As I was seated with these five big men, the conversation advanced to a story about a leather jacket which Kelley will have to tell again, and from thence to a tale of Mike and Jim’s father collecting some money in a menacing fashion, and thence to his not forging someone for not taking proper care of a piece of property. The Leather Jacket story will be related in The Devil’s Point.

Kelley: Whatever happened to Jack and Dianne?

Mike: Fuggin’ dead, I think, died in prison.

Jim: Dianne died in prison. She went up on federal charges, because she had her name on all six houses. He didn’t sign for shit.

Mike: That was some cold shit there.

Kelley: But she was a knowing partner—in up up her elbows.

Jim: He went up on state charges. She died doing time. He got released and retired for a few years in Tennessee before he passed.

Kelley: They got me to haul weed for them a couple times. But when I saw what they were doing, how big their operation was, I said, “Fuck you. You people are gonna get busted.” They had all these hydroponic systems. It was too much, were buying cars…

Author: Wouldn’t the energy consumption get them targeted?

Mike: Not so much back in the day. Things weren’t all computerized. Besides, they had the plastic caps on the meters. They eventually replaced them with glass.

Jim: Jack used to get into the gas meter and use a paper clip to stall the gear, but only long enough so that the reading would indicate normal monthly consumption instead of what they were using.

Kelley: Fuckers were into it, that’s for sure!

Jim: So, the one grow house, he paid us [author forgets the dollar amount] a month, each, to live their like a regular family, to never go downstairs.

Kelley: Like that ain’t fuggin’ suspicious!

Mike: Really, it was some Adams Family shit!

[laughter]

Jim: [Rises forward on the edge of his seat, eyes bright, talking with his hands.] Law enforcement didn’t have the satellite capability and the computerized energy records. It would only be one house in a neighborhood, and like I said, he was adjusting the meter reading, which not only throws that angle of investigation, but reduces the gas bill!

[spreads arms] He has a Big Dog lived in the yard. You could lift the dog house, which was on a wooden platform, and there was a staircase leading down to a tunnel into the basement. Only one time he had us get into a bucket for him.

Mike: And the buds were that big! [makes a circle with his hands as large as a baseball] It wasn’t gonna last—gettin’ too big.

Kelley: When he started buying cars you knew it was only a matter of time. It’s like senior skip day every day, you’ll eventually get caught.

Author: What is senior skip day?

Mike: You mean you never been in high school?

Kelley: He’s from Baltimore. They probably have head hunting day instead.

[laughter]

Author: I flunked out in high school.

Jim: So, it would be a Friday, towards the end of the year. No senior’s who skipped school would be listed as absent, unless they got caught. The teachers would try and catch us. This one teacher [name searched for and found but forgotten by author] he would stake out the parks where we liked to party, park across the entrance and call the cops—total prick. So I would scope out where the bulk of the seniors would go to party and get myself a vantage above that, so that’s we’d have plenty of time to pack up and clear out.

Kelley: So movin’ weed for years, especially when you’re growin’ and distributing in an urban area, it’s like senior skip day every day.

Mike: Just couldn’t last.

Jim: But The Dog House, that was genius!

To be concluded in On TV.