Word for Word: True reefer madness

[Times photo]

By LANE DeGREGORY
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 20, 2002

From www.phish.net, a Web site run by fans of the jam band Phish.

Today is April 20 -- 4/20. To most of us those are just numbers. But to a sprawling subculture of marijuana smokers, 4/20 (or 4:20, or 420) is code for "Let's smoke pot," or "Time to smoke pot" or "I like pot."

References to 4/20 are in all kinds of lyrics, on TV, in movies (in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the score of the football game was 42-0), on T-shirts -- and especially in happy banter at jam-band concerts. There's a 4:20 record label in California, a band called 4:20 (playing at 4:20 p.m. today in its hometown, Orlando) and what seems like 420 Web sites attempting to explain the origins of the code.

A Christian site, www.jc420.com, offers an alternative to the pot subculture. It sells T-shirts with the logo "J.C. 4:20." The tags on the shirts say, "READ BEFORE WEARING: People may be drawn to you while wearing this garment. Be prepared to witness Christ's love for them."

Here is what the Phish fan site (www.phish.net/faq/n420.html) says about the 4/20 phenomenon.

-- LANE DeGREGORY, Times staff writer

ORIGINAL SOURCES

Conventional wisdom: The most common tale is that 420 is the police radio code or criminal code in certain parts of California for having spotted someone consuming cannabis . . . (and) that local cannabis users picked up on the code and began celebrating the number temporarily (esp. 4:20 a.m., 4:20 p.m., and April 20) . . .

Conventions are legends: 420 is not police radio code for anything, anywhere. . . .

True story?: According to Steven Hager, editor of High Times, the term 420 originated at San Rafael High School in 1971 among a group of about a dozen pot-smoking wiseacres who called themselves the Waldos. The term 420 was shorthand for the time of day the group would meet at the campus statue of Louis Pasteur to smoke pot. . . . "It was just a joke, but it came to mean all kinds of things like, 'Do you have any?' or 'Do I look stoned?"' (the founder of the group) said. "Parents and teachers wouldn't know what we were talking about." The term took root and flourished and spread beyond San Rafael with the assistance of the Grateful Dead and their dedicated cohort of pot-smoking fans. . . .

ALTERNATE EXPLANATIONS

Sixties Songs: For instance, Bob Dylan's famous Rainy Day Women #12 and 35 (which contains the lyrics: "Everybody must get stoned . . .") is a possible reference, or source -- 12 x 35 = 420. And Stephen Stills wrote (and Crosby Stills Nash & Young performed) a song 4+

20 . . . about an 84-year-old poverty-stricken man who started and finished with nothing. Dylan also mentions "4 and 20 windows" in The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest . . .

Older Verse: But 420 in poetry is older than that . . . the old nursery rhyme line, "four and twenty black birds baked in a pie." Revelation 5:14 (in the King James Version of the Christian Bible) reads, "And the four beasts that said 'A-men.' And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth forever and ever." And in Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie wrote, ". . . These deaths, too, had their purpose, since 420 has been, since time immemorial, the number associated with fraud, deception and trickery."

Temporal Significance: Hands on analog clock at 4:20 look like position of doobie dangling from mouth. Disruptive students are out of detention and safely away from school by 4:20 . . . Jamaicans purportedly "worked till 4 then walked home then lit up. They would talk 420 like our parents talked about after 5. That's when partying began." Albert (not Abbie) Hofmann supposedly first encountered LSD at 4:20 p.m. on 4/19/1943. Surrealist painter Miro was born April 20, 1893. And the propaganda film Reefer Madness has a copyright date of April 20, 1936.

Ubiquitous?: Now there's a 420 Pale Ale. . . . Reportedly all of the clocks in the movie Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20. Shirts with the number 420 on the red-and-blue interstate highway shield have shown up on the sitcom Will and Grace. . . .

There have also been some references on The Simpsons. In the rerun episode aired on April 20, 1999 at a special time (probably in honor of those college students staying in the holiday spirit :-), Homer mentions to Flanders that Barney's birthday is April 20. Also, the jackpot sign in one part of the casino says $420,000. . . .

The bill authorizing force after the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11 passed 420 to 1.

And don't forget that Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, macabrely "celebrated" (or at least referenced) via the Columbine High School shootings.

PHISH-RELATED OCCURRENCES

For the summer 1997 tour, Ticketmaster service charges were $4.20.

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