Once upon a time, there was a land of kind and caring people. Where even those of different origins were treated with some
respect.
The people used to leave their windows open and doors unlocked, because crime only existed in big business and government.
Each day, children whistled, laughed and skipped along the way to school. They were greeted with smiles from teachers and hugged by classmates.
Upon returning home, a glass of milk, some home made chocolate chip cookies and a kiss from mom would be waiting in the kitchen. After warm words from a loving mother, the cookies would be enjoyed and the children would run off to play.
When Dad came home from a hard day at work, a wonderful dinner would be waiting on a table decorated with fresh flowers. Along with mom's home made mashed potatoes, mom, dad, brothers and sisters would all share their day's stories. After the kids cleaned their plates, a special treat came out of the oven, apple pie.
On Saturday, dad would help big brother Johnny get his hot rod running, because tonight Johnny would be taking his girlfriend Susie to the drive-in movie. There was never any doubt that Johnny and Sue would one day be married and live happily ever after.
The only tensions among teenagers were "wearing the right clothes", "getting a date for the Friday night dance "and" not making a fool of yourself" in front of the other kids. If a guy and a girl really liked' each other, they would "go steady" (not kiss anyone else). And YES, boys and girls who really loved each other, made love.
If you blended into that social scene, you "had it made in the shade". If your parents couldn't afford to buy you nice clothes, but you had a great personality, you could still fit in.
With everything totally groovy, but with adults running things, it would only be a matter of time before the every day party would be spoiled. For several years, the young knew that danger lay on the horizon, what with "bomb raid practice" at school and politicians shouting "Beware of the Communists" and "better dead than Red".
Of course, the kids took it all as, some kind of game, but for the adults, paranoia soon swept over their lives.
Then, like a drumbeat of lightening bolts, bullets flew through the air, ripping apart the people's beloved leader. The party was now over. The rusty gates of Hell were beginning to creak open and the beast would be unleashed upon the land.
As if Satan himself controlled destiny, the new leader of the land was so possessed with paranoia that he envisioned little yellow men with slanty eyes swimming across a thousand miles of ocean to invade America.
In order to stop the "Commie Gooks" from taking over the "once great land", the new leader would soon send thousands of little
Johnnys, Billys, Bobbys, Joeys, Pedros and all the boys, that couldn't afford to go to college, to a place called Vietnam.
There, the young boys, who until now, only got into fist fights over girls at school, found themselves crawling in swamps searching for an enemy that was fully experienced in jungle warfare.
The boys quickly learned how to slit a throat, cut off ears and fill the bodies of women and babies with M16, made in USA, bullets. After a hard day of killing, the boys in need of relaxation, discovered an age old remedy, marijuana.
Back in the good old US of A, young people were beginning to question the wisdom of the elders. Especially, because only the young were being sent off to do the time in Hell. The older folks, working in factories, were delighted at making extra money from longer hours needed to produce war materials. Dad could now buy mom that new refrigerator she always wanted.
As the bloodshed continued, a great divide between the young and the elders began to grow. The young could not relate to the thrill of Monday night massacres and the elders could not understand why the young did not rejoice at the opportunity of becoming dead heroes.
After a few years of, what some then called, "a patriotic madness", the far away battlefields, if by magic, started appearing at home. In public places, the gunning down of charismatic leaders and on college campuses, the sight of Army tanks and heavily armed soldiers became commonplace.
It got so bad, the leader who started the insanity ran and hid, leaving for a real psycho to take over. By now, young people all over the land were "dropping out" of their elder's purely materialistic world and getting stoned before "the end" might come to pass.
In desperation, the young began to unite and bond for a common cause, their survival. But this act of defiance only angered the elders more.
Brother against brother and father against son, the Vietnam War would now tear entire families to shreds.
Because never knowing when their last day might come, making love any where, anytime and to anyone became as common a need for the young as thirsting for blood on the alter of insanity became a ritual desire for the elders.
God and Satan must have been simultaneously aroused, to the point of cataclysmic conception, because the "Beast" would now arise to a position of standing on the blood stained earth.
From the cancerous bowels of the darkest dungeon, he had transcended to the favored light of mortals. After assessing the civil war between the young and the old, he quickly chose to walk the path of flower carrying children.
Like a beacon to lost souls in the night, his thoughtful logic cleared the foggy air and the young began to flock upon his very presence. Where the elders shouted "fight on, fight more", he questioned "fight what?" and soon a certain sense was made of the insanity.
With the gathering of pearls comes the collecting of dangerous stones, but to the pied piper, good and evil are both necessary ingredients in the creation of man.
Knowing that his time in the light would certainly be short lived, that the elders would eventually destroy forever the very existence of peace and love, he held up, as it were, the mirror to nature.
The reflection was a blinding ugly sight. In fact, just like the massacres in far off Vietnam, the new images of man's inhumanity to man were almost unspeakable.
Now, the opportunity for anyone and everyone to discover the meaning and origins of insanity that had swept "the once great land" was placed in plain view for all to see.
But those in power of the elder assembly were quick to realize their newly found "perfect out". The older generation would now proclaim, the discovery of Satan himself, among the young people's midst. And of 'course, the elders knew all along, that their cause was just and that the young were just crazy from drugs and rock 'n roll music.
"This is a case of "Helter Skelter" shouted the Prosecutor. "No, it's the Devil at work", claimed the clergy. The young mostly confused, but already the victims of the elder's paranoiac madness, tended to believe that at least the man called Charles Manson was on their side. Consequently, like the biblical Fallen Angel, Manson found himself now positioned like a bridge between the young and the old.
By bending the law here and ignoring it there, the elders had no trouble convicting Manson, but ignorant of the lessons derived from history, the elders had unwittingly created the most bizarre living legend in modern times and:
