seattle420lover

Full Text (2173 words)

Copyright The Local Planet Weekly Sep 12, 2001


The very first thing you notice about Karl is the dirt under his fingernails. And after spending a short amount of time with him, you find out that he spends about 10 hours a day managing the horticulture division of a large landscaping firm, for which he's paid a better-than-average wage--around $32,000. But despite his obsession - he's always washing his hands vigorously - his hands are perpetually dirty. In his attic Karl grows the world's most expensive cash crop, marijuana. If he wanted, in his spare time, Karl could potentially earn more than the average Spokane per-capita wage of $25,700.

Karl is 25 years old, soft-spoken and polite. His speech hints at the slightest tinge of a long-forgotten southern drawl. I sit with him in a century-old Victorian home in a lower-middle class, ethnic neighborhood. The interior of the house is standard bachelor chic - very little decoration, even less furniture.

As we sit in the living room, drinking a beer and watching television, I follow a faint pair of sirens up one block, down three more until they are virtually screaming from the window behind me. I panic, knowing that above Karl's ceilings you'll find enough marijuana to earn Karl more than a few nights in the slammer. Red and blue shadows dance on the curtains. Peeking out onto the street, I see two squad cars at the adjacent apartment complex. Two cops escort a man from his apartment, cuff him, and throw him in the back of the one of the squad cars. His wife and kids seem unfazed; they watch just long enough for the car's lights to be out of sight. Drugs? Domestic violence? I turn back to see what Karl makes of the situation. He hasn't even flinched. At no point in the last half-hour has he lost focus on the M*A*S*H rerun.

A little later, outside Karl's picture window, I glimpse his garden. In the dark, I can just make out the glow of flawlessly round tomatoes, blood red, just below me. Outside, a couple of elementary school aged kids spot me from the window. "Ask Karl if he'll come out and skate with us," they say, skateboards in hand.

"I'm finished for the day, guys," Karl says from behind me. "Come back tomorrow afternoon, though."

As the heat from the day finally wears off, Karl leads me to the bathroom of his house and points to a two-foot-by-two-foot square on the ceiling, just above the toilet. The Hole. "There it is," he says. Karl pulls out a ladder from a nearby closet, climbs it, pushes out the square and pulls himself up. I climb up behind him. Once upstairs, my eyes adjust to the darkness. Soon I'm able to make out a small shed, four feet in height, 10 feet in length and width, sitting amidst a pile of insulation. If I squint, I can just make out the dimly lit outline of a door on the side of the shed. Karl fiddles with something near the door, and soon he's crawling inside on all fours. I follow.

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"The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining to an understanding of compassion" SOCRATES, 470-399 BC