Weed take one

Weed

By Martin Franks

Born in East Moline, Illinois. The fifth of the Quad Cities, which also includes Moline and Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa. Whenever I asked people about the number discrepancy, they always gave me that look like, “Don’t be an asshole.” When I told them it should be called the Quint Cities they’d get really mad and sometimes chase me off . I wondered about a lot of stuff back then, and I still wonder about a lot of stuff now. The world has always fascinated me. Like the expression, “You catch more flies with honey,” which is not true. You catch way more files with human shit. I know, because me and Burt Fontaine did an experiment the summer before we started middle school. That was also the summer of 1977, the summer we discovered weed.

We didn’t so much discover weed that summer as we were offered it by Todd Dunkel. Todd was four years older than us, but was still in our fifth grade class. He started kindergarten a year late then got held back three times. Todd would have been happy to be held back a fourth time, but the school decided it would be embarrassing to have a fifth grader with a full beard and mustache. When he was in fourth grade, for the first time, he was already stronger and hairy than any teacher. Todd wasn’t at all dumb either. How hard was it to read the back cover of a book then make up a book report? Or during a test, look over at a smart kid’s paper when you got stuck? Todd just refused to do the work.

He was the youngest of the seven Dunkel brothers, each one bigger and meaner than the next. We had heard that the oldest Dunkel brother, Ray Dunkel, stabbed their dad and then bashed the family car in with a crowbar. And the story was, when the police came to get him, he pulled his pants down and took dump right there on the front yard. We had heard that it was diarrhea and it was so violent that it splashed up and hit one of the cops square in the chest. We always thought the diarrhea part was just made up, but it was a good story and that’s how everyone told it.

 

         As much as we hung out with Todd and considered him a friend, neither Burt or I ever asked him any questions about his family.  He liked having a couple of little knuckleheads following him around, listening to everything he said. Being the youngest of seven, we figured he didn’t get to do too much talking at home.

We learned a lot that summer, hanging around Todd. He knew the best place to throw rocks and snowballs at cars where no one could see you. He also had Playboy magazines and occasionally he would shoplift a pint of sloe gin. Sloe gin wasn’t really gin at all, not that we knew at eleven years-old what gin was. Slow gin was like cough syrup but with a kick. I didn’t care for it all and would always just pretend to take a swig.

Being eleven in the Quad Cities, in the eighties, was real boring. It wasn’t as boring for the rich kids, who had a country club with a pool and rec room with their own arcade. Sometimes they even held dances and had live music. So it was fortunate for me and Burt that we had a guy like Todd to come up with fun stuff to do. Shoplifting played a big part in relieving the boredom. Todd could steal just about anything and Burt and I were top- notch lookouts. I never thought being a lookout was the same as actually stealing. I just thought it sure beat sitting at home watching a broke TV or standing out-side the country club making fart noises as we watched the rich asshole kids run around. Todd’s favorite things to steal were walkmans, records, tapes, anything electronic. I think that’s what started my love of electronic stuff. He kept some and sold the rest. This was also the summer Todd started stealing cars. We figured it wasn’t so much stealing as borrowing, since we’d only ride around for a little bit thinking we were teenagers before we parked somewhere and ran.

Sometimes the fun would get a little dangerous and uncomfortable. Early that June Todd learned how to make a Molotov cocktail. It was a coke bottle half filled with dirt then filled the rest of the way with gasoline. You stuff a rag in the top of the bottle then light the rag, throw the bottle and where ever it landed there would be a pretty good size fire. We figured Todd learned about it from one of his brothers. I didn’t know what a pyromaniac was at the time, but looking back I think Todd had a touch of that. We never burned anything down, of course. It was just throwing these bottles of gas in a parking lot and watching Todd laugh as the flames spread out over the asphalt.

We had a secret fort in a wooded area about a half a mile from our neighborhood. Everyone knew about it, but we still considered secret. It was built by some other guys that really knew how to build a nice fort. Mid July Todd announced that it was his fort and the kids just let him have it and built another one a few miles away . It was bigger and nicer then the first one and had an extra room and even real windows.  When Todd heard them bragging about it, he went and took that one over and forced the kids back to the first one. I went around a few months later and saw they made some improvements to the original, but were smart enough now not to tell anyone about it. I still love a good fort.

Sitting around the fort on a hot July  morning, me, Burt and Todd  did what we usually did:  look at the same Playboys we had, talked about what department store we were gonna go steal from, and what we were gonna eat for lunch. Lunch was always a problem as we never had much money.  Well, Todd had money from the stuff he stole then sold, but he usually bought weed with it and what was left he soon got tired of treating us for lunch with.  Sometimes we would dine and ditch, but we cooled it for a while after Burt got caught half in, half out, of the bathroom window at Janson’s Diner. Old man Janson saw Burt halfway out the window and, when he tried to pull him back in, all he managed to do was pull Burt’s pants off, underwear and all. Burt wiggled out okay, but then had to run back to his house half naked. For some reason, Burt decided to take the fastest route home, which took him right past the homes of every girl we went to school with. If that weren’t bad enough, Burt tripped and went flying, earning him the nickname  “Skweeny,” the shortened version of “skinned weeny.” That name stuck with him right up until eleventh grade when he died. but that’s a whole other story for a different time.

