Peeling Out and Breaking Backs

From 2019-2022, I rolled more joints than anyone in the world. Put a fuckin stamp on it.

At a blistering rate of around 1200 per day by hand, 5 days per week, the monotony usually gave way to laughter at the expense of Charity, her dad Dave, and her sister which never really had a name, but always managed to show up a little drunk after lunch. She’d peel into the parking lot in her dented Sonata 4 fireball shooters deep and ready to kill. Eventually, she got demoted from rolling joints to just sorting the weed and even then, her productivity came into question. The last straw came on the occasion that she was too hammered to get out of her sorting chair, refusing the free Uber home and instead peeling out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell and onto the next one like Harry Potter on a fuckin broom. Luckily, Charity and Dave stuck around through the drama.

Charity was a unique case as well. She was about 45 years old, no less than 400 pounds at a staggering 5’5”and still rode to work with her step-dad, Dave, each day. A staunch OG lesbian with a heart of gold and a drug tolerance from hell, Charity was my type of entertainment for long days in the grow. I never knew what type of fucked up conversations I’d overhear and to be honest, I kind of liked it that way. It kept me guessing and there way no small talk. It was all fucked up and uncensored.

Over time, Charity took a liking to one of the cute “harvest managers” who was way out of her fuckin league in my opinion. When she’d walk in the joint rolling room, Charity would make comments like, “I’d break her damn back and blow out her asshole all in one sitting.” Or sometimes she’d just stare a hole through that very same ass as rounds were being made and supplies were being stocked. I couldn’t help but laugh my own ass off as Stevie Nicks usually played on in the background. Hits like “Rhiannon” and “Edge of Seventeen” took up most of the airwaves in our small, but powerful operation. The simplicity of the situation and the diverse makeup of that industry at that time in Denver lended itself to creativity and the true peak of what the cannabis industry could represent in more places, even with Charity, Dave, and “little sister" stuck to their chairs.

There is really no end game with this story, other than the fact that I laughed more over those few years in the trenches with Charity, Dave, and the crew than any other period in history. Outside of the standard metrics of productivity, laughter goes a long way in the workplace. Those that work on a crew they can laugh with will understand.

In other news, the heat is building in the Black Hills as we head into the dog days of summer and Sturgis sits rights around the corner.

Here’s to the dust, shit, blood, and all the rest!