After some reflection I suppose it was all my fault, my laziness—smoking too much pot perhaps. I had a medical marijuana license, cost me three-fifty a year. I was over re-registering by about a week. The paperwork was sitting on the kitchen counter when seven body-armored guys with machineguns and two attack dogs came crashing in. My face is pressed against the floor and I’m being zip-tied while these guys are screaming commands. I have a gun against my head.

I did not even have a personal quantity of pot, just a few plants and a bunch of equipment. I had a very nice lighting array. Initially I had thought it was some kind of conspiracy—perhaps something to do with that census taker that I wouldn’t talk to. But in retrospect, it was just the State bringing the hammer down on me for not paying the three-hundred-and-fifty dollar fee.

So now I can’t even smoke!

They took all my stuff and piled it out in the yard next to this mobile command center—a big armored vehicle.

I said to the cop who was talking, “Why the machine guns and the dogs and the armored fighting vehicle?”

“Mister Davis we just want to go home.”

“But I’m a marijuana grower?”

“Mister Davis we just want to go home to our families. You were lucky you were home or your parrot would be dead. If you had not answered the door we would have flash-banged your place.”

“Let me ask you then, how many marijuana growers have fought you guys? I don’t even own a gun. I’m non violent!”

“Mister Davis, there is always a first time, and we just want to go home.”

Now this is when it got really bizarre. I was out in my yard on my knees, wrists zip-tied behind me, all of my stuff, thousands of dollars worth of equipment so that I could grow the highest quality cannabis possible. Now these seven goons bring my chairs outside and arrange them in a semi-circle facing away from me, and light up cigars and smoke.

What the fuck?

In the lock up they treated me with great respect, as if I were a visiting dignitary. But the black dudes, oh my God! This is a federal detention center. I have a lawyer, am set to get out by the end of the week. I’m being held with a bunch of black dudes who gave me no shit what-so-ever. I wasn’t the enemy, nor was I the enemy of their enemy. I was passing through. The guards would come and get these black dudes one-by-one and beat the shit out of them. Then they would drag them off and you never see them again.

I did talk to one dude in there, a pimp with a very engaging personality. He told me to absolutely not try and get my stuff back. He said if I did succeed in getting back my things I would wake up every morning to cops parked outside my house—would not be able to use a public restroom without cops shadowing me. So all my stuff gets sold on E-bay.

Now, as I’m working on selling the place and moving away I still want to grow something, wanted a little vegetable garden outside. I’m a grower at heart, would like to have a self-sustaining farm some day. So I bought a 22 caliber rifle for pests. I don’t have a felony against me, so could have bought a handgun legally—I had the right. My lawyer told me I had the right.

I pay for the firearm, and there is a waiting period. Before I head back to the gun store an Agent Vincenza of the ATF calls me up and tells me that he does not want me to have this gun. I told him that my lawyer said I have the right to this gun. He told me that he knew that but he still did not want me to have this gun. He finally said, "You know Mister Davis, I would not want to see you lose your money. If you can bring a friend to the gun store so that I can assure that ownership is being transferred from the merchant to him rather than to you, then you can recover your payment from your friend."

My lawyer told me that this was a violation of my rights but that I should just let it go, that I couldn’t fight it. So my friend and I show up at the gun store at the appointed time and these two ATF agents are there. One of them looks like a new guy on the job, stiff, just following the other guy around. The other guy introduces himself as Agent Vincenza, and guess what, he’s stoned!

We do the transfer and they check my friend out and it is all so insane being that this is all happening under the supervision of a totally stoned ATF agent. This guy was nodding out, slurring his words and rolling his eyes back into his head. Look, I know high, and this dude was high!

So now I’m working odd jobs for these uneducated rural people who do not even know how to operate their own machinery. I like the West though, would like to move back out there where there is so much visual clarity when you look out on the land. I just need to find a farm somewhere and I’ll be happy.