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CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Things were coming together and flowing very well, which
was always a good sign as far as we were concerned. Whenever goals seemed
to materialize almost effortlessly, with a life of their own, it was a signal
that the energy was right and our karma’s good. With the stash house secured,
the next task was to track down equipment and parts needed to build the still
in order to start converting the puntas rojas into oil. Since having some
knowledge of the process, it was left to me to spearhead the design of the
device needed for producing quality oil in large quantities. After talking
it over with Stoker and Bligh and listening to suggestions, we came up with
the idea of converting a stainless steel, one hundred-gallon vat pressure
cooker, the type usually used in cafeterias, the military, and prisons for
cooking bulk quantities of food for large amounts of people, into a distilling
apparatus similar to the style used for making home brewed liquor.
The grain alcohol in our resin oil was extracted in the same
way moonshiners siphoned their drinking alcohol from the fermented, cooked
fruit or grain they worked with. The cooker we bought generated heat from
electric coils at the bottom of the vat that warmed a layer of oil encased
inside a thin wall of steel located in between the coils and the
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material being heated inside. The
electric coil design was perfect for working with flammable material like
alcohol and gave us a more evenly distributed energy source because of the
indirect, manually controlled temperature of the oil transferring the heat
to the material inside, which minimized the chance of overcooking the resin
and damaging its quality. The pressure cap concept had to be modified to a
more free-flowing release system that allowed heated, evaporating gases
to escape, cool and then condense back into liquid alcohol form to be recycled
and used again for the second wash.
We took the lid to a machine shop and had the escape-valve
hole drilled wider for the purpose of creating more suction as the heat inside
rose to the cooler air at the exit hole leading out. We were working with
an explosive substance and didn't want a lot of pressure building inside the
cooker and possibly blowing us up. Also, the bigger the draw the more evaporation
captured, which speeds up the alcohol extraction or "drying" process
quite a bit. We restructured the pressure valve fitting on the lid so that
a length of copper tubing could be attached to it for the warm alcohol fumes
to pass through, cool down in, and convert back into the original reusable
liquid form. There was a drain hole at the bottom of the vat that emptied
itself through a manually operated spigot valve outside the cooker which made
it easy to empty the contents of the finished warm liquid resin into glass
laboratory beakers in order to cool off and thicken. It took about three weeks
to run everything down and put together but things went pretty smoothly, and
we were ready to transport the still up the mountain to La Cumbre and set
it up at the villa.
The first thing we had to do was run a 220 electrical line
and outlet to the caretaker's cottage in order to operate the cooker. After
hooking the still up electrically we found an old, metal water trough and
set it next to the cooker, filled it with water, and submerged the copper
tubing to keep it cool so it would draw and liquefy the hot alcohol fumes
more efficiently. After everything was set up and ready to roll, we got hold
of Juan and had him start bringing us five hundred pound loads to work with.
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Once the puntas rojas was brought to the villa, we weighed
and divided it into ten lb. increments and put them into thick-walled,
clear, large, plastic bags. We would then seal and set the ten lb. bags of
weed out in the sun for five days to accelerate the aging process that turned
the fresh, green marijuana to a dark red color from the exposure. This was
the first step to producing a rich dark color and a spicy resin taste as the
sunlight bleached the green chlorophyll look and taste from the buds. After
the marijuana began turning a brownish red color, the second step was to pack
four lbs. at a time into fifty, 5 gallon glass water bottles that had been
taken to a glass cutter in Cali in order to remove the tops for the purposes
of the two alcohol washes and sun bleaching process being done during the
extraction stage that would help decompose the remaining bit of chlorophyll
left in the buds before being filtered. When the resin extraction and chlorophyll
bleaching processes were completed the raw, resin-saturated alcohol
was filtered through nylon stocking material to clean any bulky substances
out of the alcohol resin mixture that would clog the finer, less porous coffee
filters used in the final two phases of the purification procedure. After
the wash was run through a single coffee filter, and then once more through
a double coffee filter rinse, the purified alcohol resin mixture was ready
to cook down or "dry out" to the final elixir of the magical THC
laden, mind expanding, resin oil product.
Cooking the oil and evaporating the alcohol off was the most
rewarding and exciting part of the mission we were on of making the finest
marijuana oil anybody back home had ever seen or smoked. The filtered solution
was poured into the vat, the top was secured on, then the controls were set
at a temperature of about twenty or so degrees below alcohol's boiling point
in order not to bum the resin but still keeping it warm enough for maximum
evaporation. We'd then fill up the trough used for cooling the copper tubing
with fresh cold water, roll a bunch of bombers, and smoke J’s while waiting
for the still to start doing its thing.
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The first batch gave us a little rush because we weren't
yet familiar with how well our creation was going to work or how safe it was,
and when the pressure built and the vacuum created from the cooler copper
tubing started to suck the warm, evaporating fumes into itself, turning the
vapors into liquid; the whole cooker vibrated and shook like it was launching
itself into space, and as we stood there stoned and mesmerized, waiting for
ignition and blast off, liquid erupted from the open end of the copper tubing
leading into the neck of an uncut water bottle used to capture the recycled
alcohol. Needless to say, we were relieved and could exhale and start breathing
again. It turned out to be the cooker's personality trait that just before
condensing a flow of vapors into liquid, it would do a shake, rattle, and
roll dance, then spit a stream of alcohol through the copper tubing into the
water bottle. The other unexpected quirk of our creation was that at certain
We could gauge the texture of the oil inside the cooker without
looking by measuring recaptured, reusable alcohol in the water bottle. We
knew exactly how much liquid was put into the cooker and found from our experimentations
that one thousand milliliters, or about a quart of the alcohol resin solution
when dried, condensed down to
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about fifty milliliters of the finished
product of pure resin oil. So if sixty gallons or around two hundred and forty
liters, or two hundred and forty thousand milliliters of the alcohol resin
mixture went into the cooker, and after extracting approximately two hundred
and twenty eight liters, or fifty seven gallons worth of alcohol, we knew
we were close to a finished product of about 3,000 milliliters, or 3 liters.
