I grew up not with toy guns but real ones, not because my parents were game hunters or prepping to take on the federal government, but because they were gunslinging outlaws. My stepdad's profession meant our home was an arsenal, guns scattered everywhere, the air forever tense with the possibility of gunplay.
At five, my babysitter, a side-dealing heroin addict, was shot in the face during a home invasion (luckily, I wasn’t there). At three, my sister narrowly escaped being a casualty in a drug bust. And at twelve, an FBI agent on the hunt for my stepdad Rod got the drop on me with a shotgun in our backyard.
And then there were the rival outlaws, shadows with scores to settle, all gunning for Rod. Despite his criminal proclivities, my stepdad was extremely strict about gun safety. "Never point a gun at someone unless you intend to kill them," he'd say, as casually as if he were teaching me to tie my shoes. I thought he was wasting my time, I’ll never need a gun.
When I started dealing in high school, I naively believed I could keep my hands clean of violence. My policy? If someone tries to rob me, hand over the goods. It's not worth dying or killing over. But life, like any good script, loves its plot twists.
We pursued him on our bicycles, two vigilantes in tighty-whities, riding down the middle of the street at 4 am, me with a .38, Gene with a machete, like a scene straight out of a laughably bad film.
Everything changed when a deal went sour, and my connection threatened to kill my family. At fifteen, reluctantly, I started packing heat. Rod would have killed me if he knew. But he was in prison for the next ten years, leaving me to keep everyone safe.
Life with a gun? Complicated. I kept it discreet, never flashing it. I didn't need anyone to know my business or cops to catch wind of it. But fate, with its peculiar wit, would soon have me earning a bad boy reputation.
That summer, at sixteen, I was less a dealer and more a farmer, overseeing a massive marijuana grow. Going from a few plants the previous year to well over two hundred. It was more than one man could manage. I enlisted my cousin Gene and promised him half the harvest for his trouble.
We lived like soldiers, my treehouse our watchtower. We slept in shifts at night and shared joints and cold beer by day. One night, Gene's whisper cut through my sleep: "Thief at 12 o'clock." I heard footsteps tiptoeing on the gravel driveway. I started up the ladder, and the thief turned and ran. I rose up over the top of the wall and fired a warning shot over his head.
We pursued him on our bicycles, two vigilantes in tighty-whities, riding down the middle of the street at 4 am, me with a .38, Gene with a machete, like a scene straight out of a laughably bad film. We cornered Rickey Hall in Rinconada Park. Gene stepped up and punched him square in the face, knocking him out.
“Are you going to shoot him or what?” Gene asked me, pointing at Rickey crumpled on the ground.
“I’m not going to prison for murder. Are you crazy?”
“Well, what are we doing here then?”
As Rickey Hall struggled to stand up, I told him, "Don't come back. And tell anyone who is thinking of ripping me off that they'd better think twice!"
He nodded in agreement, and we let him go.
The rest of the summer was deadly quiet—until one day, word got around to me that Gene wasn’t happy with his 50 percent cut. He wanted it all. He planned to steal all of the buds after they were harvested and dried.
The next day, after we finished watering all of the plants, I told him to get his shit and get the fuck out of my yard. "I heard about your plan," I told him. "You think you're going to rip me off and take all the plants? Well, now you're getting nothing. How does that sound?"
He stood there, glaring at me, and didn't say a word.
I told him again to get the fuck out of my yard, and he started tossing his stuff in a pile. Then he walked behind my garage, came back with a long-handled ax, and walked straight at me. He took the ax in both hands and as he got closer, he lifted it and swung it up high over his shoulder like he was going to strike me.
I reached around and pulled my gun from behind my back, where it had been tucked into my pants, and took a few steps toward him, lifting the gun and holding it directly between his eyes.
He smirked. "You think you're big and bad now with that gun, don’t ya," he said. "What are you gonna do, shoot me?"
"I’m thinking about it… drop the fucking ax."
(It's scary thinking back on this. He was more than capable of hitting me with the ax, I'm sure of it. And I was capable of shooting him).
He tossed the ax on the ground, turned around, picked up his sleeping bag and the rest of his shit, then walked out the back gate. He didn’t glance back.
I knew he was going to go straight home and call the cops. He wasn’t going to tell them I pulled a gun on him. He would rat me out—turn me in for the plants.
I picked up the machete and started harvest time a little early. As a strategic diversionary tactic, I left a dozen plants in the ground untouched, as well as half a dozen large wine barrels that had some of my best plants growing in them.
Later, in the early evening, the Palo Alto Police stopped by when no one was home and confiscated all of the plants they found in the yard. They left a calling card on the door with a note that said they'd be back. They showed up the next night and let me off with a warning. I’m pretty sure that my Uncle, Gene's dad, used his political pull to call the dogs off. Not because he cared about me in any way. It was all about him, all about keeping up appearances in the community.
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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking." - Amazon review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!" - Amazon review