Mom and Dad bought a small house in Eagle River and it was to become the scene of my coming of age in a number of ways.

 

My first few tokes were with friends out behind the “Arcade” in Eagle River, RC’s Entertainment Center. Then finally I bought my own “Lid”, an Ounce of Mexican Dirt Weed. My friend Johnny and I used my Mom’s kitchen to toast a handful of it, not knowing what “carbolizing” was, it was just what the book “Cooking with Grass” told me to do. Then I mixed that with Peanut Butter and Johnny and I chowed down. We smoked a couple joints while waiting for the stuff to take effect and about the time we found ourselves laying on the floor of the camp trailer laughing hysterically we decided it had taken effect.

Some time later we found ourselves walking slowly around Eagle River offering Peanut Butter Sandwiches to our friends.

My best friend Frank and I scored some LSD at a teen party in Anchorage at a place called “Angel’s Underground”. It was the seminal transformational event in my life. My perceptions of life, the Universe and everything changed from that night on.

4 way window Pane was my first trip. Owsley Orange Barrel was second in line. I would have many more acid trips between then and 1980, including a megadose of clearlight in 1976 that was once again, transformational.

Mom and Dad got me a 4 ft black light from the Black Market in Anchorage for my birthday in 1972. I turned the living room into a psychedelic hang out dominated by Captain Hippo and a few other black light posters. I got some “Black Light Bubbles” and discovered that flinging the liquid on the ceiling and walls would create a cosmic starfield when the black light was on but could not be seen with the light off.

Mom and Dad spent a lot of time at the VFW because Dad was the Bar Manager, so Friday and Saturday nights were sort of free for all at my house until 5 AM.

All I had to do was make sure my baby brother Lewis did not die. He is still around.

I was at the Lion’s Club Dance in Eagle River, just doing my best wallflower impression sitting in a chair along the wall when a pretty girl came up and sat in my lap. Before I knew what was happening we were kissing. I had been “moved on” and I was loving it. Later that night we made love in my bedroom in the basement of the little blue house on Caribou Lane. I don’t remember how long it lasted, a Month, three? Tess was kinky and delighted in getting me aroused in front of others and several times she made sure I was fully exposed after being fully aroused to friends on several occasions and strangers on a few. I will admit to being a willing participant for the most part. Thanks, Tess, it was amazing.

In 1970 they released a movie about that concert at Woodstock.
Some of us made our way into Anchorage to see it but we were not allowed in as it was “R” rated. So we went to the home of my girlfriends (Tess) older Brother who was having a party. He gave us a Joint and sent us “out back” to smoke it. He was just trying to get rid of “the kids”. This was the first time I’d encountered Sensimilla. ( highly potent marijuana from female plants that are specially tended and kept seedless by preventing pollination in order to induce a high resin content) My mind was blown…I knew Weed was good but this shit was next level.

September, 1971. President Richard M. Nixon came to Alaska to meet with Emperor Hirohito of Japan. It would make the first time in the history of Japan that an Emperor had set foot on another country’s soil.

Dad was given 2 VIP tickets to the reception that was to be held at Elmendorf Air Base. He and Mom agreed that instead of them going (I think Dad’s hatred of Nixon played a role) they should send Helen and me. A wise choice if for no other reason here it is over 50 years later and we are both still here to share direct memories of the night.

I remember watching Air Force One land, seeing President and Mrs. Nixon walk down the stairs and into the hanger and up on the raised podium. And then Emperor Hirohito the Empress came up and they exchanged greetings. Later we watched as Nixon drove off the base to a meeting in Anchorage and I got a picture of him waving at me from his Limo.

