My mature crew, a couple of fifty-something women, clipped and clipped and laughed and sang and talked. Sometimes they just shut up and listened to the radio, KMUD, the voice of the Weed-Woods. When the work was done they returned to their homes in Washington, and I didn't know at the time that they were my last crew.
So now what to do with all this weed, nicely trimmed and ready to smoke? I had one connection that was pretty reliable but all the others had disappeared over the years. She was very nervous and bossy and prone to go off on you with a tirade if you annoyed her, like changing your mind about doing a deal.
“Bring it over now, right now, they're coming!” she said on the phone. Within fifteen minutes I had a bag of pounds out of their hiding place, stashed in the car, and on the way to Redway, a few miles away. A week later she said, “Oh, they didn't show up, you can come get it.”
The industry was in free-fall and I did whatever she said, like a little puppy scurrying for attention. She had pissed off my neighbor with her annoying and aggressive attitude, he had vowed never to deal with her again, but I put up with her bullshit as she was my only steady connection.
Whenever I brought a bag of weed to her house I always opened the double or triple- bagged pounds and poured the turkey bags on the floor. We counted them together and I made a note of how much was there, with a copy for each of us. It's not that I didn't trust her, it was just good business practice.
In the beginning you always religiously counted the money right when you got paid. Over the years and decades we got more casual and just took some rubber-banded bundles of cash and counted them later. (One guy once handed me a bag of money at the gas station and drove away.) I had a good grower’s reputation: my pounds were always a few grams over weight, well-trimmed, and no duff at the bottom.
A few years ago I brought a pile of pounds to this guy who paid me and didn't bother to weigh them. He handed them off to another middleman and told him, “You don't even need to weigh this—this guy's always right on.”
A few days later I got the call. “Hey Puffy, every pound is twenty-three grams under. What the fuck?” We had been playing basketball and the ball knocked the scale to the floor and broke it. I had bought a new one but didn't test it out first. I quickly returned the money I owed, took the bad scale back to the store, but the guy never called me again.
For the next few months my steady middle-woman moved my stuff. It was in good condition because I had stored it in a cool place all winter waiting for Spring, the selling season. The dealer lady was living on my road just outside town back then so I could just shuttle it to her place, about a hundred yards.
Then I didn't hear from her for a while so I took out my little red book, made a list of prospects, and called everyone who I had dealt with, even if they had already turned me down the year before. I came up mostly empty, like a groveling dog, but I did get one call-back from a woman deep into growing who liked to dabble in a little dealing.
“They're coming today,” she said. I waited by the phone all day. Nothing. I waited more hours the next day and finally called her again. “Oh no, they didn't show up. They were out in Briceland looking at some other stuff and...”
The weed biz is so flaky. It also had gotten to be a beauty contest, whose buds were prettier? If I ever tried to deal with that lady again I was going to say, “Hey, you know what kind I have, what it looks like, and how much I want for it. Don't even call me unless you've got the guy with the money right there ready to buy. Then you can come over and get it.” But it doesn't work that way. It's a flaky dance where half the dancers are stoned and you just stressfully wait, sweating it out.
I became that boring person who, whenever I saw someone I knew, didn't even say hello first, just “Hey man, can you help me connect? You know anyone who wants any Sour Deisel?” Didn't even say hello first! Obsessed. Who will buy my wonderful buds? (It reminded me of when I used to stand in front of the Woodrose Cafe ten or fifteen years before with a bud in my front pocket looking for a connection.)
While desperately driving around I thought about this friendly guy I’d met at the Woodrose a few years before who had told me where he lived in Redway, but probably grew up Alderpoint Road somewhere. I didn’t have his number so I’d have to cold-knock and annoy him in person with my quest: Help me sell this weed!
He wasn’t home but I recognized his wife as a long-time Ettersburg resident, and she recognized me too. “I don't know if you or Sam are into moving stuff,” I said, “but I'm just trying anything, so I thought I'd ask.” She was nice, didn't seem put out, and said she'd mention it.
“Okay, thanks, tell Sam I said hi.” I gave her my number and never heard back.
Soon after I got home there was a knock on my door. It was this guy who had legally changed his name to “Crooked Prairie.” He was a nice guy I'd seen around for years though pretty full of himself. He was a bit of a contradiction, always talking about healthy living while sporting a huge belly, which was not a good sign for the future.
