May 13, 2020 • 23 mins
Two of Nixon’s affirmed enemies, a hippie & an African American, tell stories of historic cannabis use, oddly originating in Kansas. And the Lemurs reveal their plan for a therapeutic side hustle.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. There is no place like home. There's
no place like home. Ruby slippers clicked three times and voila.
Dorothy returns to Kansas. As Perklinda the Good Witch's instructions.
(00:36):
So I played Dorothy and my nursery school production of
the Wizard of Oz, igniting a lifelong obsession with a
classic story. And until I chatted with a couple old
hippie friends for this podcast, my main thoughts about Kansas,
a state I've never visited, were related to the Wizard
of Oz and the universal truth that there's no place
(00:57):
like home. There's no place like home. However, after hearing
stories from my dad's old friend Tall Joe and a
friend who goes by the alias Cape Hot Granddaughter, my
notion of Kansas has shifted. In today's bonus episode, Kansas,
(01:19):
Cannabis and Chickens, We're going to Kansas and then we're
going to talk about chickens. I'm Rainbow Valentine and this
is disorganized crime Smuggler's daughter, do young, free and groovy,
(01:41):
making it up. We rolled along, rolling along country. He
didn't rain in the cold. Gag do to your state,
making it up as we roll, Hey, are you doing
(02:13):
Oh my god, I'm awesome. How are you? I'm all right,
just on a little staycation, you know about songs. I'm
honest staycation as well. This is k p Hot granddaughter.
Now my parents don't know her well, but she and
I are friends from the hippie theater community and we've
been acquainted for about thirty years. She grew up in Kansas,
(02:34):
and she's telling me about the first time she got high.
It was sweltering. I was playing tennis with a friend.
We finished our set and decided, oh, we'll smoke some well,
but they're still incredibly hot. We took off our shirts
and we played. We found that'd be funny, you know.
Then we took off our bras and we were standing
(02:55):
side by side on the court, passing a joint, of course,
and a police cruiser cruised by. Two men in the
car and they looked at us, and they slowed down,
and they looked at us again, and nothing happened. A
few minutes later, they drove by again and they looked
at us, They looked at our chests, and they just
(03:18):
smiled and kept driving. Ah. The patriarchy, instinctively distracted by
their probable primary source of nourishment the memory gland that
they missed the criminal activity, reminding me what the Mary
(03:38):
Jane Mamas, candy can and peach blossom from episode five
taught us. Beauty and boobs are a great distraction from
elicit endeavors. Cannabis history in Kansas goes back to the
mid eighteen hundreds, when hemp production was as common as tornadoes.
(04:02):
Trivia tidbit, Kansas averages ninety six tornadoes a year. That
seems like a lot. I come from earthquake country, but
ninety six tornadoes a year seems like quite a bit.
So hemp as common as tornadoes, maybe more now. In fact,
for decades, America's heartland was a major contributor to the
hemp industry, and according to a state agricultural report in
(04:25):
eighteen sixty three, Kansas ranked first in the US for
bushels of hemp per acre. Now, My cans and Friend
Kapot's story reveals the robust interconnection between her community of
cannabis using cansens and the state's long history of hemp cultivation.
(04:46):
Now Kapot is the daughter of middle class African Americans
who were part of a population of cansens who grew
and smoked marijuana years before it was popular with the
San Francisco psychedelic pioneers. Her grandfather grew it in his
garden and hired pickers to harvest it regularly and everywhere,
(05:06):
I mean my culture, people from my culture used to
smoke it all the time. It's a big deal. My
mom said that she was sitting in there was four gardens,
tiered gardens, and the top garden was where they grew it.
And the men would come in to work, and my
mother said she remembers, you know, them giving them tea
or beer whatever, and everyone had a brown paper bag,
(05:27):
and that my grandfather grandmother would count up the money
to them and then they would light it up. Kape
Hot reveals her mom and grandma were never shoot away
from the pot harvest in smoking afternoons because in her
subculture everyone was smoking cannabis was common. Cape Hot gives
a voice to the historic communities of pot smoking African
(05:49):
Americans targeted for disruption by Nixon, Reagan and their cronies
who criminalized cannabis in order to vilify black people and hippies,
as we discussed in episode three, The Devil Weed. But
another story. My mother belong to the Blue Monday Club.
