@Matt: This is probably a lot more than you want to know :-)
So about 3 or 4 months after my display at Idlewild Airport, Kennedy was assassinated and they renamed Idlewild, JFK. The assassination was the work of the anti-communist war party, imho. The military industrial complex, Eisenhower had warned us about.
Johnson played it cool about expanding the war. He ran as a peace candidate in 1964, saying, "I won't send American boys to do the fighting for Asian troops." Then he sent a lot.
By 1967 there were over 200,000 civilian casualties in Viet Nam.
On the evening of December 2, 1967, I took a drug called artificial mescaline, which was part amphetamine and part animal tranquilizer. On the walk home at 5 in the morning, voices appeared in my head and we discussed the war. The voices convinced me that the war was my fault, that I should go up to the roof of my brownstone when I got home, where further instructions would be waiting.
I don't remember anything after going up on the roof. I woke up in the ICU of Columbus Cabrini hospital with my left leg in traction for 7 weeks. I was discharged on January 25, 1968 and immediately arrested by the NYC police for possession of pot they had found while looking for my family's phone number.
Released in my own recognizance, I later got off as the police had entered without a warrant.
5 days after I left the hospital, the Tet offensive began.
Admit it, Matt, you couldn't make up shit like that.