by Weir and Lesh, but by the vibe of the Deadhead community. Lull describes part of the Deadhead movement as "people who maybe were disenfranchised from their own, traditional family environments and found an opportunity for friendship, camaraderie and brotherhood within a very accepting community."

"I would never travel 14 hours, three weekends in a row, to do anything other than this," said Vermont native Lizzy Farley, a 20-year-old domestic exchange student at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Oregon.

"But there's some kind of crazy energy surrounding this and I feel like I have to do it. Everybody I've talked to knows everybody else. Everybody's connected and wonderful things just keep happening."

Deadheads often travel together — sharing money, food, transportation, clothing and anything else another Deadhead needs — moving from concert to concert without tickets, or lodging, or plans, other than to find a way to see the show.

"It has to do with freedom," said Todd Tholke, a 44-year-old Haight-Ashbury street musician who has seen 450 Dead concerts. "It's a bliss, a vibe that goes all over the country, and The Dead is the only band that creates it."

"I feel like I was born in the wrong era," said Devon Swinburne, a Portland State University student who made her pilgrimage to Monterey for both shows. "It's not just about the music — it's this whole community that's here to support you, and it's a circular thing."

Lull and his brother, Chris, created a website (www.gankmore.com) where they have archived audio of every Grateful Dead show from 1965-95 for no commercial purpose. He is quick to say that the Weir/Lesh band isn't the same as The Dead.

"Jerry Garcia was the virtuoso. He played improvisationally, which is why people could see him again and again," Lull said. "Jerry played The Warfield 10 times in 14 days, sold out every show, and it was the same people who were going every night." The Warfield Theater is in San Francisco.

Without tickets in hand, the Deadheads mingle among their own community, asking each other if they might have one to spare. (Lull says he has never, ever been shut out, and says Deadheads usually find a way, and they help others do the same.)

"I need a miracle right now," said Alabama native Jessica Hunter, 22, extending her index finger skyward to alert others that she was desperate for a ticket. "But miracles happen at these concerts. They happen all the time."

And if the miracle doesn't come?

"You hang out and dance outside with amazing people," said Farley. "It's really a wonderful thing."

--

Dennis Taylor can be reached at dtaylor@montereyherald.com

or 646-4344.

.

The Grateful Dead Moves Furthur

The Grateful Dead Moves Furthur

http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/news/2011/oct/06/grateful-dead-moves-furthur/

with Bob Weir and Phil Lesh four decades after Monterey Pop.

By Adam Joseph

Thursday, October 6, 2011

In June of 1967, an unkempt and hairy ragamuffin San Francisco rock outfit brought its extended acid test jams to the Monterey Pop Festival.


The Grateful Dead had already started gaining underground notoriety for their epic improvisational instrumentals, but the Monterey County Fairgrounds was a coming-out party of sorts – not just for them, but for a whole approach to music appreciation and celebration.


Rock Scully, a Monterey Peninsula local and the Dead's manager from 1965-85, regards the unprecedented three-day, outdoor music festival as the "first of its kind to feature electric rock and roll" and "a prototype for all the rock festivals that followed." It was a platform used to introduce the world to little-known talents at the time, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. The event also highlighted world music acts like sitar guru Ravi Shankar and introduced hippies to the heart-throbbing voice of Georgia native Otis Redding. Additionally, Scully says the festival showcased many of San Francisco's "free-flowing" bands of the time, including Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Moby Grape. 


At the apex of that amorphous, psychedelic music scene was the band that he managed for 20 years, fueled by Jerry Garcia's inquisitive musical experimentation, which always appeared to expand exponentially.


But Scully, Grateful Dead rhythm guitarist-singer Bob Weir and the rest of the band were not very happy with their performance at the fairgrounds. 


"It was terrible," Scully says. "We were sandwiched between The Who and Jimi Hendrix on Sunday night. Also, the wall in the back of the arena was breached so everyone started flooding in." 