The still would then be shut down and the remaining hot liquefied oil was
drained from the cooker through the spigot valve at the bottom of the vat
into open-mouth, glass Pyrex, one thousand mil. beakers to cool down
and cure by thickening from more alcohol evaporation due to sitting out in
the open air.
After visually checking out and sampling the original finished
product, we knew we had been led to a quality high to turn people on to and
were stoked. The oil was consistently coming out clean and crystal clear,
having a dark brown color with a reddish amber tint to it when looked at through
sunlight. For some reason we could never figure out, it routinely had a faint
chocolate aroma which was unusual but only added to its appeal that later
on became one of its identifying trademarks after hitting the streets in California.
The oil had a very rich smell without a hint of chlorophyll taste to it when
smoked. It also had a clean, glassy shine and was thick or "stand up"
when the glass beakers were tipped, which was generally a good sign unless
burnt into a tar state, that most of the alcohol has been evaporated out of
the oil which, if left in, causes it to be "loose" or runny, and
not only dilutes the quality but will "shrink" and cost people money
from evaporation during distribution. After a thorough inspection and a lot
of testing, we joyously concluded that we had come upon the kind, primo stash
and like a band of Indian brujo alchemists conjuring up magic potions in the
remote Andes Mountains, began producing large quantities of the psychedelic
movement's preferred brand of home-brewed, mind expanding, herbal “WHITE
en-LIGHTENING ”, out of some of the most potent marijuana in the southern
hemisphere.
While busy putting the oil trip together up in the mountains,
other developments had been taking place down in Buenaventura. After the sail
boat engine blew the second
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time, Fred and Bubba hooked up with
some brothers of ours who had an eighty-five foot powerboat and captain
willing to make the run to Colombia and back. Even though the still was operating,
the decision was made that as Iong as we were down here working in the area
we would load their boat too, and try to get as much weed back to the states
as possible. It wasn't often a boat and captain became available that easily,
and it was almost a sacred duty from our point of view to take advantage of
the opportunity that had come our way.
During the two months after our breakdown and while setting
up our oil lab, the powerboat made its way to Colombia and had been anchored
in Buenaventura for about three weeks. Bligh was still working on getting
our sailboat ready for the piggyback ride on a freighter north to California
and was spending a lot of time in Buenaventura and on the powerboat with our
brothers who had just arrived. The longer they were together, the more obvious
it became to everyone that because of the experience Bligh had gotten from
our sail to Colombia, and all the connections and knowledge gained from our
six months of living in Buenaventura and Cali that would help facilitate getting
the boat ready for its trip back to the states, it was decided he should hang
with the new boat to help get it outfitted, and when ready, make the return
trip back with the load.
Bligh couldn't have been happier because he wasn't making
the adjustment from life on the water to life on land very well, and we noticed
the more time he spent in the mountains away from the coast, the more agitated
and irritable he became, and his attitude began to sour and affect the vibes
at the villa. The success of a scam often depended on putting the right people
in the right places and into the element they are most comfortable with, and
Bligh's element was definitely in or close to the sea. The villa's atmosphere
was a slow pace that revolved around the time it took to complete each step
of the logistics of making the oil. You had to have patience and needed to
center yourself and zone in on the different phases of the process, that if
weren't done correctly, could affect the oil's quality and jeopardize lives
because of the volatility of the material being used. The situation
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called for a semi-meditative
state, which wasn't hard to come by while smoking good oil and weed up in
the Andes Mountains all day Iong which naturally induced a quiet, calm, deliberate,
monastery-like atmosphere at the villa with everyone's attention focused
on what we were trying to accomplish, which was to make the finest marijuana
oil anyone had ever seen that would rival even quality hash oil in the marketplace
back home. It was hard for Bligh to settle himself down into that kind of
a routine of devotion because he had the type of personality that needed the
rush and excitement of either being in command or in demand, and the villa's
pace was much too slow for him and didn't suit his character.
So as time went on he became a crewmember on the new boat
and spent most of his time in Buenaventura getting it ready for the return
trip back to the states. Everything was falling into place and seemed to be
going in the right direction until somewhere along the line, things with our
brothers and their boat took a wrong turn and began heading towards a different
purpose, both spiritually and physically, than what had been the original
incentives for motivating the scam. To me, looking at it from the standpoint
of a person who had been swept up by and connected to the peaceful psychedelic
movement almost from its beginnings, I interpreted what was beginning to unfold
as our first steps as keepers of the faith of giving into and selling back
out to the very things we were trying to overcome in ourselves and society
that had been revealed and recognized as being deceiving distractions that
blind us from the true knowledge of how to connect with the spiritual side
of humanity and creation.
The atmosphere on the new boat was a lot different than it
had been on ours when first entering Buena Ventura due to where the people's
heads were at and its size. The eighty-five-footer was mugh roomier
than our forty-one foot sailboat had been, and this crew was a lot less
secretive and had exposed themselves to more new people in three weeks than
we had during our entire eight month stay in Colombia before their arrival.
There were always unfamiliar faces and constant activity happening on the
yacht, and it was becoming a hangout, party scene that was sweeping these
guys into a totally different
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direction than what we had set out
on. They were becoming famous in Buenaventura and beyond because of the parties
and the shit going down on the boat. It was early 1972, and the full-blown
cocaine affliction hadn't hit the counterculture yet. Coke had always been
around and experimented with along with all the other hard drugs like reds,
whites, methadrine, heroin, morphine, desoxyn, yellow jackets, black beauties
and others, but addictive drugs were not the highs of choice, and that was
the key to cocaine not being a problem with the mass majority involved in
the psychedelic movement in those days. But while searching for a way to fill
the void of the much harder to smuggle marijuana, the lure of lucrative profit
from a less bulkier material that was continually rising in direct response
to the U.S. government’s war on hippies and the “devil weed”, and the
seductiveness of the psychological grip it puts on the mind when abused, cocaine
slowly began to cast its spell over the mind expansion movement of the sixties
and early seventies and was catching the interest of some of the local wholesalers
and foreign smugglers. During our time spent in Colombia, we had been approached
on several occasions by other local wholesalers known to us who normally just
worked marijuana, with large samples of coca, trying to convince us of all
the benefits of the less bulkier, more profitable material, and they would
always end their sales pitch with a sly grin and the comment, "Amigo,
this is the droga of the future."
