At the bottom was a perforated rectangle that read, “this card must be posted at the grow site.”

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I looked at it for some time, not sure what to make of the whole situation. I thought about what I knew about my neighbor. He was obviously younger than most of the people in the neighborhood, probably in his late-20s. He had tattoos on his forearms and was short and stocky. On Saturdays I could hear his stereo in my living room. He always seemed to have friends over, and his girlfriend had green hair. One of his friends had a big beard and long hair, and when he sits on my neighbor’s porch bench smoking cigarettes, he reminds me of a late Jim Morrison. The neighbor and I had waved at each other a few times, and once, when Tristan (my 7-year-old) fell on his roller blades, he helped Tristan up and asked if he was okay.

I know that the man did little to no yard work because his lawn was long enough to be bailed, but in the past few weeks, I’d noticed him hauling a bunch of soil into his backyard. At the time I thought, “Good for him. He’s starting to take pride in his home.” But as I looked at the date on his growing license, I realized what he’d really been up too.

Until I found his growing license, I didn’t even know his name. Now I knew that and more. I felt a pit in my gut about the whole thing, and I wasn’t sure why.

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I brought it into the house, which my wife, Mel, and I had bought six months earlier, and showed it to her. She was in our kitchen, sitting at the table, holding our new baby.

She read the license a couple times, tugged at her glasses, then she responded.

“Really?” she said.

“Yup.”

“Should this bother us?” I asked. I shared my many thoughts: “I know it’s legal in Colorado and Washington. It will probably be legal in Oregon soon. [Note to readers: This was written before the election.] But… I just don’t feel right about it, and I’m not sure why. I feel like I should get angry and try to stop it, but I don’t know what good that would do. And honestly, if it were a microbrewery, or something to do with alcohol, I don’t think it would bother me. And that seems strange. Or if we were renting this house, I don’t think I would care. But for some reason, because it’s pot, I am really uneasy about it.”

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Mel thought for a moment before responding. “I’m not in love with this. I mean, I don’t really care what the guy does in his home as long as it’s legal. I don’t care that he’s growing pot. I just don’t want him to attract bad people into our neighborhood.”

I agreed with her.

Before this moment, I really didn’t care either way about the pot debate. In fact, all I knew about pot was that I smoked it for about six months in high school, I ate a lot of Little Debbie cookies, and drank a lot of Mountain Dew. Once, while high, I rode my bike into a chain link fence. It was fun for a bit, but then I grew out of it. Mel had never smoked pot. I have some friends that still smoke pot. Some of them are motivated people with good jobs, some are not.

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Before this whole incident, I didn’t think much about the legalization of marijuana. But suddenly, now that I was a homeowner with kids, who had a neighbor growing weed, I felt like I had to do something. Perhaps I was supposed to put up a fight to make this guy stop. Maybe I was supposed to give the guy back his license, sit down on his sofa, and light up a bowl. Perhaps I should’ve just thrown the thing away, and forgotten about it.

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Mel suggested that I chat with our other neighbors. Get their opinions.

A few hours later, I was bringing a pan back to the elderly couple who lived next to me. They are in their late 80s. Great neighbors. The kind of people who bring you baked goods regularly.

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Bill had been an iron worker most of his life, and Janet had been an educator.

“How well do you know our neighbor?” I asked them.

“Jay?” Janet said. She invited me in, and I sat on their green sofa.

Across from me, in a recliner and slippers, was Bill.

Janet told me what she knew about Jay. She said he was a nice boy at first.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well,” Janet said. “When he first moved in, he was with this girl who I assumed was his wife. But then she moved out, and I found out she was his girlfriend.” She exhaled, raised her eyebrows, hand on her knees, “they were living together.”

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She paused, and Bill gave me a straight-faced look, one that said, “You should be outraged.”

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“Yeah,” I thought. “That happens.”

Bill sat up a little in his chair and said in his deep husky voice, “It’s just the way the world’s going.”