A bigger hindrance arrived when Mickey Dolenz, drummer for one of the original boy bands, The Monkees, interrupted the Grateful Dead's set to announce, "The Beatles are NOT here!" All weekend, rumors swirled the Fab Four were at the fairgrounds; the band, in fact, was recording in London. 


Those plot twists inspire Scully to admit he's glad he refused to sign a release, before the Dead played, that would've allowed them to be filmed for D.A. Pennebaker's pivotal documentary, Monterey Pop. Weir concedes his most memorable moments of the 1967 festival didn't necessarily come on stage, but while he watched Hendrix play from the side of the stage and when he listened to Joplin blow the minds of all the spaced-out kids in the audience. (Scully adds that he had a blast checking out all the musicians interact, meet, hang out and hold late-night, impromptu jam sessions on the Monterey Peninsula College football field.) 


Weir continues: "I remember being nervous [playing the Pop Festival] and we didn't get to use our own backline gear, which sort of impacted us a little bit, but [our performance] was also flat. It wasn't a bad night, it just wasn't an exceptional night by any means."


Fortunately he will return to play the arena stage at the fairgrounds once again, for the first time in 45 years, this Friday and Saturday with Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh and Furthur, the latest incarnation of the seminal band.


"It will be interesting to play [the fairgrounds] again," Weir says. "I remember it being a good-sounding place so I'm looking forward to it."


~≈~≈~


Between then and now, troves of fans have discovered the group. 


"By 1967, [the Dead] were already the center of a lot of attention in San Francisco," Scully says. "It would only be a matter of time that after the festival kids would start flooding The Haight. And they did."


In fact, the Grateful Dead became so ingrained as a way of life – for both the musicians involved and their loyal fans – that even when the group's unofficial leader Jerry Garcia passed away in 1995, the Dead didn't stay dormant very long. 


In 1998, Weir and Lesh started touring as The Other Ones, an offshoot featuring Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, keyboardist Bruce Hornsby, sax-man Dave Ellis and guitarists Mark Karan and Steve Kimock. After a few years, The Other Ones became The Dead (without Grateful) for a short amount of time before disbanding to take on separate side projects. 


But by 2009, both Weir and Lesh were itching to delve back into that expansive Grateful Dead song vault – after all, Weir believes, if Jerry were still alive, he would still be touring.


"We've got nothing better to do," Weir says.


For diehard Deadheads, that represents a divine decision, and one that will evoke memories shared by thousands, of quitting jobs and selling homes to tour with the Dead. The devotion even led some to hold their weddings in parking lots before shows. That undying love, Weir insists, remains the group's driving engine.


"[The audience] feeds us," he says. "They let us know what they like and we work with that. When you're out in the audience you can feel it and we sure as hell feel it too. We're always a part of the experience as much as the audience."


Adds Scully, "[Furthur] shows are really exciting because the audience is so appreciative. This isn't like watching a Grateful Dead cover band; it's an extension of the band. It says it in the name, Furthur: It's really a deep investigation into the music and what makes it so special."


Furthur, which was the name of the candy-colored school bus that transported Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters around the country dosed on LSD, which was idealized in Tom Wolfe's journalistic account of counterculture in the 60s, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, is also a way for the cultural phenomenon that is the Grateful Dead to live on.


"This is the only life I've ever known," Weir says.


Lesh and Weir's musical connection with Furthur's younger bandmembers – Jeff Chimenti (keyboard), John Kadlecik (lead guitar), Joe Russo (drums), Sunshine Becker (backing vocals) and Jeff Pehrson (backing vocals) – finds a familiar improvisational chemistry.


"We listen to each other and play off each other," Weir says. "It's pretty much like it's always been. On a nightly basis I get surprised by certain songs standing out. The tunes never quit surprising me. Beyond that, it's business as usual." 


Adds Scully, "[Weir and Lesh] have become really good team leaders and the band is a team effort." 