 

Catch a Fire

I loved Bob Marley as soon as I heard the first riffs. Something about that Reggae beat just resonated in my soul. of course in 1973 Tony Orlando and Dawn, Paul McCartney & Wings, Grand Funk Railroad, Three Dog Night and Dr Hook were the shit and very few of my friends in Eagle River were into soul, and to them Reggae was just more soul music. But I was down with the “Brothers”. Billy Preston (The 5th Beatle), Billy Paul, Stevie Wonder, War and Curtis Mayfield were just as likely to make it onto my mix tape as George Harrison or the Doors were. “Stir It Up”

1972, exodus from Alaska, again…Mom and Dad sold the house, bought a red Ford F150 and a camp trailer and we headed South. Before we left Dad quit his job with the Alaska Railroad and as a going away present they gave him a gallon bottle of scotch in a wireframe oil rig. It was a Pipeline thing. Helen and I rode in the back of the truck cozy in out nests under the camper. I had “RAM” by Wings on my tape player and some quite excellent black tar hashish that I kept inside a small brass water pipe.

When we arrived at Laird Hot Springs something needed repairing on the truck so we established base camp there while Dad worked on the truck and we waited for parts to be brought up the highway. Mom and Dad made friends with a Canadian Couple that were also staying there and one night the Canadian Rye met the American Scotch and somewhere after midnight Helen convinced Mom and Dad that she and I could hitchhike the rest of the way to Washington.
Mom insisted that we take along some provisions and made us 4 Bacon Sandwiches that she wrapped in tin foil and put in the top of my small suit case. 4 Bacon sandwiches wrapped in tin foil may seem like a small, almost inconsequential part of the story, but that one act of kindness would come back to play a rather important role in our adventure.

There was a Crane Operator that picked us up just south of Laird. He was driving an old pickup truck and running it on “purple gas”, which was illegal to use anywhere other than a remote jobsite. He was also drinking gin. He drove us up into the hills where he was working a job and told his boss that he was quitting to take us to Vancouver. He filled the 55gallon drum in the back of his truck with purple gas and off we went. Some time farther down the road we convinced his that as wonderful as his gesture was the idea of the trip was to see what sort of interesting people we met along the way. He bought us dinner and went around the truck stop diner asking guys if they could take us south until he found someone he thought could be trusted. I don’t remember much of the trip until we got to Vancouver, BC. A young couple in a Mustang picked us up and took us on a grand tour of Vancouver pointing out all the highlights. When we finally arrived at the CAN/US Border the guy looked in the car, the kid driving said they were just dropping us off. The guard looked in the back at the two road worn hippies and told us to get out and come inside and told the kid to park his Mustang “over there”…I gave Helen an unmistakable “OH FUCK” look and she ran with the cue getting out on the other side and leaning over the car drawing the guards attention while I took the brass hash pipe out of the suit case and slid it in my jacket pocket. As we walked into the station I forced the pipe through a hole in my pocket and gave it a push that sent it around to the back inside the lining. I took off my jacket as we entered and a guard took it from me, patted it down and tossed it aside on a chair. I heard the hash pipe clunk. I sat the suitcase on the counter and the border guard unzipped it and flipped open the top to expose the 4 squares of tin foil. The game was afoot! Seizing on what was certain to be the tip of a vast drug smuggling conspiracy the guard ripped open one of the packages with such a frenzy that he sent slices of bacon flying down the counter.  They took Helen into a back room and searched her while a very apologetic Canadian Border Guard put my meager sandwich back together as if we were going to eat it.

Failing to find anything more nefarious than Birth Control Pills they resigned themselves to letting us go on our way. I picked up my jacket on the way out. As we left we could see the kids standing beside their Mustang that was being systematically disassembled.

We crossed a parking lot into the US and I stopped at a trash can and fished the hash pipe out of my jacket and tossed it in. Helen wondered why I would toss it now that I’d made it…I just felt the hash had acquired bad juju at that point.

We made it to Helen’s place in Lake Oswego, Oregon and waited for Mom and Dad to roll in. Soon we were on our way to Grandma’s house in Guerneville for a short stay that turned into the longest stay ever. We rented a house just outside of town and Aunt Phyllis gave me a 10 speed bike. I rode the shit out of that bike, actually rode the wheels off it finally. Having a broken wheel and having carried it for a couple miles I hid the bike in the creek bottom and got home just after dark. When I went back the next morning my bike was gone. I hate thieves.