They was a literary club for professional African American women.
(06:10):
These were her friends. Sometimes there was always a pot luck,
early pot luck, but my sister called it the day
of the Mommy laughed because other times they listened to music,
they danced, and they smoke pot. Now, these Blue Monday
Club meetings enjoyed by Ka Pot's mom took place in
the mid nineteen fifties, a pot luck in more ways
(06:33):
than one, rims shot. Yeah, well years this, Oh god.
I was a little kid, maybe nineteen six, fifty seven,
thirty eight. I just remembered that one person owned a
bakery and she would bring colored bread, you know, they
would dye blue, green, black, whatever, and I'd take it
(06:56):
to school and I was very popular because I had
this fancy bread. You know. The fun was everywhere in Kansas,
from the Blue Monday Club to Rainbow Bread to the ditches.
How can a ditch be fun? Because Kansas was and
still is full of wild cannabis known as ditchweed, left
(07:18):
over from the state's extensive hemp production in eighteen hundreds,
which of course led to communities of cannabis using cansens.
Since the eighteen hundreds. Today, if you drive along certain
parts of Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas, it's easy to spot
and smell fields of ditchweed and strands of it lying
(07:38):
along the road. Now, ditchweed has little value for livestock,
so it's fairly untouched by wildlife and therefore abundant now.
Unfortunately for the THHC enthusiasts out there, ditchweed has low
TC tetrahydrocannabinol, the chemical responsible for most of marijuana's psychological effects.
(07:59):
So while you might get a slight buzz from the ditchweed,
it won't be the memorable experience a TA see rich
cannabis provides. Now, as of this recording, pot is still
illegal in Dorothy's home state, but there's ample ditchweed. It
leads us to another Kansas story from an old friend
of the Lemur's, Tall Joe. I mentioned his name in
(08:22):
episode one as Tall Joe was part of the smugglers
baseball game in Mill Valley in that Crisp Marine air.
He and his family have been close with our family
for about forty years, and his lifelong career in cannabis
began in Kansas. This is disorganized crime. I'm rainbow Valentine.
(08:42):
We'll be right back. I've landed here. We are at
the farmhouse. Chimes and succulents everywhere. It's so good to
be back in Norcalla, so beautiful. All right, let's knock
(09:05):
off the harmhl store. Let's do it. Hello. Hey, So
I visited Tall Joe at his Sonoma County home, where
I found him sorting through a vat of greeny brown nibs.
(09:26):
It was marijuana shake to cook with butter, the essential
ingredient in tasty edibles. What a good hippie you're year.
I would like to go, but I just don't have
a barbie. I can't go now. Tal Joe was never
a smuggler like far Out, Tall Joe is a lifelong
(09:46):
pot dealer, and in the nineteen eighties he was one
of the local dealers to whom my dad would distribute pot,
usually small loads of one hundred pounds or less. And
like all our family friends I've known my whole life,
I never knew Tall Joe's backstory until he agreed to
be on the podcast Past. Tall Joe grew up in Detroit,
(10:13):
and much like my dad, he started dealing pot because
he loved smoking it. I was just I don't know.
I was just thinking that in the early days, people
got into dealing and stuff because they could buy an
ounce from her friends or something who came back from
San Francisco or something. That's how it happened back in
Michigan with friends of mine set out this young girl
(10:34):
to go pick up a pound or some half pound,
forget what it was, and she had so much fun
out here that she didn't come back for like a
month or six weeks. And everybody's going, what happened, you know,
and everybody you know back there. But if you bought
an ounce then and you sold a quarter to somebody
in according to somebody else, then you ended up not
having to pay for yourself. And so I mean that's
(10:56):
just the way it just developed right then. I mean
people would then do that. In nineteen sixty seven, Tall
Joe and some of his pot loving Michigan chums went
to California to immerse themselves in the magic and madness
of hippie doom in the Summer of Love. Now. Before
he and his pals headed back to Detroit, he learned
(11:19):
about ditchweed in Kansas. I came out in the hate
Ashbury Media and you know, caught the end of the
Summer of Love and everything, and it was quite a
quite a scene out here in Hate Ashbury and Hate
Street and everything like that. We left the day of
the Death of the Hippie. They marched a casket around
(11:39):
Hate Street up down by the panhand along all that.
