We left providence on August 8, 1974 amid the jubilation of the imminent resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal. There were eight of us. Beside myself, there was Dennis, Randy, Harry, Fressel, Noonan, Chris LaSalle and Doug.
Fressell drove his charger wearing a full leg cast from a recent motorcycle accident. I drove my car, a 1972 Gold Plymouth Duster. As usual, we partied as we drove, so by the time we reached Washington, DC we all had a good buzz on, but were not impaired. We had the radio blasting not music but the resignation speech of Richard Nixon, the 37th president of the United States. We were driving right through DC when this historic, momentous event in American history, was taking place. We could see the buildings of DC off to the right of the highway. Then Harris said, “Hey wait a minute. That’s not…Bon look! That Helicopter over there! I think that’s NIXON!”
We all looked and sure enough, we could see the capitol building and the White House and the Washington Monument, and a helicopter just lifting off, mere seconds after we heard Nixon say goodbye. We pulled up next to Fressell and hollered out the window at them to check out the ‘copter. All 8 of us were waving our hands out the window as the helicopter flew right over us. We were honking the horn and chucking the finger up at the president, excuse me, former president of the US.
We were traveling to something called August Jam, at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’ve always loved traveling in the South and this was another good excuse for a road trip. If it involved drugs and rock and roll, we were there. This concert came on the heels of and was billed as a follow up to the successful California Jam out in Ontario, California. The concert was meant to be almost a small Woodstock with several of the most popular bands of the time. The list was heavy on the Southern rock with the Allman Brothers,The Marshall Tucker Band, Black Oak Arkansas, and Grinderswitch, And there were other bands as well, bands like Foghat, and Emerson Lake And Palmer.
This time we didn’t even waste the energy buying tickets. We did however, bring some tin snips. I don’t remember who brought them but I knew they were not the best tool for the job. I was a “tin-knocker” for my dad’s Business, Superior Sheet Metal Works, so I knew what would been the right tool. This wasn’t it. This would come back and bite someone later on.
We each had an ounce of pot so that meant a total of a half pound in the car, plus Randy and Dennis had another half a pound between the two of them hoping to sell or trade for other stuff, like hopefully, mushrooms. Doug and I each had several grams of black hash, which Doug had gotten recently from a friend. He bought an ounce of this stuff and it came sealed in white vinyl with an official Turkish Government seal on the outside, and the words Khafa Khari – Product of Turkey printed on the wrapper. Chris had a hundred hits of THC to sell while we were down there. I had a vial of this crazy stuff called “Rush” It was a very appropriate name. It was actually amyl nitrate, and when you took an ever so slight whiff of its fumes, you would feel like your brain was strapped to the side of the space shuttle. You’d feel all warm and fuzzy all over, a real pleasant sensation, followed by slight dizziness.
In addition to all the substances we had all of the various pipes, rolling papers, roach clips and all of the miscellaneous paraphernalia necessary to consume massive amounts of illegal smokables. I also had a massive pipe made from pieces of several pipes I had put together. It was what we referred to as a “chamber pipe” due to the two large storage chambers built into the handle of the pipe. These were actually two large bowls with covers, stuffed with weed. The deal with this, was that the weed acted as sort of a filter and tempered the harshness of the smoke a bit. Plus this had an added bonus that after you had exhausted your supply of weed (like we would really allow THAT to happen) you could remove this pot and find that it had become coated with resin from all of the pot that had been smoked through it. The bowl of this pipe was large and could hold maybe an eighth of an ounce. A pipe full could easily waste a dozen people, or totally trash the eight of us.
The drive from DC to Charlotte took forever! My last memory of the drive was being on a two–lane highway at 1 AM surrounded by tractor-trailer trucks. They were on three sides of me, effectively boxing me in, although I was able to pass a few trucks, once they moved apart and let me out. The next thing I remember was someone saying ,“here it is – turn right”, so I did, and turned into a grassy parking area, surrounding the racetrack, where the concert would be held. We found a spot to park and partied a bit before crashing out for the night.
