Hassenpfeffer and Maryjane🌱

You can’t make this stuff up, and with 5 teenagers 7 years apart, you don’t need to.

Olive Mae Pottoff was the secretary of my father’s law partner Neil Bush, in 1977 Hillsboro, Oregon. Good natured and somewhere in her early 40’s, she typed a 120 words a minute while smoking and talking on the phone in her unnaturally low, Lauren Bacall voice. She knew everyone’s business in Hillsboro, and Hillsboro was happy to talk to her about it.

She sat next to a gift that had been given to Neil from an appreciative client. A shrub with a beautifully unique leaf pattern she had never seen. She had grown quite fond of it.

Around this time my sister Sandra was working in Government Camp, a hamlet located on Mt Hood. My parents owned a condo there at Golden Poles Chalet, and it had been a family retreat since 1967. A decade later, it was the perfect place for Sandra to live and work three jobs while not paying rent, and get an indoor outdoor bunny. Meaning, the bunny sometimes lived in its cage, sometimes roamed about the unit, and sometimes went out onto the spacious balcony of this second story, 900 square foot unit.

I was 17, working in Hillsboro at the local Dairy Queen, and mostly concerned myself with tanning in my spare time. My older brother John, and younger brother Mark, seeing the life sister Sandra was living on Mt Hood, followed her lead, got summer jobs at Timberline Lodge, and blew “Thrillsboro” to live the party life of the mountain people.

I suppose my latent gardening capabilities were first recognized then by my little brother Mark. We lived next door to an elderly woman named Mrs Phillips and her daughter Z. They had a garden in the decent sized back yard of their house, unlike ours which was pitifully small due to the family home being located on a corner lot. Mark had decided Mrs Phillips’ was the perfect place to camouflage and grow pot plants, and he was right. The leaf patterns are very similar to the tomatoes she was growing. Only one problem. He now had a job 70 miles away.

Since all I was doing was flipping burgers and tanning, he asked me to look after the plants and water them. Seemed straight forward enough, so I did. I have only vague recollections of tending the plants, but I do remember there were four, robust plants, thanks to me.

Mark wasn’t a complete cad growing pot in our unsuspecting, elderly neighbor’s yard. My father Harry had bought the property, rented the house back to Mrs Phillips, and he hoped to expand our tiny back yard into something more suitable for his large family once Mrs Phillips died. She was taking her time moving on to her just reward so technically, in the mind of a 15 year old boy, it was family land that Harry owned and Mark could farm it.

Now Harry, busy running his law practice while his kids were working, living for free and growing illegal substances, happened to be in the office when local police officer Joe strolled in to talk business. Olive Mae was there too, fingers flying and gossip a churning, when the officer noticed the plant sitting next to her as one not usually prized for it beauty. From the flowering family Cannabaceae and a cultivar we can only guess, they knew exactly what Joe meant when he said:

“Harry. That’s a pot plant.”

This scenario must have made quite an impression on Harry. He knew nothing about plants and of course ignorance of the law does not suspend penalty. However he was a well known lawyer of good standing in the community and the plant was simply whooshed away, despite Olive Mae’s protests:

“But can’t I keep it?”

About two months into my duties as pot tender, by chance I came into the kitchen to find a very excited oldest sister Liza:

“Someone’s growing marijuana in Mrs Phillips back yard! Dad showed it to me this morning and I identified it by looking in the encyclopedia.“

“Oh, really? Who would do that?”

I can only imagine what went through my dad’s head that day when he went to visit Mrs Phillips to collect rent, and Mrs Phillips proudly showing him her garden. I can picture him looking at her tomato plants, seeing something vaguely familiar from the recent past, but his lack of experience tempering the conviction of his recollection. So he turned to my older sister, whose generation was symbolized by the hemp leaf, for validation of his suspicions. Only problem was Liza had seen even less pot than Harry, so she confirmed with the Encyclopedia Britannica.

“He called the police and they are going to do a stake-out to see who comes to water them.”

“When do they start?”

And with that, I was in on the surveillance hotline: the cops would tell my father when they would surveil, he would excitedly tell Liza, who in turn, told me.

Meanwhile, back at Government Camp, or “Govie,” Mark got a worrisome call from me, but I offered a plan:

“Mark, the cops know about your marijuana plants, but I know when they are planning their stake-outs and they are at night. If you want them, come in the middle of the day. I’ll keep watering them until you can get here.”

And that’s exactly what we did. I kept watering and a week later Mark caught a ride from Government Camp. In broad daylight he walked into Mrs Phillips back yard and dug out the pot plant with the most uniquely beautiful leaves of all, and took a single Maryjane plant back with him to the land of the mountain party people.

The police had fixated on the shady-looking-but-not neighbors one door down from Mrs Phillips, which blinded them to the inside job operated by the teenagers of the lawyer who alerted them to the plants. They no doubt felt considerable consternation that the plants continued to be watered, yet despite their well planned stake-outs, never saw a soul. It had to be insult to injury when furthermore, during their watch, one went missing. Shortly after Mark’s mid-day “atta boy!” the remaining pot plants were whooshed away, again, without penalty.