It's supposed to be death of the Hippie, right, and
that was the you know that. And we left back
and we went and somebody told us that there was
pot growing in Kansas, ditchweed like that east but they
used to grow him, you know, during the war, and
it was still out there somewhere. So on the way
(12:00):
back to the motor City, Tall Joe and his friends
made a detour. When we drove back, this friend of mine,
a couple of ladies or something, and we stopped and
had a like a laundromat and bought these big garbage
bags and went out on a Sunday morning, like at
seven or eight the morning on these little tiny roads
(12:23):
and then we saw, you know, at creeks running through
and we kind of hiked back in there and found
all this ditchweed, threw it out on the road. It
was himp mostly I mean it was like, you know,
they weren't. They grew it for him basically, you know,
it's all legal Fill thirty nineteen thirty seven, so this
was and then during the war they didn't They needed
(12:43):
HIMP too for ropes and parachutes and all the rest
of the stuff. So it didn't really go you know,
that bunch of illegal till later on. You know, it
was funny scene though, because I remember these people going
to church and they drove by and looked at us
like we were, you know, pushing all the stuff into
bags and all this, you know, like we were semi looking,
(13:05):
not mis straight as could be, even coming out of
the day. Ask where. Well, I got back to Detroit
with this stuff and dog vided it malf and I
and this friend took this guy took this other half,
and I took mine and cleaned it up, and he
got busted the same night. Oh my god. Somehow, I
don't even know how it happened. I didn't talk to
see him, you know or whatever. But so anyway, I
(13:28):
put my stuff because it wasn't very good. Yeah, I mean,
it's just you know, I just put it away and
put it in the closet. And forgot about it. Basically,
I told Joe forgot about the Kansas ditchweed in the
closet because better weed was available to smoke for the
time being. This podcast has focused primarily on the movement
(13:54):
of the psychedelic pioneers POT and LSD, which came out
of the nineteen sixties, but that decade is also of
course known for the Civil rights movement and it's moments
impact on the US and the rest of the world.
The sixties was a time of extremes when rebellion against
the puritanical racist society erupted in the form of both
(14:17):
hippie free love and civil rights bloodshed. So when tal
Joe returned to Detroit from San Francisco, he went directly
from the hippie movement to the civil rights movement. With
a quick stop in Kansas. He went from peace, love
and rock and roll to violent race riots. Now tal
(14:38):
Joe's hometown, the Motor City, was the site of the
Detroit Riot of July nineteen sixty seven, the bloodiest riot
of the long Hot Summer of nineteen sixty seven, which
refers to a summer of one hundred and fifty nine
race riots throughout the country. The Detroit Riot, also known
(14:59):
as the Twelfth Street Riot, was mostly clashes between black
citizens and the Detroit police. It was the largest uprising
in the US since the eighteen sixty three New York
City Draft Riots of the Civil War. No less than
a year after the Detroit Riot, in nineteen sixty seven,
Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated, and strangely enough, that
(15:23):
historic calamity was the catalyst that started Tall Joe's lifelong
pot dealing career. And then when Martin Luther King got
killed in sixty eight, they put Detroit under curfew for days.
You couldn't go out at night or nothing else. In
there's cops and there was tanks and stuff, and you know,
(15:44):
you didn't know it will be caught. So there was
no pot around. And somebody was saying and they go,
I go, I got this stuff in my closet right
and brought it out. It still wasn't very good, but
it was something, and these people have just gobbled it up,
smoked it at me and it won't charge him that
much or anything, but it just kind of flashed me, Wow,
(16:04):
this stuff. You know, you can make some money here,
You can make a living maybe selling some pot here
and all that. I mean, it's kind of actually I
once then moved on out here because it's too that
whole was freaky though, the whole Detroit, because they didn't
had Detroit riots in sixty seven, and then in sixty
eight they wanted to make sure there was no riots.
That's why they had a big curfew right away, right
(16:25):
after Martin Nu the King got killed. So so after
that I came back. I came out here to live
and stuff, and yeah, I mean, it was just part
of the whole history then, you know, because you know,
Robert Kennedy got killed, and then he got killed, and
it wasn't good for and of course the Vietnam War,
it was heavy duty going on. And well I found
(16:47):
out later I went to my high school class. Anybody
that didn't go to college and didn't have the poll
to to get a deferment got drafted and fought in Vietnam.