In the morning we got up and had a wonderful breakfast of Mama Fressell’s delicious meatball sandwiches and homemade pizza. She always took good care of us when we traveled. She would cook the night before and wrap it all up in foil and plastic zip-lick bags so it would all stay dry in the cooler. We probably would never have eaten as well as we did, had she not packed us the goods.
After breakfast we did various things like walking in search of outhouses, smoking dope and just exploring. Noonan spied a cow pasture across the street and he and Chris LaSalle made a beeline for that, in search of Psilocybin mushrooms, also known as “Magic Mushrooms,” a wonderfully powerful and totally organic hallucinogen. This type of mushrooms grows in cow shit so he was excited at the prospect of finding some. Dennis and Randy had stowed their excess weed in a box of Ritz Crackers and nonchalantly tossed them in the back of Fressel’s open trunk. We made friends with the people nearby us, especially two girls who were camped out in a pup tent near my car. We partied with everyone we met and gradually wandered here and there. Harry, Doug, Fressel and I wandered around the perimeter of the security fence. Fressell was on crutches and had a tough time of it. He had to stop frequently to get his breath, due to the heavy cast he was wearing.
There were people everywhere, some lucky ticket-holders were inside the fence, but for the most part everyone was milling about outside the fence. Even at this early hour, around noontime, there were security personnel with German Shepherd dogs patrolling the fence. Every so often, just to goof on them, We would jump on the fence and start climbing up. The guards would let the dogs loose at this, and we would jump down, before they could get to us. The minute the dogs went off in a different direction we would jump on the fence, yelling “YAHHH!” at the dogs, totally setting them off again. We kicked at the fence, and growled at the dogs freaking them out as much as possible.
“Seven o’clock tonight – This fence is coming DOWN!” we told one guard after another. They told us to just try. We assured them we would. I think, deep inside, they all knew their job was a losing proposition and it was only a matter of time before the fence did in fact come down. After all there were a couple of dozen of them and several hundred thousand of us. The fence was coming down exactly when we said it was. If I had been doing that job, in the back of my mind, I would have been preoccupied with “Which way can I run when they do come through that fence?”
After exploring for a while we headed back to the cars to smoke a bit and have some beer. We had no sooner gotten back to the car when Noonan and Chris came up and flipped open a baggie containing a bunch of ‘shrooms they had picked across the street. It looked like a bag full of ink and dead worms. One thing we discovered about mushrooms is that this kind melts in the daytime and liquefies into this gooey mess with an hour or so of picking them. Doug or one of the other guys took them and threw them on the ground saying, “Who the hell wants to eat that shit Noonan? It looks like a bunch of dead squid!”
Dennis was gone most of the day and we only saw him now and again partying with different people. We kind of forgot about him as we knew he would be all right. Later that afternoon it became obvious that he was half out of his mind. We noticed people off in the distance cheering on this guy who was darting this way and that, all over the place. We laughed as we noticed it was Dennis. He was barefoot and shirtless and had on only a pair of shorts that were ripped almost all the way up to the waist. Good pants to pick up chicks with.
He started to run our way and was just about to the car when he slipped and slid down a small embankment covered with all manner of sharp rocks. We could see that he had scraped the hell out of his legs and left arm.
“Whoa Denny, come here for a minute.” Doug told him, “You took a nasty spill. Looks like you scrubbed your legs up a bit.”
“No time to stop now! Gotta go have some FUN brother!” Den said before running off. One look at his eyes and his dilated pupils, was all we needed to see. It was obvious he was tripping his ass off. We watched, amused and a little concerned, as we saw him zigzagging all over the place. It was obvious that he’d hurt himself pretty bad. He was going to be hurtin’ for certain in the morning. Meanwhile the crowd was cheering him on as he ran like a madman.