Upon Mark’s return to Govie, he promptly stuck Maryjane in a five gallon bucket and placed it next to the sliding glass doors leading to the 2nd floor deck, giving this Central Asian native plenty of wholesome, mountain sunshine.

The condo, or 207 as we called it based on its numerical designation, had turned into a hub of activity with the Elliott teenagers living and working there. Between varied work schedules and friends, 207 was in constant turnover, and a laissez faire attitude extended to all, including the bunny. The front door was never locked, and the sliding glass door to the balcony constantly ajar.

A morning arrived when all three Elliotts were away working at the same time. The bunny, or Hasenpfeffer as he was called, couldn’t believe his good fortune. No humans were home and all was quiet. The cage had been left open and as he roamed about, there loomed before him, illuminated in the dazzling sunlight, the biggest salad he had ever seen.

Sandra was the first to come home that afternoon. Because Hasenpfeffer had free reign of the condo she didn’t always know where he was, but this fine day located him when a knock came at the door and the downstairs neighbor handed Hasenpfeffer back to her.

“I found your bunny wondering around outside below your balcony. He must have fallen off. He seems dazed and confused.”

Brothers Mark and John arrived shortly thereafter, and found what was left of the carefully cultivated plant. Where once stood a three foot bush of potential pot-smoking nirvana, now stood 12 inches of decimated hemp. And a stoned Hasenpfeffer.

About my brother Mark. He is a Taurus in every sense of the word. Hard working, stubborn, and slow to anger. After the shock of Hasenpfeffer‘s appetite wore off, it was the hard working aspect of Taurus who showed up, and a diligence born from hope that all was not lost. Mark consulted High Times. He used fertilizer. He literally prayed over Maryjane, waiting for the plant to rejuvenate and for the development of the precious buds, the most potent part of the plant. Furthermore, Maryjane was placed on the dining room table well away from the reach of small creatures. Mark’s hard work and patience started to pay off, and the buds were near peak.

They say lightning doesn’t strike twice. But that isn’t saying anything about bunnies. Or the attention span of teenagers. The plant grew, the mountain party people did their thing, and one night the plant was moved off the central congregation point, opening the door for history to do what it likes to do best; repeat itself.

The next morning, three confounded Elliott’s who spaced-out the bunny with an appetite, found Hasenpfeffer backed into a corner, unmoving, and enjoying the high of a lifetime.

Let’s just say that this time the Taurus bull so slow to anger finally hit the tipping point. In a cathartic rampage, Mark’s farming days were over as he stormed out onto the balcony, throwing the 5-gallon bucket, with the half inch nubs of what was left of the beloved Maryjane, over the side of the balcony and on to the ground below.

With it’s beautifully unique leaves gone, a cannabis plant is hard to identify, especially if it looks like toothpicks. Although the plant had followed the same trajectory as Hasenpfeffer’s earlier adventures, in an ironic twist of fate, despite Maryjane’s status with the mountain party people, no friendly neighbor knocked on the door to return the plant. Or the bucket.

The rest of that summer was uneventful. The sibs continued working at Government Camp and with their laissez faire lifestyle, although another source of weed had to be found. Not hard in Govie. Back in Thrillsboro, I had a tan of the gods, and at summer’s end when Mark, John and Sandra returned, we realized we had all learned an important lesson about the nature of nature. Don’t own a bunny unless you are growing carrots.

Epilogue

I don’t recall our ages when we finally told mom and dad the truth of the mysteriously appearing and disappearing Phillips’ pot plants, but I do remember them both being highly amused. Recounting this family story over the 40 years since has been the delight of many an Elliott family dinner. Now, due to the COVID-19 outbreak and Stay at Home orders, I had the time to write it down, and my brothers and sisters had the time to pick up the phone when I called asking for particulars. Over a two-hour period three Sundays ago every one of them answered the phone and I never rolled over to voicemail. It felt as though we were all channeling my late father, who was fond of saying to his children whenever they called, “I’m just sitting here waiting for your call.”

Since the summer of the bunny, Mark gave up his nefarious activities of growing and selling pot, and went into sales and delivery for UPS. John followed in my father’s footsteps and became a lawyer, occasionally representing those who weren’t afforded the “whooshed and no penalty” treatment. Sandra became a headhunter, no doubt those years of working three jobs, managing a bunny and mountain party people giving her valuable insight into the human psyche. Liza used her methodical intellectual skills and precision vision to became a web designer. After 30 years of teaching yoga, I have come full circle to that first thrill of watching something grow, and am now working my bohonkus off during the approaching apocalypse at Sky Nursery. See more under “Gardening.”

As for Hassenpheffer, well, you know what the word means . . . Just kidding.

©Theresa Elliott, All Rights Reserved