Well I believe it was quite a few years ago now, maybe 7, when I saw finally my first Willie Nelson show. He was one of those guys I just always figured I’d see and yet hadn’t managed to.
I was in a state of flux at the time, moving back to Seattle after a 2 year sojurn south to Santa Cruz, home of the backyard healthy- hillside marijuana plants. I had moved to Santa Cruz under the guise of “getting my shit together”, which was… and still is an oxymoron, although unbeknownst to me at the time. Not to say the student population isn’t plugging away at their futures at an earth friendly and socially concious, excellent academic institution, it’s just that the fog burning off the water as you smoke a jay on the way down the trail to class and realize you ate mushrooms here last week is a regular occurance. You need to graduate and get out!! Needless to say.. I was never a student at UCSC. But it is a great place to learn things about yourself and the world, and sit in on classes… easy cultivation in pickle buckets, the drying of sweet leaf in storage units on 17th avenue, large batch butter making from fresh shake, great spice cake recipes, the sweet left spot in front of Oneill’s, and how fast a ball of kelp can make the surface water at pleasure point feel like you hit a tree… but I will digress from reminiscing of what now seems like a utopian place, because it makes me a long for the noon f0g burn off and a mimosa.
The state of shock upon reentry into the Seattle culture and climate is what this is about…. and Willie Nelson was the kind, kind salve,… that would soothe my rainy entry into Seattle, along with a kind joint shared with a Margaret Lindsey Grubb in the Monroe evergreen state fair parking lot before the show…
Marni had moved to Santa Cruz, where God placed her in a barista position at my place of employ. I was like, who is the new flaky Californian come to work the morning shift, then she said I’m from Snohomish.. I said, bla blal bla bla Steven’s Pass bla bla, Washington sticky buds etc… and we became a bragging team representing the Evergreen state in all things marijuana and snosport oriented at the coffee shop con yuppie stoner hub that was the Soquel California mortgage broker, burnt out yuppie stoner, small time grower’s, retired state patrol rancher’s, seaside new age dweller’s, general contractor’s employee and wife’s latte stop of choice. We could not compete in the Snow arena, though we tried…valiently mostly with beers and NW rock and roll. Our compatriots raised on the slopes of the Sierras had us beat in skills and cojones, but we were girls and we had good weed… You can see where this is going perhaps, but I will continue it later….