He must have said that same phrase half a dozen times while I was there. I thought about how outraged they were over Jay living with his girlfriend, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I lived with a former girlfriend for a few years before I met Mel. I’m Mormon now, and I suppose my neighbors living in sin should outrage me, but that really was the least of my concerns. I was more worried about him growing marijuana.

Suddenly, I wondered if me getting all worked up about my neighbor was as old-fashioned as Bill and Janet getting worked up about Jay living with his girlfriend.

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Bill and Janet went on, telling me all about the neighborhood. How they’d watched Jay bring in this or that. They described his friends, talked about where he worked, and what hours of the day he was coming and going. They mentioned the time that Jay helped pick up my son, and asked if he was okay.

“You guys really know what’s going on in the neighborhood,” I said.

Janet rubbed her legs. I think she was a little embarrassed.

“We just like to look out the windows. Not much else to do when you’re retired,” Bill said.

I told them about the license I found, and Janet’s eyes got wide. Then she looked over at Bill and said, “You should go talk to him. Tell him to quit this business. ”

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Bill looked at his wife, shook his head, and said, “I’m doing no such thing.”

They asked if I was planning to give the license back, and I said, “Yes. Well… probably. I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”

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We chatted for a moment more. As I left their home, Bill jokingly said, “If you’re willing to climb over his fence, I’d be willing to give you a bottle of Round-Up.”

The next day, Janet came over to our house several times to tell me about this or that she’d found online that might be an argument to shut down Jay’s grow site. The last time she stopped by, she mentioned how close we lived to a school, and that we should be in a drug free zone.

“Bill paced it off. His house is less than 1,000 feet from the school,” she said with raised eyebrows. Her face seemed to say, “We got him!”

She asked if I’d taken back his license, and I told her I hadn’t. I had to assume that he’d be able to get another, so it wasn’t much good keeping a hold of it. I was simply procrastinating. I didn’t really want to approach him about the subject, because I still didn’t know how to feel about it.

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Finally I told Janet that I would call the number on the license, tell them about the school zone thing, and get back with her.

The next day I chatted with a few co-workers about my neighbor growing pot across from my house. I work at a university, and I assumed that most of the people I worked with would tell me I was being uptight. But there were actually a range of reactions. One coworker mentioned that she had grow houses on both sides of her. One was very discreet, and the other openly smoked pot. But neither bothered her much. One said that she would be angry, and that I should try to shut it down. Another told me that I shouldn’t worry so much about it, give him his license back, and use it as an opportunity to engage in conversation about the subject.

Around 10 a.m., I called the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program. However, they didn’t open until 11 a.m., and I thought to myself… “typical.”

I called back during my lunch break. I told the woman at the program what I’d found, how my wife was worried about it attracting dangerous people into my neighborhood, and about how close we lived to a school. Then I said, “I suppose I just want you to help me feel better about all this.”

“Sir,” She said. “I cannot discuss any of this with you because it is confidential.”

“Fine,” I said. “Then just answer my questions generally. Can a person have a grow license when they live in a drug free zone.”

“We don’t enforce that,” she said. “We just issue the license.”

“Who does enforce it, then?” I asked.

“No one.”

“Then what’s the point of issuing licenses?” I said.

“Because it’s the law,” she said.

I just wanted her to help me understand more about the situation, so I could feel better about it. I told her that I wasn’t for or against this, I just wanted to make sure that my kids were safe.

She didn’t respond to that. Instead she said, “If you have further concerns, I suggest calling your local police department.”

“Okay,” I said. Then I hung up.

I came home from work, told Mel about my phone call, and said, “I’m just going to walk over there and give it back to him.” I told her about what one of my co-workers said about turning this into an opportunity to invite discussion. “It’s probably a good idea.”

“Did you hear about what happened in Waldo?” Mel said. Waldo was a small city about 10 min from our home. She showed me a news report. Two days earlier, five ski-masked men wearing bulletproof vests and brandishing firearms robbed a medical marijuana grow house. No suspects had been arrested. The suspects broke into two residences and used zip-ties to bind two victims. The article went on to list more than a dozen similar armed robberies at grow houses. All of them in the past few months. “Obviously, we’re seeing a bit more violence related to the narcotics trade,” a local detective was quoted saying.

