Dude, strange story. You’re not gonna believe it. So I went to our bro Ted’s house yesterday. You know Ted, he took off for Oregon last year. He’s back, with a guy who blows glass. That’s right, a glass blower. Rasta dude. I kid you not; got dreads three feet long. White guy. Teaching Ted how to blow glass. Hell yeah, I’m serious. Is that crazy or what? Ted . . . he’s always up to something.
So I called him yesterday morning ‘cause I heard he was back in town, and he said, “C’mon over, we work everyday in the shop.”
And I said “What shop?” and he said “The garage in back of the house. Come check it out. I haven’t seen you in The Day, brother.”
So I go down to their little shack of a shop around mid-morning, and the guys are already in the garage getting started. First they were smoking a bowl.
Do I have good timing or what?
So I hugged Ted and met Dave, and we smoked some killer bud, dude. Wake-‘n’-bake, you know what I mean? Then Dave said he needed to make some money and he turned and lit a nozzle on the countertop, about the size of a gun, four hoses feeding into the back of it--two red, two green: propane and oxygen. Blow ya sky-high if you aren't careful. Ted handed me some safety goggles. “Put these on bro, you’re gonna need ‘em to look at the flame. Watch Dave work now. He’s pretty good. He learned in Eugene, dude. Yeah … Snodgrass … all them guys.”
Dave went to a kiln in the corner and pulled out a 2-foot glass rod with a glass figure about the size of a pickle on the end of it--just a raw, blob of a shape. But the embryo of a pipe waiting to be blown was inside the blob like a dream inside a brain. Dave stepped on a foot pedal and a small blue flame shot out, becoming longer and broader until a big flame with a yellow core was blazing like a Jedi light saber. He said it was about 3,500 degrees. Is that hot enough for you? Dave stuck the glass inside the fire and bathed it, spinning the glass rod to keep the figure on the end of it whirling and twirling.
“Keep it still and it melts,” he shouted. Rasta beats bumped from the box, mahn, reggae, and the flame hissed; no, wait a minute; the sound was more like a roar, like when you put your ear to a conch shell on the beach and hear the ocean. Then Dave stepped on the pedal again, and the flame became a small, blue-burning heat tip, and he had this thin, glass rod in his right hand and he held the tip of it to the pipe’s surface. “This puts silver and gold on the clear Pyrex as base colors,” he explained, and as he turned the glass in the flame, a faint, opalescent mother-of-pearl color emerged, like an Easter daybreak, man.
And this Dave guy kept saying “Heat it, spin it, blow it, show it.”
Is that cool or what? So he held his left hand up with the blob of a glass piece in it. “This one’s the girl,” he said. Then he set his right hand on the torch. “And this one’s the boy. Glass and fire; it takes both to make a pipe.”
Sweet, huh? I’m telling you, this Dave guy is a trip. So here’s the part you’re not gonna believe. Two people show up, a guy and a girl, about 25 years old I’d say. Maybe married, I don’t know. The chick? Pretty good looking, dude, pretty good looking, a real sister. Dude! She busted out an ounce of ‘shrooms! No kidding. Well, what can I tell ya? It’s been a while since I tripped, but those ‘shrooms looked so sweet: not very big, but plump little fatcats, caps and stems all connected. Pretty.
So Ted goes inside to make tea from the mushrooms, and the guy, his name was Stephen, is this astrologer dude. Check it out – he starts telling Dave about his chart. I’m not kidding. He’s going on like, “This is a good time for you to make money through creative enterprises.”
Oh duh! I mean, Dave blows glass, OK? Even I can figure out that’s where his cash will come from. And then this Stephen guy asks Dave if he’s in a relationship now, and Dave says “Sure!” and Stephen goes: “Wow! Really?”
But check it out. We’re all watching Dave shape the glass piece in the flame, taking it out, putting it back, keeping the temperature just perfect for shaping and blending in colors. And this flame is life itself, dude; it transforms the glass.