Lead guitarist/singer Kadlecik spent several years touring with the popular Grateful Dead tribute band Dark Star Orchestra and is known for his ability to come scarily close to replicating Jerry Garcia's voice. 


Furthur, meanwhile, replicates the Dead's penchant for extended songs – and shows – playing for as long as four hours while offering everything from Garcia solo work like "Reuben and Cerise," to marathon Grateful Dead classics like "Weather Report Suite," "Let it Grow" and "Eyes of the World," which have all been known to meander on for more than 15 minutes if the band's feeling it. 


"The jams are still spontaneous and can be combustible or completely knock you off your feet, which is part of the reason why they're so popular," Scully says. "They want to pack more of their experience and knowledge about what works and what doesn't work, and try to make it better and work more often."


When Furthur lights up the Monterey County Fairgrounds on Friday and Saturday nights, Weir says it may be fun to revisit the set they played on that very stage at the Monterey Pop Festival. Not that he's living in the past – far from it: "It's sometimes hard for me to be involved with the past," he says, "because there's so much future-oriented work in my scope." 


FURTHUR plays 7pm Friday and Saturday, Oct. 7-8, at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, 2004 Fairgrounds Road, Monterey. $55.25. 394-8432. www.furthur.net

FURTHUR plays 7pm Friday and Saturday, Oct. 7-8, at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, 2004 Fairgrounds Road, Monterey. $55.25. 394-8432. www.furthur.net

Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

http://articles.boston.com/2011-09-30/ae/30230052_1_blaxploitation-era-footage-tanya-hamilton

'Black Power' speaks the truth: Film doesn't need to preach

September 30, 2011

By Wesley Morris

One reason people object to "The Help'' is because of movies like "Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975,'' a documentary that comprises footage from Swedish television journalists covering black Americans during the end of the civil rights era and the Vietnam War. The challenge and actual revolution that scare "The Help'' are freshly, thrillingly apparent in "Mixtape.''

For instance, the documentary contains film of Angela Davis. Even in defiance she maintains a stirring placidity that belies reality - she was headed to death row for aggravated kidnapping and first-degree murder (a jury eventually found her not guilty). You look at that Afro, hear that commandingly gentle diction (part scholar, part Southerner), and sense her power and you wonder, "Where's the movie about her?'' Actually, you watch the material here and wonder whether most of the movies made about black people are meant to pacify general audiences, to distract them from demanding more of the movies.

Where are the films about black America in the late 1960s and 1970s? Last year, Tanya Hamilton released a tiny drama about a sliver of the movement, with Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington, called "Night Catches Us.'' It quickly disappeared. It's an imperfect but ambitious film willing to confront an enormous, complex period in this country. Pending the arrival of another film like Hamilton's, there's "Mixtape.''

Göran Olsson spent years paring down the footage with his co-editor Hanna Lejonqvist. He then showed that material to activists (Harry Belafonte, Sonia Sanchez, Davis) and to Ahmir "?uestlove'' Thompson, Talib Kweli, and Erykah Badu, highly regarded, iconoclastic musicians who, in Olsson's thinking, connect the two eras. The assemblage of images compresses nine turbulent years into 95 minutes. The assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in 1968 are flashpoints for a social revolution whose urgency waned as drugs flooded black communities, turning blacks away from fighting for justice to fighting each other. In that sense, the film manages to explain how the movies swung from the blaxploitation era to, I don't know, "The Klumps.''

Olsson acknowledges in a disclaimer that his distillation amounts to significantly less than the whole story. But what he's done achieves significance nonetheless. We don't see any of the other interviewees. All we hear is their voices playing over the footage as commentary. The observations are incisive, though Abiodun Oyewole, of the Last Poets, gets a few of his dates wrong (Olsson doesn't correct him, and it almost doesn't matter; the Last Poets were there). Really, it's the footage that astounds and fascinates: Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, and Huey P. Newton holding separate news conferences, a group of schoolkids at a kind of black power training academy singing an altered chorus from "Land of 1,000 Dances'' so the "naaa nananana'' is "pick up the guns.'' This country once endured something like an Arab Spring. It was a headache for the government, and the footage makes a compelling case for the assertion of Malcolm X - and many others - that the influx of drugs in those neighborhoods wasn't an accident.

