Aromatic Hydrocarbons and Grow Rooms

Top of the morning gents,

Observations and recollections; miscellaneous ramblings, all bullshit.

Winter is officially here. It touched the 32-degree mark this morning, blowing snow sure hypnotizes an avid reader daydreaming to a view of whitecaps and icebergs. On this August morning, north of 70 lat.

If you've been missing your strolls down front street, it's the smell of sea air you're likely missing. Partially opened windows keep that ocean odor near my writing station, and in my writing.

It was 25 degrees in Nuiqsut. A village I fucking doubt any of you will ever visit.

On cold weekends, I tend to stay indoors and play with a caulking gun, masking tape and latex products. Reviewing pages from an old diary, it seems this frosty morning was spent stripping wire, running cable, and hooking up a new halide system.

One of my blessed pals from the Valley mailed me some interesting seeds, soil, and plant food. I also snagged a really cool all-in-one halide unit; ballast, lamp and shield system from Shop 2.

“Snagged” is such a dishonest term, akin to kyped or nicked, but far less insipid.

Titles; like names can be deceiving, especially in discourse with a liar, contrasted by bullshit, you all should detect a certain degree of authenticity.

One acquaintance I’ve made here in Barrow, a generous chap at Shop 2, calls me “Groid”, whilst a hippy working at the liquor distribution center, frequently calls me “Negro.” My hygiene has most notably declined since relapsing back into rural idiot subsistence savant, non-medicated. You sons of birches oughta worry, if I’ve collapsed to the level of nativity, evoking an African rebuke and moniker.

The generous operative that sent me this wonderful Alaskan care package, another fictional dude from the Big Lake area has earned my affectionate title of the Wertman Bitch. Heck of a nice guy. He lives down a mile long driveway, and hangs stadium lamps in his garage to meet his botanical requirements; lettuce, cabbage, sweet peas.

Sure, vegetable fiber is best smoked, nutrition for your throat and lung nodules, so eat me.

He also sent me some Jim Beam and a mighty fine stash of Seattle’s Best Coffee, French Roast oily bean, nasty, and skanky wonderful coffee. I’m an addict.

Refreshing to play with my tools, cuz they’re my toys. I enjoyed the needle nose pliers, crimpers and strippers, and my locksmith surgeons bag. Brings back memories of a system I craftily installed, on a peninsula where there’s three mass gravesites, and where the soil’s gone bad. Hooking up grow lights with near ghosts Albert Monroe and Pete Lambert.

I’m rather fond of my accomplishments and the business arrangements I’ve closed.

The deal I had with Pete Lambert and Albert Monroe is simple. Get house 369 wired and hot, meeting code, and then convert a couple of converters.

I handsomely reimbursed those chaps to install a power mast, service panel, and heavy conduit to the telephone pole for house #369 and to convert a halide light transformer from 220 volts down to 110 volts for covert use in house #676. I paid them compliant with the published governmental and regulatory policy manuals, The Kotzebue Fair Trade Practices; Davis Bacon black market wages.

You’re trying to imagine how I paid these chemically altered and accelerated electricians. Inupiaq la cosa nostra. In other words, “this Eskimo thing of ours.” Don’t be so fucking naïve; remember when Hammersley and his wife Shauna were hanging about? I snagged a dozen units from the same Mike Hammersley, moments prior to his departure, arrest, escort, and mysterious disappearance enroute from Kotzebue to Pt. Hope on Baker Aviation. Two six packs that were never intended to be paid for. Pity.

I also had a couple sheets of Seattle’s Best Acid, oily, nasty, skanky wonderful blue dot paper. Pete and Albert weren’t no dummies, those shrewd fucks pounced on the deal. The bids were legit, the work was real, and the receipts I submitted were legitimate, only this gray market transaction (blending both black and white markets) transferred zero currency. Corruption is merely a matter of perspective, these boys valued carcinogens.

Hiring teams of convicts to magically transform 4 shitty rural Alaskan shacks into assets yielding better returns that a growth fund, isn’t immoral. Fuck you. Houses 420 and 711 received interior face-lifts. House 369 was expanded and reshaped to match the original architecture. Big Dumb Dale and I cut the roofs off the shitty add-on porches on the front and back, then Scott and I prefabbed a dozen triangle trusses, nailed down 5/8ths inch CDX plywood, with the Burnors screwing down the brown metal roofing.

House 676 received slightly more upgrades; largely due to a previous tenant installing a marijuana grow room, with a covert egress hidden in the right bedroom closet, and a barrel stove sauna in the front shop and storm porch. What’s odd is that old halide lamp is still stored in that old Trooper house, near the airport.

I had to give it up; everything me and Ken Hall talked about was recorded, transcribed, and analyzed in redundancy. That included discussions of a fictional grow room somewhere on Caribou Street. It ain’t easy to commit multiple felonies on a weekly basis, whilst under the magnified eyeball of Kim and Paul.

It also ain't easy to forfeit a perfectly good 1000-watt high-pressure sodium grow lamp to my handler #1D25.

Rule #1, Never bullshit Kim, besides he was more fascinated and intrigued by the dirty truth rather than any sugar coated pile of steaming BS. Oh, 1D25 is the old call sign for a retired copper better known as Trooper Nay.

Some of you remember him. Cool under fire, but a real pain in the ass when he loses his temper. Him and Bud Dial both almost lost their tempers, just once, and for only a brief moment.

Some points in time can break many ways.

Mike Wilson just may be the luckiest child gomer in the NANA Region. Wagging a rifle out the window of a log cabin next to the Kiana playground, ain’t the smartest thing to do, especially when 2 coppers are resetting their sights on your Lysol saturated cranium.

