As a kid in smalltown Illinois there were not a whole lot of fun things for me to do.
The town was called La Harpe, Illinois, and I am not even sure it’s still around.
The sign coming into town said the population was 1,200, but my dad said that was not accurate. By the time I was spending my summers there, La Harpe was only about three or four hundred people. There was an old park in the middle of town, a couple of places to eat, a gas station, a grocery store, and a drug store. That was it! Luckily the drug store sold comic books, so at least I had something to do. Despite all of that, I remember Illinois very fondly. Illinois was where I got my first taste of cannabis, from a local kid that was growing a patch of plants near the railroad tracks. Perhaps inspired by the movie Stand By Me, and fueled by boredom, I would spend hours walking the railroad tracks around La Harpe, Illinois. On one of my treks I came across a small patch of cannabis plants that were so close to harvesting I could smell them from a hundred yards away. I met a teenager named Matt, who was about to harvest the cannabis, and offered to give me some if I helped him. With a head full of marijuana smoke, I started viewing Illinoius in a whole different way! Thanks to Matt and his cannabis, the remainder of my summer vacations in remote Illinois were a lot of fun.