 where we explore the history of a clandestine scene through the eyes of the folks who lived it. I'm Matthew, owner of Riot Seeds. I'll occasionally be joined by my co-host, Natsudaw, breeder and grower from Mendocina. Welcome to the Underground. Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome to Breeder Syndicate. My name is Matthew. This is my co-host, Natsudaw. There he is. And we have with us today, Mad Jack and Ricko. So this is one of the episodes I've probably been looking forward to the most since we started. And I'll leave it up to Mad Jack to kind of start his tail because this is one I couldn't possibly begin to start. So Mad Jack, when you started getting into growing, what was the impetus? What was the start? Well, the start was a friend of mine who was a dealer in Tempe, a weed dealer. He saw all kinds of loads coming through over the years, from the late 60s to, let's say, 73, 74. And he would high-grade the seeds. These were all seeded loads at first. So if he had Guererin or if he had Mohakken, if he found that it was a great strain, he would keep the seeds. And over time, he started collecting all these seeds. And then one day, around 1975, he said, why don't we just grow our own with these seeds instead of having to deal with the stuff? So we decided to test that theory. And that's the very first grow in 1976 I did with him. And I went up and found the spot that we would potentially use in a remote canyon along the Mogallon rim. The Mogallon rim is spelled like Mogallon, but it's pronounced Moggion or Mogallon. And it's the southernmost edge of the Colorado Plateau. So it stretches roughly from Williams, Arizona all the way to Mogallon, New Mexico, 200 miles wide, this edge of the plateau. And along the edge are all these cracks, let's call them, and they're canyons with streams, year-round streams. There's probably, I'd say 20 canyons with year-round streams in that 200 miles. And we chose one of them. And when you decided to choose that, was it because you knew for a fact there was no real human interaction there? Is it just so remote that nobody was going down there? That's pretty much it. Hunters stay up on top of the plateau edges and stuff, or they're way, way down in areas that are easier to, more accessible. Sure. To hike down 1600 feet into a canyon, down a boulder, strewn wash, through bushes and stuff. Hunters wouldn't do it because if they shoot anything, they'd have to carry it out. And it's just way too remote. And the criteria was we wanted, it had to have a year-round stream. So we had to make sure that it was flowing in the heart of the summer. And a Jeep trail dirt road that led close to it, so we wouldn't have to hike more than maybe two hours one way. Yeah. And then we began testing it in different ways. I'd have my friend who was the dealer from Tempe walk around down below while I was up on the rim, and we had walkie-talkies back then. This is pretty self-clone. So you just, I'd go, oh, I can see you. You're wearing a white t-shirt. So that had to change. And then he had a straw hat that had to change. Just can't be doing those things if you're in the bottom of the canyon in hunters, cowboys. Ranchers still use these areas back in the early 70s. They were grazing cows there. Even though it was national forest, the forest was allowing them, I think their permits go back to the 1920s or 30s or 40s, and they just allowed them to continue on. And they got tighter and tighter. And then eventually by, oh, let's say late 70s, they stopped all the grazing in these areas in this particular area, which was great. Yeah, yeah, that's very awesome. A canyon away, some guys from Jerome were growing and they parked their truck every week, week after week after week at the end of a Jeep trail. And finally the rancher using that area called the Forest Service and they came out and ran the plates and found, oh, wow, they're from Jerome, the hippie capital of Northern Arizona. So that was their scene. Yeah, and they didn't wait for them. They just, they didn't want to go down inside in case it would become a shootout or something. So they waited till they harvested it and took it all back to Jerome and then they busted it on Jerome with like a hundred pounds. Oh, no. And they didn't have any effect on you guys? No, it bothered us because they were within five miles by air of where we were, but it's so remote and so difficult. They chose a canyon that was a lot better known and people were known for hiking through it and swimming through it because it was very long, it had sections of wall to wall, water, you had to swim. Our canyon was unknown and you couldn't hike down from the top because there was a spot we called, land, not lands and the hall of the mountain came is what we called it. It was a hundred foot waterfall drop-off and you couldn't go down it. We never had to worry about anyone hiking downstream from where it started as a wash five miles away. So how did you guys hike in? Did you guys go in a certain way that made it accessible enough, obviously for you guys but other people didn't know? Yep. We drove five mile Jeep trail, the first, well, this first time with my friend from Tempe, it was about a three mile Jeep trail and then maybe a thousand foot drop-off down into the canyon and it was a canyon that at the top was heavily used by swimmers and people who were into crystal clear pools and things like that. But the lower part where we were, there was no one. We never left footprints either. We, these beautiful sandbars that along creeks and edges, we would just avoid them because we knew that if anyone did hike through, that's the first place they would walk because it was easier. So we could always check for footprints and our primary canyon, Magak Canyon, which came the next year in five years, we only saw one set of footprints. Wow. And ironically, my partner picked up a hitchhiker on the way back through the nearest town and he was the guy who had hiked through there. So we found out he was all excited because he had hiked this 12-mile canyon and saw nobody and he had hiked right by our gardens and never knew it. You know, because he was down in the canyon. Yeah, so that was good karma. Meeting the guy, the hippie. What I find so interesting when I was reading a little bit about your history and stuff is how similar, although a little bit different just due to geography, like when I first moved to Mendocino County and we were doing guerrilla before the medical era really started, was how similar the criteria was in that you were looking for somewhere very remote, inaccessible, normal people, hikers, hunters, various people wouldn't ever go there, but you needed water and you couldn't really take a vehicle up there or even like dirt bikes or anything because you never wanted to leave a trail that would have been visible from the air. So you would only get so, so close and then the rest of it was sort of hooping it in and even hooping it in from like different angles so that you wouldn't create a path in summer that would be visible. Was that, can I, let me interject the question, were they flying looking for weed then or was that too early for that? It was too early. They, there were people who talked about that going on but we never saw that happen. We did have a helicopter land in our canyon in the only spot that was wide enough. This is another weird one. And their tracks went about, the tracks from the helicopter went about 400 yards down the canyon stop and then went back and we thought we were dreaming because we didn't see the helicopter. We just saw these tracks and we followed them to this little opening but when we got down on our knees and looked carefully little pieces of paint had chipped off the helicopters. I forget one of those, the skids, let's call them. And on the rocks, because it's volcanic rock so it's very sharp. So we knew we were hallucinating and the helicopter had landed there. And later we found out it was eagle stud ears from the university in, we're not sure which university but they were checking out all the canyons up there and getting out and hiking if they saw eagles and trying to get some numbers for their studies. So we felt okay. But the actual looking for plants, if you were to like clear a huge wide area and leave it open and then just start growing such that you could stand on the edge of a canyon and look down in and go, hey, what's that? That would be bad. So you have to go in and out between the bushes, make little patties that flowed from one to the next level and work it out. And then later we even found out it made sense because we were up on the rim looking down after watering and the reflection on the mud was very obvious that this was an area that had gotten water. So every time we watered, which was once a week we spread oak leaves and whatever leaves were there we started piling them up in advance and just threw them on top and totally stopped the reflection. So we did a lot of things. We painted all of our hose connections with brown spray, flat spray paint so that we wouldn't reflect. We never wore white t-shirts or hats. We had this photo that you have up right now that's my second partner. He's my first partner in Magic because the guy I started with, who's the dealer we went separate ways kind of because he lived in Tempe and it just wasn't feasible for him to come up and do this every week. So I lived in the Verdi Valley which I was still over an hour away but it made more sense. And this fellow that you see here was my first partner. He lived in Flag and this is what the creek looked like year round water. This pond right here is what we pumped out of and our first garden was 90 feet above the creek level. So we used a Briggs and Stratton four horsepower, two inch fire hose and it wouldn't pump up 90 feet. So we had to drop down to a garden hose adapter that it forced it up to 90 feet. We just barely made it. Yeah, there was different pumps we could have gotten for more money like six horsepower that weighed 150 pounds or something. But it worked. So it took two hours that first garden to just move the hose around. We only had one hose and we just move it. In subsequent years, we created systems of hoses. So you just, they all just watered. And then those filled up little patties and then those poured over onto the next level and to the next level because the train was relatively flat on these alluvial plateaus but maybe a foot or two of differences. Plus we raked it and leveled it and used rocks to outline little patties so that maybe there'd be two or three plants. Yeah, on a patty. And then the next one would be next to it and it would drop off. We had free hoses though too that were on Simon's shutoffs and we could open them up and then spot hit other plants and it worked pretty well. We spent a lot of time developing our hose network in some subsequent years. Sounds like it. After that first, yeah. So I'm gonna be, you know. Mad Jack, this is Raho. So just, I wanna jump in there. You're talking about all these guerrilla tactics. And this is back in the 70s you're talking about. When you were doing all this stuff was any of this kind of inspired by the war that we had just finished fighting in Vietnam and everything that we used to hear on the news all the time about the guerrilla fighters over there and how they concealed what they did. I know that when I was doing my guerrilla stuff it was, you know, I'm listening to your stories and it's exactly like what I did except my stuff was all green and not rock, you know. But where was your inspiration for these tactics? The whole catalog. The