Our house was awesome. Sitting deep in the redwoods, moss and ferns all around, and that was where I discovered Dinky Bird hanging on a wall and Fanny Hill hiding in a drawer. We also had a huge Grundig Radio that I would spend hours listening to far flung radio stations, ships at sea, airline pilots…when I was not being distracted by Dinky and Fanny.

Uncle Bill took me out drinking with him one night. We must have hit every bar from Rio Nido to Jenner! I don’t know what he had on the cops but the first place we stopped he walked over to the Police Car, opened the drivers door, took a long piss on the drivers seat and then walked in the cafe, walked over to the Cop and told him that he had just pissed on his seat. Then we went in the bar and drank beer. All night nobody asked my 17 year old ass for ID, just being Billy Burkes Nephew was all the bona fides I needed. some time later Uncle Bill would discover both Marijuana and LSD.

We left the redwoods and headed East, stopping at Mount Lemon above Tucson. I loved running down the creek leaping from huge boulder to huge boulder. Stopping to swim in the occasional pool. It was a great time for me. Little Sister Sandy was not having such a great time. I think it was the 110 degree heat, Mom thought it was some Acid the hippies in the next camp had dropped, but what ever it was Sandy had some severe seizures. When she was released from the hospital we headed East again, stopping in Texas when she again had a seizure while I was baby sitting her and Mom and Dad had taken Lew into town. When they came home I met them at a dead run carrying Sandra and she spent the next week or so in a Texas hospital.

One night Mom and I had been visiting her and had to get back to the trailer, Dad was off somewhere getting the truck worked on so we set out on foot. A mid 1950s Packard stopped and the mid 1800s family made room for us in the back seat. As we rode along they discussed robbing us. The old lady in the front seat turned and looked at us and said that we were just folks as down and out as them and they “shouldn’t be preying on those that got nothin.”

Finally Sandy was released from the hospital and we headed on East, stopping at Slidell Louisiana, at a camper park on the Salt Bayou on the North side of Lake Pontchartrain. We would drive across the causeway into New Orleans and visit Uncle Lewis at his shop on Bourbon Street. It had been a Ford Garage at one time and still had many 1920s era Ford parts along with a Model A Uncle Lew was restoring.

Uncle Lew let me have one of the bottles of Liberty Cure All that I found scrounging around in his attic.
Ingredients included cocaine and opium. No, I never tried it, it still has the magical potion in it.

I spent a lot of time walking around the bayou. I spent a little time running from Water Moccasins that would spot me and make a bee line for me like they were going to kill and eat me! I never let one get close enough to find out. I did catch a Red Eared Slider who I kept safe for many years. He was still with me in LA in 1977 when I joined the Army. Mom said they turned him loose down at the LA Zoo but I know they left him out in the yard and he baked in the hot Southern California summer sun. He was a good Turtle.

We left ‘nawlins and went to Arizona. Back to Tucson. We got a place on the south side of town just about 1/4 mile from the fence around Davis-Monthan AFB. I found a spot where I could slip under the fence and go play in the vast aircraft graveyard. I got to sit in one of the first generation Blue Angels. I only made a few excursions into the base as the security was tight and I got tired of hiding from them real quick.

Mom and Dad both got jobs with Circle K quick stop stores and soon Dad was regional supervisor. I found a decent supply of good weed and had a cute gal living in the next apartment section so for a while life was grand again. There was another girl around my age living in the next apartment over. Our bedroom windows faced each other. I learned the delights of being both a voyeur and an exhibitionist with her. We were just casual neighbors aside from our late night mutual admiration sessions at a safe distance.

