1975

Neighbors 4

Jim

Jim lived in the cottage next to me and we soon became friends.  Jim was studying education at the University and planned to be a teacher.  Jim was a very mellow, down-to-earth guy and we were always getting stoned together, on good days we would sit outside, smoke a joint and play chess.  We often would get stoned and watch TV together.  Jim was into motorcycle racing which I didn’t know anything about.  Jim’s motorcycle looked old and beat up, but Jim was quite proud of it, telling me it was Indian motorcycle which I had never heard of at the time but later learned they were something special.  Jim’s father was well off, so he didn’t have to work and always seem to have money.  Jim and I on more than one occasion bought a pound of pot together, sorting it into sixteen one ounce baggies which we divided between us.  Neither he nor I sold any of it, it was for our own use, but it was not as much as one would think.  Pot at the time was full of stems and seeds which had to be picked out and discarded.  Columbia Gold, which we thought of being some of the best was half as potent as marijuana that came later. 

Michael

Jim lived in the cottage next to me and we soon became friends.  Jim was studying education at the University and planned to be a teacher.  Jim was a very mellow, down-to-earth guy and we were always getting stoned together, on good days we would sit outside, smoke a joint and play chess.  We often would get stoned and watch TV together.  Jim was into motorcycle racing which I didn’t know anything about.  Jim’s motorcycle looked old and beat up, but Jim was quite proud of it, telling me it was Indian motorcycle which I had never heard of at the time but later learned they were something special.  Jim’s father was well off, so he didn’t have to work and always seem to have money.  Jim and I on more than one occasion bought a pound of pot together, sorting it into sixteen one ounce baggies which we divided between us.  Neither he nor I sold any of it, it was for our own use, but it was not as much as one would think.  Pot at the time was full of stems and seeds which had to be picked out and discarded.  Columbia Gold, which we thought of being some of the best was half as potent as marijuana that came later. 

Suzi

Just as you turned down off Old Archer road into the driveway to our cottages there was a single wide mobile home in the lot immediately to the left of the old lady's house.  Most days I would walk down to get the mail at the mailboxes on the main road and would walk past the trailer when one day I met Suzi. As I was walking down our driveway to get the mail I saw her in the yard outside the trailer, a petite attractive girl, a year or two younger than me, I said hello, she said hello back.  After a couple of more times, she started coming over to the fence and we would talk for a while.  I had seen that she was living with her boyfriend, and soon she started telling me about their relationship and how poorly he treated her.  I could not understand how he could treat her like that and told her so, and that she shouldn't put up with it.  At first, she gave me all sorts of excuses why she couldn't leave him, how he was nice to her some of the time and I argued back how that wasn't good enough, he was still treating her badly.  We had a platonic relationship, or so I thought at the time, me wiser and older providing guidance to the younger woman. For many weeks she would always be on her side of the fence and me on mine but later she would come over to my place and we would smoke a joint and talk for hours.  I could feel her attraction to me. She was latching on to me, reaching out in a desperate manner, I could feel it. I could have taken her then, but I didn’t, she was too desperate, I wanted a woman who respected me, who was my equal.   A few weeks later she told me she decided she was leaving her boyfriend and moving back to Cincinnati from where she came.  The following week she rented a U-Hall truck, packed everything up she owned and drove away.