Stories
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
But on the last days at the end of his tour, he was told that the snakes he had been handling for a year were poisonous after-all, and had not been devenomized. So the upshot of the story was, if he had known, he would not have been able to do it, and probably would have been bitten.
The best teachers had a 'do it yourself' grading system. Come to class, do the homework, get a passing grade on the final, and you get an automatic C. For a B you had to do all of the foresaid plus some extra curricular work. To get an A you had to all of the aforesaid plus some kind of project of which one consulted the teacher beforehand.
We had a big garden in Saint Helena the first summer. It was a lot of work and a lot of watering for a few weeks of vegetables. Maybe with automated watering, but otherwise forget it. I am not a farmer. I have never had a garden since. The following summer I think I restricted my gardening to marijuana, although
Sonoma probably had in other things. Along the edge of the garden next to the drive I planted about fifteen marijuana plants. They got really big, about seven feet tall. I didn't smoke, but sold most of it really cheap, to a grandson of the owner, who sometimes lived in one of the barns and sometimes in a hut he had built on the back of a pick-up truck. One day I came home from school in late September, and thought I should pull those plants, which I did. Later in the week the grandson came to me and said a St. Helena cop had been out.
(7 of 32)
Next Page
