Occasionally, in the old country, Nebraska, in a time long ago, a bag of amazing pot would show up. Tight little buds, streaked with red and silver hairs, tiny little packets of heaven, and you knew things were about to get interesting.
Some of the best always had the name “Meigs County, Ohio.” It was a sirens song, everybody wanted some of that.
When I decided to move to Ohio, in my late twenties, I had this idea I was going to paradise. A land of indulgence and extravagance, communes lining the Ohio River, where hippies raised legendary weed. It seemed inevitable. When a player for the Ohio State football team did something noteworthy, they gave him a pot leaf sticker to put on his helmet.[1] Life was looking up.
I was wrong.
When I got here, and found a job, and made my way around, I found the same narrow-minded, mean-spirited bigots I had seen everywhere else.
One time, a man yelled at me, in a gas station parking lot, in one of the suburbs; “Get your hippy, dope-smoking ass out of our town. We don’t need your kind here.”
In all fairness I was driving a 1972 VW bus, with Nebraska license plates, had a droopy, unkempt mustache, ratty clothes appropriate for a screen-printing plant. And I was stoned.
I was also lost. I had taken a wrong turn, I was still new to the city and ended up on the wrong side of town. I had been to a small town north of Columbus to buy a bag of average pot. I had taken a wrong turn on the freeway that runs around the city, and found myself on the southside, in a place not welcoming or friendly. I pulled into a gas station to find myself on a city atlas my sister had given me. And here was this guy yelling at me to get out.
I split. Eventually, I got home, safe and sound and stoned.
Not long after that, I met a guy, whose parents owned some land by The Plains, a small town, north of Meigs County and he took me down there. It was about 100 miles southeast of Columbus.
It was a rugged, forbidding place. Sharp hills and steep draws, covered in trees and crossed with dirty brown streams. It was the foothills of Appalachia, and it was exactly what you would expect it to be. There were small shacks, sitting beside the road, once in a while there would be a person standing there, glaring at the intruders. I guess if you are growing pot, in 1980s Ohio you would be a little suspicious.
We stopped at a small café for lunch, and there was nobody in there that looked like a head, nobody looked stoned, nobody looked happy to see us. They were taciturn and looked at us through narrowed, suspicious eyes. There was a steady hum of subdued conversation, and it died as we sat down. Slowly returning, a small drone of incomprehensible language, background noise, a blanket of sound that covered everything in a dusty film of frosty hostility.
We ordered burgers and soft drinks and ate them in silence. Afraid to make waves, trying to avoid making eye contact. It was a scene I had lived through in small towns from Wyoming to Iowa, South Dakota to Kansas, I was comfortable, being uncomfortable.
I’ve lived in Ohio since then. For some reason it surprised me, people are people, and people are uncomfortable with people they don’t know. I admit, the city, the greater Columbus area has over 1,700,000 making it easier to camouflage yourself in the creaking groan and weight of the masses. Even there, though, differences will mark you as an outsider, or someone who doesn’t belong, there are just more outsiders strolling down the street, stopping for a coffee, or bottle of water. It’s harder to single them out.
Our world is split, broken into pieces, as divided now as it ever was, and I can’t prove it, but it seems like America may be more divided than it ever was. Instead of growing together, we are slipping apart. Anger and bigotry have become a point of pride. It was a dream of freedom that drove people to risk a dangerous ocean journey to a new frontier. It was an idealism that pushed people into demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. It was the hopes of equality that spurred people to the streets during the race riots of the long, hot summers of the late sixties. All that sacrifice and suffering. And as far as I can tell nothing has changed.
[1] Turns out it was a drawing of a buckeye leaf. Go figure.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
