Juicy Fruit!

As a kid I had a hell of sweet tooth. Halloween had nothing on me as far candy consumption was concerned. With a mom who regularly chugged Coca Cola around and an old man who maintained a high volume bubble gum dish in his barber shop I was assured that sweets would have no trouble breaching the walls of my home.

Down the block from where I lived was a drive-thru dairy that stocked an incredible array of treats for the kids from the Catholic school to hit up on the way home: wax bottles filled with bright colored sticky liquids of unknown origins, 2^nd tier off quality chocolate bars that sat too long in the sun, PEZ dispensers with their strange hard chalky candies, hard candy necklaces that discolored your neck, citrus flavored suckers on white paper loops in endless cellophane rolls like machine gun ammo and packs of queer bubblegum cards with equally strange (and tasteless) cardboard like bubble gum. Somehow I could never get a decent bubble out of that gum. The texture was woody, the flavor almost medicinal and the amount of work it took just to get it soft was almost too much work for the dingy amount of pleasure it produced.

I loved gum probably more than any other kind of confection that came my way. You might think, gum, what the hell, there’s a million kinds of candy out there to love. Ok, sure, I wasn’t opposed to a Hershey bar, cinnamon toothpicks or those gaudy oversized suckers from an amusement parks. But gum was ubiquitous, it was everywhere and best of all, carried regularly in my mom’s purse. Those were the days when you were assured of an after lunch stick of gum when you were out and about. 

Gum ruled my candy coated world because it was sanctioned and indulged in by the powers that were.There were so many kinds of gum out there that rocked our kid worlds back in the 60’s. I remember the weird pleasures of Black Jack, Clove, Beemans. Dentyne and Chicklets but it was the big guns, Wrigley’s Doublemint, Spearmint and, best of all, Juicy Fruit, that carried the day on a regular basis. Of all the flavors out there only Juicy Fruit was guaranteed to satisfy. I know that mint gums were preferable to adults to mask those after-meal scents, too much booze or to settle down a rumbly tummy. But to a kid that wild tropical minded taste was just the thing that could, in its soft squishy kid of way, make a dessert jones disappear or quiet down the mind before a movie at the West Coast picture palace. If I couldn’t get Good and Plenty, Abbazabba or chocolate Dots I knew that I could always coax a stick of Juicy Fruit out of my mom’s pocket book.

Years pass and boys grow up. In recent years I have taken on dark chocolate, high in cacao, to satisfy my candy urges. I left behind boxes of malted milk balls and instead, I seek out See’s marzipan by the half pound to satisfy my candy urges. I put aside the joys of hard butterscotch candies by the bagful and indulge, instead, in Almond Roca from the can. And gum, well, I have a partner who knows how to blow a mighty fine bubble from stick gum, even without the benefit of Bazooka Joe’s favorite brand around to make bubbles with. After all these years I don’t know if Juicy Fruit would even satisfy a candy jones anymore.

So it makes me wonder, why I am in such a big damn hurry to seek out Juicy Fruit, the strain? I know that just doing a dry hit will be a trip back to child hood, but will that trip also come with all the repercussions of that "just don’t do it" claptrap that came along with the marijuana messages of my youth? What kind of sick and demented grower would market a strain that tastes like a slice of life that was decidedly not friendly to dope? A man just has to find out.

What draws me to this strain is that it is close as I can get to the landrace genetics that I love. How can you go wrong with a melange of Thai and Afghan flowers tumbling around in your head? My reads on Leafly give me the impression that it is a happy kind of dope, a real wake and bake kind of strain, something that is guaranteed to slap a big old happy smile on your face no matter when or where you use it.

When I think of that I think, okay, that’s what would happen when my mom would dig out a pack of gum from her bag. No matter how bad the day was a stick of Juicy Fruit gum would turn things around. Sounds like whoever put together the ying and the yang of those plants knew what they were doing. Sounds like I just might have to make my way down to the convenience store and pick up a pack of Juicy Fruit until I can find a dispensary that can take care of that old slice of life jones.

I may get lucky sooner than I think. And while I don’t necessarily trust those on-line menus I read that Peaceful Choice out in Boulder just might make my day. My birthday is around the corner. Who needs cake when there is good stick of gum is to be had?

Salud!

Birthday boy bash!

When you are a kid and your birthday falls close to Christmas nobody comes out a winner. Not the kid and certainly not the parent. A good case in point: when I was about 7 or 8 my mom decided to take me to Knott’s Berry Farm for my birthday. It was Christmas vacation so it took no major amount of brainwidth to make it happen. My mom didn’t drive but we were within range of a Greyhound bus station The weather was great, we had time on our hands and there was no separate gate admission to get in the park. I am sure that I had a good time. My memories may be dim but the old Kodak photos show a happy go lucky guy riding the gold mine train and sitting next to a couple of dance hall girl statues, smile on his face. It wasn’t till the day dawned on December 31^st and I found that there wasn’t a party to celebrate the big day that I fell apart. Tears and tantrums throughout the whole day. Miserable kid, pissed off mom. Believe it, that special day stuff ahead of the birthday never happened again in my house.

As an adult it’s a different matter altogether when it comes to celebrating a big deal day like New Year’s Eve. As I inched closer to a birthday celebration that came with more than cake and ice cream I discovered how wild and fun it could be to toast in the new year with sparkling wine and other more exotic substances. The more control I had over my life and the holiday the more I began to wander further afield, to take in the big day in places that got to be further and further from home. But as the years have passed I became a bit of homebody. Kids can do that to you, living in new places without pals and a knowledge of the lay of the land can do that to you, too. But life is funny, the world loops around the sun and on the next go round things can change again. Last year was quiet and home bound,  a new job and a new town, this year I am going with my partner to a little town called Lyons, to spend the night at a “hotel” that specializes in little houses and to wander a wee town that has more than its share of eateries, distilleries, craft brew houses and cannabis dispensaries. All-in-all it promises to be a good time. My only hope is that somewhere between there and home is a good little hole-in-the-wall taqueria with a decent bowl of menudo waiting for me. A feel a good crudo coming on and it’s still a week away!

I have had many New Year’s adventures over the years. Those homebody ones were sweet, especially when the kids were little. What kid doesn’t want to stay up late with his folks, drink sparkling apple juice and light off strings of fire crackers at midnight? My parents were sleepy heads, never did a damn thing with me, never watched Dick Clark and action at Times Square on the tube. My kids had a chance to see what life was like at the stroke of twelve and while we haven’t had a chance to blow off bottle rockets for a few years now they are always in my thoughts when the Roman candles or sparklers go off at midnight.

I am truly happy to have made this far in life. 59 might be the best year yet, but 59 would not have the shine that it does if it wasn’t for all the mishaps and wild times that came before it. My partner and I were talking about life the other night on a long drive home and she asked me if she would have liked me when I was a younger man. That gave me pause. I have always thought of myself as a wild kind of guy but these days I feel like such a pussycat. When I really think about it I really don’t think I am much different now than I was back then so I am sure that she would have thought the world of me when I was in my 20’s or 30’s. I am sure that if she asked that same question of my old pals they might raise their eyebrows as they raise a toast to us. No use going back in the past, let us savor the present and be thankful for all the white water that has tumbled away under THAT bridge!

Yeah, this New Year’s Eve will be different. This year I won’t be stacking multiple bottles of bubbly in the snow outside my room up in Big Bear Lake nor will I be heading out to the Mojave desert to ride motorcycles with my father, Pappy and all his clan. I won’t be taking the train into Tokyo to dance away the night with other gaigins in the Roppongi district nor will I be heading up to the mountains north of that same city to go skiing with a bunch of Japanese ski bums, college students and former Yakuza. This year I will not be falling asleep with my feet propped up on a new mattress in a steam heat apartment in Boise nor will I be falling asleep in an easy chair in a foggy seaside town three hours before midnight. This year I will not poison myself with too much tequila and throw up all over somebody’s yard. This year I will not be hanging with a strange old pal and indulging in too many magic mushrooms. I will not be out in the desert shooting off black powder pistols nor will I get a “birthday spanking” from 30 or more very drunk motorcycle heads while my dad, god bless his sorry ass, gets into a fight because he thought drinking his three day ration of suds in one evening was a good idea.

