In the summer of 1995 life was treating me fairly well, I had been selling cannabis for 10 years and growing for the past 4. I had money in my pocket, a nice place to live, 2 cars, a motorcycle, and a new girlfriend. The summer had been very good for growing and we had already taken 2 cuttings from our crops and were waiting for the first frost to finish it off. That day came on September 25 when a hard frost was forecast and we had to act fast and get them out first thing in the morning. I called my partner to arrange the details as he had the suburban with tinted windows that was perfect for the job, and he informed me that he would not be able to do it that morning as his young daughter had taken ill and he had to attend to her. I didn’t panic as I knew another friend that was unemployed, had a pick-up truck with a topper and was someone I trusted. I called him and he was happy to help out, it didn’t hurt that he was going to get a quarter pound of bud for about 3 hours of time.
He picked me up about 7 in the morning and off we went, the place was about 40 miles from our home town and the gig was to drive me there, drop me off and go get some breakfast, then return in an hour and pick me up. That part went as smooth as it always had with my partner and soon we were heading back home with 10 pounds of killer green. As soon as I got back in the truck I told him “we are home free, just don’t give them a reason”. That seemed to fall on deaf ears as within ten minutes I noticed he was going 10 miles over the speed limit, I told him again to not give them a reason and to stay in the right lane and to even let granny pass you by if she wants. As we neared home and after reminding him a few more times about speeding, we saw the sign for our exit, one mile away, it looked like we were going to make it, my friend had been nervous the whole time and in his mind, the sooner we get there, the sooner it is over. we were behind an 18 wheeler but it was okay as it was going the speed limit and we only had a mile to go, well that was not going to work for him and before I could say anything he was over in the left lane and speeding by the big rig. Unfortunately for us there was a state trooper on the bridge we went under taking radar and clocked us at 13 over the limit. Imagine my shock when he says there is a trooper racing up the road behind us! By that point we were in front of the 18 wheeler and could see our exit, the trooper raced up to just behind us and cut between us and the semi and hit the lights.
The trooper was a typical hard ass cop, he came up to my friend’s window with a stone face wearing mirrored shades and with that stupid hat they wear on his big head. He said in a stern voice “you were speeding, you are getting a ticket!” he took my friends license and headed back to his car, when he got to the back of our truck he stopped and looked in the back, then returned to ask what was in the bags in the back. My friend was frozen, eyes straight ahead and hands white knuckled on the steering wheel, he said nothing. He asked again, nothing. It was at this point I made a fatal flaw ( as my lawyer would tell me later), instead of keeping my mouth shut, I thought that maybe I could save the situation by saying it was just hay for my aunt’s farm and we were heading there now. Of course he didn’t buy that and he reached in and took the keys out of the ignition and called for back-up. for the next 20 minutes he stood in the drivers window and stared at us while we waited. I will always be curious as to what he told the dispatch about who he had because no less than 6 troopers came racing down the highway to back him up. When they got there they pulled us out and handcuffed us and proceeded to bask in the glory of their big bust, joking and laughing about it, I heard the first trooper say “I could smell it as soon as I got out of my car”. They kept us by the side of the road in handcuffs for the next 2 hours, very humiliating. We eventually headed back to the state trooper headquarters and they tried to intimidate us with telling us we would be going to jail for 10 years and that they knew we were just working for some kingpin and if we gave him up they would be lenient. I was feeling indignant and once again should have kept my mouth shut but I said sarcastically “yeah, we’re working for some kingpin”. That was all they needed as they wrote it up as me confessing to a criminal conspiracy.While I was sitting in the outer office I noticed two guys that looked very familiar and as I was trying to figure out where I had seen them, one of them speaks up and says “yea, you know us, you work at Bucks bar right?” I sat in silence, my mind racing trying to figure out what this meant. The bar I worked at had a reputation for being a ‘party bar’ , ie the place to get drugs and I was friends with a few of the players there so I wondered what this meant for them. The other one spoke up and said “if you want to jump into another ballgame, you can go home today”. I told them that while it was true that I worked at Bucks, I had no idea what they were talking about and even if I did I would not help the pigs bust anyone for a victimless non-violent activity.