Mom and Dad brought home a young teen boy they had picked up hitchhiking and he stayed with us for a Month or so. One day we were walking around North Tucson looking for some weed and hitching and guy in a tiny red convertible picked us up. We went to his house and  he smoked some weed that was next level shit. It was the first time I actually had a “trip” from just weed. He sold us a bag and we walked back to South Tucson stopping to roll another joint ever hour or so. The guy split shortly after that taking with him the last of the weed and my Captain America pants. My girl friend moved to Florida and for around a year we continued to write each other. She became a Mary Kay Cosmetics salesgirl. I got a ticket to the Rolling Stones first Tucson concert and then was told we were leaving again, just a few days before the concert!

We ended up down in Imperial Beach, on Iris Ave right up against the fence for the Navy Airstrip. Just past that was Mexico. I spent a lot of time up on Silver Strand mostly just walking around looking for someone I could score some weed from. I photographed a lot of Choppers, the Motor Cycle sort, and even sent some shots into Easyriders. I don’t think they ever used any.

Finally Dad found a place that would hire him! Every place he had tried told him he was vastly over qualified for them. Herb Grolinger of the Data-Center took him on as a Computer Programmer and by the time he left in 1980 he was a Sr VP.

One of their accounts was running payroll for the Hollywood Musicians Union. I’d sit and watch the names roll by on the printouts…Oh, Neil Hefty, Batman theme! Lots of big names got their $0.03 royalty payments through the Union account. While he was there they got one of the very first Desk Top computers.

I got a job at McDonald’s in Marina Del Rey. Playground of the rich and famous in West LA.
The folks got me a 1958 Buick Roadmaster, they liked having me in a “tank” knowing I was usually too stoned and driving too fast. I literally drove the wheels of that one. One day in Santa Monica I looked in the mirror and the rear wheel was several feet from where it should have been.

Next they got me a 1959 Caddy Coupe DeVille.

It was metal flake gold, studly tail fins, leather interior, awesome FM radio, autodim headlights, and a speedo that topped out at 150 MPH. And that was how I killed it, I topped out the speedo racing a corvette on the 405 freeway about 3 AM one Sunday Morning. I’d beat the shit out of that Vette…he took the lead and then I just hit passing gear, lunged, backed off, hit passing gear again, lunged again and suddenly I was seeing the Vette in my mirror. When I pulled off the freeway to fill it up and check the fluids I could tell I’d overheated it. I managed to seize the engine. I really loved that massive automobile.

 If I sold everything I own today I might be able to afford one of those iconic Caddys, Dad had paid $300 for it.

Next up was a VW Bug. One night I scored a few Thai Sticks, the real deal oldschool one hit shit. I smoked a 1/4 joint down at Will Rogers State Beach and all I can remember is when I opened the door to go try and walk on the beach a massive puff of smoke rose from the Bug over the parking lot. Later that night I recall stopping at a left turn lane in Marina Del Rey and waiting through several cycles of the light changing before deciding I’d better just pick a color and go. I also remember driving into several cars parked along the residential streets I took back home where I parked around back in the garage and spent the next day pounding dents out of the VW. Then I spray painted it flat black. I think Mom knew better then to ask me what I’d done. I know she aided in keeping the escapade from Dad. I don’t recall just what happened to the bug but I suspect they just made the evidence vanish and presented me with a Satellite. I let my buddy who worked at a gas station in Santa Monica borrow it to run over to his girl friends house. As soon as he left my buddy Gus Akrich said “Why did you give him your car? He’s loaded on Reds!”
When we arrived at the accident scene he had parked my Satellite on top of his Girl Friends fathers car.

Mom and Dad got me a Buick LeSabre Convertable.

John and Helen came through town on their way back to Alaska and invited me to ride along. I of course accepted and told my Boss I was going to Alaska. He understood completely and even wrote me a check for what I was owed.

