I think I’ve posted this next thing before but it’s totally appropriate at this juncture. When you’re in school, in your teens or even your 20s, your whole life can change for the most seemingly inconsequential decision or even for no reason at all. Life-changing things can happen because of who you sat next to on a bus or in a class. At that point of your life, everything that comes after can be completely changed because of something you read or someone you met or even something you misunderstood. When you hit 30, you have the benefit of another ten years of experience and can look backwards and forwards and either keep going or decide to make a change. At 40, you can still change but you’re pretty much set and it takes a major event to reroute your direction in life. At 50, deciding to change is rarely an option and your future is less a part of your life than your past. 60? Well thank god for wisdom… Now I can tell my wife that I am loaded with wisdom while she makes sure I feel like a complete idiot.
Anyway, while I was ripe for the plucking, that trip to Miami was a life-changing moment for me. I had no way of knowing it at the time but the next 30 years would be directly attributable to the happenstance meeting with Beanie. And... he never knew it, doesn't know it and might not even be alive today.
So here it is, August of 1970 and I head back to New York to a life I had envisioned as a budding journalist but that is totally upside down in the midst of a crazy generational rebellion against the entire foundation of my youth. My peers were either fighting a pointless war overseas, hanging on desperately in school to avoid the draft, turning on in increasing numbers, tuning in, and, more significantly, dropping out. From protesting a war, protesting civil rights inequities, the protests expanded to include women’s rights, gay rights, free speech and the whole concept of ‘big brother’. And I can’t understand why marijuana is illegal. I do a little reading and find out that it was legal up until 1937… which, not coincidentally, happened to be the year prohibition was repealed. I drink and I can’t stay awake or control myself but I can smoke and drive… smoke and walk a straight line… smoke and see everything differently… I’m smoking joints in the morning when I wake up, on the way to work, grabbing a hit on my break, smoking while I’m walking… and nothing bad happens. Why is this stuff illegal? It’s fun and the biggest problem is the law, not the physical effects of it.
Now just to be honest, it’s not like I had never smoked before. I had smoked occasionally in my first year of college and never stopped using. After my mom died, my father remarried and moved to Orlando , and I was left with the two bedroom apartment I had grown up in. I had been something of a loner but I took in Tom as a roommate and he ran with a really big crowd of freaks. Tom worked at Time Magazine as a researcher and we got along great. We worked different hours so we weren’t always in each other’s way. Plus, his whole crowd was into smoke so I never had any trouble getting it. Until one day, Tom comes in and tells me there’s a drought. He’s out of pot and has tried all his sources and can’t find any. I was still going to City College at the time so when I get up to school, I ask a friend and he says, ‘Drought? What drought? How much do you want? What kind do you want?’ And right there, at that moment, another epiphany occurred. I realized that I was connected to something. I could get something that Tom and his entire crowd wanted but couldn’t find.