And that's that's pretty outrageous in a way. So Tall
(17:13):
Joe is a poster child for the pot loving hippie
reviled by the anti marijuana establishment of Nixon and Reagan.
It was fascinating to learn that two friends who represent
the enemy of the racist Puritan system. A hippie and
an African American both shared the link of Kansas in
their lifelong weed enthusiasm. Kansas home to Dorothy Wild cannabis
(17:38):
and the lynchpin for hippies and African American pot smokers,
and who knows who else next up a totally unrelated
story from my smuggler parents that I really wanted to
share with you because it's ridiculous. Okay, So if you
watch Madmen, the TV series, you'll remember that the season
(18:00):
finale ends with Don Draper at a self realization healing
sense in northern California, recognizable to anyone who spent time
in the Bay Area in the seventies and eighties as
St and Big Sir st Aka. Airheart Seminars Training was
an organization started by Werner Airheart in nineteen seventy one,
(18:22):
offering transformational healing and self success to seekers who pay
for the seminars, which always lead to another essential seminar
in order to achieve contentment Now. Groups like st full
of self declared gurus and spiritual leaders flourished throughout California,
particularly Marin County, throughout the seventies, and eighties, and they're
(18:45):
still there today. Thankfully, my parents never got into these
predatory groups, but they've always loved laughing at them. Here's
a little slice of us having tea at their breakfast
table and talking about groups like EST and their idea,
the Lemur's idea for their own self actual Asian organization.
(19:07):
Tell me what the chicken thing is? What chicken the
chicken thing wasn't? I'll talk. We had chickens and Mill
Valley and they lived in this special coop that Walter
was Chinese um meditation hut for the chickens. And uh,
(19:27):
we used to watch the chickens. So then one day
we were watching the chickens pecking at each other and
being weird. We had a lot of beautiful chickens. We
had Polish coachings and like Plymouth Rock. We had beautiful
chickens and they pink and blue eggs. They were just
(19:48):
like humans. They were they were just it was exactly
like humans. You had the king, you know, who strutted
around and pecked whoever whenever you had his his his
helpers or you know, and then the weaklings and as
(20:09):
they failed that we didn't have very many weaklings because
we kept our chickens and they were all these very
fancy chickens. You remember, I do remember the buff coachings
and all these We didn't know how beautiful coaching. So
we thought that was you know, asked to just finish.
(20:32):
And everybody was running and doing workshops and how to
you know, become one with the universe and without We
could just put people out here and minute and just say,
watch the chickens become become free, you know, you enjoy
(20:53):
the chickens and see how they how they relate, and
then you learn how to how to be in society.
But we never did it, but that was our premise.
We really, you're gonna have a work chops on just
watching chickens and meditating, Yeah, learning, Yeah, what it was
all about. It was were we calling chicken therapy good ideas?
(21:20):
I know it was a good idea. Then nothing has
changed other than it's a good and that's chicken therapy.
Keep your eyes open for the Lemur's Side Hustle offering
a holistic, transformational healing experience with nature and fancy chickens.
Maybe some live sitar from Gabby Lalar sitar player, and
(21:42):
maybe it'll be on candy Cans Sonoma County Farm and
they're at Chicken Therapy. You will achieve lasting contentment all
thanks to the chickens and of course the Lemur family gurus.
Thanks for listening, everybody. I'm Rainbow Valentine and this is
Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter. Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter is written
(22:15):
and recorded by Me, Rainbow Valentine. Our producers are Gabby
Watts and Taylor Church. Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin,
Elsie Crowley and Me at School of Humans and Connel
Burn and Charles Bryant at iHeartRadio. Our music is by
Gabby Lala and Claire Campbell, with original theme by Mark
Karen and Me. You can follow us online at Disorganized
(22:37):
Crime podcast dot com. R story do it as with Me,
Stephen Princess, The Handshake, Seals the Deal, Rap Seal Meal,
(23:07):
Road Up. These are Wes Rolling, Dooby, Young, Rich and
Groovy making it Up. We roll along, Rolling along for Country, Roll,
(23:28):
Rolling along Far Country, Roll, Rolling along Far Country. Roll
School of Humans. There is no place like home. There's
no place like home. Ruby slippers clicked three times and voila.