“Hey man, can you help me out?” he said. “I gotta move my shit and my last connection didn't show up this year.”
“Man, I was just doing the same thing, knocking on doors! You're my doppelganger,” I said. “Sorry, I can't help you.”
“I got ninety-eight pounds of OG,” he said.
“Well, I have no idea what to do with it, I can't sell my pounds,” I said. “You got some samples out in the car? I guess I could take one just in case, I've got seventeen OG myself so who knows?”
“I really gotta find someone to buy my weed,” he said. “I'm starting my garden for this year and I've still got all my stuff.”
“Yeah, right, I think it's over. Well, it was a forty-year boom, longer than most.” I thought it over for a moment and then said, “If you're really desperate I know this last resort shit-show you could try. He's a total low-baller out in Briceland and he's probably still moving tons of weed. Do you know Jerold Money?”
“Yeah I know who he is. I talked to him once or twice,” Crooked Prairie said.
“Do you know where he lives.”
“Yeah, right there by the road.”
“Okay, just go out there, bring some elbow samples, and tell him I sent you. Ninety-eight pounds of OG, what do you want for that?”
“Twelve,” he said.
“Okay, then try to get eleven. Good luck, tell me what happens.”
A couple days later I got a text: “All gone.”
I called him up. “Really? You got rid of it all? Amazing. And a good price?” He wouldn't say but I figured eleven. “Shit, well, maybe I should try him too. Do you have his number?” He gave me the cell but it was almost impossible to get ahold of Jerold Money, or J as he is widely known, on the phone. The next day I threw ten pounds of Sour D in my trunk, just drove out there, and found the usual chaotic J scene.
I was standing in the backyard with my big garbage bag of Sour D's, another farmer I knew was standing there with his big plastic bag of pounds, and we exchanged glances as if to say, “Yup, it's come to this, dealing with J as a last resort.”
Sitting around the picnic table was another middle-woman just hanging out. J's teenage daughter was walking back and forth from the creek in her bikini. About thirty feet away was a brand new white truck, maybe a rental, with a couple people inside. Another guy was shuttling back and forth from the picnic table to the truck bringing samples to the guys from New Jersey.
“We got a situation here,” J said. “He doesn't want to come out of the truck, he had a bad experience or something last time. Lemme see what you have.” He looked over my pounds and sent one over with the runner. “What do you want?”
“I want a thousand,” I said. J looked doubtful if not incredulous. After some back and forth to the truck he said, “He'll give you eight but I still need my fifty cents so you’ll get 750.”
“I don't want 750,” I said. “I want nine.” Back and forth it went. Really? Settle for 750 for Sour D in 2017? Had it really come to that? I said no thanks and packed up my shit and left.
Later, I saw Crooked Prairie at a party and asked him how his deal had gone down.
“I will never deal with J again!” he said. “First I hauled all 98 pounds to Briceland where he checked it out and then he told me to take it to Weott where he controls like a block of houses. Then this other guy comes over, checks it out, and wants to take it all down the street. I looked at J and said what the fuck, are you guaranteeing that? He shrugged and nodded. Sure enough the guy came back with all the money, I counted it and got out of there. It was the most stressful deal I've ever done.”
After that I whined to a friend and he finally turned me on to his connection, who happened to be his father-in-law. He gave me his number and I agreed to run some pounds up to Eureka. So I was driving up 101 with a load to drop off at a guy's house I had never met, a friend of a friend. I was just trying to get done with this, get paid, and reevaluate this whole life.
Then I lost it and thought wow, really? It's come to this? Hauling a load up 101 to drop off with a stranger? I started crying, sobbing relentlessly. Has it really come to this? And maybe crying in relief that it'll all be over soon, everything will be gone, and maybe even mourning the end of this lifestyle, all the work and the stress, and “selling our souls” for money, in a way. (At the end of the road in a quiet little neighborhood just outside Eureka I met a nice man who helped me move a few.)
I was finally down to my last ten pounds of Blue Dream and decided to dump it. Prices were dropping, it was July Fourth, and time to get even more desperate. Good trimmed weed for $500 a pound was unheard of, friends said I was crazy, but a couple months later they wished they had also dumped theirs.
