Shmavis
Being-in-the-world
O.K., time for some more anecdotal storytelling...
In my late teens I had the fortune of meeting a guy who became a good friend. He always had access to some fine, fine stuff. Eventually, after possibly a year or more of friendship, it was revealed that his considerably older step-brother was the source. And it was homegrown. Talk about a shocker! Even prior to meeting my friend I had had the good fortune of having some good connections. I was pretty much always holding some good stuff myself. And while I don’t know for a fact that what I was able to get wasn’t actually homegrown, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. In those days, for me and my friends, homegrown was synonymous with ditchweed, headache and a waste of time.
My friend ended up moving away to go to college. But fortunately for me not before I was able to purchase directly from The Man. His harvests were always eagerly anticipated and, for the most part, sold out before completed. I always felt privileged to have this access. But as I say it would be gone immediately. Which meant that in between harvests I had to resort to other sources. The quality wasn’t nearly as consistent. Eventually I got around to thinking, “hey, it can’t be that hard... why don’t I try growing myself?” So with seeds (sometimes there were a few, but most of the time none) found in one of the purchases I’d made from him, I gave it a go.
At the time I was in a two bedroom apartment. I set up the closet in the spare bedroom. I had a whopping 160 watts of florescent lights. I had eight plants, all girls. (It wouldn’t be until later that I understood how that was.) The stink was tremendous. I had no form of odor control. I sealed off all the vents in the room in an attempt to contain it. A friend when coming to visit said that walking through my door was like walking into a brick wall of funk... Of course it only got worse. Towards the end you could smell it when entering my apartment building. It was three floors with four apartments per floor. I was on the second floor. Talk about having your nerves on edge! But I soldiered on. The results were Extremely skunky and Extremely narcotic. What I had grown did not reflect the cannabis from which the seeds came.
At the time I was working in an auto plant. I worked on a production line with just over seventy people. I brought in roughly two grams for a friend. It was double bagged and then wrapped in aluminum foil. This was then inside a tupperware bowl and inside my lunch box. When I got to work I removed it from the tupperware bowl and gave to to him. He was wearing sweat pants and put it in his pocket. Within minutes of giving it to him people on the line were making comments about a skunk smell. A lot of these people, I don’t think, even associated it with cannabis. They just wanted to know where the skunk smell was coming from. Eventually folks on the mezzanine stared commenting about the smell...
The next day he comes into work and when he sees me he cocks his head to the side, with his eyes bulging and a funny look on his face, and asks me if I’m trying to kill him. He goes on to tell me that he and three friends smoked some and it paralyzed ‘em. From that point on it was referred to as The Paralyzer. And he kept asking me, “is it the Ghan?” To which I kept having to tell him that I had no idea what it was, aside from luck. For him though there was a strong association with Afghani. He said occasionally stuff that smelled similar (yet not nearly as strong) would make it into the ‘hood and it was known as The Ghan.
With my whopping 160 watts I only pulled in a little under two Os. But I wan’t concerned because I had seeds. More than a few, actually. And yeah, all the beans popped were female with medium to strong hermie tendencies. The same results never surfaced again. And it got very tiring having to go over each and every plant trying to locate and remove pollen sacks. So when a friend offered to order seeds for me, I jumped at the chance. Unfortunately though, after all these years and strains along the way, I have never encountered another strain with that same super strong skunk-spray smell. Talk about beginner's luck!
I grew up in the country. I am familiar with the smell of skunk. (Had more than one dog come home from the woods after a fight with a skunk).
Was it RKS? I doubt it, but I don’t know. I’m inclined to believe that it was in one form or another a relation to RKS. Perhaps The Man had an RKS that herm’d during a multi-strain grow... I dunno.
But I’ve been searching, to no avail, ever since...
In my late teens I had the fortune of meeting a guy who became a good friend. He always had access to some fine, fine stuff. Eventually, after possibly a year or more of friendship, it was revealed that his considerably older step-brother was the source. And it was homegrown. Talk about a shocker! Even prior to meeting my friend I had had the good fortune of having some good connections. I was pretty much always holding some good stuff myself. And while I don’t know for a fact that what I was able to get wasn’t actually homegrown, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. In those days, for me and my friends, homegrown was synonymous with ditchweed, headache and a waste of time.
My friend ended up moving away to go to college. But fortunately for me not before I was able to purchase directly from The Man. His harvests were always eagerly anticipated and, for the most part, sold out before completed. I always felt privileged to have this access. But as I say it would be gone immediately. Which meant that in between harvests I had to resort to other sources. The quality wasn’t nearly as consistent. Eventually I got around to thinking, “hey, it can’t be that hard... why don’t I try growing myself?” So with seeds (sometimes there were a few, but most of the time none) found in one of the purchases I’d made from him, I gave it a go.
At the time I was in a two bedroom apartment. I set up the closet in the spare bedroom. I had a whopping 160 watts of florescent lights. I had eight plants, all girls. (It wouldn’t be until later that I understood how that was.) The stink was tremendous. I had no form of odor control. I sealed off all the vents in the room in an attempt to contain it. A friend when coming to visit said that walking through my door was like walking into a brick wall of funk... Of course it only got worse. Towards the end you could smell it when entering my apartment building. It was three floors with four apartments per floor. I was on the second floor. Talk about having your nerves on edge! But I soldiered on. The results were Extremely skunky and Extremely narcotic. What I had grown did not reflect the cannabis from which the seeds came.
At the time I was working in an auto plant. I worked on a production line with just over seventy people. I brought in roughly two grams for a friend. It was double bagged and then wrapped in aluminum foil. This was then inside a tupperware bowl and inside my lunch box. When I got to work I removed it from the tupperware bowl and gave to to him. He was wearing sweat pants and put it in his pocket. Within minutes of giving it to him people on the line were making comments about a skunk smell. A lot of these people, I don’t think, even associated it with cannabis. They just wanted to know where the skunk smell was coming from. Eventually folks on the mezzanine stared commenting about the smell...
The next day he comes into work and when he sees me he cocks his head to the side, with his eyes bulging and a funny look on his face, and asks me if I’m trying to kill him. He goes on to tell me that he and three friends smoked some and it paralyzed ‘em. From that point on it was referred to as The Paralyzer. And he kept asking me, “is it the Ghan?” To which I kept having to tell him that I had no idea what it was, aside from luck. For him though there was a strong association with Afghani. He said occasionally stuff that smelled similar (yet not nearly as strong) would make it into the ‘hood and it was known as The Ghan.
With my whopping 160 watts I only pulled in a little under two Os. But I wan’t concerned because I had seeds. More than a few, actually. And yeah, all the beans popped were female with medium to strong hermie tendencies. The same results never surfaced again. And it got very tiring having to go over each and every plant trying to locate and remove pollen sacks. So when a friend offered to order seeds for me, I jumped at the chance. Unfortunately though, after all these years and strains along the way, I have never encountered another strain with that same super strong skunk-spray smell. Talk about beginner's luck!
I grew up in the country. I am familiar with the smell of skunk. (Had more than one dog come home from the woods after a fight with a skunk).
Was it RKS? I doubt it, but I don’t know. I’m inclined to believe that it was in one form or another a relation to RKS. Perhaps The Man had an RKS that herm’d during a multi-strain grow... I dunno.
But I’ve been searching, to no avail, ever since...