In those days we would just laugh it off and try to explain
the differences between the two highs and why we preferred marijuana over
cocaine. We would try to educate them about what the movement back in the
states was all about and that we and millions of other people weren't in to
mentally or physically addictive drugs and that we smoked their marijuana
and took the mushrooms, jungle juice, LSD, and other psychedelics because
they opened us up to the power of God within. It was plain to see they all
knew the differences between the two and understood exactly what we were talking
about, being raised in a country where so many of its people and cultures
are getting high all the time on one thing or another. But because Colombia
was a poor country, the bottom line for them and their last comment would
almost always be, "Si, but the profit is much greater with the
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coca." You could feel the pressure
was on and that the local wholesalers were trying to create an interest and
market for their cocaine, but we kept resisting and tried to sway and bring
them around to our way of thinking. Ours and others' stance in the beginning
against cocaine helped stem the tide of its dominance in the U.S. for a few
years since there weren't a whole lot of American smugglers in Colombia during
the early seventies, but some, like our brothers on the new boat, were starting
to cave in and innocently enough, but unwisely, using the drug heavily and
beginning to mentally and physically succumb to its sensual and profitable
lure.
Really bizarre shit was starting to happen on the boat, and
Lorenzo told us things were getting out of control with our friends in Buenaventura.
But before we could get down to the coast to try and mellow things out and
keep the boat cool for the scam, we got word from Lorenzo while at the villa
cooking oil that one of the crew members on the yacht had been killed. There
had been a non-stop coke run on the boat for weeks and people were starting
to get whacked out, and the scene was getting the attention of and attracting
a lot of the Buenaventura low-lifes that even our black Colombian friends
from Tobacco Road wouldn't associate with because they were so untrustworthy
and ruthless, calling them "culebras," or snakes. Our brothers had
lost it, and the predators sensed how spaced out and loose they had become
and began making night raids on the boat stealing anything not tied to the
deck.
After a few times of the Colombian marauders sneaking on
to the yacht and robbing them blind, our friends made the fatal decision to
start posting crew members armed with guns on night watches to try and keep
the boat from being picked clean. While on a late shift, one of our brothers
made the mistake of falling asleep during his early morning watch. The Colombian
thieves who had been circling the boat like sharks all evening waiting for
their chance to strike, watched as our friend nodded out. They silently paddled
to the boat, climbed on board, slit his throat with a knife, and took the
gun that was lying in his lap for protection. We couldn't believe what we
were hearing, and the events taking
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place. What blew our minds even more
about the incident was that the brother killed was the same surfer, Tyler,
we had met in Gulfito, Costa Rica. Our friends on the way down to Colombia
had made the same stop into Gulfito as we had and somebody on the boat knew
Tyler from Laguna, so wanting another crew member for the ride back and unloading,
they took him in. It sounded very out of character to me that the psychedelisized
hippie surfer from Laguna we had known in Costa Rica would fall to that state
of mind, but that's the kind of drug cocaine is and what it will do to a person
when abused and all touch is lost with the reality of a wisdom that comes
by focusing on and keeping the faith in the "ENERGY SOURCE” making all
we were doing and experiencing possible. We had been turned on and shown too
many times over the years by the mind expansion movement to never doubt that
the good fortune we had been having was due to our belief, knowledge of, and
faith in the "FLOW” and being humbled by and focused on that part of
"IT" within us all that is our connection to "God omnipresent"
and "ITS Power" that makes all things possible. The more dedicated
and loyal you are to staying in tune with the "Intelligent Force"
that courses through all creation, the greater "ITS" effect will
be in your life. On the other hand, straying from being centered in "GOD'S
FLOW” and immersed in a loving, positive consciousness restricts and weakens
the influence of the dynamics of "Divine Will" in life, and that's
when negative things start happening.
After hearing about all of the partying and crazy shit going
on in Buenaventura with our friends, we already had serious doubts and had
just about come to the conclusion the boat was getting too much negative notoriety
to be used for a scam, but after Tyler's death, it was obvious any hopes of
cooling our friends and the boat down to be used in the future for a load
were gone. Not only was the boat too hot, but from all of their coke use,
the crew had become mentally drained and sidetracked by the white stuff, losing
their will and the positive energy it takes to do large marijuana loads. The
addiction to snorting high quality, cheap, uncut cocaine in the laid back
tropical jungle atmosphere of Buenaventura had hooked our brothers, and they
fell under its seductive, dark spell of the obsessive craving for sensual
gratification that was leading them away from the spiritual ideals of the
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psychedelic movement that had made
what we were doing all these years such a positive turn on for everyone involved.
So for basically philosophical reasons we began to drift
apart, and the crew of the new boat and Bligh, who had gotten himself sucked
into the fast lane while living on the yacht, rented themselves a villa in
one of the wealthy sections of Cali and began to smuggle cocaine. We were
totally bummed out by the turn of events and went back up the mountain to
La Cumbre and cooked oil.
It was the middle of 1973 by now, and for the last year and
a half we had been living in the Andes Mountains at our villa making some
of the finest marijuana oil most people back home had ever seen, which is
saying a lot when getting feedback like that from our connoisseur brothers
in California. If the quality of your product was appreciated there, you knew
you were doing something right, because in those days people only wanted the
kind, and because the west coast was so progressive in the movement and always
on the cutting edge, the heads living there had high standards. Even though
the Golden State might not have been strategically located to every source
country in the world, the money and the appreciation for the good was there,
and the best of everything was targeted for and eventually made its way to
the California market to meet the demand of the psychedelic voyagers and their
constant quest for the "ultimate high."
