True Confessions

[boomer2]

A few incidents of police interference in my shroomy days regarding pot and picking shrooms.

The following story is true and not a figment of my imagination.  It happened to me in the first few years of the 1980s.  No names are used except mine.  And I have only discussed this incident with a few friends over the course of the last 24-years.

I just posted this tale in an email to someone who noted they had permanent back pain and asked me how they should go about getting treated in Washington state as that person would soon be moving to Washington.  I want to note that my personal attitude about marijuana and its cost is my own personal opinion, but that I have many friends who agree with my assessment and my view concerning the greed of marijuana and those who grow it.

"Hi, this is in response to your question of how to obtain proper medical treatment for your ailments which you say are permanently a conditon of your physical being.

There is no medication outside of oxycodone (vicodan) legal treatment.
While Washington has a medical marijuana program, It would be up to you to find a physician willing to support your need for medical marijuana.  Mine was for arthritis in both my hands, and I have bone spurs in both hands.  However, in Nov of 2007, I fell about 5 feet to the ground and hit so hard it bounce me from one side to the other.  I had fractures in both arms and a right shattered elbow and my wrist were sprained.  I was on 30 tabs of 5 mg of morphine and two months of pain killers I can no longer finger pick my guitar with my right hand due to the implant and have problems holding onto a pick and problems playing the right side of my keyboard.  I had a metal implant, strangely shaped like a mushroom to replace my elbow.  When the accident occurred, I apparently had no more arthritic pain in either hand and have not smoked any pot since November of 2007.  I have smoked pot since 1962 while working as an extra in the movie, "The Greatest Story Ever Told."  and smoked it until I broke my arms and lost my elbow.  Now I have no more arthritic pain in my hands.  I do get cramps once in a while.  I love pot, but coming out of Haight-Ashbury and the psychedelic sixties, to me pot is only worth $10.00 an ounce.  I do not like super budd and have always preferred Mexican dirt weed.  Half a joint and I feel good and the come-on is slow. I do not like the greed associated with pot.  And that is what comes with high-grade pot.  I personally have no pity when I read of someone caught growing more than 4-5 plants.  And during my life I have seen crops of 300 plants to at least 4,000.  I never support those kind of people because it is greed.
 
It seems the shock of the impact on my body somehow overshadowed any arthritis into some kind of remission.  You can go to a marijuana medical supplier shop in the city and ask where you can see a doctor specific to the needs of your problem.  I cannot refer you.  This is something you need to do for yourself.
 
Another point I want to bring to your attention, while I have, since 1962, always been able to find pot when I wanted it, I never spent money on it. I could always trade shrooms or other services to have my pot.  However, during that time, hundreds of my friends (not really all friends, but mere acquaintances) would always ask me to pick some pot up for them.  One thing I learned in my lifetime is that selling pot or delivering to someone else, always eventually gets someone busted.  I do not deal pot, so many friends would get uptight at me for that position.  A lot of shroom busts, and I have over 500 in my files now, the majority of them were because cops had warrants for pot dealings and that in turn showed up with illicit shroom growing operations or possession of mass quantities of mushrooms, several incidents in the more than 50 busts involved shroom cultivations of from 30 to 500 pounds of mushrooms.  Something else I am very much against, as I am about people who make shroom candies. That leads to selling at schools and that leads to law enforcement activity.  I have no sympathy for anyone who grows more shrooms than they really need.
 
Sorry to go on a rant, my pain is mine alone and I had to deal with it.  I personally do not care if they legalize or nor because I was able to smoke it successfully for more than 45 years without any problems.  But then that is me.  I know better not to smoke pot in a car when I am photographing shrooms with others who might want to light up. I have actually gotten out of vehicles when others have lit joints up.  Sure in a field picking shrooms a joint is cool.  But smoke in a car can get you busted and Cops, the TV series has a lot of dumb people, pulled over smoking weed and lying to the cops about it.
 
I have seen a friend confronted once in Oregon, a very liberal state that was the 1st to decriminalize pot.  The cop asked my friend if he had any drugs or pot on him, He told the officer yes and handed his bag of weed to the cop, and the cop opened it and said, remember Bob Dylan's song, Blowin' in the Wind, and that is what the officer did to the pot.  Then he said, "well, no evidence,  You be sure to have a nice day now."
 