I drove back to Jerold Money's place with ten pounds of BD. There were hundreds of budding green girls in the backyard with tarps bunched around the edges of the hoop houses, next to a cabin where some grow lights were glowing and humming. (It's about impossible to put one over on J, but a couple of those last pounds had some leftover Sour D, Blue Cheese, and Green Crack mixed in, though if he gave me any problems about that I’d tell him the interview was off, so no article, book, or movie deal.)
Jerold came out and I said, “Look, here's ten pounds of nice Blue Dream and I want five grand cash. I don't want to wait for that Black guy from Texas who likes to buy Blue Dream. I don't want to leave it here until someone else comes by who wants it. I want five grand cash right now.”
J was a little surprised, I was doing his low-balling work for him. The middlemen don't like to use their own money but this was a deal he wouldn't refuse. He checked out the weed and paid me.
Getting rid of it all in early July was a celebrated feat in this, the year many would be caught holding the bag, the year we knew would come some day. Over the years our kids had gone bad, blew up the tranquil hillsides with annoying generators, and then everyone else came from everywhere to finish the job with multitudes of light deprivation hoop houses trashing the formerly pristine hillsides of Humboldt County.
Truckloads of expensive dirt were still going out of the garden shops every day, and I wanted to say, “Don't you know it's over?”
Weed-dealing Rant
I asked my friend if he could help sell some weed
he took it with a smile recognizing my need
It wouldn’t be just a good deed for him
he’d take a cut though it would be slim
I had the pound ready and many more
he took a quick look then went out the door
I waited for weeks as my prospects became dimmer
with no good connections I felt like a beginner
After a month I said just bring it back
they probably want some gnarly green crack
He brought the pound back but something wasn’t right
I noticed a clump of stems as I held it to the light
It looked like a unit I’d never seen before
I’d never send a mess like this out the door
My trimmer said that’s not what I cleaned
I wasn’t naive waiting to be reamed
Pay me for the elbow or replace it please
I wasn’t going to plead down on my knees
The old school growers have a strict code
if I take it from you it’s as good as sold
Responsibility is the word that we use
it is a trust which we know not to abuse
Just another episode in the flakiest business
behind closed doors without any witnesses
He didn’t like my tone and delayed doing what’s right
I insisted he owed me and he got very uptight
I don’t like your pushy attitude he said
then replace the weed, your friend trashed the meds
He finally took the pound back and paid me in full
in the flakiest biz the petty thieves drool
So what is the lesson to learn from all this?
get out of the game if you can’t live your bliss
Welcoming Note to a New Trim Crew
alright you’re here!
thank you, I need the help
how I envision it is
I set you loose and then
I go do my thing
this is not one of those jobs
where it’s big and chunky and easy
my only anxiety is that
you will not be happy with the stuff
I want to just be nice and generous
and hope we will all have a good experience
it just has to be done well
otherwise what’s the point?
so dear workers, lovely ladies
let’s go put some lipstick
on this pig!
turn this straw into gold…
any questions?
Denouement
When I was a taxi driver in New York I roomed for awhile with a fellow cabbie named Heather Schreiber in an apartment on the corner of First Avenue and First Street. The old Italian guys played bocce ball out front and the little Puerto Rican man sold the best egg cream in town for a dollar in his bodega downstairs.
Heather fed her cat rice and vegetables and would chant, “Little black cat with little black paws and little black balls.” She was forty-five with a cute little seven-year-old with shoulder length blond hair under his baseball cap. She sent him walking across town every day to PS 41, the cool school in Greenwich Village. She called him Huggy.
I first heard the word when Heather wrote me a year or so later. “I’ve reached the denouement in New York,” she said. “Can I come out and live in Whale Gulch?”
About thirty years later I saw the name Leiv Schreiber in the entertainment news, he had just won a Tony award for best actor on Broadway. “Could it be?” I thought? I googled his name, and Huggy, and sure enough it came up that he never liked his mother calling him that.
Another Heather
I read some quirky stories to some trimmers down the street at my friend’s house and one was intrigued and came over for a morning sauna. She came back that night for a glass of wine and a game of Scrabble. She said she wasn’t interested in a one-night-stand and I said that’s fine, just enjoying the company.
Then we were sitting on the couch and she leaned over and kissed me. “I know!” she said. Women like to give their “I am not a slut” speech and after that it’s ON.
She liked to do it everywhere: the bed, the sauna, the bathtub, and even on the kitchen counter. Once after she rode me deliciously for a minute I said, “Oh, that was so nice!”“Well I have to tell you it wasn't so great for me,” she said. “Dude, you have E.D!”
