The antics surrounding marijuana can make for some funny stories.
One of the funniest was about a rapscallion from Hilo named Jeff. He had a 3-foot tall pot plant in his apartment when the Hilo cops charged in and busted him and took his potted plant as evidence. The trial was weeks away so to keep the evidence alive the cops placed the plant outside high on a ledge on the second story of the old Hilo Police Station. It is now the Art Center building downtown.
Everyone walking by looked up at the ledge and could see the ominous plant sitting there. It was the talk of the town. There it sat, 50 feet above the sidewalk, green and leering, waiting to send poor Jeff to jail.
But Jeff had another idea. It had to do with scissors.
Late one night he got a very tall ladder and climbed up to the ledge and snipped the plant and absconded with it. The evidence was gone so they had to drop the charges. All of Hilo laughed over that one.
You fine people of Kona living the good, straight life should know something about your neighbor Puna to the south. From 1980 to about 1999, Puna was one big marijuana field. It grew everywhere from Pahoa down to Kalapana to Kapoho, in the bushes, on porches, front lawns, everywhere. Back then hippies didn’t walk, they floated.
This was the time we called B.C. — Before Copters. It was 1982 B.C. or 1993 B.C.
You see, around 1994 the government gave Hawaii County millions of dollars and a bunch of helicopters to fly around and eradicate pot, it was called Green Harvest. Hilo cops, who had previously been handing out parking tickets, suddenly got to be Rambo and fly around in helicopters scaring the hell out of Puna residents.
They would land their chopper on someone’s front lawn and jump out with flack jackets and big machine guns scaring the chickens and goats. It was more fun than a police car.
The result of this onslaught was they stole all the pot plants and everyone went to hard drugs and it started a huge crime wave, much worse than before. Now that’s not funny.
Before these crazy helicopters descended like a reign of terror from the skies, marihoochi bloomed abundantly.
One fine day I was driving down from Pahoa to visit my girlfriend when I thought I’d pick some wild orchids for her. I stopped the car and walked 10 feet off the road, to my amazement, there sat seven, 6-foot tall marijuana plants growing in black pots. Those growers were so cocky.
Now when a Punatic stumbles on marijuana plants in the jungle he always rips them off, it’s mandatory. But not me, that’s bad karma. I took the zany route and went around to every plant and placed orchids in the branches like Christmas trees.
I always wonder what that pot grower thought when he saw those orchids on his plants.
Once I had a lapse of sanity and moved back to the mainland for awhile. It was to the wine country so it wasn’t so bad. There I encountered the funniest pot story of all.
A guy named Scott came home to discover his friend Jim had ripped off his big stash of weed. He was so mad, and knew he’d get busted, but he went down to the police station and told the cops his friend Jim had stolen his pot. He drove with them over to Jim’s house, they found the dope and the cops took them off to jail. They both got jail time.
Who says pot affects the brain?
Dennis Gregory is a writer, artist, singer, teacher and Kailua-Kona resident who mixes truth, humor and aloha in his biweekly column. He can be reached at makewavess@yahoo.com.