\n(From the Sunday <\/em>Cleveland Plain Dealer, Mother’s Day).<\/em><\/p>\n
My mother sent me a letter about dope. This was my freshman year of college. The fifth floor of my dorm was called the \u201cdope floor.\u201d You name it, we had it: heroin (\u201cscag\u201d); marijuana (\u201cgrass\u201d); and cocaine. Some guys even sniffed gasoline from cars at the nearby parking structure. That was called \u201chitting the tank.\u201d Many of the heavy dopers eventually dropped out. This was at the University of Michigan, where the Hash Bash \u2013 a celebration of marijuana \u2013 started.<\/p>\n
I got harassed for non-toking by my dormmates. I was a mama\u2019s boy. The boys on my floor couldn\u2019t believe I didn\u2019t partake. Two inner-city Detroit boys, in particular, were quite often amused by me, calling me \u201cExpletive-deleted Bert!\u201d and \u201dBert be trippin\u2019. That Expletive-deleted be trippin\u2019. You be trippin\u2019, Expletive-deleted!”<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 a white kid from South Euclid. The Detroit boys were from Cass Tech, a Detroit science-magnet <\/b>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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
My mom wrote me regularly. (Phone calls were expensive back then.)<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s her letter to me from October 1968.<\/p>\n
Dear Bert,<\/i><\/p>\n
We had a wonderful visit with you last weekend. It was great seeing you and finding that you haven\u2019t changed — you\u2019re 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.<\/i><\/p>\n
Bert, you\u2019ve always had a strong will and mind of your own. I\u2019m praying that you use your good judgment and not be swayed by good fellowship and badgering. What I\u2019m leading up to is this: marijuana. I\u2019m not sure, but isn\u2019t that the same thing as pot? Whatever it is, it scares me. What does it do for you? You don\u2019t 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.<\/i><\/p>\n
You have the makings for a wonderful, happy life. You have it in yourself. Keep it that way. Don\u2019t let the boys tease or try to shame you into doing something you don\u2019t need and know isn\u2019t right.<\/i><\/p>\n
Love and Kisses,<\/i><\/p>\n
Mother<\/i><\/p>\n 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\u2019t toked in decades. (My mother, Julia Stratton, died in 2004.)<\/p>\n Julia Stratton, 1967, age 47.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (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 \u201cdope floor.\u201d You name it, we had it: heroin (\u201cscag\u201d); marijuana (\u201cgrass\u201d); and cocaine. Some guys even sniffed gasoline from cars at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33144"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33151,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33144\/revisions\/33151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Julia-249x300.jpg\")