This is a movie that shows us the black experience through European eyes. But the Swedish filter is an important one. Early on we see King Gustav VI warmly receiving Belafonte, Martin Luther King, and Coretta Scott King in 1966. They toured Europe to drum up support for civil rights, and, during that trip, King made an appearance in Vilgot Sjöman's new-wave cult provocation "I Am Curious (Yellow).''

The film later mentions a TV Guide cover story accusing Swedish and Dutch television of anti-Americanism. In the 1960s, those countries enjoyed the luxury of relative societal harmony. The social issues of the day belonged to other countries, and Europe - Scandinavia and the Netherlands, in particular - developed a rather aggravating affinity for ours. So the Swedish journalists came to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. In the '80s, '90s, and 2000s, the Dutch documentary filmmakers - for starters Johan van der Keuken, Heddy Honigmann, and the South-African-born, Dutch-trained Aryan Kaganof (born Ian Kerkhof) - toured the world looking to rub our noses in atrocity and injustice.

Everyone meant well. But in the finished result there was often the stink of condescension and naïveté and a backhanded compassion for the indigent. Behold these poor and oppressed. Look at how not like us they are. How sad! It's how directors like the Danes Lars von Trier ("Manderlay'') and Susanne Bier, who made this year's insufferable foreign-language Oscar winner, "In a Better World,'' can produce movies that decry racism and dehumanization while deploying the tools and tropes of racism and dehumanization.

On the one hand, "Black Power Mixtape'' is a distant relative. It's about the Swedish affinity for and curiosity about black America made with the same affinity. But this isn't a work of propaganda or heart-tugging. Olsson doesn't tell us how to feel. He doesn't have to. His sharing this footage is a moral act whose righteousness can stand on its own. The material obviates the need for an outsider's commentary. It's powerful, vivid, inspiring, demoralizing, and damning enough to speak for itself.

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com

.

Gala commemorates struggle

Gala commemorates struggle

http://utdailybeacon.com/news/2011/oct/4/gala-commemorates-struggle/

Jamie Grieg, Staff Writer

Published: Tue Oct 04, 2011

aNearly 900 people gathered last week in the Knoxville Convention Center to celebrate 50 years of African-American achievement at UT.
    
The event was part of UT's year-long celebration commemorating the first black undergraduates to enroll in the university.
    
The large crowd honored UT administrator Theotis Robinson, the families of Charles Blair and the late Willie May Gillespie with a standing ovation.
   
 UT Trustee Anne Holt Blackburn, a 1973 alumna and Emmy-award-winning anchor for Nashville's WKRN-TV, served as the mistress of ceremonies.
    
"Today's students owe a debt of gratitude to the brave men and women who broke down the walls of segregation at the university," Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek told attendees. "The events of the past have brought us to where we need to stand today — a campus open to and committed to diversity."
    
The celebration, organized by the 50th Anniversary Committee, featured musical and dramatic performances highlighting the challenges and accomplishments of the last five decades.
    
UT students, faculty and staff, along with community members, were part of the music and dramatic production.
    
The 1970s were represented by a song and dance production of the song "Age of Aquarius."
    
The All Campus Theatre and Strange Fruit Productions student groups joined forces to produce a play highlighting the 1980s and the on-campus struggle for equality.
    
The families of Gene Mitchell Gray, the first African-American graduate school student, and Lincoln Anderson Blackney, the first African-American law school student, were also recognized at the celebration.
    
Many African-American achievers attended, including Brenda Peel, the first UT African-American undergraduate to obtain a degree; Lester McClain, the first African-American scholarship athlete, who played football in 1967; and Wade Houston, the first African-American basketball coach in the Southeastern Conference.
    
