Swear to dog, I'm going to take a vacation this year. It might only be to my attic to smoke some dope or something for a few days, but dammit, it's gonna happen.
This is neither here nor there, but... I was once a reporter in a very tiny and rural county in Arkansas run by the Church of Christ, basically. (Harding College.) It was a dry county, which was, er, a problem for a young (or old, but young then) reporter.
But anyhoo, this was White County, population 70,000, and I lived in Searcy, population 10,000. And I was the only political reporter in the county. We had 2 sports reporters, natch.
So I lived a block away from the county jail, where all the trustees would be washing the sheriff vehicles in their striped jail outfits. And 2 blocks away from the county courthouse, where the trustees did all the cleaning, etc.
Understand this was the deep south. Probably 80% of the prisoners were Black, where only 10% of the county was Black. The entire political establishment was white.
But my job took me down to the county courthouse pretty much every day, because I wanted to talk to the County Judge, who wasn't a real judge but sort of like the mayor of the county.
His name was Bob Parish. He was the smartest guy in government. He was a Republican, but not an asshole Republican, just sort of a decent guy in a horrible place. Bob's big program was paving roads. He made sure to get every road in front of a church and a cemetery paved.
Bob read me like a book, and vice-versa. We used each other, basically. I wrote stories (no lie!) about his road crew killing beavers that flooded the highway, and he'd feed me stories about corruption the next county over.
Anyway, I was in the courthouse so often, I got to know all the trustees, the Black guys cleaning up the place and doing all the other manual labour. And before long, I realized they had the whole place figured out.
They had the run of the place, which was like, I dunno, a 150 year old courthouse or some such. And after a while, they'd invite me up to the courthouse attic, where all the ancient court records and meeting minutes and such were stored.
I'm totally afraid of heights, but here were were on the 3rd or 4th floor or whatever, hanging out at a window sill looking over the town, and OF COURSE the trusties had a complete supply of dope stored up there.
So'd we'd sit around, smoking joints for a couple of hours, looking over the town that was oppressing all of us (them worse than me, but still), me hiding from my crazy editor, them hiding from their asshole sheriff.
I never much smoked dope before or since, but I felt kind of obligated to smoke up with these Black dudes from nowhereville, Arkansas, because why the fuck not? I mean, we're in this together, no?
So, I'd tell them about crazy shit in California, and they'd tell me about crazy shit in Arkansas. We'd get high, and laugh for a spell. Then they'd go back to jail, and I'd go back to my stupid little apartment. Obviously, I had the better end of this deal.
I've never told this story before because I figured I'd get them in trouble, but it's been so long they all must have moved on to fates better (hopefully) or worse (likely).
So every time I smoke dope, which is like twice a year maybe, I think of those guys. And I look out whatever window I'm near, and I sigh.
You can follow @Tim_Bousquet.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: