I told this story in an old blog already but it's pretty wild, and with talk of the band getting together to do a few shows, all the crazy memories are flooding in afresh. One weekend we played a place called Club XIII in Sheffield, AL. When we'd play two nights in a town, on Saturday we'd get a late checkout, and rather than pay for another day just to sit in the room for a few hours, we'd take in the town and do some sightseeing, have dinner, play the gig and then drive home after. This day we got up around 11 or so, hung out and showered until around 1, checked out, grabbed a bite and decided to visit the Space and Rocket Center in nearby Huntsville. It was extra-cool because years earlier, when I was doing drafting for my dad, he drew the plans for the first-ever remodel, the new visitor's center. I'd gone up there with him several times to help measure and such, and when we visited we saw his name on a placque first thing. That was cool.
[ ]So we were coming back, and decided to go ahead and fuel-up. There was a small gas station off to the left so we decided to pull in. It was a beautiful day. We were on a four-lane with a turn lane in the middle. There was only one other car on the road. It was a cop...a trooper to be exact. He was approaching at maybe 55 or 60, and he was maybe 100 yards away. The driver slowed-down and I thought he was going to stop, but to my horror he went ahead and turned, making the trooper have to stop, in the middle of the highway. I couldn't believe it and sure enough on came the blues. "Oh, shit" we all said in unison (we'd worked on our vocals).
[ ]The problem was that we'd just finished smoking a huge bowl, and the entire van reeked with the smell of burning rope. The cop smelled it immediately. I don't remember exactly what he said or if he told us we were under arrest, but we were. Within a minute or two at least two other patrol cars pulled in behind us. The trooper basically said not to go anywhere and that the K9 unit was on the way. We were going down like clowns. We were pretty bummed and not just a little nervous, resigned to our fate, and for a minute we sat there like statues, but then my "Little Voice" made an appearance, and told me there was a way. Then I noticed something that saved our butts.
[ ]The building and the lot were tiny, and we had to park with the huge trailer we towed behind us at an angle. I noticed that all I could see from the driver's mirror was the side of one car. I leaned over and checked the passenger mirror and I couldn't see anything but woods. I couldn't believe they didn't have a guy watching us but they were all behind the trailer, jabbering away. I reckon they thought they had us dead-to-rights. Even though there were several cops right behind us, not a one of them was on a line-of-sight to us. The trailer was blocking their view. I knew there wasn't much time.
[ ]"Guys," I said, "they can't see us. Let's clean up all the shit and see if we can get rid of it, and let's do it NOW." Two of the guys were shaking, and didn't want to do it, but I reminded them that we were already busted, so we had nothing to lose. We went through our pockets, luggage, and every inch of the van in record time. We had several pipes and some of us had brought weed (there were no other substances on board), plus various baggies and remnants and whatnot. Not only were we able to move freely about the van, cleaning up weed no less, completely unnoticed, but O' and I were able to grab everything and run into the gas station, and we might as well have been invisible.
[ ]We went running in and headed straight for the restroom. There were two black dudes behind the counter and when they saw us run in they died laughing. They knew what was going on. Wouldn't you know it...there was a loose tile at the bottom of the wall with a hollowed-out area behind it. It was the perfect place to frantically hide weed and paraphernalia. We went running out and the dudes were laughing even harder. "We left y'all some shit" I said as we pushed through the door and jumped into the van. The cops never saw a thing, and that's not normal. I truly believe that God was looking out for us on that day. And we could only hope that the two dudes wouldn't narc on us, and luckily they didn't. What they DID do however was instantly acquire a free stash, with a few nice pipes and enough weed to smoke for a week or two at least. I was a win-win situation.
[ ]We resumed our former poses and sat still in the van. About a minute later the K9 unit showed up and we were ushered out of the van to let the dog do his thing. You didn't have to be trained law-enforcement personnel to see that the dog knew immediately that there had recently been weed in the vehicle. The cops were waiting for him to come out with a big fat sack of weed or whatever, but the problem was that we'd scoured the van and gotten rid of every crumb of everything, or so we thought. After the dog had snooted every inch of the van he finally stopped at the front ashtray. We saw him, and wondered what he was after. We'd emptied all the ashtrays. We thought we were home-free.
[ ]The dog was obviously interested in the ashtray. The cops had searched those first-thing and they were as confused as we were but after looking again one of the officers found a small, completely-blackened seed that had lodged itself in the corner. A seed. One seed. One blackened seed. The trooper was mad that they didn't find anything else and he badly wanted to make a bust, but it was hard to tell that it was even a pot seed. Too bad we couldn't request DNA testing. The DNA would have been barbecued. Much to our utter disbelief he put the burnt seed into a tiny plastic bag and then into a bigger bag marked EVIDENCE. He then told the driver to turn around, and he was cuffed. "Are you arresting me for a burnt seed?" he asked. "That's right" said the trooper. We were aghast.
[ ]We were all in a mild state of shock from the rollercoaster ride we'd just been through. It was literally a miracle that we hadn't been seen, and had been able to get rid of all the stuff, but here we were about to go down for a fucking seed. A small, crispy, burnt-ass seed. Arrested. No shit. It was a bit of a blur but I'm pretty sure we had to drive back home without him and he had to spend the night in the pokey. Anyway he had to get a lawyer and drive a long way to meet with him and do all the court shit. The day the case came up we all drove back to Sheffield. The case came up and he walked up to face the judge. "Case #54, People versus Bud Greene" or whatever the bailiff said.
[ ]What happened next was classic. The trooper handed the judge a manilla envelope with the EVIDENCE bag inside. At first the judge didn't see anything but then he saw the tiny bag inside. He pulled it out, held it right up to his nose to see what it was and realized it was a burnt pot seed. He held it up for all to see, and looked at the trooper almost in disgust. "You've wasted my time on THIS?" he said. "Sorry, Your Honor" said the trooper. (WHAP) "Case dismissed." Just like that he was a free man. All that shit for one seed. It's still hard to believe, but this hyere's Alabama, boy.
[ ]The thing is he could've actually gone down for it if the judge hadn't been a reasonable man. He had another minor possession charge and could've faced a mandatory six weeks, if I'm not mistaken. Plus if we hadn't been able to get rid of the MAIN evidence, at least those of us who brought along weed would've gone to jail too, and it'd have cost the band way more that it did. As ridiculous as it was to get busted for a pot seed that didn't even look like a pot seed, we were still glad that was the end of it. All because a cop got pissy because he didn't make a big bust, and it could ONLY happen in Alabama. As much of an unbelievable story as it is and as much of a hassle as it was it still makes for an interesting story that had an actual miracle. How many times do you think something like that would ever happen? It was yet another time that I was very grateful for my excellent vision, plus my attention to detail and my situational-awareness, both of which I'd been working on for years by then.
[ ]The Epilog I guess is that for one thing we survived a surreal experience, and we went back to a policy I'd implemented in the early days of the band but that we'd gotten lax on, which was to never carry anything you couldn't eat. That included pipes, bongs, pinch-hitters and even baggies. You can't eat a baggie very easily, much less a bong. Papers were still okay. Actually we were so freaked that we tried to implement a no-weed policy, but for some of us that lasted exactly zero gigs. We started taking weed again, but not any pipes or anything. Before we left I'd either roll 125 joints or we'd take papers and put the weed into an envelope. I said that I think God saved our asses that day, but some might say that we still had to pay money and one of us had to go to the pokey, but maybe God let that one little toasted seed slip through to send us a warning while still keeping us out of major trouble, so we'd go back to our old policy, which saved us some trouble down the road, so it turned out okay. Crazy story too. Lots of odd stuff goes along with playing music.
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