I was even caught one time when I had several bags of pot on me, 3 dried ounces of mushrooms and two pharmaceutical vials of MDMA, before it was illegal.
 
I had a friend who lived near Eugene, grew pot and lived with a girl with 7 kids,  3 over 14, and they were allowed to smoke pot on the weekends but not during school time.  One time I was hitch=hiking out to their farm and after walking an hour with no ride, I decided to wander onto a dirt road to roll a joint to kill the monotony.  I heard some loud music ahead around a bend in the road and loud laughing and much giggling.  IT was a carload of school kids smoking doobies like I wanted to.  As I approached the car, I noticed it was the son of my friend.  Of course he was doing what he shouldn't so I joined them and kept his secret.  Never ever break the trust bond one has with someone that age or he/she will never trust anyone ever again in their life.
 
Anyway, I was in the mall in Eugene one day, I had just bought a pipe at the Hindu head shop (Today they and Muslims own all of the tobacco shops, sell bongs and water pipes and never get raided although paraphernalia is illegal in Washington, and down town in the public market in Seattle is now the oldest head shop in the city.  Owners friends of mine since 1974.
 
So I ran into my friend's son in the mall in Eugene and We deci9ded to step into a walkway behind the five and ten store and smoke a bowl.  Ten minutes later he left and I was walking down them all when two cops on foot beckoned me over to the side of a building.  They said someone had reported someone who fit my description and color of my backpack smoking pot with a minor and called the cops.  I immediately denied smoking pot with someone under age.  So the cop said to me, "What is that in your shirt pocket?" Stupid me.  I said, "My new pipe."  So I handed it to him.  Unfortunately it had fresh resin in it so they handcuffed me and walked me through the mall to a side street and to the back of the mall where they had me handcuffed and then went into my backpack.
 
So he finds a brown paper bag, one of several and inside it were about 7 one gram (real weight, not the street shit here in Seattle which is usually half grams) and says, "Ought oh, we gotcha."  "No sir, I replied, that's my personal stash." In Oregon in 1981, Possession of pot less than 45 grams was a misdemeanor, usually a normal $100.00 fine, but judges usually ask for a $25.00 fine.  This time he brought out another brown luncheon bag and it had about between half to 3/4s of an ounce.  As he opened the bag and looked inside, he then said, "No, now we got you."  I told him that it was less than an ounce or so.  HE then took out his California postal scale used by police to weight confiscated small amounts of pot and weighed it and from his own admission, I still had, altogether, counting the small gram bags, under 45 grams.
 
Now he was having a difficult time with me and the female officer actually let out a grin.  Then he grabbed the third bag and it had about 3 dried ounces of P. cubensis.  He said, "so you have mushrooms.  What kind are they?"  I told him I picked them and dried them out and that I was going to take them to the U of Oregon's Botany department to see if they were edible.  He knew what I had, but I learned never admit what you have or are doing if you have all of the items i had in my backpack, plus the officer's belief that the phone call to the Police indicated I was smoking pot with a minor.  Not good in a courtroom.  So then he was feeling inside my back pack and he found the two European vials of MDMA.  Had warnings on the label, "Not for human consumption. For laboratory research only.  Then he grinned again and said, "I think you are in big trouble now."  So I explained to him and his female partner that what I had was not illegal under any laws in America, Federal of local.  He took that in stride but added, "I hope you do not think I am ignorant, I know what all of this is."  But I told me, all I have is marijuana possession,.  So he had to call in on his walkie- talkie to find out what to do with me.
 
As it turned out, he was told to write me a marijuana possession ticket for under 45 grams, and to list the confiscated other suspected illicit drugs and let me go.
 
So I got a ticket and they took my drugs.
 
Now this is what happened next.
 
I had a court date for my possession for 3 weeks later.  Since I was paranoid about the mushrooms, I asked for a continuance and set a later date for my appearance for 30 days.  As that time approached I ask for a 45 day reschedule and it was approved.
 