Anyway, after about a half hour, Todd announced that since we were going to go to middle school in the fall, it was time that me and Burt smoked weed. We were thrilled to death, but managed to stay cool. We knew Todd smoked weed all the time, why wouldn’t he, he was almost sixteen. Heck, we didn’t know anyone over fourteen who wasn’t toking up. I always figured that fourteen was the demarcation. Before that you could drink beer and maybe even a little booze, but leave the weed alone. There was a rumor that weed wouldn’t do anything to you until you were fully out of puberty, but Todd told us that was just some nonsense the parents had cooked up to keep us kids from smoking weed for as long as possible.

Todd pulled out a small baggie of weed and a pack of Zig-Zag rolling papers, and emptied the grass onto a little tray he kept with him. We had seen weed before but not this close.     He told us that it was just Quad City Gutter Weed, but it would do the trick. It was clear Todd was enjoying his role as our weed mentor, so Burt and I just nodded our heads, like we know what he meant.   

Back then the weed had seeds in it. You had to get them out before you rolled a doobie, otherwise the seeds would pop when they got hot and ruin the joint, plus there was a good chance the cherry would pop off the joint and land on you. You sure didn’t want that happening, especially if you’re driving a borrowed car. 

Todd meticulously separated the seeds from the rest. Then, with one swift movement, he pulled out a paper, loaded it with weed and rolled it up tight. He finished the job by licking the paper to seal it and then stuck the whole joint in his mouth for good measure. We could not help but be amazed. He said he learned the technique from his brother Jack Dunkel who was currently doing ninety days over at Rock Island juvenile detention.

With a magician’s flourish Todd took out his Harley Davidson Zippo lighter and sparked up the joint. He took one long hit, let out a giant plume of smoke, then passed it to Burt. Burt needed no encouragement. He immediately took the joint, put it to his mouth, and sort of sucked on it.  Then he let out a tiny bit of smoke and started coughing. Todd laughed, so I laughed. Then he called him a pussy and hit him hard on the arm, accusing him of not inhaling correctly. Shaking his head, Todd told him to pass the joint to me. I was scared, excited and a little nervous all at the same time. I didn’t want to get hit in the arm for sure. If I cared at all about writing, I could have written a book about what I didn’t know about weed. And now, here was my introduction to what would be my lifetime affection, affliction, addiction, contradiction. A simple but oh so very complex plant.

  

I had smoked a couple of cigarettes I had stole from my mom, so I was familiar with how to inhale and not just puff. I was ready. I was over ready. It’s like I had been practicing all my life for his moment. I put the joint to my mouth and inhaled deeply. It was a lot harsher than the Parliaments I had smoked, but it tasted a whole lot better. The weed burned my throat as it went into my lungs and started to expand. I was determined not to choke and get laughed at like Burt. I really wanted to impress Todd. I slowly exhaled and I could tell Todd was impressed.

The joint got passed around three more times. Each time it came to me I felt more and more comfortable. I was now a true weed smoker, a stoner, a pothead. I had graduated, with honors, from Mary Jane University.

The anticipation was deadly. I had no idea what would happen next.  I’ve seen people laugh and get all intense and funny at the same time when they were high, but I had no idea what it would do to me. How long would it take?

Then a full minute raced by. That minute turned into five, as we sat there looking at each other. I looked at Burt, who just shrugged his shoulders.

  Another few minutes passed and still nothing. Then Todd started laughing. His eyes were starting to get red. He looked at us and said, “Good shit, right?” We nodded and said, “Good shit” back.  Todd suggested since we were all high we should just go to Sears and watch TV the rest of the day.

As we headed out to Sears I didn’t feel any different than before I smoked the weed. Nothing, zip, nada. It did not do the trick. I thought maybe I was some sort of freak. A one in a million kind of person that grass had no effect on.   After all the talk about marijuana, ganja, boo, weed, grass, hachacha, dope, herb, rope, skunk just to name a few, and now barley eleven years-old, sentenced to a life of not knowing what Todd and every other teenager knew.  

At Sears, Todd was laying on a chair, laughing his ass off, at a commercial for some back scratching device. It wasn’t funny at all but he was “high.”  Something I could only imagine. I looked over to Burt and he was half sleeping, sort of giggling. It felt like being at a party where no one wanted you there and then someone tells a joke and everyone laughs and you don’t get it. But just like when that happened for real, at a party I wasn’t even invited to, I just laughed at the commercial and pretended it was funny. It would be many years till understood the whole pot world, but that didn’t stop me from smoking Quad City ditch weed whenever I had the chance.

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