written word has always been my guide. And this is domestic grower supply catalog from 1981, 1980. And I read about this in the whole catalog and I wrote in a way for it. Look at these waterbed claspal tanks to fit in the back of your trucks so you can pull up to the edge of a canyon. And I knew people who use this method and it's all gravity feed downhill for 600 feet to their spot. And this is a small little thing, small little catalog. But it does have a very nice section on pumps and these guys, I don't know, once we started making their second catalog in color 1982 and they were based out of, I think, Oregon. Let's see where this is. But they have all kinds of guzzler pumps, hand operated where you just, that wouldn't work for us but we've had a few times where things broke and we had to water by hand using five gallon jugs, dipping them in the water and carrying them. It takes a little bit of strength. But you can't neglect it because you're there to water and it was good. The way we did it, we were fortunate because one week we would flood irrigate. We estimated in subsequent years that we were putting 20,000 gallons on our little gardens. So that was in this soft dirt that we used, it would sink nice and deep and then the roots would follow it. And it's, but you couldn't go two weeks. If you went like even 10 days, which we tried to do a few times, you'd come back and all the plants were wilted and drooping or freaked out because we thought we had messed up and we went ahead and watered in the next morning. Everything was standing up perfect and looking beautiful. They're amazing plants, how they can be almost shriveled and then one water or just... Did you ever use any water retention crystals or anything like that to extend? Because that was some technique that, by the time that I got to Mendocino County and started doing stuff like that, there was already a lot of like, I don't know if you wanna call it hill tech or older people that were passing down how to get away with things. Infrequent watering was always, well, how do you retain the water? How do you keep it? How do you keep things wet when you're only checking on things every so often? So... Well, our canyon was 12 miles long and we hiked it up and down to find the two spots that we... This was the first spot that's on the camera right now. But the other two spots we found were up canyon and you just don't come across alluvial plateaus at water level. They're up at least 20 feet above and we had to scramble up and look and scramble up and we'd be up in the rim and look down and say, hey, that looks like a good spot. And then go back the next week and check it. But when we finally found our two spots, this soil is wind deposited over centuries and decades and multitudes and it was so nice. There was rocks in there, big boulders, as you can see here, but in this is our very first place. Down below here is where that photo was taken. And this is at almost at harvest. You can see the size of the coal is sticking up here. And the soil was just this beautiful rich volcanic soil. Although when Robert Clark came down in the second year of our new location, not this one, he said, he didn't believe we were growing in dirt. And I said, what do you mean in dirt? And he said, well, in Mendocino and up in North, it's not dirt like this, it's soil, like black, rich soil. And ours was brown and gray and just dirt, but it was easy to shovel. So that meant that the water penetrated it and so did roots very easily. We turned the soil down 18 inches, I think. And the only amendments we ever added were bone meal and blood meal. Oh, wow, that was it. We didn't have to do a foliar spray. And the foliar spray saved us from this twisting leaf thing that we, it was a micro nutrient that was missing. We think it was malibbed in them, but we sprayed the plants and it saved our butts because they all untwisted. No, that's nice. But that's it. So when you were, let me ask a question in terms of when did the growing season, like when was it nice enough outside that you were able to plant? And how much work did you do to prep in the winter, spring off season? Like when you said you turned the soil and you had to run all these hoses and prep all this different stuff, how much pregame went into like preparing the areas you were thinking about using? We had November and December and January off and then we were back out in February. Preparing, we started small. At this garden here, you're looking at and this photo is probably 100 feet by 50 feet with boulders and trees and stuff in it. It blended in pretty well. Even from the... It doesn't blend in really well. Yeah. However, the next garden we used was three times the size of this. And we planted in between bushes and trees, which I'm sure you've seen in some of the photos. But when there were no plants, those between the bushes and trees were the patties, I'm just calling them, that we had to build up with rocks and have it spill over to the next garden or the next patty in the next one. But we had free hoses too to be able to walk around and water with. It took, I don't know, months of prep the very first time because we had to bring down so much stuff. And then the third year we grew, we did two gardens. That was the big year and that's the year that Rob Clark came down to see. He only came down to see the one easiest to reach garden. And in this, this photo is kind of an early photo of that first garden. And these are little tiny plants in here in these, let's see if we can get up to that. That first garden, so was that primarily different types of Mexican that your dealer friend had collected? Was that the primary seed stock for the first season? I mean, you were saying stuff about Oaxacan, I believe and some other things, was there any Colombian and stuff? Yeah, but the first year we just grew the Mexican strains and it was in this other canyon that people actually went to the top of it and would swim there. But our canyon, we didn't start till my partner that you saw down there next to the water. That, hold it right here if you could hold that one. Which one, the last one or this one? Yeah, the last photo, aerial photos. I was trying to jump through, this one? That one, this one. You can see how they stand out. Yeah, definitely. In the canvass, the evergreens here were giant pines and small shrub oak trees and bushes. But from the rim, it didn't look too blocky. They were scattered out. If you really knew what you were looking for, yeah, you would have spotted this from 1600 feet above. But no one really went to those edges in those canyons. This was not, especially when it's 100 degrees out. It was difficult. So this is just, I'd say this is one half of this garden. It extends over here and over here. And this was only 30 feet above the creek, but it was in the spot that you would never expect it. And we hiked up there and went, holy cow, this is perfect. So we were able to pump two inches of water in a two inch fire hose up to this flat. And that's why we put about 20,000 gallons on here every week. And so wild. Do you mind me asking how old you were? I was 28. 28. Yep, 28 and 29 and 30, when we were doing these three canyons, these three gardens that you were seeing here. Yeah, my partner was the same age. We were all just late 20s and right around 30 when we started doing this. In 76 though, I was only 25. Are you contact with any of the other guys? All of them. So they're all still with us? That's awesome. That's freaking awesome. Yeah, relatively speaking, the dealer from Tempe has, what's that disease? He's now in a wheelchair after 15 years. He made it 15 years. Multiple sclerosis. Oh, MS, yeah. MS, yeah. Yeah, so he's kind of restricted. Another partner who was the very last one I worked with, he was a friend. We all knew each other independently. I mean, it was great because we're all originally friends. He has early onset Alzheimer's. He's 70 and he has great long-term memory but he can't drive a car. If he gets in the car and starts driving, he doesn't remember where he is within a block. So he's restricted. But my first partner that you saw there in Madjag came down by the water, he's still, he's six foot seven and he's a big guy and he's still around and I see him every once in a while. But my partner for the last two years in Madjag, he lives in Taos. He's originally from the UK. One who just wrote the Year of the Madjag, he's got it on Amazon, you can get it. It's a fictional account of using all of that. Yeah, all of us and all of the characters, but it's more about a love affair he had. It's at the time and it's pretty funny. He got an honorable mention in the of Scott Fitzgerald competition or something. Oh, wow. He is writing a second book now already. That's gonna be more factual. My, that'll be great. My pilot friend who he's in the chronicle I wrote called, I know the guy who knows the guy. I just talked to him a few days ago. He called me because he just fell and broke his hip. I was gonna invite him to be on this show, but he's in the hospital in Anchorage, Alaska now. I know, bizarre. So the universe didn't want that to happen. And I had kind of thought he wouldn't want to. He makes Mr. Nice look small. I can, we'll go into his story later if you don't mind. Yeah, I'd love to. The last time I saw him physically in 1985 until last year, they were just working on 60 tons of hashish from Pakistan. And this is the level he worked at. And he retired, never was busted. He, it's incredible. I know it's amazing, but if you knew him, you'd understand. This is why I was so intent on getting this show because I think, we talk about a lot of the people who we, who've been put on a pedestal in our scene. I mean, of course, Sam the skunk man, Rob Clark, amazing people, obviously deserve their accolades. I mean, the big heroes in the scene. But there's some guys who did some really big, bold stuff that don't quite get seen for many reasons. A lot of it has to do with the fact that it was clandestine and illegal. And it's in some folks don't even still want to talk about it. But there are some amazing stories out there that I've come across over the years and years was one. And speaking to someone that you were able to bring with you, Raho, I wanted to get into a little bit with you, Raho. Can you talk about when you first started collecting and getting into growing? Yeah, sure, Matt. And it seems like so long ago, you know, I was just a kid, 78 was the first time I smoked weed. And back then you had to smoke, three, four, five times before you ever actually felt the effect. I don't know if it was because the concentration of THC wasn't as high as it is today, or maybe the stuff that kids could buy on the street back then wasn't so great. But by the time I got high, that very first time, I was 15 years old, after school at a buddy's house. And, you know, it took a while to kick in. And after, I was actually riding my bike home thinking, oh, you know, another time that it didn't work when it started to hit me, right? It was a beautiful spring day. The sun was out, you know, the air was just, it was one of those days where the air was crisp and it was the temperature was perfect. You know, I'm cranking away on this 10-speed bike and the wind is blowing in my face. And all of a sudden I kind of noticed that the air and the light and everything is just kind of alive and the feeling of the wind and the air circulating around me and in my face and everything just became, you know, it was like I was connected with everything around me. And it was just a wonderful experience. And, you know, I get home and I put on some music because I'm really cranking at this point, right? It's really kicking in and I'm like, wow. You know, I mean, I drank plenty of beer and, you know, but this was nothing like it, you know? And I put on these headphones and it's Ted Nugent Great White Buffalo, right? Wide open, cranked up and it's like, you know, that's, yeah, you know that song, you know? The Great White Buffalo and, oh my God. The heightened senses and all of it going with it. Yes. How old were you then? How old were you, Rahul? 