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GETTING HIGH
Somehow, getting high seemed always central to my younger existence.
Now you could say, “Oh my goodness, those two were dope-heads.” You got us, but in addition to the excitement of some fruitcake showing us how to make a fortune selling Kansas-Killer or Nebraska No-High, we were also thrill seekers. As if sleeping bags full of giant plants picked outside of Junction City for transport to Missouri to brick, then to Massachusetts for sale didn’t do it. Or thinking that rolling along sleeping on a mattress of Nebraska weed hidden in our van while we sold the dried stuff wasn’t thrill enough. There were two problems hawking smoke from the van; one, we were on the road; lugging it around all that green smelled, so we always had to park far away from people, and two, that pot wouldn’t get a fly high; both, minor drawbacks. A hitch-hiker had showed us where to go harvest, then went with us to his old home to sell it. I guess he didn’t mind screwing his old acquaintances in Massachusetts; we didn’t know them, so buyer beware, those college kids all tried the stuff anyway, and you go to college to get educated, right? He finally stole my new Triumph 900 chopper and all our cash when we left to get another load. When we got back, everyone had wised up, so we left quickly, penniless, with a trunk full of worthless pot, empty wallets, and we have learned a big lesson in life. Didn’t dull the thrill-seeking part, though, just made us more aware and showed how uncaring most of the world is.
Enter painting water towers, now there’s a thrilling occupation, and you are high constantly! From the second we started, it was exciting. Jim knocked himself out with a hammer, and I caught him falling out of the bosun’s chair one hundred ten feet up. Les tied my rigging wrong, it came loose, and I dropped like a rock. I grabbed the ropes with both hands, burned down fifteen or twenty feet, then me and my hamburger paws went out for several beers. Another lesson, nobody ties my ropes but me! We constantly slid down the struts, racing for the bottom without ever being tied on; to heck with OSHA! Jim got shot at up there; you could hear the bullets dinging off the tower. Both of us took turns slipping on the ladder while going up a tower in Keys, Oklahoma, during an ice storm. I painted thirty or forty cars in a parking lot in Indiana. Jim smoked pot with the mayor in Florala, Alabama, while I played kill the jet bombers with my silver spray paint after crawling over the side into a huge nest of black wasps. That was pretty cool; they’d attack, I’d spray, silvered black wasps veered out of control and spiraled down. I’d have been stung to death otherwise.
Get the picture? Ten feet tall and bulletproof, and this was after we came back from the mountains! Life has been interesting for as long as I can remember, plus it sure makes for some neat and truthful stories. Most of these have wound up in one or another of my books; next time.
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