We were taken to the county jail where we stayed for the next 2 days, my first time ever in a jail and it sucked! When we finally were allowed to see a judge I was a bit nervous as when they had weighed the bud at state patrol headquarters it was over 40 pounds (wet) and talking to people in the cell, most thought I would not get out. That turned out to be unfounded as with it being a first offense, I was able to get out on a 1000 dollar signature bond. My first concern was smoking a big fat joint! Next would be to get a good lawyer, I called the local chapter of NORML to see if they could recommend a lawyer who was down with the cause, they were very helpful and gave me a few to choose from. After choosing one I went to sit down with him and as he looked over the merits of the case he told me straight out that if I had kept my big mouth shut then it would have been easy to get me out of it completely by claiming I had no knowledge of what was in my friends truck. Too late for that, so he did his best to minimize the damage.
It took almost a year to get the whole thing resolved, and in that time, most of my money had been spent on living and lawyer, and the new girlfriend was gone. I was very naive back then about how the system works and as is the case in most court proceedings, I took a plea deal. The D.A. was threatening a year or more if we went to court and lost or I could take her deal of 3 months in jail and 3 years probation, plus the lawyer wanted another 5 grand to go to court. Knowing I would go nuts in jail for a year or more, I reluctantly took the deal and was told I could pick the day I went to jail. Yea for me, they gave me a 60 day window but anyway I chose it, I would be spending my 30th birthday in jail, a major bummer. I decided to push it the full 60 days, It was the first of June and if I went right away, I would miss the entire summer and the Further Festival was coming in July, it would be the first time seeing The Dead since Jerry died. A good choice all in all as the concerts were awesome and I partied for those two months harder and better than ever!
The dreaded day arrived much sooner than I wanted (never would have been too soon), it was August 1st and I had to check myself in to the county jail at 9 A.M. sharp. The day before had been one for the record books, me and 6 friends went to the state fair all day and drank beer, smoked weed and I even did some magic mushrooms for the evening highlight, The Allman Brothers, it was an epic day that I will never forget but on the morning of the 1st, I was feeling pretty crappy indeed. When I checked into jail there were 3 of us coming to jail that morning and they have a policy that you can not show up with drugs or alcohol in your system. My luck was running high that morning as they checked the other 2 but not me and I probably had more than both of them combined.
I was given the choice to have work release while in jail but it came with a catch… I would have to pay rent to stay in jail! It was as much as the rent I would have to pay for an apartment I could not use for the next three months. There was no way I was going to pay these scumbags for caging me. I also know myself well enough to know that the temptation to party would have been overwhelming and I would have been busted very quickly as they would drug test the work release prisoners.So I took a leave of absence and went to sit for 3 months at the States expense.
Jail sucked and I won’t bore you with all the details, I made the best of it, stayed out of trouble and even became a kitchen trustee which wasn’t very good for me because as a kitchen trustee, you can eat as much of the crap food as you want, and being bored all the time makes for a lot of eating, I gained 30 pounds in 3 months and when I got out I was up to 220, by far the most I had ever weighed. My fellow inmates were fairly easy to get along with as most of them were there for victimless, non-violent “crimes”. The guards on the other hand were hit and miss, some were easy-going just there for the paycheck and some were sadistic pricks just looking to control people, probably like most jails.
I got out the day before Halloween and picked up right where I left off, partying with my friends and selling weed to fund it. I also resumed bartending at Bucks, it was a few days a week and I worked there more for the party scene than the money. I had to meet with my P.O. after a week and he seemed to be cool enough telling me that he did not care about weed and to just stay out of trouble. He also told me not to drive as they had also taken away my D.L. because I had a drug charge, for some stupid reason, any drug conviction carries a 6 month suspension whether you were driving or not. I told him what he wanted to hear and left his office and got into my car and drove away, and kept driving to anywhere I needed to go. I certainly wasn’t going to follow this rule! After about 4 months he had not even drug tested me and I was doing just about as many drugs as there were out there back then, so one month before the visit to his office, I was thinking this might be the month he tests me, I stopped everything 4 days before the visit and on the day took what was marketed as a foolproof way to beat a drug test. I had to drink about 2 gallons of a terrible tasting concoction and went to his office feeling very confident. The visit was what I had become accustomed to, a few questions, some small talk and ‘see you next month’. As he was about to end the visit I spoke up and asked if he was ever going to drug test me? He looked at his records and said “I guess I should probably get you tested”, so I pissed for him and left feeling very sure it would come back clean.