Dorothy returns to Kansas. As Perklinda the Good Witch's instructions.
(00:36):
So I played Dorothy and my nursery school production of
the Wizard of Oz, igniting a lifelong obsession with a
classic story. And until I chatted with a couple old
hippie friends for this podcast, my main thoughts about Kansas,
a state I've never visited, were related to the Wizard
of Oz and the universal truth that there's no place
(00:57):
like home. There's no place like home. However, after hearing
stories from my dad's old friend Tall Joe and a
friend who goes by the alias Cape Hot Granddaughter, my
notion of Kansas has shifted. In today's bonus episode, Kansas,
(01:19):
Cannabis and Chickens, We're going to Kansas and then we're
going to talk about chickens. I'm Rainbow Valentine and this
is disorganized crime Smuggler's daughter, do young, free and groovy,
(01:41):
making it up. We rolled along, rolling along country. He
didn't rain in the cold. Gag do to your state,
making it up as we roll, Hey, are you doing
(02:13):
Oh my god, I'm awesome. How are you? I'm all right,
just on a little staycation, you know about songs. I'm
honest staycation as well. This is k p Hot granddaughter.
Now my parents don't know her well, but she and
I are friends from the hippie theater community and we've
been acquainted for about thirty years. She grew up in Kansas,
(02:34):
and she's telling me about the first time she got high.
It was sweltering. I was playing tennis with a friend.
We finished our set and decided, oh, we'll smoke some well,
but they're still incredibly hot. We took off our shirts
and we played. We found that'd be funny, you know.
Then we took off our bras and we were standing
(02:55):
side by side on the court, passing a joint, of course,
and a police cruiser cruised by. Two men in the
car and they looked at us, and they slowed down,
and they looked at us again, and nothing happened. A
few minutes later, they drove by again and they looked
at us, They looked at our chests, and they just
(03:18):
smiled and kept driving. Ah. The patriarchy, instinctively distracted by
their probable primary source of nourishment the memory gland that
they missed the criminal activity, reminding me what the Mary
(03:38):
Jane Mamas, candy can and peach blossom from episode five
taught us. Beauty and boobs are a great distraction from
elicit endeavors. Cannabis history in Kansas goes back to the
mid eighteen hundreds, when hemp production was as common as tornadoes.
(04:02):
Trivia tidbit, Kansas averages ninety six tornadoes a year. That
seems like a lot. I come from earthquake country, but
ninety six tornadoes a year seems like quite a bit.
So hemp as common as tornadoes, maybe more now. In fact,
for decades, America's heartland was a major contributor to the
hemp industry, and according to a state agricultural report in
(04:25):
eighteen sixty three, Kansas ranked first in the US for
bushels of hemp per acre. Now, My cans and Friend
Kapot's story reveals the robust interconnection between her community of
cannabis using cansens and the state's long history of hemp cultivation.
(04:46):
Now Kapot is the daughter of middle class African Americans
who were part of a population of cansens who grew
and smoked marijuana years before it was popular with the
San Francisco psychedelic pioneers. Her grandfather grew it in his
garden and hired pickers to harvest it regularly and everywhere,
(05:06):
I mean my culture, people from my culture used to
smoke it all the time. It's a big deal. My
mom said that she was sitting in there was four gardens,
tiered gardens, and the top garden was where they grew it.
And the men would come in to work, and my
mother said she remembers, you know, them giving them tea
or beer whatever, and everyone had a brown paper bag,
(05:27):
and that my grandfather grandmother would count up the money
to them and then they would light it up. Kape
Hot reveals her mom and grandma were never shoot away
from the pot harvest in smoking afternoons because in her
subculture everyone was smoking cannabis was common. Cape Hot gives
a voice to the historic communities of pot smoking African
(05:49):
Americans targeted for disruption by Nixon, Reagan and their cronies
who criminalized cannabis in order to vilify black people and hippies,
as we discussed in episode three, The Devil Weed. But
another story. My mother belong to the Blue Monday Club.
They was a literary club for professional African American women.
