Ron, living as he did in Glendale, was oblivious to how much I was smoking. But Dad was starting to get the picture. I had gotten into trouble a couple of years earlier when I helped myself to a couple of cigarettes from a pack that Mom had left lying around. I didn’t particularly like them, but my curiosity had gotten the better of me. Dad smelled the smoke on my clothes and lost it. He didn’t want me to experience the same health issues as Mom. I got the hardest spanking of my life.
Dad could still get away with that when I was thirteen or fourteen, but by my midteens, I wasn’t going to take it. It’s just sort of hardwired into a boy’s DNA, that at a certain age, he feels like he’s ready—or even eager—to tangle with his old man. So, when he challenged me about my pot-smoking one day, around the time that Ron and Cheryl got married, I challenged him right back.
It started with him telling me that he could smell it on me. He called me a dopehead. He said the word dope with disgust. He was from that generation that had no problem with alcohol but believed marijuana to be morally beyond the pale. I made the case that this was hypocritical—I saw no categorical difference between booze and pot. With no small measure of bravado, I said, “You should try it, Pop. You might actually enjoy it.”
Dad was too tough to act shocked. He gave as good as he got. “You know, maybe I will. Maybe I will try it!”
So I went upstairs to get my bong. “Come on, Pop,” I said when I came back down, “let me see you do it. Do a bong-load. You’re gonna love it.”
I was provoking him but I was also sincere: I thought that if he just took a hit, he would enjoy it and see the error of his ways. I miscalculated.
I had never seen him so angry. “Dope won’t get you anywhere. Get that out of my sight!” he said. “I don’t want that shit in my house.”
I didn’t quite sense that his fists were balling up in preparation to give me a pummeling, but this was definitely an escalation. If I hung around, there was a chance that things could get ugly. So I just bolted. I ran out the door and spent a few hours at a friend’s house, allowing time for the tension to defuse.
When I returned, the bong was still there—he hadn’t smashed it up like a southern sheriff demolishing a moonshiner’s still. He chose to remain my loving, supportive dad. But now I knew that he knew.
AT THIS STAGE of my life, weed wasn’t getting in the way of things at school. To the contrary, I was a pitcher on the varsity baseball team and a dedicated correspondent and photographer for the Burroughs High newspaper, The Smoke Signal.
* * *
RON
Burroughs’s sports teams were all called the Indians, and the Smoke Signal was an extension of that. This was a good three decades before schools, leagues, and other institutions began to realize how offensive these culturally exploitative names were. The girls in the cheerleading and twirling corps, Cheryl among them, were known as the Injunettes. Some of them wore feathered headdresses. That name is no longer in use, and the community is currently debating whether or not to retire the Indians name.
* * *
The journalism supervisor for the Smoke Signal was a brilliant woman named Betty Trempe. Ron had thrived under Mrs. Trempe, so she was already well-disposed toward me when I reached high school. I loved her intellect and attitude. She didn’t shy away from letting us do controversial stories that might ruffle the administration. My friend Gig Kyriacou and I pushed for a special issue of the paper devoted to teen smoking, complete with a magazine-style photographic cover. She was on board.
Competition was always a part of my student journalism career. In junior high, Gig and I won national recognition in a Columbia University competition. We wrote a feature article on the Jordan Middle School alum Rene Russo’s inspiring trajectory from bullied outcast to fashion model on the cover of Vogue. （Later on, she became a successful actress, starring in Ron’s Ransom, among other movies.） Rene graciously gave us an interview and I turned it into a strong piece. I had a knack for writing and enjoyed it.