The following month was a home visit and the night before I was out with friends with the full intention of being home early and fairly sober. All thoughts of that ended when my friend ( who was the local coke dealer, every weed dealer knows at least one coke dealer) showed up with an ounce of Columbia’s finest. We partied the night away and I went home about 10 in the morning with my P.O. coming at 1. I showered up and tried to sober up but it was no good, I was still as high as a kite and it didn’t help matters when I noticed that I still had about a gram of coke with me. Anyone who has ever done coke knows that when you start coming down, the urge for more is overwhelming and you usually don’t stop until it is all gone. This day would not be different, I rationalized (if you can call it that in my state of mind) that he would only be there for a few minutes and would not notice a thing, so I lined up another fat one right before he got there. When he arrived I was very high, but at least I wasn’t ‘jonesing” for more, which may have even been worse. He went through the standard questions when I thought he was about to wrap it up, he asks me “do you want to tell me about the drug test you took last month?” I was caught off guard with that as I was sure the test kit would have worked, it was even double your money back if it didn’t work. Of course good luck trying to explain to your P.O. that you need the test results so you can get your money back for a test kit you took. I composed myself the best I could and said ‘maybe it had a bit of THC in it’ he said “it had both THC and cocaine in it”.I tried to make some excuse saying ‘it couldn’t be’ and that maybe I had inadvertently smoked some that was laced in a joint. He wasn’t buying it and told me that I would have to check into a rehab center within the next month. I tried to be as humble as possible telling him what he wanted to hear so he would just go away and not take me with him! He said he would be in contact about the details and was off. Phew, I had just dodged a bullet, if he would have suspected that I was high during our visit then I would have been off to jail for sure on a probation violation. Now I was going to have to deal with rehab and to add insult to injury, I would have to pay for it. Lucky for me that day would never come.
I successfully delayed going to rehab by having to move to a new apartment as the landlord at the one I was in got wind of my drug conviction and decided to kick me out. Luckily I had a friend who was in the business of renting apartments and she set me up in a brand new place with much more space and a master bathroom with a jacuzzi tub. Living here was going to be sweet! little did I know how short-lived this feeling would be.
I had been living in the new apartment for a few weeks and was loving it. I woke one Tuesday morning in May to find the sun shining down on a glorious new day. I had a great feeling with all kinds of energy so I figured I would go to the gym and burn some of it in a productive way. On the way out the door I noticed a message on my machine, it was only 9 in the morning and wondered who would have called that early in the morning. When I checked it, it was my P.O. sounding urgent and wanting me to get ahold of him right away. He had also left two messages the previous day but I had thought he was just bugging me about rehab. I also disregarded this morning’s message as I had a meeting with him on Thursday, I figured I would get it sorted then. Off to the gym I went and had a great work-out, when I left the gym I couldn’t help but notice that the day was rapidly progressing into one of those perfect spring days and since I kept my clubs in the trunk, I headed to the golf course for a round ( a decision that would save my life ). After a decent round I headed home for something to eat and a shower, My apartment was at the end of a small cul-de-sac which you could easily see from the cross street. Having been in the drug game for the past decade, I had become very good at noticing things that are out-of-place in my surroundings and that skill would be a great benefit now. When I approached the turn to my street, I noticed what seemed to me to be unmarked cop cars lining my street and an unfamiliar van in my driveway. This felt very wrong and I kept driving by at my turn. My stomach was in knots, this couldn’t be, could it? I had to make sure, I headed to the street that ran behind my apt to see if there were any more signs of a raid. My heart sunk as when I saw my back balcony, the door was open ( I always shut and locked it when I left, after all, I was a bud dealer) and inside I could see several people standing around. My worst fear confirmed, they were raiding my house and I was screwed! I didn’t know what to do but one thing I knew for sure, that life would never be the same again. This is where my story truly begins.
A continuing story about life on the run