To repeat, all
kinds of people came north to grow
marijuana. It might have been the Hippies who were first. Sure,
ranchers and
loggers were here long before them, but it was the Hippies who started
the dope
growing and others followed their lead. I remember that as early
as the late
60's, a friend of a friend of mine in San Diego went off to buy
land in
Northern California, where land was cheap.
That guy, Cliff,
was a drifter and a sometime surfer (which is how I met him)
who played in a band somewhere around Mission Beach. When he got
married, he
decided he needed to settle down, so he and his new wife headed
north. Using
some money her family had given them as a wedding present, they
bought a piece
of land up here, and then came back to San Diego. They were really
high on
their big pioneer adventure. I was the only cynic at a party where
they were
telling me how great it all was. "How far from town?"
I asked, in the spirit of
politeness.
"About
fifteen miles. The last mile, if you don't have a four wheel drive,
you
have to hike it. There's no road." Cliff actually sounded gleeful
at that
lack. He panted on. "Just as soon as we get water onto the
place..."
"No water?"
I croaked. "No road and no water? Just what is there on the
property?"
I shouldn't
have asked. It released another torrent, all about nature and
trees and stuff. To me, they might as well have been talking about
moon rocks.
Anyway, it turns out that they had spent all the money on the down
payment, so
they had to come back south to work and save, so they could go back
and put
water and some kind of shelter on the place, and grow dope. That
much they had
learned from their short visit. The way to make money while homesteading
was
to grow dope.
I don't know
whether they made it or not. I don't remember ever seeing them
again. But if they didn't, a lot of others did. So ex-urban Hippies
were
probably the founding parents of the current illegal industry. There
are a
few ex-bikers, too, usually identifiable by their tattoos. Then
after the first
immigration, everybody got into the act. But I'm not sure that any
particular
group consciously made it their mission to bring sinsemilla to the
masses. Most of the one's I have spoken to about the matter swear
they came
here for lots of other reasons than to grow dope...and they turned
to marijuana
growing when they realized they had to have a cash crop to survive.
I expected,
before I got up here, that I'd be meeting in the dope growers a
fast and sinister bunch, with secret signals and ways akin to the
other
outside-the-law groups. The Mafia, for example. Or at least, the
movie's
idea of the Mafia. Since "The Godfather" is one of my
favorites, I was sort of
disappointed that I didn't get to join a society with secret handshakes
and
blood loyalties to "The Family." Looking back on that,
it was sort of like
expecting cotton farmers all the way from Texarkana to Bakersfield
to have
passwords and vices in common. Actually, the only thing they share
in common
is cotton. It's the same here. We've all got one thing in common,
only it's
illegal.
I seem to keep
harping on that little fact, maybe because it makes me
uncomfortable. It's not like I've hurt anybody, after all. I grow
a flower
that some people like to smoke. It may not be as bad for them as
tobacco; I
don't know. But don't anybody give me that argument about kids in
the
schoolyard getting high on my stuff and then turning to worse dope
and more
evil ways. I'd like to know where there's a schoolyard where kids
can afford to
pay the two thousand a pound I get for my best sinsemilla from Marvene.
And God
knows what she sells it for.
Yeah, some people
have gone to rack and ruin on this dope...or what it led to.
For example: before John Smith was a vegetarian and raised goats
for milk and
grass for money, he had an old lady named Mary (I kid you not, some
folks still
have names like Mary Smith.) The way I understand it, Mary was a
nice
woman. She wasn't bad looking, and she liked to sing. She'd had
a few gigs with
bands in the Bay Area, but she had split that scene, and with John,
built the
house he now lives in. He had good luck right from the beginning,
and they had
more money than they'd ever seen before. They took the ritual trip
to the sunny
southland, and bought new clothes and a truck, and still had money
left over.
So they bought a little cocaine.
They say cocaine
isn't addictive. From everything I've seen, it might as well
be, for some people, of whom Mary was one. See, she wasn't too smart
going in.
No great ideas burned in her brain, and she wasn't into creativity.
She didn't
itch to get to her loom every day like some weaving types, and she
wasn't
able...or maybe chose not to...have kids. Actually, she couldn't
sing all that
well, either. But when she had a line or two of coke, she thought
she was
great. She felt great, which is the next best thing to the real
thing.
It wasn't long
before they ran out of money. John had to borrow several bucks
just to get through the next growing season, including some funds
to support
their coke habit. He figures that inside of two years, they sniffed
$50,000 up
their noses. To meet him now, you'd find this pretty hard to believe.
Here's
this solid family type who hardly even drinks beer, and won't go
near meat. He
even became a born-again Christian after he hooked up with his present
lady,
Arizona. (Now that's a better name, Arizona Smith.) John feels sorry
about what
happened to Mary. That's the way he puts it: "I'm real sorry
about what
happened to Mary. But I couldn't stop her." He goes on. "When
we ran out of
money for coke, she ran out on me. Moved in with a dealer in Sonoma
County
somewhere. I haven't seen her but once, and she looked terrible.
But after
awhile, you know, they get to be a real pain in the ass, coke whores.
Who needs
'em?"