15. 15. Perfect day for it too. When I was listening to that, it sounds like you had your very own bicycle day because that's what happened to Albert Hoffman when he first took LSD is he didn't know it was gonna work. And he got on a bike and started going around and all of a sudden colors and wind and he's like, what's going on? I'm starting to feel something unusual. And yeah. Changing the way we accepted you. Wow, I had no idea, man. That's awesome. They just celebrated today. They call it bicycle day because he took acid accidentally and then he hopped on his bike and he started, you know, riding around and all of a sudden things started altering on him and he really wasn't sure what was happening. He thought it was the most beautiful experience he'd ever had and wanted to give it to everyone. It was kind of similar to what you just said. It was, that's what we think is it colors and the wind and you were very in tune with nature and like you're riding your bike. It just kind of triggered that for me. Of your head space changed and all of a sudden the world was born to new. It was. Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, to share that experience or similar, right? With such a famous man. Pretty cool. It's a great story, dude. So, you know, I mean, that was the first time getting high and as soon as I came down, you know, mom and dad came home from work and I'm like, God, can they tell, you know? Yeah, of course, yeah. Dinners prepared and everything. It's, you know, and I was starting to reflect on what's, you know, what's happened to me and I realized that, you know, the last seven years of my life that I've been told these things in school about drugs are bad, you know, they're evil and they'll make you want to jump off of a building because you think you can fly or you'll be violent or, you know, you'll immediately be addicted and fending for more. And, you know, I mean, it was just, all of a sudden I just started questioning everything I'd ever been told by the authorities, you know? Because they lied about this and if they lied about that, what else did they lie about, you know? So, you know, almost every bag of weed that I got after that and there were many, right? Because that was the beginning and, of course. And, you know, I've never, never been the same but every bag came with seeds back then. Four finger bags, man. That's right, you know, two fingers, yeah. Yeah, 15 bucks. Two fingers for a quarter, one finger for a dime bag, you know, half ounces, it's just, you know, simple math but there were plenty of seeds in it and, you know, where I lived, you know, in the Southeast it was mostly Colombian that we saw. I know Mad Jag, you know, they got lots of Mexican out there and he was very close to where it came from and everything but for us, you know, buying kids, buying weed on the street it was commercial Colombian most of the time and, you know, it was just loaded with seeds. So, the very next year in 79, I tried to grow my first garden and, you know, I had a tray full of sprouts. I've been gardening with my mom ever since I was a little kid, you know, in the vegetable garden, tomatoes and cucumbers and watermelon and you name it, right? But growing weed was just another garden thing for me and so I got them to sprout and I think I might even use the paper towel method, you know, I mean, because after I started smoking and I immediately discovered High Times Magazine and it became a monthly ritual of going down to the bookstore and picking it up. And that was at the beginning of High Times, yeah? 76, 77, 75? Yeah, so it had been around for a few years. I mean, I think- I think 70 was the first year. There you go, yeah. And, but, you know, I took those sprouts and I put them out in the bright, full sunlight, you know, that I started them indoors under a little fluorescent light and I put them with no hardening at all under the sun and I went out the next day and they were all dead. Yeah. And that was the end of, you know, year one. Total failure, you know. The next year I came back and I hit it pretty hard and me and a couple of friends of mine, yeah. How are your parents with this? You know, that's a great question. Just amazingly open-minded about it. You know, at one point, maybe it was 81, I think. I started, I started breeding. I had picked up Rob Clark's- Marijuana Botany? Marijuana Botany. And it was just so inspiring, you know? I mean, it really, everything just clicked as far as the science of breeding and the way that he described, you know, genetics and selection and creating hybrids and everything. It was all so intuitive to me. It all just made complete and total sense. I immediately wanted to make my own seeds and start breeding. And, you know, that meant, of course, you know, we wanted smoke too. So we needed to segregate the males. And I wound up bringing these male indica plants into my parents' house. You know, I mean, I had these things in the dining room in the window just stinking. You know, I don't know how they put up with it. My mom's gone now, so I can't ask her that, yeah. I have a question for you. So it sounds like, you know, obviously he's, you know, he's messing with Oaxacan and different things from Mexico, you know, Arizona and New Mexico and that are not that much different climate. But if you're in the southeast of the United States and you're getting mostly Colombian, when you, that second year where you didn't kill your seedlings and you got a lot farther down the path, did you hit a point where you were like, are these ever going to finish? That's a great question. So, you know, that second year we had, a neighbor across the street had pulled in a harvest in 79. One of his friends had gone to Maui for Christmas and had come back with seeds of what I know now was Maui Wallians in 79. And he grew, they grew a big patch of that stuff. And it was, it was wide leaf. It was, you know, I know today that it was, it was Mexican and some sort of indica hybrid. You know, it finished early, it had amazing taste and being a poor kid that cut lawns for money, luckily half of their crop was seeded and they sold me the seeded stuff for cheap because nobody wanted it. Yeah. So. Even back then nobody wanted seeded weed. Well, you know, I mean, everything was seeded. You know, when you, when half your crop is seedless and they made t-shirts, you know, that said sins and they were, they were selling, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they were. I'd love to see some of those today. I, you know, I'm such a nerd for all the old vintage shit. Like, if you ever see one, let me know. You know, it's, it's amazing, you know, kids immediately turn into, you know, these instant entrepreneurs when they wind up with, with, you know, a bedroom full of weed hanging from the ceiling. That's for sure. You know, it's just all of a sudden, you know, it turns into, well, all my friends are going to want this. So how much am I going to charge for it? Yep. And, you know, all of a sudden. So you got lucky in the sense that you got a hybrid that would actually finish in your area. Yeah. Because I always had this idea and I'm, I'm obviously like in 19, when you guys are speaking of 1975, 77, 78, I was still happily in diapers. So that's definitely not my, my part. But I always thought that like maybe the first American breeding was you're getting this import from Thailand and Columbia and Panama and all that. And you're like, well, how the hell do I get this to finish where I'm at? Maybe I can take this Mexican and I can shorten it up some because this Mexican seems to be quicker. But man. You're exactly right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This Thai and this Colombian is taking a million years and it's getting cold and it's getting rainy and my stuff doesn't even look like it's done. Yeah. So I mean, that Maui was only part of the crop that we did that year. You know, it was, we also had a Mexican and we had a couple of Colombians. You know, it was, and all my friends were growing at that point, right? So, you know, everybody had a couple of plants out in the woods and we'd go to a party on Friday night. Somebody's parents were out of town and sometimes they'd walk you out behind the house and you know, into the woods behind their house and there'd be a little six foot Colombian Christmas tree in an opening in the woods behind their house. You know, just a little hole in the canopy where the sun came in and yeah, so those Colombians, you know, they would, we didn't, we never really finished them as we know, you know, what, you know, resin glands and, you know. Yeah, proper finish. They weren't ever really properly finished but they were finished well enough that, you know, we could get into the end of November and sometimes even, you know, the first couple of weeks of December where I lived before the frost would. That's very helpful. Yeah, and the hardest part is actually, you know, not picking it early. Kids didn't know any better and we just wanted to smoke the stuff. So, you know, I mean, we were just going off of the weather reports and the newspaper and, you know, Farmer's Almanac bullshit. So, maybe I could ask a question of both of you. These first couple of years that you guys are both describing. What were the aromas? What were the scents? What were the terpenes? You know, no one used terpenes back then but like what were the, what did the weeds smell like to you? You know, did it just smell like weed? Did you get citrus? Did you get any kind of skunk? Did you get, did you just smell like weed? You know, if you can remember, what aromas were you getting off these original Mexicans and Colombians and these. Even a 1979 skunk one. What would that smell like? Well, yeah, you're going to get there but I was just curious is like, what did Oaxacan smell like? You know, like did it because, you know, we know these lines from like way later when they've been worked by people extensively and bred in different directions. And it sounds like you guys were getting it basically from the farmer. The source. Yeah. From unadulterated, from the farmer and the source. Actual, like what we would call land race today, I suppose, right? Do you want to go first, Medjager? Sure. Well, the very first, I'll just, I have a little start up here. The first two joints I bought were in 1966 from the only hippie in my high school. And I wasn't quite ready to smoke them so I put them in a bottle and buried them in my yard. And two years later, when I dug them up and thought, oh, try them, they were just mold, pure mold. So that didn't work. But they had, you know, your really earliest weed that I remember smelling from my friend in, well, when I went to, yeah. Pine, pine terpenes really stood out. In 1975 or 76, some growers weed from Santa Barbara was showing up in the Verdi Valley in Sedona, Cottonwood, Jerome area, and probably coming through Phoenix. And it smelled just like fresh pine. I've never smelled weed like it again since then. If you close your eyes and just held it up, you would think you had pine soul in front of you. Like