What?!
We had an absurd argument in bed on Christmas morning about dancing. My premise was if you go out dancing with your girl, each can dance with others as well. She said no way, we have to only dance with each other. As she left the bedroom annoyed I mumbled, “Oh fuck off” under my breath but she heard me. She went up to the attic, got the twenty grand she had made trimming 100 pounds and drove back to Oregon. (She later said she waited two hours in town for me to call and apologize.)
A week later on Monday she called and said she missed me. On Tuesday she sent me a pic of her stepping out of the shower naked. On Wednesday she said just come, now. I was packed by noon and arrived in Eugene the next day. When I saw her she said, “Oh, I'm just not into it anymore. I'm over it.”
What!?
(People asked me how I reacted, like was I angry? Nah, I just figured that men have been oppressing and fucking over women so long that this one's for them. I took one for the team.)
That’s it?
The last paper paper is done, sent to the printers and that’s all she wrote?
Okay, onward fellow dinosaurs!
The Court Jester of Dep
Limping down the street I am paying the price for my youthful enthusiasm, and the big bill has yet to be received. I used to go up and down the mountain daily in search of garden sites and riches, young, strong, and out of control. Often I found out-of-the-way patches with little sun but plowed ahead anyway, wasting time, energy, and money. Yes, I was a fool.
For example in 1990 I decided to try light dep, but not just easily accessible around the cabin: I invented remote dep! I set a scene up halfway down the hill and another all the way at the bottom by Whale Creek. I hauled many two by fours in my zeal to build the greenhouse frames, I hadn’t envisioned hoop houses. Yes, I planned to go up and down that mountain three hundred vertical feet twice a day to cover and uncover the plants, my legs and energy had no limits.
On the first day of covering I had my flunky, a neighbor kid, helping me. As we tried to pull the bulky six mil black plastic around the sharp wooden corners I said, “I’m going to be the King of Dep!”
The structure was so poorly designed we couldn’t even cover the plants once. “More like Court Jester of Dep,” the smart-ass kid said.
Giants and Weed, What a decade…
Wow, the teens, what a decade: the Giants won three World Series. One would have been pretty cool, three was amazing. They did it with good starting pitching lead by the marijuana maneuvers of Tim Lincicom, great relief, and clutch hitting. The manager Bruce Boche made all the right decisions.
They also picked up key players including Cody Ross and Hunter Pence, and to top off the run Madison Bumgarner came out in relief in the 7th game against Kansas City and shut down the Royals after pitching and winning three days before.
It was also a great decade for weed, but it was a lot of work. When the price went down the amount you had to grow went up.
By this time I’d brought in the clones: buying them toward the end of April, putting them under lights for a month, then out in the sun for another month before transplanting the growing babies into their final locations. There were many clone businesses in that last decade selling trays of fifty for ten bucks each.
It became a dirty business when the market dictated types and names, with the production of clones came bugs and disease, with the toxic and soon routine use of sprays and poisons to counteract them. There were organic solutions but just barely. Mites and powdery mildew were the main contagions then others joined the party.
The days of sticking any old seed into the ground were long gone. The “no-name” seed varieties grew the biggest plants but the names (OG, Sour Diesel, and Girl Scout Cookie) were what the market demanded. (New York City was very smitten with Sour Diesel.)
You could order your clones for a late May pickup in two by two chunks, step them up into one gallon containers filled with potting soil, and you were good to grow. (Since the sun was more intense than artificial light it was good to have them under shade cloth for the first few days to a week to gradually get them acclimated to full sun.)
After a month out in the sun you would have plants a foot tall ready to be put out July first. If you wanted bigger clones a grow room could be assembled: take a small shed or room and have at it!
First, all external light would have to be extinguished: measure your window dimensions, cut pieces of one inch rigid insulation, fit them into the window spaces, and then jam aluminum foil or black plastic bags into the gaps.
For ventilation one window would be left open an inch or so. In that case two sheets of rigid insulation was necessary to overlap to let the air in and most of the light out. Totally dark was great but if a little diffuse light crept in along the edges it didn’t matter.
If the door had a window that was covered with aluminum foil and grocery bags unfolded and taped over it.
Harvest time was exciting those baseball Octobers, sitting there dealing with the weed while the Giants played gloriously in the World Series.