[Photo provided by Paul Modic]

Contrary to what was declared in the new bookMendo, back in the day the only word heard less than marijuana was cannabis, both rarely spoken in the backwoods. I heard cannabis once in 1977 in a court room when Steve Ball was going for the “indica defense” and marijuana a few times when someone was talking very formally for some reason.

The buds were called units, elbows and pounds and the waste products were trim, shake, minis and duff. There were many names for the minis, such as babies, the tiny buds which often weren’t included in the final pound and were traded or given away. You knew you were a pro if you de-duffed the pound before trying to unload it, something which became a selling point when the market got tight in the later years of the boom. (“No duff, man.” It could take a while to de-duff an elbow, running many handfuls of buds through a sifter.)

Marijuana and cannabis were terms too broad for common use and clear communication as they could mean the growing plants, leaves (shake) or trim when it was the buds which were the goal and main topic of discussion. (As well as all the shop talk about how to deal with mites, mold, hermies, powdery mildew and other weed-related conversations which became tedious and repetitive after a few decades.)

Weed was known for the marketable status of the trimmed product, and I did hear “product” used a few times by these up and coming amateur business people. No one asked how much cannabis or marijuana you had, they asked how many pounds you had for sale.

“I’ve got five. How many you want?”

“I’m looking for twenty, how much you want for them?

“I want twelve,” as in $1200 a pound in 1977. And then it went up to 19, 33, 42, 48 and after Prop 215 down to 29, then 18, 16, 9 and hey I’ll dump all the rest for 5 ($500), at the end of the boom.

At first when talking on the phone to arrange deals you used code words like how many “cords of wood” you were looking for or had to sell though after a while growers and buyers just talked openly. (When there were cops around it was “cows on the trail.”) In the beginning you always counted the money when the dope deal was happening though later you just took the wad of cash, usually bundles of twenties, and counted it when you got home or sometimes years or even decades later.

No one used the “C word” in conversation until the Green Rush when words like “trichomes” and “terpenes” also came into common use heralding the end of the pot boom as we knew it. These terms came out of the mouths of younger recent arrivals, the garden enthusiasts and opportunists who came from everywhere to “blow up the hills” and cash in with the multiple Post-215 dep greenhouses that defined that era. (I still don’t know what those botanical terms mean, don’t care and don’t want to know, coming from the time where you just put a seed in the ground and waited for October to come around.)

With the Green Rush came clones with names and flavors.

“What you got?”

“Nine OG, eight Green Crack, six Girl Scout Cookie and all the Sour D you want.”

The green rush had its own lingo which I’m not familiar with though I believe “boxes” was used, maybe ten pounds to a box? Twelve? Twenty?

When people tried going legal in the last ten to fifteen years, “cannabis” finally became the word of the realm, muscling its way into the reams of paperwork wannabe legal growers had to fill out before most of them went under.