MY MOTHER SENT ME
A LETTER ABOUT DOPE

 
(From the Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer, Mother’s Day).

My mother sent me a letter about dope. This was my freshman year of college. The fifth floor of my dorm was called the “dope floor.” You name it, we had it: heroin (“scag”); marijuana (“grass”); and cocaine. Some guys even sniffed gasoline from cars at the nearby parking structure. That was called “hitting the tank.” Many of the heavy dopers eventually dropped out. This was at the University of Michigan, where the Hash Bash – a celebration of marijuana – started.

I got harassed for non-toking by my dormmates. I was a mama’s boy. The boys on my floor couldn’t believe I didn’t partake. Two inner-city Detroit boys, in particular, were quite often amused by me, calling me “Expletive-deleted Bert!” and ”Bert be trippin’. That Expletive-deleted be trippin’. You be trippin’, Expletive-deleted!”

The Detroit boys were charismatic. They wore berets and used a lot of Black slang. They wore silky colored underwear and put Vaseline on their skin in the winter. This was all new to me – a white kid from South Euclid. The Detroit boys were from Cass Tech, a Detroit science-magnet high school. They were pre-med, like almost everybody on our dorm floor. The Cass boys aced inorganic chemistry that freshman year. But they did too much dope. That was a problem. The Cass guys were gone by sophomore year.

Tune in, turn on, drop out. Many did. The Jewish boy from New Jersey stopped studying altogether and giggled a lot. It seemed like he was high almost every waking moment. He dropped out and drove a cab around Ann Arbor. The Italian boy from Chicago dropped acid, dropped out and became a brakeman in Chicago, in imitation of Jack Kerouac. I saw the Chicago boy a couple times after college. His primary concern was passing the periodic railroad-mandated drug tests.

My mom wrote me regularly. (Phone calls were expensive back then.)

Here’s her letter to me from October 1968.

Dear Bert,

We had a wonderful visit with you last weekend. It was great seeing you and finding that you haven’t changed — you’re still the same old nudnik that we love! Still, I have a worry. I only wish I could express myself well on paper so I could be sure to reach you.

Bert, you’ve always had a strong will and mind of your own. I’m praying that you use your good judgment and not be swayed by good fellowship and badgering. What I’m leading up to is this: marijuana. I’m not sure, but isn’t that the same thing as pot? Whatever it is, it scares me. What does it do for you? You don’t need pot to tell you it is a beautiful day. From the time you were a child, it has always been a pleasure to go places with you. You were the first to see the horses, the water, the points of interest.

You have the makings for a wonderful, happy life. You have it in yourself. Keep it that way. Don’t let the boys tease or try to shame you into doing something you don’t need and know isn’t right.

Love and Kisses,

Mother

That was 57 years ago. I confess, I smoked marijuana the following year and periodically after that. But not that much. I never bought, Mom! And I haven’t toked in decades. (My mother, Julia Stratton, died in 2004.)

Julia Stratton, 1967, age 47.