Doug was there with his date, and there were two other couples.
Doug had gotten hold of some pot, but we didn’t know how to roll it. So we just emptied out a couple of cigarettes, packed the pot in there and smoked. We each took a hit, and we all were expecting fireworks to start exploding in our heads.
But nothing happened. So we took another hit and nothing happened. By now we’re getting a little upset, so we just start smoking ’em as fast as we can. The next thing you know, one of the guys goes into a literal wide-awake coma. He can’t move. And the more he can’t move, the harder I laugh. Another guy is about ready to shit his pants, he’s laughing so hard. Doug Holt goes upstairs and vomits. And we get out another joint, and we smoke that.
Then Ruona says, “Jack, I want to talk to you.” And she takes me outside. I’m standing there looking down at her, and she looks about two feet tall with tiny little feet. I can hardly stop laughing. And she said, “Now, you know that this leads to bigger things.”
And in my head, I’m saying, “I certainly hope so.”
And she says, “We’ve tried it, it’s over with, we’re done. This won’t happen again.”
Well, I knew the minute it hit me that I was going to do it again. My God—I was high as a Georgia pine, totally tuned in to everything around me, and I wasn’t going to feel like road kill in the morning. I was out trying to score the very next day.
I learned pretty fast that I didn’t have to finance my own habit. I’d buy three lids and sell two. That turned into a half-pound, a pound—whatever I could get, I’d sell to cover the cost, and I’d smoke the rest. The first kilo I ever bought was with a friend just back from the Army. He and I drove down to the south end of Juarez—way out in the boonies. He drove and we ended up in a bar. I remember he was talking to this guy and he came over and said, “Jack, we need $20 to buy this kilo.”
“Well, goodness gracious, we’ve got $50. Are you kidding? Why don’t we buy two?”
So we put it in the trunk of the car and drove to the border. They waved us through and that was our first smuggle. We broke it down and sold it quick—it was really good stuff. When it was gone, I started buying from anybody that had it. It turned out a lot of us were buying from the same people who were buying from us. Everybody knew each other and somebody always had pot to sell.
That’s how I met Mike Halliday. He was selling to a girl I knew—she introduced us at a party, and we started doing a little business—nothing much. It was more about staying high than making money. Mike Halliday was one of the guys I did business with. Dave Blott was another one. Mike and Dave didn’t really know each other, but when I went away to the Navy, they were the guys I counted on to keep me supplied.
In a lot of ways, pot is like Mary Kay Cosmetics. Try it once and you see yourself in a whole new way. Before you know it, you’re dealing to all your friends so they can support your $10-a-day lipstick and blush habit.
The only difference is you’ll never see a pothead in a pink Cadillac. But at the grass roots, marijuana is all about network marketing. Today’s buyer is tomorrow’s seller. And everyone shares the high.
In 1969, Mike Halliday was casting weed upon his friends in the handy take-home size. That’s what brought him to the little hippie commune on Doniphan Drive in El Paso’s Upper Valley. It was a small connection, but it was his first. He scored less than a pound, but before the day was over, Mike would experience the bliss of homemade granola, listen to a little Bob Dylan, and witness a spectacular high-desert sunset.
In the time it took to break in a new pair of Levi’s, Mike Halliday became a tie-dyed hippie. He grew a ponytail and converted his VW bus into a slick camper with a cleverly concealed “hide” to preserve his stash. A few performance-enhancing modifications of his own design were added, of course. But the crowning glory was the large peace symbol that replaced the VW logo on the front of the bus. Make Love, Not War may have been the statement he was trying to make, but he couldn’t have screamed ARREST MY ASS! any louder with a billboard and a bullhorn.
MIKE HALLIDAY
My wife Karen turned into Earth Mother and I was a hippie with a job—which made me kind of a part-time hippie. But I was lucky enough to get on at Phelps Dodge—the copper refinery down on Trowbridge Street. It was hard work, but the pay was really good. It turned out I was the very first gringo in eight years that lasted more than sixty days. The only gringos there at the time were the machinists and the foremen and office guys.
I worked down the line from the shears, where the copper was cut into pieces weighing about seventy-five pounds each. Part of my job was to stack ’em up for shipping. The thing is, this copper would have growths on it kind of like warts. By the time you stacked ’em about three feet high, they would be leaning every which way, looking like they were going to fall over. So every time I saw a big wart, I’d flip the sheet and turn it so it would come down on the other side—the smooth side. My stacks would always come out nice and straight.
The shipping department thought I was a genius. They wanted me to show the other guys how to do it that way, but I think they had me confused with somebody who wanted to experience an industrial accident. These guys had been working there for fifteen years—they weren’t gonna like some gringo kid showing them a better way. I kept my mouth shut. Turned out to be a good decision too, because a lot of the Mexicans ended up liking me.
I had a Volkswagen van I converted to a camper. I always smoked a joint on the way to work. I wore tinted safety glasses inside Phelps Dodge, so you couldn’t see my eyes. I could get high, go stack my copper or whatever job they gave me, and no one would ever know. At noon, I’d go out by the smokestack and smoke another joint by myself.
I thought I was pretty cool about it, but it turns out the Mexicans all knew I was getting high. They started asking me if I wanted to smoke some of their pot.
“Okay—whatever. Pot’s pot.” But the first joint—hell, the first hit was a different story. That was some primo shit—the best pot I had ever smoked and probably my first taste of really good Mexican. It made the stuff I’d been getting from the hippies look like alfalfa.
I went drinking all the time with these guys from Phelps Dodge—they hung out in a little bar on Alameda Street. In those days you could go in there and buy a Prince Albert can of pretty good pot for $10. Some of the guys just let you reach in the bag—as much as your hand would hold, that was $5.
They hooked me up pretty good—a kilo or two at a time. So I got to where I started selling more and more—to the hippies, friends and neighbors, and a few other guys. And they had some friends who had some friends…you know how it was. If you had pot, you had friends. I was getting a lot of friends.
That was about the time I met Jack Stricklin. It was at a party thrown by an old girlfriend of his—she introduced us and we hit it off right away. Jack was a college guy, but he wasn’t a douche bag. We started doing a little business, nothing much—nickel and dime shit. Jack got to be one of my regular customers. He was always trying to hook me up with a friend of his named Dave Blott. Dave was another guy he bought from. Every time I got with Jack, he was always trying to get us together.
Dave