We had produced and smuggled gallons of our oil to the states
and hadn't had any problems with customs or turning it, and things were going
well. We were using suitcases with built in false compartments made by a brother
of ours who earned his living by supplying smugglers with different devices
he would create or modify to run customs with for cash up front or a percentage
of the load that was brought in by anything he had constructed. Because of
his skills and expertise, we called him "the engineer."
We would rotate different people in our family so no one
became overly exposed, and were walking right through different ports of entry
all over the United States with the suitcases. Sometimes we would take detour
flights to the Bahamas and come into smaller
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airports like West Palm Beach, Florida
pretending to be returning from a vacation in the Caribbean while trying to
cover our tracks coming from Colombia. We were also middling boatloads of
marijuana from Juan on the Caribbean side of Colombia out of Barranquilla
and Cartagena to other brothers of ours starting to bring large quantities
into Florida and Louisiana.
We had paid all of our investors back with the four to one
return like promised, our family was taken care of, and we were generating
money for Juan to work with, and in those early days in Colombia American
dollars got a lot done. Things were going well for everyone and life at the
villa wasn't all work and no play. Besides having some of the best stash south
of the U.S. border to smoke every day, my Old Lady, Stoker and I would jump
on our horses and take wild rides through La Cumbre and the countryside with
our ponchos on, wearing straw Colombian hats with machetes hanging from our
sides feeling like we were living a hundred years in the past. Lorenzo took
us on trips to the wealthy town of Popyan in the foothills of the Andes in
southwestern Colombia to check on one of his government hotels there and to
collect psychedelic mushrooms growing under cow patties in the grazing pastures
surrounding the town. From there we would drive up to the eight thousand foot
level to a small village, populated mainly by Indians, called Silvia and take
hot baths in some of the richest mineral water in the world.
There were several hand-dug pools that had been crudely
plastered over with cement on their sides and bottoms that sat on the edge
of a small plateau of a mountain facing south with awesome views of the Andes
and their valleys for as far as the eye could see. The pools were located
outside the village with no man-made structures or gates around them,
sitting in a remote natural setting with no one, it seemed, around to maintain
them or pay for their use. But after a few minutes of waiting, three Indians
walking silently in single file came down from a narrow path out of the fog-shrouded
mountain peaks wearing their usual white, loose-fitting cotton shirt
and pants, sandals, psychedelic colored ponchos, with their Iong hair braided
in a pony tail to the middle of their backs.
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Without a word or glance our way,
they quietly cooled the pools with natural stream water that flowed out of
the mountains, set an old wooden bowl down, and left as silently as they had
come, walking back up the narrow trail and disappearing like ghosts into the
misty mountainside.
We asked Lorenzo what the bowl was for and he explained the
Indians never haggled over money, it was not in their character to do that,
but the bowl was set out for voluntary donations from people who used the
springs, and even if none were left, the Indians still came down the mountain
and served anyone who wanted to soak in the pools. Lorenzo was not a hard
man to read when it came to expressing his opinions about the different people
and races living in Colombia, and you could tell by his tone when he described
the Indians and their lifestyle that he liked and deeply respected them, almost
with a spiritual reverence. During our three-year stay in South America
we had also noticed the uniqueness and the differences between the Indians
and the other locals because of their looks, mannerisms, and vibrations that
were such a contrast to others living in the country. The Indians' physical
characteristics looked almost Asian, short in height; small boned, with light
skin, and straight, usually long, thin, jet-black hair. Sometimes they
would cut it short with bangs in front and bowl-shaped all around the
head, but usually it was down to the middle of their backs worn in a braided
ponytail. While everyone else seemed to be naturally talkative and had the
Latin American flare of being animated with body gestures while communicating,
the Indians were quiet people who, at least in public, hardly ever verbally
conversed with each other let alone anyone else, and walked and moved with
a smooth gracefulness as if effortlessly gliding across the surface they were
traveling on. As you observed them and their ways, you got a strange feeling
these people not only didn't fit in with the normal Latin American, heavily
Spanish influenced mold of the country, but almost seemed other-worldly
and had been transplanted on earth from some other totally alien civilization.
They weren't "wealthy" people, but were always immaculately clean,
healthy, with non-judgmental, non-threatening looks in their eyes
and
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big smiles on their faces, which
made them seem almost angelic and much more spiritually evolved than anyone
else around them; so noticeable that the locals picked up on those vibrations
and respected them for their unusual, independent traits. They relied on no
one and stayed to themselves, and were peaceful people who seemed to rise
above normal human conflicts and strife while living within the protection
of the secrets of their mysterious, ancient culture. Being part Apache and
a psychedelic warrior myself, I felt more of a kindred spirit to their lifestyle
than to Lorenzo's Spanish imperialistic mindset or the normal Colombian survival
of the fittest attitude, and there were times when around the Indians that
I felt like dropping everything and taking my Old Lady with me into the mountains
and becoming one of them.
Lorenzo would also give us guided tours around Cali and introduce
us to some of his colorful friends and associates in the city, which was usually
pretty interesting. One day he had us take him to a favorite bakery of his
in town to buy some bread for a dinner that his wife Isabella was preparing
for us that evening. As we went into the little shop, Lorenzo “goose stepped”
up to the old, bald guy behind the counter; stopped, came to attention, clicked
his heels, and raised his right arm while shouting "Heil Hitler!"
This caught us all off guard as the old man behind the counter looked frantically
around in fear and then totally freaked out, waving his hands around saying
"yo no gusto, yo no gusto, Nazis no aqui!" ("I don't like,
I don't like, no Nazis here!") and was very agitated with Lorenzo. Although
the old man spoke Spanish well, you could tell he was a transplant from somewhere
else because he still had an accent that was noticeable. He also had a light
complexion with blue eyes, but didn't have Spanish characteristics or mannerisms.
