DISPATCH FROM THE WEED WARS
Oaky Joe & The Pot Police
Originally published February 11, 2010
Volume is the first thing you notice about Joe Munson: He doesn't seem to have much control over it. The hearing aids stuffed in his ears are next. They're the result of being an alcoholic. More specifically, they're the result of going on a bender in Pontiac, Illinois, of talking shit to a very large man, of receiving an asskicking so severe his jaw broke in three places and his hearing vanished.
That was more than 20 years ago—before Munson, 46, met his wife, Atsuko. It was before he quit the juice and had two kids. It was before he became known as “Oaky Joe”—a name that's derived, depending on the day you ask, from a firewood business he once ran or because he says “OK” to everything. It was before he became one of the area's most combative—and, literally, one of its loudest—disgruntled medical pot growers.
Which is the next thing you notice. Get him started on the medicinal marijuana situation in Mendocino County, and he's not unlike the comedian Lewis Black: A bit unhinged, with ferocious tongue-lashings for all whom he thinks deserving: The district attorney's office, the sheriff's office, the Major Crimes Task Force, the San Francisco Police Department—anyone on his long list of villainous authorities.
And there are many.
KNOW WHEN TO KILL THEM
Dope, guns & Republican blood lust in Mendocino County
Originally published in the North Coast Journal August 20, 2009
The village of Westport is the last outpost before Mendocino County's northern coast disappears into a roadless swath of rugged shoreline and redwood-carpeted hills. It is spread across roughly one mile by one-half mile of coast, and has one store, two gas pumps and 47 registered voters. Retirees are Westport's dominant demographic, and 15 miles of coiling coastal highway separate it from the closest town.
In this very small village, there is one political entity -- the five-member Westport County Water District, which oversees the local volunteer fire department and provides sewage treatment and water to several dozen homes. In this very small district, there have been many fiery debates over the years between board members: Sheriff's deputies were called to intervene at a meeting. Recalls have been organized. And in one now infamous case in 2005, Alan Simon, the board chairman at the time, was nearly killed in the doorway of his home by nine shots from a semi-automatic .22 Ruger pistol.