This year I will not be attending a reggae show in Ashland, throwing a black tie house party in Santa Ana, watching fireworks below the Space Needle, knocking back cherry brandy while on watch on the Worm Island Bridge, dancing in a little bar in Boonville with my sweetie nor will be sipping Anchor Steam Christmas Ale in a bar in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco. I will not be out climbing Mt Tamalpais or the Saddleback Mountains to celebrate my day. I will not be hiking the desert around Red Rock Canyon nor will I be walking along a beach in Fort Bragg but I will find someplace equally grand to walk with my honey as a good long walk on New Year’s Day is a good thing to do and a wonderful way to start the year.

No, this year will be different. I am settled now. I am happy with my life, with my partner and where I live. Sure, it is almost time to pull together that list of things to do for the coming new year but from here it all looks good. I don’t have to go looking for trouble on my birthday nor do I want it to come looking for me. I think that this year I will go into my 59^th year with my eyes wide open and my heart ready for whatever comes. I will spend my birthday with my sweetheart, go see the Frieda Kahlo exhibit in Fort Collins, sip some bubbly, nosh a bit of edibles, go find some sushi to eat and then settle into a bar or some such thing walking distance from our digs. We are going to have the day to ourselves and so we can cavort and be merry as only adults without kids can do. Being an adult on your birthday is a sign of mature development and possibly an older liver. But more than anything it a clear sign that you have already done one hell of a lot and that there is nothing really left to prove anymore.

I am going into this new year with open eyes and heart that is filled to bursting with love, happiness and a will to live. May your new year be filled with delight and a zest for living as well!

Salud!

Adios, Princess Leia!

Carrie Fisher passes, RIP. The galaxy will never be the same! What a year! So many great people have gone on to the other side. Can we be finished with 2016 already?

Salud!


The LA Times story!
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-carrie-fisher-obit-20161227-story.html

Carrie Fisher as ICON! Those buns! That bikini!
http://www.eonline.com/news/818200/carrie-fisher-s-princess-leia-was-one-of-the-few-truly-iconic-characters-yet-her-greatest-role-was-herself

A Christmas smack down: Tommy's vs Tamales!

Christmas is all about tradition. The older I get the more important it is for me to have just the right things around me to ensure that the big day is one of cheer not one of grumpiness. I must be doing something right as this year’s celebration was mighty nice. Just the right amount of loot for the boy, just the right amount of Christmas cheer to round out the edges of a slightly snowy day. For some reason a good nap, a strong cup of coffee and a lot of movies on the couch are now part of my new holiday tradition line up. No midnight mass, not holiday ham, no histrionics, no drama, no whining. After months of preparing for the spendiest night of the year by the time I hit Christmas morning arrives I am done. Unwrapping presents is almost an afterthought. So much has gone into the prep and the buying and the wrapping by the time the youngsters are tearing through their tissue paper I am completely underwhelmed. Happy but meh, done. Where’s breakfast, when can I sneak away and snooze for a while?

Hasn’t always been this way, natch. I know as a younger dad that I not only had to be up all night wrapping presents but I also had to be on hand to witness the joy AND knock out breakfast, lunch and dinner. And going back in time the big day was easily more about what I got instead of what I gave. It’s been great to get older and realize that the holiday is all about the giving. Giving the right gift to someone is an art, something that gets better, easier and more fun as the years go by.

But Christmas is just not about giving and getting but also sharing the day at the groaning board with friends, relatives and family. My time in the service sometimes had me miles apart from my peeps. 

There have been times over the years where I have found myself on the road, in a strange new city for a new job or just in-between people on Christmas and found myself spending the day on my own. It’s a different kind of experience when you find yourself on Christmas day in a tiny apartment in a big new city. No incentive to fire up the stove, make a turkey, pull together a batch of enchiladas. No, if I had my druthers in comparison I would rather have that teaming horde in the house, a kitchen full of people to cook for, a home teeming with people making racket, clamoring for chow, beer, goodies and good cheer.

And hey, I am not complaining about my holiday this year. Quiet, a smattering of snow, a simple stir-fry for supper, a lot of episodes of 3^rd Rock from the Sun. There was talk of a pulling bigger meal but sometimes easy is better. But tamales were in the line-up. Tamales are the go-to dish in a Mexican household on Christmas day but this year we didn’t have the zest, the verve or the masa on hand. I read a note from Uncle Max this morning about the trouble he had with his masa this year, him and half the population of the Southland apparently. Here in Greeley we can’t seem to swing a dead cat without hitting a place to buy masa. But we got lazy and the green chili, red beef and sweet tamales are just going to have to wait till after the new year.

Growing up we had tamales every holiday season. If I look back I see can a vast panorama of my ancients pass before my eyes, all with the intention of making their tamales and the requisite party to eat them the best one yet. Every year my abuelas would come to the house and help build up the season’s best and every year all sorts of folks would come over on Christmas Eve to help demolish all the hard work that went into making the finest treats that man or woman could ever hope to roll out for the holiday.

One year, though, tamales were just not going to be enough. By the time we hit the mid-80’s everything I knew about life was upside down. We were older, not so wise, just wise ass. We thought we knew everything there was to know about life but we still ran home for the holidays. One Christmas my cousin Mario got out of the service and came back to LA with an honorable discharge in one hand and pretty young Texan wife in the other. He and the rest of siblings were not content to just hang around with the elders at the family home, no sir-ree. They had to find trouble and that was to be found way out in the Simi Valley at the home of my cousin Christina. Back then we all had this penchant for blow and many lines were definitely crossed that day. Cuban food lead to too many beers, too many fatties and a mighty big jones for burgers. Burgers on Christmas when tamales and Mexican food were supposed to be the order of the day? Not for my recently returned to civilian life cousin. Only one kind of burger would do that night and that was a Tommy’s burger. And not just any location would do, no sir. His return to California burger experience had to be at the grand temple itself, at the little burger shack on the corner of Beverly and Rampart in Los Angeles.

Crazy at it was we loaded up into the family car, and, loaded as we were, found ourselves out and about and deep into one of the worst nights ever to be on the road in the Southland. It wasn’t a case of being a bad night to drive, weather wise. It was just another cool and clear Southern Californian winter night, perfect for stoned driving. No, it was far more hazardous than that, as we found out as we rolled closer to our objective. Lady luck must have been smiling down on us that night. We decided the last minute to find an alternative route to our burger paradise as the traffic slowed down to a crawl. As we crossed over the overpass a few streets down from the stand we saw why the traffic went a near standstill that night: sobriety checkpoints stretched across the freeway in both directions, CHP cars all ablaze in holiday flashing light glory. We didn’t know it but we were moments from being swept up in the holiday dragnet. We would have had less of a merry Christmas than a bubba-groping good time in the LA County lock up had we not had sense enough to jump off of the 101 Freeway when we did. In the end, yes, we got our Tommy burger delights, but we were all just a bit more sober than we ever thought we’d be that early LA morn.

I am sure that we got over our awe at our good fortune the moment we got in line and saw the famed burger delights spread out before our eyes. If you should ever find yourself out and about in LA, head over to that humble burger shack on Beverly and Rampart and take in one of the finest burgers in the land. And what makes them so worthwhile, you might ask? A burger off the griddle is no big deal, you might say, but when it’s slathered with lip-smacking chili, covered with melted America cheese, heaped with raw onions, beefsteak tomatoes and pickles and squirted with fine yellow mustard, all squished between two lovely soft hamburger buns, well, let’s just say you got hot heaven in your hands right there. Followed up a with cold pop out of the cooler and a fist full of yellow peppers from the brine you can’t get much closer to burger perfection than that.

