I met Beryl at one of my IBM Sys-3 accounts in Monterey, CA, in the seventies. We had dinner in town, then hung out in my large enclosed hotel hot tub, drinking and smoking until they kicked us out. We consumed the obligatory sex thing that night and there was no chemistry.
We never tried that again and became lifelong friends. She would rent big beautiful homes up in Carmel Valley, a very hip and cool place, with the Carmel by the Sea beach lifestyle twenty miles down the road.
She would get roommates to split the rent. When I was down there for business, I would stay with them in the current place. She also had a teenage daughter named Judy.
Carmel Valley was an experimental pot growing community. Many farms were scattered all over the back woods, learning how to grow bud without seeds, by killing the males.
One night Beryl threw a growers party at our house. Best party I've ever been to in my life. About forty growers showed up with their partners, all packing their crop, rolled up into giant joints. Show off and check out the competition, Willie would have been in heaven, probably would have played...
One grower left a bag of leaf from his crop at the house. Thanksgiving was upon us and as we prepared the turkey for her family and friends, I suggested putting the leaf in the stuffing.
The leaf still had a lot of THC in it, and the guy just gave it to us if we needed something to puff on. Beryl, for some strange reason, said sure, and we mixed it up into the stuffing.
I could very easily pull a TikToc here and say Wait for part two, but that ain't my style.
Judy got a new video game that she was playing on the TV after dinner, surrounded by the guests. There came a magical (possibly criminal) moment when I looked around the room and realized everyone was really stoned.
We never copped to it, nobody knew why turkey dinner at our house put them in the zone. Everyone made it home safely.
I recently talked to Beryl back in Idaho, she was a happy grand-mother living in Hawaii!
I think this is a grand-daughter:
