Here Today Gone to Maui

Here Today, Gone to Maui

I flew into Honolulu, then took a connecting flight to Maui. Once I landed, I stepped out into the warm tropical breeze with what little belongings I had under one arm. I landed with $150 in my pocket, plus the 4 ounces of hash and the LSD. My flute case made it easy to transport the stash with its false bottom with ample room for the goodies. It was a foolproof plan back then because there was no such thing as X-raying luggage or TSA security. Nobody was looking through your shit.

Ron had advised me to hitchhike after I left the airport and although hitchhiking was illegal in Hawaii at the time by simply standing alongside the road you’d get a ride in no time.

The first ride that stopped and picked me up was an old rusty car from the early 50s full of hippies headed for Kaanapali just north of Lahaina town.they pulled over and promptly opened the door and said, Aloha brother jump in, their car was filled with the pungent smell of cannabis and the first thing the cute little blond haired hippie chick says to me is “Aloha little brother welcome to Maui the land of peace, love and harmony.” After squeezing myself into the car I opened my flute case lifted up my secret compartment and whipped out the ounces of primo Afgani hash and said, cool have you got a pipe, She reached down picked up her brightly colored beaded hippie chick bag and with a big smile on her face pulled out a small wooden pipe that had been carved into shape of a Whale, I loaded it up with a pinch of black gummy primo hash and reached in my pocket grabbed a lighter and let her fire it up, there must have been 6 or 7 people packed in that old car and I got them all toasted before they dropped me off on the side of the road in Lahaina town.

I was wasted and after fumbling around in my pockets for the address of my brother's friends. I finally found my way to one of the addresses he had written down for me. It turned out to be a little old funky wooden house built up Hawaiian style a few feets off the ground with a faint splash of red paint and a small yard surrounded by a white picket fence. It was just off of Front Street set behind an old Chinese Bhuddist temple. It was typical of the houses in that area. It was where Tom and his roommate Steve lived. Tom worked as a waiter at the Pioneer Inn, a local hotel in front of the harbor and Steve was a coral diver servicing the huge tourist market for pink and black coral jewelry and both of them were doing a little drug dealing on the side in order to keep the party going. I walked up to the entrance, knocked on the rickety screen door, and a blond-haired guy answered.

With excitement in my voice I said “hi you must be Steve,” introducing myself saying, “ Hi,I’m Ron Stevenson’s younger brother Scott. My brother said it was cool for me to crash here." and with a hint of hesitation, he let me in, but he didn’t look too happy about my brother offering his pad for me to crash out in. “That’ll be cool for a few nights man,” he said, although I could tell he wasn’t thrilled of me staying there. I remained there for a few nights, smoothing them over by sharing some of the primo hash with them, and then decided it was time to mosey on. I headed for the second address, which was on the west side of Maui in Kihei, towards Makena Beach.

Bill and Eleanor lived at that address, They turned out to be really cool people, They had two small children, cute, long blond-haired hippie kids. Soon after arriving, I opened up my flute case, popped open the bottom, and gave them an ounce of the Afghan Primo hash. An ounce of Afghani Primo back then had a street value of $55 to $65. The couple threw me what they warmly termed “an Aloha welcoming party,” although it was obvious that they had been partying for days, and most likely wouldn’t stop partying until long after I left.

Without having found time to eat on the day I traveled to their place, I went straight for the potluck they had laid out. It was piled high with mostly local vegetarian dishes, with the exception of some fresh turtle that Bill had recently caught and a few sweets that I easily recognized. After practically inhaling the food, I polished off a few of the dozen delicious brownies that Eleanor had baked up.

“What happened to all those brownies?” Bill asked me as I stuffed the last one from the plate into my mouth.

“They were great!” I said with a big cat that ate the canary smile on my face. and admitted that I had eaten four of them.

“They should have been,” he laughed, adding that the secret recipe included the whole ounce of the hash I had given them.

From ingesting all that hash, I was “peaking” for three days, fading in and out of a completely fucked up blitzed out in a stoned psychedelic haze. I was barely able to recall hitching another ride, this time out to the middle of nowhere with a car full of hippies. We traveled down a road full of powdery dust and eventually ended up at a long strip of perfect white sand bordered by the turquoise blue Pacific on one side and a rolling lush kiawe tree forest on the other.

There was only a single house standing up on poles in sight at the far end of the big beach, the residents of Makena beach on a smaller stretch they called Little Beach they had constructed shanties everywhere made out of sticks and palm tree leaves with recycled junk. They were rustic and funky, and it looked like something right out of the Leonardo Di Caprio movie, The Beach. Little Beach had maybe 50 or so full time hippies living there doing nothing but getting high on psychedelics, smoking cannabis. hashish, making music, basking in the sun or swimming naked with an occasional pod of dolphins in the rolling waves of the turquoise blue ocean, it was truly pure paradise for us..