After Lorenzo introduced us as his friends the old man calmed down and relaxed
a bit, and then they started talking rapidly in Spanish, and it seemed he
was jumping in Lorenzo's shit about something. Lorenzo would just turn around,
look at us, then roll his eyes and start
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joking with him and you could tell
they had known each other for a Iong time and were well acquainted.
After we bought our bread and left, Lorenzo explained that
the guy had been an officer in Hitler's Nazi army who escaped to Colombia
when things started to get too hot over in Europe for Germans suspected of
war crimes. From what Lorenzo told us, he wasn't one of the worst war criminals
being hunted down and wanted, but his hands weren't exactly clean either,
so in the forties during the time the war didn't look like it was going to
turn out favorable for him, he took his family and possessions and fled to
South America. He initially came to Uruguay then migrated north to Colombia
where Isabella's father helped him out by laundering money through his banks
to start up the bakery business. After all these years this little old ex-Nazi
was still as paranoid as he had been while fleeing Europe almost thirty years
ago, and when looking into his eyes, they showed the years of running scared
had worn on him, and the Karma of his past actions was eating him alive.
No person can have more of an effect and judge you better
than yourself, and when conscience finally kicks in, even if it had been dormant
while performing whatever negative deeds were done, in the end it will never
let you rest, and the pay-back process can be a living hell. Obviously
by the old man's demeanor he wasn't escaping his punishment although still
alive and not in prison, and it was interesting to see natural law at work
and "ITS" way of dealing with crimes against humanity by "ITS"
effect on the soul. Human reaction out of ignorance, anger, and fear usually
calls for physical revenge when tragedy strikes, but this only interferes
with God's work on the criminal's soul while on earth and hardens the victims
to the true lessons that something as horrible as the murder of a loved one
or the slaughter of millions of people brings; which is as brothers and sisters
that are off-shoots of the same Divine Spirit, we have to start acknowledging
our bond to one another and with all creation as being parts of "ONE
BEING", and that it is a painful oversight and illusion born of ignorance
to think we can get away with violence used
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against each other, or have the moral
wisdom and right to judge a human being by superficial, outside appearances
of culture, creed, color, and even his insanities, because man is much more
than what meets the eye. In our preoccupation with using our energies for
aggression and retaliation there is no time for inner change and improvement
because all reflection is lost on the true lessons to be learned from inhumane
experiences that should be remembered and taught to younger generations so
the same misjudgments and mistakes won't be made in the future. It is man's
right to judge and remove violent people from society for humanity's physical
well-being and safety, but it's God's and God's only “perfect” judgment
and Divine determination that has the moral justification to remove souls
from earth by execution. Learning
from the damage done to become stronger and more whole should be our main
goals as human beings while dealing with tragedy, not to lash out and make
spiritually ill-informed judgments on subjects that only God can possibly
"Truthfully" make because of the omnipresent wisdom that only "IT
possesses. Revenge temporarily satisfies grief and anger, but does not heal
or create long-lasting solutions and changes that are the only real
insurances humanity has of negative actions not repeating themselves.
As long as mankind harbors the indifferent attitude that
we all too often have towards each other, we will continue to manifest a mindset
capable of insensitive acts of violence that people of countless cultures
have used against each other for thousands of years to deal with their disagreements
and disputes, and the vicious cycle of conquer and revenge mentality will
continue to live on in man's psyche. We are going to have to start paying
more attention to expanding and nurturing the spirit than we do on incarcerating
and executing bodies if we want to create meaningful and lasting changes in
our world.
We had also been taking a lot of trips into the countryside
of eastern Colombia with Juan to visit his growers at their marijuana fincas
to pick out the finest buds to make our oil from. In those days there wasn't
near the violence in the country that there is today, but to travel in certain
parts of the remote Ilanos where large marijuana fields were grown,
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it was still necessary to be with
somebody who was known in t he area to get in and out safely without being
hassled or worse by the locals, guerrillas, or police who all had financial
ties to the marijuana and/or coca trade that was beginning to blossom under
their protection. Those trips were always an adventure and we saw a lot of
outrageous fresh stash. We were shown both neatly cultivated fields and ones
that were hacked out of the dense tropical forests with the seeds thrown in
the cleared area left to grow without much care at all, and due to rainfall,
the hot, humid climate, and rich soil the Colombian marijuana plant was hardy,
grew tall, the buds were heavy and dense on its thick stalk, always sweating
resin, and very potent. Compared to other marijuana the Colombian strain seemed
to be almost bigger than life as you walked through fields of fifteen to twenty-foot
plants with stalks and root balls as big as small trees. Before the high demand
for its product Colombian growers kept their crops in the ground longer to
keep them fresh and to let it mature into full potency. Sometimes the plants
were left in the ground for as long as nine months, and the weed in the tropical,
humid climate would grow and produce resin until the plants sparkled like
diamonds in the sunlight that reflected off the clear, crystallized resin
covering the leaves and seed pods of the buds. We would cut tops off mature
plants, sun dry and smoke them, standing around in the jungle looking at the
towering plants still in the ground glowing in the sunlight, bringing to mind
the biblical story of Moses and the burning bush.
The best marijuana came out of Colombia in the early seventies
because the farmers were leaving it in the ground longer, giving it more time
to mature. As the demand rose and political pressure increased, making it
more dangerous to cultivate, harvest, and transport without police protection,
the uncertainty of the times motivated the growers to begin cutting earlier
and earlier in order to meet the rising demand, and for their own safety.