And while most of my peeps might just want to say to me, hey, Senior Mota Man, a nice platter of tamales in the safety of your home on Christmas day is far more sane thing to eat than chasing down chili burgers in Hollywood all blown out in the middle of Christmas night. I might have to say, yeah, you ar e probably right. BUT! New traditions call for new treats. Here in Colorado we have Smashburger and there isn’t a ladle full of chili in sight. Yummy, yes. But Tommy’s? Not even close. We gotta do something about that!

Yes, here in NoCo we are definitely down for tradition. The tamales are coming and thanks to the net Tommy’s chili can even be made at home as well. Any more these days it's just not about having a white Christmas. Bring in the color! Give me a burger, or a tamale for that matter, all slathered in red and keep the cold brews coming. New traditions call for new treats, indeed!

Salud!

Yay, The Original Tommy's!

http://www.originaltommys.com/

Have a Tommy's jones but too far from the Southland This recipe will do the trick!

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/79779/tommys-chili/

The new year is coming, are you ready?

I never want to be one of those old codgers who sits around in a coffee shop and loudly dispenses advice and then gets mad about it if the advice is ignored or not well taken. Advice is not a one size fits all kind of thing. Folks love to dispense advice. Look at Dear Abby. She and her ilk have made a killing telling folks how to live. Self-help books and the gurus who write them are a dime a dozen. 

Doesn’t matter what you are into there is someone out there who is ready, willing and able to direct you down a path that will lead you to your own version of success, fame, wealth and happiness. Need a book to help you find yourself, get laid, be a better sweetheart or be the best son of a bitch businessman on the planet? Well, go down to your local library and raid their shelves, there is bound to be something there for you. Coming into the new year and wanting someone else to guide you towards some sort of truly great set of resolutions? Need to lose some weight? Got too many bills coming in from too much holiday spending? Well, Barnes and Noble or Amazon must have something you can use and personally mark up and then throw away or donate around mid-spring 2017. If you are patient and can just wait a bit to set yourself up with resolutions for the new year you can do that with the help of all those discarded and helpful tomes that others sought out and paid top dollar for. Second hand shelves are filled with books that other’s unloaded when the desire to help themselves passed. Get those second hand ideas on the cheap. There’s a resolution for you.

Better yet, make up some of your own. Who knows you better than you?  Your mom or your partner or even your dog might think that they do but you are the one who is going to make those resolutions, plans and grand ideas stick because they’ll only work if they come forth out of your own precious noggin. I suppose all this ranting came out of an article I read this morning in the Cannabist about all the things that a stoner can do to improve his or her life. While I was reading it I became a bit incensed, not because of the good advice that was shared but because it trotted out the names of all these wealthy and successful people who just happen to smoke pot.

Now, I believe you are going to be successful, or not successful, just because you are you. Sure, there are those magnificent hands of fate that are hovering over all of us. One little flick of the flying finger of fate and you will either be toast or the toast of the town. Luck, karma, the gods, what have you. Things happen. Or, they don’t. Whether or not you smoke dope is not going to make you a better 

artist, rapper, writer, cook or CEO of a massive international concern. It’s all up to you and how you handle yourself, what you do with your time, how you approach your education, or, even more, it all depends on what your God given talents are. We’re not all created equal. Some of us truly rock and some of us are dumb as rocks. It’s just what the gods decree. Whether you like mota or McRibs or merlot doesn’t matter much in the end. It’s how you play the game that matters. Or, how you are played. Sometimes we just don’t have a choice in the matter. And that part, well, is fine with me. Let the dice roll, baby.

It’s almost December 31^st. It’s about time for reflection and for getting those New Year resolutions in line. I am going to get ahead of it and trot out ten things that I want to focus on in 2017. Maybe you can use them, who knows. They might work for you. Apply them and MAYBE you COULD  be a better person, a bigger success story, a better partner, a stand up kind of guy here in the coming year. But don’t take my advice. Make up some of your own. Whether you are a stoner or not these things are golden and will make your life all so much better.

Maybe. Here you go:

Senior Mota Man’s Ten Seriously Bitchen Things to Focus on in 2017:

1: Breathe: this one is a natural. Take a walk, do some yoga, stretch, have wild sex, do what you need to do to get air into your lungs. But breathe. When things get too tense, step outside, take a good few deep breaths and things will be better. Believe it, this works.

2: Broaden your horizons: travel, read, talk to folks who have been around. Get past the borders of your mind and take in some different viewpoints, vistas and values. Yes, you have your views and values, I get it, but so do other people. Find out about them and then maybe mix and match a few. Your mind and your feet might feel a bit different, especially if you go walking around in someone else’s shoes.

3: Be willing to move: Grousing about where you work or where you live? Move. Go away. Get on down the road. That’s what U-Haul is made for. Take that faunchy attitude and take it someplace else. You never know, a move might be just what you need. Or it could end up being like my mom always said, no matter where you go there you are.

4: Stay informed: this last election told us one thing very clearly: there is a shit load of bad news out there. Go to the source, read a good daily and then, if you don’t like what you read, then seek out even more authoritative tomes to verify what you just read. Don’t take the words of the talking heads as gospel. Read, listen, talk to folks who know, who matter and then, only then, make an informed decision. You, your community, your country, deserve the best. Start out first with real information.

5: Practice the Golden Rule: this never goes out of style and is practiced by all major religions all over the world. Good sense. Treat me as you wish to be treated. ‘Nuff said.

6: Be curious; Use your imagination. Color outside the lines. Turn over rocks. Take some paint to canvas, sing a song, make a meal that you have never made before. Be bold, have fun and if it didn’t quite turn out the way that you expected, well, then, do it again. Or not. No sense being a damn fool about it. But no matter what, laugh.

7: “Keep Calm and Carry On”: yeah, and don’t forget to breathe.

8: Be good to yourself: Rest, eat well, exercise, love, be considerate, be kind, be real, be positive. Now, do all that and watch all sort of good things come back into your life.

9: Be respectful of history, be aware of where you are going but more than anything be here now.

10: Moderation in all things. And yes, that applies to your mota, too.

Happy holidays, peeps. And a righteously delightful new year.

Salud!

Trolls in the trees!

Timber!

The epitome of karma can be summed up thus: do not piss on the Christmas trees.

I was released from my duties at the research arm of Disney in November of ’83. Together with a cast of thousands we had knocked out Tokyo Disneyland, EPCOT in Florida, helped bring a a cable station online and revamped  and freshened up Fantasyland in Anaheim. I watched as folks I got to know and love leave WED on a daily basis. By the end of October I knew the routine. HR would come up and pull the cards of the soon to be unemployed from my check-out box and then go off in search of  items to be returned. When the library manager came up and pulled a name from the box herself I knew my time was up.

Being consolidated wasn’t so bad. I was back to living at home, had an older girlfriend who made me feel like a gigolo, had a beater of a car that was nothing but trouble and had absolutely nothing in the bank. I knew that I could go down to the unemployment office as soon as I wanted to. My mom made it clear that I “wanted to” so I set up a file, pulled a few cards from the board, talked to a job coach who then put in a couple calls. Set me up for an appointment for a warehouse job. Interviewed for a position the next day with a swim suit manufacturer, Barely Legal. Went out that night with Uncle Max, got so loaded that I missed the first round of return calls from my future employer the next morning. When I finally had sense enough to grab the phone in the afternoon I was asked if I wanted the job. The holidays loomed, of course I wanted the job.

So, I got to know the denizens of Costa Mesa through that short bit of employment. My line of work kept me downstairs. I was officially titled “Fabric Inspector”. Not as racy as it sounds. I didn’t get to see the fabric after it was made into bikinis, nor did I get to check out the fabric while it was on the models. My job had me loading up huge rolls of wildly colored rayon and assorted polyesters onto a massive light box with rollers. I spun the fabric from one cardboard spool to another, looking for flaws, tears, what have you. My handy, loyal plastic tagging gun was there for me and with the help of that gun I marked the places on the roll that were not going to make it in swim suit land.

