I don't want
to wax unduly sentimental about our community up
here in Humboldt. It's easy to go overboard after your neighbor
pulls your
truck out of the ditch for the third time in as many days, or, as
in the case
of the Fibbles, drives off a rip-off attack.
You get used
to waving at everybody on the road. By the second year it becomes
a reflex. Walking through Garberville on a Friday, or on the first
day of the
month, your face and neck weary from all the nodding and grinning
you do.
It took me a
while to get used to it, all the waving and nodding and pitching
in. I'm a city boy, whose closest brush with rural life before Humboldt
was the
annual trek to San Felipe in Baja California to do some off road
racing, and to
get drunk and try to stay that way for a weekend at a time. I would
no longer
describe this as getting in touch with nature, or one's neighbors.
What such
yearly migrations have done to our relations with Mexico would take
another
book.
So most people
up here are neighborly in the old-fashioned way. Not that I
want to give the impression that the old-timers...the rancher, the
fisherman,
the logger...welcomed with open arms and a big grin the Hippy invasion.
The
"Hill People", as they dubbed them, were certainly weird:
all that long hair
and dope growing and counter culture tofu eating was a bit much.
For a time,
I've been told, there was downright hostility between the two factions.
But
time and the effects of inflation began to change certain attitudes.
If, as a
rancher, you found it harder and harder to make ends meet, with
just sheep, you
soon discovered that a few exotic plants not only paid the taxes,
but allowed
for a new pickup too. So you sidled up to your weird neighbor who
lived in a
dome made of plastic, redwood and lots of climbing vines, and asked
him just
how in hell he grew them plants that paid off the land in just three
years.
Such intimate
contact leads to one thing and another, and in the end, the
weirdo and the rancher end up almost friends. Like me and the Fibbles.
Not that
they turned to me for advice on growing grass. Ha! I had to ask
them more than
once just what I was doing wrong. But the ground had been broken
for me and my
relationship with the rancher and his boys by those who first bought
parcels of
land from him.
So when I moved
into my tent, he was almost used to growers. He would never
describe himself or his sons as growers of course. They were ranchers,
even
when they had five hundred plants spread out over the landscape.
Very nicely
camouflaged, I might add, amid the Madrone and Tanoak. Rancher he
would stay
and never the twain shall retire together. But in the meantime,
we cooperate in
the business of getting along, and pulling rigs out of ditches,
and setting up
mutual warning systems. But there comes a point...
This story was
told to me by Reg the Veg, who moved up here some years before
Brenda, which makes him, in the counter culture, one of the founding
fathers: A
year or two before I arrived on the scene, Reg had a a hundred fat
females just
ready to harvest when he got a tip from a friend in Eureka who worked
for the
Sheriff's Office that our road was on the schedule for a raid in
just two days.
Reg was pretty
sure the tip was a good one, because he had met this guy in the
one gay bar and steam bath that Eureka possessed, and had enjoyed
more than a
one time relationship with him. He also knew there was no way the
sheriffs were
going to hit the Fibbles. So warned, he high-tailed it over the
hill to ask
Coyne if he could put his plants into protective custody in one
of his barns.
The old man considered for a couple of minutes before agreeing.
Then he added,
as Reg headed for the door, "There's rent on that barn y'know."
Reg nodded,
running, in a big hurry to get his harvesting done.
So he cut his
ladies down and hauled them into the aforesaid barn. One of the
Fibble boys even helped him hang them from clotheslines stretched
across the
barn. Neat? His crop was saved, and he even had a good drying shed
for that
crucial stage of the harvest when, if you weren't careful, you'd
end up with a
black, gooey, moldy mass like a mess of overcooked spinach.
And sure enough,
the sheriffs whooped in early on the appointed morning. They
had a warrant and everything, for most of the grows on the road.
They proved a
mite grouchy over climbing Reg's drive only to find empty holes
where eight to
ten foot plants had been just two days earlier. They searched all
through his
house, too. There was no way he could have hidden giant green plants
in his
tiny cabin, but that didn't stop them from opening every drawer
and container
in the place.
Reg felt mighty
smug. He worked on his crop in the barn, usually with one of
the Fibble boys who showed up to give him a hand. He cut the plants
up into
primo buds, grading out the lesser stuff. He burned all the trash
leaves and
stems so they wouldn't breed mold. He neatly clothespinned the buds,
according
to size, up and down the lines. Finally the day came to haul it
back to the
house for cleaning and bagging. Coyne Fibble himself was there that
day, along
with Drew.
"Rent time,"
the old man announced with a grin.
"Oh yeah,"
Reg agreed. "Right on, how much do you want?"
"We'll
take it in product," said Drew.
Reg agreed again.
When the Fibbles
were through collecting their rent, they had taken exactly half
the crop. Considering the prices dealers were paying that year,
it cost Reg 25
thou for the use of their barn.
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