Alaska 1976…

We made it to Alaska and went to Cordova, a small town on the coast cut off from the rest of Alaska except by boat. We came in on the Ferry and John and Helen made a deal for a fishing boat. They made a down payment, got the gear and just had to wait for the boat to arrive. It was under construction in Tok, a few hundred miles North. When it was finished the builder hired a kid to drive it to Valdez. Just south of Tok the kid put the guys new pickup and the boat over a cliff and the boat landed mast first and shoved the mast through the hull.

I got a job as a dish washer in the restaurant in Valdez. On the first day I turned around to look at a guy carrying a Halibut through the back door just as he tripped and launched the 50 pound Halibut into the air. I caught it. I did not show up for work the second day. Never went back for my check.

We set up a camp just below the waterfall on the outskirts of Valdez. I was there alone and trying to survive the constant assault of mosquitos and the bats that were constantly circling to feast on the cloud of protean I was attracting. I decided to walk into Valdez some time after midnight and set out down the dirt road. About 1/4 mile down the road I came face to face with a Black Bear coming down the road in the opposite direction. We met on a curve and there must have been less than 20 feet between us. We both leapt into the air and both landed running back the way we had come. I decided that encountering the same bear again was not likely and set out again. I was walking past a trailer court when I heard a rather loud “Woof”.

I turned, half expecting to see the Bear again but instead I saw a Saint Bernard that was almost as big as the Bear. He “woofed” again and took off at a dead run right toward me. I knew that if I ran he would just be on me before I made it ten feet so I stood my ground, determined to go out fighting. He pulled up about 3 feet from me and stood shaking his tail and panting. He was so delighted to see someone had come to play with him at 2 AM!

After recovering the losses by selling the nets and gear we set out for Anchorage. There John, Helen and I parted ways. I got a job working as a laborer at Settler’s Bay, a golf course and upscale residential housing being constructed a few miles South of Wasilla. I set up a tent down in the woods where we were working. A few days later the foreman asked me if I would do Night Security, and I agreed. So I was pulling a full days shift as laborer, then getting paid to hang around my tent and make sure nobody fucked with the equipment. By the end of the first week I was put in charge of a work crew. We cleared brush, raked rocks, spread top soil…basically built the greens and fairways up to the point that they could be seeded.

After my first paycheck I decided to treat myself to a night out. I went to the Bar on Wasilla Lake and ordered a Tequila Sunrise. after the second one I asked the bar tender to suggest something and she asked if I’d ever tried a Lighthouse. I had not so she prepared one, floating the Everclear on the top and lighting it on fire. She took a paper napkin and laid it on top the glass and whipped it off, inadvertently flinging a stream of flaming Everclear down the bar. “That was great! Can I have another one?”

Some time later I managed to make it out to the parking lot where I crawled in the back of the pickup and fell asleep. I did not own a pickup and when I woke up it was heading down the road toward Wasilla. I knocked on the back window and the driver managed to come to a stop without driving off the road or shitting himself. He was very good natured about it and gave me a ride to the liquor store on the corner or Parks and Main where I bought a bottle of Schnapps.

I walked the several miles home.

After my second paycheck I bought a Ford station wagon, so I could get into Wasilla and make the 50 mile run into Eagle River where I knew old school buddies that I could score weed from.

As summer came to an end so did the work at Settler’s Bay. I was offered a job with the rock plant but as it was coming into winter I wanted to be closer to anchorage and find some indoor work.

I set up my tent on the banks of the Eagle River across from the Camp Ground. It was secluded enough that nobody other than two friends ever came by. I would take water from the river, let it sit for a day to settle the glacier silt, pour it off and boil it for cooking and coffee. One day Dan and Bobby came by and took me out for the day…they knew I’d been looking for work and Dan said he knew of a place in Anchorage I could get hired on. He worked at Tire King and got me on doing tire mounting. The entire operation turned out to be a front for a large Cocaine dealing operation and Dan and I would spend many days just sitting around the shop making pipes and smoking weed and snorting coke. I moved in with Dan and Jackie in their trailer in Eagle River on the shore of Fire Lake. I spent most of the winter there and in the spring I moved into Anchorage and at their invitation shared an apartment with Bobby and Linda. I left Tire King and went to work for Dial A Ride as the overnight Gas Jockey.
After a couple weeks I was offered the job of Mechanics Assistant and started working under Ken doing maintenance on the vans that they used to run people around Anchorage. It turned out that Dial A Ride was just a front for a huge Cocaine operation, which it seemed many of the businesses in Anchorage were at that time. Ken started fronting me various drugs that I sold to many of my friends and soon I was making far more dealing than actually working.