Some time that afternoon, Doug wandered off and came back with a large foil pouch containing a few grams of hash oil. Now hash oil is a versatile substance as it can be smoked in a glass pipe, or a drop or two can be placed on top of a pipe full of pot and a chunk of hash. We used to call this a sundae. Or joints can be dipped in it so the ends are covered in oil. Hash oil is made when high-grade marijuana buds are crushed and compacted into hashish. The oil is the plant resin, with an extremely high concentration of THC, the active ingredient in weed. Chris LaSalle came back with a bag of nice dried out mushrooms. It was then that Randy discovered that his and Dennis’ box of Ritz crackers and their half-pound of pot were gone. We figured later that some waste-oid had wandered by, seen food in the trunk and grabbed what he thought were crackers. He or she must have been extremely pleased when it was discovered what was actually in the box they’d stolen.
Around 5:00 or so we sat down and had some more food – more meatball subs and pizza, washed down with beer or Lambrusco wine. For desert we had reefers dipped in hash oil and we each had a couple of hits of THC. The we went off to harass the security folks and remind them of their destiny. By now the music had been going on for quite some time, and we could actually hear it quite good, but we wanted to get in to the arena to see the bands. By now there was a large, increasingly unruly crowd at the fence. Immediately Harris jumped up on the fence and started climbing. They let the dogs loose and as the leaped at the fence barking and snarling, Harry jumped back down unhurt. He turned to the crowd and yelled out, “This fence is coming down at 7PM!”
The crowd roared its approval and now Harry turned his attention to the security guys. “The fence is coming down in an half an hour! We’re comin’ in!” We all started in on this, yelling, “Seven o’clock! Seven o’clock! The fence comes down at seven o’clock!”
The crowd was nearing the riot point and at this instant something happened. I don’t really know what triggered it but suddenly bottles and cans and rocks were flying this way and that. The crowd turned en masse and ran from the perimeter fence. I was running away when I heard “BON! Wait for me!” I turned to see Fressell hobbling along on his crutches as fast as he could manage, which was not really fast enough. As I waited for him there was a “thunk” and a large, 32-ounce can of Hawaiian Punch hit him in the head. He stumbled and went down. I ran to him and helped him up. He was completely white. He looked like he had just come through a war or some other such extreme fright.
He turned and yelled, “You FUCKIN’ ASSHOLE!” to no one in particular, but his curse was obviously meant for whoever had tossed the can. We got down the hill and headed back to the cars to prep for the concert. We grabbed our various smoking materials and Harris grabbed the tin snips out of the trunk. Now these are basically a big pair of scissors about a foot long, meant to be used to cut sheets of metal.
We went right up to the fence and weaseled our way through the crowd until we were right at the fence.
“It’s 7 o’clock! Do you know where your fence is going?” I yelled out.
“On the ground!” someone said and the crowd began chanting, “TAKE IT DOWN! TAKE IT DOWN!”
And so we began to do exactly that. While the security folks were busy with a large crowd of guys pulling at the fence, Harry and the rest of us moved down away from them. Harry went to work with the tin snips, trying to cut the small pieces of relatively soft aluminum wire that held the chain link fencing to the poles. He picked one about waist high, and jammed the snips through one of the holes in the fence and positioned the snips on the wire. He squeezed with all of his might and it cut the wire, freeing that part of the fence. So far the security guys had not noticed this as they were being kept occupied with people scaling the fence and jumping over. Feeling pumped up by his success, he got down on his knees to pray. Not really, the only reason he was on his knees was to snip the wire that held the bottom of the fence. This was easily done, and then he stood up to attack the top-most wire. He reached up above his head and got a good grasp of the wire and began squeezing with all of his might. He had both hands wrapped around the handles of the snips when they cut through, and pinched the shit out of his fingernail.
“AW FUCK BONNIOL!” Harris yelled, dropping the snips, and grabbing the middle finger of his left hand. “I just CRIMPED the SHIT out of my finger! SHIT! That hurts like a bastard!”
I looked at it, and you could tell that he was going to end up losing this fingernail. You could see the pool of blood gathering under the nail. The skin was turning purple and there was a square indentation from where the “nub” I guess you might call it, had pinched his nail. The snips were equipped with a steel nub or a piece of steel that protruded from each handle to prevent them from being shut too tightly and jamming the jaws. Harry had pinched his finger between both of these after squeezing with full force.
