Chapter from "The Yellow Paint Chip" - Amazon link 

This memory comes riding on the back of the memory of all those  wonderful confectionery delights my mother would make every Christmas, especially the rum cake that I was always too young to enjoy until I was fifteen and she cut me a thin slice on Christmas day and handed it to me while I was seated at the grown up table.

In 1974 a pound of pot could be purchased for around $150 and an ounce was about $20 and the guy who hung out in the doorway of a peep show near Times Square would sell you a joint for $1.00.

You could find weed if you wanted but it was always an effort to track down someone who was selling it so when you did score you had a tendency to conserve your stash and make cautious use of every last little bit. I had started carrying a small stone pipe and it didn't occur to me at first that having that pipe was an asset.

When someone pulled weed out of their pocket and asked if anyone wanted to get high I would produce said pipe and I was almost always assured that when weed appeared it would be shared with me and my friends.

Because most people didn't have a lot of weed to share it was important to make full use of whatever was available. Before I started carrying a pipe everyone just rolled a joint but it was an inequitable arraignment depending who rolled the joint. More often than not the person who supplied the weed wanted to also roll a joint and in doing so show off their joint rolling skills, even if those skills in most instances were more imaginary than practical.

I can't tell you how many times we watched someone take the last bit of pot they had, just enough to roll one joint and then proceed to make a two rolling paper slurp joint. I don't know where they learned this (although I have to admit that I was one of them at the beginning to some degree) but they seemed to believe that a joint is best constructed with lots of saliva. After they finished rolling the joint and more often than not it would take more than one try and numerous rolling papers to finish, they would then lick the joint and roll it over their tongue and in some cases even put the whole thing in their mouths and extract it slowly from between their pursed lips making sure to coat the entire thing with their spit. The look on their face was precious as they held the completed abomination for us all to see while smiling proudly at their self perceived skills.

Of course there was no way we were not going to still smoke that devil weed. It didn't matter how much oral love the joint builder had applied to that joint, we had every intention of sparking it up and getting high. But we developed a system to ensure the "integrity" of these slurp joints.

One of us would tell the joint roller that they needed to toast the joint in order to get the best results and they would respond "What's that?" and we would take the joint from them and happily offer "Let me show you". We would then hold the joint from one end and fire up a BIC lighter and hold the joint over the flame moving it back and forth while rolling it to dry out the paper.

"See" we would say "it's toasted" as if that made it better. "Oh yeah man, cool" they would respond and from that point forward we would see them toast any joint they rolled.

In essence we were converting a soggy joint to something a little more palatable but I think we also believed that we were maybe killing off any germs too. But toasting a joint made it's way around our group of friends until it was a thing we saw almost everyone do thereafter.

But there still was the inequity of the build of the joint to contend with as most people didn't have the skills to roll a joint and evenly distribute the weed the entire length of the rolling paper. Remember that this was well before any of us learned to roll a filter into the end of the joint. Our joint rolling training came from either cowboy movies where the cowpoke would roll up a cigarette with one hand and cartoons where a cigarette was rolled up with delightful ease. More often than not their construction shape was, tiny at one end, fat in the middle, and tiny at the other end. This meant that you had to position yourself in the correct order if possible as the joint was passed around the room to ensure that you had possession of the joint while it was still burning in the fat section, otherwise you would just be sucking on burning paper.

This is where my pipe entered the picture and when someone was about to roll a joint I would pull out my pipe and offer "Hey, we can all get some good hit's off the pipe and not waste any" "Cool man" would be the reply and I would then load the pipe with what weed they had to offer so that everyone got a hit or two. More often than not the pipe required less weed than a joint and I could reload the pipe so that everyone got lit to some degree. So people would seek me out as most didn't carry a pipe with them or didn't want to go to the trouble of rolling a joint. This also meant I rarely had to buy any pot myself as it was more often than not shared with me and my friends because I was the Keeper of the Pipe.

