When my grandpa Luke came back from the Vietnam War, my grandma Mary was part of a large protest waiting near the airport.
They were not my grandparents yet, but they would be after meeting each other at that violent protest.
I don’t know how a hippie and a soldier fall in love like that, but that is what happened. Luke was done with military life, and fell head over heels for Mary, who took him back to her old family farm where she had been farming cannabis to make a living. The gruff old soldier dedicated himself to her cannabis operation, and within two years they were doing very well financially. Please keep in mind that all of this is news to me, before a few weeks ago I had no idea that my family tree was so firmly rooted in cannabis production. Grandpa Luke is in a nursing home now, and lately he started telling me about how all of our family’s wealth came from cannabis farming. My grandparents got out of the cannabis business before my father was old enough to understand what was happening. They walked away from it forever, without looking back, because in just ten years they had made so much money from cannabis that they knew they had financial stability for life. The fact that my college tuition was paid in full, in advance, wasn’t because of wise investing, it was cannabis money being put to good use. After I graduate, I would like to write a nonfiction book about my family history in the cannabis business.