Krassner - Pot stories for the soul: true tales about Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson, Allen Ginsburg ... and many more

Table of Contents

Best of The Realist [Editor]

For Peter McWilliams, whose creative and compassionate
leadership in the medical marijuana movement
has continued to inspire and invigorate

Marijuana is not a medicine. It is a drug that makes people think they feel better.

Art Croney, a lobbyist for the Committee on Moral Concerns

I admit I experimented with drugs in college.
What I dont say is the experiment was a success.

Steve Coppage, satisfied smoker

TANKS BUT NO TOKES

Basically, fuck dope. No offense, dude, but fuck dope.

This has virtually nothing to do with the subject at hand, but as deep background, permit me this brief preamble: I ran away from home at age thirteen. Id already been earning my living for three or four years prior to that, apart from mooching off my parents in Painesville, Ohio.

I mean, I was nine or ten, fer chrissakes, so when I say I was earning my own living, I mean I was paying for everything a kid of nine or ten in the early forties would need money for: ten cents for admission every Saturday afternoon to the Lake Theater; the latest issue of Big Shot Comics featuring Skyman and Tony Trent as The Face; an occasional Grosset & Dunlap hardcover of a Lone Ranger novel ($2 each) bylined by Fran Striker, who had created the radio show and the character, but actually ghostwritten by the unsung Gaylord DuBois; a new pair of U.S. Keds high-tops with the big red ball on the side; a Tom Mix nuclear bombardment chamber radio premium ring for ten cents and two Ralston Purina box tops; a bottle of Teel tooth drops; some Fleers Dubble Bubble... I earned the money for such staples by selling the Sunday edition of Clevelands The Plain Dealer every Saturday night at the corner of State and Main streets, by shining shoes at that same excellent location, by mowing lawns, raking leaves, shoveling snow, catching flies, cleaning garages and attics. Back in the days before the discovery of Cultural Guilt and the advent of the Victim Society, that was how us lower-middle-class white boys paid our way. It was a hardscrabble existence for Clark Bars.

And then I ran away. And began to earn my keep for real. No mommy bargaining that if Id eat my peas and carrots, I could stay up an hour later to hear Big Town or The Hermits Cave. No father saying if I cleaned my room, I could come downtown after he closed the store on Saturday night and wed have hot roast beef sandwiches and French fries at Jerry & Berts. It was La Strada, dude. I was on the road, sans bucks, sans mommy/daddy, sans even Kerouacwho wouldnt be published yet for another decade. I worked on farms and in orchards, picking crops. I bluffed my way into truck-driving jobs on construction sites. I worked in a lumber camp, on tuna boats, as a door-to-door salesman, a short-order cook, a printers devil and slag-bucket carrier in a lithographing plant, a garbage collector. I worked in a carnival, on a road gang, in a quarry, standing by the side of the road selling bouquets of flowers. I lied to farmers wives and told them I could repair (or mangle) the busted washing machine (or stove or hot plate) out there rusting in the side yard in exchange for a meal. I rode the rods, I drank gypsy coffee out of a tin can with Princes of the Road under railroad trestles in ten different states, I had my ass saved a hundred times by men of many other colors, and I was locked up in the old Kansas City slam with a carny geek who had gone wet-brain so long ago that the scent of rancid sour mash came out of his pores when he sweated.

I saw what liquor and dope had to offer. I have been around drugs all my life. I came back with Chinese food one night to a sleazy railroad flat I was sharing with a beautiful girl and found her dead, naked, ODd in the tub. The water was still warm. One night, I actually heard Charlie Parker blow at a $1 admission rent-and-spaghetti party up on 101st and First Avenue in Harlem; and he went into the can, went Charlie Bird Parker, and he fixed, and he came out, and he blew... crap. Discordant shit. I heard the great legend Bird blow, only that once, a year or two before he died, and he sounded like shit. From the dope.

Here is the subject at hand: I have been on the street since I was thirteen. I have learned important stuff about staying alive. I have learned that sneaky bastards and kindhearted slobs come in all colors. I have learned that youre never as smart as you think you are. I have learned that love is rare but cowardice is plentiful. I believe that anything not nailed down is mineand anything I can pry loose aint nailed down.

All through the 60s and 70s, going to parties and just hanging, this one or that one would offer me a hit of this or a lid of that. Drop one of these, stick this in your instep, shove this spansule up your ass, honk a line of this, inhale a vape of this... I always said, No thanks.

I wasnt afraid. Ask anyone who knows me. I dont scare. Simply put, I didnt want any part of that crap. When someone would thrust a doobie the size of a Macanudo cigar under my nose and intone the magic word toke? Id reply with a sweet smile, Not till I come down. Theodore Sturgeon (if you dont recognize the name, go look it up, you ignorant asshole) once wrote that hed seen studies of people who allegedly produced psilocybin in the bloodstream. He opined that I was like that... always high. Otherwise, how do I explain all the weird stuff Ive done in my life?

The subject at hand is Krassner asking me to write my dope story for his idiot book.

Here it is.

Fuck dope.

Oh, and... have a nice day.

PAUL KRASSNER

Pot Stories for the Soul was first published by High Times Books in 1999. It won the Firecracker Alternative Book Award and also became a Quality Paperback Book Club selection. All rights have since been reverted back to me, and this is an expanded and updated edition of that collection.

The original concept was a trilogy of true dope talesPot Stories for the Soul, Acid Trips for the Soul, and Magic Mushrooms for the Soulbut attorneys for the Chicken Soup for the Soul publisher sent a letter to High Times Books demanding that it cease and desist.

Thus, the first sequel was retitled Acid Trips for the Mind, but the distributor insisted that it be changed to Psychedelic Trips for the Mind