Towards the end of its reign in about 1974 to 1975, as the most sought after
marijuana in the states, it was being harvested as early as five months, and
paranoia, along with mass production, had taken its toll on Colombian marijuana's
potency. These two
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factors gradually cut the quality
of the majority of bulk loads being smuggled into the U.S. down to the level
of high grade Mexican commercial weed. But we were blessed and fortunate enough
to have been able to work with and use the magical plant in times before our
government’s drug policies upped the stakes for wholesalers and smugglers,
which only drove prices higher and created more wealth for the Colombian locals
to invest into developing the less dangerous to transport, more profitable
cocaine market that eventually ravaged
the U.S. while ominously overshadowing the previously dominant marijuana trade.
Other good times had were on town trips taken to Cali for
supplies that couldn't be bought in La Cumbre, phone calls, money transactions,
or meetings with people. We'd stay at the Hotel Aristi, take eucalyptus leaf
steam baths, and practically live on fresh banana smoothies while swimming
and hanging out at the pool; high as we could be, soaking rays on the hotel's
roof that had a 360 degree view of the towering Andes mountains encircling
the city, surrounded by an immense blue sky.
We'd fly to Quito and check out Ecuador, buy hand woven rugs,
wall hangings, vicuna fur jackets and cotton, handmade, hand embroidered shirts
and blouses to ship back to California for our family and turn ons for our
brothers and sisters back home. The experiences were all very exotic but what
made them seem even more special to us was that we were on a mission while
having all of this fun, which gave everything a magical, mystical feeling
that was with you every waking moment. Our group at the villa and family members
were driven to help reinforce the youth's desire for peace, love, and brotherhood
through the “food for thought” and had been dedicated to the movement and
our beliefs to the point of no return and there was no turning back for us,
so with the best intentions and in the spirit of peaceful change that was
transforming the world in the sixties and early seventies, we were consistently
sending as much marijuana and oil to the states as we possibly could.
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It had been pretty busy throughout the year of 1973 making
oil and middling loads of marijuana through our connect, Juan, to brothers
of ours out of the Caribbean side of Colombia that were headed for the south
and east coast borders of the U.S. We had only run into our friends from the
new boat a few times in Cali during some of our town trips, but had been hearing
a lot about them through Lorenzo and our contacts in the city. Over time and
with constant coke use, they had created a lot of bizarre scenes and were
becoming too well known by the locals and police for our comfort. We kept
our contact with them as limited as possible to avoid any heat from their
growing notoriety in the area. The last time we saw our brothers was a tell-tale
sign that the psychedelic, spiritual side of the movement was in deep trouble.
Stoker and I made a trip to their villa to visit some brothers
of ours from Laguna who had been staying with them. After flagging down a
taxi and giving the cab driver directions, a sly grin appeared on his face
as he informed us of already knowing the direction to the Americans’ casa
because he had been taking people back and forth from Cali to the villa for
months. The guy obviously knew something was going on there and we didn't
like his vibrations from the start, but since he had already made the trip
numerous times and the villa hadn't been raided, we figured he was probably
okay and we were just being paranoid.
When arriving Stoker had him wait because we just wanted
to drop in, see our brothers visiting from California, and set up another
meeting with them at a cooler spot away from the area to spend more time together
without picking up heat. The brothers were old Anaheim friends of ours that
had migrated from the Irvine Hills years earlier to Laguna Beach. We hadn't
seen each other for a while and were hoping to put a weed scam together with
them and open another door to the U.S., but when we entered the villa expecting
to see smiling faces, incense burning, and the smell of Colombian buds in
the air, we got a dose and a rude awakening to the destructive forces beginning
to
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seduce even some of the original psychedelic voyagers away from spiritual
expansion and liberation into addictive, physical and mental gratification.
As we walked through the kitchen of the villa there were
dinner plates sitting on the breakfast table piled high with mounds of glittering,
uncut, cocaine and short pieces of straws that had been cut and used to snort
it with lying all over the floor like discarded cigarette butts. The roomy
villa was filled with people we didn't know, some Americans and others Colombians,
who had obviously been on a long run and were in the process of coming down,
crashed out on the floors, sofas, and anywhere else there was room to lay
a body. Most of them looked like they hadn't been outside or eaten much for
a while, probably on and off for weeks or longer, and looked like thin, pale,
unhealthy cadavers right out of a “Living Dead" sci-fi flick.
An American guy, who we later discovered to be one of our
brother's cocaine connects out of Cali who had been living in South America
for the past seven years middling twenty to thirty kilo loads out of Colombia
to smugglers from the east coast, looked like a corpse while crashed out on
a big foam pillow in one of the rooms. He had begun his South American odyssey
by traveling to Peru and chewing coca leaves with the Indians. But after following
its path to Colombia where it was being processed from paste to powder, he
became hooked on the euphoric high cocaine has when used in the laid back
atmosphere of the exotic, tropical jungle and had been lost in a cocaine haze
ever since. As we walked by and glanced down at him passed out on the pillow,
there was blood trickling from his nose, caused from the chemicals used in
the processing of the coke eating away at the nostril's membrane; and along
with black, rotting teeth, sores on his face from nervous picking, a thin
frail body, and greasy, Iong, stringy hair, this brother wasn't a pretty picture
of the future.
The most disappointing thing about it all though was our
friends from Laguna. They had been visiting the villa longer than had been
thought and bingeing with the people at the house for a couple of months.
They were also bringing ways and runners back with
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them from California and smuggling
coke to the states while using the lame excuse it was all being done to generate
some quick financing to do weed loads that never happened. All kinds of weird
shit was coming down at the villa. One of our friends' Old Lady, who he had
been with for years, ran off with one of the local Colombian coke connects
staying at the house. Brothers were whacked out and getting into fights with
each other over nothing, ripping each other off, cutting each other out and
jumping connections back home, and the whole scene for me personally was signaling
the beginning of the end to whatever was left of the psychedelic spiritual
movement that began in the sixties. While unified in the past by our beliefs,
a growing divide between brothers and sisters being lured by the negative
energy of the ego inflating cocaine craze and those who resisted and stayed
loyal to mind expansion and the peace movement was beginning to take place.