Finally, the day of my appearance, I went into the bailiff's office and ask the sheriff at the desk, "How long does it take to analyze mushrooms in Eugene?" the sheriff then asked, "When did the mushroom incident occur."  I told him about 2 months before this time. He looked at me and said, "well if they haven't charged you with them by now, then they probably won't."  Well I was relieved at that assurance.  However, police are generally known to lie when drugs are involved in ongoing investigations.  However, at my website is the grapevine section of mushroom incidents from the first ever attention newspapers gave to thousands of weekend pickers.  You can read the Oregon and Washington news item cases reported in the press where during 1974 through the early 1980s, police spokespersons told news reporters that their State Crime Labs had analyzed 100s of pounds of confiscated shrooms and never found any psilocybin in them whatsoever.  One sheriff in a news time said, "I don't know what is in them but if you eat a few and drink a highball you get quite a kick."
 
There is no medication outside of oxycodone (vicodan) legal treatment.
 
While Washington has a medical marijuana program, It would be up to you to find a physician willing to support your need for medical marijuana.  Mine was for arthritis in both my hands, and I have bone spurs in both hands.  However, in Nov of 2007, I fell about 5 feet to the ground and hit so hard it bounce me from one side to the other.  I had fractures in both arms and a right shattered elbow and my wrist were sprained.  I was on 30 tabs of 5 mg of morphine and two months of pain killers I can no longer finger pick my guitar with my right hand due to the implant and have problems holding onto a pick and problems playing the right side of my keyboard.  I had a metal implant, strangely shaped like a mushroom to replace my elbow.  When the accident occurred, I apparently had no more arthritic pain in either hand and have not smoked any pot since November of 2007.  I have smoked pot since 1962 while working as an extra in the movie, "The Greatest Story Ever Told."  and smoked it until I broke my arms and lost my elbow.  Now I have no more arthritic pain in my hands.  I do get cramps once in a while.  I love pot, but coming out of Haight-Ashbury and the psychedelic sixties, to me pot is only worth $10.00 an ounce.  I do not like super budd and have always preferred Mexican dirt weed.  Half a joint and I feel good and the come-on is slow. I do not like the greed associated with pot.  And that is what comes with high-grade pot.  I personally have no pity when I read of someone caught growing more than 4-5 plants.  And during my life I have seen crops of 300 plants to at least 4,000.  I never support those kind of people because it is greed.
 
It seems the shock of the impact on my body somehow overshadowed any arthritis into some kind of remission.  You can go to a marijuana medical supplier shop in the city and ask where you can see a doctor specific to the needs of your problem.  I cannot refer you.  This is something you need to do for yourself.
 
Another point I want to bring to your attention, while I have, since 1962, always been able to find pot when I wanted it, I never spent money on it. I could always trade shrooms or other services to have my pot.  However, during that time, hundreds of my friends (not really all friends, but mere acquaintances) would always ask me to pick some pot up for them.  One thing I learned in my lifetime is that selling pot or delivering to someone else, always eventually gets someone busted.  I do not deal pot, so many friends would get uptight at me for that position.  A lot of shroom busts, and I have over 500 in my files now, the majority of them were because cops had warrants for pot dealings and that in turn showed up with illicit shroom growing operations or possession of mass quantities of mushrooms, several incidents in the more than 50 busts involved shroom cultivations of from 30 to 500 pounds of mushrooms.  Something else I am very much against, as I am about people who make shroom candies. That leads to selling at schools and that leads to law enforcement activity.  I have no sympathy for anyone who grows more shrooms than they really need.
 
Sorry to go on a rant, my pain is mine alone and I had to deal with it.  I personally do not care if they legalize or nor because I was able to smoke it successfully for more than 45 years without any problems.  But then that is me.  I know better not to smoke pot in a car when I am photographing shrooms with others who might want to light up. I have actually gotten out of vehicles when others have lit joints up.  Sure in a field picking shrooms a joint is cool.  But smoke in a car can get you busted and Cops, the TV series has a lot of dumb people, pulled over smoking weed and lying to the cops about it.
 
I have seen a friend confronted once in Oregon, a very liberal state that was the 1st to decriminalize pot.  The cop asked my friend if he had any drugs or pot on him, He told the officer yes and handed his bag of weed to the cop, and the cop opened it and said, remember Bob Dylan's song, Blowin' in the Wind, and that is what the officer did to the pot.  Then he said, "well, no evidence,  You be sure to have a nice day now."
 
I was even caught one time when I had several bags of pot on me, 3 dried ounces of mushrooms and two pharmaceutical vials of MDMA, before it was illegal.
 