a Christmas tree style or pine soul, what would you say? More of a Christmas tree style, yeah, natural pine. Yeah, yeah. And it was beautiful stuff. It was cinemia, it was strong, and it was very inspiring because when we smelled that tideweed though, tie stick had a total different scent. It was heavy and earthy. I remember seeing early tie sticks in 1970, 71, that were supposedly dipped in opium too, or opium. Yeah, the pass of water. Yeah, they had white on the outside. We sat down with some black hash ones that was opiated supposedly, but little black white specks through it. And we cut out with razor blades every white speck. It could have been mold. So we could have enough to take a hit. And it wasn't opium. I don't know what it was. It didn't get us any higher, but it made the costs go up. When people were buying it, they paid more for it. I've looked a lot into that situation, especially when researching chocolate tie, because a lot of that theory behind chocolate tie was that it was dipped in something called passawater, or passawater, which was the water that was left over from producing heroin. It had the alkaloids, the morphine alkaloids and stuff in it. And supposedly the story was that they would dip it in that, but there's not really any proof of any of this ever existing anywhere. But that was the theory behind it and where it kind of all stemmed from. It may have happened once or twice, but I don't know if it ever really got out there. But I've heard about people being charged massive amounts of prices for these tie sticks that they were supposedly dipped in this water. Yeah, there's been long debates about that online, but I think it's been pretty much debunked mostly because the people growing the two different crops weren't really the same people. And a lot of them weren't producing heroin. They were just farmers. Right. Before we lose track, what was the smells that you were getting off your Hawaiian hybrids that you were successful with that second year? Right. So I mean, the Mexican versus Colombian, pretty distinctive. I usually associate cedar tastes and kind of a citrus, piney, cedar-y taste with Mexican. And I grew some beautiful alacan a couple of times that it flowered so much faster than the Colombian that I actually let it go too long to the point where it was actually over mature and it had lost some of its potency. But that was contrasted with the Colombians, which were usually, we'd get a lot of purple because they'd be coming in so late that just the temperature change would bring out a lot of purple colors in it. Once something turns purple, that what's that, what's that? It's not core or fill, it's the other. Anthocyanins? Yeah, the anthocyanins really seem to affect the taste Oh yeah, they always do, affects the taste and smell without a doubt. And personally, I like it, right? I do too, I'm a purple fiend. Yeah, but like Majeg said, the pine was there in the Colombian and there's a difference between the smell and the taste when you smoke it. There's some of it has kind of a chocolatey, I mean, I don't wanna completely sidetrack things into a haze talk, but my belief is when I started growing Ohaze a few years ago, I found that the effects, one day I just realized that the effects that I got from smoking Ohaze and even the tastes were exactly the same as what I felt that first time I got high riding that bicycle home. Yeah, the Colombian. And that it really kind of messed with my head a little bit because for so long, people talked about haze as the mixture of four different kinds of sativ Mexican, Colombian, Thai and Indian, right? And trying to figure out how this, what is obviously Sam's, the Ohaze as it's been released to the world since Sam brought it to Amsterdam is not everything that they made when the poster was made, right? And the pedigree was described. That's what Sam brought with him, that's what Sam preserved, that's what Sam shared, a three-way Colombian hybrid, right? Not the Indian, not the Thai, not the Mexican. And the tastes are there. There's kind of a chocolatey taste to it, earthy, you could call it, there's piney. You can find some sweetness in there, some citrus. There's different phenos in there, but it's all coming from Colombia as far as I'm concerned. We can have a debate and I'll let anybody believe what they wanna believe. I genuinely think, like right now, there is a man with a letter D for a name that is just smiling ear to ear. When Neville's old partners have been talking to me and not so a bunch, specifically about Sam's Ohaze being so Colombian dominant, being so Colombian dominant and the 69 haze, was it? That Neville had gotten the first time was very much more like Southeast Asian dominant. And that was the main difference between the haze Neville was using and why Neville's haze became so popular and why a lot of the Ohaze, supposedly, that's one of the theories why Ohaze didn't come as much as it had promised. It reminded me of something actually because it had been mentioned earlier on the thing is that when Thai and stuff like that was a little bit broader leafed, right? And he made a point that Sam and those guys, they kept breeding towards the thin leaf because they thought that was more sativa but that was actually more Colombian sativa and that some of the Southeast Asian stuff and some of the Thais, it's not like they were fat leafed but they were broader leafed than pure Colombian was. Yeah, I've got a picture of a Thai, I grew in 81. It was a Thai stick from 1980 that a friend brought home from college, older brother of one of my partners brought home from college in Colorado and it's very thin leaf. And I know that people talk about with Thai the alligator tail leaves, right? Broad leaf, extreme serrations and it has a reputation for that but that was, it's a big country and we all know from growing that man, you can't even pop a 10 pack of seeds without seeing a couple of narrow leaves in there with the wide leaves so why should we think that an entire country is going to produce nothing but wide leaves? It's the same thing, of course. Microclimates everywhere. Yeah, for Matt and myself, when I first started smoking, the only real two kinds of import I ever saw was brown Mexican and green Mexican. I came up a little later, the Thai, the Colombian, the Panamanian, some of these different regional things, the shift towards all those groups mostly importing cocaine had already happened. So a lot of the diversity in imports had changed and there was still a bunch of Mexican but that's kind of all it was for us. Yeah, I have the same experience for me. Even a decade, coming in a decade I think after Nato where I was starting, it was the same. We had Mexican, was it? You know, talking about these Mexicans, I'm thinking about Madjag's experience with that stuff and I don't wanna, can we just stick a pin in that? I wanna make one more point about the Hayes and the Colombian roots of it as we know it today. That Colombia, just like we were just discussing, Thailand is obviously gonna have a diverse range of different chemo-type, phenotypes, whatever, but in Colombia you had reds and golds and green and black, yeah, I mean so many different types and they all had such distinctive flavors and tastes and effects. I was lucky when I started doing this stuff, it was the end of the gory days of those elite types of wheat. I got to smoke the Panama, Colombian red. I got to smoke real Santa Mara gold and they all have things in common, but there were some unique characteristics about them that just, you know, Viva de France, just a big, big, big fan of R the Connoisseur and High Times Magazine and he inspired me to become a connoisseur of life and appreciate all the differences between things and savor them and dead. I wanna point this out just because I just, even a recent episode, I made a statement that I thought R was Robert Clark because that's kind of what people have been saying forever or it's assumed, but I think that might be wrong maybe. Totally wrong. Totally wrong, so yeah, that's an important note to make because I have always associated everything Robert Clark's ever written with R the Connoisseur and I love R the Connoisseur and I love Robert Clark too but I've always associated them as the same person and they're not R Clark. I asked Rob himself because long ago, I wondered the same question and he said no and I've actually heard R's real name and I can't remember it right now but someone I know from Manhattan knows him and said, oh no, that's a different guy. I wonder if he's still with us. I don't know. Man, you'd be great in the interview. One thing I'm curious about and I don't wanna, there's so many threads that happen in these kind of convos you could lose it at but when you were describing how difficult it was to get to your canyon gross, having done some gorilla myself and hidden, obviously like growing it is one thing but then harvesting it and drying it and getting it out of there is another thing. Could you talk for a minute about what that was like if you're going down some goat trail through the rocks and all of a sudden you have several hundred pounds that would be, I mean, more like a thousand pounds when it's wet, did you try to dry it there in the bushes? Did you hike it all out one by one? How much effort went into that? Because that's a real struggle. Once we started growing in our own canyon in Mad Jack Canyon, we did everything except for that first year where you had the photo of my friend down next to the water but the subsequent two years with my partner from the UK and we had a Swiss helper too who I'm still good friends with. I saw him three years ago in Zurich. He, we did everything down there. We manicured it, we dried it, manicured it, boxed it, we bought knockdown boxes from a supplier in Phoenix that were roughly, I'd say about, well, for 12 inches by eight inches by six inches and that held a pound. So, that's early. What we did, we brought Kelty pack frames that were just bear frames without the associated baggage on them and bungee cords and we could stack five of these boxes on one Kelty so you could carry out five pounds. Oh, wow. Every bit was hiked out that way up this 1,600 foot wash of boulders and strewn and we had pruned a few branches here and there where you just had to have clearance to get under a pine tree or something and we were very fortunate because one of the people in my life who's still around, he was one of the two principles of peyote that I've written about. He also was a huge weed dealer and he would meet us at the edge of our canyon after sunset and we would just hike up, hand them however many boxes we brought up and he'd hand us a paper bag full of cash and we didn't have to even drive to Phoenix or take the risk of trying to take it back home because that was actually the thought of working that hard for a year and then losing it all because you got a traffic stop. That was really influenced us. So we got a $100 an ounce, 1,600 a pound and that was the standard price and he sold it all by grams. Smart man. He sold it for $10 a gram to college students at ASU. He lived two blocks away from ASU in Tennessee. He just would buy everything we had and just slowly sell it over a year or two and triple his money. So you had one or two friends that were helping you, right? So when it comes to hiking it out if you could bring about five pounds at a time that means each trip you're probably at a maximum of 10 or 15 pounds. Yep. At harvest time, we brought in six more people at harvest time. Okay, that makes more sense. I was gonna say, I was