When I got back from Mexico at the end of February I was told by my landlord’s son, Bruce Burton, that he and Chris Baldo were taking over the property to mill their redwood and store their poles, and needed to use my rental unit for an office for their new Willits Redwood Company.
So I’m back in Willits without a job, soon to be without a place to live, and wouldn’t get my Teacher’s Retirement check until summer. I didn’t actually retire, per se, but quit. I got what you might call early burnout. Still, the district owed me about a grand per year that I had put into the kitty, and since I’d saved enough money to live on for awhile, I wasn’t worried. Plus I did make 50 cents an inch writing a weekly column for The Willits News called, “Foot Notes.”
My column was mostly about running, which had become more and more popular, with more road races and marathons showing up in Northern California and across the country every year. I would go to run these races, usually with my two boys, and then write about them.
When I was introduced to local folks they usually responded with, “Oh, you’re the runner,” and then they’d tell me why they don’t run.
The main reason I decided to remain in Willits was because of my boys, who were living with their mom in town in the place we bought back in ’78 with money she inherited when her grandma passed away two years earlier. In ’79 I built a two-story addition off the back so we’d all have a little more room, but by ’81 I had an affair with a friend’s 21-year-old daughter and that pretty much was the end of our ten-year relationship.
Yvonne and I had a good ten year run, in fact, looking back often makes me think that a marriage should only be ten years. I mean, it doesn’t get much better after ten years, so why endure it? Of course we should be given the option of renewing the wedding vows for another ten years, but also feel free to walk away, take a break, see what else is out there. You’d still be friends, sharing custody and whatever assets that were accumulated together during that ten year run, and you wouldn’t have to go through a nasty divorce. Just hang in there until your ten-year time is served. No problem.
Cannabis Indica
My friend Neva said I could stay in the house her ex built on their 20-acre property before he decided to go his own way, plus she wouldn’t charge me any rent if I just made it more livable. A live-in carpentry project with no pressure was just what I needed, and it was only five miles from town.
Another friend said he had some extra marijuana starts he’d give me. Although I never grew cannabis before, I had smoked on and off since that first time in Milwaukee back in ’67. I remember four of us sitting around a friend’s living room floor passing a Mexican joint around and I stubbornly insisted I felt nothing. Then driving home, when the stop light went from green to red it was like the red was really bright.
“Wow!! Look how bright that red light is!” I awed, as if it was the brightest red light I’d ever seen. My fiancé Lois laughed and brought me out of my denial with, ”You’re stoned, Jimmy!”
Neva said I could grow ten plants, but not near the house, and she pointed to a ridge that was on the highest and most distant part of her property. The good news was it faced east and got ample morning sun, causing those plants to grow big and hearty.
The bad news was I broke my ankle less than a week after getting them in the ground. This meant I couldn’t walk without crutches and couldn’t walk up to the ridge with crutches, so I crawled on my hands and knees for nearly two months to nurture those greedy monsters. But it was worth it, I got twelve pounds off ten plants, and the price of pot was going up. That year it hit $2000 a pound, and if you knew the right people it didn’t take long to get rid of it.
To sum up for the record books, ten marijuana plants earned me more money than my last year of teaching in the public school system. Also, I should mention, in case the Feds are reading this, I paid taxes on the money, but called the work carpentry, since I wasn’t getting paid for the carpentry I did on Neva’s extra house, it somehow made sense to me at the time. What else made sense to me was how my friend who gave me the starts summed it up: “Growing pot is part-time work for full-time pay.”
By the end of September I started harvesting. I wanted to test each of the plants separately to see what I had, so by mid-morning every day or so, when the sun came through the window to my cleaning station, I would take a dried bud from one of my ten plants and roll a joint. Then I would smoke it and just observe my reaction.
Every high made me feel good, made me breath deep, move around, and unless I already went for a run that morning, made me want to do something physical.