As I said, I
never met the lady, so all this is secondhand from people who
might have reason to be prejudiced. Reg the Veg knew her. He said
she was a
ruined soul before she ever took her first snort. "Empty and
vacuous," was the
way he described her. "I'm not saying all coke heads are that
way. I know it's
also the drug of choice of a lot of creative types. I'm just talking
about
Mary. She was unlucky enough to have the money for a drug that let
her feel
good after so many years of feeling next-to-nothing. John is kind.
He didn't
tell you how freaky she got, how almost psychotic. But don't we
all reach for
that 'Brave New World', in any way, shape or form?" Well, he
lost me
there. Later, Brenda clued me in. I don't claim to be an intellectual,
so I
never came across Aldous Huxley. He wasn't required reading at Point
Loma High.
I guess Mary's
story is a sad one. But a horror story? A useless life, maybe
But did she..or any other example you might use...need coke to do
self
damage? I don't think so. Alcohol will do. And my mother once had
a friend who
ruined her life with diet pills.
What I guess
I'm preaching is that I resent all the political hay made of the
"drug problem." To my way of looking at it, there is no
drug problem. There
is a problem with living. Some of us handle it better than others.
Not that
I'm a shining example, but who's your nominee? Nixon? Genghis Khan?
That's enough
sermon for one sitting. I knew that becoming a criminal would
make me an outcast. I didn't know it would make me a preacher. What
the hell.
I showed Kiki
the part about Mary Smith, but she wasn't impressed. (I let her
read the parts that don't involve her. I tell her she's going to
have to buy a
copy like anyone else to read what I say about her. She says she'll
wait til
it's offered for 98 cents on remainder from Publishers Central.)
Anyway, she
didn't think the tale of M. Smith was all that moving. "Have
you ever given a
thought to what it must be like, waking up every morning with only
John Smith
to look forward to?" She asked. "He is God's answer to
dull. You want dull? Look
at John Smith. He's the epitome."
"Jeez,
what did he ever do to you? John's an okay guy. He does think he
knows
everything, and tells you about it in detail. But I've found that
helpful..."
"You would.
You need all the help you can get. Even from a boring, born-again
expert on everything. He bored Mary into coke Heaven. And you should
have
heard him when he was on coke! One night he actually told me he
was the new
Godfather, and how, in excrutiating detail, to organize a union
of pot
growers..."
"Okay,
so Mary was not the new American tragedy, but whose story is?
Yours? Belinda Bernstein meets life, while making ends meet on the
dole and ten
pot plants?" She punched me rather efficiently in the mouth
and kept talking.
"Why don't
you tell about "Sugar" White? Now there's a guy whose
life would
make a book."
"Meaning
mine wouldn't ?"
"Portnoy's
Complaint? It's been done." Since she said it smiling, I let
her
go on. I'll sometimes do anything to get her in a good mood.
Kiki went on
about "Sugar" White. "So after being a biker for
all those years,
and being just grossed out, he took so much acid it changed his
outlook. I
mean, that did happen to some people. You meet them every now and
then; people
who really had their world view changed by LSD. Sugar was one of
those. He was
working his ass off to improve that place of his, him and his old
lady,
Alta. So he had a good set of plants ready to pull, and life was
looking fine. And
then these bastards, who knew something about the area, came up
from down south
somewhere. Maybe one of them knew Sugar, because his place was hard
to find.
Anyway this one evening, his dog started to growl, so he picked
up his shotgun
and went out to patrol. Here he is, creeping down a path in his
bare feet when
he runs smack into three guys creeping up the same path.
He totally freaks
and fires that shotgun off right in the face of the lead guy,
then splits back for the house. He's up all night. His neighbors
come
over...me included...I was a good friend of Alta's...and at first
light, they
go out and find bits of bone and teeth mixed with blood on the path.
I didn't
go look, but those who did said it was really gory. Later that day,
there was a
news story about an unidentified man dropped off at a hospital in
Santa Rosa
who'd been shot in the face at close range with a heavy gauge shotgun.
He died
a few minutes after he was delivered, and his companions split without
leaving
forwarding addresses. So poor Sugar was a murderer."
"You mean
they drove all the way to Santa Rosa with their supposed buddy?
A
hundred and fifty miles with a guy with no face, bleeding in the
back seat?"
"They probably
didn't have a back seat. More likely they came in a truck, or a
van. Probably a van. Anyway, Sugar had two choices: to face charges
of murder
if the Law caught on to the trail, or being himself murdered if
the guy's
buddies wanted vengeance. I mean, they knew where to come, right?
And I think,
even though he never said so, that Sugar knew that face. Just before
he pulled
the trigger, maybe too late to stop himself, he recognized that
face."
"So what
happened to him? Did they come back?" (It was a more exciting
story
than Mary Smith's, all right)
"He split.
That very day. Packed a bag and headed out. Alta followed him a
few days later, after she arranged for someone to rent the property.
She came
back later and picked up a share of the crop. The rest went to the
renters for
taking care of the place. To this day, nobody knows where they went.
I've
heard Oregon; I've heard Alaska. Anyway, the renters put the money
in an
account at the B. of A., and the mortgage and taxes come out of
that. Now, to
me, that's a story of how getting into drugs can change your life.
First, LSD
changed Sugar into a steady citizen, and then grass made him a
fugitive. Goddam! I should be writing a book. I know a lot more
stories than
you do."