Ted comes back with a tray of mugs, and everyone but Dave and the astrologer drinks the mushroom tea. There was a big ol’ ‘shroom in the bottom of each mug, and we swallowed them. Trippy, dude. And that chick, her name was Tara, she gagged big-time on hers--chucked it right back up! It came shooting out of her mouth and hit the floor and I’ll be damned if Dave’s dog, a pit bull named AK, didn’t leap off the sofa and snarf that ‘shroom right down. No, I’m not kidding. And we’re all yelling, “No, AK, no!” but Dave said “That’s all right. AK used to trip ‘shrooms all the time in Eugene.”
Can you believe it? So now we’re tripping with a pit. I look at all the glass on the countertop in front of the torch. Jars with different length glass rods in them look like multicolored spaghetti: ruby, pink, amber-purple and lots of thin clear glass. “Just straight Pyrex,” Dave says. And the light coming in through the glass door starts shining on all the different-sized and colored rods, making rainbows, dude, the colors all shifting. Awesome! Now get this. Ted starts showing me the kiln. He lifts the lid and explains how it works, but all I can do is stare at these four pipes baking in there. Maybe it’s because I was tripping those ‘shrooms, I don’t know, but each one of the four pieces looked like a season.
Does that make any sense? I mean, one pipe looked like winter--all blue, white and cold; reminded me of Finland. Another flared with summer colors--yellow, orange, red; a pipe from Algiers or Morocco. The third was spring--bright greens shooting through this long glass tube. Costa Rica, baby, tropical rain forest pipe on a lily pad. And the fourth piece of course had your autumn colors: brown, black and gold. And I thought, “This guy’s a friggin’ genius, man.” And Dave keeps rapping about glass blowing, saying how it’s an ancient craft that goes back even before the Egyptians. You want history? They got it. Dude, glass blowing’s been around as long as ganja and astrology. Blowers even have their own patron saint, I kid you not. Saint Anthony Abate. Straight up. Don’t ask me how to pronounce it smart-ass; I can’t even spell it.
Then Ted really blows my mind. He whispers: “Dude, I think Dave’s girl just left him. Last night, Dave was out at the bar with some friends and Tammi came into the shop. We had a big talk. She told me Dave doesn’t ‘see’ her, but if she were a piece of glass he wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes off her. Then, a minute ago when I was brewing the tea, I saw a yellow envelope on the kitchen table. Addressed to Dave. Sounds like she said adios with a Hallmark card, huh?”
Well, I’m listening to Ted tell me this stuff, and it’s blowing my mind because I saw a chick throw a suitcase in a car and drive off as I was getting there. So I whispered to Ted: “Redhead? Dreads like Dave’s?”
“Yep,” Ted says. “That’s Tammi, all right. Long-gone Tammi.”
Can you believe it, dude? His woman left without saying a word. Crazy. And he doesn’t have a clue!
So, we go back to the workbench where Dave was making a sweet bubbler for Stephen and Tara. I think they brought the mushrooms into town, dude, ‘cause they were from the Northwest--Vancouver, Eugene, somewhere like that. They said people trip ‘shrooms out there every day, dude. Can you imagine? Maybe they put ‘em in the water. Wanna trip? Take a drink. Now that’d be livin’! The electric community! I’m there, dude, that’s all I’m saying.
But anyway, this Stephen guy is telling Dave that since he’s a Sagittarius and Ted is an Aries that it’s natural they work with fire. Is that a trip? Fire signs working with fire. I don’t know what sign that Tara chick was, but I’ll tell you one thing: she was fire, dude. Hot, hOT, HOTTT!
So Stephen and Tara leave. Hell no they can’t hang with us. Can’t hang widda one-man gang, bro. Now we’re tripping balls. Shit’s meltin’ everywhere; visuals coming on like gangbusters, and Ted, he’s such a hoot, he looks at me and winks, then says to Dave, “So Bro, what have you and Tammi been up to?” And I look at Ted like, have you fucking lost your mind? ‘Cause I know my mind was lost, dude, out wandering in the forest of foggy mushroom mist. And Ted’s