I know, that sounds a bit snarky. I should have been pleased to be gainfully employed at Christmas time and believe it, I was. I got to hang with some very interesting and disreputable people, deal with a couple of bosses who lived a toney life in Newport Beach and who both drove matching Mercedes convertibles, work in the vicinity of scantily clad models and ride around in a delivery truck when the other warehouse guys were too busy to do it themselves. It was also through Barely Legal that I got to meet the world class photographer, Jennifer Griffiths, who taught me all there was to know about being a photographer’s “tech assist”. Sheesh, who would of thought that holding the bag would be so much work?

Christmas meant parties to me back in those days. Once the bosses threw their shindig for the staff I had it in my head to throw one of my own. Living with mom made that dream easy to do. She was going to barber school at the time and had a wild group of student pals to pull from. We had the space, a wonderful big, old Craftsman house with towering ceilings. All my life growing up I wanted a tree that would reach up to the top of the living room. I decided one evening to make that dream finally happen.

Once again Uncle Max came to the rescue. He had a beater of truck in those days and it would do nicely to haul a tree home. We met downtown, took in some merry forms of refreshment at the Goat Hill Tavern and then went off in search of a bit of mota. I was feeling somewhat like that character in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I felt we were stocking up on contraband but instead of making a major road trip out into the desert we were just going up the block in search of an evergreen tree. After a bit of cruising we found just what we were looking for, a garish tree lot with a ten footer at a reasonable price. But all that gathering of drugs and drinking of beer had its price. Two men had to water their horses and water they did, but not in a trough or a barnyard but in the back shady corner of a night darkened tree lot. All we knew was that OUR tree was dry!

The night of the party was wild and memorable. It started out fairly quiet as the ground work of that particular party was set by family and ancient relations. Elder aunts and baby brothers can only get so kooky on sparkling apple juice. Once folks from the barber college arrived the noise level in the house increased dramatically. The holiday music took off, the keg was tapped and then a few car loads of fabric folk showed up direct from the warehouse. In the mix was one character in particular, Patrick, who I didn’t dislike as much as I distrusted. He was a crazed sort of young drunk who lived behind the complex in an old abandoned sailboat. Funny, yes, unpredictable, definitely, and was destined to be the man who would put more than just a star on the top of the tree.

It was a good time there for a while. I got to hang with folks that I might not otherwise get to know in a work setting. The barber bunch was artsy and cool, the family was grooving on the full house and festive atmosphere and there were friends and pals who came all the way from Disney just to wish me a happy new year. All was going well until we heard the crash issue forth from the living room. 

We spent a good amount of time getting that tree up the week before. It was no small feat to get lights and decorations on a ten-foot tree. I would have never suspected that someone would have thought it needed more but Patrick was the man that night to recognize that something was amiss on the top of the tree and he was going to be the man to fix it.

With the help of a guy who will go down in the annuls of time being known as Boy George, and with assistance of another sodden guest known as Biker Billy, Patrick made it his quest to remove what he considered an offensive star and put one up of his own. I have no idea where he got the aluminum foil but his ornament, well, looked like something a very creative kindergartner would fashion after a severe night fever. Did he use a chair or did one of his accomplices hold him up? I’ll never know because at least one of them made it up the trunk while the others helped to bring the tree down to the floor.

The party wasn’t salvageable after that as someone had to help get the drunks home. While Patrick and pals were ushered out the remains of the crowd helped pick up the mess. When everyone was gone Uncle Max and I stepped out onto the porch and fired up a doobie and thought about what we had done. Nothing there at the party, mind you. It was that ignoble act in the Christmas tree lot that had done it, that had brought the bad ju-ju into the house. Or not. Maybe it was just a case of one too many Patricks..

We went back inside and admired the now well-broken-in tree. It was a merry Christmas season, no doubt about it, and a wild holiday party to boot.

Salud!

The 12 Days of Old Stoner Stuff

I think I have heard The 12 Days of Christmas enough for one year. I am not a bah humbug kind of guy when it comes to the holidays but when seasonal music takes over the entire season of fall I just sort of get my fill by mid-December. Besides, the 12 days is supposed to start on Christmas day and work its way to the Epiphany on January 6^th. I loved to sing that song as a kid, especially while performing in a choir. We really thought it was a show stopper. I am sure that the stunned look we saw on the faces of the parents in the audience at the end of the song was not one of pleasure or pride, but sheer relief. All those squeaky high voices! All that manic energy and crazed excitement knowing that it was almost Santa’s big day!

These days I like to think of Christmas as being all about the kids. I am helping to raise a young boy and that helps to keep me sane in so many ways, but it really goes a long way in helping to make the season merry and bright. I love the shopping, the cooking, putting up the tree, all that. Seriously love to fill my partner’s stocking with good cheer. But for me, meh, I could do with about four weeks less celebration. I mean, goodness, we go from Halloween through New Year party-party-partying, a relentless pace of holiday frenzy all the way to the finish line. By the time I get the 1^st of January I am completely exhausted from the merriment, forced or not. I am not suggesting going into hibernation during that time or anything like that. I love to do costumes, make turkey, get holiday cards in the mail. No, what I am saying is that I could do with a little be less of the madness…er….merriment that marks the Christmas holidays. Hmm, maybe I just need to up my dose of tincture.

So, this year, once the big day is shopped for and the presents doled out for everyone else, I would like to start, or in this case, reboot, an old tradition. I would like to go back to that small kind of gift giving, the 12-day march towards the arrival of the three kings. I don’t want milking maids or turtle doves or drummers drumming but I think a token gift a day for that run would be a lot of fun. So, without the background swell of the song to accompany this list, here is what this old stoner would like for this coming 12 days of Christmas:

*A simple stash box with RAW rolling papers, some stainless steel screens, a blown glass spoon, a pair of Fiskar scissors, some Nag Champa incense and a box of wooden matches.

*A Trader Joe’s gift card (merrily munching along!)

*A Criterion copy of The Fantastic Mr Fox (who doesn’t like Wes Anderson?)

*A 2017 Alex Grey calendar (stonerific, 12 months of the year!)

*A bottle of Signal Ridge sparkling wine (a niche item but, hey, I am worth it!)

*The Watersons Mighty River of Song box set (gotta love those old English folk tunes!)

*The Firefly 2 vaporizer (this is pushing it, I know!)

*Two tickets to the local philharmonic (ah, to sit and groove to those classic live tunes! Bliss!)

*A stack of Shaun Tan picture books (my latest artist thrill!)

*A cheesecake from Costco (nothing say loving like commercial baked goods from the oven!)

*A six pack of Anchor Steam Christmas Ale (can you say “ahhhh!”?)

*Wool socks, a knit cap and a pair of mittens, to better honor that old Sierra Club Mountaineer ethic; “if you are cold put on a hat and warm socks”.

Yeah, that was quite the list but hey, baby Jesus, I am worth the haul!

But unlike the kid who looks under the tree and discovers there is no pony, bb rifle or trip to Disneyland, hey, just know that I am happy with what I have. A warm home, a full larder, healthy children and a happy partner are all that I can ask for. May you all be so lucky and get what you ask for as well.

And may you all have a lovely holiday and a safe and profitable new year!

Salud!

Uncle Max

That is short for Uncle Maximum. As in being the one in our clique who had the questionably macho ability to hold the maximum amount of whatever kind of substance we were passing around in his system. Later on those limits were tested and said substances would generally find their way out of him. Yard, toilet, dashboard, where ever he was he shared. Never mind that. He is my oldest and best friend. A great husband, a loving dad, a dutiful son. And, thanks to a solid disposition, still alive. Thank the gods.