Then Ken went down to California. He got with some of his old school buddies and they were tight with some of the music scene including the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and other bay Area bands of the time. Seems they were the “connection” for a lot of the weed coming out of Mexico. Ken and I went into business. He would fly to California, buy kilos of Mexidirt, send to to Alaska where I would pick them up at the airport and distribute them around Alaska.

The first shipment of 500 kilos came in a large wooden box that created a cloud of talcum powder when the fork lift picked it up at Anchorage International Airport’s Freight dock. I drove it home in my International Travelall and Billy Kelly helped me get the kilos into the house. We spread a sheet on the bed and broke open every bundle. It seems that you could have as much weed as you wanted as long as it was not packaged for sale. So I kept the large wood box in my closet filled with loose weed that I’d portion out by the ounce or pound as need be. I also ended up with several kilos of seeds.

I had a Field Jacket that I liked to wear. I would fill the pockets with Pot seeds and walk around tossing them out anywhere I thought they might grow. I seeded the planter in front of the grocery store in Eagle River, the planters in front of the Federal Building in Anchorage and even my own front lawn. As the weed grew I kept mowing and eventually had a nice mat of cannabis crab grass.

I had two girls living with me for most of the summer, a third for part of the winter, had clients that would fly in from the bush and take 10 or 20 keys and enough heat that the Narcs rented the house behind me and the one at the end of the block. My phone was tapped so I’d answer every call with “This line is being tapped, how can I help you?” And I would say goodbye to the narcs after my caller had hung up. Sometimes I would go out at 3 AM just to take the Narcs for a ride around town. Any time I left the house I had a tail.

Edwardo was the son of a New York “Made Man”. His Mother was a Columbian with a history of cultivating Columbian Gold. So Eddie, or Wop as we called him, had some nice connections for some of the exotic items being shipped to Alaska during the pipeline days.

Wop’s main cover was in used cars. He was always driving something different from one of the lots and always had a good line on high end weed and acid. One day Wop and I took off in my Travelall and drove to Glenallen. From there we turned South and drove down to Valdez. While in Valdez we made a couple deliveries and visited with some of the girls that he knew that were down there servicing the Pipeliners. They supplied them with what they were working for and we supplied them with what they needed to keep working hard. We traded some of what we had for some of what they had and had a place to spend the night.

The next day we drove onto the Ferry for the trip back to Anchorage. It was July 4th, 1976, the 200th birthday of the USA. Wop and I got deck chairs out on the afterdeck and started passing my Gandolf style pipe back and fourth. After a few minutes we had a small crowd of people that had smelled what we were smoking and joined us. I looked at the back of the ship as I was passing the bowl and two bald Eagles flew across the majestic scene right behind the Stars and Stripes. It was a magical moment. A short time later I just happened to look over as the Ships Purser came up the ladder and looked at our little party. I saluted him with my Sherlock pipe and said “Happy Birthday!”
He went back down the stairs.

By the fall of 1976 I had become one of the biggest Pot Dealers in Alaska, my friend Dan was one of the biggest Coke Dealers and my friend Wop was bringing in East Coast hashish from Europe and enough pharmaceuticals to stock a drug store. I was also friends with two Acid Cooks. Money, drugs, sex and excitement made the summer and fall  of 1976 a bit blurry here and there.

