I was going to wait a while more before telling this story, but in light a recent developments, here goes.  As the band gained in popularity through 68, we were on the road, albeit mostly in Texas, almost every week-end.  Around that time, the mid-level weed dealers were plying their trade generally on Sunday, and specifically when the Cowboys were on the tube.  after all, the cops were also watching the game.  This process, however, became an annoyance to us in a strange way.  Since we seldom could get back to town early enough on Sunday, having sweated away pounds in a week-ends worth of concerts featuring a wealth of frenzied excess,  we would usually miss the load.  Oh, the motherfuckers would tell us how great it was and we should have been there and we wish we had some more but it's all gone.  Well, we tried placing advanced orders and we begged our good buddies not to forget us, but it was no use.  Even when we left our money with them, they would space on it and give us our money back!  This was really frustrating.  So I decided to find another source.  We got a few pounds from a guy in Denton.  The car we were using, registered to a general in the Air Force, decided it a good time to break down.  I had to put Suzy and the kid on the bus up near Waco.  She got the stash back home while we dealt with the car.   Man, I didn't want to go through all that crap each time we needed smoke.  After all, we just ran like the Bluebell ad,"we smoked all we could and we sold the rest". So when a fellow I'd never met came to my door and offered me a deal I couldn't refuse, well, I couldn't refuse.

I only knew him as 'Joe', and that's all I really needed.  He had been supplying the guy in Denton, but he needed to move more faster, and somehow he tracked me down in Austin.  Now, at least, we could get stash when we wanted it.  I figured to be a middle-man for a time, just to get some cash and stash, and then to pass this juicy connect to my only customers.  I would get small loads, around 100 lbs.,in front,i.e.  on credit, and I would pay $45 a pound.  I decided to pass the whole thing to a single customer for $50 a pound.  And, for a while, it worked.  It more than paid for our prodigious smoking habits, and Joe delivered when we were in town.  As long as it was low profile it was ok; we got to know Joe's whole family; he even brought his mom from Mexico to visit with us because he dug our family.  Joe's dream was to get into the inner circles of weed deal making in Mexico; his problem was that, being mostly Indian, he couldn't grow the necessary Spanish style moustache, that subtley racist fashion statement that only white men grow well. Actually, he had started selling weed after getting busted for selling guns and heroin to the feds!  His lawyer was a Texas state congressman.  In those days a lawyer who was serving in the state legislature could put off his clients cases until he was no longer in office, in other words, he needed to make enough money to keep his lawyer in congress.  This is precisely why Gabby Hayes would always say, "the YOUnighted States And TEXas!".  

Soon a bad thing happened.  All the other middle-men in town lost their deals or got busted, and my profile was growing by the moment.  I suppose that if I were a real dealer I would have been happy, the that's not the real 'me'.  I decided to give up the connect.  I would be able to buy into a future large load at cost, and I  would take one good-sized load to New York, make one small killing and be out of it.  After all, what could happen?  It'll be a snap, right? Not exactly.  It was March, and we were thinking it was warm enough and late enough not to worry about winter weather.  I had told Joe to bring me a good load, and so he brought me 200 pounds of foot-long mota!  Since we were going to NYC, I took along 1000 copies of our local hit 45, "Kaleidescoptic/Song for Peace".  All this plus personal baggage into my manager, Jack's, Ford Torino, a hatch-back two-door, and off to see the wizard!  Well, we got there in good order, found a likely underground parking garage, and went off to find what was supposed to be a friendly address where we could stay.  We found the place, on 3rd Avenue right above the Police Academy, but they had no idea who we were or visa versa.  They did, however, say we could hang out a while; especially when we told them what we had brought to distribute.  We had noticed a few snowflakes earlier; now it was starting to get intense.  It was supposed to be a flurry, a light fall, not to worry.  But it was coming down harder now, soon it was too thick to think about getting the car out.  Our hosts, who were a gay couple, said we could camp there, until we could get out.  It was a Sunday and the mayor didn't want to call out the snow-ploughs because the workers would get double-time; he was gambling that the snow would stop, but it didn't.  And when, at last, the call was made, the pissed off city workers wouldn't show up; and so between the government and the union New York City was completely shut down and closed off for three days!  And that meant that we were also shut down; we couldn't go anywhere. Even the subway wasn't running.  We would check on the car every day.  We would give the black guys at the garage a box of 100 singles every day.  I guess they thought all those boxes in the car were more records, and they guarded our load well.  I could sell a few lbs to our hosts friends, who were all pretty wierd, but this wasn't going anywhere fast. And just try to explain 'snowed-in' to a bunch of Mexicans!  Also, they wouldn't deliver another load until this one was paid for, so Austin was dry for the moment!

