Ohio Getaway

Pot costs about $800 a pound in California and several years ago two boys from Duchess County New York decided to drive cross-country, score ten pounds, and drive back with the weed to sell OZs at $80. Neither Mike not Earl could remember a big bust in their hometown for ages. The cops were old and over-worked. Everyone wanted cheap weed and they could use the money.

The two twenty year-olds cut their hair, dressed in their Sunday suits, packed up their BMW SUV with empty bags, and headed west from the Poughkeepsie at dawn. The strain of the long haul was eased by good tunes and a few joints for the road. By the time they crossed into Ohio, the duo were high and the stash was down to a single joint. None would have been better, since the 1st Commandment of an outlaw was to only break one law at a time.

West of Cleveland a state trooper stopped them on I-90. He had a dog with him. It wasn't a poodle, but a Alsatian drug sniffer, which had probably been raised on hash cookies and was jonesing for a bag of weed.

"It's factory regulation." The trooper was almost as young as them. His hair was cut to the bone. HIs body fat zero. A gun was on his hip. He was everything they were not.

"What's the problem, officer?"

"Those windows are too dark for this state."

The trooper's dog barking meant one thing and he ordered the two boys out of their car. The dog found the last joint in three seconds. The $8000 was next to it. Things looked bad, until the trooper offered them a deal.

"Boys, you're probably heading to California to get some weed. $8000 worth. Come back to New York and make a little fortune. You tell me the truth and I'll let you go."

The two had never trusted a Duchess County cop, but decided to place their fate in this mirror image of law and order.

They admitted their guilt.

"Good, now I want you to turn around and drive back to New York. Don't come through this way again. You're getting off easy, just remember that. Cops farther west would have you in cuffs and you'd lose the car and the $8000."

"Yes, officer."

Mike and Earl were grateful for this gift. They threw out the joint and turned around on the next interchange. Both tried to figure out why they had gotten off so easy.

"Maybe Ohio is soft of weed." Mike had a cousin in Cleveland. He said that the police were only after crystal meth.

"Naw, it's because the state is broke and they don't have the money to try small-timers like us."

Their debate was cut short by the whoop of a siren. Another state trooper pulled them over for tinted windows. He had a dog. The dog found the marijuana scented cash in 5 seconds. Mike and Earl explained the story to the state trooper, who called his fellow officer on a cellphone.

"Just keep heading east."

"Yes, officer."

None of the headers in Duchess County believed Mike and Earl's story, but after a few homegrown joints they called the incident the "Ohio Getaway'.

A true miracle of the Drug Wars.

Ban Ohio SB-33

On October 27, 1948 a deadly toxic fog of Hydrogen fluoride and sulfur dioxide emissions from U.S. Steel's Donora Zinc Works and its American Steel & Wire plant blanketed the Monongahela River Valley and killed fifty people and infected thousands of people with longlasting respiratory problems.

According to Wikipedia two of the heroes to emerge during the four-day smog were Chief John Volk of the Donora Fire Department and his assistant Russell Davis. Volk and Davis responded to calls from Friday night, the 29th until Sunday night, the 31st, depleting their supply of 800 cubic feet (23 m3) of oxygen, borrowing more from all nearby municipalities, including McKeesport, Monessen, and Charleroi. "I didn’t take any myself. What I did every time I came back to the station was have a little shot of whiskey."

Another murderous coal smog struck London hard in 1952. Thousands died without any repercussions to the coal industry.

Coal killed and no one said how many.

In the autumn of 1995 I lived in the Far West of Ireland. The beaches were glorious and the westbound wind drifted over the primodial bogs carring the whispers of every conversation of Europe. The waves from the North Atlantic blessed my surfer skin with purity.

Ty Spaulding and I had rented a house from Lord Robert Guinnness. His coastal haunt was perfect, however we were exiled to a haunted schoolhouse.

Thick walls emanated the damp and cold of the Connemara Peninsula.

Ty and I burned everything after seeing the rapidly spinning electric heat meter drained our wallets dry.

Neolithic peat heated a three-foot circle around the fireplace.

We bought a fifty-pound bag of Texas Coal # 4.

The embers generated heat

The wandering horses loved to stand by the open door.

I entered the cottage after a long walk through the bogs and found Ty in a near-coma from breathing coal fumes.

Coal was not safe.

Sweaters helped, but one night was so cold that my computer screen screen frozen into the Ice Age.

!995.

The advent of the Internet.

The web helped neither of us get warm, but electric blankets accomplished confort.

Forward tenty-five years and Ohio State Senate Frank Hoagland had forwarded a Senate Bill condemning any and all protests against the fossil fuel industry. Ohio SB-33 languished like a zombie awaiting darness and lastd wek Ohio's GOP house passed the law to beneifit the remaining three thousand coal workers and the coal elite living in Palm Beach.

Frank Hoagland, the GOP sponsor of the bill, had been a US Navy Seal. The man's history seemed much more honorable than this sneak attack on the lungs of a nation.He was betraying his people for the wealth of others i hopes that one day he mght be rich in my eyes. He seemed a better man that that, but my wckedness alllows me vision.

Once more according to Wikipedia under Ohio’s legislation, anyone convicted of stepping foot on critical infrastructure property and “causing another person to believe that the offender will cause physical harm” would be guilty of a first-degree misdemeanor, a class of crime that includes domestic violence and drunk driving and is punishable with up to six months in jail and $1,000 in fines. Those who trespass “with purpose to destroy or tamper with the facility” face third-degree felony charges, which in Ohio can result in up to five years in jail and $10,000 in fines.

Last week I wrote Ohio Senator Hoagland an appeal to his sense of justice, especially as Ohio SB-33 is an affront to the First Amendment.Ohio SB-33. The Freedom of Speech is the Ace in the Hole. It overrules the Right the Bear Arms

Not for the Deplorables.

As A New Englander I believe in a world other than this.