“This really makes me scared,” Mel said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

We chatted about it for a minute more. Then we decided I should call the local police and see what they had to say.

I spoke with an officer Chapman in the Small Town Oregon narcotics division. I told him about what I’d found in my yard. I told him about my fears and anxieties. I told him about what happened in Waldo, and how I didn’t want something like that to happen next door to me. Then I said, “I suppose what I’m trying to say is, I just want you to help me feel better about all this.”

“Sir,” he chuckled, “I’m not sure what you’re asking for.” He had a youthful, scratchy voice.

“My whole life this has been an illegal drug,” I started. “It has been associated with crime. And now, in the past year, things are changing. It’s become legal. That’s really fast. I suppose what I’m struggling with is how to deal with that. I’m a father now. Above all, I just want to make sure that my family is safe. Can you help me do that?”

Officer Chapman paused for a moment. The he told me that the house in Waldo was a strange situation. They had a lot of money in that house. And a lot of marijuana. He didn’t see that happening in Small Town Oregon. Then he said, “You just happened to find out about this grow house. In this town alone, we have a lot of them. More than you’d think. In fact, you’d probably be surprised how many people in your neighborhood alone have grow licenses. I’m not saying that I’d want my neighbor growing pot. But what this man is doing is legal, and that’s not going to change. I predict marijuana will be legal in Oregon next year. I don’t agree with it, personally, but it is what it is.”

We talked for a moment more. He answered a few more of my questions. Then he urged me to give my neighbor back his license.

The next evening, I knocked on my neighbor’s door. Jay answered. Around his waist was a white bath towel. His chest was covered in tattoos, and his light hair was matted on both sides from sleep. He looked at me with confusion, not sure who I was.

“Jay?” I said.

“Yes.”

“My 4-year-old found this in our yard.” I handed him the license. “I think it’s yours.”

He looked at it with confusion. Then he said, “Yeah… it is.”

“Look,” I said, “I don’t care what you do in your house. I don’t care if you grow pot or smoke it. Not my problem. But what I want you to realize is that I’ve got a wife and three small kids. Did you hear what happened in Waldo?”

He shook his head. I told him about the armed robbery, and his eyes opened wide.

“Please keep this stuff locked down. I don’t want anything like that happening here. Realize where you are. You are in a neighborhood. There are kids everywhere. They play in the street.”

As I lectured him, he had a look of fear that reminded me of when I spoke to my 7-year-old son about cleaning his room or not using bad language. At the core, this man was just a child. And suddenly I felt old, like some grumpy old man telling the neighborhood kids to get off my lawn.

Jay reached out his hand and said, “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.” As he did, his towel nearly fell. Suddenly things went from serious to comical.

I never did shake his hand.

“My name is Clint,” I said.

Jay fixed his towel and said, “You don’t have anything to worry about. It’s all on the level. Locked down. We don’t even smoke pot here.”

“Jay,” I said. “I can smell pot right now.”

He laughed, and gave me a look that said, Ya got me!

“And the fact that this blew into my yard tells me that you don’t have it on the lock down. Listen, man. I’m not trying to ruin a good thing. Like I said, I don’t care what you do. Fifteen years ago, I’d probably have wanted to hang out on your couch,” I said. “All that I’m asking is that you help me keep this neighborhood safe. Cool?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Got it. Don’t worry about a thing.”

That was it. Jay closed his door, and I walked back to my house. We’d spoken now. I have to assume that there are people out there who grow marijuana responsibly. The kind of people that answer a door fully dressed, and don’t allow their grow license to blow into other yards.

I told Janet and Bill what happened, and they shook their heads. I told Mel, and she said, “I still don’t like it.”

I’m not in love with it either. But at least I know about it, and I better understand the situation. All we can do now is live our lives, I told her.

Now, when Jay and I wave at each other, it’s not a cordial thing anymore. Jay smiles back, his face seems to say, “You have nothing to worry about.”

And my face seems to say, “I hope so.”

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