One day I smoked some of my Kush. Most of my plants were Cannabis Sativa or a cross, but this was Cannabis Indica. It looked different than the Sativa, not as tall but thicker, the leaves wider and the buds coated with resin. It also had a more potent odor, what some later called skunk weed. But maybe best of all, especially during the CAMP years (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting) with helicopters flying around the county during harvest time, it matured faster.
I had only a few hits and the next thing I knew I was outside in a patch of sun, barefoot, and doing tai chi. I stood there breathing deeply, feeling centered and tuned in to everything around me. The squirrels were chattering, the birds were tweeting, and a Western Fence Lizard was doing push-ups on a sunny rock, looking in my direction in a challenging manner.
That by far became my favorite of the ten. I shared it with a few people, but I didn’t want to sell it. The sad part was my friend didn’t have the seeds to that particular strain, so it was a one-hit wonder.
So how did I break my ankle? I wrote about it in one of my Foot Notes columns. I broke it running the Dipsea, a footrace in Marin County from Mill Valley over Mt. Tamalpais to Stinson Beach. That race in ‘85 was the 75th running and it’s still going strong. This year, on June 14, 2015 the 105th Dipsea footrace will take place. No, I’m not doing it again. I only ran it that one time, and then moved it from my Bucket List to my Fuck it! List.
The 1985 Dipsea
(the following is an edited version of my 1985 Foot Notes column from The Willits News)
The Dipsea is a handicap footrace that starts in downtown Mill Valley and winds up and up and up 671 stairs to Muir Woods, around the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais, and down to the finish line in Stinson Beach. The 75TH annual Dipsea was run last Sunday, making it the second oldest continuous footrace in the United States, behind only the Boston Marathon.
I’ve been wanting to run this 7.4 mile trail run since I joined the Tamalpa Runners last year after turning 40 because they’re the closest club with a competitive Masters Team, and I was told that if you haven’t run the Dipsea you’re a running virgin.
To reduce the crowded conditions on the trail, the field is limited to 1,500 runners, and the age-handicap start gives older and younger runners up to a 20-minute head start. Being 40-years old, I had a 2-minute head start, which meant I had to pass nearly 700 runners on the narrow steps and trails to finish near the front and receive one of the 35 coveted black T-shirts.
Since the more people you have to pass on the single-file trail, the slower your time, this race is ideal for the fit older and younger runners who get to start before most of the crowd. One of the fittest older runners in the country is 45-year old Sal Vasquez, who won this year for the fourth straight time. Sal had a 4-minute head start, which meant he had his share of runners to pass, but still ran the fastest scratch time with a 49:56!
Perhaps the best way to describe this rugged, root-infested trail is to list some of the names along the way: Suicide Hill, Cardiac Hill, Steep Ravine, and Insult Hill, to a name a few.
According to the Marin Independent Journal, 85 runners suffered an assortment of strains, sprains, abrasions, and heat exhaustion. One runner was taken to Marin General Hospital for a “possible torn tendon.” Actually, that runner sustained more than a torn tendon, he suffered “an avulsion of the right distal fibula.” An avulsion is a ripping off, a tearing away. In laymen’s terms, this runner broke his ankle.
He was charging down Insult Hill, trying to make up lost time due to a wrong turn, when suddenly his ankle snapped and he flipped into a dry creek bed, rolled into a boulder, and without losing his place, jumped back on the trail and finished the race, hobbling like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
It may seem crazy to run the last mile on a broken ankle, but this runner wasn’t sure it was broken, he just thought it was a bad sprain, and all he could think about was getting to the finish line and putting ice on it. This runner finished in 33rd place with a scratch time of 54:58. He felt stupid and embarrassed and extremely sorry for himself. If you happen to see this runner in Willits, treat him as you would any other cripple on crutches. Don’t ask him if he wants to go jogging—haha—he’s a sensitive human being, just like some of you.
Very interesting. Captures the era.