Chapter 13: Carson Santini

In the wake of Lil Ron getting busted Jason had to find a new source for weed. It turns out he had a connection he did not even know about.

Jason’s best friend in elementary school and middle school was a kid named Carson Santini. Carson looked like Ethan Suplee, you may remember him as the bully Frankie from the 90s TV show Boy Meets World. Carson was tall like Jason, but he was also big body wise. He was not necessarily fat or muscular he was just broad and thick.

Carson had social issues and a slight temper. He wasn’t dumb or slow, but he was definitely on the spectrum. Carson and Jason first started smoking at a young age.

Lil Ron got them into it when he first started high school.

When Jason and Casey were in the eighth grade, Carson had a meltdown in class after his teacher made fun of him for being dumb. He got up in front of the whole classroom and punched his teacher in the face and knocked him out. Then he walked out of the class.

Carson climbed a fence and then got onto the school roof. He sat down on the roof with his legs dangling off the side, pulled out a weed pipe from his backpack and started smoking until the police came.

I think the school and the police agreed to drop the charges if Carson got some kind of mental help or discipline.

The story Carson’s parents told the school, and the local neighborhood was that he got sent to a military school out of state. The truth was, he got sent to work on a weed farm in northern California.

The Santini family owned and operated a weed farm in a forest near Humboldt County. Carson and other members of his family all worked on the farm eight months out of the year. After harvest each year they each took their share of the weed and sold it back home to support themselves financially.

One day, a few weeks after all my court drama had finally ended, Jason and I were hanging out at Jason’s garage. We heard a knock on the garage door, and someone say:

“Jason are you in there?”

Jason went outside to see who it was.

It was Carson. In walks this bumbling ogre with goofy smile on his face. All these young guys were all taller than me.

I had never met him before but because Carson and Jason were such good friends and Jason told Carson I was his best friend. Carson treated me like an old buddy right away.

Carson told us about his life the last few years working on the farm. At first, I was skeptical. I barely knew the guy and thought he was making it up to look cool. Carson pulls out two zip lock bags filled with weed.

"You still smoke weed right?" Carson asked Jason.

Carson brought about two ounces of weed with him. He ended up giving one ounce to Jason to sell and the three of us smoked the other one over the weekend. We even had a contest to see who could smoke a gram the fastest.

In the end Jason won, but I maintain that he only won because the day we had the contest I had been working for seven hours prior. He had been home all day smoking, essentially giving him hours to warm up his lungs and practice. If you are a stoner this makes perfect sense, why he won.

Jason started helping Carson sell his weed. Jason made him his money, so Carson kept fronting Jason more and more weed. Carson never disclosed how much he really had. The weed just kept coming in ounces.

Carson had been gone a few years; he did not have customers or go to school to meet new people to sell weed to. He depended on Jason.

His parents and older brothers tried to limit and restrict Carson’s control of his own weed at times. They wanted to sell it all themselves and take a cut of the profit. Jason was selling it faster.

Looking back, they probably knew Carson did not have the self-control not to smoke too much of the weed. We were having contests to see who could smoke a gram the fastest and his family depended on selling it to survive.

Don't get the wrong idea, Carson and his family did alright for themselves. They lived in a three-bedroom apartment about a block from the beach.

Chapter 14: H.B.