I got to know DB back in J high. He had already been toiling in the fields of catholic school for years, knew the nuns, the whiskey priests and all the hard cases who had come up before the cross just like him. I joined up in the 7^th grade, fresh out of public elementary and for whatever reason he took a shine to me. He was pugnacious, wild, funny and, as a balance to all that, introspective, intelligent and generally quiet as hell. I was his polar opposite…loud, awkward, bookish, sometimes too much in my head and completely naive…it’s funny to think but that rare balancing act of being complete opposites seemed to guarantee our friendship from the start. We tended to hang with the rest of the geeky guys, the nerdy ones, something that seemed to be okay as we were all weird, bright, shy around girls and yet always on the make. And while we took our mischievousness on road fairly often he was always finding ways to up the ante.

 A good example is our 9^th grade class experience at Disneyland. I am almost sure that he was the one who came up with the two more elaborate tools of terror we pulled together for that day: Salvo detergent pods, which were dropped into the Pirates of the Caribbean flume (and shut down the ride for the rest of the day) and foot long chrome tubes that were just the perfect size for chickpeas, which we used with deadly skill and accuracy throughout the day but most notably on the WED People Movers. Why we didn’t get kicked out of the park that day will always be one of the great mysteries of life but it had long lasting power to inspire other equally great acts of stupidity and craziness.

Things just seemed to happen when DB was around, some good, some not so much. When he brought the homemade nunchucks to school we thought, okay, a cool tool to make us look very tough. Tough times ended early when he popped himself in the nose at lunch time and broke it wide open. A good solid blood flow has a way of ruining a white Catholic school boy’s shirt. We were always good for a bike ride to the beach but once, when we were surrounded by some local toughs he and his neighbor pals got away, which left me holding the bag. In the end turned out okay. I figured out a way to not only let them get away but to talk myself out of being jumped as well. It paid to live in the barrio back in those days.

High school, well, we got through it alive. Not hard in a prep school. We hung out with motor heads, the surfers, the lowriders, the dope heads. We listened to Tull, Nugent, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath and Skynyrd. We hustled mota when we could and took in school dances just so we could hang out with the cool kids. After graduation we took off for a week and camped along the Kern River and talked our way out of a ticket for having an unattended fire (the liquor and the dope we had at the site would have been enough to send us to jail). We talked out way out of a ticket on his birthday, him loaded to gills, a bag of dope in the glovebox waiting to be found. We shared cousins, a rolling machine, a number of record albums, a handful of friends, Ren Faire memories and a lot of cheap Mexican mota. 

We worked side by side on the weekends at the swap meet, picked up trash, double dated girls and shared a lot of stale popcorn and cold beer afterwards with the field crews we mustered up to handle the crowds and the busted up left behind treasures. We looked out after each other's lives. I got him to a hospital after he was badly torn up in an off road motorcycle accident. After getting lost in the local mountains I watched him almost plummet to his death when a sun damaged rope ladder behind an abandoned mota farm broke off underneath his feet. We took in camping in the high desert  in the winter time where he taught me how to do all those outdoorsman kind of things my old man never taught me to do. And, best of all, I got to be his best man at his wedding (and to this day, the only marriage he has ever had, thank god). I ate the flowers off my lapel, gave a hell of a toast, drank too much bubbly and cried my eyes out. A good friend is a tough thing to lose to a wife!

We both got into drugs but at different times of our lives. DB started early. I can still remember hearing the stories about the giant acid induced spider that chased him down the block. In our senior year we had a mutual pal who turned us onto big bags of Mexican shake where we learned to roll bombers together. We did way too many unknown chemicals, dropped our share of LSD, packed too much Bolivian marching powder up our noses but it was our mutual love of mota and beer that became our signature drug of choice and our regular source of amusement and after work pleasure.

When I took off and joined the Navy it didn’t take him too long to join up, too. He was and still is a tough son of a bitch and when he went off to the fleet he wasn’t going to go lightly. He got out of boot camp and went off to be a machinist, but he took it one better and made that working on nuke reactors. Surface ships were not going to be his bag, no sir. He decided to up the macho ante and go submarines. He took up scuba diving, bought himself a Harley and top it off, he invested in his prized “rocket on a roller skate”, a Sunbeam Tiger. We ran into each other now and again, him off of Pt. Loma Blvd, me out of 32^nd Street. When he finally got home in the early 80’s we got to know each other again, first up in North Hollywood, then back to Orange County. From 1981 on we managed to launch careers, marriages and families.

Friendship, when you start off that solid, that connected, never really gets broken, even at a distance. We’ve seen each other maybe a dozen times these past twenty some odd years. I’ve made my way down south, he and the missus have made their way up north. Every time we get together it seems as if we have to commit to burning down the house all over again. One evening fairly recently I got to visit with his mom, who I hadn’t seen in years. After she left I went through three bottles of wine, helped him with his beer, all the while watching him do a large number on a case of local craft brew and a couple medicinal brownies. We were young Turks again, even if it was just for the evening. The next day I had to make a nine hour drive back up north. That drive took fifteen. Rest stops were my salvation. We have never partied like that again.

Yep, we have come a long way from the days where we would shoot construction tacks into oncoming traffic on the freeway for fun. When we get together these days our consumption is mellow. We share our California mota (his preferred strain: Pineapple, mine Hawaiian Sativa) and knock back brews and bubbly. We are both happy with our lives. He and his wife are both retired and planning on road trips and adventures to fill up their time. His house is a wonder, his kids dutiful, a bit wild and making their way in the world. He is recovering from a work life filled with humping broken diesel engines out of large trucks and the lines in his face show the wear and tear of a long party fueled life.

And yet he is still the good guy that I got to know years ago on that Catholic school field. When we talk on the phone the years fall away. There have been episodes in our lives where stupidity and circumstance have kept us from seeing each other for years at a time. But once we make that connection again it’s as if no time has passed at all. I look forward to his road trips, to him and his good wife finding their way out to the wilds of Colorado. If not here, well, then, I guess me and my partner will have to make my way back to Cali to see them, instead. His wife, good woman that she is, has pretty much forbidden us from breaking out the tec or the Jack Daniels ever again. Can’t blame her there. The last time we did that we almost got arrested for drinking in a municipal park, and, if that wasn’t enough, we painted the walls outside the garage with large splashes of bbq sauce. Yeah, too much fun. A trademark, a liability, just a way of life that we share with each other.

And yes, we’re grown. We’re wise. And we’re still the best of buds.

Salud!

The allure of a well illustrated book

I feel I have a pretty good imagination but I think that a nicely illustrated book goes a long way to helping augment that. Yesterday as I circulated through my chidren’s department I came across a picture book by Shaun Tan, The Lost Thing. One of my favorite things about library work is strolling through the stacks and stumbling on a new author. But even better is coming across a new artist. New to me, anyway. One title of his lead to me others. I now have on my desk copies of The Bird King and Rules of Summer with a few more on their way. I haven’t been this excited by a children’s artist in a long time. Nice to be excited by things cool and artistic. Helps to take the edge off of the election process and the upcoming inauguration ceremony.

Been a librarian in the public sector for a while now and baby, let me tell you, after 40 years the thrill is gone. But when it comes to working with books, to turning folks on to really well done picture books, well, the joys of the profession still linger large in me. I started out as a children’s librarian. The funny thing is that by the time I dove in earnestly into J work I had been a full-fledged head for many years. At the time it seemed that my affection for marijuana and working with finger puppets, cartoons, crafts and art was a natural fit, that a big part of the mystery of my life had been solved. The arty side of the house had a very big appeal and it took a while for me to see why. It should have been clear. Having grown up in a household with an artistically minded mother I had the pedigree of an old school bohemian. I had all kinds of art around me growing up. Books, paintings, film, music. All of it was woven into the fabric of my life. After a while I learned to discover that a good bowl of quality mota would help enhance the appreciation for that art. I don’t think smoking pot ever made me a better artist, or writer, or anything like that. Rather, it made me a better “appreciator”, a more well-rounded accumulator, a curator with a better eye or ear or feel for the arts.