He got over his hurt in a hurry though because things happened pretty fast after that. Once the crowd saw that the fence was unhitched from the pole, they started yanking the fence back and forth. This back and forth movement, combined with all the pulling, combined to loosen several sections of fence. In seconds the fence was on the grounds and thousands of people were streaming into the concert grounds. We all ran in as the dogs were running at the crowd. I saw a guy in front of me get bitten on the arm and hand by one of the German Shepherds, so I ran off the other way and tried my best to stay in the middle of a crowd where the dogs couldn’t reach me. In a matter of moments, the security people bolted, running for their lives. It was a free concert now. We ran off to the right hand side of the racetrack, and regrouped and let Fressell catch up with us. He was wiped out from running with his cast and crutches. There was no need to run now so we took a leisurely stroll around the base of the viewing stands, looking for an opening. As we came around a corner, we found a large crowd of people gathered around the base of a water tower. We went over closer to see what was going on, and someone had somehow gotten a drain or something partially open on the water tower and a large stream of cold water was pouring down on the ground below. In this stream of water, a couple of girls were taking a shower. We all perked up over this and decided that this would be an excellent spot to stop and let Fressell catch his breath. The girls were gorgeous and all kidding and innuendo aside, they looked totally refreshed. I felt like joining them, but we ended up blowing out of there and heading into the stands to find a seat.
Once we found a place to sit at the top of the stands we set out to do some serious joint rolling. As always, I had on my nurdin’ hat, that I’d found at Watkin’s Glen, and as we rolled a joint, we handed it to Doug who dipped the end in hash oil and then we tucked into the band on my hat. By the time we were done, I had about fifteen joints, all glistening with the reddish-brown oil, standing up like soldiers around the brim of my cowboy hat. This ought to last us for the first half of the concert we figured. I broke out the Amyl Nitrate and took a few good whiffs before handing it over to the rest of the guys. By the time I got it back I was somewhere out by Saturn, nurding heavily. We smoked several of the joints, and followed this up with a nice bowl full of hash. We were totally baked by the time Black Oak Arkansas, a favorite of ours came on.
Black Oak was one of the first groups I ever saw in concert. The first concert I ever attended at the Providence Civic Center was Black Oak Arkansas, Blue Oyster Cult, and Black Sabbath. We had been fans of them ever since. The lead singer, Jim Dandy was a horny wild man, strutting back and forth across the stage, telling us how once he had that dreaded disease, and how actually all it was, was plain and simple horniness. He told of how he had it once, and got cured by this woman “come walkin’ in with long, white hair, hanging down past her nip-piles.” The crowd went mental. He wore white pants that were so tight you could count his ball hair, and every so often he would pick up an old-fashioned washboard and strum it while wearing thimbles on his fingers. One of their newer songs was an electric rendition of Dixie and I remember him strutting back and forth across the stage, waving a giant Confederate flag.
They were followed by The Marshall Tucker Band who was one of our favorites. All of the songs back then, were long, and each group had several songs that were in the 11-minute range, and always featured extended guitar solos and dueling guitars.
One of the most memorable events of the night was when Emerson, Lake and Palmer played their hit, Lucky Man. As Keith Emerson played the piano, the platform it was on, rose up, and while he continued playing, began to turn over until he was sitting there upside down, suspended in mid-air. The crowd went totally ape-shit over this. By now we were so stoned, I kept looking down and finding hash oil joints at my feet as they kept falling out of the band on my hat. Of course, when one would be discovered down there, we figured the only way to prevent this from happening again was to smoke it, and you know, this worked!
