Don't Drop Anchor Here (Part III) - Sex Stories

Don't Drop Anchor Here (Part III)

... California, at Arhoolie Records. It was sold at “teach-ins” for fifty-cents as a 7-inch EP. About 100 original copies were sold. If you “Google” the Top-40 songs of the era this song won’t come up. But for those who attended the rallies, who protested, who went to Woodstock, this is the iconic song of the period. It was “Country Joe and the Fish” who first introduced Americans to the “F. U. C. K.” cheer. This version first occurred at the Shaefer Summer Music Festival in 1968 in front of 10,000 fans. The “cheer” of “F-I-S-H” was altered to “F-U-C-K”. The Ed Sullivan Show immediately canceled the band’s scheduled appearance. The cheer would rouse the anti-war spirit of a generation. Country Joe made an unscheduled appearance at the Woodstock Music Festival. Anyone who watches the movie decades later can hear Joe imploring the huge audience as follows: “Listen people, I don't know how you expect to ever stop the war if you can't sing any better than that. There's about 300,000 of you fuckers out there. I want you to start singing. Come on!” In June of 1970 on the CBS evening news the reports were coming in about the Battle of Kompong Speu and the Battle of Prey Veng . In coming decades would anyone other than devoted military historians even remember these battles? In total America would suffer 58,193 soldiers killed in the Vietnam War. It was a war the government was forced to call a “conflict” as their euphemism to avoid accountability. Of these casualties the greatest ...

... number—14,095—would be twenty years old when they died. Vietnam was also a very “white” and largely “Christian” war. Of all the American dead 50,120 were Caucasian. Only 269 of the dead were Jews as their protective mothers probably took dramatic steps to keep them in college, or suitably out of harm’s way. A mere 12 of the dead were Moslems and the bulk of the rest, over 7,000, were black. Eight of the dead were women. Interestingly and surprisingly California contributed more dead soldiers than any other state with 5,573 residents killed during the war. In 1970 the rate of killing was petering out with some 6,081 Americans killed in the conflict. By the time Rob lost his life in 1972 he would be counted among a very unlucky 641 Americans who lost their lives that year. This is the traumatic backdrop to our tale. For those who didn’t live through it, well, to comprehend the time will be difficult. In every conflict since America has refused to commit troops to any war that would result in “kill ratios” anything approaching what was suffered and endured during Vietnam. June 1970 American Pop Culture In the summer of 1970 bellbottoms and a wonderful invention called the “Mini Skirt” were all the rage. Things called the “cassette tape” and the “eight-track” were becoming popular and even appearing in cars. Who could know this was only the beginning of the end for LP’s. In November of ’69 rumours of Paul McCartney’s death swept the world and “Abbey Road” sold 2.5 million copies in ...