Dope

Marijuana must have been the moonshine of the ‘70s. It was illegal, but “everybody” used it. Once you got past the laws against selling, buying, possession or using it, there were ethical rules that you applied to its use. You lived and let live: You could use it if you wished, but nobody pressured you to (dope pushers?), and nobody complained if you didn't. You never fed brownies from the Alice B. Toklas cookbook, laced with it, to anybody who didn’t know what he was eating. Usually, you just felt mellow under its mildly intoxicating effect, and laughed knowingly at an episode of “The Redd Foxx Show” where the secret ingredient in Auntie’s salad dressing gave you “the munchies;” dope does wonders for the appetite.  And you scoffed at the warnings in “Reefer Madness” that marijuana could turn you into an addict descending into insanity. Of course, you could take in too much, and  “Everybody” had their own stories about getting stoned.

     One guy was so stoned that he knew he must drive very carefully to get home without drawing attending to himself. The speed limit was 45, so he pitched his speed at about 35 mph, but was pulled over anyway. “Do you know how fast you were going?” the officer asked him.

   “Um, oh, about thirty.”

   “You were going 3!”

     Another watched his spider plant growing and watched the small plants coming off shoots from the parent plant turn into real spiders.

     Another driver slowed down for the surprising number of speed bumps that had gone up across the highway—until realizing that they were just the shadows of the street lights alongside the road.

     A colleague (government lawyer) was exhausted after a strenuous trial, but he had won a good result, and decided to take a day off to go fishing.  He checked the tide table, hooked up his boat on its trailer behind his pickup truck, lighted up a joint, and took off.  Soon he noticed a State Trooper driving up behind him, then the blue light came on. He couldn’t pitch the joint out the window; the officer would see that. He couldn’t crush it in the ashtray—the smell would be too strong. He rolled the windows down to blow away as much smoke as possible—and swallowed the joint.

     The Trooper approached the driver’s window. “Going fishing, huh? Well, I just wanted you to know that one of the tail lights on your boat trailer is out.”

The Trooper chatted fishing for a few minutes—some guy he knew caught a nice one off Brown’s Point a few days ago-- then said, “The tide will be just right about the time you get there. You better get going.”

     When Bill Clinton was asked about his using dope and said, “I didn’t inhale,” I was probably the one person in the world who empathized. I didn’t smoke anything, and  just couldn’t seem to get coordinated enough to do it. Besides, in the ‘70s, dope cost $30.00 for a baggie. My professional salary was $800.00 per month, and I just couldn't afford it.