Eventually, our favorite band, The Allman Brothers Band came on to finish off the show. We got up from our seats and went down to the ground to get as close to the stage as possible. I was doing all right so far. I was totally tripped out on THC, and had added massive doses of this chemical to my brain in the form of pot, hash and hash oil, and then there was the wine I had drank, and the magic mushroom I had gotten from Chris. After a while I desperately needed to get out of there or at least to just sit down. There was no way out though, as we were in the middle of the crowd. I found myself getting a little weak or dizzy or something and just went down to my knees. When I did this, I was sure I was hallucinating, for I suddenly found myself in a forest, but wait, this was no ordinary forest. I looked all around me and on each side as far as my bloodshot eyes could see, was a “forest” of legs. Whoa! Fucked up! I sat here for a few minutes, enjoying the music and getting my head back together enough so I could stand up again. I did all right after that until the band started playing their signature song – Whipping Post. This is long in its studio version, about 18 minutes or so, and live it can go on for 40 minutes or an hour. Once I heard the rumble of the bass that lead the song off, it seemed as if this was almost digging right into my brain, or stomach or whatever. Next thing I knew, I was down on the ground again. This time I made myself comfortable and grabbed a joint from my pocket and sparked it up. It was funny how the crowd suddenly parted in my area once the smoke began wafting up from the ground. I noticed people looking down at me, wondering if I was OK. I assured them I was OK, just taking a break, and passed the joint up to them. What the hell. I had more where that came from.
Before too long the show was over and there were fireworks, just the right attraction for a stoned nation. We went back to the cars, grabbed some more cold pizza and just in case we were lacking, smoked some more to cap off the night. We still had not seen any sign of Dennis since he fell that afternoon. Within an hour we were all curled up in our sleeping bags, in the cars or on the hood or on the ground.
The next morning we dragged out butts out of bed around 9 and had a nourishing breakfast of Mama Fressell’s pizza and meatball grinders. Someone remarked. “We gotta find Den.”
“Yeah, DENNIS,” someone else said. “What the hell happened to him?”
And then, from not five feet away, came Dennis’s distinctive voice calling, “Good morning Brothers!” And there he was crawling out of a tent where he spent the night in the company of two girls, who, I assume, nursed him back to health. He was scrubbed up seriously. His entire left leg was all scratched and scabbed over. His upper arm and side looked to be in similar condition
Then we went for a ride in my car, all 8 of us. We had 5 people in the car and 3 people sitting on the hood. We hadn’t made it that far when we came upon the pile of pretzels. There was this large pile of discarded pretzels, left by vendors on their way out after the concert. I stopped the car next to the pile and jumped out as did everyone else. We filled the inside of my car with pretzels, and the guys on the hood each had boxes of pretzels. I steered the car onto the dirt road which circled the racetrack, and began driving down the road filled with walkers. Because of this we were driving about 3 miles an hour. I began calling to the crowd, “Get your pretzels! Magic pretzels! Trip your ass off with these pretzels!”
People were enthused, to say the least.
“Yo buddy! Over here,” and then from right nearby, “ME"!” Each time I tossed the pretzels to the person. And this would inspire more people to ask for one, plus I was continuing to yell, “TRIP YOUR MOTHA-FUCKIN’ ASS OFF! Magic pretzels!” It got so I couldn’t hand them out fast enough. Here were these people scrambling like dogs to gobble up pretzels that had been, only minutes ago, rat food lying on the ground.
And then I actually encountered another car, pulled over to the side of the road, I went slowly by the other car. As I passed, I glanced at the driver and noticed that the driver wore a uniform. I made a split second decision, and launched a pretzel at the driver. At that last instant, that last possible instant, before the pretzel hit, I realized he was a police officer. I hit him square in the face.
Instantly from behind me came the “whoop” of a police siren, and flashing blue and red lights filled my mirror. I couldn’t pull over because side of the road was thick with people so I kept driving. Hear I was in a low speed chase that would have put OJ to shame. We were traveling under 5 miles per hour. The siren came on for real now. I pulled the car over finally, and sat there, watching in my rear-view mirror, as a burly looking North Carolina state trooper walked up to me.
“Y’ALL FROM RHODE ISLAND?” he bellowed.
“Yes sir,” I said.
“GIT OUTTA THE CAR!” he screamed.
Hurriedly, we got out of the car. He walked over to Fressell on the hood to see what was in the box. He had a walking stick on one hand, instead of his crutch.