like, man, you were really fit. Yeah. Your legs, your hiking ability was intense because it's a lot of back and forth. Yeah. Well, that part, I mean, I've hiked down gasoline. You know, five gallons of gas is like 35 pounds and we'd triple baggy the garbage bags and it would still stink. It was amazing because shaking it and moving down it was so difficult to keep it not from saturating everything. But at harvest time, boyfriends and girlfriends of ours and others, at most we had eight people down there, manicuring. We set up 10 by 10 foot Coleman classic tents that were spray painted. So they were a light brown color but we sprayed them with a little darkness and green and they blended in very nicely. And we limbed the plants. We cut a whole plant if we could, if it wasn't too big. We'd hang it for a day or two and then we'd cut the branches off, lim them and stack them like that all the way up inside these tents. So in case it did rain, we weren't gonna get caught with our plants getting wet. Did you do a lot of sun drying? No, it was all in the shade. We hung ropes between the trees and just hung them in there. And it was still in the 90s or 80s in the day. At night it would drop up where we were growing. We were growing at about 4,500 feet. So at night it would cool down but in the day this, it was really nice. Plus we were growing in, our main garden was in an east-west situation so the sun when it came up, it hit very early and it went almost to the end of the night because it did drop below the canyon edge at each end but one of our gardens was in a north-south section. It only got seven hours or eight hours of direct sunlight at max. And still the plants grew perfectly and beautifully. Didn't make a difference. But the east-west gardens, you know, they got 10, 11 hours of direct sunlight were awesome. Yep, they grew much bigger plants, much taller. What, when did the Mexicans naturally finish? Like when was your harvest time? When were they ripe those first few years for you? October. October. Yeah, the Colombian, you passed a photo by there earlier. That was, it was snowing on the rim above us on Thanksgiving and that's our tent, one of them. Yeah, the tent, yeah, there it is. Right in there, well hidden. That was the north-south garden we called the Anasazi. There's the Hall of the Mountain King. You cannot, you know, that kept hikers out. Yeah, I bet. Anyway, the Colombian, we didn't know about these things about finishing and how long they would take. And it was crazy, cause it was, they were the size of my little fingertip, you know, the buds and it was Thanksgiving and snowing above us. So we didn't grow any more Colombian after that first year. Yeah, there's a high, I think, was it by our, and anyway, there's this famous, there's this famous list of seeds that's been attributed to Sam or it's been attributed to others or whatever. And it had a bunch of, you know, hazes and skunks and different things like that. But what was interesting about it is it was organized by month that it finished. And there was only three or four things that finished in October. There was probably 10 things that finished in November. And then there was like 25 things that were December or January, which is like a polar opposite today. Yeah. Well, Rob was growing in Ben Lohman just above Santa Cruz in the redwoods there. And he, you know, the temperatures were very Mediterranean in a sense, you know? It would be cool. Yeah. Back, I wanted to jump forward to a question when you were talking about Mendocino and up North. Did you ever, do you know where Redway is? Yeah, 100%. The town of Redway. Yeah. Oh yeah. Southern Humboldt, yes. Because I met my Colombian friend and future partner in many escapades at the country tavern there in 1972. And a guy from Scottsdale owned the country tavern and he also had his own chemist and he produced millions and millions of hits of acid. That's amazing. And then when we went into that tavern the first time half the people were tripping and it was just, wow, it was like plain scene. But my Colombian friend who I just met there he took me on a hike down towards Shelter Cove. Shelter Cove was just five houses then that were abandoned because it was a someone tried to do a subdivision there and it didn't work. So as we hiked down, we went off into the woods because he knew about a few plants. And I saw my first plants over there that were growing. They were individual holes in between the redwoods like where there was a spot of sun shooting down in. And it was just this beautiful black, rich soil and their plants were probably six or seven feet tall. So I was like, wow, that's cool. Yeah, that's my part of the country. I moved to Mendocino County in 1998 and I've lived there since. So Southern Humboldt, Humboldt in general, Mendocino, Lake, all those areas that's kind of like my stomping grounds. And yeah, and like you were saying with LSD or whatever else, there was back then it was remote. It was mountainous. You could get, there wasn't very many people. Your worries up there were hunters and loggers. But lots of people went up there to kind of get away from things. Some people grew weeds, some people did other things, but it was that isolation and that being kind of out in the middle of nowhere, Ville. That was kind of. I have no idea. I have no idea how this guy from Scottsdale found redway but he bought the tavern there and he was living nearby and his chemist was somewhere nearby out in the woods and yeah, it was an interesting place and that's where my Colombian friend was, Gerardo. So he was on a student visa but he overstayed an extra eight years. So yeah, he spoke, he learned English simultaneously with Spanish and Columbia and Cali since he was five years old. So he spoke such perfect English that later in life when we were, our big, big bust happened, he was interviewed by FBI agents. He corrected their spelling twice. Because they didn't know how to spell the words that they were using. So it was pretty funny. Yep. You know, another thought I had, you met, you mentioned, you know, Howard Marx's book, Mr. Nice and how your friend kind of blew him out of the water. I remember a long time ago when I read his autobiography that he said that basically his autobiography was full of people that had been busted and that some of the coolest and biggest people that he interacted with had never gotten trouble. So therefore you weren't gonna hear anything about them in his book because they had skated through and nobody knew about them and he wasn't about to give any tips or ideas. So he said his book was essentially a collection of people that had gotten in trouble and that there was many who didn't and they were invisible. Well, I can dig it. My friend who broke his hip and was my pilot friend, he never got busted. And he gave my UK partner the go ahead that he would be willing to let him write a book about him and interview him. So he's excited about that but I said to him, you're gonna have to follow this guy cause he's all over the world still. Now he's in the hospital in Anchorage. So you could probably get some weeks of talk with him but he still goes to Hong Kong and Portugal. And I mean, the guy is, he's 75 and he got his pilot's license when he was 15 before he could drive a car. And we figured it out once, he stopped keeping a log book at 10,000 hours. And he said that most TWA pilots never hit 10,000 hours. But he literally lives in his plane. And then when he went to Alaska and bought a gold mine, the only way to get to it was to fly in and out. So, and as you know, in Alaska, everyone uses planes like cars, if they live way out in the woods. So he owned the airport once in a town that I lived in and he's just a legend. But you're right, no one really knew about him. Just like Mr. Nice's Howard Marks friends because he got into Afghanistan in the late 60s. He was importing Lapis, the deep blue stone that's so highly valued in Europe. And that led to Hashish and he was just sending home a few pounds rolled up in Afghani rugs. He would just ship them and they would get through back then. They weren't even using dogs really to check stuff in the late 60s or 1970. Then his friends slowly, you know, moved to freighters and they were sending freighters. But when the Soviets took over, he couldn't go to Afghanistan any longer. So he moved over to Peshawar in Pakistan. And Peshawar now is known as the terrorist capital. I mean, that's where all the terrorists hang out. Peshawar. But he was active over there, gosh, I don't know. Like I said, last time I met him in 85 in, he had a houseboat in Sausalito and I met him there and he was visibly shaking because he was so excited about the 60 ton barge that they were gonna pull across the universe, which they did more than once. That is awesome. That is so awesome. Wow. Fucking out. They would love it. And they would go to Canada. Canada had, they had only like a thousand, not even a thousand, a few hundred agents involved in drugs. So all those West Coast places above Juneau in Alaska in that were perfect. I mean, in Canada along the coastline. So. Canada has much more of a hashish culture than America did because of that importing. And I think not only that, but it was like the penalties, if you got caught in Canada, were far less than the American ones. It seemed like, you know. And once it reached there, it would get exported over to the US. Yeah. And this guy, he had a passport. He paid $10,000 for it from the UK in like 1969 or something. And it was a real passport that he was able to have it fixed with his name on it. That's awesome. And his photo. And he would walk across the border to Canada and then fly from Canada around the world as a British citizen. When he was going to Afghanistan and Pakistan, he wasn't an American. He was British. So, and then he'd fly back to Canada and walk across the border into Washington and then go back to his normal life over here. Man after my own heart. He also had one of the first phone scramblers I've ever seen. He bought it from a company in Amsterdam and you held it up to the phone and the little rubber cups went over each end and then you talked to the back of it and it was used and stuff like that by 1970, 1971. Very security conscience, fella. Very smart. Yep. Wow. That's fascinating. So, I was gonna say, we've kind of wandered off the Mad Jag part, but there's one part that like, totally, totally enthralled me with the whole story. And it was about, not just about the wizard robes or any of that, because I find that so amazing, like the pictures of you guys wearing the wizard robes and being very serious about all of this, but how well you treated the land and how you respected the land and the culture that came before. And in a lot of your writings, you talk about even finding ancient, like the ancient petroglyphs, but also some items and stuff that you guys would not take. You'd leave it there because that's where it was and leaving nothing, not even footprints behind. So, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the spiritual aspect of Mad Jag Canyon? Well, when we first started exploring it, I started from the bottom up, where it flowed into another canyon, which flowed into another canyon. And that's where I first met a mountain lion, I'm pretty sure it was, it wasn't a jaguar, but we came up with the term, you know, Mad Jag, that I had come upon because it was screeching at me in the dark when I was trying to go to sleep. And that canyon, when we got further up the canyon and found these spots, we started finding boulders just covered with pictograph, I