Friday, March 11, 2011

Which are you -- Cheech or Chong?

This post is going to tell two funny (well, I thought they were funny when they happened) stories from a part of my misspent youth.  Actually I wasn't so young.  I was in my late 20's or early 30's, but I was a latecomer to the world of recreational substances.  I began smoking cigarettes (really, really dumb idea) at the age of 13, and started drinking beer around the age of 17.  But, alcohol remained my only mind altering substance until I was almost 30 years old.  Before I begin, I must state unequivocally that I do not advocate the use of illegal substances.  I certainly am not a proponent of drug use among teenagers.  As adults, I would hope you have enough sense to know what you can and can't and should and shouldn't do.  As adults, I believe you should make your own choice.  As a teenager I believe the answer should be NO!  Many of my friends began using pot, and in some cases other substances, when they were teens (hey, it was the 1960's).  They don't seem to be any worse for the wear, but I still think it is far better to wave adieu to adolescence before you start thinking about screwing your head up even more. So here's how these stories go, oh and all names have been changed to protect the innocent, the guilty and all parties in between ....


I lived in a small town just north of Baltimore named Bel Air.  My friend, Mike, also lived in Bel Air.  Mike was originally from somewhere in the south.  He had lived in Bel Air for almost a year, but had never bothered to get a Maryland drivers' license or get Maryland plates for his car.  One night about 11:30 pm, Mike and I and a few friends decided we desperately needed some Irish Coffee and baklava from a little restaurant/pub in downtown (I use that term very loosely) Bel Air.  We had all been at Mike's house for a few hours, and there had been a few joints passed around prior to this earth-shattering case of the munchies.  So we all piled into Mike's car for the drive to the Red Fox.  We had made this trek numerous times in the past, and Mike having lived in Bel Air for most of the last year was well acquainted with the roads necessary to get us there and back.  While we were on the way to the Red Fox, we, of course, lit up two or three more joints (there were five or six of us in the car).  It was winter.  The windows were all closed.  The inside of the car soon took on the appearance of a London fog and reeked of marijuana.  Mike, in one of his less intelligent moves, decided to take a short cut to the Red Fox and turned the wrong way down a one-way street.  Yes, he knew it was one-way.  Yes, he knew he was going the wrong way.  But he reasoned that since it was a short street, and obviously no one was coming from the other direction, he'd just slide down the street really quickly and cut oh, about an eighth of a mile off the trip.  However, no sooner than Mike turned onto the street going the wrong direction when a local constable turned on the flashing lights and siren to pull our car over.  This was definitely gonna be trouble.  If we opened a window or door, it surely would seem as if the inside of the car was on fire from all the smoke that would have poured out.  If a policeman got anywhere near that car, we were all going to jail.  Fortunately, this was in the mid-1970's, when policemen didn't have to worry that every car stopped contained someone who might shoot them.  So, Mike opened the driver's door and jumped out of the car very quickly.  There must have been a gigantic plume of smoke that exited the car when he did, but apparently the officer was looking elsewhere because it seems he didn't notice.  Mike, ran back to the squad car and approached the officer behind the wheel.  The office rolled down his window (something we certainly were not going to do while he was sitting back there) and Mike asked him what the problem was.  The officer explained that Mike was going the wrong way down a one-way street.  In an academy award winning performance, Mike (exaggerating his normal southern accent only slightly) explained that he had just moved to the area and was unaware the street was one-way.  He showed the officer his out-of-state license, the officer clearly saw the out-of-state tags, and this man certainly did not talk like a native of Baltimore.  The officer gave him a verbal warning and told Mike to return to his vehicle.  Then the officer proceeded to escort us the rest of the way down the one-way street, the wrong way.  Not one of us breathed until we reached the end of the street and the officer drove off into the night.  At that point, we all burst out laughing, thanked our lucky stars, and opened every window in the car to let it air out.


Fast forward several years.  It's now the early 1980's and everyone is living in Greensboro, North Carolina.  Rod Stewart is going on tour and he is doing his opening show in Greensboro.  Now, back in the early 1980's, smoking was still permitted almost anywhere and everywhere -- in restaurants, coliseums, offices, schools, etc.  So it was nothing to see cigarette lighters all spark the minute the lights went down at a rock concert.  It was legal to smoke, but most of those cigarettes were a little funny, so I'm not so sure about the legality of it.  And, there we all were at Rod's concert.  What a concert it was.  How can you not love a man in pink polka dot tights?  I was standing next to our friend Patty, who was between me and Mike (by the way, Mike is not the name I'm using to disguise Bud.  Bud was present on both of these occasions, but he is not the perpetrator).  Patty had magnificent long, thick blonde hair.  She was turned toward me and we were yelling at each other in order to be heard above the din.  Mike, paying absolutely no attention to anything (which is not unusual for him) passed the joint to Patty, while her back was turned to him, and set her hair on fire.  If you think pot stinks, you should smell it mixed with burning hair.  Yecch.   Anyway, we put Patty's hair out without too much damage, and enjoyed the rest of the concert.  Several weeks later, Rockin' Roddy was closing out his tour in California.  His final concert was going to be simulcast on TV and the radio in Greensboro.  It would have been stupendous if 60" flat screen TV and Dolby surround sound had been invented by the early 1980's, but alas that was not the case.  Still, Mike had spent several thousand dollars on his stereo component system, so we had the best available to us at the time.  Prior to the night of the simulcast, Mike visited every apartment in his building and explained he was having a party to view and hear the concert.  Each occupant was invited to attend the party, but if they weren't interested they were at least advised there was gonna be a whole lotta shakin goin on.  The night of the concert arrived and we all gathered at Mike's apartment.  There was a tremendous amount of alcohol consumed and it wasn't long before we needed fog lights to find the bathroom.  About half-way through the concert there was a knock on the door.  Mike peered out through the little peephole, and turned to the rest of us and said "Cops".  Instantly the noise level dropped, at least from the humans in the room.  Rockin Roddy was still going strong on the stereo.  In another of his svelte-like moves, Mike opened the door and slipped quickly out, closing the door behind him.  It would not have been possible for that policeman to have missed the smoke or the aroma.  However, all he said to Mike was there had been a complaint about the noise and we were gonna have to turn it down.  Mike explained that he had invited the entire building to the party and most of them were actually inside his apartment, so he wondered who had complained.  The officer told him it had come from residents two buildings down.  Then the officer offered that he too was listening to the concert in his patrol car, but if we couldn't tune our noise level down, he was gonna have to do some further investigating and he'd really rather just enjoy the concert.  We turned it down and once again breathed a sigh of relief.


So, what's my stance on marijuana today.   I think there are too many far more important issues in our world today.  I think it should be legalized, but controlled in much the way cigarette and liquor sales are controlled.  I think medicinal marijuana is absolutely necessary.  I am constantly nauseated.  Marijuana can alleviate the nausea.  It's not gonna grow hair on my palms, it's not gonna lead me to heroin or crack or meth amphetamines.  And sometimes it provides a great deal of humor in life.

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