Why I Dont do drugs — Part 2 — My Grandpa

A bit too much chemicals going on in there. So I'm walking around the property, my grandpa and grandma's house, and I get to the greenhouse where they grow their vegetables. They live way out in the bush. And so they grow their vegetables for cooking in there. And I went in and I'm looking at the zucchinis and all the different plants. And I said, "Grandpa, what are these ones here?" And he said, "Oh, those are tomatoes." "You've got a lot of tomatoes." He goes, "Yeah, well, grandma likes tomatoes. She likes to put them in everything." I said, "Oh, okay." So there were no tomatoes on the plant, they just looked like tomatoes. And so I went inside and I asked Grandma, "Grandma, why do you need so many tomatoes?" She said, "What are you talking about? I don't have any tomatoes." I said, "No, in the greenhouse. Grandpa's growing like hundreds of tomatoes. What do you do with them all? Do you sell them or something?" She said, "Oh, is that what he said that is? Yeah, tomatoes." And for those of you who don't know, tomato plants and marijuana plants look very similar. So my grandfather was stalking my uncle, who was also selling marijuana to his neighbors and stuff. So my grandfather was not really probably like most grandfathers. And in fact, I never really knew my real grandfather because when he was young, when my mom was about 16 years old, my grandfather was the head electrician of a big sawmill, had a pilot's license, and he was just buying an airplane, and he was starting a business flying from one sawmill to the next and being the flying electrician. And it was going to be the— I mean, it was brilliant. It was a boom time for logging in Northern California and Oregon. And he was going to fly from place to place, but to do the electrical work in these places, you have to know the electrical layout. And so you have to buy what's called a schematic, electrical schematic. It's like a blueprint, only really detailed. It tells you where every wire is and where the power is going from and coming to and where the— everything, where the switch boxes are and where every power you know what a PowerPoint is, and they're expensive. They're $2,000 or $3,000 each for each sawmill. And he would save up and buy another one and save up and buy another one. And he had nearly all the sawmills in Northern California and Southern Oregon. And he was just about to buy his plane. He had his pilot's license and everything. He was just about there. And his house burnt down. My mom said when the house burnt down that she went in and found her penny collection and it was just a lump. Of copper, just a big lump. Well, when my grandfather went in the house, he didn't have a lump of anything, because his schematics were paper, and they just burned up. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of investment burned up. He knew there was no way, especially, I mean, he could start over, but by the time he finished, the logging boom would be slowing down. He got the insurance for the house and built a new house. When he got his next paycheck, he went down to the pub, and he spent it on alcohol. And he started normal stuff, you know, beer and that kind of stuff, and then he worked his way up, and by the time I knew him, my grandfather was drunk all the time. In fact, one time I came out— when we first got there, I came to my mom, and we'd been there for an hour, and I said, "Mom, something's wrong with Grandpa. He doesn't seem like himself. He seems like something's wrong." And she said, "Oh, he just hasn't had anything to drink yet today." And so when I saw my grandfather sober, I didn't know who he was because he was always drunk. And he drank and drank and drank and went from being the head electrician to being the night janitor by the time I was a kid. The night janitor at the, uh, at the sawmill. And when he ran out of money and wanted to get some more money, he remembered that last time his house burnt down, he got a big payout. I don't know if he thought about the fact that insurance companies, you know, they make sure you don't burn your own house down. They do checks and make sure it's not arson. But he thought, "I know a way to burn my house down that nobody will know." Being an electrician, he knew ways to wire things in the walls and whatever. And one night, while he was over at work, his house burst into flames. Well, slowly but surely, one wall started on fire and it started burning. And my grandmother was still in the house sleeping. It was like 2 o'clock in the morning. And when he got back over there, she was standing outside. And so she had evidently smelled the smoke, and she got up. And she come outside. And somebody in the sawmill said, hey, George— because you could see the sawmill from his house and vice versa— and he said, hey, George, it looks like your house is on fire. He said, what? And so he jumped in the truck. And you couldn't just drive. You had to go around the river, down to