mean, petroglyphs. And in 15 minutes, that rock that you had a photo of, let's see, I'm gonna try to find those. Yeah, we had a projectile point and all these pieces of pottery. And we just left them there, like a little shrine or altar. Yeah. We also found a cave across from our garden the first year where I was working with the tall guy. And in this cave was a, those are Colombians there. This is the Colombian right here? Yeah, those are all the ones, that's as big as they got. This was close to Thanksgiving, this photo. That's wild. They grew huge, but they just, they needed to get into December in the tropical. Let's see, where's the petroglyphs here? There we go. Beautiful petroglyphs. And we did these costumes and things thinking that someday we would do a movie, and that's why we were doing this. And here's the, I still have this little arrowhead here, but we left all the pottery behind. And we found a cave across from near our first garden that had an arrow shaft in it. It had a single yucca fiber moccasin that the ancient people made out of yucca fiber. And they were like about a half inch thick and had been chewed up a lot by a rat. But they were obviously in this cave. So we just left them there as a little museum. We put them all on a rock together. I haven't made back to it. I'd love to go back to it. The one thing we didn't do, which I regret, but it could still happen, was take all of our old hoses out of the canyon and the pump. They're still there. Oh my God, still there? Oh yeah, they're tucked under the tree. We went back in the 90s and the bear had pulled a bunch of them out. So we re-buried them and pushed them back under. And the pump got hiked out ultimately by someone who wanted to use it. And this guy was a young stallion, man. He's just strapped that sucker on a single pack frame and hiked it out himself. And we had taken it in two of us on a pole between us, but he just hiked it out. So we said, you can have it. If you can get it out, you can have it. What year did that happen? And he knew you guys before and you guys told him about the pump existing? He was this tall guys loving the law. Oh, okay, that makes sense. Yeah, so he went in and he worked. He worked, he came down, I think at harvest time and helped us a bit. He's since left the planet though. He was much younger than all of us, but he lived a rough and tumble life, you know? And he, yep, he didn't make it. But it's the spiritual aspect. I've slept right where he's sitting here a few times next to the creek and listened to it flowing by at night. It was the most fabulous thing. And talking about dark skies, in late 70s, the dark skies in Northern Arizona were extensive. Flagstaff was the nearest place. I spent 400 days out of my life in the bottom of this canyon and over a year of my life. And it's just, it became like my second home in a way. I can imagine. Five years, we grew for five years in this canyon. And since then it's been just quiet. Every once in a while I'll go back and go out on the rim and look down in. More people are driving in four wheel drives and razors and little four by side by side vehicles. They're going out on all these Jeep kills and that, but they don't know what's down below because they're not gonna get out and hike down 1600 feet just on a hunch and get down there. And they wouldn't find these alluvial plateaus. They're just too buried, you know? So what a magical place. 90 feet above the creek. There's no trail that would even remotely bump into it. Yeah. Yeah, it was a special place, still is. I went back there four years ago looking for this trail that a rancher had made years ago that came down not far from this original garden. And I couldn't find the trailhead again. It had grown over so much in 10 years when I was there last hunted all over, man, for hours and hours. And I know where it goes down, but I just couldn't find the trailhead. So I'm gonna go back. It's strange. It's in a forest fire area that has still not been reopened. And after a fire that was over a year and a half ago, and I'm gonna go talk to the forest service. I wanna find out why. And I have a feeling why is that it's not about landslides or people getting hurt. It's exposed so many archeological spots from the trees burning. And there's all this that they're, I think they're afraid of people going out there and plundering spots. Obviously. It's very human. Yeah, a canyon next to this that was more used and where the guys from Jerome were using it. I've seen skulls just laying on the surface where people had dug to burial sites, ancient burial sites. It's just sad. But it goes on. Yeah, Raiders of the Lost Art. They did an article in Tempe in the early 80s about guys who would go out and just look for burial sites and dig them up. Oh, wow. And plunder. One of them I knew and he got busted. Got five years in prison because of ancient graving. That's what happens. I mean, ancient grave robbing is something that's been going on for a long, long time. And they get sold on the private market to collectors and the origin of all that. It's definitely, I mean, it's a shame that it happens, but it seems like it goes on anywhere there's ancient humanity that existed. Oh yeah, Egypt. Yeah, Egypt. Egypt would be one of the primary sources, sure. Yeah. So I don't know, I mean, this conversation could likely go in a million different directions. Yeah, I think this is gonna be like a nine-parter. It would probably be more than just this one part because we can't touch on everything. But one of the things I do want to touch on is that one thing that's really interesting to Matt and I ourselves is that some of these, we got a little off-topic on Hayes, but some of this stuff with Hayes and Skunk One and some of these American strains, a lot of us younger folk, our first legitimate history on them that we know of comes from when they made their way over to Holland, right? And that's when they kind of became famous and started getting bread with and started getting sold where people could hear about them. And then you have people like Rob and Sam and stuff like that who tell their story, but it's very, with historians or whatever, it's always cool to get a different perspective from someone, an alternate source from the same era, right? And you were talking before about how for a minute there or for a year or two, you were Sam and Rob's biggest customer, right? In the sense that you bought something like, if I remember correctly, off the top of my head, something like 3,000 Skunk One seeds. $5,500, yep. Was that 1978 or 1979, something like that you said? 7980, and on the back of this, if you look at it up close, it says that these were bred for the 1980, in 1980 for the 1981 season. Do you still have this back? On the back of this emblem. Yeah, several. You still have that? Yeah, oh yeah. And I was telling Raho yesterday, some of the loads we got from the cartel in Mexico at a certain point in 1984, roughly, 82 to 84, we moved our first load so quickly that they sent us another load that wasn't meant for us. It had labels in it from someone in California and I've got two or three of these labels. I know you'd like to have them. And I'd be glad to send, I stamped one of them too, Sam Clex. I'm sure he does, yeah, he has great collections. This one was, it was a Santa Claus in a wagon pulled by horses. It was in a black and white label. And then we got another one a different time that was someone else's load, but because we were moving them faster, they just sent it to us. And it was a raccoon on the label and it was from Northern California. And yeah, it was funny. But these are, yeah, these are precious little mementos. And I went to Amsterdam in 1969 right out of high school. I went on seven weeks to Europe with a friend and that's the first place I tried to get high. I was at the club Paradiso and I couldn't, I didn't smoke cigarettes. So I took a big hit of something and I coughed my lungs. I couldn't even get it in deep enough to get it. But to give you an idea, this guy was selling a pound of Turkish weed for $15. It was in a shoebox. A shoebox full was 15 bucks. And I had an idea, huh? Do you think it was like jump dish hemp? Yeah, it was probably, you know, like bag weed from Turkey. Yeah, yeah. It was dark brown. It didn't look good. But I bought my first chunk of hash and I actually smuggled it back in 1969. I was nervous as heck. I didn't actually get high until later in 69 when I went to college. That was the first time. And I don't know if I had that hash still then or not but Denver in 1969 had everything, you know, Panama Red, Colombian, Mexican, every sort of acid you could possibly want was being sold on the Hill and Boulder. So all you have to do is drive over to Boulder and hang out. Was it called Hibbey Hill back then? It was just called the Hill. Just called the Hill and Boulder. Yeah, it was in the next, it was near the university but it was this stretch. And it still works. Yeah, there's a bookstore at the top where I actually saw Ellen Ginsburg reading a book. It was called Brillag Works. And Tulagi on the Hill is still there. It's a place where they have live music. It's a bar with live music. I saw light and hopkins there and a few other amazing people. So wild. Yeah, and it opened and I think, I have a photo of it in my chronicles. I think in 64 it opened. Yeah, I mean, I was really a kid then. But so the, what channel are we on now? Oh, yeah, I mean, it's funny. So when I was going to Boulder in the 90s, that hill was still a place that you could go and buy weed and acid. It had transformed and it was called Hippie Hill. Nice. Right, then. And it was still a spot that you could go and yeah, you could get, obviously, the type of weed had changed. But the ability to go there and meet someone and score a bag of weed and the cops sort of tolerated it and tolerated a little bit of trade going on there or whatever. So I didn't realize how early that had started because at that point, by the time that I had been going, which was the mid 90s, late 90s, it would have been ongoing then for 30 some years. Right. But the thread we were on is I would love to know and I'm sure Matt would too, what Rob or Sam told you about their skunk one lines? Like, you know, aside from the descriptions and stuff like that, like what they told you about what was in them or why they were excited about them, what got you excited about them to buy so many. And then what your experience was like actually growing them in terms of like what they grew like, what they smelled like, were they superior to the Mexicans you were growing, anything like that would be probably wonderful to chat about. Well, I met Rob through high times. He was, he wrote articles a few. And yeah, at the end of the article, he always put something like, if you want to, if you're interested in any of the things I wrote about are these seeds, you can contact me through the magazine. So I wrote a letter to high times to Rob and I put my phone number in there and he called me up and that's how we hooked up because the first year I grew Skunk, I had already had two years, actually three years of growing before that, but the year before I made enough money that I could afford. When I saw and heard his description and other peoples of Skunk number one, I just went, this is what I want to grow something that has a reputation and these guys are breeders. He put in a book on botany for Christ's sake. So he, I said, yeah, I want to get 3000 seeds. There were two bucks a piece and he knocked it down to 175. And he flew to Phoenix, deliver them to me because you're not