You have to admit that there is nothing better than a rainy day at home accompanied by a decent bong load of pot. Living in Seattle was one of the best places in the world to develop that disposition. Seattle was what I like to call an “indoor town”. It appealed to the outdoor enthusiast, certainly, but it really had all those inside things down. Great museums, fabulous movie houses, incredible music venues, one-of-a-kind bookstores, delicious eateries and world class coffee houses. What wasn’t there to love about that town? Seattle was made for cannabis. Even before Amsterdam was the place to go with their canals and cannabis laced coffee houses Seattle was rocking it.

I cut my librarian teeth there in Pacific Northwest. Sure, I started out in SoCal, got my start in the same library that I went to as a kid. But it there along the Puget Sound that discovered how cool dope and children’s picture books went together. Somehow, between the moody weather, the warmth of quiet bookstore stacks in winter, the coziness of a good IPA and a thrill of a match being set to the end of a dank and sticky fatty, it all came together. Art, mota and a well-developed, artistically trained and imaginatively inclined life was the way to go.

I was lucky, then, that I was thrown into a children’s book review group as soon as I landed there. Once a month I got to go the U-District and head off to the Suzzallo Library and hang with other children’s librarians and look at the latest advanced copies of kids titles thrown our way. It was about as cool as a job as one could ask for. Books, good company, mileage allowance and a lunch afterwards in the city. It felt then almost a bit sneaky. Who would pay a person to have that much fun?

The arc of delving into children’s picture books appealed to me. As a kid I was deeply into illustration. I don’t think “art” impressed me as much as well drawn image. At first it was largely comic art that did me in. I was a big fan of DC war comics. I was caught between my love for two artists, Russ Heath and Joe Kubert, who both drew Sgt Rock and the Haunted Tank episodes. For years I favored the more technical artistry of Heath but later on I began to see and feel the true art background that Kubert shared with his readers. I took my love for DC Comics and spread that jones to other places. Mad Magazine, Cracked, Eerie, Creepy and National Lampoon all got in line. As I got older the underground comic art of Crumb, Spain and Vaughn Bode drew me in and expanded my taste for naïve, outsider, surfer, barrio, graffiti and hot rod artists.

It wasn’t enough to thrill to the old illustrative masters. The older I got the more I felt that I was the lucky one. I grew up with Remington, N.C. Wyeth, Gibson, Parrish and Pyle all around me. It was the fine lines and the great imagery of those artists that propelled me to seek out the coolness that other artists had to offer. The pulp comix that came out of San Francisco lead me to other, even richer territories. I discovered Heavy Metal, artists like Moebius and Bilal, which turned me onto even richer forms of film and literature. Where would films like Blade Runner or books by William Gibson be if wasn’t the deeply dystopian and otherworldly imagery that spilled off those comic book and graphic novel pages?

Children’s picture book illustrators, in the end, became not so much my end all but a great launch place of the imagination to share with children and to indulge in after a long work week. I think it became easy to sell books to kids once I discovered how beautiful and outrageously fantastic they were. With a bit of mota I could easily get past the treacly writing that some of the art labored under. With the right combination of a comfy couch, soft lighting, a strong rain storm and a crackly fire a stack of picture books by my side could turn into a full afternoon of stony, literary delight.

But sometimes good things come to an end. Jobs change, duties transmogrify, folks grow up and tastes go into hiding. For years my life took the shape of a man on the run. Working on a house, raising kids, starting a business, moving across state lines, cannabis prohibition all took its toll on the joys of picture book reading. My illustration jones found other venues to explore and celebrate. I sought out quality coffee table books.  I went off in search of great photographers, of well shot cook books, of art house films. Somehow I lost my taste for illustration and went off in search of art, instead. Art I found in abundance in NorCal. The second hands were full of tossed out canvases and my collection of outsider art swelled. It was around that time that I was tasked with weeding a large, overused book collection on the coast and I was able to score stacks of well-worn picture book classics. What made that salvage job worthwhile and exciting to do was being re-acquainted with grass. What was cool before was cool again and I was forever happy that the kid in me, the one who thrilled to the old masters, the old soul that had gone to sleep, was awake again and grooving to new artists on the scene.

Yesterday I went wandering through the stacks and stumbled on a title by Shaun Tan. I said to myself if there is one book in there to groove on there has to be many. With a bit of poking I came across a fistful of other folks to take up my time with. Leo Timmers (Bang), Lane Smith (Cowboy & Octopus), Aaron Becker (Journey, Quest and Return), Gennady Spirin (The Twelve Days of Christmas), Wallace Edwards (Uncle Wally’s Old Brown Shoe), Francesca Sanna (The Journey) can now all take their place on my bookshelves, right alongside the folks who made me gasp, laugh and groove so long ago. Really, what stoner’s house isn’t complete without copies of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, Paul Zelinksky’s Rumplestiltskin, David Shannon’s Rough-Face Girl, Uri Shulevitz’s The Fool and Flying Ship, Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burkick, David Weisner's Tuesday and Mercer Meyer’s fairy tales? 

Yes, the kids may be grown up and far away, and yes, your stoner sensibilities may have you grooving to reggae and letting your freak flag fly in clubs and festivals but don’t let you mind turn to jello and think that the only thing out there to do, once you’ve couch locked yourself into a state of indica bliss, is to turn on the tube. Fluff up some pillow, put on a pot of tea, spin a bit of Bach, pack your bowl and blow your mind with art. Your brain with thank you for it and your imagination, already burdened with too much cannabis bliss, will soar as well.

Salud!

Boo-boo Bubbler!

There was a time long ago where I used to work as a salesman for an audio firm. MCS. Out of Tustin. Specialized in high speed tape duplicators, cassette tapes. Had a whole warehouse full of machines that were worked by Pilapina gals, wives of  local Marine service men, who would spend the day talking in Tagalog and recording, over and over again, the Sunday sermons of local pastors for the homebound set. My job was to find ways to undercut the mail order catalog prices and other salesmen out there who had a better price break than me. High speed duplicators were all the rage with the evangelicals. All my boss and I wanted was for my price breaks to be all the rage, too.

One day I found myself on foot. The VW truck I was given to do my road work in died on me. Rather, the diesel engine died on me. It was a noisy truck, smoky as hell and for a day I was happy to be hoofing around Van Nuys without it. I had my briefcase full of brochures of my crappy product and a stack of business cards with my name and my company's logo on them. My skinny black tie went fine with my US Navy white dress shirt. It was spring and the weather was right for walking. As I made my rounds on the Boulevard I spied what was known then as a “head shop”. I hadn’t been in one in years so I figured, what the hey, time to check out the merchandise, see what stoners in 1983 were using to smoke their weed with. I walked in and was amazed at the wealth of water pipes I saw and said so. Well, what I said was “Wow! Great selection of bongs!” It didn’t take but a second and I was ushered out without so much as explanation or fare thee well.

It was the next day, talking about the incident with some pals of mine that I found out that you were forbidden, at that time, anyway, to utter that word. "Bong". Goodness, just saying it got a guy in trouble. Didn’t even have to have mota on your person to be given the bums rush.

Well, times have changed. I walked into Bear Necessities in Greeley this morning. Had some shopping I needed to take care of. Christmas is just around the corner and I needed to pick up a water pipe…okay, let’s say it…a BONG for my buddy over in Cali. I felt like it was about time I took care of my pal, put a fresh bubbler in his hands. The reason why is that I was responsible for him breaking one last year. Seems that the mota I forwarded him on a visit was just a tad too strong for his weak disposition.