Among the many other individuals and groups celebrated for achievement was the late Fred Brown, who founded UT's Minority Engineering Scholarship program.
    
Cheek noted the impact of Brown's work and highlighted the efforts of the campus' Love Gospel Choir and ME4UT student organizations.
    
Cheek also made note of Brown's role in nurturing many students, including UT trustee Spruell Driver, a 1987 engineering graduate.
    
Driver was named a Torchbearer upon graduation and went to Duke University to earn a law degree. He also was celebrated at the event as the first African-American president of the UT National Alumni Association.
    
Music faculty member Donald Brown, a three-time Grammy nominee and internationally renowned jazz pianist, played "Someday We Will Be Free," accompanied by vocalist Kelle Jolly.
    
The program reflected on the role of sports in UT's African-American achievement.
   
 Including Larry Robinson, the first African-American to receive a scholarship for UT's varsity basketball team; linebacker Jackie Walker, who became the first African-American football team captain; and Condredge Holloway, who was named the school's first African-American football quarterback and UT alumna Benita Fitzgerald, who was the first African-American to win a gold medal in the Olympic 100-meter hurdles.
    
The program gave credit to the work of Rita Sanders Geier, who filed a lawsuit against the state in 1968, which led to a long-standing consent decree and dedicated funding for minority recruitment, scholarships and faculty hiring at UT. Geier came to work at UT in 2007 as a special assistant to the chancellor and retires this fall.
    
UT junior Jessica Session gave a riveting slam poetry performance, which was accompanied by vocalist Shana Ward, pianist Kristopher Tucker and cellist Jeremiah Welch, all of whom are UT undergraduates.
   
 The gala ended with the university's Alma Mater, sung first in traditional style and then reworked into a modern arrangement for the grand finale, which showcased all the evening's performers.
    
Cheek thanked celebration co-chairs, Charles and Annazette Houston, and members of the committee for an enjoyable and inspiring event.
    
Avery Howard, agriculture and natural resources leadership and table host at the Gala, remarked on the event's meaning.
    
"It was incredible to see the achievement of African-Americans who attended UT. It inspired me to see that I can make an impact just as they did," Howard said. "African-American students at UT are not here solely because they want to be but because of the work of others who have come before us. Reflecting on the 50 years of accomplishments by African-American students makes me want to continue to make a difference for another 50 years."

.

Viet Cong vet finds friendship with former foes in Sacramento region

Viet Cong vet finds friendship with former foes in Sacramento region

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/10/03/3954917/viet-cong-vet-finds-friendship.html

By Stephen Magagnini
smagagnini@sacbee.com

By Stephen Magagnini The Sacramento Bee

Last modified: 2011-10-03T16:02:07Z

Published: Monday, Oct. 3, 2011

A Viet Cong anti-aircraft gunner engaged several U.S. Army helicopter pilots Sunday in a Vietnam-era chopper parked inside a West Sacramento warehouse.

Dinh Ngoc Truc didn't have his big 37-mm cannons as he seized the controls of the olive-drab Huey UH-1C "Gunship" that flew with the Army's 175th Assault Helicopter Company out of Vinh Long South Vietnam in 1970.

"I used to shoot at these," Truc told Vietnam veteran Ken Fritz, who hosted Truc at his Orangevale home this weekend.

"Talk about sleeping with the enemy," said Fritz's wife, Marcia. "Saturday night, over beers and wine, they were talking about how they used to shoot each other like they were playing video games. They said it's a good thing we didn't meet back then, because one of us would be dead."

The unlikely friendship between former combatants 36 years after the Vietnam War ended began last November, when Fritz and fellow helicopter pilot Jack Swickard of Roswell, N.M., returned to Vietnam.

Vietnam, though still run by the communists, has a full-throttle capitalist economy, and the current generation of Vietnamese don't care about "the American War," as the Vietnam War is known there.