going to put that in the mail back then. And what, put 500 in the mail and no. So he flew it, we met at the airport, Sky Harbor, drove him up to Cottonwood where I lived. He stayed a few days and I gave him 5,500 in cash and he was super happy. I'm sure. When he came up with, he had this little zip case that he pulled out of his jacket and he had, he had pre-rolled joints of Thai, of Colombian, of Oaxacan, of Skunk number one and he was standing there and he gave me one hit of something in my living room and I was laying on the floor after that and he was just standing there talking away, smoking the rest of the whole joint. And he said, oh, but you got to try this Thai, this Thai strain and I've never, my friend in Scottsdale who, I mean, and Tempe who was the dealer, he could smoke like that. My Colombian friend for sure, he started smoking when he was seven in Cali, Columbia. But my friend in Tempe, he would roll 10 hash joints, pin joints, just crumbled up hash and smoke them in a day's time in a hundred degree, driving a tractor. That was his motivation, just chain smoke, hash joints. And Rob, Rob was pretty much like that. So I don't remember him describing to me what Skunk was like. It was what I read in high times that it just, the Skunky smell and it was going to be also have some exotic strains in it. The original Skunk number one didn't have Indian, you know, the Kerala, India in it all. It was just three countries, I think, right? Colombian, Mexican, Afghan. Yep, it was just those three. And I had smoked each of those individually, but the fact that this was a hybrid that was so potent and everything. I don't know what I had read. I have all those old high times magazines. I have the first high times. I have the first black belt magazine. I collect all kinds of weird shit. I love that too. Yeah, and memorabilia, we'll get into that. I'll send you some things. I'll do a correction, you just let me know. But the Afghani number one, I did get a few from him as a gift, I think, from buying all the Skunk. And it's funny, because this says Afghani Hindakush Hashish seeds, you know, his label. And yet on the back, he says, this is Skunk number one. And I have one of these envelopes with Afghani number one. So it's kind of, you know, and he also has in letters here, extra early. So, yeah, I was reading it and it actually is a description for a pure Afghani is what it is. Like the whole thing is a description for a pure unadulterated Afghani, but then it says Skunk one right there. These envelopes had two giant horse caps with 50 seeds in each one. So there were a hundred seeds in two big gelk, I mean, cellulose caps, he'd get 50 seeds in each one. And I don't know what happened to the many, many of these very different people over the years, one of one I gave him one in my chair. I think my UK partner still has several. I don't know how else to, Rob came down to our garden once and that's when he said, he was amazed that we could grow out of dirt. Yeah. Never seen Arizona plants, I don't think before. And we average 6.8 ounces across our entire garden per plant, which roughly almost a half a pound per plant, which growing in the dirt, yeah. He said that he was used to two, three, four pound plants in Northern California, you know, up in that black soil, but what do you smell like? There's a volume, you know, thing to like plant numbers. And so in Northern California, I mean, some people went crazy, but a lot of times people tried to maximize how much they could get per plant to not get, you know, so if they did get in trouble in Northern California, it would be for less plants. That was a big thing. So it's way, way easier. And I think you get better weed growing a six or seven or eight ounce plant versus a four or five or six pound plant, but numbers did play a role, at least in Northern California where I'm from. Well, we were in very full water country. Did they, what, what were the type of aromas that you got off the skunk one that first year you grew them? It was very, it was very skunky. No, you know, the smell of a skunk when you drive over it on the highway, it was that exact smell. We were stupefied by it actually. We went, this is incredible. And it didn't smell like that growing so much, but when it was harvested, the flowers dried and you crush, you know, a flower and it was skunk smell. And it was pretty damn potent. We rolled a joint once and went to this topless club called the highlighter that we liked in Phoenix. And one of the two of the dancers, we went in the ladies bathroom with two of the dancers and we each had one puff. That's all before we got busted by another dancer who came in and was in charge at night and said, you guys have to get out of here. And so we went and sat down. The ladies, I think they had one puff each more. It was, they were, these were New York needles, we call them or pin joints, where you had to really, you know, just to get a hit. And we were sitting there and they came out of the bathroom. They walked around the bar, they were laughing and they smiled at us. And then they walked right into a table, knocked it over, all the drinks went over. They fell on the ground themselves. And we were just sitting there laughing. They had never been that high in their life. And we found out later that they were scared almost. I bet. But, you know, in 1980 or 81, there was, you know, we had already smoked this cinemia from Santa Barbara that was very piney and there was Thai weed around and other things. But for some reason, this thing packed a punch, really quite a punch. And I don't know how people would rate it today compared to all these, you know, chem dogs and all the other varieties that people have bred up to 35% THC or whatever they're at now. But as you know, the entourage effect is what counts, the total package, you know, the terpenes, the bioflavonoids, everything. Everything. Someone said that the test on original Afghani, I mean, skunk number one was, it was only like 14% or 15% THC. Most of the stuff I like falls in between eight to 18. Yeah. So all the other ingredients, the terpenes, perhaps that skunky terpene profile and other things really added up. It's really nice to have another account that isn't from Rob or Sam about skunk one having that same smell even back then because it's been heavily debated for a long time, whether that was true that skunk one had that smell or if it never had. Roadkill skunk, yeah. Yeah, because the stuff that got sold in Europe, it sounds like Rob and Sam or maybe Sam only kept breeding away from that aroma. And so eventually it became very floral, very citrus, maybe a little cheese, maybe some grapes, but people have been hunting for that skunky smell in skunk one seeds ever since. And yet it seems like it existed in the 70s and the early 80s and then it kind of went away and he maybe they successfully bred it out of the line entirely. Because people have really hunted through skunk one trying to find recessives that are a throwback to what you just described. Hey, not so. So I moved out to NorCal to grow for a season and it was 1985 and when I first arrived in Ucaia, I had taken a Greyhound bus and my instructions were to meet my new partners at the laundromat which was near the airport and the bus station, I guess I'm not sure, that part's a little fuzzy, but I'll never forget arriving in Ucaia, getting off the bus and as I'm walking towards the laundromat, following the instructions I've been given, the entire town smelled like skunk. The entire town, I mean, everywhere I walked and I had to wait for a couple of hours. So after a while I got bored of standing around waiting for my buddy to drive down off the mountain and pick me up. So I walked around a little bit, the whole town smelled just like roadkill. People confuse the rotting flesh, roadkill part with the look when a skunk gets hit on the side of the road, you don't smell anything but the skunk, right? It's not about rotting anything, it's just that sulfurous, stinking thing. It's the same plan that's been smashed, yeah, yeah. I live about 15 minutes for, I can be in Ucaia about 15 minutes from my house. Beautiful, beautiful. So you said 85, that's the. Where did you grow up first year? Do you remember what part of Mendocino you grew in? Do you remember where you were? Now 1985 was the influx, like the major, major influx of Indicas into that region. I mean, of course there were some, you know, making their way bits and pieces throughout the 70s and whatnot. The 85 was like the smash year for Indicas, right? Out in that area, so it makes sense a shit load of skunk would be in that town. You know, the Indicas that I grew in 81 and 82 were from NorCal, from Ucaia and the towns around there. And they were picked up by a friend of mine who was hitchhiking around there for like two years and every time he'd get picked up, he would offer to, you know, would you like, hey, I've got some weed, do you want to smoke one? And everybody always said yes. But they said, you know, let's not smoke yours here, go in the glove compartment and let's smoke some of mine. And he'd pull out the bag and here you roll it and we'll smoke it. And as he rolled, there were always a few seeds in there and he'd ask them if he could keep them. Yeah. So my. I met a guy. Yeah, I mean, my first interaction with Indico was, you know, Christmas 81. He came back from California to visit and he had a collection of like six different Afghanis. Wow. And a story to go with each one. Like there was one that he called Ranger weed and he had smoked this weed with a forest ranger like this guy had and it was, I swear it was what I think where Afghani number one came from. It was a very coarse, you know, Afghani with kind of a candelabra style, you know. There was another one he called Plainweed and this was on his way home. He at SFO, he was walking through the parking lot and there's a guy sitting in a Corvette convertible smoking weed, right? And he walked up and he gives him the look, you know, and I don't know if he, you know, held up his finger like, hey, can we smoke? And the guy invited him to join him in the car and, you know, he got a couple of seeds out of that encounter also. That turned out to be an F1 Thai Afghani hybrid, which was just amazing. And I knew what exactly what it was because I had grown pure Thai the year before, right? So I had these pure Afghanis and I had this, I had pure Thai the year before and this stuff was just right in the middle. It was a 50-50 cross and, you know, I used to sit there and make notes about, you know, I'd sit and smoke it and write down the effects and the taste and compare it with other stuff and just amazing. You still have the notebooks, right? Yeah. You still have them? That's amazing. I do, yeah. When you first told me that you've kept these notebooks like on sense and stuff, I was like, man, this guy's gonna be my best friend. I'm telling you, this is amazing. Like it's just, it's only a certain type of people that really get this far into weed, I think. And a lot of us think it has something to do with being on the spectrum, you know, because we get so far into something, so many people are just like, it's just weed, smoke it. And we're like, what? So much more. One of the cool parts about doing these chats that Matt and I do is like, the realization that the vast majority of our history is oral, right? It's very little of it is written down, you know? Right. As people age. Because that was evidence, right? Yeah. Yeah, it was evidence. And then, so there's all these cool stories out there and there's all these bits and pieces like