Repurposing

For about a quarter-century my buddy Rusty and I exchanged Christmas gifts. One of my things has always been to try to get people thoughtful gifts, and to that end I've spent a considerable amount of time, effort and resources over the years, and Rusty was certainly no exception. Every year I'd get him something really nice, and every year he'd give me some bullshit gift that he'd been given the year before and didn't want, and was obviously a thing I had no damn use for, but he did it anyway. 

 Some of the things he gave me were hilarious, and I need to put my Thinking Cap on and go back and try to remember what all the gifts were, but one year he gave me a beard trimmer, when I'd never grown a wisp of facial hair in my life. It was a joke, and I guess I kept hoping he'd at least give me something actually related to my life in any way just once, but doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is the basic definition of insanity.

 What makes it crazier is that for most of that time he was already a millionaire because of his father's business, and would become a multimillionaire down the road, and knew it, but that's how some of them roll, and his father was even worse than that. A penny saved, I guess, but the obvious difference when we opened "presents" was so glaring you'd think it'd be embarrassing, but technically he did give me a gift. Don't get me wrong...Rusty is a unique individual and I love him to death and we've been friends for a very long time, and he can be very generous in other ways, but not in gift-giving. Ho-Ho-Hum. 

 One year he have me a portable computer-keyboard vacuum. It was similar to this one but obviously a very early model. It looked like a flashlight, with gizmos attached. It was round, to fit the two D batteries, and it had a hard plastic hose with a bend near the end, with brush attachments and a mesh bag attached to a small tube coming out of the side. Now this was within a year of the first mainstream PC- the Apple Computer, or Apple 1. It cost $666.66 BTW. Besides the cool number, we didn't have the equivalent of over 3K in today's bucks to drop on a computer. Point being I had no use for a computer vac. 

 But then inspiration struck, and the Autotoker was born. The end of the suck-tube was about the size of a cigarette and the out-tube made a perfect mouthpiece without the vacuum-bag. I took the brush off the end and I either put a metal ring over the end or lined the edge and part of the inside with foil, so it wouldn't burn the plastic, and it made a mouthpiece that held a joint perfectly. It had different suck-speeds, so you could get a small hit, like Rusty liked, a normal hit on medium, and on full-crunk you could get a massive, "pre-concert" hit. It was impressive. 

 You'd hold it an inch or two in front of your mouth and it would deliver a "shotgun," like someone taking a lit joint, turning it backward, putting it in their mouth and blowing, and all you have to do is inhale at your own pace. It was pretty smooth, and there was no chance of getting your lips burned form the hotrock at the end of the joint, when it gets down to "roach" territory. It didn't save weed or get you higher or revolutionize pot-smoking or anything, it was just cool. 

 Before then there weren't any commercially-available motorized tokers, although they did come out with some a few years later. I'm sure I wasn't the only one to think of it but it wasn't something common, and we had a blast with it. It certainly wasn't discrete, unlike some of the products on the market, for when you were trying to mitigate the telltale signs of pot-smoking...like clouds of pot smoke, so we generally didn't drive around with it or take it out into the public too often. 

 There was the "Sneak-a-Toke," a smokeless-toker. It had a plastic mouthpiece like a cigarette holder, and an aluminum chamber that was a tube that flanged-down to a very narrow opening. You'd put the stuff in, replace the screen and screw it back together. A flame would pass through the small hole but almost no smoke would come out. It was effective, and it also cut down on product going up in smoke, as with a regular pipe. I'm sure it's still made. 

 Then there was a thing I forget the name of. It was made to resemble an early plastic water bottle. It had a normal-looking spout as the mouthpiece, and a hole with a rubber grommet on the side, to let it fill with air again quickly, after a toke. The spout led to a tube that went inside the bottle. You'd light a joint as normal, place it in the tube, stick it down inside the bottle and screw the cap back on and you were good to go. You'd cover the hole and squeeze it and you'd get a shotgun hit. 

 Back in high school when we were in the bicycle club, my buddy Tommy and I both put an extra clip on our bikes- one for a water bottle and one for the toker, and they looked just the same. We told everybody that we were extra-thirsty. When we'd take rides along the river, we'd lag behind the others, fire-up the toker and casually toss it back and forth as we rode. It was beautiful. 

 Special mention has to to go what we called the "Frisbowl" but which went by several names, including "Toss-a-Toke" or the "Flip-a-Toke" or something, and a couple others I can't recall at the moment. It was a great idea, considering that tossing a Frisbee or other flying disc and smoking pot went hand-in-hand. In the distant past and before smart-screens and shit that's what people did. The Whammo company didn't actually enter into the "flying paraphernalia" scene and make a Frisbee model, although we modified a few. 

 It was always an off-brand of disc, which for some unknown and magical reason almost never flew quite as well as a Frisbee, but that was beside the point. They had a brass bowl mounted top and center, with a screw-on lid with a small hole, to let in flame but not let the contents spill due to an errant throw. It was brilliant. On the underside of the disc two lengths of thin, flexible tubing, basically aquarium tubing, went to holes on opposite sides of the disc, in a gentle S-curve. They were friction-fitted and glued. The reason for having two lengths was for balance, but I suppose if you were tossing with someone you didn't really know or trust, you could mark your toke-hole, and each have your own. Maybe the "Frisbowl" should make a comeback. In this day and age it'd be perfect for people who'd still like to share a bowl, but not lips.

 The Autotoker was a hoot, for about a year. The motor finally got so choked with resin that it overheated one day, and gave up the ghost with a final wisp of extremely-aromatic smoke. RIP, prototype Autotoker. You were an original. Actually it may have really been an original, and I could be mistaken about seeing other similar things, but I don't think so, although the closest thing I could find in a search just now was something called the Megatoker. It has rechargeable batteries and an internal bowl. You load it one toke over the line...um, I mean one toke at a time, and you have to empty it and reload for each hit. 

 It sounds like a rather needless thing, especially at its price of $199, but it heats the product at a much lower temperature than lighting a pipe with a flame, and that preserves more of the active ingredient as well as vaporizing less tar, so if you have the money to spend and aren't in a big hurry to get stoned it'd absolutely be a great way to smoke- healthier, more economical and more buzz-producing. The Autotoker didn't do that but you could smoke a whole J at once without having to reload for each toke. Plus Megatoker doesn't have a motor to blow the smoke out, but only heats it. 

 My Autotoker was about $199 cheaper than the Megatoker, and it had also been free to Rusty, and for all I know several people before him, sort of like a "chain gift." Back in the day when most of us kids didn't have $666.66 to spend on a computer, and not much use for a computer vac (although I did use it to clean my turntable and a few other electronics before I turned it into the Autotoker), at least I managed to find a use for it, when most probably got "recycled" into the trash, and Rusty got a huge kick out of seeing me actually finally find a use for one of his bullshit gifts. Hmm...Autotoker vs. Megatoker...it sounds a bit like an old Japanese Sci-Fi B-movie. 

 Dang, with all this germ shit going on, I really think that it's a good time to bring back the Autoker, the water-bottle toker and the Frisbowl. "Contact-free" toking...it's the order of the day, and these things are begging to be re-released. With a few tools I could easily come up with some prototypes. Man I really could use an agent. I could just think-up crazy shit and let someone else promote it. I should start a company. I could call it LIPSA, for Lip-Independent Paraphernalia & Smoking Accessories. Right on.