I had a friend who lived near Eugene, grew pot and lived with a girl with 7 kids,  3 over 14, and they were allowed to smoke pot on the weekends but not during school time.  One time I was hitch=hiking out to their farm and after walking an hour with no ride, I decided to wander onto a dirt road to roll a joint to kill the monotony.  I heard some loud music ahead around a bend in the road and loud laughing and much giggling.  IT was a carload of school kids smoking doobies like I wanted to.  As I approached the car, I noticed it was the son of my friend.  Of course he was doing what he shouldn't so I joined them and kept his secret.  Never ever break the trust bond one has with someone that age or he/she will never trust anyone ever again in their life.
 
Anyway, I was in the mall in Eugene one day, I had just bought a pipe at the Hindu head shop (Today they and Muslims own all of the tobacco shops, sell bongs and water pipes and never get raided although paraphernalia is illegal in Washington, and down town in the public market in Seattle is now the oldest head shop in the city.  Owners friends of mine since 1974.
 
So I ran into my friend's son in the mall in Eugene and We deci9ded to step into a walkway behind the five and ten store and smoke a bowl.  Ten minutes later he left and I was walking down them all when two cops on foot beckoned me over to the side of a building.  They said someone had reported someone who fit my description and color of my backpack smoking pot with a minor and called the cops.  I immediately denied smoking pot with someone under age.  So the cop said to me, "What is that in your shirt pocket?" Stupid me.  I said, "My new pipe."  So I handed it to him.  Unfortunately it had fresh resin in it so they handcuffed me and walked me through the mall to a side street and to the back of the mall where they had me handcuffed and then went into my backpack.
 
So he finds a brown paper bag, one of several and inside it were about 7 one gram (real weight, not the street shit here in Seattle which is usually half grams) and says, "Ought oh, we gotcha."  "No sir, I replied, that's my personal stash." In Oregon in 1981, Possession of pot less than 45 grams was a misdemeanor, usually a normal $100.00 fine, but judges usually ask for a $25.00 fine.  This time he brought out another brown luncheon bag and it had about between half to 3/4s of an ounce.  As he opened the bag and looked inside, he then said, "No, now we got you."  I told him that it was less than an ounce or so.  HE then took out his California postal scale used by police to weight confiscated small amounts of pot and weighed it and from his own admission, I still had, altogether, counting the small gram bags, under 45 grams.
 
Now he was having a difficult time with me and the female officer actually let out a grin.  Then he grabbed the third bag and it had about 3 dried ounces of P. cubensis.  He said, "so you have mushrooms.  What kind are they?"  I told him I picked them and dried them out and that I was going to take them to the U of Oregon's Botany department to see if they were edible.  He knew what I had, but I learned never admit what you have or are doing if you have all of the items i had in my backpack, plus the officer's belief that the phone call to the Police indicated I was smoking pot with a minor.  Not good in a courtroom.  So then he was feeling inside my back pack and he found the two European vials of MDMA.  Had warnings on the label, "Not for human consumption. For laboratory research only.  Then he grinned again and said, "I think you are in big trouble now."  So I explained to him and his female partner that what I had was not illegal under any laws in America, Federal of local.  He took that in stride but added, "I hope you do not think I am ignorant, I know what all of this is."  But I told me, all I have is marijuana possession,.  So he had to call in on his walkie- talkie to find out what to do with me.
 
As it turned out, he was told to write me a marijuana possession ticket for under 45 grams, and to list the confiscated other suspected illicit drugs and let me go.
 
So I got a ticket and they took my drugs.
 
Now this is what happened next.
 
I had a court date for my possession for 3 weeks later.  Since I was paranoid about the mushrooms, I asked for a continuance and set a later date for my appearance for 30 days.  As that time approached I ask for a 45 day reschedule and it was approved.
 
Finally, the day of my appearance, I went into the bailiff's office and ask the sheriff at the desk, "How long does it take to analyze mushrooms in Eugene?" the sheriff then asked, "When did the mushroom incident occur."  I told him about 2 months before this time. He looked at me and said, "well if they haven't charged you with them by now, then they probably won't."  Well I was relieved at that assurance.  However, police are generally known to lie when drugs are involved in ongoing investigations.  However, at my website is the grapevine section of mushroom incidents from the first ever attention newspapers gave to thousands of weekend pickers.  You can read the Oregon and Washington news item cases reported in the press where during 1974 through the early 1980s, police spokespersons told news reporters that their State Crime Labs had analyzed 100s of pounds of confiscated shrooms and never found any psilocybin in them whatsoever.  One sheriff in a news time said, "I don't know what is in them but if you eat a few and drink a highball you get quite a kick."
 
