You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

KANSAS GOLD

In the Fall of 1969, I drove my VW Bug from The University of Pennsylvania to my first teaching job at the University of Kansas. The road trip took me past endless fields of sorghum, wheat, and corn. As I approached my destination, Lawrence, Kansas. I was surprised to see that many of the fields I passed were growing hemp instead of grains.

After becoming settled in an old house and new job, I found time to take part in college town parties. These affairs usually included a combination of faculty and locals. At one such party, I met Leroy, a long time resident of Lawrence. I asked him about the hemp growing in the surrounding farmlands. I pieced together the following story from what he, and others, told me. Early in the Second World War the Navy needed rope for ships to supply the troops in Europe. The Pentagon sent delegations to Midwest granges asking farmers to support the war effort by planting hemp. Many patriotic farmers did. However by the time the hemp was ready for harvest, the government didn’t want it. The admirals had discovered that a plastic made by DuPont and used in ladies’ stockings, nylon, made superior rope. The farmers were paid to plow their hemp under and replant sorghum. They did this and what came up was hemp. There was no getting rid of it. And so twenty years after the war had ended, hemp was still growing in farmlands of the Midwest.

Leroy and I decided that we should harvest a couple plants to test it’s medicinal qualities. In preparation for the heist, we drove the back roads surrounding Lawrence until we found the perfect spot. A straight stretch of country road, several miles long with hemp fields on both sides. Our plan was to return late at night. We would stop mid-way along that stretch. Feigning motor trouble we would open both the hood in front of the VW bug and the motor compartment in the rear. Leroy would stay with the bug and look out for cars. I was to disappear into the hemp field and pull up a couple of plants. If a car should come, it would possibly stop to offer assistance. In that case, I would step out of the field zipping up my pants. We waited for a moonlit night to set our plan into action. It was after midnight when we drove to the designated spot. I made my way into the field of hemp. The stalks were much taller than they had seemed when driving by. I pulled up a plant that was taller than me, it came out of the ground easily. I had pulled up several more. Why stop at two? I wrapped my arms around my treasure and headed back to join Leroy. Just then he yelled, “CAR COMING.” I could have dropped the stalks but then I would have had to return to find and recover them. No! I thought, there is time to make a getaway. I rushed to the car and shoved the plants into the luggage compartment in the front of the beetle. However the plants were too long, they stuck out on both sides of the VW’s hood. It looked like a horse with hay protruding from both sides its mouth. The car was getting closer. I embraced the long stocks again pulling and bending them in with me, I stuffed them and myself into the back seat. Leroy closed the hood and motor compartment and he quickly drove away. We were on the road before the approaching vehicle could see that our back seat was stuffed from floorboards to headliner with cannabis and me.

THE DRUG BUST of 1970

Lawrence, the home of the University of Kansas. It is a small town surrounded by farms, and located near the center of the U.S. ” Bible Belt.” The relationship between the university and the agricultural community was strained before the Vietnam War. With the war, and student demonstrations against it, this strained relationship deteriorated further. It is probably more accurate to say that there were farmers who despised those hippy, godless, commie, students and everyone associated with them. On the other hand, the students would have cared less about the farmers, except that they would occasionally visit the farmer’s abandoned hemp fields to “Mow the grass”.

There was a story, possibly apocryphal, about a couple of students who visited a farmer’s field to take a few stalks of the useless hemp. The farmer caught them and shot them both. The young man died. The young woman survived after a long stay in the hospital. The farmer was not indicated. Upon hearing this story I became a little anxious about the stash of dried hemp leaves and seeds which I kept in the kitchen cabinet.

I became increasingly anxious as a result of events on one winter night in 1970. On that night, a long line of police cars and black sedans were driven from Topica, the Kansas state capitol, to Lawrence. They were coming to rid Kansas of sinful students and their hoards of drugs. I learned of the raid the following morning in the design studio. My students were very upset that the police had demanded entry to their apartments and dorm rooms without warrants. The police had rifled through their drawers and closets searching for drugs. The raid was initiated by the Kansas State Attorney General. He had invited the national press, but he had not notified the local police. It was thought to have been a political ploy to boost public opinion and his campaign to be governor.

This event was upsetting to me for several reasons. I felt the stress of my students who were shaken, and unable to focus on their design work for several days after the raid. I was also worried about my stash. I could imagine headlines in the local paper, “University Professor Arrested for Marijuana Possession”. I had to get the grass out of my house. I took the film canisters, containing dried hemp, to a collapsing garage that was open to the alley behind my house. There I made my way over an old lawn mower, a broken wheelbarrow, and other rusted junk to place the canisters on the top plate of an open framed wall. They were placed so that I could see them as I walked by in the alley. I thought they would not be noticed unless one was looking for them. This alley was like many in Lawrence. The alleys were comprised of a single paved driving lane with a five-foot-wide strip of weeds on either side. These strips are public property. Most were not maintained. They are where residents left their garbage cans and abandoned things such as broken bicycles and dead lawnmowers.

While I had hidden my canisters of dried leaves, I still had several film canisters of hemp seed in my house. I devised a plan by which students would no longer have to risk their lives stealing pot from framers. Late one night my wife drove our VW Bug, while I stood on the seat with my torso out of the sun roof. Perched there with a plastic straw as a pea shooter, I sowed marijuana seeds in the weedy patches along the alleys leading to campus. Over the Summer the garage, in which I had hidden my stash, was cleared of all the broken-down yard tools and my canisters of marijuana. The following Fall, I overheard one student tell another “I walk up the alleys on my way to campus. It’s amazing. There are marijuana plants growing in many of them. Of course, my alley was no exception and I had a hemp plant in the strip behind my house. It was a big beautiful plant, which I frequently admired but dared not harvest.