Johnny Winter was in NY recording his first album for Columbia.  A little bird had told him how I was carrying about 100 hits each of lsd, mescaline, and psilicybin.  He needed psychedelics for the studio, and he was playing at Steve Paul's Scene for a NY debut.  I got him about 30 hits of each, and he invited me to jam on the show.  The city was still pretty much shut down, but people were getting out to the clubs, so there was a full house in the modestly sized club located at 42nd and Broadway.  I figured to come on stage during the evening, and I had brought along 2 or 3 pounds of weed just in case.  I did wind up selling them to some groupies backstage; it blew thier minds to get good smoke for $100 a lb.  Anyway, Johnny wanted me to start out with the band, so I did.  He had Tommy and Uncle John, his regular unit, who would later become Stevie's unit.  I was on violin, but when Johnny went to slide I figured a fiddle is somewhat in the way, so I picked up his regular axe to back him with some rhythym.  Seems like we played an hour or more when some folks came up to jam.  I had noticed a left-handed bass sitting on stage and I wondered about it.  Tommy's a righty.  I had learned to play bass on a left-handed instrument, but that's another story.  The man on drums was Buddy Miles.  I had met him backstage at a Graham show in SF when he was playing with the Electric Flag; I had come down to give support to Freddy King, who was also on the show.  Then I noticed that the left-handed bass was being played.  The guy looked like Hendrix, but I thought he was a big guy, and this guy was pretty much my size (5' 7").  I finally realized that this was indeed Jimi standing six feet away and doing the journeyman bass player bit.  So I started messing with him a little, throwing his famous licks into the jam mix.  The sound of the fiddle on stage startles players because, unlike the electric git, it has a substantial acoustic voice.  It feeds into the pa as well as through it's amp and pervades the whole sound.  Jimi looked surprised as I stuck his licks into Robert Johnson songs!  The producers and agents were drooling; this was some kinda band.  I guess we jammed like that for at least a few hours.  Later I talked to Jimi about coming down to Texas to hang out and jam; he said he'd like to do that sometime. But a short year later he would be gone.

Although the big jam had been something of an exhilarating experience, it didn't do much to solve my problem,i.e. how to get all this shit sold in a shut-down town.  Well, I decided to let Jack sit with it, and make the money from it because we had a gig coming up in Houston the next day; and the airport was going to let some planes take off in the morning.  We had the people located to make a sale, but the roads would have to clear up a bit more before it could be accomplished.  Also, I decided to let Jack make the money because he was not going to manager for us anymore.  It was my custom that, if we did split with a friend, I tried to make sure he was taken care of; my own version of the golden parachute.  So I bid him and our hosts farewell and headed to the airport, Kennedy it was, I believe.  The cabbie wasn't sure we could make it.  It had been three days since the snowfall, but the city was still basically in it's grip.  There was one lane open in most streets, and you could see plenty of wrecked and abandoned vehicles everywhere.  Even the subways were just getting going again.  However, we did finally get to the airport and I studied the situation.  They had about a dozen planes all lined up and ready to take off on the one cleared runway.  It looked pretty scary to me, who had up to that day never flown, to see all those planes on what they called a cleared runway, but which clearly was glazed over with ice.  Well, I figured I'd watch the first few take off, just to see how it went, but my plane was the first in line.  There was no backing out now, so I put my fate and faith on the line.  I had always looked forward to flying, but this was the very first time.  Maybe it was my imagination that the plane was doing a little lateral sliding as it raced down the runway.  Up we went in a rather steep ascent; the plane made a left bank that seemed extreme as I was momentarily looking straight down on the top of the Statue of Liberty.  Wow, what a great view, now please straighten it out because that water looks awful cold!  The ground was snow-covered all the way to D.C., but the rest of the trip was smooth and uneventful.  In those days, everyone landed at Hobby in Houston.  It was a good half-hour to my in-laws where Suzy and Tiva were waiting.  I actually made it to the gig, and as good thing it was since I only made $900 out of my get-rich-excursion.  And you would think that this escapade would have cured me of hair-brained schemes, but my parents had a child with a very hard head.  And that's another story.