(06:10):
These were her friends. Sometimes there was always a pot luck,
early pot luck, but my sister called it the day
of the Mommy laughed because other times they listened to music,
they danced, and they smoke pot. Now, these Blue Monday
Club meetings enjoyed by Ka Pot's mom took place in
the mid nineteen fifties, a pot luck in more ways
(06:33):
than one, rims shot. Yeah, well years this, Oh god.
I was a little kid, maybe nineteen six, fifty seven,
thirty eight. I just remembered that one person owned a
bakery and she would bring colored bread, you know, they
would dye blue, green, black, whatever, and I'd take it
(06:56):
to school and I was very popular because I had
this fancy bread. You know. The fun was everywhere in Kansas,
from the Blue Monday Club to Rainbow Bread to the ditches.
How can a ditch be fun? Because Kansas was and
still is full of wild cannabis known as ditchweed, left
(07:18):
over from the state's extensive hemp production in eighteen hundreds,
which of course led to communities of cannabis using cansens.
Since the eighteen hundreds. Today, if you drive along certain
parts of Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas, it's easy to spot
and smell fields of ditchweed and strands of it lying
(07:38):
along the road. Now, ditchweed has little value for livestock,
so it's fairly untouched by wildlife and therefore abundant now.
Unfortunately for the THHC enthusiasts out there, ditchweed has low
TC tetrahydrocannabinol, the chemical responsible for most of marijuana's psychological effects.
(07:59):
So while you might get a slight buzz from the ditchweed,
it won't be the memorable experience a TA see rich
cannabis provides. Now, as of this recording, pot is still
illegal in Dorothy's home state, but there's ample ditchweed. It
leads us to another Kansas story from an old friend
of the Lemur's, Tall Joe. I mentioned his name in
(08:22):
episode one as Tall Joe was part of the smugglers
baseball game in Mill Valley in that Crisp Marine air.
He and his family have been close with our family
for about forty years, and his lifelong career in cannabis
began in Kansas. This is disorganized crime. I'm rainbow Valentine.
(08:42):
We'll be right back. I've landed here. We are at
the farmhouse. Chimes and succulents everywhere. It's so good to
be back in Norcalla, so beautiful. All right, let's knock
(09:05):
off the harmhl store. Let's do it. Hello. Hey, So
I visited Tall Joe at his Sonoma County home, where
I found him sorting through a vat of greeny brown nibs.
(09:26):
It was marijuana shake to cook with butter, the essential
ingredient in tasty edibles. What a good hippie you're year.
I would like to go, but I just don't have
a barbie. I can't go now. Tal Joe was never
a smuggler like far Out, Tall Joe is a lifelong
(09:46):
pot dealer, and in the nineteen eighties he was one
of the local dealers to whom my dad would distribute pot,
usually small loads of one hundred pounds or less. And
like all our family friends I've known my whole life,
I never knew Tall Joe's backstory until he agreed to
be on the podcast Past. Tall Joe grew up in Detroit,
(10:13):
and much like my dad, he started dealing pot because
he loved smoking it. I was just I don't know.
I was just thinking that in the early days, people
got into dealing and stuff because they could buy an
ounce from her friends or something who came back from
San Francisco or something. That's how it happened back in
Michigan with friends of mine set out this young girl
(10:34):
to go pick up a pound or some half pound,
forget what it was, and she had so much fun
out here that she didn't come back for like a
month or six weeks. And everybody's going, what happened, you know,
and everybody you know back there. But if you bought
an ounce then and you sold a quarter to somebody
in according to somebody else, then you ended up not
having to pay for yourself. And so I mean that's
(10:56):
just the way it just developed right then. I mean
people would then do that. In nineteen sixty seven, Tall
Joe and some of his pot loving Michigan chums went
to California to immerse themselves in the magic and madness
of hippie doom in the Summer of Love. Now. Before
he and his pals headed back to Detroit, he learned
(11:19):
about ditchweed in Kansas. I came out in the hate
Ashbury Media and you know, caught the end of the
Summer of Love and everything, and it was quite a
quite a scene out here in Hate Ashbury and Hate
Street and everything like that. We left the day of
the Death of the Hippie. They marched a casket around
(11:39):
Hate Street up down by the panhand along all that.
