Cheech and Chong and Prostate Cancer and Cannabis.

When I think of Cheech and Chong I think of a 1969 Camaro that my brother gave me in high school. Rushton bought the car almost new while he was working for Lockhead. Rushton was going to Kennesaw College as well and the money he was making per hour was more than anyone in my family was making. Rushton was a very generous person and he freely gave the money he made to our mother and shared as well his brothers. He and his girlfriend at the time, Edna, took me to see Jimi Hendrix at the Atlanta Civic Center when I was in the 8th grade. Since my brothers had the album “Are You Experienced” I knew all the songs and the event, the fact that it was Jimi Hendrix made this experience one of the most memorable of my life. I memorized “Castles made of Sand” off the  “Axis Bold as Love” album and remember every line to this day. (I’ll come back to that song in a minute.)

So Rushton’s Camero had an 8 track tape player in it and the thought of having an album in you car was unheard of at that time.  My mother and father were now divorced and I was made to live with my father by the courts and we lived on a highway between Smyrna and Atlanta. It was a converted office for a dog operation, we referred to it as the “Dog Kennel.” Anyway Rushton came over in his car and said he had something he wanted to show me. To my disbelief he had an 8 track of the Beatle’s “White Album” and “Sgt. Peppers.” We sat in his car for a couple of hours listening to it in the paved parking lot of this house/office. Why we did not ride around I don’t know. Rushton was good to me. He understood that I was isolated out in this place with a parent I did not want to be with and he sensed that and that is why he came over. Very much like him and how he related with people the rest of his life.

Well Rushton goes to school in Alabama ( the only one my mother could get him and another brother of mine Cooper into) call Southern Union in Wadley, Ala. Rushton meets other “hippie types” and starts a band call the “Fishcamp Band” because the lived in an old fishcamp much like a commune of his band members and followers. In the process of this and road trips he took to various places playing music he trashed his camaro. For reasons I don’t remember Rushton from time to time would leave the Camaro ( we were all now living in LaGrange with my grandmother and my father now long gone to Alaska) in LaGrange and said I could use it. I then would clean it up and use it until he came back. He would then trash it and leave it and I ‘d clean it up and then the process started over. I loved cleaning it up and I loved the 8 track player. I loved finding stuff in the car, most memorably a Cheech and Chong tape. I’d sit in the car and listen to that tape for hours on end. I had never heard anything like it. There was one about tasting dog poo poo and then they would say “Hmmm taste like dog s…. better walk around it.” Or the one about pot being behind one of three curtains and when they picked the one they wanted it was the wrong one and behind it were the police and someone saying” Yourrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee busted.” I knew em all and could talk just like them you know that drawn out “Mannnnnnnn.”

They were good and probably influenced another of my favorites Richard Pyror….or maybe vice versa.

Anywho……….If Mr. Chong’s prostate cancer is bad he will not do well, and if it has favorable parameters he’ll do well.

And if he does well and he attributes that to smoking pot well then more power to him.

Just a note the word for the day is scofflaw.

Another note….I don’t think you should be put in jail for pot next to someone who has killed someone. I don’t know if they do that but there must be a line of distinction between the various types of “offenses.”

CNN) — Tommy Chong, one-half of the marijuana-loving “Cheech and Chong” comedy duo, is battling prostate cancer, he announced Saturday on CNN.

Having first noticed symptoms about eight years ago while incarcerated for selling drug paraphernalia, Chong said he was diagnosed “about a month ago.” He revealed his condition in an interview about his support for decriminalizing marijuana use and sales.

“I’ve got prostate cancer, and I’m treating it with hemp oil, with cannabis,” he told CNN’s Don Lemon. “So (legalizing marijuana) means a lot more to me than just being able to smoke a joint without being arrested.”

Chong described the cancer “as a slow stage one (that I’ve) had for a long time.” He said that he was drug free for about three years, during which time he began having prostate-related problems.

“So I know it had nothing to do with cannabis,” he said. “Cannabis is a cure.”

He and his on-screen partner Cheech Marin recorded a series of hot-selling comedy albums in the early 1970s, before hitting the big screen in 1978 with “Up in Smoke.” It was the first of several “Cheech and Chong” films chronicling the adventures and misadventures of the stoner pair. The two continue to tour as a comedic act, with shows scheduled for later this month and the fall, according to their official website.

Besides the “Cheech and Chong” films, Chong has appeared in several TV series, such as “That 70’s Show.” He’s authored several books including “The I Chong: Meditations from the Joint” about his “family business” specializing in handmade bongs, arrest and nine months in federal prison, according to his and Marin’s website.

Chong, 74, explained to CNN that he doesn’t smoke marijuana, which he said he’d quit about a year ago “for health reasons,” to treat his prostate cancer. Rather, he said the ingests the hemp oil “at night, so I won’t be woozy all day.”

“I’m taking it as a medicine,” he said.