Back in the 50's in East New York there was a marijuana bust. Most people didn't even know what that stuff was. Some guy was growing pot back in the woods behind the Projects. We called the woods Sherwood Forest. There were quanset huts or we called them Barracks, that went from East New York to Canarsie. There were goats, and farms. Starrett City now is where Sherwood Forest once was. So they burnt the guys pot field. Years later when we knew what pot was we would be amazed that this stuff was growing in our neighborhood. Around 1963 or 1964 pot started in East New York. It didn't really start but it became popular amongst "cool" people, so to speak. There was one known ex-junkie in the neighborhood. He was a graduate of Synonon, the heroin rehab center. Perhaps the only in the US ( maybe). I don't want to divulge names on that, but he was famous for starting people smoking pot. His name started with a D, that 's all i'm saying. So this pot smoking started before Hippies started. What was funny , it was "tough guys" that were smoking the stuff. Not all of them. It started a division between the ones that did and the ones that didn't. In those days they didn't sell rolling papers.
You had to buy a bag of tobacco and it came with rolling papers inside. There were two brands that had papers. Bugler was one, that you settled for if you couldn't get the main brand. The main brand was Top. It took no time to figure out that Top spelled Pot backwards. Bambu and EZ Wide and Rizla didn't come for years later. The joints people rolled were like toothpicks. People would buy nickel bags ( $5), I think it got 20 of those skinny joints. It also had seeds in it. Since it was a new thing people would smoke in the streets, in parents houses, anywhere and non-smokers wouldn't have any idea what was going on. Yes, they heard a lot of giggles. Some scoundrels would rip off people and sell them lipton tea or oregano and tell them it was pot. Remember this was early on, and people were new to it. By late 1964-65 we were moving from DooWop to the Beatles and Bob Dylan. The best pot that you either could get or heard about was Panama Red, Acapulco Gold. There was Black Pot, and Chiba Chiba that was supposedly from Africa. There was a Black guy named Kelly, that had pot named after him "Kelly Red". People would call pot Tea ( because it looked or smelled like tea burning), or Boo. The Rolling Stones mention the word Boo in their song 19th Nervous Breakdown."when you were in school and you had that boo it really messed your mind,,,", many songs had hidden meanings about pot. Tambourine Man by Dylan was a favorite. Puff the Magic Dragon was another. It was days of censorship. The Rolling Stones were on Ed Sullivan show and had to change the words in a song "Let's spend a night together" to Let's spend some time together" ,,, It was hard to mention pot in the songs. It wasn't until a couple of years later, like 1967 when Beatles and Joe Cocker did " I get high with a little help from my friends"... Yeah yeah I know pot smoking was going on in Harlem. In the 40's and 50's, ,it didn't all start in East New York in the 60's. But it became popular then. Then California hippie migration started. People learned to roll huge "Cali joints" They stopped putting "roaches" in cigarettes after emptying out the tobacco, and created "roach clips" I knew a guy Davey who started a business making soapstone carved roach holders. Great carvings. I carved a few too . i still have one or two i think carved into heads. What's interesting is the early days of pot, brought people together , like a clan or family. You would say " are you a head". It was like a clandestine group. Of course then by 1967, the world went wild with drugs in general. East New York was loaded with junkies and pill heads. People you knew who were great athletes would be found in alleys dead. The gangs fights between Black and Whites kind of ended when the junkies started. What happened was the Blacks and Whites started to do heroin together. It was probably one of the only good things heroin did , was bring people together ...Of course eventually they would rob each other and kill each other or themselves. Bad stuff. Anyway, there was also the other crowd that did LSD, and those that did Speed, which the motto Speed Kills was very popular. As it really did kill people. So, anyway, by 1965 ( going back) Hashish started to be known. It was much stronger than pot. They had many kinds. Red Lebanese, Black Pakistan Slabs, Red Afghani, and the best was Black Nepalese with white mold on it, also their Nepalese temple balls. Some guys in college smuggled a lot of Kif, back from Morocco stashed in a VW van. These days, and i don't indulge, just for the record. Pot is much stronger than back in the day. Its hard to imagine that it is stronger than nepalese hash, and I still have my doubts. But it became more sophisticated. And now its' not the "cool" people who smoke the stuff. It's the people who were called the "straight" people, the suit people, doctors, soldiers, murderers, artists, all sorts.
So there ya go, what was once a cult thing is now mainstream, and is legal in so many states. As the world turns . I guess my generation is finally running the world. it was bound to happen. And Its a good thing. I'm not advocating pot, but if cigarettes and alcohol are legal, why shouldn't pot be.
It keeps a lot of people happy.
