4/20

I’ve been smoking weed for fifty years. I never ONCE thought of April 20^th as a weed-smoking day. Hell, they are ALL weed-smoking days.

Around these parts, 4/20 is the birthday of my soulmate Karen. We will go have a nice Italian dinner tonight and probably hit it early.

Old people are SO much fun.

There is absolutely no one individual responsible for making today a marijuana holiday. Maybe someone who owns a cannabis dispensary.

There are thirteen holdout states where marijuana is still illegal. If you look at the list, there aren’t any that you’d want to visit anyway. Crappy states like that NEED to legalize marijuana just to put up with the place. Arizona makes over a billion dollars a year from marijuana sales (recreational and medical) to add to the state’s coffers.

I took my very first hit of weed at a concert in Boulder, Colorado in 1970. The headliner was Spirit and the opener was Pentangle. It is just like the stoners to think that Pentangle was cool.

They were not.

Lame.

The second time I ever got stoned was at my brothers’ house in Long Beach. This time there was drinking and some very tasty females involved, so it seemed pretty cool to me.

I played in garage bands in high school until my senior year of high school. That’s when Reckless was born. I was the front man, singing and occasionally picking up my guitar and strumming rhythm. Danny was our bass player and insurance against any of the older, more established bands who we competed against. Danny was six-feet four inches and he would go on to be an all-L.A. City player as a middle linebacker.

He would eventually play for the Texas A&M Aggies, so he was a legit badass.

Believe me when I say no one wanted any part of Danny when he was angry.

No one.

Everyone loved Crystal.

She was our drummer and she could shred. She was drop-dead gorgeous and had a laugh that comes from the belly. She and I never got together because I always had a girlfriend. Crystal was twenty-two and was a divorcee.

What she and some of our band members would engage in would probably be considered criminal in today’s day and age.

Not us.

We just thought we were the luckiest seventeen-year old’s on Earth.

Our biggest gig was in Hollywood for a party of actors and actresses of which I had a few family members.

Talk about fantasy.

That one, single party almost made me change the entire direction of my life. I was going to enroll in UCLA and go to the film school and get close to actresses, but I ended up headed out to South Bend, Indiana instead.

Choices.

Tony was our lead guitarist and was quite possibly, the biggest chickenshit coward I ever knew.

EVERY single time we played out, he was fine with setting up his equipment and sound check, everything. No problem. Then, five minutes before we were to hit our first power chord of the evening, T would freeze.

Every single time.

Stay well.