High On Weed

It's July, 2013 and my wife Cora and I are taking a driving trip through Northern California and into Oregon.  Weed, California was our stopover on the way to Oregon. 

We pulled into Weed, California a little after 10 at night.  It was a five hour drive from the Bay Area in scorching heat and we’d decided that getting to our destination held more appeal than food.  Motel 6 never looked so good.  I was perfectly happy to shower and call it a night but Cora wanted dinner.  The desk clerk told us that the choices were the fast food joints a couple exits down the interstate or a place a few blocks down the road called the Hi Lo Café.

Parking in front of the Hi Lo was like pulling up in my parents’ station wagon to the coffee shops of my childhood.  Even the waitress was the same.  Bleached blonde, enough eyeliner to bring raccoons to mind and a waning cheerfulness that was quickly losing ground to fatigue after a hard night of schlepping food to tourists and burly locals, bussing their messes and pocketing paltry tips.  When it starts closing in on 11, “Hon” comes a lot harder, especially when a pair of flatlanders from San Francisco drift in 20 minutes before closing.  Along with standard diner fare and breakfast served all day the menu featured tortilla crusted tilapia.  I gave Cora a stern warning, “Stay clear of the fish. Keep it simple and keep to what coffee shops do well.”  This is a standard warning that I give her since an East Coast trip some years back.  We landed late in Boston late one evening and by the time we’d rented a car and found our hotel we decided to settle on the IHOP next door.  Cora just couldn't wait to have fish in New England even if it was coming out of an IHOP kitchen.  She spent part of the rest of the evening kneeling before the commode reviewing her fish.  The moral of the story is that coffee shops don’t do beef Wellington (or fish) and a four star chef can’t turn out a proper chicken fried steak and cream gravy.

Five thirty in the morning and I was heading out for a run.  I got out to the road in front of the motel, fiddled with my watch and as I headed out kept my eyes towards the ground.  Some steps in I finally looked up; “Oh wow!”  Filling the view directly in front of me was Mount Shasta, the snow reflecting the colors of the rising sun.  From all points this dormant volcano, visually erupts out of its surroundings.  Everything else is dwarfed and insignificant; mere accessories to its majesty.

My run took me through the few blocks of downtown Weed. Halfway through town a sign grabbed my attention; Black Buttes Sporting Goods and just below that, Liquor.  That interesting combination brought all kinds of possibilities to mind. I crossed the street to take a closer look to find that it was actually a tavern; the Black Buttes Saloon.  I suppose that over time the ownership kept trying new things and never bothered to take down the old signs.  Change the business and keep piling up the signs. Next to the plain looking door bearing the usual, Nobody under 21 allowed was a window declaring that Ladies are allowed.  Did that mean that this place was a holdover from the men only days of long ago or were they simply trying to soften the image of the place?

“It’s for sale if you’re interested.”  The woman’s voice, as rugged as the local country, came from the doorway next to the saloon.  “If I didn't have to be somewhere I’d open the place up and let you look inside.  I’m the owner.”  We exchanged introductions and a few pleasantries.  Darla was sixty-ish and squat, with pasty white legs that sported faded tattoos on her ankles.  Her tone spoke of a life of hard work and too many cigarettes.  She was friendly, pleasant and maybe a little suspicious of the stranger in front of her yet hopeful that maybe she’d found a buyer.

“That’s okay, we’ll be here a few days,” I lied.  “I’d have to talk the wife into it.”  I didn't have it in me to tell her that at sixty I’m not ready to embark on a career of breaking up Friday night fights in my very own rural, small town saloon; as romantic as the notion may seem.  She asked me where I was from and I told her San Francisco. “Yeah,” she said, “I’m trying to sell and move back down the hill myself.” Her ride pulled up and I resumed my run.  Running along a main street with more empty and papered over store front than a town should have it looked like much of Weed is trying to sell.

In Weed, everything seems to be for sale.  Even this old fire truck

It wasn’t always like this.  At one time Weed thrived on lumber.  A sign at the edge of town welcomes visitors to Weed; Historic Lumber Town.  It was a history that started before the turn of the 20^th century when Abner Weed built a lumber mill that grew into a company town and then a major lumber producer (in the 40s it had the world’s largest mill).  Now the lumber industry is mostly just history.  My run took me past the still active Roseburg lumber yard so the industry is still alive but on life support.  The environmental movement and a shift away from wood products put a large, irreparable dent in timber, crippling local economies in the area and forcing these small towns to find another way to get by.   Generations of jobs went away and took with them the younger generations who left to find their way “down the hill.”

And so Weed markets its singular name to hawk T-shirts, shot glasses, refrigerator magnets and other trinkets emblazoned with slogans like Weed makes me happy and I’m high on Weed; all in that bright psychedelic script from the sixties.  The annual car show is called Rollin Weed and a motorcycle ride, the Outta Weed Run.  I wonder if the old timers realize the stark irony that their town with its lumber milling history is now surviving on the pot legacy of the hippies whose values defied the traditional work ethic and conservative ideals of those roughhewn lumbermen.  Oh and by the way the hippies championed the environmental movement of the sixties that helped drive nails into that redwood coffin of the timber industry?

All isn't lost in Weed.  The water bottler, Crystal Geyser has established a small presence and the town plays host to vacationers, climbers, fishermen and skiers.  But these are service jobs, not the career opportunities that were passed down through generations.  Still Weed is better off than nearby Humboldt County which also lost its timber industry and now has as its new industry, weed; the real stuff.  Humboldt is dotted with pot farms hidden in the hills and forests and run by farmers who are armed, dangerous and inclined to shoot a stray backpacker first and ask questions later. 

And so the old timers grab their breakfasts at the Hi Lo, greeted by a waitress offering a cup of strong black coffee and a “You havin’ the usual hon?” They sit at the counter and still eat their lumberjack’s breakfast that, back in the day, they’d have burned off by 10 in the morning but now just settle into their every growing waistlines.  And when the diner door opens to reveal the new economic reality, flat landers from San Francisco, they probably wonder just how everything could have gone so wrong?  

There's a statue of an archer in Weed's small city park entitled Vision and at the base of the statue an appropriate legend.

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