Lucky Tailor and I couldn't find any
grass, if you can believe that, but the reefer scene wasn't always
what it is today. Things are better now, but we still have a ways to
go. Thirty years ago we suffered dry spells in the Midwest, usually
in late summer and worsening before election cycles. It wasn't
classic rock then. It was just rock.
I can remember back in the Park Layne
days, going to the park in August and giving the High Sign and
somebody telling me it's dry. That sinking feeling. Days of
searching, looking for the friend of a friend. Sitting by the phone,
sitting down the road while a friend went to check the prospects at
some third-or-fourth-party's house. Pay phones and parking lots and
suburban streets. Trying to look like I wasn't waiting on a drug
deal.
I remember one particular summer in
Muncie, 1989, and the trials we endured looking for a bit of smoke.
We went from Crawfordsville to Dayton and the story was the same.
Waiting and driving and waiting some more and it never panned out. A
sure thing was never a sure thing and eventually somebody would try
and sell us lettuce opium. Sometimes we bought it.
The fucked up thing is, this was how
pot was a gateway drug. You know how they tell you Marijuana is bad
because it leads to harder things? Well this is how.
When it dried up, you'd ask everybody
you knew where to get some pot. Eventually somebody would say
“Everybody's dry now, but I know where to get some coke”. I lost
friends to this every year. They'd think “Well hell, they lied to
me about pot. Told me it would addict me and make me an ax wielding
maniac or at the very least grow titties like a girl. Maybe they lied
to me about the blow too”. Next thing you know they're selling
blowjobs on Penn Street in Springfield or popping their collars and
listening to Billy Ocean. Like I said, I lost friends to this every
year.
This is why I started selling pot. It was never about the
money. Selling pot for the money is like running a pizzeria for the
money. The risk is greater than the reward if you do it right and
don't take advantage of people. You do it for the love of it.
In the dry spell of '89, the
Connersville boys called and said they had a sure thing. A friend of
a friend who lived on Jackson Street had the hookup. I picked them
up and they took me to a guy's house who had us drive him to Whitely.
He took our money and walked in the front door of a house and fifteen
minutes later I saw him go out the back wearing a different jacket
and hat.
I was all for storming the joint, but
the Connersville boys talked me down. We waited fifteen more minutes
and then I went and knocked. The residents claimed a total stranger
entered their house, exchanged jackets, and escaped out the back way.
I knew he couldn't have made it back to Jackson Street yet by foot. I
assumed he would stop for crack somewhere
I had the Connersville boys drive me
back to his house where I kicked in his door and stole his color TV
and a box of fried chicken from his freezer. I got my fifty bucks
back on the TV. We ate the chicken.
The next day they called and had
another sure thing in Connersville. They had a friend holding a half
ounce for me. They dragged me 46.1 miles to their “sure thing”
where I waited at a railroad bridge, hunting geodes. They arrived and
gave me three thin joints and thirty five bucks back. Lucky and I
smoked one with them, on the 46.1 mile ride back, and dropped them
back in the village where they came from.
It was Wednesday night, so we smoked a
second and went to the “Skin to Win” wet tee shirt contest at The
Golden Fox. It was a good way for Ball State girls to make rent.
I tucked the last doobie behind my ear
and we returned to my place on Wheeling to smoke it. When we got
there, my girlfriend who didn't live there, had locked us out. She
would do that. She said she was never trying to keep me out of my own
house. She just wanted to feel safe and wanted to know when I got
home
I had ways around that.
I had a window I liked to keep
unlocked for such situations. Failing that, there was a door behind
the refrigerator I could jimmy and push through. This particular
night the window worked well enough. I climbed in, and opened the
door for Mr. Tailor.
Once we were safely inside and Amy not
woken, I reached behind my ear for the last hardworn joint and it
wasn't there. We panicked. We searched the car and the gravel and
bushes outside the window and nothing. There was a rack of albums
below the window I had climbed in. LP's. Vinyl records for you
youngsters. Zepplin and Halen and Rush. Kansas Leftoverture and
Frampton Comes Alive and Journey Escape.
We dumped them all out
looking to see if the spliff might have fallen inside when I climbed
in.
We searched the gravel and bushes
again, flicking our bics until they melted down and we eventually
gave up. Lucky made me promise to call him if I found it, and he was
headed out the driveway in the Tercel when I ran my hands through my
hair...
...and found
the joint behind my OTHER ear.
(We were joyful. We might have hugged).
Let this be a lesson. ALWAYS check
behind the OTHER EAR.