One night Dan, Bobby and I got in Bobby’s Datsun and drove to Homer. Bobby was a race car driver and had me move in the back seat to where he felt the car was balanced. The trip from Anchorage down along Turnagain Arm to Homer was exciting to say the least. With shear cliffs rising up on the left and dropping away into Turnagain Arm on the right Bobby took most turns in a 4 wheel drift and milked every horse in that Datsun for all it was worth. We made a drop in Sterling and went on down to Homer. The delivery was a one off adventure for me, and excuse for me to hang with Dan and Bobby for a couple days on a road trip, but there was massive profit margin that allowed me and Dan to pay our Wheel Man very well. On the trip back we stopped at a gas station in South Anchorage and an Alaska State Trooper pulled in behind us a little later.
“I picked you guys up at Girdwood and I’ve been trying to get close enough to pull you over since then. I want you to go strait home and don’t let me catch you out on my road again tonight.”

One night I got a call from some stranger that just said “They will be in your house at 6 AM, clean it up.” and he hung up. Seems as though the West Coast Syndicate had someone on the inside. Me and the girls went through the house and gathered every scrap of weed, every roach, every hit of LSD and all the coke and what we didn’t smoke or snort I sent them off with to sell while I loaded my Travelall with gear and set out for the deep woods. The girls went to stay with a friend.

I went to Eklutna and pulled into the camping area at the end of Eklutna Lake. It was deserted and I dropped a hit of LSD and started climbing a small knoll. By the time I reached the top the LSD was in full force and I had no idea how to get down. I could not see over the edge to figure out where I’d climbed up so I just started back down. Evidently I made it. I woke up with the sun streaming in, and ounce of weed laying on the dash with papers and roaches and a battalion of Army guys that had arrived in the night and set up all around me.

I got dressed (Yes, I’d been sleeping nude as I always do), stashed the weed and took off up the valley on foot. I made it almost to the Glacier but the constant falling of rocks from both sides of the narrowing valley scared me off and I went back to safe haven of my Travelall and the US Army. I realized I had forgotten my rifle in my haste to get out of town so I drove back to anchorage and parked several blocks away from my house. I made my way down the alleys and when I got to my door I could see the splintered door frame where they had kicked in the door. I went in the bedroom and as I opened the closet to grab my rifle I spotted a Kilo of weed sitting on the shelf. I recognized it one from a shipment from several months back. They had come in and left empty handed but left a Kilo that they could charge me with when they caught me on my return. I put the Kilo and some other shit in a pillow case and made it back to my Truck.

In Eagle River there used to be a large, open field where a supermarket now stands. Peppel’s Field was the go-to place for parties and various shenanigans. The State decided to put a highway through the center of the field and there was a going away party being held with a large bonfire and lots booze, drugs and sex.

I pulled off the “Old” Glenn highway and drove across the field to the bonfire. I took the kilo out and set it on the hood of Tom’s truck. I slit the blue construction paper with my buck knife and splayed the kilo of weed open. Tossing a pack of Zig Zag papers on the pile I told the dozen or so gathered around the fire to enjoy, gave Tom a salute and got back in my truck and headed for Eklutna. Several days later I came back to town and stopped at the Bon Fire. Everything I owned was in the truck and at the Bon Fire I picked up two girls and Billy’s dog, giving them a ride back to Anchorage.

At the Ft. Richardson Gate I went to downshift for a stop light and the ass end of the International spun around and we headed for the ditch. We did a double endo coming to a stop on the side about 50 feet from the Guard Shack. I got the two girls and Billy’s dog out through the windshield, which had blown out as we flipped on our side, and went back into the travelall. I stuck my head up and saw one of the guards coming toward the truck. “Hey, get out of there!” he yelled. I yelled back “I’m good, check on the girls!” and he headed toward them while I found the 5 kilos of weed and stuffed them into a suitcase. We hitchhiked into Anchorage and when I came back after my truck the next morning it had been towed. I didn’t have the cash to bail out the truck, and as several days went by and the bill grew I just said “Fuck It!” and let them keep the truck and all my worldly possessions.