Matt had mentioned. There was great debate, like was Sam and Rob lying about how skunky it was in the beginning. And, you know, because by the time they took Skunk 1 to Amsterdam, it was fruity and citrusy and floral and all that. And so, you know, these stories and stuff from the region and what things were like is a big deal. Because now people look at me and, you know, I'm only in my mid 40s, you know, but people think I'm old as fuck. And like they want to hear like my stories from the 90s. But your guys' stories from the 70s and 80s are like a full generation beat before that. Are these old Mad Jag notebooks? Yep. Oh my God. That's amazing. And your handwriting is so much better than mine. It's just amazing that they lived through the bust. I've tried to everything. Yep. You know, they made it through the busts like the, like when you guys did get busted, they didn't go after the notebooks and stuff. Not so. Those affies came in in like 1980, 81, not 85. And I grew, I grew mine in 81 and 82. And I was the only one in practice, you know, that anybody and I knew that had this stuff, right? Yeah. That year, the very next year, all of my friends had their own affie, right? That they'd gotten from different sources, from wherever, you know, I mean, 83, everybody had it. It was making its way around the country, probably through Deadhead, you know, Dead Shows and stuff like that. Let me ask you a question about that then. A lot of the old heads have said that, you know, have told me that like basically like Mendocino and Humboldt was almost pure sativa. And people really liked the buzz and the flavor and the effect. And they said one of the big things that drove Indica's popularity was when in 81, when they started flying helicopters in my neck of the woods. Right. Getting something that would finish in September or early October was a lot safer than something that took till Thanksgiving and was this giant thing, right? Yeah. And so that started spreading it because police pressure and hiding it and all that became more important. Indicas were shorter and squatter. But a lot of people told me that they didn't like the buzz as much. Maybe you could, could you talk for a minute about your experiences versus the Mexicans and the Thais and the Columbians and all those you were growing versus like smoking Indicas at first and like what the differences were and what your preferences were? Yeah, you know, I mean, and today what people think of as Indica usually is some sort of hybrid because there were pure Indicas back then that had a very sedative effect without making your brain fuzzy, right? I mean, it was calming. It was body light. Yeah. Yeah, calming and peaceful and kind of dreamy but it didn't give you that, you know, that just, you know, the couch lock is not just a body effect. It's a stunned mental effect, right? Where your brain just kind of seizes up, you know? It's like distortion on a guitar, right? Exactly. So you don't have to have that to have that body effect and most of what we experienced today but with that distortion, with that fuzz comes, you know, it's usually got a lot of power to it, right? So some of these pure affes would have actually been just kind of this just who slows it down, right? Peaceful, very high, amazing taste, right? Just like pure hash, taste it exactly like hash, you know? And at its best, right? But without that inability to think, you might be slowed down but you could still, you know, follow a train of thought and eventually get there. But with, and I think that, you know, Skunk as it originally existed before Sam got it and hybridized it and used the name for the new thing that he created, which was no longer what it was named after. Yeah. If anybody can follow that, right? Right, it's blueberry, it's the same to me, it's the exact same thing. I wanna let you finish your thought but I'm gonna come back to that until a part of what you just said in a moment. But please finish your thought. So I mean, you know, Skunk was very, was very Afghani dominant back when it first came out and it was, it hits you like a sledgehammer, you know? Mentally, it just stunned you. You couldn't think, you were just seized up. And I think that, you know, what we think about as Afghanis these days, Afis, Indikas, whatever, you know, the chem line is definitely, you know, got hybridization going there with some kind of Skunk, which gives it, you know, a combination that the extra power and the mental kind of sledgehammer that a lot of people like. So contrasting, you know, you went into this with talking about what people used to grow up there in the mountains and as you were just talking about it, I was picturing Jim Richardson's book, you know, Cinsemilla Flowers, right? And the garden that he photographed in there and took it through the phases of fluorescence and documented it just so beautifully. You know, I first saw that book in I guess 82 or 83. My buddy had brought it back for me and said that it was on every coffee table in Northern California. Yeah, it had the Big Sur, Holyweed and Dolores and all kinds of special plants in there that weren't labeled. And a lot of people don't know that, that that's the original Big Sur, Holyweed and the Tripweed and yeah. NorCal had spent years, you know, refining these imported sativa lines to turn them into things that would finish in the season that they had there and, you know, selective breeding for quality and yield and finish time, you know, things that would work in the environment you had there. And it was, you know, you had created something just as special as anything from Hawaii, right? As unique and special. And those lines, I think the last thing that we, you know, on the market today of somebody would go out and look for seeds that they could grow that would be similar to that or would at least give them, you know, a hint of what it used to be would be if they could find a good early pearl. Yeah, that's what that means, right? Because you can still taste the Mexican in there and the effects still have that, it's still there. Yes, there's an affi thrown in there and affi or two in the mixture of, you know, different sativas, but the sweet, Neville called it the awoken zing, right? And it's a, you know, when grown as since a millow by a gardener who loves what he's doing, you know, small numbers and pampered and cared for, it's so tasty and delicious that there's hardly anything that can come close. Yeah, I'm a sucker for the silver pearl still, but you know, I really want early girl because that's one that I've never ran but early pearl was a big favorite in San Diego too. Amazing stuff. Yeah, so those, you know, early girl and Pollyanna were, you know, from that era and from that region. And they were some of the, some of those early hybrids when the first affi showed up and they said, well, wow, this is the greatest thing ever, you know, can you imagine growing a couple of these things in your garden and never seeing anything like it and falling in love with the hash and the first thing you're going to do is you're going to say, I'm going to take this new thing, which is the best thing ever and cross it with the best thing that I've spent the last 10 years making. Yeah. Right. That's exactly the first thing you're going to do, right? Yep. And in Mendo, you kind of have till Halloween or maybe the first week of November, if you get lucky, of a good chance of reasonably good weather and not too much rain. And then the cold and the rain and the weather starts to turn. So breeding and Mendo and Humboldt, you know, you kind of have to have some Halloween weed at the latest, maybe some early November, but you really can't like trying to push things full outside till Thanksgiving. It gets really dicey, very dicey. Real quick guys. So we've made it through episode one because we're already hitting the two hour mark and it makes me stop the two hours. So I want to get in any kind of plug you guys want to get in before the end of it. And I definitely want to do an episode two if you guys are up for it next week or whenever it's convenient for you, both of you. That would be amazing. Yeah. Thumbs up. Yeah. I've enjoyed our chatting today immensely. Amazing. Amazing. Actually. It's been really cool. I hope that it can continue maybe even off-channel a bit. There's a million things I could talk about. I'm intrigued at all of the memorabilia, for sure. I used to drill. I mean, Sam used to post on Overgrow and the Breeders segment back then and the forums. A lot of those old school pictures and stuff like that and art that would get made with certain kinds of people's weed. And that whole like sort of like pre-marketing of anonymous growers was super neat. And just... So yeah, there's a million directions we could go, but as Matt said, we only have four minutes before it'll cut us off. So Mad Jag, we have you at madjag.com. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about before we're wrapping up? Anywhere people can contact you or get a hold of you or any of it? What do we have here? This is beer. This year's, it's a smaller one. It's Santa Marta Gold Cross with Acapulco Gold. And it's pretty much a good friend of mine in California made the F1. And it's gotten good reviews. What's the name for it? What do you call it, Jim? Oh, well, I had a couple of people test it that I trust that smoke all day long that live in Sedona. And I said, well, what is it on a scale of 10? And they said 9.3. I said, well, good, we'll call it 9.3. That's a good name. 9.3. Yeah. So instead of some fancy, you know, airplane cookies or whatever. I love it. Yeah. The next week, have any questions you have, you could have them ready. I have, yeah, absolutely. I did my own little free. No, free stream. We've come quite a bit. We have a pretty free flowing thing. And so it can head off in all kinds of different directions. And sometimes we get to pick up on threads of things we hear and pull on that thread and hear more. And other times, there's definitely things we didn't pull on that I would love to in the future. And Raho, do you have anything you want to get in? Yeah, I'd just like to say, you know, first of all, big props for your Discord channel. Oh, thank you. Thank you. You know, you guys threw us in there to kind of organize and prepare for this meeting. And your community there is great. That's good people, man. We've been lucky. Good people, very responsive. And, you know, a lot of good information and knowledge up there. So just props to that. And thank you for letting us be part of that. I'm not besides that nothing, you know, I'm just into this for the love and I'm looking forward to doing it the next time. So yeah. Well, I appreciate the hell out of both of you for your time, all the love you've put into cannabis. I mean, you guys are the reason that we are here digging into the past while we are doing what we're doing. So thank you for laying that foundation for us. I truly mean that. And I can say from myself, while I love talking about weed with different people, I'm leaving this conversation particularly excited. Yeah, me too. I had a real good time chatting about this. So it was very enjoyable. Thank you both very much for your time. Me too. Let's make the people out there jealous and just say it. Let's keep talking after we finish the recording. You got it. All right. All right, I'm gonna start the outro and then I'm gonna remove us from the thing but after it's done recording, I'll pop us back in. Got it? Okay, I'm here. All right. Thank you, everyone. That's us. Gawk, gawk, dude. Perfect script from up north. Got a pop on it.