“DROP THAT STICK!” He yelled
The stick went down instantly.
“Why are you throwing these at people?” He wanted to know.
“They were asking us for ‘em.” I told him, which was true, I just left out the fact that we were telling the folks that these particular pretzels would make you trip. In the end, unbelievably, he let us go after making us dump the rest of the pretzels out of the car .
“See that entrance? Right over there?” he asked.
I nodded my answer back to him.
“I want y’all to go right out that exit and get out of here immediately. I told him we had another car that we had to get, so he escorted us, with lights flashing, back to where the other car was. We grabbed our stuff and split up between the two cars. Escorted by the cop, we left the raceway grounds and headed north, grateful that we weren’t on our way to jail.
We drove until nightfall, turning in to a campground at the Prince William National Forest in Triangle, Virginia. We pulled up to the ranger station and paid to stay there over night. It was a relatively cheap charge, 10 or 15 dollars I think. They gave us a list of do’s and don’ts - basic rules of the campground, and told us where our spot would be.
As it was, we ended up with a spot not all that far from the Ranger station. We pulled both cars in, and in no time at all, we had a nice roaring fire going. We sat down on logs near the fire and drank beer and wine and listened to the Allman Brothers on Fressell’s car tape deck. We kept the trunk open so we could hear it better. We made something for dinner that was NOT Mama Fressell's pizza or meatball sandwiches as we had thrown the remainder of them in the dirt at the racetrack. They were good but we needed a change. I think we had some Dinty Moore beef stew and Harry and I went off away from the campsite to catch a buzz and look at the stars. We thought we should get away from the site to do this in case anyone came down the road on foot. That way they wouldn’t see us. Noonan announced he was tired and gonna crash out for a while. He picked an obvious spot to relax – in the trunk of Fressell’s car, right under the speakers. He loved the Allman Brothers and he was happy to fall asleep with them blasting in his ears.
Meanwhile Harry and I walked down a grassy road, maybe a fire road, and found a log to sit on. We fired up the joint and relaxed. I opened up the bottle of Amyl Nitrate and we each took a few whiffs of this, and went out to talk to the stars. The next thing I knew, I vaguely heard Harry say, “Whoa Bon, what the hell was that? Uh oh. Bon, who’s this coming?”
The next thing we knew a flashlight was shined in our faces and the two rangers were standing in front of us saying, “All right, let me have it.”
“Huh?” I managed, totally messed up and still in a bit of a fog.
“Let me have the marijuana.” The older ranger told us and Harry complied.
“That too,” the other one said, pointing to me. I had no idea what he was talking about.
“The bottle,” he said, “Let me have the bottle.”
In my stupor I had neglected to do what would have been relatively easy. I had held on to the bottle of “Rush” instead of dropping it or flicking it into the woods where it might have escaped detection. Feeling both stupid and scared at the same time, I handed it up to him. We stood up and walked with them back to the campsite. Doug spotted us, coming along with our new friends, and scurried back to the rest of the guys, and said, “Hide your stuff, Rangers coming!”
No one realized that we had been “bagged” so they really made no attempt to seriously hide their stuff. Each person just placed their bag of pot behind a tree closest to them. A couple of guys threw pine needles on top of theirs but mainly they were just placed out of their possession, in pretty much plain sight. The rangers rounded us all up and after dumping water on the fire, began walking us back to the ranger station. They had us shut the music off and grab our car keys. As he passed his car Fressell grabbed the trunk to shut it.
“That won’t be necessary, Son.“ the ranger said.
Harris also put in his two cent telling Fressell in a hushed voice, “No Fressell,. Leave it, leave it open.”