As luck would have it, I had arrived at the ideal time, the day when everyone received their food stamps. That night a massive feast was held, complete with a big bonfires and music. I played my flute to the beat of the drumming of a guy who called himself Hashish Harry and a symphony of guitars and others singing along, as the sun set over the water, bathing the darkening sky in a perfect mix of orange, red and purple.

Thus, began a cycle of staying at Makena Beach, occasionally making it back to Bill and Eleanor’s, and then traveling on to Banana Patch. Banana Patch was in Haiku. And like Makena Beach, the commune I found there was another blissful paradise for a fifteen-year-old boy. Beautiful young men and women naked and skinny-dipping in the natural freshwater pools sunbathing on the rocks beneath the waterfalls, I was welcomed with true communal spirit. Everywhere people were meditating, practicing yoga, and getting high on Maui Wowi and fresh psychedelic mushrooms that we’d picked in nearby cowpastures early during the morning dew. I carried as little as possible as I moved from place to place, sleeping on a woven mat under the stars with my flute case and beach towel as my pillow.

There was absolutely no presence of law enforcement. I remember smoking pot on the boardwalk in Lahaina town with the local cops walking by. All they would say is “Put da pakalolo away, braddah!” Pakalolo is the Hawaiian term for ‟pot.” It literally translates to “crazy smoke.” Keep in mind that this was at the very same time when there were big crackdowns on pot smoking on the mainland in California. Hawaii was one of our newest states. Back in the late 1960s, it was very much like south east Asia, in that it was so laid-back and easygoing with few rules and regulations were enforced. There were a lot of draft dodgers on Maui at the time and luckily Ron had taken the precaution of supplying me with a phony baptismal certificate and a phony draft card that stated my age was nineteen. But I never had to show any form of ID to anyone during the time I was in Hawaii. That’s why the Brotherhood of Eternal Love went there. It was a paradise for them, and a paradise for many.

People were just beginning to grow “Maui Wowi,” pot in quantity when I got over there. They were growing their pot on plots they had staked out in the jungles up country on the slopes of Haleakala. They would dig far into the jungle and be willing to sit there for six months, waiting for the time to harvest their plants. They would basically camp in the woods and watch their plants grow. The growers worked in teams and would trade places. One guy would be relieved by another guy, so he could come out of the jungle for a month at a time. In the early Maui days, the police weren’t enforcing many laws, but within a few years, there was a huge crackdown by the feds looking for many Brotherhood guys on the run for the law. When I first arrived in Maui in 1969, you never heard of any big drug busts, probably because law enforcement was ill-prepared to carry them out. The cops on Maui were a joke. The police station was just an old run-down building in Lahaina. There was no one who could stop any of the pot growing in the jungle, and the only thing growers had to fear was the locals ripping them off. It wasn’t until around 1972 that the drug raids started, and they started using helicopters for surveillance.

I was having a great time. Before I knew it, the days had stretched into weeks and weeks into months. Initially, I was making ends meet by selling the hash and LSD that Ron had given me. To make a few bucks with perks, including the use of a bathroom and a shower, but my money had run out and I took my first job at Charlie’s Juice Stand, a five-by-ten-foot shack, named for the owner’s dog that had a painted likeness of a large black and white Great Dane on the side of it.

The juice stand was owned by a guy named Jim Fuller. He was a cool guy in his early thirties. He gave me the job of making avocado sandwiches, smoothies, and serving organic carrot juice to the local hippies and surfers. He didn’t pay me anything; all I received was free sandwiches and smoothies. I slept out in front of the juice stand on a reclining beach chair. If it rained, I got underneath the thatched roof awning. To a fifteen-year-old, this was paradise. I had all the hash and pot I wanted to smoke, some healthy food to eat and the pussy was everywhere!

When not working at the stand, I would sit on the boardwalk or go surfing, drink smoothies, and chat up high school girls, many there on trips given to them by their parents as graduation presents. I often shacked up with them in their hotel rooms at the Pioneer Inn where I could take showers and clean up. I was living as an adult, but with no responsibilities. It was the greatest time of my life!

I will never forget one beautiful, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl from California. She was special, and I felt in lust with her. We hung out for about a week until one day she got wooed away by a guy who I had met on the boardwalk by the name of Joe South.

I made the biggest mistake by introducing my hot little California babe to Joe because he sweet-talked her right out from under me. Joe South was about fifteen years my senior, and I later found out that he had played guitar with a range of artists, including Bob Dylan (on his album, Blonde on Blonde) and Aretha Franklin. In addition, Billy Joe Royal recorded several of Joe’s songs in the 1960s, including “Down in the Boondocks” and “I Knew You When.” Elvis Presley performed Joe’s song, “Walk a Mile in My Shoes,” in concert. Joe South is probably best known for his Top-Ten hit, “The Games People Play,” which won a Grammy.

He was big competition and played the game very well. He took that special girl away from me. I learned a lesson about how not to be so trusting with your girl. I felt that he really let me down, and I was really hurt. For the first time I felt, a woman had broken my heart. It wouldn’t be the last.