Easter lamb

First off, let’s be clear on this matter: I had no idea that lamb was supposed to come off the grill rare.

Lent can be a serious bit of business for Catholics. We go through all the build up to Mardi Gras, then, after a mega-blast of alcohol, sugar and meat or what have you, we strap on abstinence, guilt and devotion for however many weeks there are until Easter. I always loved that nasty sick feeling I would have from having had just a tad too much fun the day before and then, taking that wee feeling with me into church, I would get my favorite blast from the past of a smear of soot on my forehead. I loved the soul taste that ritual always left in me, a reminder that no matter what I may have done the day, the winter, before, with enough patience, fortitude and pain I could wake up Easter morning and pig out all over again.

Well, in this case, lamb out but that is, one, not a phrase, and two, getting ahead of myself.

Towards the end of my spring semester in 1988 I was working on a paper that was be my grand exit opus from college. It was to be a treatise on spring rituals as they applied to the Southern Californian lifestyle as I knew it then. This grand work included chapters on the opening day of Angel baseball, spring break at Balboa, Renaissance Faire in Agoura, among other things. Living the Lenten experience would allow me to not only participate in favorite annual spring pastimes but also give me something more to write about. The bigger problem at hand was that I was starting to flail. Why my advisor didn’t see the warning signs is beyond me. As far as the paper was concerned I was sincere in my approach, solid in my research but I didn’t have good discipline and was goofing hard, waiting for school to end so I could get on with grad school, a totally unrealistic thought as I hadn’t even applied anywhere yet.

Nevertheless by the 2^nd of April I was ready for Easter. I was cruising through my classes, had already planned out our annual RenFaire bacchanal, commiserated with buddies who were on their way to being married, chased women and generally screwed off. No way was I ready to graduate but I was seriously ready to break my fast. Luckily for me I had friends who had been there for me throughout my entire undergraduate days and were ready to help.

I met Lori back when she was driving the bookmobile for the city library. I got to meet her man, Clay, at a get together at their house a little bit later on. Both were well educated, generous, happy go lucky and arty. My first impression of them as a team was unequivocally “cool”. Their house was very NorCal with its extensive hippie vibe but the colors on the walls were straight out of Oaxaca. The rooms were lined with bookshelves packed with incredible titles, the walls rich with Mexican masks, loom woven fabric, original paintings and Huichol art. The food they served up was always fresh and leaned towards organic. They always seemed to top off a good time with equally good bubby and the finest grade A mota that I never ever found anywhere else in the southland at that time.

After years of easy access to herb in the service I had hit a dry spot that was unprecedented at the time. Reagan and his dear wife Nancy had something to do with it, I am sure. The unrelenting uptick in cocaine use and the impact that drug made on the scene helped out considerably. Paraquat spraying down Mexico way put a damper on things, too, but the biggest thing was that many of my friends both in and out of the library industry were just not smoking anymore.

Then the curtain rose and in walked Lori and Clay. With that friendship my relationship with cannabis began a third, very sweet chapter. Never before had I looked at weed as a family matter nor had I experienced it in a way that said to me that dope and all its surrounding escorts and handmaidens like respectable jobs, home ownership and a vibrant social life were normal, workaday and real, real in the way that the drug warriors and all their lies were false, antagonistic and plain wrong. My friendship with those good people was based on family, literature, good living, art and long discussions on the meaning of life.

Sure, we had some excellent times with mota but weed was always secondary to the basis of our lives and friendship. I was a student, Lori a bus driver and Clay, well, he was a mystery but a large, happy and generous man. He favored loose Hawaiian shirts, foreign cars and leather coats in season. His taste in literature was broad and eclectic. His music collection was vast and his stories wild and colorful. I have no idea why he welcomed me into his life the way he did but I was grateful. When I met them was a callow youth, deep into a struggling second marriage. I felt dull and listless, a funny thing to be as a student. I played fast and loose with life but meeting them helped to put a stop to my shiftlessness and helped me to once again see the value of a solid, happy family life.

Easter ’88, then, was to be a big deal. My paper was in the works but I set it aside for the day. A good buddy of mine came in out of the desert for a visit and that meant lots of cold champagne would be on hand. I was separated from my wife, it was sunny and warm and my pal and I had an bbq invite we were keen to honor that afternoon. Arriving early my friend and I were escorted out back to a wild cactus and palm themed jungle of a yard. The umbrella was up, the cooler brought by and with a twist and a shout we had two bottles of Veuve Clicquot opened and pouring. Jazz, blues, Janis all rotated on the cd player. The grill was fired up and folks began to arrive.

That’s when Humboldt’s finest was sparked and the day went from sweet and wild to even wilder and weirder than I could have ever imagined.

For me Lent meant a drop off, nay, a total curbing of my drinking. It meant leaving marijuana behind for the season, too. So, not only did I have a head full of sunshine and a fist full of champagne to propel me that afternoon but I also had a series of magnificent, professionally rolled, lit joints to contend with as well. The bud that day was clean and robust, cured to perfection, rich with flavor notes that I somehow had been missing out on over the years.

I knew that the game had changed once NorCal got into the growing scene. All the back to the landers in the late sixties had taken all those plots of clear cut Humboldt land and turned them into homesteads and farms and the beginnings of the great Emerald Triangle mota industry as we know it today. Clay had friends up north and a good network to draw from. From the time I knew him he was the man who always made sure I had a good baggie of something decent to smoke. But somehow that Easter was a game changer. The quality had improved immensely, the flavors and the density of the smoke were miles beyond anything he ever shared with me before. I found myself not flailing but soaring. The roadblocks that kept my paper at bay and my applications to grad school grounded all fell away.

But first they put the lamb on the grill and asked me to watch it.

I was always invited back to their home after that Sunday. I was even asked me to babysit their house when they went off on vacation. I was taken along to holiday parties, they broke bread with me and my third wife when we bought our new digs, heck, they even kept in touch with me when I found myself far and away out of state and on the run.

But they never, ever, let me touch their lamb again.

Rare, Accumulate Man, rare, that’s the way lamb should come off the grill.

Salud!