I was lucky to know a number of great stoners back when I was living in Mendo. One of the gals, a pal of my sweetheart, grew some mighty fine Mendo Purps in field outside of Covelo. She gave me a pint jar full of it for Christmas one year and being the pal that I am I decided to share my bounty with my oldest friend. He was recovering from work related injuries and, at the time, was a regular user of a local Pineapple strain out of LA. When I passed along that purple goodness to him I was not as savvy as I am now about strains and such. I thought, wow, good weed, he should think so, too. My pal used his weed as a medicine prior to his morning stretches and exercise program. He went off into his work shed, loaded up a bowl and took a hit thinking, yep, just another bowl of Northern California weed. He took a big toke, held it and then proceeded to pass out. On the way down his bubbler slipped from his hand and hit the ground. Shattered. He ended up on the ground, too, but on the way he hit his head on old military ammo box. Gave him a shiner that had the whole neighborhood talking. Surprised (and happy) that he didn’t kill himself but he is a tough old son of a bitch.

It took him a while to report that story to me. He went out and bought himself another bong. After a while his family stopped laughing about his black eye. When I found out about his accident I felt bad for a bit but since he just kept on going with his medical treatment I didn’t feel all that sorry for him for long. I did feel bad about his bong getting broken, though. As you can see it took me a while to get around to replacing it. These days you can barely swing a dead cat around here without hitting a glass store. This particular one has glass bongs and such all the way from floor to ceiling. There a tons of other products, too. Papers, a wide assortment of pipes, a number of different dab rigs, vaporizers and all sorts of other paraphernalia. Tobacco, too. A regular old time head shop. I can even say “bong” in there and not get kicked out. Imagine that!

Next week I will send off a package to my buddy. What was great about buying that pipe today is that I was able to get two at a very reasonable price. One bong for 35 bucks, the other for 4 dollars and 20 cents. I went in with a 15 percent off coupon and really had a merry old time. When it comes to gift giving I really love to give things that I like. I didn’t have to struggle over that purchase. We both got the same one.

Glass being glass I hope this one lasts longer than his last one. Good old NorCal dope. Great stuff, that Mendo Purps!

Salud!

Aloha!

It has been many years since I was fortunate enough to visit the Islands. Never as a tourist, mind you, just as a sailor passing through town on the way to other, bigger things. But even though Oahu didn’t have the impact on me that, say, Hong Kong or Singapore did, there was a certain sense of otherworldliness that washed over me as I stood there on the starboard side of the ship on sea and anchor detail as we sailed into Pearl Harbor. I know that I had never smelled air as sweet as I did that day coming around the bend, prior to pulling into port. I remember being up topside, above the bridge, with two local boys coming back home for a visit. I had no idea what the island landmarks were. From what I recall I kept confusing Diamond Head with Sugarloaf. My shipmates thought me a Lollo Buggah, a real stupid guy. I am sure that all the guys on the ship were haoles to them. I didn’t mind. I was a newbie in the fleet and everything was fresh to me.

But that didn’t matter to the hard guys in Waikiki who felt they were there just to take advantage of the new sailors in town. I found that out pretty much right away on my first liberty there. I don’t know why I was always fired up to find grass in those days but I was. For some reason the risks associated with asking just about anybody for it didn't bother me. Looking back I would say it was a serious lack of street smarts but at the time I was adventurous and just a tad stupid. No matter, grass was my mission and right away I found a local in a tourist bar who was aching to sell me some of the local pakalolo. I was lucky to be hanging with a group of fellow data processors at the moment and they were all game to score as well. The big problem was that the dope wasn’t there with my contact, we had to drive to go get it. Oh, and yes, could we give his partner a ride there as well? We had a rented car at our disposal so the ride to fetch it didn’t seem to be a problem.

What turned out to be a problem was not so much the drive as my inability to read the signs. Oahu isn’t the Big Island but somehow we never seemed to get to where we needed to go. The two guys I was shotgunned up with in the back of the car kept saying it was just around the bend. I never knew an island could have so many. After a hour or so my shipmates smelled a set up. We had no idea where we were, where we were going but the consensus vote was that we were not going to take those guys any further so we unceremoniously dropped them off by the side of the highway. Did we miss out on a beating or a hold up? I'll never know but I was seriously red faced about it.

Yeah, I was bummed, for not only blowing the score but for also looking like an ass in front of my pals. We ended up again in Waikiki and settled up the evening with a rack of Primo Beer on the beach, so all was forgiven. For me, though, not forgotten! I really wanted to try out a big joint of that Maui Wowie!

Well, I did finally get around to it but it took almost forty years. Ever since I landed here in Colorado I have been on a landrace chase and I finally got a chance to secure a bit of the islands I longed for so long ago. I know that there are a number of dispensaries around the region that sell Hawaiian landrace strains but Nature’s Herbs and Wellness in Garden City was the first one to have it in stock for me. I remember seeing it in a jar on the shelves when I first arrived here but I didn’t think too much of it at the time. I was too spoiled with the holdings of the shops back in Mendo and thought, sheesh, who would want to smoke a throwback like that? Little did I know that landrace strains were exactly what the doctor ordered. Once I figured that out it took awhile for it to come around again. Yeah, it took months but I finally made that big score. Last week Maui Wowie was finally checked off the list.

There are many lovely descriptions of this magnificent weed out there but let’s just say that while the high is not up to the sky my head certainly took a flight there. I loved the tropical fruitiness of it all, the smooth smoke, the bud density, nice and light and fluffy. I may not be sitting on the North Shore watching the wahines surf right now but with a bowl load of this fine herb it’s about as close as I am going to get to the Islands in the immediate future.

Salud!

Leafly: Maui Wowie strain review:
https://www.leafly.com/sativa/maui-wowie

And while I may be drinking Kona beers these days this was the brew that all the cool guys would drink back in the day:

http://primobeer.com/

Local lingo!
http://visitmolokai.com/wp/local-lingo-basic-hawaii-languages-for-visitors/

Blue rings of wonder and delight!

Entheogen:

An entheogen ("generating the divine within") is any chemical substance used in a religious, shamanic, or spiritual context that often induces psychological or physiological changes

Or, in this case, a kind of fungus that brings on an “oh, holy shit!” moment.

Been a long time since I’ve had a chance to chat with machine elves over a cup of cosmic tea. Easily since the fall of 1992. I was a new bookmobile man back then. Had a route that took me through Forest Park in Everett, Washington. Just finished visiting the kiddos at the local preschool. Enthralled them with a story time and a visit on the bus and was heading back to the branch when I looked out the side window as I got ready to make a turn onto the boulevard when I spied a patch of what I knew for certain to be psilocybe cyanescens, or wavy blue caps to the layman. It didn’t take but a moment to go back around the park, back the bus into a parking spot and take a gander at the flower bed on foot and close up.

One of the great things about that park in the late afternoon of October was the deep dark secret woodiness of it all. It was easy for a library staffer to disappear for a few moments into the underbrush. The park was ringed with rhododendron beds and towered over by all manner of evergreen trees. The flower beds were sodden underfoot but since it was still early fall not damp and uncomfortable to stroll around in. My investigation revealed that the flower beds were not just casually strewn with mushroom beds but absolutely redolent with them. I took off my hat and filled it up with a few handfuls of squeaky wonder, got back up into my ride and finished up my day checking in books and restocking my truck. I went home, did a spore reading and found out that I had in my hand a very potent hallucinogen, something that I had been seeking for quite a long time.

I was no stranger to psychedelic mushrooms but this was the first time I had found them in the field. It’s one thing to get them from a reliable dealer, all desiccated and ready for play, another thing entirely to find them out and about, field guide in hand, with the mysteries of the universe right there before you in a garden bed. Stumbling on those shrooms that day was something I never expected, let alone needed, to have happen. I was new in state, new to my job and a relatively new dad to boot, with all the glories of child rearing all still fairly fresh and new to me. Somehow it was meant to be, I suppose, but try telling that to a new mother with a babe at her breast. I am sure that no matter how excited I was to have discovered a cyanescen goldmine, it seemed pale in comparison to all the worries and concerns that were delivered to our door on a daily basis.