Fressell shut the trunk anyway, sealing Noonan inside. We walked single file, one ranger in front, and one behind, toward the station. Once we got there, they took all of our information down. They asked us at least three times if there was anybody else. We assured them that this was it. I guess we thought, in the back of our screwed up little minds, that maybe there was some chance that Mike Noonan could escape the confines of the trunk, find all of the hidden drugs, and reduce this to a simple slap on the wrist. He explained to us that the reason they had come searching us out was that we were in violation of several of the campground rules. Seeing the puzzled look on our faces, one of the rangers held up a copy of the paper they had given us when we first arrived, similar to the one we had used to help light the fire. He read off several rules:
“ Number 1 – No loud music, Number 2 – No loud talk or behavior after 10PM, Number 3 – All fires shall be no bigger than 12 inches high, Number 4 – No alcoholic beverages allowed in the campground,” and he went on to read 6 more rules. We had violated the majority of the rules and only ourselves to blame for this.
Then they asked who owned the cars. Fressell and I stepped forward and they took us back to the campsite, to search it. This was about an hour or more after we had first gotten snagged. We went right up to Fressell’s car and they ordered him to open the trunk. As soon as he did this, there was Noonan in the brightness of their flashlight beams, rising up like a ghost from the trunk.
“WHOOOOAAAAA!” was all he would say at first. He was a bit freaked out after being stuck there for so long.
“What’s your name son?” They asked him as they helped him from his temporary prison.
“Mike,” he said, “What the hell happened?”
“Did they feed you Mike?” they asked him, with concern evident in their voices. And then it clicked – They thought we had kidnapped him and locked him in the trunk, and this must obviously be the reason why we didn’t admit to him being there in the first place.
After verifying that this was not he case, they told him to stand with the two of us, while they searched the camp. In no time at all, they had easily rounded up 8 ounces of pot, several grams of hash, Doug’s hash oil, pipes, papers etc. and last but not least, the baggie containing Chris’s 50 hits of THC.
They came over to us and the older guy asked me, “Would you like to start telling us the truth now?”
I assured him, as did Fressell, that we were indeed telling the truth.
“You didn’t tell us the truth about Mike now did you?” and before we could respond, “This is no longer an ordinary marijuana charge boys. We found your hard narcotics!”
“What? Hard Narcotics?” We both said.
“Yes,” he said, waving the baggie full of pills in our faces, “These hard narcotics!”
My heart sank. We were going to jail again. I just knew it.
They marched us back to the ranger station and brought us inside. Both rangers took all of our stuff and laid it all out on a counter top. The ranger that was in charge was amazed at how much illegal substances he had in front of him. This was WAY more than they had ever dealt with before. Before any of us could say something he grabbed the bottle of Amyl Nitrate AKA “RUSH,” and took the top off. He raised it up to his nose
“I wouldn’t do that,” Randy said but he just took a huge whiff, something you should NOT do. We looked on anxiously as his eyes suddenly went wide and he fell back slightly, against the wall. He held his right hand out against the wall to keep from falling further, and his left arm on the counter, to keep from sliding down the wall onto his butt. He finally got his wits about him after a few more moments, and glared at me.
“YOU SHOOT THIS STUFF UP YOUR NOSE?” He demanded of me.
“It’s some sort medicine for your heart,” I told him.
“Do you have Heart problems?” He shouted.
“No sir. It’s supposed to be good for asthma too,” I informed him,
“Do you have asthma?” He asked with skepticism in his voice.
“No but I have allergies.” I told him.
He glared at me one more time and then turned his attention once more, to the stash of illicit party materials they had. The younger ranger picked up my huge pipe and turned it over in his hands examining it. Then he unscrewed one of he chambers to expose the hidden stash of resin-coated weed in there.
“AHHH! That’s where they hide the stuff!” he said.
After they studied and bagged all the stuff, they took Fressell and I separately, into a room alone with them. They took Fressell in first. He was only 17 at the time and he was the head of his household, after his old man ran off on his mom, with some young chick and left her and the kids, Paula, Frankie - AKA, Fressell, and Thomas. They had him in there for what seemed like quite a long time. When he came out, you could tell he had been crying. Later we found out that after telling him what they were about to tell me, they had called his mother, because he was a minor. They wanted to verify that he had permission to be partway across the country, and did he have a friend named Mike? She assured him that he did and that she knew Mike. She was understandably quite nervous and over wrought at this news, but to their credit, the rangers told her there was nothing to worry about; that it was a minor traffic violation within the park. Then they called for me and I went and found out what he had heard that had upset him so much.
