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I thought, 'This is not going to make it'. It was a dry winter. My frequent meditation was spending hours painstakingly pawing through seed stashes to ferret out crumbs of leaf and stem. That winter I got ahold (somehow) of my old coin collection and essentially traded it for a bag of Jamaican (or so I was told). To this day I regret giving up the coins - some were very old, a Spanish piece of eight, a Roman coin, or more likely convincing fakes - but under any circumstance they were my only resource.
Compared to the previous season I thought I was being prudent cultivating a little patch, enough for about 15 big plants, about a quarter mile up the hill from the courtyard, just off an abandoned logging road. I put in some effort pickaxing the hard rocky slope and scrounging leaf compost and deer shit and what have you and in spite of scant water, it was hard carrying enough of it up the hill, several plants got to be about 8 feet tall. They weren't very bushy because some of the surrounding trees shaded them, but they were good.
Partly because, once warm dry weather showed up, I built a wood platform next to the plants that was just big enough for a sleeping pad, and spent a lot of my time there, talking to them, giving them all names, treating them with the respect they deserved. They were truly individuals, though all seeds sprang from one bag of pot, with different colors, different shaped leaves, variable potency. Wasn't enough quantity though, to carry so many smokers through the winter.
That was '71. The '72 season I started off with 2nd generation seeds and worked a lot harder adding fertilizer, mulch and more adequate water in the same spot. The plants were grand. I was simultaneously going through a lot of changes and was in a naked phase, rarely donning threads before dinner. The scene is set - Phillip and I and Heather, all naked were hanging out by the plants on August 31st (I remember the date because they busted two years later on the same date) when two cops with rifles pointing at us showed up. I later learned the plants were first spotted by a good Christian who had received a message from God telling him to go search out pot farms.
Not wanting to deal with a naked 9 year old, they pretty quickly let Heather go. They had sheets they wanted to wrap us in for the run to the Jo Co Jail. They were insistent on the sheets, but I was even more insistent that they let us go down to the courtyard to get clothes. Quite a circus parade as we naked offenders and fully dressed cops entered the courtyard. I reached in to the old kitchen, where I was living, to grab clothes hanging by the door. They wanted to go in to search, I stood my ground, shouted them down, and refused to let them in without a warrant. They said they didn't need a warrant for individual buildings, I refused to back down. (Actually I'm not sure that standing them down wasn't part of the '74 bust)
Before we got into the cop car I realized I had a couple of rolled joints in my shirt pocket and didn't quite know what to do with them. As we headed down the road, Phillip brought out a package of Top tobacco and started rolling up. It's worthy to note that we weren't thrown down to the ground, stomped on and handcuffed - those were more civilized times. One of the cops smelled something fishy and said, "What are you smoking?" "Just tobacco officer." Except after a few puffs of tobacco I took out and lit up one of the joints.
It didn't take too awfully long before they knew something really was amiss this time. Stopped the car, confiscated the joints and continued on to the jail. This was before decriminalization, which made possession or use a misdemeanor and subject to a one year term. Cultivation however was a felony subject to 10 years in prison. Tokin' while taken saved my life, a good part of it anyway.
The misdemeanor judge was said to be a lenient type. A SR visitor, who was a doctor, talked to the judge over the weekend and pretty much got both of us out of time behind bars. However, I was pissed, not to mention a little crazy, and was straight with the judge and told him what he didn't want to hear. Like I wasn't selling, I wasn't harming anybody, I believed in what I was doing and it wasn't any of their business besides. The topper was when he asked, "Do you mean if I let you free you'll go right out and smoke a joint?" and I replied in the affirmative. "Six months", was his response.
But as I said it saved my life. My head had been in turmoil over the summer and I saw jail as an escape, but it didn't take more than a few minutes behind those bars to realize I might have made a big mistake. It took about two weeks to transform my belligerent attitude as well as shave my head and beard, which happened just in time to appear before the felony judge, who was noted as a hard ass, with lots of contrition and the utmost respect for the power of the law. Otherwise, had I laid my trip on him first, I would have easily spent a decade in the slammer.
So I was a good boy and quickly became a trustee which allowed me to go outside twice a week and wash cop cars and get woken in the middle of the night to learn how to skin and gut deer that had been confiscated from poachers. I also read the bible, dreamt a lot and had embarrassingly grandiose fantasies which were shot down pretty fast after my release. Always a writer, I kept respectful but cogent letters, begging for clemency, going to the judge, who released me after 10 weeks.
As I walked up the driveway after hitching from Grants Pass Ted brought out a stash which, miraculously, the cops had walked right by without seeing. I vaguely remember thinking my attitude towards smoking was going to be different after regaining my freedom but that didn't last long. We sat in a circle and turned every bit of it to smoke.
In '73 I grew again but in spots that were so hidden and shaded, they were hardly worth smoking. In '74 I chose places that were better for growing but highly dispersed. They found about half of our plants that year - they would pull the plants and leave their calling card… "For information contact Jo Co County Sheriff's Dept." but no one got busted.
I had plants that were 12 feet tall on Aug. 31st, Ivy and Victor's patch had 15 foot tall plants and they still had a month to grow. They had put an immense amout of effort into them. Unfortunately remote means nothing if you make a clear trail. In the spring when you plant, the grass is green and springs right back after you walk on it. By summer it's all brown and walking shows a clear path and an obvious sign that something is happening at the end of the trail. Victor learned from that experience and set a mile long path of stones that he could walk on to get to his plants that would have been extremely difficult if not impossible to track.
But I love the plant and feel deprived when I'm not able to grow it. I built a greenhouse in my attic in Portland in 1980 and grew a few small plants there for about ten years, then grew under lights for couple of years - helped to finance my first Asia trip. But I always dreamed of growing outdoors in the full sun and got my wish living in China. Pot grows all over the roadsides in Yunnan Province in SW China and used to grow right in the center of Kunming, its capital city - they finally caught on and axed the plants growing in front of the bus station, et. al. - and obviously one of the reasons I was attracted to living there. Not great smoke but with giant plants everywhere hard to complain.
However I solved the potency problem by importing seed from Thailand and planted them in a ruble field about a half mile from my apartment on the edge of town. The second year I got a plant that was the biggest plant I've ever grown. It was about ten feet tall and so dense it netted about seven one pound coffee cans stuffed with bud which I shared with everybody who came to my café in Kunming - long story, it's out of my hands now but you can see pictures of its glorious past on my web site, www.tripeast.com.
I'm hoping they'll add back pain to maladies that qualify for medical marijuana under Oregon law and allow the suffererer to grow a few plants legally. Wouldn't that be cool.