We were living in Seattle at that time.We were both going through divorces. home foreclosures and post partum blues. It was the height of the grunge era and the city was steeped in youth culture and a sort of electronic sound not experienced since the days of the Doors and the Beatles. I was still relatively new in the profession and very new to big city life. It was a novel experience, dressing up for work in flannels, Doc Martin shoes and bulky sweaters, listening to Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Nirvana and cruising the city looking for rock band posters stapled onto telephone poles. The city was not overloaded with newbies at that time, rents were still reasonable and the tech industry was just starting to get off the ground. Seattle still felt funky back in those days. Artists still lived in the warehouses north of downtown, the Dome was still hosting ballgames and concerts and there wasn’t a Trader Joe's or a decent Mexican food restaurant to be found anywhere in the city limits.

Seeing those mushrooms changed my mission, no doubt, just as it was meant to be. How could I deny them? The flower beds were lush with loamy soil and the wavy caps were sitting there, sunny side up, smiling at me, prolific. I really had no idea what I was doing back then, had no mycological sense and sensibility. I just jumped in those beds like a crazy man, pulled them out by the stem, by the fistful, decimating the beds and all future hope of harvest. All I saw before me in the wispy, Northwest sunlight was endless doses of psychedelic splendor, all waiting for me to harvest and take home and dry. And so I did. I took them up to my study, rigged up a drying table with a ceramic heater and an old Coca Cola case box and, grocery bag after grocery bag, dried them out a tray’s worth at a time. My partner, babe in arms, was patient but flabbergasted. What the hell was I thinking bringing so much contraband into the house? I know that they came out of a city park but they were still illegal as hell to have around, especially in that sort of volume.

I don’t think I really cared too much at the moment, I was too caught up in the bounty before me. It wasn’t until I damn near lost it on my maiden voyage that the burgeoning bounty in the freezer section of my refrigerator seemed to be a liability. But before that pivotal moment all I could think about was the trading value of what I had in the house. I thought, yes, those SoCal pals of mine would be more than happy to trade me ounce for ounce, hongos for mota. Little did I know that they would be just as freaked out as my partner was when they received a box of fungi from me in the mail. What the hell was I thinking, indeed!

Like all good journeys this one had its first steps. For me I thought it was going to be a typical Friday night. Some brews, a bit of bud and a fistful of hongos to round out the action. Looking back,  I must admit that I was a rube. I had it in my head I was just the same party boy of old and that there wasn’t anything out there, psychedelic wise, that I couldn’t handle. Sheesh, was I in for a surprise!  Also, the reference librarian in me had been asleep at the switch on the planning part of that trip, too. Part of it had to do with the lack of available study materials. Outside of an old copy of The Psychedelics Encyclopedia and a careworn copy of the Petersen Field Guide to Mushrooms there was little to work with. The Stamets guides were long gone off my local library shelves. There was no Erowid site to guide me, no online forums of folks who had tripped on these things to help me define dose or reasonable expectations nor were there books to spell out warnings or give me any sensible and important cautionary tales. I was going to be a solo psychonaut blazing a trail to the stars and I was going to go up in that rickety ship of mine without a guidebook, a compass or a navigator. While I chewed up my first mouthful of mushroom I must have felt a bit like one of Roger’s Rangers when he was told that they were going out west to see the natives. That Ranger was not only scared shitless but he must have had a boat load of questions to ask. I know that I did but the answers were forthcoming. Almost immediately.

In those days Friday night in my house generally meant movie night. Who was I to mess with routine? So, after snacking on my hongos I sat down in the comfy confines of my Victorian easy chair and popped in The Searchers. I don’t remember the room transforming but it did. It went from an upstairs room in an old Craftsman to the upper balcony of the Fox West Coast Theater I used to frequent as a kid. The curtains parted and before I knew it I was there in the opening scene, when John Ford opened the door to the ranch house to better tell his tale. All too quickly the film became too much to handle. I have no idea what happened to my partner and my kid as the house began its transformation into the wildest and most colorful carnival a home as ever been. It was a riot of color, patterns and auditory wonderment. Wave after wave of architectural designs, Mayan motifs, graphical overlays and otherworldly symbols not only splashed before my eyes but turned my home into some sort of land where giants, gnomes, fairies and elves cavorted and ancient spirits dwelled. It was as if all the folk tales, color palettes, classical tomes and mystical places all descended and overlaid themselves over every surface in that house.

After three or four hours of being pretty much out of my mind I went downstairs and settled into the bathroom, next to the toilet, thinking at the time I should just unload my gut. I was sitting next to the River Styx and was waiting for the Boatman to cross but he was off duty that night. My partner, gawd bless her good senses, decided at the last minute not to call the parameds that evenng. I can only imagine what kinds of horrors would have been visited upon me that night with a stomach pump as a sidekick!

The rest of the evening was like any other good tripping experience. The colors slowly faded, the sound effects quieted down, my mind settled into a beatific groove and the wild and otherworldly visions took a powder and left the building. I woke up the next day completely exhausted and confounded with the journey I had undertaken but like any good psychonaut couldn’t wait to do it all over again. Thanks to the bounty I harvested from that city park there were plenty of other trips to be had that fall, some solo, others with a good friend of my mine who had relocated to the city years before. But unlike my so many of less prosaic experiences with LSD those shroom trips had a pretty heavy spiritual overlay to them, one that said to me two things: first, those entheogens were special and were not to be taken in a lighthearted manner. Second, like any other lessons learned the hard way, I was content with the lessons I learned that fall and put them away after that.

Time flies. It has been over twenty-five years since I’ve visited the land of the machine elves. I went back to the Pacific Northwest a few years ago to visit my old haunts, to see what I could dig up. Before I left that old job of mine I was up to almost a dozen sites around the city where I was fortunate to find the blue ringers. Those days must have been pretty special indeed as not a one of my old mushroom beds had not even one hongo for me to take away and savor.

I am a older and wiser man these days, much more so than I was when I was happily tripping around in the rhodie beds of yore. I have learned a lot of hard, valuable lessons since then, ones that have given me insight not only into who I am but more on how the world works. I feel that those moments I spent quaffing hongos like party snacks are long behind me. I look forward to peering over my shoulder again someday and spying on another bed of sacred mushrooms, just so I can visit with machine elves again. I think, finally, that I am mindful enough, patient enough to appreciate the lessons that come from voyages with entheogens. I feel that I am a better man thanks to my past experiences with psychedelics, have a much richer and much more humbling respect for natural tripping agents and have learned to master the language of the machine elves in such a way that I value the listening much more than I do the speaking. At 58 I feel I am ready to experience that upcoming voyage like the leader and the spiritual guide that I now believe myself to be.

My ears are open. Hongos, call out my name again. I am here, patiently awaiting your return.

Salud!

Magic mushrooms: wild party toy or serious medicine?
http://www.thecannabist.co/2016/12/01/magic-mushrooms-psychedelic-ease-anxiety-depression/68533/

The Shroomery! Wild tales! Humbling stories!
https://www.shroomery.org/

Books by Paul Stamets:
http://www.fungi.com/shop/mushroom-books/books-by-paul-stamets.html

The Atlantic Magazine!
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/12/the-life-changing-magic-of-mushrooms/509246/

Terence McKenna and Machine Elves 101:
http://realitysandwich.com/55798/machine_elves_101/

Terence interview:
http://roychristopher.com/terence-mckenna-meets-the-machine-elves-of-hyperspace-struck-by-noetic-lightning

The Psychedelics Encyclopedia!
http://www.federaljack.com/ebooks/Psychedelics%20Encyclopedia%20-%20Peter%20Stafford%5Bpdf%5D%5Badeelamalik%5D%5B10-08-2008%5D/Psychedelics%20Encyclopedia%20-%20Peter%20Stafford.pdf