The handwriting was on the wall when considering how much influence smugglers
had at the time on the attitude and tone of what was going on back home, even
though not visible and out in the streets protesting like a lot of other brothers
and sisters were doing to be heard and for the sake of change. Although purposely
trying not to be seen or labeled as a group that could be recognized and targeted
because of the nature of our activities, and avoiding the forefront as much
as possible, our positions as couriers secretly bringing home the mind expanding
ingredients that moved and stirred people's emotions had a huge effect on
the character of the movement and the directions it went in....
The true “POWER” of the peace, love, and brotherhood movement
had always been within the people, and that's what made it work. It was an
attitude with spiritual qualities that swept through the masses, who then
unified in the peaceful struggle to evolve consciousness with the purpose
in mind of making our volatile world safer and a little easier on its inhabitants
to live in. But as that part of the counter-culture who had cut all economic
dependence, and disagreed with not all, but most social goals and overly materialistic,
lacking true spirituality, values of society, that had given themselves over
totally to the quest for personal and global spiritual advancement, we had
a certain
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obligation to the movement during
those times. People listened to stories of our travels around the world and
what was being experienced and learned from other cultures. They were smoking
stashes, feeding their families, and making livings off of the loads brought
in from other countries for them to sell back home. Smugglers had been blessed
with opportunities that produced experiences, relationships, and new insights
that many people weren't aware of, or only dreamt about, and our role in the
movement seemed to be as
There were a lot of people looking to us for economical support
and spiritual motivation, who in turn affected a lot more people in their
dealings, and they others. We were all influencing, supporting, and relying
on each other, and our role and responsibility to promote and keep the faith
almost seemed a sacred duty in return for all that had been shown and given
us by the counter-culture movement. Those staying at our brother's villa
were some of the first psychedelic voyagers out of Orange County during the
mid-sixties who over the years had gained respect and influence in our
flow and with others, and with that kind of reputation, had far-reaching
effects on how a lot of people thought and acted. Where the heart goes the
mind and body will follow, and some of us who knew better were losing it and
if this was any reflection of the future, it was clear that many more people
trying to find their way to the light by following their lead would be doomed
to the same path of disillusionment and destruction that our brothers were
on. It was disappointing walking around the house with all of the chaos and
insanity going on around us, and totally obvious that nobody there was together
enough or had any interest in doing a weed scam. There wasn't even enough
stash at the house to roll a joint, which seemed almost sacrilegious, so after
a short conversation about what was going on at the villa and establishing
some distatisfaction, we couldn't get away fast enough to shake the negative
vibes off and headed back to the taxi waiting for us. But there are times
in life when you
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step in shit, you can't get rid of
the smell, and just by being around negativity can sometimes get you burned.
As we were driving back to Cali, the taxi driver stopped
the car in a secluded area and started to shake us down for extra money for
the ride back. We knew by now that he had been taking our whiffed-out
compadres back and forth to the villa for the past couple of months and that
they had been flashing money and playing the super fly role in front of this
guy. He figured we were just as crazed as them and was trying to get in on
some of the action. When letting the guy know we were paying the same fare
going back as we did coming, he started freaking out. He kicked us out of
the cab so we grabbed our portable radio-tape player used for cruising
music and started walking down the dirt road towards town. About a half hour
had passed when out from the jungle behind us stepped six Colombian police
with their machine guns aimed at us yelling, "Alto, alto!" (“Stop,
stop!"). I had had a bad feeling about the cab driver from the beginning,
and after deserting us, it turns out he drove straight to the nearest police
station and ratted us out thinking we were carrying stash and money for the
cops to find. Unfortunately he was right on all accounts. We stopped and put
our hands up, but they didn't search us. Instead, they stayed behind with
their guns pointed at our backs and commanded us to keep walking down the
road. After going a short distance and figuring out the cops weren't planning
to just waste us, take our shit, and say we tried to escape, the next problem
was that we were being escorted to a sub-station to be thoroughly searched.
I had a twenty-milliliter vial of weed oil in the top pocket of my shirt and
was looking for a chance to get rid of it before being shook down.
The police were following about fifteen feet behind with
their guns pointed at our backs, watching us as if we could dematerialize
ourselves. There was no way to sneak anything by these guys under their intense
scrutiny, so the only other alternative was to make a fast move before they
could get to me and hope they didn't shoot first and ask questions later.
I reached into my pocket, grabbed the vial, and fired my best outfield to
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home throw, and tossed it into the
surrounding jungle before the police could react. They shouted and we froze,
waiting for bullets in the back, and they ran up and surrounded us as one
of them went into the bush to look
for what I had thrown. Since no shots had been fired and we were still alive,
I was feeling pretty good and was confident there would be no way the cop
was going to find a small vial in that dense jungle. I was getting a little
cocky, thinking we had just gotten away with something, when the Colombian
cop walks out of the thick vegetation with a big smile on his face holding
the vial between his thumb and forefinger over his head, looking at me as
if to say "Did you lose something amigo?" How he found that little
bottle, I'll never know, but what I was sure of was, if asked, it wasn't mine.
We finally came to a small, cinder block sub-station
in the outskirts of Cali and were put into a cell. The guy who found the vial
came in, held it up, and asked whose it was. I told him I didn't know and
he reached back and punched me in the mouth. The guy wasn't very big, so his
best shot didn't have much of a kick, and I just stood there looking at him.
That pissed him off even more and just when he was about to take another swing,
the other cops ran in to stop him, and then the commanding officer appeared.
Things started to calm down a bit with the comandante present,
and he ordered us to start stripping. They had already pat-searched
us and didn't find the ounce of weed Stoker was carrying in his boot that
was used to smoke the oil on, but we knew we were busted. Stoker and I looked
at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and he pulled the bag out and gave
it to the jefe. Now was the time to think and talk fast, and the first thing
out of my mouth as Stoker handed him the stash was “quantos”? (how much?)
