One of the most unique experiences I had in my many years as a marijuana smuggler/dealer/entrepreneur was what I refer to as the Quintessential Hippy Drug Deal. It took place in early spring of 1971 after smuggling my first ton of Mexican pot back to California. This was the first of many loads that I brought in by boat. This was by far, the biggest that I'd brought in to date and to say that I was merely naive would be an understatement. I had now entered the realm of a large scale marijuana smuggler and early on this vignette was typical of some of the crazy, far-out and unique scenes that I experienced throughout the years to follow.
This was by far, the biggest that I'd brought in to date and to say that I was merely naive would be an understatement.
During the next five days, I ferried about one hundred kilos a day to ‘Yorktown’ Billy. On one of those days, he invited me to accompany him and meet one of his customers who lived over in Marin County. *For perspective - 100 kilos is 220.46 pounds
We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and went up to the town of Fairfax, where we met a real hippie looking character who Billy introduced as Woodacre Bob, nick-named for the tiny Marin village of Woodacre, located west of Fairfax. I immediately liked his carefree attitude and just called him Woody Bob. Bob was about six feet tall, with a full head of blondish-brown curly hair which flowed in tight ringlets down the middle of his back, had leather sandals, white pajama bottom pants with a drawstring holding them up and wore a tie-dyed purple, green, red and blue tank top which looked like he’d just thrown up down the front of it. We followed him in Billy’s brown VW bus. Woody Bob also drove a VW bus, but his was painted from bumper-to-bumper with bright psychedelic swirls causing any passerby to nearly suffer a broken neck from gawking at him as he passed.
We headed west into the Marin countryside then turned off the main road. We went about a quarter of a mile on a dirt road and through a locked wooden ranch-type gate, then climbed up the Marin hills for several miles to a barren mountaintop surrounded by nothing but blue sky, tall brown grass and clean fresh air.
We all got out of our vans and Bob proceeded to remove all of his clothes. Now he was totally nude and we proceeded with the transaction, like it was nothing out of the ordinary.
Coincidentally, this was not the last time Woody Bob and my paths would cross. Many years later we would meet again in rather unusual but predictable circumstances.
“What the fuck?” I asked Billy.
“Oh, don’t mind him. This is what he always does. He’s just getting in touch with nature. I just had to let you see this. He is one of the biggest dealers in Marin and one of my best customers." We transferred the load to his ‘hippie van’ and he gave Billy a paper bag full of cash. “We don’t need to count it here. I guarantee it’s all in there. I’ve never lost a penny with any of my customers. Now you can see how it’s done." (page 91 - 90° to Zamboanga)