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while a city employee, in the public Plaza in Los Angeles.
The Plaza in Los Angeles is a pretty square, ornamented with small gardens, palms in great pots,
and many, many flowers. It is a landmark, a tourist center, a city pride, for it preserves a Mexican-
ness unknown in Mexico. Joseph and Mary, then, was in charge of watering and cultivating the plants
in the Plaza — a job that was not only easy and pleasant but kept him in direct touch with those tourists
who might be interested in small packets of art studies. Although Joseph and Mary realized he could
never get rich in this job, he took a certain pleasure in being partly legal. It gave him the satisfaction
most people find in sin.
At about this time the Los Angeles Police Department had a puzzle on its hands. Marijuana was
being distributed in fairly large quantities and at a greatly reduced price. The narcotics squad
conducted raid after raid without finding the source. Every vacant lot was searched from San Pedro to
Eagle Rock. And then the countryside was laid out on graphing paper and the search for the pointed
leaves of the marijuana went on in ever-widening circles: north past Santa Barbara; east to the
Colorado River; south as far as the border. The border was sealed, and it is well known that muggles
does not grow in the Pacific Ocean. Six months of intensive search, with the cooperation of all local
officials and the state police, got absolutely nowhere. The supply continued unabated, and the
narcotics squad was convinced that the pushers did not know the source.
Heaven knows how long the situation might have continued if it had not been for Mildred Bugle,
thirteen, head of her class in Beginning Botany, Los Angeles High School. One Saturday afternoon she
crossed the Plaza, picked some interesting leaves growing around a potted palm, and positively
identified them as Cannabis Americana.
Joseph and Mary Rivas might have been in trouble but for the fact that the Los Angeles Police
Department was in worse trouble. They could not bring him to book. How would it look if the
newspapers got hold of the story that the Plaza was the source of supply? that the product had been
planted and nurtured by a city employee, freshened with city water, and fed with city manure?
Joseph and Mary was given a floater so strongly worded that it singed his eyelashes. The police
even bought him a bus ticket as far as San Luis Obispo.
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If I ever cultivated marijuana, it would be a mild pleasant smoke, like what we were accustomed to in the sixties
and I would call it Sweet Thursday, with a hat tip to John Steinbeck most underrated novel.
OK...one more time then....Thank you yuiyoshida....very informative and a joy to watch.