At first the comandante didn't bite and tried to play dumb,
like he didn't comprender what was being said, but after a little political
bantering it finally came down to what the whole thing was really about in
the first place, money. We offered them the tape player and four hundred dollars
we had on us, which seemed to take care of the situation. They led us out
to the street and our good fortune brought us a taxi just in time.
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Thinking they might get greedy for more money and change
their minds about letting us go, Stoker and I threw ourselves in front of
the car and flagged him down. The cops were standing all around us and the
poor driver was wondering what he had gotten himself into. We piled into the
car and in the rush and confusion the police realized they hadn't taken the
tape player. But Stoker and I were fully aware of the oversight and our main
mission at the moment was to escape with our sounds, so as one of the cops
stuck his hand through the window reaching for the stereo, we told the cab
driver to vamanos, and as we took off he was still holding on to the taxi's
door handle grabbing at the tape player until we accelerated and he couldn't
keep up and had to let go. We told the cab driver to take us to the Hotel
Aristi, and while staring at us in the rear view mirror I could see he was
so rushed out over the incident his eyes were as big as quarters, but this
driver was cool and didn't give us any more problems while driving back to
Cali.
Stoker and I were pretty rushed out ourselves after that
trip but were still alive and had saved our sounds, so our Karma must have
been good, which made us feel like cranking the Doobie Brothers tape up we
had in the cassette player. That's how we had learned and trained ourselves
to handle adversity; to look at the positives instead of the negatives, trying
to be aware of signs being sent, especially during the most radical times,
so as not to panic and misjudge the experience, misread and make unnecessary
adjustments out of unwarranted paranoia that causes overreaction and mistakes.
The immediate message seemed to be we had survived, things could have been
a lot worse, and that we were in the FLOW, and since not much more could be
asked for at the moment, Stoker and I were anxious to get to the back-up
stash at the hotel and celebrate our good fortune.
After returning to La Cumbre there finally came a chance
to roll a fat one, sit on the front porch of the villa looking out over the
peaceful view of the Andes Mountains, and reflect. I was sensing a change
in the air; that people were starting to feel the effects of all the stress
and paranoia in their lives of being constantly targeted and attacked by the
government's relentless push to eliminate the counter-culture movement. Even
some
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of the original psychedelic warriors
were starting to wear down and lose faith. It was always about tuning into
Cosmic Consciousness and the Spirit of Oneness that was the Energy and Power
behind the sixties movement, and when that principle was turned away from,
the "SOUL." of the psychedelic peace, love, and brotherhood reality
that had been created, slowly diminished as we cut ourselves off from "IT”.
The "SPIRIT" that moved through the sixties came about from our
journeys of individual self realization which revealed on a personal level
the feeling and knowledge of God being everywhere and within all things and
this “DIVINE FORCE" had certain spiritual laws that had to be followed
in order for "IT" to work in our lives and the world. As we began
to lack the desire for and focus on the spiritual will power that is needed
to overcome the strong pull of ego and physical obsession, we facilitated
the fall from grace, so to speak, by cutting ourselves off from the higher
nature within that linked us to the "SOURCE” that due to our dedication
to self realization and spiritual outpouring was responsible for creating
the psychedelic movement of the sixties. It was plain to see and easy to predict
that if some of the original explorers and messengers of the "WAY"
couldn't hold up and stay centered in our Iong-held beliefs of the wisdom
and power of the TAO, that what was happening at the villa in Cali was only
a preview of what was to come and would eventually filter through to a lot
of other brothers and sisters. "THE ENERGY" at its height during
the sixties that moved so many people never left us, but a change in heart
began to take place, and we strayed from the "SPIRIT” of the "Garden
of Eden mentality" that had been created by our living for the pursuit
of life's metaphysical side, and many of us banished ourselves and wandered
back into the physical wilderness of inflated egos and sensual abuses, to
which cocaine was the karmically perfect agent that accelerated the downfall
and mirrored the negative condition some souls had fallen to that eventually
weakened the strong connection to cosmic consciousness our beliefs and lifestyles
had turned us onto. Although the numbers were beginning to dwindle, there
were still those who kept the faith and believed, but because the world was
becoming a more dangerous place for the counter-culture to
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exist in, our groups became tighter
and even more secretive than ever before which only conditioned us to be more
efficient at what we were doing and even more of a growing dilemma and perceived
threat to society in the eyes of the government.
It was the end of 1973 and Stoker, my girlfriend, and I had
been in Colombia for quite a while and wanted to take a break and fly back
to the U.S. for a short visit. We shut the cooker down and made arrangements
with Bubba and his Old Lady to stay in La Cumbre while we were gone so they
could send oil that had been stockpiled and stashed back to the U.S. with
different runners we would send them from California. While waiting for their
arrival from the U.S. Stoker and I bought six bottles of Colombian wine that
had the darkest colored class we could find and held the tops over boiling
water to steam the paper seals covering the corks off without tearing them.
After diluting three quarts of oil with alcohol back into a more liquefied
state, we emptied the wine out of the bottles and filled them with the dark,
alcohol resin mixture, put the corks back in, and carefully re-glued
the undamaged seals back on to make the bottles look unopened. Two wine bottles
filled with lightly diluted oil cooked down to about one quart, so by taking
a couple each back with us we'd have three more liters to sell and smoke back
home. We had a new route to try through the Bahamas to the U.S., and since
it hadn't been tested yet and my Old Lady was going through holding, I wanted
to feel it out before she made the attempt. A couple of days after Bubba and
his girlfriend got to the villa, I took off. Everything went smoothly and
I arrived back in Laguna Beach to one of our communication houses late that
night.
The next morning Stoker called to see how things went, and
after getting the green light, he and my Old Lady flew back through customs,
returning to California safely the following day. We took the wine bottles
from Laguna to another safe house in the middle of an orange grove in Anaheim
to cook down and stash with the rest of the oil that we were sitting on and
turning that had been smuggled back previously with other brothers and sisters.