I guess I was about 15 the first time I got stoned.
It was after Babe Ruth baseball practice. I had just whupped a kid that picked a fight with me.
As luck would have it, I kicked his butt at baseball practice in front of "SuperCoach."
SuperCoach was new to town, and had a son who was a year younger than me, but was a MUCH better athlete. But this kid was an arrogant, worthless punk. You know the type. All ability, no drive. Folks, this kid was an asshole.
He emulated his SuperCoach father evidently. Example: After the kid I was fighting and I had beat each other all over the spectator area of the baseball field, and into the outfield (and the sprinklers were going full-blast in the outfield...making a pretty comedy-filled spectacle for the peanut gallery), SuperCoach marched over, broke us up and demanded to know why we were fighting.
Well, the obvious reason was that we were 15 year old boys, and didn't like each other. Not one bit. But I didn't think that it was any of Super Coach's business. And I told him so. He wasn't amused.
I wasn't much amused either. The testosterone was really flowin'... I felt like a million bucks at that point, was pissed off, and was ready to keep fighting. I had that "bring 'em all on!" attitude going.
We all glared at each other for awhile...and then separated off to different parts of the field to go through the requisite "When he said....I shoulda said..." thought processes.
After practice (I stunk during practice. I was a little preoccupied) a buddy of mine took me out in the country to another buddy's house and we all got silly smoking cheap Colombian Gold out of laboratory equipment they stole from the high school. I specifically recall blowing smoke into a cat's face to get him stoned. The cat would get right up into my face and inhale deeply.
I thought the whole episode was really cool. So I got some seeds from one of my friends and decided to open "Karl's Dope Farm."
At first I planted the seeds out in a pasture. But Dad turned some cows into that pasture and they ate the dope down to the ground.
Back to my buddies for some more seeds.
This time I got a whole film canister full of them. I also got a lot of advice.
"You have to germinate 'em first."
"What does that mean...germinate?"
"You know...put the seeds between two paper towels soaked in water for a few days. The seeds will sprout, so then you plant 'em. They won't grow unless you do that."
"Whaddya mean, they won't grow? Are you telling me that marijuana plants have been solely dependent, throughout history, on south american indians germinating them between two wet Bounty paper towels?"
"Uh, you've got a point....But I heard you gotta germinate 'em first."
I shined the "germinate 'em first" plan on, but I still needed a completely cow-free zone to plant my cash-crop.
Then the perfect idea struck me. I'd simply plant them in the attic in used 5 gallon ice cream buckets (we had about a million of them...Dad's a big fan of Lucerne Neopolitan).
The attic was perfect. It had fantastic light coming in four sets of gable windows, it was oppressively hot and humid, and we never turned cows into the attic to graze.
So I filled about 10 buckets full of Dad's "super-fertile-zucchini-growing" garden soil, and schlepped them through the house to the attic and planted my seeds.
WHOA Nellie! They grew like... well, like weeds. It was a veritable dope jungle up there inside of a few weeks. I hauled gallons of water up there, one bucket at a time, up the step-ladder in my walk-in closet, through the little 1 by 2 foot hole in the ceiling (that I probably couldn't squeeze through now if my life depended on it), across the ceiling joists to my crop.
Well, it had to happen-- Mom caught me.
She remembers it differently, but she asked how come the ceiling had new cracks in it and specifically asked me if I had been messing around in the attic.
I said that I had, and when she asked what I was doing up there, I told her "growin' dope."
I was so proud of what a green thumb I had, that I wanted someone to know, even if I got in trouble.
So she asked if any of the other kids knew about it. I told her that I didn't want them to know.
She told me to keep it quiet and take it easy on the ceiling.S
o, that was cool! It was OK with my parents if I grew dope in the attic.
Karl's dope farm REALLY got serious after that. I started using "Miracle Grow" to increase my yield. Hell, it seemed like the movie "Little Shop of Horrors",. Every time I went into the attic, the plants were bigger and healthier.
Then, one day, Mom was coming in the driveway and looked up into one of the gable windows and saw a plant sticking up and a bottle of Miracle Grow. She decided that I was being too tacky about my farm at that point, and told me to move the plants into my room. By this time I had reduced the plants until there was only one plant per bucket. So I brought my remaining plants into my bedroom. They were about 3 feet tall at this time, and ready to bud.
They promptly died. One and all. It was a massacre. So much for my farm. I lost my farm in the late seventies along with all of the other farmers. Crop failure, you know. Very sad.
So, I picked them, dried them and stripped the leaves into a trash bag. The whole crop yielded about a tenth of an ounce. I smoked it all at one time. Got incredibly stoned, and fell out of the pickup into a gravel parking-lot on my head while two girls from school rifled my pockets for whatever I had been smoking. I couldn't stop laughing.... 'cause it was all gone.
But back to the sad-but-true saga of SuperCoach...Later that year (after I fell on my head) the Babe Ruth coaches all met to elect the all-star baseball team. I did a pretty good job pitching that year, and wasn't too bad a hitter, so they all voted for me as a first-string pitcher.
Well...all the coaches except one.
My coach (who was only nineteen years old at the time, and a pretty good guy) asked me "Jeez, what did you do to piss SuperCoach off? That guy went on for half an hour about how he wasn't going to coach all-stars if you were on his team, and what a crappy attitude you had, and how you’re the problem with America."
I told him about the fight earlier in the season. He laughed, I laughed, after all...what did it matter? I was on the team, SuperCoach notwithstanding.
Later that evening, I told Dad about my conversation with my baseball coach. I was just trying to make conversation, but Dad really took the whole episode seriously. He marched upstairs, picked up the phone and dialed SuperCoach.
It turned out, unbeknownst to me, that SuperCoach's worthless kid had been caught by the police for vandalizing an abandoned house on our farm. He and his buddies had broken all of the windows out, and managed to get caught.
The police called Dad to ask if he wanted to press charges. Dad, being a Little League coach, said that if the vandals all volunteered to work one Saturday at fixing up the Little League field he wouldn't press charges.
They all showed up that Saturday and worked all day. All except one...Super Coach's worthless, arrogant, punk kid. Dad didn't pursue the issue.
So, Dad got SuperCoach on the phone, and I was sitting there listening when he said "I understand that you have some criticism of my son. Why don’t you tell me about that?"
Then he politely listened to SuperCoach tell all about what a lousy attitude I had. It took about 5 minutes. I caught bits and snatches of SuperCoach's speech. It was highly critical, and pretty earthy. I also saw my dad hold his tongue during this whole conversation.
When SuperCoach was completely done with running me down with his laundry list of reasons that made me a poor choice for the all-star team, Dad calmly explained about the vandalism of our property at the hands of Super Coach's worthless kid, the promise to help with the Little League field, and SuperCoach's punk-son's subsequent shirking.
Dad said "I don't mind that you have a low opinion of my son. But I just wanted to let you know what a jewel you've raised." Then Dad signed off and hung up the phone.
SuperCoach and I got along all right after that. I think we both had a greater appreciation of the other.
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