 
So I go into the courtroom not very afraid.  The case before mine was called was a black man who bought this girl a motorcycle.  When the charge was read, this 300-plus pound black lady screamed out in the courtroom, "He bought some bitch a motorcycle?" She apparently was unaware of it and everyone laughed.
 
Since the salesperson was no longer in the state, the judge dismissed the charges against the old man, but everyone laughed when the woman slapped the old man on the head with her purse.
 
Then they called my case.  First, I knew that the judge had read the cop's report of the incident with me.  He looked at me and said Mr. Allen, this report says you were observed smoking marijuana with a minor.  I instantly denied that the person I was smoking with was a minor.  I told the judge my friend was 22 but was only 5-foot tall and looked young, but I was pretty convincing and adamant to the judge that I never would jeopardize my freedom by doing something so stupid.  Then he brought up the fact that I had multiple small bags of marijuana that made it look like I was selling pot.  I told the judge that those were my personal stash.  I said, like most adults over 21 like to drink beer, wine, whiskey, bourbon, tequila, rum, scotch, vodka, gin, that I was a connoisseur of fine weed. I had some Columbian, some Acapulco gold, some Michoacan, some Panama Red, and the big bag was some plain Mexican dirt weed.
 
Then the judge says but then you had all of these other drugs, adding, "mushrooms and 2 pharmaceutical vials of some kind of compound that was not on any watch list.
 
I then told the judge that I was a researcher if psychoactive plants and other substances and that nothing I had, outside of the marijuana was an illegal drug.
 
A few snickers came from the people in the pews of the courtroom.  The judge new what I was doing, but in a way he kinda respected my attitude about the matter.  He then hit is gavel and said, "$75.00 fine Mr. Allen, see the bailiff to make arrangements to pay your fine."
 
So, sometimes I am stupid, but I thought why not ask, So I ask the judge if I could have my other drugs back.
 
Everyone cracked up and the judge looked at me with an intense stern stare in my face and said, "Mr. Allen, do you realize just how lucky you are?  Good day sir."
 
Well I took three months to pay the $75.00.  Figured I would make them pay for that.
 
A few months later, the Eugene daily paper reported that someone had just noticed that there were two-foot high marijuana plants surrounding the entire new Federal Building in Eugene.
 
I had nothing to do with that one.  The paper even had a photo taken to the right side of the street entrance to the building.
 
Well, Have a shroomy day.  Let me know how things turn out."'''
 
That was my only real pot problem with the law.  I did have a few incidents where I was caught smoking in public but the cops decided not to interfere.  One time at Seattle Center, sitting on a lawn, smoking a bowl with a chicky-poo, two beat cops approached me sniffing in the air and ask me what I was smoking. When I told them I was smoking cherry blend in a corncob pipe.  One cop kept telling the other in a mocking tone, "That sure smells funny."  And as they walked away from me, the cop kept repeating his sarcastic comment.  They knew what I was doing.   Like I said do not admit anything to the police.
 
A few moments later I left really fast, thinking how stupid they were. Then I realized they were not stupid.  They knew exactly what I had been smoking.  It was me who was stupid for thinking they were.

Have a shroomy day,



Part Two

[quote name='gonzo420' date='Jul 28 2009, 10:44 PM' post='71774']
-SW-

i really enjoy all of your posts and look forward to more because they are so educational. however, i have to disagree with you on not telling the cops shit. i got picked up on a warrant the other day for an old misdemeanor dui i got like 6 years ago. when i was arrested they asked if i had anything on me and i said yeah and gave them my pot. they asked if there was anything else in the car. i had shrooms in the trunk but said no, just a bunch of tequila and beer. so he didn't search the car.  then the officer said, well i don't wanna charge you with this so do mind if i just give it to your buddys? i said sure and off they went. i however am now on house arrest. a have also gotten off a few times when i was underage drinking and driving. i told the truth and wasnt over the actual limit so hey appreciated the honesty and let me go. that was the first time i have been alowed to keep the pot,  numerous times they have taken it from me. i have never been charged with possession. the cops always seem relieved when im not on crack/meth/herion and dont have any needles. i've had more serious shit on me, but i just hide that really good, and give them my weed. i just think you gotta tell them most of the truth, and they will believe you. peace and thanks again for your posts.
[/quote]



Friends of mine, their 4 children and I with my two kids were picking shrooms on the lawn of Bank of America along Andover East in South Center Shopping mall in Tukwilla, Washington when out of nowhere, about 8 squad cars suddenly pulled up on us all.  I immediately dropped my keys on the grass and stuck my shroom bag inside my shirt.