They had me sit down and told me that due to the nature of this crime, and because the park we were in was a national forest, we were subject to Federal charges. The Federal Government would probably seize both of our cars and they would most likely have them transported to a Federal Government impound yard in Baltimore, Maryland.
I didn’t cry, but rather, sat there, struck dumb, rocked with fear. After a moment they ushered me out of the room and now addressed all of us. He told us we were going into the his office and record our personal ID information. We were having trouble with Dennis because he was barely able to walk and severely messed up either from whatever he’d taken the night before or some stuff he’d taken for pain. He was barely able to talk or function. He looked like he was totally wrecked. We did our best to stand in front of him or block him and at the same time keep him from being noticed. This went out the window a few minutes later.
We had all gone into the office where we sat on the floor, while one of them started typing records up on each of us. Den was in pain due to his injury and could not stand still. The senior ranger, sent his wife into the other room to get us all some coffee. They had noticed Den, but figured he was drunk, or more than likely, hung over. And then when the woman came back with a tray containing 12 hot coffees, Den tried to stagger to his feet, lost his balance, kicked out at the door and slammed it into her, spilling hot coffee all over the floor. I could see Doug chuckling under his breath, sort of a “Fwee” sound. He put his hand in front of his mouth and stared at the floor, trying to hide this.
Meanwhile Dennis was on his feet, just barely, weaving back and forth a bit. The old guy came over and looked him right in his glassy eyes, wanting to know why he had done that.
“I’m sorry sir. I didn’t mean it.” He said with sincerity in his voice. I” fell down yesterday and scraped myself all up. I’m feeling kinda sore.”
“Are you high on something right now Dennis?” the ranger wanted to know. Meanwhile Chris wanted to know if this place was a three-shroom cabin. This thinly veiled drug reference went right over their heads.
After they got done taking our information, we had to just hang out and wait, for either the cops or some sort of government agents or whoever was going to come get us and put us in jail. The ranger’s wife got some antiseptic and treated Den’s leg as good as she could. She also gave him some Tylenol, which I suppose didn’t interact with the Quaaludes already in his system. We were free to hang out either inside or outside the cabin. They had our car keys as well as both of our registrations and each person’s driver’s license, so it was not like we could go anywhere.
We sat out on the front porch discussing how screwed we were. Fressell had calmed down a bit and we commiserated with each other about our soon to be seized cars. By now it was around 10:30 at night and we had been waiting for some local sheriff to come get us. We began to take the absence of said law enforcement as a good sign, as if there was a chance of a good sign in the “bust of the decade.” We began to get a sense, from talking to the younger ranger, that due to this being a Sunday night, the rangers were having trouble finding someone to come get us. We waited until approximately 11:30 or 12 before the rangers called us back in side.
“Here’s how it’s gonna go,” he told us, “We’re gonna let you go back home and have these pills tested. If these pills turn out to be anything other than PCP, we will issue federal arrest warrants for the 8 of you and take it from there.”
This was amazing in itself. Nowadays, possession of PCP also known as “angel dust” is almost an automatic prison term, as it is recognized as leading to violent crimes and or insanity and permanent brain damage. Back then, in the ‘70s it was basically a rip off substitute for THC. It had a similar effect to the active ingredient in pot, but it was, I believe, an animal tranquilizer. So basically what he was telling us was, if our drugs were not genuine, we would be free to live the rest of our lives in freedom. If we, or rather Chris, had gotten ripped off and had been sold 50 hits of PCP in place of the THC, we would be OK and would never hear from them again. If he had gotten the real deal, we would be arrested, brought back for trial, and put in the stir.
We were given our keys, and the rest of our personal information, and allowed to go back to our campsite. We spent the night sleeping in and around the cars, with no fire, no partying, and worst of all, no music. The next morning we got up, packed our shit and after stopping at the ranger station one more time, got the hell out of there. We never heard anything from the rangers or any other law enforcement personnel in regards to the arrest.
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