the bridge on the other side of Lyon Pond— what's the name of the town— and then back up. So it took a while to get there. And he pulled in, and his house was just aflame. My grandma was just standing there outside the house. And he said, "Oh good, Vera, you got out alive." She said, "Yeah, but Julie and the kids." I had an aunt named Julie, and she had Rachel and Ronnie, and they were two great little kids, and lots of fun to play with. And he said, "Yeah, yeah, Ronnie and Rachel and Julie aren't here tonight. They went to Hayfork to stay with some friends." She said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, but they came back." He said, "No, no, no, no, I talked to her before, and she said she was definitely staying in Hayfork tonight. She's not here, Vera. I think you just, you know, your mind's been tricking you. She's not here." She said, "George, I tucked the kids in tonight. They are in that house." And he said, "Vera, no, they aren't." And finally she convinced him, and he had so— he was so convinced that it was just her in the house, and he was willing to sacrifice his wife, but he loved his daughter and his grandkids. And a little sideline story. I know it's really weird to think about your grandparents. Like, they made your parents, right? And so they do that stuff. Well, my grandfather was cheating on my grandmother. So that's even weirder to think about. Your grandfather has the hots for another old lady. But anyway, he was constantly cheating on her, and she would catch him and say, "George, you stay home," and rah, rah, rah. And so he was trying to— get rid of her, what, and get rid of the house at the same time. And she got out, and Julie and Ronnie and Rachel were inside. And he ran around to their window, and when he threw open their window, they had asphyxiated by the smoke. And so they hadn't even woke up, and all three of them were just lying in their beds, and their room was on fire. There was no way to get in to save them. In fact, they wouldn't have been alive anyway. They would have been dead from the smoke already. And when the The insurance company studied it. They said, "Well, it burned hotter than a fire should burn. It was burning in the walls. The electrical system was on fire, but we can't prove that it was arson. It could have just been a short in the walls and caused everything to get really hot." But, um, so they gave him a payout. What's interesting is the house that they built has no electricity. My grandmother demanded, "You will not have electricity in this next house." And so they have a solar panel. And it generates electricity for their television and the light bulb in the lounge room and the water heater, and that's it. There is not enough electricity to start that house on fire. And so we know that Grandma wins. And this is all because of the little bit and the little bit and the little bit that Grandpa drank until it became a lot of it, and the drugs that he took, and the whole lifestyle that came out of it. And I can remember as a kid just saying to my mom, why would anyone, why would anyone Drink alcohol when it makes you like Grandpa. She said, well, nobody thinks they're going to become like Grandpa when they start drinking. They just do it for fun, or they just do it because it's nothing. It's just another drink. But she said, for Grandpa, it wasn't. It's his only thing now that he lives for. And when I was about 12, my grandpa went to the doctor because he had really, really bad stomach pains. And they told him, well, your liver is completely shot. You've been drinking and not eating for so many years that your liver literally is not doing its job. So when you drink stuff, it goes— the poison goes straight to your liver and into your bloodstream, and it's poisoning your whole body. You have to, you must stop drinking. And they told him that he would be dead within 2 or 3 years if he didn't stop. And my grandfather died, I think I was about 32. So he lived another 20 years after that and never stopped drinking. But we always just said he was pickled, he was preserved. But, you know, when you know somebody and you love them, you look past that stuff. But when it's you, and you have the decision to make, and you can say, "Do I want to become like that?" It was not a hard decision for me because I had those examples. And a lot of people say to you, and a lot of people in their mind, they say, "Well, I know what happened to other people, but I want to know for myself because maybe I'm different." And the truth is, statistically, you're not different. That I'm not different. If I have alcohol, my dad was an alcoholic as well, and he overcame it, but it was a hard struggle for him. My grandfather on the other side, my mom's dad, was an alcoholic, and he didn't overcome it. And so I'm pretty sure that if I was to have a drink, I would have another and another and another. And so I've never even had one. Well, I've got to take that back. My friend, when I was in grade 8, his