Someone called the cops because we were walking all around the bank.  That was the 2nd bank I was at with shrooms and cops came.  The other time, at about 1 a.m. in the morning with a crazed doctor (MD not shrink who wanted to hold some shrooms in the moonlight to feel their aura).  That was near Seattle Center.  

So when they approached me after alighting from their vehicles, I acted like I had dropped my car keys.  Shit, I did not even have a license.  Never had one my whole life.  So I told them my kid flipped the keys onto the lawn somewhere and we were looking for it.  They never searched me or my friend nor his wife.  And I had my shrooms inside my shirt.

So the cops put a make on me and told me there was an outstanding warrant for my arrest for failure to appear for a jaywalking ticket from 6 years before.  I immediately told the cop that was a mistake that I had paid that ticket years ago.  I had not.  I could not believe a jaywalking offense would be on the records for 6 years.  And so I kept telling the cops over and over that I had paid it.  A computer error of sorts I told them.  So we sat there waiting for about 45 minutes for a cop car to come from Seattle and take me off to jail, and it was Friday afternoon that meant I would not be able to get out of jail until Monday at an arraignment that I was sure the court would dismiss the case.

Anyway, My kids, my friends four kids, his wife.  Mine was at work.  Finally one of the officers turned to me and said, "Mr. Allen, "this is your lucky day.  We really do not feel like waiting another hour for a King Country sheriff's car to come and take you to the city jail.  Since this is a misdemeanor, we really do not feel like a lot of paper work, your kids would have to be taken to children's services and that would be a big problem for you, so we are going to let you go and you really have to go pay this ticket on Monday."  

Still in denial, I continued that I had paid the ticket but I would make sure they corrected the charge and remove it from their computer system.

Between 1974 an 1986, I had been stopped every year at least 12-15 times while shrooming, sometimes with my kids and sometimes not. I have had every cop who stopped me write my name down into their little memory notebook, I have had some tell me to dump my shrooms and step on them, something I refused to do.  I had two cops take my shrooms saying they were going to share them with friends; several confiscated my shrooms and wrote the bags down into their notebook.  Nothing bad ever came from that.  And I had several who let me keep my bag and told me never to pick mushrooms in their beat.

I always believed in the shrooms that they would protect me and they always have.  On a few occasions I felt like George Jefferson, like, "Elizabeth, its the big one weezy," because a few were really rude and power tripping me.  One told me I had a lot of nerve bringing my son with me to pick drugs, to which my son told the officer, "Sir, those are not drugs.  They are mushrooms.  Drugs are what my mom gets from the doctor."  HE was referring to mom's valiums and Quaaludes; of course my son had no idea about what a drug was.

But I have had luck like that since 1962 and nothing bad has happened to me over drugs except two times when I had guns pulled on me, once over an ounce I got ripped off for, and another when a black kid pulled a gun at me for saying hi ladies to two women with him at a street fair in Seattle's Public Market. I had shrooms on me and there were 10,000 people in the street and I actually dared him to pull the trigger. IT was a 22 caliber and I know I had read of people shot six times in the face with only minor injuries. The bullets only go in about an 1/8 to a 1/4 of an inch at close range. Anyway, I said there are lots of people watching and he pocketed the little mini pistol and kept walking. Later I realized that was stupid.  But again I felt the shrooms on me protected me from harm.

Two other unusual incidents involving both a pot incident and one with shrooms.


In Oregon, my wife and I and my two-year-old son were hitching to Portland from Eugene. We were dropped off in a sticky spot near the logging mill on I-5 at Albany, Oregon.  It smells putrid. Don't know how people could live there.  You get use to the smell if you do.

