Little bright lights of sanity prevailing

[The Snark]

It is absolutely delightful to now go wandering through the local markets. Along with the food stuff and gimmick crap there is nearly always a few stalls selling potted plants and seedling. Among them proudly displayed are a variety of cannabis plants. At random at first, now I'm seeing the varietals showing up. Sativa, Indica and Ruderalis for the folks using the plant to make household and utility items. A very high demand for the latter as has been proven and used for centuries, it is easily rendered into cords, ropes, baskets and even woven materials and decorations.
As for the more narcotic varieties, there is very little interest. Why bother growing your own? The bottom has fallen out of the market and the smokable stuff can be had by the kilo for pocket change or even given away as sales loss leaders and presents.

(The irony. As an aside, in return for giving a local a few cubic yards of fertile top soil he has rewarded me with about 10 pounds of high quality resinous Indica for making all sorts of home brew remedies and cure-alls. The word allergic doesn't seem to translate into Thai. Since it's bad form (and karma) to give away gifts I had no idea what to do with the crap. In the heyday of the Emerald Triangle there would be about $20,000-$40,000 sitting in those bags taking up valuable floor space. And now? The wife has been using them as compost for her little papaya plantation. . She comes up with some completely crackers ideas that makes my frontal lobes throb to even attempt to follow her logic.)

 

[winter]

Unfortunately, the heyday of the Emerald Triangle is gone. There are still people cultivating, legally or not, but the price has fallen so much since legalization here in California. I think the growers now mainly make a living by supplying the states where cannabis is still illegal.

That's some fancy compost your wife is using; a different interpretation of gift recycling.

 

[The Snark]

, but the price has fallen so much since legalization

Now if only the homo erectus disguised as the congress and senate would get a clue.

 

[The Snark]

Unfortunately, the heyday of the Emerald Triangle is gone.

Recollections. 1979-80. A pretty typical year+ of my life.
Finished up my college course and a short fire fighting season. A fat wallet and as usual, at loose ends. Sleeping on a couch at a friends house and wondering what next. Another friend introduced me to his father who needed a partner to build a house. I signed on and chipped in. House completed he bought me out of my share with him throwing in his daughters car to sweeten the deal. Another stint of school wasn't in the cards so I loaded up the car with my everything and put it in the wind. A homeless vagrant once more, Just the way I liked it.

Found myself in Humboldt county. While sitting in front of a store in a small community a guy came by looking for farm workers. I looked disheveled enough, a month living in that car, to fit the bill. 'Come work for me! $50 a day only part time actual work.' Singing my song. Doing what? Prepping the garden plots, then moving a couple thousand seedling pot plants to the land and get them planted. Rig up a watering system and building a shack. All out in the wilderness - bliss. Flexible ethics. I kept to myself I was a sworn LEO. But that was a couple years back and another life.
So some hard core months. Tending the gardens, chasing off the deer and twiddling my thumbs. Lots of time to go stomping the lost coast of Calif between finding new ways to prep and cook venison dinners. Strolling up the local ridge road, the scent of skunk wafting my way from all directions. The end of the heyday of the Emerald Triangle.
Then the most arduous task. A solid month of trimming bud. Hands and snips coated in the goo that refused to wash off.
Taking a break one afternoon, my hand aching from the endless snip snip. Me and a few fellow itinerant pot farm worker sitting in front of the store taking a break. A guy I knew sitting nearby... I asked him how it was going. He replied by opening his hand that was holding his can of beer. The can didn't drop being glued to his palm. Yup. The order of the day come harvest season.

Excitement. A nearby pot farmer had a deer bait pot patch spotted by a CAMP helicopter. No doubt they will be back the next day to raid the place. Anyone care to come watch? A group of us took up station on an adjacent ridge to watch. Shades of the Vietnam war. And many of the cops were recruited straight from their return from the rice fields. Two Hueys came in an hour after dawn and the circus was on. They went flat out crazy. Around 10 cops get set on the ground with their rifles and fanned out military squad style. They collected the pot plants then went berserk. Walls were knocked out of the shack. The water pump loaded into a chopper. The water lines hacked to pieces with machetes then the empty swimming pool with all personal items and equipment in it got set on fire. All the while some of the veterans stationed on the perimeter keeping an eye out for the VC, rifles at the ready.

I had some misgivings about that state of the art police force, aside from everything they did being blatantly criminal. But as has been the way with much of my leaf in the wind life the fates had some delicious irony in store for me.
Checking in with my home base I got the message my old boss wanted to talk to me. I called the station, collect call. She accepted the charges and more or less it went "Listen up, turkey. I want you back on the force now SHUT UP AND NO LIP! All expenses paid two months of college course then DIRECTLY report for duty. No goddam couple of months wandering in this direction. BE THERE. DO IT!"

So from itinerant pot farm worker and professional vagrant to taking the POST, Police Officers Standard Training, and back in the saddle. My boss had come to the realization that as a cop I was questionable but after a year and a half of searching she couldn't find a S&R deputy candidate any better than what I had to offer. And I owed her a couple dozen favors.

 

[DaveM]

@The Snark, I think you should have been an interrogator. You'd tell the suspect so many stories that he'd forget he was the one being questioned. He'd start talking like you were old pals, probably bragging about all of his crimes trying to one-up you with his intrigues until you'd absorbed into a small compartment of your memory everything his puny brain had to offer.

Cannabis looks pretty and smells nice. I might grow some as an ornamental.

 

[The Snark]

I think you should have been an interrogator. You'd tell the suspect so many stories that he'd forget he was the one being questioned. He'd start talking like you were old pals, probably bragging about all of his crimes trying to one-up you with his intrigues until you'd absorbed into a small compartment of your memory everything his puny brain had to offer.

If only you knew how much you sounded like my old boss except she was a little more succinct. After being amiable while booking a couple and them getting mad and chewing on each other - spilling all kinds of beans in the process, the boss asked, "What the hell was that? A group social?"
Blame it on my weird sewage trap memory. In that particular instance it got triggered when I asked the boss if I was going to be out of pocket buying the female suspect sanitary napkins? The glaring stare I got and palpable wave of 'Did he really asked that?'

There are some amazing hybrid ornamental cannabis. One grows into a small tree. Too bad it's an annual. BTW, they are super easy to hybridize and the results pop up in a month from the seeds. Also very easy to tell male from female plants. They also take well to grafting. That's how the mega bud got spread in the US. Powerful sativa root stock with indica grafted to it.

A pot farm up in Canada got raided where they had to use chain saws to cut down and remove the plants. Short ultra fast growing season.