Growing & Distributing High Quality Cannabis & Hashish since 1978…

...the years & decades have gone by & a lot has happened since I pulled off that first solo harvest in 1978. I got lucky with my first set of Family Skunk seedlings, my uncle's girlfriend at the time had sexed them all & she was an ace at doing it, 2 dozen female seedlings ready to go into a hillside somewhere in Southern California. The plants had come from an operation in Fallbrook that was very remote back in those days. It had turned out Skunk at a consistent quality & with that withering nose that no container could conceal well.

Those 24 female Skunk plants yielded about 40 lbs of primo sinsemilla bud & at least as much 'shake', or what folks called 'mersh' back then. I trimmed it fairly well, in fact so well that some older customers complained there was not much outer leaf for 'daytime joints'.

It was a different market in those days, dominated by smashed together bails from Colombia & Panama & Oaxaca & Alcapulco & Thailand. Hawaiian buds came around quite a bit, too. California grown was still mostly amateur aside from the Skunk trade, which was high end market for the sinsemilla version & back then 'exotic' meant sinsemilla, as most herb had seeds, most of that herb with seeds had a lot of seeds, to the point where I once broke up a lb of Colombian Gold for a customer & they paid me 100 bucks on top of the deal to remove stems & seeds, which I wieghed it out before & after & it was 199g of stems & seeds out of a 454g elbow.

So, needless to say, I studied & watched my elders who were pros at sinsemilla cannabis from an early age.

I had the pleasure of getting my first work assignment in cannabis before I was ever a smoker. I was very attracted to the plant & I had cannabis leaf black light posters in my 'clubhouse', an old abandoned Santa Fe railroad caboose near the train tracks by my neighborhood, a city far east of LA called San Bernardino, my uncles called it 'Berdoo' & me & my homies called it 'Verdugo'. Marihuana or Mota or Yesca or Grass or Weed or Reefer (it had a lot of names for a lot of people back then) was a hot commodity in our area. The 1960s had been a tumultuous time in my early youth & the economy was not so great by the dawn of the 1970s. Unemployment was high, folks needed some relief, breaking up lids into dimes & doobies provided that & then some.

My grandmother, who was from Roswell, NM, had come to the area before WW2 to pick citrus in the San Bernardino Valley, the home of the National Orange Show. She brought cannabis seeds with her from New Mexico, where her mother & grandmother had grown it along with many other medicinal plants.

I was teethed on tincture made from leaves & stems that soaked in mescal spirits. So you could say I was born into the cannabis life, I suppose.

So, on a hot June day in 1973, I was riding my bicycle down the alley that ran behind all the houses on my block. I was attempting a trick where you stand up with one foot on the seat & one foot steering the handlebars. I was getting pretty good at it, which meant I didn't have to watch what I was doing as much & I could 'show off' by looking around from the new vantage point as I wheeled down the alley. As I came flying past one of the cinder block walls of the neighbor's yard kitty corner from our yard, I saw a brief flash of the outline of a leaf that looked like a pot leaf sticking out from behind a stack of rooster coops in that backyard.

I knew exactly whose backyard it was, the Rivera's, Danny Rivera was in the Pharoahs Car Club & his youngest sister, Rosie, was a grade ahead of me in Jr. High. I was very excited about what I saw, I wanted to see more. I got back on the bike & circled back up the alley slowly, standing up on the pedals as I passed the wall again. I saw the leaf & other leaves more obscured, all growing of a barely protruding branch. The dogs in the backyard knew me, so they didn't bark as I rolled past again, trying to get a better angle. I was able to determine that there was at least one plant behind the 4 tiered rooster coop. The Rivera's had fighting cocks & the cockfighting was a common grown up event in the summer. I had done yard work & watched the dogs in their back yard a few times & I knew the area behind those rooster coops. I used my bike as platform to jump over the wall & skinnied my way behind the coops. There were about 10 plants back there, they had grown up quickly in the summer heat & sun. I grabbed one without thinking about it much & pulled. The plant gave on the third or fourth tug & I was face to face with the first cannabis plant I had ever held in my hand at that point in my life. I bounded over the wall using an old wooden milk crate & hopped on my bike & went into my own back gate & quickly hid the plant behind a couple of sheets of plywood leaning against the back of our garage, not sure what I would do with it, I put the biggest shade leaf under my shirt & snuck it into my room. I put the shade leaf inside of an old photo book, hoping to press it out to save it like some fall leaf or flower that was sentimental. I was pretty happy & didn't think I had done anything wrong, I figured there was plenty more plants back there & no one would notice.

I was wrong about a lot of things in that afternoon, but it was the next day, on the way home from school, my uncle Hambone pulled up on his Harley & told me to hop on. I thought 'cool, getting a ride home on the scoot, better than walking', but I was in for a rude awakening when we passed our block & went to the next, pulling up out in front of the Rivera's house, where Danny & his cousin Freddie & my other uncle, Animal, were waiting.

I was in trouble, turns out those were 'special' plants & not only was the one I took missed, it was easy for Danny to see the trail of fresh soil it left that led over the wall & straight to our back gate. I didn't deny it, I was honest & said I didn't think anyone would notice them missing. I just wanted one because I thought they were cool & besides, I knew everyone had tons of those seeds lying around because I knew they didn't smoke the seeds. Turns out those were female plants & had been part of deal between my uncles & Danny. I learned that day that cannabis plants only have full value at harvest, which was months away.

So, to make amends for my error, it was decided I would help out one day every weekend, working in one of the many spots my uncles had plants growing, from Lytle Creek to Waterman Canyon to Morongo Valley. A full day of labor carrying water, watering plants, sneaking thru the hot brush of the high desert foothills & watching the plants grow until the Santa Ana winds started blowing at the end of September, beginning of October & by then I had proven myself worthy to help with harvest in the spot closest to where I lived, in Waterman Canyon. After that harvest I was in the biz, so to speak, which would lead to me going out on my own in 1978 with that first solo Skunk harvest. I keep it moving & keep it harvesting & distributing ever since.

It's enabled me to travel the world, to see things I never would've seen if I had just stayed in that hot, smoggy valley. I have learned every aspect of cannabis use from every culture I could find, grown it every way it could be grown, developed an understanding & a relationship that few have ever known & been paid the highest prices anyone has ever been paid for the craft. I have counted money by weighing it on scales & I have asked for a lb on the front after being released from prison with no money at all & I have fronted a lb to a peer upon their release from prison. I know this plant as well as anyone could, in spite of being arrested, tortured, stabbed, shot, left for dead & still loved for providing access to a quality of cannabis & hashish that is rarely, if ever, found on a dispensary shelf these days.