In the fall of 1990 my girlfriend Lona and I returned from a 6-month trip to Europe. We then moved in with her parents in Waukesha, WI until the spring of 1991. Our savings were running low and we decided to move out on our own. We had just enough money left for a first month’s rent and deposit and that was about it. We would have to get jobs immediately wherever we moved to. I had wanted to return to Minneapolis where we had gone to college and where all our friends were, but Lona wanted to stay in Waukesha where all her family was. We both had strong arguments for each city. We had roots in Minneapolis and all of our close friends were there, but Lona’s family were awesome and her parents were not just another set of parents, they were also like my best friends. In the end we compromised by moving to Madison, WI. It was a city in-between that neither of us had any ties to. We would make a fresh start in a new place and get new jobs and make new friends. It was a little scary, but mostly exciting.
Our first apartment was just that…a one-bedroom apartment in a complex that did not allow cats. We had a cat named Jo-Jo but we did not let that deter us and we rented the place. That lasted for a few months until we got busted for having the cat and we had to move. We decided apartment life was not for us so we rented the bottom half of a house on Center Ave. near Lake Monona. By this time I had a part-time job working at a telemarketing company doing phone surveys. We would cold-call people’s houses in the evening trying to get them to take surveys, including Jeffrey Dahmer's house. It was about a week after he got busted in 1991 and Dahmer’s name/phone# came up on my list one evening on my 4-8 pm shift. I called, hoping maybe a cop in the apartment would answer, but it just rang and rang with no answer.
I have a lot of stories about my time living in Madison and I have posted a few, but this one is about growing pot. The house we rented had an average sized basement full of the usual boilers and water heaters and pipes and we stored a lot of our crap down there, including a 1000 watt metal-halide grow light and a 400 watt sodium-pressure grow light. I used to dabble in growing pot in Minneapolis and so one day I decided I should take up growing pot again. I did not smoke pot, but it is a fascinating plant and extremely fun to grow as you can manipulate the light cycles and trim it to make it grow into exactly what you want it to…which is a female plant full of sticky buds. So I rounded up 20 plastic milk jug containers, cut out the tops and planted a seed in each one. Then I hauled out the powerful lights, hung them from a rafter in the basement and started my grow operation.
After a couple of months of 24-hour/day light and tender-loving care and nurturing, I had twenty nice 2-foot pot plants growing in the basement. One day though the very kind, very old landlord came a knockin’ and said he needed to get to the water heater in the basement because the upstairs tenants were having problems with their hot water. Oh boy. The entrance to the basement was through the back door of our main-floor unit so that is why he was knocking on my door. I stammered, hedged and hawed for a minute trying to think of a single reasonable explanation of why I could not let him in. I thought maybe I could forbid him entry because he had not given the customary 24-hour notice…but we had always been on friendly terms and that would just be weird.
So I opened the door and as he was passing me I said: “Don’t mind all the tomato plants down there, I am just getting them started indoors but will be moving them outdoors soon.” Maybe an old guy like him would not know the difference between a pot plant and a tomato plant? I could not bear to go down there with him, so I went out back and hung out awaiting his return. After about 10 minutes he came back up, announced that he needed to get a part for the hot water heater and would return tomorrow with the part to fix it. Then he took a big breath, sighed, looked me in the eyes and said: “Son, those are not tomato plants, and they had all better be out of my basement when I return.”
Crap. Now what? I went to my 4-8 pm telemarketing job and told a co-worker about my predicament. His girlfriend was my supervisor, so he took me into her office for a meeting. They lived together and he thought it would be cool if I moved the plants in to their apartment, that night. After some deliberation she relented and it was all set. After work I went home and loaded all the plants up into my 1987 Toyota Corolla hatchback with the back seat folded down. I put the grow lights in the front passenger seat, and every single cubic inch of the back of the car was full of plants. It looked horrible. It was nighttime but there was no way I could drive the several miles from my house to my manager’s apartment without somebody happening to glance over and see the felony-on-wheels passing by. I grabbed the sheets off our bed and carefully laid them over and around the inside perimeter of the car, trying not to break any stalks on the precious cargo. It was a passable job, but there was still a few leaves poking through here and there and it of course reeked like marijuana. If I happened to pass a cop, or god-forbid got pulled over for anything I would instantly be arrested.
I decided to go for it though and jumped in, staying clear of the main roads and taking residential side streets until I got to the downtown area and had to drive on main roads. I got to my first stoplight and was nervous as hell. My head was on a pivot looking anxiously around for cops. I was still at the light when suddenly a carload of drunk college kids pulled up next to me on my left, hooting and hollering about ‘partying’. Had they noticed the weed? I looked over, nodded, smiled and mumbled something like: “Yeah, alright, party on.” The kid in the front passenger seat misheard me and shouted to everyone in his car: “Hey, this guy knows where there’s a party! Follow him!” The light turned green and I frantically started shaking my head yelling: “No! No! No party!” But they did not hear me as they had already slowed so that they could get behind me to follow me to ‘the party’. F*cking hell, now what?
I did not want to be driving around anymore than I had to, as I just needed to get to my boss’s house as fast as possible. But I did not want these f*cking drunks following me there and finding out that it was about to become a grow-house. And I did not want to stop and chat with these guys and have them see the weed in back and maybe jump me and take it. So I circled back to the residential streets, going left, right, u-turns, hoping these guys would give up and leave me alone. But no, they were following right behind me and were not going to lose me. I started getting desperate…sooner or later I was going to run into a cop. So I decided to be an assh*le and started flipping the car off and yelling at them to f*ck off and leave me alone. All of a sudden their joy turned to anger when they realized I did not want them following me. I got just the reaction I hoped for as they roared past me, yelling and swearing at my while the whole carload of them flipped me off. Phew. Now I just had to make it the last mile or so to my boss’s place and unload the plants. I got there without further incident, nervously making it through a few stoplights without running into the drunk guys or the cops.
Unfortunately moving the plants there ended up being a bad idea, as the couple ended up taking all the weed. Every time I would go over there to manicure or check out the plants, there would be buds missing. I kept telling them to stop that...wait until they are mature and we can pick them then and I will split it with him. But they kept taking the buds and not only did I not get any real weed to speak of out of the deal, I ended up getting fired from my job for some stupid reason. Not the cool couple like I had originally thought. Live and learn. So I decided to drastically downsize my grow operation. I planted just a couple of seeds and put them under the one 400-watt light in the spare bedroom with the windows covered with sheets. I kept one female plant and grew that to maturity, getting a few nice buds which I gave to a cool local musician.
Madison was a fantastic place to live. After a couple part time jobs I had finally cut my long hair and scored a real job at WPS Insurance. This is where I met dozens of friends, many of whom are still close friends today including my best friend Mitch Marshall, as well as Lauren Hatch, Brad and Erin Pronger, Daddy, Bonnie & Clyde Donstad, Sherri and Derrick Goetz, Glenn Kampson, and of course our pain-in-the-ass-but-always-good-for-an-embarrassing-laugh-friend ‘Marshall’. The house that Lona and I rented was about two blocks from the lake, but more importantly we were two blocks from The Harmony Bar & Grill which would soon turn into my version of ‘Cheers’, where 'everybody knows your name'. Countless nights were spent in there playing pool and darts while draining pitchers of beer with my friends from work. Many more blog stories will eventually be written about our adventures in Madison...
