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Let's just start out by talking about marijuana days, how you came to be a marijuana dealer, how did that happen?
Well, smoking marijuana--or most everybody who smokes marijuana deals it in small amounts to their friends, innocently enough. I think it's innocently enough. Then I begin to see the money aspect of it. That was the driving force. I suddenly began to realize that to become an entrepreneur in the marijuana business would make me fairly well off. And I also liked the lifestyle, my own working hours. Basically, the whole conception of this came about when a friend of mine came out to Manhattan Beach for the summer in California. He was attending U-Mass at Amherst and I had a large punch bowl of pot sitting on the table, for anybody to use at their leisure. He asked me how much it was worth and I told him something like $60.00 per kilo. He told me that it sold for $300.00 back East in Amherst. The wheels began to turn and the next thing I knew we were purchasing the $60.00 kilos and transporting pot back to Amherst making a profit of approximately $200.00 on each one less the airline fare, what have you. At that time that was a lot of money.
So you're sort of beating the system. Now you're sort of an outlaw.
Not sort of. I crossed over the line--but at that time I was still on the verge of not thinking that I was really doing anything against the law or anything bad because I was simply supplying a need that everybody my age wanted and I wasn't looked upon as the guy in the black hat in the Sedan hanging outside the school yard. In fact, I was welcomed. There were movie stars and rock stars. I became a pot star. I glorified in that. And of course as time wore on the business began to expand and grow. It went from more or less a college fun thing to a serious business. As the money grew, the power grew.
So at the time Nixon becomes president, in '68. At that point you're doing what?
In '68 I was transporting pot back to the Northeast in Amherst, the college areas. At that point I was buying it in Southern California and then conceived the idea of why not go down to Mexico and get our own pot and fly it across the border and then transport it back east in motorhomes, and triple our profit. And so, at that time I had no idea of Mexico. I've been to bull fights in Tijuana with some of my college buddies but that was about all I knew of Mexico. I had seen a movie called "Night of the Iguana" with Liz Taylor and Richard Burton and I've heard it was filmed in Puerto Vallarta and ironically enough that's the area I chose to go to. Spent several weeks there looking for a connection. We couldn't speak Spanish and after about 2 weeks there everybody was more or less burned out on the whole idea and wanted to return to the United States and carry on with the supply of business we had. Find out the last day we were leaving, we met a young lady in a yellow Volkswagen beetle and she came up to us and took us for a ride. Asked us what we were doing there and we told her--
Mexican woman?
No. A little American hippie girl. She said I happen to live with a guy, Mexican, who has all the pot you want and so she took us over there. He was the son of a Mexican general. And that's how that all began.
So tell me about that meeting.
Well he was kind of crazy, too. But we went along with what he said. There were sport fishing boats in the Puerto Vallarta area, and Puerto Vallarta extends out into a point, which is called Point [Damia], and he [informed] us we could keep the plane at the airport in Puerto Vallarta and then hop over to Point Damia which was like 10 miles, and the pot would be taken over there across Banderas Bay and loaded onto the plane. There was no access road into Point Damia at that time. And it was simply a matter of flying back into the United States. As concerning where to land, up by Palm Springs, California there were dry lake beds and we used those. The first flight, I did it with myself and another fellow, and was in the Cherokee 6 and I wasn't really proficient in flying. I only took lessons to fly this Cherokee 6 and in the initial flight we got lost out over the Pacific and I knew I was somewhat 100 miles off my course and it was starting to get dark and I didn't have any instrument rating and paranoia set in. So I turned to the East and finally found the mountain pass and luckily just before dark set in I arrived at the dry lake beds. It was a frightening trip and all. After that I decided to hire professional pilots.