Anyway, 20 minutes and no ride I put a joint in between my fingers and get into the hitch hiking mode, a car passes my hand sweeps buy with my thumb out and a joint between my first two fingers.  Within a few minutes, an old vw pulls up and I run up to the window, joint in hand and lean in, only to see a Smokey the bear cop with his Sgt Preston of the Yukon Mounties shaped hat looking directly at the joint as I said were heading towards Portland.  I then stuck the joint into my shirt pocket really fast but he looked at me and said, "was that a doobie, I'm off duty so we can smoke it if you feel like sharing."  So he, my wife and I toked it up.  That is Oregon.

One time in Noti, I was picking liberty caps at my friends farm, Lester Hale and his family have a cattle ranch on highway 46 a kilometer west of Noti, Oregon. The left side of the highway has about 12 paddocks and liberty caps galore. He charges pickers ten bucks a bucket and he can see the pickers from his ranch and if they don't have a blue bucket then he chases them out or rents them a bucket.  I use to give him copies of my book and he would let me pick for free.  Now I use to use a wax milk carton (one gallon) and it would hold between 1200-1600 shrooms.  Close to or over a pound of lib caps.  I would hitchhike the 16 miles from Eugene out west 11th to the turnoff to Florence on Highway 46.

After picking I would hitch back home to Eugene.  So if people saw me on the road, it looked like I had just bought a gallon of milk.  One time a trooper picked me up and after about five minutes says to me, "been picking have you?"

I was a little shook up but told him that yes I had.  he asked me what I intended to do with such a large collection of shrooms and I told him they were for a party of friends at the U of O for a frat party.  He told me that was okay by him and said he was glad I was not going to sell them. He made it clear he would of charged me if I had told him I sold them.

And I always asked every farmer who had a home by his fields if I could pick, some said no so I would go on to the next field, and others would let me in or charge me.

One 70 old or older lady near Noti held 7 teenagers at bay with a shotgun after calling the county sheriffs office that he had corralled a group of teen trespassers.  The sheriff ended up charging her with menacing and terroristic threatening and let the kids go.

However, Pot always gets people in cars in trouble.  And I have had friends I warned about smoking in vehicles get pulled over of tail lights not working, no stickers, plate tags expired and get popped or ticketed for weed because the officers could smell it and then other drugs turned up.  

Once in a field out near Kent at about 212th street south of South Center near where the Green River Killer buried a lot of his 40 or so victims and I knew the sister of one victim.  I was on property owned by PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) and this patch of field which had land leased to Smith Brothers Dairy on both sides of the fences where I was had Power lines in the strip I picked at.

About six teens came out and I told them they would have to leave and get permission from the farmer.  So I told them it was Smith Brothers property and they should go there to get permission as I had done.  I did have a letter from PG & E to be on the property.  And i knew Smith Brothers, who had nothing to do with the property I was on would never allow kids on their leased grazing lands to pick shrooms.

Twenty minutes later the kids come back and climb the fence saying the farmers gave them permission.  OF course I knew they were lying, but I minded my own business and went about picking as many as I could.

Before too long, a county sheriffs car pulls up along side the fence by the road and an office climbs the fence and starts to tell us to leave that we are trespassing.  Many pickers never knew that a cop cannot charge one with trespassing unless the farmer or landowner calls them to remove people from a field, but many got massive ticketing in the PNW for about five years every shroom season.

I tell the officer I have permission to be on the land and I give him my letter of permission.  He then tells the other kids they have to leave. Then they get upset and uptight, questioning why I am allowed to stay and they are not.  They get belligerent with the officer and some start to rag on me, calling me nark and pig and just in general verbally harassing me and abusing me with filthy utterances.  The cop told them to behave and watch their language and to climb the fence and get in their car and go.  He told them explicitly that if they did not behave he would ticket them for trespassing.  One jerk kept saying, "Why does he get to stay?  Is he special?" and he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and tapped it when suddenly what looked like a gram of coke flew out of his pack and the cop busted him.  Several of his friends were looking at me in anger saying wait till you leave the field.

The cop busted the kid for possession but told him, I warned you to leave, but no, you have to be a smart ass and now you have problems.

So I always believe the shrooms protect me from harm. I believe that with all of my heart. In the meantime, again have a shroomy day. IT seems that this is the day for true confessions.

boomer2