I found out another benefit of the pipe when I sat down one day to clean it. I took a small piece of rolling paper and balled it up and then pushed it through the stem hole with a straightened out paper clip. What came out of the other end was this black sticky goo that at first I was going to throw away until I realized that it was resin from all the pot being smoked in the pipe and I found out you could smoke it and get a buzz, sort of.

So....

When you're weedless and need a buzz

You cleaned your pipe and smoked the crud.

It wasn't the best but I didn't protest

'cause it's better than nothing at all

So, the weed we burn today

Will be goo for some other day

But it's potency suspect with no ill effect

With just the promise of a buzz

Yeah, it was like when you got desperate and smoked pot stems and all you got was a hint of a high.

Now that you know how precious weed was to us back then and the lengths we went to ensure we handled it with the utmost care, you will understand why I remember in such vivid detail the following incident.

It was the beginning of our evening with all that promise you feel in youth that a new adventure may be lurking just around the corner. The three of us, myself, Roger Sullivan, and Joe Mulligan were out cruising that fateful night. I don't remember our destination but in the interim we had wandered over to Paterson NJ and we found ourselves at the Paterson Great Falls park. I parked the car and we walked over to the first bridge. On this night we were very animated in the crisp winter air. Each of us trying to find new words to banter with each other and raise our level of witticism.

We had stopped to spark up and get a buzz and we thought it would be easier to do so outside the car. On this occasion I had both the pipe and the weed in my possession as we walked to the center of the first bridge. In a ragged pre-ziplock fold over baggie I had the dregs of what was some of the best weed we had gotten in a long time. It was sticky and smelled sweet and we had opened the baggie in the car and each of us took turns inhaling the promise this little nugget was offering before we exited the car.

It was smaller than a marble so I took the time roll it all over the inside of the baggie trying to pick up any small bits that were stuck to the inside of the baggie before giving it one final roll between my index finger and thumb to produce the most perfect little ball of pot that probably ever existed. The three of us became quiet and we all watched together as I placed the small sticky ball of weed into my pipe as we anticipated the promise that was now before us.

As the keeper of the pipe it also fell upon me to select the order of who would smoke first, second, third, etc. I had to be watchful of how each person approached the pipe and remember how they smoked in the past and then make the selection as equitable as possible so that everyone had an equal turn as I felt it was my duty. This weed was potent so I chose not myself but one of my two companions to be first and I would take the second hit and then pass it on to the third person. From experience I knew that this order would give each of us the kick we wanted.

That was the plan anyway.

Did I mention that we were in high spirits? The three of us were without any chemical enhancement yet but we were hyped up on the crisp clear winters night air and the company of three friends trying to best each other in wordplay. The object that would hopefully be the seed for stepping up our spirits that night was handed over to the first recipient of the pipe. We all laser focused on the moment when a lighter was produced and a flame was struck alive. We all leaned over towards the pipe and two of us held our hands in front of us as we mimicked the actions of the one who would take the first hit.

Carefully now...

A word or two was spoken by whom I do not remember but it was at the same moment the flame touched the small sticky ball of promise and just as it began to glow, the words that were just spoken hit their unintended target. A laugh or even a chuckle is always a welcome response to words but perhaps it would have been better to have waited before doing so because that little laugh happened while the lips of the recipient were on the end of the pipe.

A laugh followed by a huff into the pipe and the sticky ball of promise did fly out of the pipe and fall into the...

Oh wait did I happen to mention that we were on a bridge over water? As the holder of the pipe laughed into the mouthpiece expelling air at a velocity not welcome in that very moment the three of us watched as the glowing ball of weed exited the pipe and flew in a perfect arch over the bridge railing. We all leaned over and watched as it fell all the way down into the water and in the quiet night air we could hear the Psssst as both the ember and promise were extinguished.

It was so very quiet and the three of us were frozen in place while still processing the event. It was like being thirsty, so very thirsty and then being offered a cool glass of water and just as you are about to quench that thirst...

A laugh, a giggle, and then a loud OH FUCK broke the silence as we all just started laughing and then threatening death upon the miscreant who denied us that choice morsel. But there was enough blame to go around as the spark that triggered that incident was shared by us all.

We survived that night intact but there will forever be that unanswered question of, what if.