I almost had a fucking heart attack. Both Kim and Bud had clenched jaws, tunnel vision, and tightening trigger fingers, when the poisonous solvent soaked Mr. Wilson tripped and fell, dropping a bent rifle out the window. That situation almost went bad, really fast. I flinched in anticipation of simultaneous gunfire.

Koslof snagged the useless, yet suicidal rifle, while Kim and Bud held steady aim on the window. Those old coppers proceeded to yank the plug wires and fuel lines on all the machines, and then simply waited 11 hours until Mr. Wilson digested his Lysol, woke up, walked out the front door into another near death firestorm of truncated hollow points from 3 coppers, and was briefly pummeled and quickly cuffed, and dragged up to an awaiting airplane. He doesn’t remember the 2 fractions of a second he almost sucked broken glass and 6 bullets from 2 directions.

Had Dean6killer been prone behind a bipod and rifle, well, let’s just say, Mr. Wilson would require a much shorter coffin.

Rhetorical discussions, ex post facto speculation, rear view mirror context, don’t ever believe my stupid bullshit. Nobody ever smuggled LSD into a remote arctic coast fishing village, or installed a grow op on Eskimo territory.

The reason Albert has cancer, is cuz I fucking gave it to him. Sure. He and Pete may have worked for and earned a couple of sheets of acid, but it’s his own long term habitual actions that induced the illness. Really strong stuff mates, and those boys covertly nibbled numerous micro doses, unknowingly yet documentably, nibbled numerous decades off their lives.

I am the angel of mercy; I promote carcinogenic behavior. I smoke meat, I smoke fish, I smoke cigars, and drink burnt oak barrel aged whisky. Cancer isn’t a disease, it’s a cruel, yet lousy way the body tries to heal continually irritated tissue and scars. Runaway cell division, uncontrolled cell duplication usually localized on tissue that’s never allowed to regain health and hence, never fully heals. Like my morning hack when I’m entertaining tobacco products, non-tobacco products too.

My Dr. Spock fucking brother once lectured us that the source of the aromatic hydrocarbons is irrelevant; all complex carbon based organic structures will yield volatile oils when heated; incense, hickory smoke, even beauty bark. Some of you vicious fuckers may recall pleasant smells like wood smoke, beach fire smoke, and yes, even the wonderful smell of a freshly lit cigarette, cigar, or pipe. Aromatic hydrocarbons dudes, tasty smoky flavors: all extremely carcinogenic. Or so the doctor persuasively argued.

My smarter brother’s assertions were in response to a dinner discussion comment by Cully that bong hits won’t give you cancer; the general consensus of the post hippy 70’s intellectual elite. The musical art snobs from the suburbs of the Pacific Northwest. Despite their obviously superior education and typical arrogance, these super wanna-be bad Asses were also all major dope heads. Whole generations of morons falsely believing that their bong hits weren’t anything like smoking cigarettes. That included me and most of my brothers.

Cancer is something that has to be earned. Albert earned his cancer from coffee and bong hits with his grower pal, White Mike, Shane Emdee, and Scott Wade, somewhere up on Caribou Street. He also smoked 2 packs of fags a day, and indulged in overwhelmingly dangerous LSD from a familiarly impaired musician in Bellingham. There’s still a persistent rumor that good acid can be found in the plastic liners of dog kennels. Pipe bombs and goats’ milk, shot guns and pit bulls. All bullshit.

Mr. Monroe and his pals, Danny Burnor and his pals all nibbled searing paper on numerous occasions, but only if they did an honest day’s work. No shit. Those fuckers worked harder’n fuck. Columbo and the Sergeant seemed to time their visits right at the moment Charlie, Big Dumb Dale, and Harley were chiefin’ up. It’s funny shit to see how nervously busy a crew of bake heads scurry when uniformed coppers pop in for a fag break.

Experiences only a moron survives. Or does he? David Burnor is sucking dirt; Albert Monroe is at Death’s door, awaiting me to pull him through. I’ve got Brian “micro dot” Higman on every antidepressant and antipsychotic he can munch, crunch, and snort. Our beloved acid tripper from the beyond has returned a complete basket case. His maniacal drug intake has now become maniacal religious pursuit. Danny Burnor and Roberta Brower lived here in Barrow for a while. He ran a rather profitable speed shop. Nothing mechanical, merely chemical; folks up here really like to smoke meth-amphetamines. The state of Vermont has taken their kids, whilst Danny and Roberta serve their obligatory time.

My guess is Marty and Dennis got shot, or buried during a septic tank and drain field replacement job. My wood chipper has an adapter so it shoots straight into my 1500 gallon Greer Septic tank. Simply flush a couple of boxes of Ridex down your toilet and yer good to go. A good rule of thumb is to also have your septic tank vacuumed out every year too. Teeth, silver, pins, metal implants and bits will find their final resting place in the Muldoon Sewer Treatment Plant, off the Glenn Highway, right outside of Anchorage. I’m kidding, they’re likely John Doe’s at the King County Morgue. Sometimes, racial integration only occurs at the morgue. They were more stupid with guns and darker targets, than even Pim.

In light of his recent terminal diagnosis and if I was a true friend, I’d fly up to Kotzebue, escort Mr. Monroe out to Willow, show him a good time, then show him a shotgun, a chainsaw, a wood chipper, and a cold dark bath in poop and enzymes.

Shitty job, someone’s gotta do it.

If you dipshits contemplate coincidence or psychic forecasting even for a fucking second, I’ll knock you out and take you for a drive up near Columbo’s place on Hatcher Pass.

He’ll be installing a well and septic system soon. He’ll likely be needing help with his grow room too; after all, he’s living in Willow.

Karl.