It's supposed to be death of the Hippie, right, and
that was the you know that. And we left back
and we went and somebody told us that there was
pot growing in Kansas, ditchweed like that east but they
used to grow him, you know, during the war, and
it was still out there somewhere. So on the way
(12:00):
back to the motor City, Tall Joe and his friends
made a detour. When we drove back, this friend of mine,
a couple of ladies or something, and we stopped and
had a like a laundromat and bought these big garbage
bags and went out on a Sunday morning, like at
seven or eight the morning on these little tiny roads
(12:23):
and then we saw, you know, at creeks running through
and we kind of hiked back in there and found
all this ditchweed, threw it out on the road. It
was himp mostly I mean it was like, you know,
they weren't. They grew it for him basically, you know,
it's all legal Fill thirty nineteen thirty seven, so this
was and then during the war they didn't They needed
(12:43):
HIMP too for ropes and parachutes and all the rest
of the stuff. So it didn't really go you know,
that bunch of illegal till later on. You know, it
was funny scene though, because I remember these people going
to church and they drove by and looked at us
like we were, you know, pushing all the stuff into
bags and all this, you know, like we were semi looking,
(13:05):
not mis straight as could be, even coming out of
the day. Ask where. Well, I got back to Detroit
with this stuff and dog vided it malf and I
and this friend took this guy took this other half,
and I took mine and cleaned it up, and he
got busted the same night. Oh my god. Somehow, I
don't even know how it happened. I didn't talk to
see him, you know or whatever. But so anyway, I
(13:28):
put my stuff because it wasn't very good. Yeah, I mean,
it's just you know, I just put it away and
put it in the closet. And forgot about it. Basically,
I told Joe forgot about the Kansas ditchweed in the
closet because better weed was available to smoke for the
time being. This podcast has focused primarily on the movement
(13:54):
of the psychedelic pioneers POT and LSD, which came out
of the nineteen sixties, but that decade is also of
course known for the Civil rights movement and it's moments
impact on the US and the rest of the world.
The sixties was a time of extremes when rebellion against
the puritanical racist society erupted in the form of both
(14:17):
hippie free love and civil rights bloodshed. So when tal
Joe returned to Detroit from San Francisco, he went directly
from the hippie movement to the civil rights movement. With
a quick stop in Kansas. He went from peace, love
and rock and roll to violent race riots. Now tal
(14:38):
Joe's hometown, the Motor City, was the site of the
Detroit Riot of July nineteen sixty seven, the bloodiest riot
of the long Hot Summer of nineteen sixty seven, which
refers to a summer of one hundred and fifty nine
race riots throughout the country. The Detroit Riot, also known
(14:59):
as the Twelfth Street Riot, was mostly clashes between black
citizens and the Detroit police. It was the largest uprising
in the US since the eighteen sixty three New York
City Draft Riots of the Civil War. No less than
a year after the Detroit Riot, in nineteen sixty seven,
Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated, and strangely enough, that
(15:23):
historic calamity was the catalyst that started Tall Joe's lifelong
pot dealing career. And then when Martin Luther King got
killed in sixty eight, they put Detroit under curfew for days.
You couldn't go out at night or nothing else. In
there's cops and there was tanks and stuff, and you know,
(15:44):
you didn't know it will be caught. So there was
no pot around. And somebody was saying and they go,
I go, I got this stuff in my closet right
and brought it out. It still wasn't very good, but
it was something, and these people have just gobbled it up,
smoked it at me and it won't charge him that
much or anything, but it just kind of flashed me, Wow,
(16:04):
this stuff. You know, you can make some money here,
You can make a living maybe selling some pot here
and all that. I mean, it's kind of actually I
once then moved on out here because it's too that
whole was freaky though, the whole Detroit, because they didn't
had Detroit riots in sixty seven, and then in sixty
eight they wanted to make sure there was no riots.
That's why they had a big curfew right away, right
(16:25):
after Martin Nu the King got killed. So so after
that I came back. I came out here to live
and stuff, and yeah, I mean, it was just part
of the whole history then, you know, because you know,
Robert Kennedy got killed, and then he got killed, and
it wasn't good for and of course the Vietnam War,
it was heavy duty going on. And well I found
(16:47):
out later I went to my high school class. Anybody
that didn't go to college and didn't have the poll
to to get a deferment got drafted and fought in Vietnam.
