Pot Tales...

 

In 1969, air travel for two suitcases packed with loose pot was relatively safe. No dogs yet, no x rays. I flew from Atlanta to Boston to pick up ten pounds of “shake”. Hit and run. Then I was back in Atlanta, without incident, after grabbing my two full-size suitcases off the luggage carousel.

With all senses on full alert, I could feel the heartbeat pulsing in my ears, drumming timpani in my chest, but no hands on my shoulder saying “come with us”.

No cops, no problems.

In those days, there in Alabama, one joint could put you in jail for a very long time. Ten pounds was a big deal for me, a first.

My college buddies, Howard and Al, picked me up at the airport for the three-hour drive back to school in North Alabama.

The late-night drive was uneventful as we left Georgia and were only an hour from campus in Alabama.

Howard was driving. Being 6’4”, with long stringy hair, he squeezed his oversized frame, all knees and elbows, in behind the wheel. Al was sitting in the passenger seat. It was his Mustang we were driving. Between them, the console featured an ashtray surrounded by black pits burned into the Rayon carpet from numerous cigarettes and joints that so often missed their mark. The floors were littered with Pabst Blue Ribbon empties, foot stomped and flattened.

I sat in the back, a large grey suitcase under each arm.

We were in a dry county.

Blissfully high and road hypnotized, there was only the sound of crickets to pause as we sped by, leaving a fading trail of sound as The Moody Blues sang of nights in white satin.

So close to the safety of the campus, I was finally able to relax, drifting in and out of the conscious world.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the Moody Blues added a new instrument, some kind of a high-pitched wail getting louder and louder.

Howard looked up into his rear-view. “Oh Shit!” was all he needed to say. We knew. He started to slow down as the flashing lights bathed us in terror. Finally stopped on the side of the two-lane blacktop flanked by endless dark fields of farmer scrub, I sat frozen in place, watching the rotating lights of the patrol car circle around those wide-open spaces like a lighthouse scanning flat seas.

All of us had rolled down our windows to air the car out as two Alabama State Troopers towered over both front windows. On Howard’s side, the eight-foot trooper used his flashlight to illuminate the ashtray overflowing with roaches, then spotlighting the empty beer cans on the floor.

I have no memory of what was said. I was thinking about my dad. A successful attorney with his own firm in Manhattan, dad specialized in international business law, not criminal defense, but he knew people. He and I never had a “hands-on” “I love you dad; I love you son” kind of relationship. It was more of a Ward Cleaver manly handshake kind of thing, but I knew he was always there for me if the shit hit the fan. He had my back. This, of course, was an entire barn load of shit hitting a windmill.

Calmly knowing that I was going to do serious jail time, my question was centered on wondering just how much my dad could do to help reduce the sentence. Would I ever be able to marry, have kids and a life? Did I dare to think maybe I would get away with only 7-15 years or so?

I assumed it to be a Trooper’s wet dream in those days to get their hands on a few long-hair hippie types, from New Jersey no less, in a dry county, speeding, with PBR empties covering the floor of their car.

Oh, and one incontinent clown sitting in the back seat with his arms draped over two suitcases packed with pot in a state that still put marijuana in the same category as heroin and morphine.

Knowing that my dad would do what little he could and that I would spend my foreseeable future in some godforsaken Alabama prison, I started to worry that the troopers may enjoy using those long wooden batons to beat us, just for fun, before taking us in.

All a blur, I remember the lead trooper going back to answer a squawk on his car radio. Returning to the driver side window, he looked down at Howard, handed him back his drivers license, and said: “You boys go straight back to campus now.”

Both cops trotted back to their cruiser and took off fast, siren wailing, kicking up stones in a cloud of dust.

Everything went black and silent as they left. I could smell the rot of plants in the fields, hear the crickets start back up, the pinging of our own car engine, still hot from the drive.

Ever so cautiously, like tiptoeing through a mine field, we began to move again, in slow motion.

We knew that we had just witnessed a miracle, in a remote field somewhere in North Alabama, and that for now, life would go on.

---------------------------------------

Over the next few weeks, in frequent, animated replays, Howard, Al, and I came to realize that the troopers didn’t recognize the smell of pot. They never questioned my suitcases, after all, by friends had picked me up from the airport. They never thought all those roaches in the ashtray were anything other than roll your own cigarettes, which were fairly common at the time.

All they had was a few new Jersey hippie boys, drinking beer when they shouldn’t be, heading back to school.

Bigger prey, and a dispatch that could only have been from a merciful god himself, called them away.