A Wee(d) bit of History
OK, so this is one of the few times I agree with the old Michael Scott quote:
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take — Wayne Gretzky”
I thought by not doing a weed fun fact last week, I was doing my boy Mehul a real solid (my day was 4/19, his was 4/20). While Mehul’s last fact was great, not taking the 4/20 fact for myself was basically me tossing him a nice juicy meatball, passing an airy lob for a mean alley-oop, or handing him a nice tasty fun fact on a silver platter.
Alas, Mehul did not take the shot and therefore did not make it. Now, I must carry this weight on my shoulders and provide the history of 4/20.
Back in 1971, a group of 5 Guys (!) that called themselves the Waldos (apparently because their hangout spot was a wall) heard about a plot of pot plants (say that 5 times fast) in the Point Reyes Peninsula. It belonged to a member of the Coast Guard who was no longer going to be able to take care of the plants. They went to school together at San Rafael HS not far from the supposed location of the goods, so one day, they decided they would meet up at 4:20 to get high and drive to Point Reyes in search of the field.
As they passed by each other in the halls, they would just say “4:20” as a reminder. Every week they would meet at 4:20 and search for the field, which they never found. It became part of their lingo, and meant anything from “do you want to smoke?” to “are you high?’ to anything else about weed.
Plenty of groups of friends, including our own, develop slang and what could seem like a new dialect. But how did their slang go worldwide and eventually turn into a nearly-legitimate holiday and a symbol of an entire culture?
One of the Waldos’ dads was a real estate manager for the Grateful Dead, and another of them had a brother that managed one of the band’s sidebands. The Waldos got to know the Grateful Dead, who eventually adopted a bit of the boys’ slang. They took this with them as they toured across the country. The term picked up among their groupies and hardcore fans, but that was about it.
That is, until High Times, a long-running magazine that covers all things weed, ran a story on the Grateful Dead that explained what 420 means.
Ironically, the history of 420 according to this article is blatantly wrong. They claim that 420 was a police code used when people were smoking. Surprisingly, there is now very little disagreement about the origin of 420. The Waldos kept a bunch of memorabilia from their high school days that leave pretty much no doubt they started it. They even have a tie-dyed flag that one of them made in art class back in ‘71.
Random fun facts about 420:
- Idaho’s mile 420 sign on one of their highways had to be taken down and replaced with 419.9 because it was being stolen repeatedly
- The bill that made medical marijuana legal in California was senate bill 420
- Several clocks in Pulp Fiction are set to 4:20
- One guy got on The Price Is Right and refused to guess anything other than $420 or $1,420 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3IuHMxFHjQ)
Can’t wait until some bit of our slang turns into a worldwide holiday :)