And that's that's pretty outrageous in a way. So Tall
(17:13):
Joe is a poster child for the pot loving hippie
reviled by the anti marijuana establishment of Nixon and Reagan.
It was fascinating to learn that two friends who represent
the enemy of the racist Puritan system. A hippie and
an African American both shared the link of Kansas in
their lifelong weed enthusiasm. Kansas home to Dorothy Wild cannabis
(17:38):
and the lynchpin for hippies and African American pot smokers,
and who knows who else next up a totally unrelated
story from my smuggler parents that I really wanted to
share with you because it's ridiculous. Okay, So if you
watch Madmen, the TV series, you'll remember that the season
(18:00):
finale ends with Don Draper at a self realization healing
sense in northern California, recognizable to anyone who spent time
in the Bay Area in the seventies and eighties as
St and Big Sir st Aka. Airheart Seminars Training was
an organization started by Werner Airheart in nineteen seventy one,
(18:22):
offering transformational healing and self success to seekers who pay
for the seminars, which always lead to another essential seminar
in order to achieve contentment Now. Groups like st full
of self declared gurus and spiritual leaders flourished throughout California,
particularly Marin County, throughout the seventies, and eighties, and they're
(18:45):
still there today. Thankfully, my parents never got into these
predatory groups, but they've always loved laughing at them. Here's
a little slice of us having tea at their breakfast
table and talking about groups like EST and their idea,
the Lemur's idea for their own self actual Asian organization.
(19:07):
Tell me what the chicken thing is? What chicken the
chicken thing wasn't? I'll talk. We had chickens and Mill
Valley and they lived in this special coop that Walter
was Chinese um meditation hut for the chickens. And uh,
(19:27):
we used to watch the chickens. So then one day
we were watching the chickens pecking at each other and
being weird. We had a lot of beautiful chickens. We
had Polish coachings and like Plymouth Rock. We had beautiful
chickens and they pink and blue eggs. They were just
(19:48):
like humans. They were they were just it was exactly
like humans. You had the king, you know, who strutted
around and pecked whoever whenever you had his his his
helpers or you know, and then the weaklings and as
(20:09):
they failed that we didn't have very many weaklings because
we kept our chickens and they were all these very
fancy chickens. You remember, I do remember the buff coachings
and all these We didn't know how beautiful coaching. So
we thought that was you know, asked to just finish.
(20:32):
And everybody was running and doing workshops and how to
you know, become one with the universe and without We
could just put people out here and minute and just say,
watch the chickens become become free, you know, you enjoy
(20:53):
the chickens and see how they how they relate, and
then you learn how to how to be in society.
But we never did it, but that was our premise.
We really, you're gonna have a work chops on just
watching chickens and meditating, Yeah, learning, Yeah, what it was
all about. It was were we calling chicken therapy good ideas?
(21:20):
I know it was a good idea. Then nothing has
changed other than it's a good and that's chicken therapy.
Keep your eyes open for the Lemur's Side Hustle offering
a holistic, transformational healing experience with nature and fancy chickens.
Maybe some live sitar from Gabby Lalar sitar player, and
(21:42):
maybe it'll be on candy Cans Sonoma County Farm and
they're at Chicken Therapy. You will achieve lasting contentment all
thanks to the chickens and of course the Lemur family gurus.
Thanks for listening, everybody. I'm Rainbow Valentine and this is
Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter. Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter is written
(22:15):
and recorded by Me, Rainbow Valentine. Our producers are Gabby
Watts and Taylor Church. Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin,
Elsie Crowley and Me at School of Humans and Connel
Burn and Charles Bryant at iHeartRadio. Our music is by
Gabby Lala and Claire Campbell, with original theme by Mark
Karen and Me. You can follow us online at Disorganized
(22:37):
Crime podcast dot com. R story do it as with Me,
Stephen Princess, The Handshake, Seals the Deal, Rap Seal Meal,
(23:07):
Road Up. These are Wes Rolling, Dooby, Young, Rich and
Groovy making it Up. We roll along, Rolling along for Country, Roll,
(23:28):
Rolling along Far Country, Roll, Rolling along Far Country. Roll
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.