It's not easy to find many of the old battle sites, so Swickard and Fritz joined Truc, now a Vietnamese official with the International Press and Communication Cooperation Center.

"He's a funny guy who wears loafers – they call them 'lazy man shoes,' " said Fritz, 65, co-founder of the 10,000-member Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association. Its motto is: "On the eighth day God created the Huey."

A war hero himself, Truc had joined the Viet Cong at 18 and became an anti-aircraft gunner firing at South Vietnamese army aircraft along the Ho Chi Minh trail.

"My battalion shot down three planes," said Truc, who helped capture Saigon on April 30, 1975. He carries a snapshot of himself in front of the South Vietnamese presidential palace.

"I waved my arms up and down to inform my mom in Hanoi that I'm safe and alive," said Truc, 55.

Truc led the U.S. pilots on a tour of the demilitarized zone then separating North and South Vietnam. He took them to Khe Sanh, where the North Vietnamese laid siege to a Marine base for 77 days in 1968 in a bid to stop the U.S. clampdown on weapons flowing to South Vietnam along the nearby Ho Chi Minh trail.

"Khe Sanh is considered like Dien Bien Phu," where the Vietnamese defeated the French in 1954 after a bloody battle, Truc said. "Khe Sanh dealt a very big blow to the Americans. After this battle, the Americans start thinking they cannot win the war and start withdrawing troops."

"We never lost a battle, but people here in the U.S. lost the war," Fritz countered.

The North Vietnamese fired 130 mortar roundss at the U.S. base in one hour, Fritz said. "We lost 112 guys and they lost over 10,000, but we pulled out of there."

"We never say how many we lost at Khe Sanh," Truc said. "We win because the Americans stopped bombing us."

He took Fritz and Swickard to battle sites in Hue and Da Nang, where a huge U.S. air base has been converted to a commercial airport. They visited China Beach and Marble Mountain.

Next stop was Chu Lai, Fritz's home base in 1968 and 1969, where he logged 1,640 flying hours as an assault helicopter pilot.

"We were flying west of Quang Nai over some rice paddies and a guy jumped up and put a zipper of gunfire right through the middle of the helicopter," Fritz recalled. "My co-pilot got hit in the neck, and my door gunner, who was 18, took a round in his back."

As Fritz relived the war in Vietnam, "the hair stood up on my neck and arms, and chills went up and down my spine," he said. "Helicopters were like horses in Vietnam. The best job was leading the grunts out of the jungle, out of harm's way. The worst job was hauling them in."

But wherever they went in Vietnam, "the people were extremely friendly when they found out I was a veteran," Fritz said. "I felt like we made a whole lot of friends."

In West Sacramento, the restored Huey is parked at the Western Truck School owned by Mike Nord of Elk Grove, one of 140 former Vietnam helicopter pilots in Northern California.

After examining the Huey, the old combatants climbed into a truck trailer converted into a "Mobile Officers Club" featuring a corrugated tin roof and a bar made from a shuffleboard table.

The Officers Club is lined with battle photos, maps and a poster honoring those missing in action.

In Vietnam, Truc offered to let Fritz climb into his old anti-aircraft gun, but Fritz declined, saying "Jane Fonda already did that."

Fritz's wife admitted she too opposed the Vietnam War, which claimed about 58,000 U.S. lives – the average age being 23 years old. Another 292,000 were wounded. Between 1 million and 2 million Vietnamese died in the war.

Inside the trailer, Truc rubbed his black hair and remarked, "I feel the war was really stupid and good for nothing, and caused lots of casualties on both sides."

"We feel exactly the same," Fritz said. "We should never have been there in the first place. We were doing what we were told to do."

One of the pilots played "Red River Valley" on his cellphone for Truc, who fell in love with country music while secretly listening to the Voice of America as a child as B-52s bombed Hanoi.

"I feel very happy to be with my friends," Truc said. "We were on different sides, but we are now united."

.