Adventures in Smoking, pt. 3

When we got sick of playing guitar Jeff and I would walk out to the dike between the airport and the reservoir. Watch the planes come in. Little ones—Cessnas—turning in big, wobbly arcs around the water and over our heads to land. Some higher, some lower, some so low you could almost touch. I remember one swooped down below us, pulled up just in time to buzz our heads, trying to scare us, and it did. And we smoked.

We drank if we had anything to drink, and we smoked pot when we had it, but we smoked all the time.

Back at his house we smoked between tunes. I would light one up and stick it between the strings and the headstock, then play, letting ashes fall wherever. Jeff had a burn mark there on his. We’d take a break and sit cross-legged around the ashtray and listen to his hissy tape of Starlight Theatre, Kansas City, Missouri, August 3rd, 1982. Franklin’s Tower. To Lay Me Down.