International Smugglers

Some of my friends used to travel to Pakistan in the 1970s and bring back drugs in their false bottom suitcases, which probably sounds strange to a lot of people, but this was the life that I lived. I had another friend who lived in Montreal and he was also in the drug smuggling business dealing quality hashish. My best connection was a guy who lived across the street from me, till he went to NYU and then moved to the Village. This guy always got the best stuff because he had become good friends with the editor of High Times magazine and his reporters were always bringing back samples.

My friends and I were all Deadheads and all we ever did was party. I never thought about having a meaningful career and I never thought that there was anything more to life than just having fun. My parents had a summer home up in the Poconos and they said it would be OK for my brother and I to use it for the weekend, so the party was on. Yes it was a drug party filled with music in the woods as their property was very secluded. My friends had just come back from Pakistan with bricks of brown hash and they also had some black hash laced with white streaks of opium that they called wacky black Packy, but the best thing they brought back was this honey oil. Hash oil is a concentrated liquid essence form of marijuana, or hashish containing its resins. We used to smear it on a rolling paper and roll up these kick ass joints Honey oil is hash oil, but instead of being black in color it is the color of honey. It is a purer form that has more intense effects, and it has a much sweeter taste.

My NYU friend brought these Thai sticks grown in Thailand, where the buds were so heavy from resin that the marijuana was tied up onto sticks, thus Thai sticks. This was not only the highest quality marijuana available, but it was also the best tasting. You could get high from just smelling it! Silk threads were used to hold the Thai buds together around a stick that was about 6 inches long and although $20 was a lot of money back in those days, this greater potency made it all worth the while. A lot of the girls brought food and a lot of guys brought beer, so we were loaded for bear and the party was on. I had the boom box and I had a lot of rare Grateful Dead tapes, which I recorded at some of the concerts that I went to.

I guess about 20 people showed up at the party, where we grilled a lot of steaks, as my dad had built this huge barbecue pit in the back yard. There were a lot of snakes around, so I warned all of my friends not to wander off to far in the woods, unless they were wearing thick shoes and long pants. I did take them up to the beaver damn, which was about a two mile hike, but I told everyone that they needed to be quite, or else the beavers would be scared away. Beavers are fascinating animals to watch and their dams are usually started by a young male looking for love allowing him to mate for life and start a family. I used to love sitting up on the hill by this stream and watching the beavers do their thing, as it always felt so peaceful.

Twenty people was a lot for this rather small two bedroom house that only had one bathroom, but even though my friends experimented with drugs, we were all respectful people that knew how to behave around others. Four couples took the two bedrooms and since I did not have a girlfriend at this time in my life, I called the living room couch. Most people brought sleeping bags and they passed out on the floor. This one guy passed out early and we all started putting our empty beer cans on him while he was sleeping, which got real funny as they kept piling up higher and higher. Eventually he woke up and the cans went crashing down which made us all laugh, although he did not seem to be amused. I had helped my dad on many weekends getting this house fixed up just the way he wanted it and it was nice of him to let me use it for this party.