Criminal - 420

Episode Date: April 7, 2017

The Colorado Department of Transportation says the 420 mile markers on the state's highways were stolen so often, they had to replace them with 419.99 mile markers. Many people know that "420" represents marijuana - hence the popularity of the mile markers - but very few know why. It's not a police code, it's not the number of chemical compounds in cannabis, and it's certainly not Bob Marley's birthday. Today on the show, we try to find the real story and in the process meet Steve Capper and Dave Reddix who, as high schoolers, followed a treasure map in search of the illicit crop.  Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So what these are, they're mile marker signs. And there's not a lot of roads, frankly, around the state that get to a 420 mile marker. You know, you've got to have a long highway that can really go across the state to get to a 420. And we have a couple in Colorado. And so consequently, those signs kept getting targeted, especially as people are coming in from Kansas and into Colorado. It was sort of right off the beaten path there, and people like to yank it and take it home as a memento, and especially so if it was a Colorado 420 sign. This is Amy Ford. She's with the Colorado Department of Transportation. The department has been dealing with this for years. A 420 sign gets yanked, they put out a new one, and then that one gets stolen too.

What did you do about it? One, we were replacing a lot of signs. And so that was one of those things that our maintenance guys had to go back out because those signs actually do matter. They matter for emergency response and others as they look at those signs to say, hey, this is maybe where an accident was and things like that. So, you know, after a while, our guys got a little tired of having to replace the signs. One of our maintenance superintendents a while back said, you know, instead of us putting back up a 420 sign, which is just going to get stolen again, what if we put up a 419.99 sign just a tenth of a mile away? Still accurate, still in the right spot, good for emergency service, but it saves us the hassle, baby, of having to have these signs in place all the time.

I think that one's kind of funnier. I think I'd rather have that one. Me too, because it's sort of unique. It's definitely from Colorado then, if you know you've got the 41999 sign. We've also done some other numbers as well. So let's just say we have a 68.99 sign as well. These.99 signs are also getting stolen. And other states with highways long enough to have a 420-mile marker have the same problem. Do you think it's funny? Oh, absolutely.

In fact, you know, we in Colorado, I mean, if we can't laugh at some of what's going on here, and when we think about all of the neat stuff that can happen on our roadways or the terrible things that happen on our roadways, someone thinking one of our signs is clever and yanking it is something that we definitely can laugh at. Do you know what 420 refers to? You know what? I don't entirely. But, you know, if I remember correctly, it's one, it's in Colorado has become such a big celebration now that I always think of it in regards to all the events that we have here, various events at our civic center and the like. And so I don't

know all of the details, actually. If you don't know why someone would want to steal a 420 sign. You aren't alone. Hello? Dad? Yes? Do you have a second? Yeah, yeah, of course. I was wondering, what are you doing on April 20th? Do you have any plans for April 20th, 420? Hold on.

On April 20th, I have, there's a couple of appointments that could be shifted if need be. Does the number 420 mean anything to you? 420. I can't think of a thing. It's a pot thing. Pot? You mean like in dope, like in marijuana? Yeah, yeah. Oh, doesn't that have to do with, it's sort of code for people who are,

want to let others know that they're marijuana-friendly. Isn't that what that is? Yes, marijuana-friendly, but it's more, I think it's a... This is being recorded. Are you... Yes, this is being recorded. There should be a red light that goes on so I know for sure. We're trying to figure out what 420 refers to specifically. Had you ever heard that before? Yes, but I don't know now what 420 refers to specifically. Had you ever heard that before? Yes, but I don't know now what 420 means.

Just that I recognize it as sort of marijuana talk. What do you mean, what does 420 mean? I mean, I don't know where it originates. It's the time at which you smoke weed and is a reference to weed culture. I was in the Navy, actually, when I heard of it. I used to think it was Bob Molly's birthday. I'd sort of heard it in middle school actually. I thought it was a police code. What does 420 mean? Is it April 20th? It's a number. It adds up to six. It sounds like a class that someone should know. Maybe like econ.

Econ sounds like it should have a 420. I don't know where it came from. All I know is it signifies the plant and we all get high as hell. Something about marijuana, I think. But I know it it signifies the plant, and we all get high, I'd say. Something about marijuana, I think. But I know it's near Earth Day, that's all I really care about. I don't know, I've heard the myth that it is a police coat, but I'm fairly confident that's not true.

I know it's the date, and that's when the people smoke the weed, and they like it a lot to do it on that day. But I'm not sure how it came about. No one seems to know exactly where 420 came from, but people have plenty of ideas. Wrong ideas. It's not Bob Marley's birthday. It's not a police code.

It has nothing to do with the number of chemical compounds in cannabis. So we thought we'd try for the actual origin story behind 420. And like all the best stories, it begins with a treasure map. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. The scene, people are wearing bell-bottom blue jeans, what, belts with turquoise in them. We had long hair, afros.

Vests. Vests, leather vests. Sometimes we wore country shirts. Puka shells, and we liked country, western shirts and boots. Bandanas, hiking boots or cowboy boots. It's kind of like some, well, the 70s. It was the hippie uniform back then. This is Steve Capper and Dave Reddix. They met in 1969 at San Rafael High School in Northern California.

And you could hitchhike anywhere. You didn't need a car. I mean, I used to hitchhike out to the beach or Point Reyes, and people would pick you up all the time. Everybody helped each other with rides, food, lodging. Were you stoned? Yes. Oh, yes. All the time.

Dave, Steve, and their friends spent most of their free time at school sitting on a wall and eventually got the name The Waldos. And one day, The Waldos got the best news any of them had ever heard. Here's Steve Kapper. I was sitting on our hangout spot, the wall, at Centerfell High School. And a friend of mine, Bill, came up to me and he said, Hey Steve, my brother's in the Coast Guard and he's been growing some weed. He's afraid he's going to get busted by his commanding officer.

He says, we can pick it. Here's a map he drew for us. Well, Steve approached us and said, do you guys want to go look for this? We said, of course. You know, we're like teenage boys, free weed, are you kidding? So we decided we'd, you know, some of us had after school activities after school. And so we decided to meet at 4.20 p.m. at the statue of Louis Pasteur on the campus of San Rafael High School. So we got there and we met up.

We fired up a doobie, got high, and we hopped in Steve's 66 Impala with a Killer Craig 8-track stereo. And we smoked all the way out there, and we started our search. It looked like a scene from Cheech and Chong's, one of their movies, because we'd get the whole car clouded up with smoke, and we'd be listening to these 8-track tapes, and we were talking and grooving and having a great time, and we're excited to find this patch. Steve, Dave and their friends would meet at the Louis Pasteur statue at 420, pile in the car and continue their search for this dream field of weed every single day after school. We would see each other in the hallways all day long. You know, you go from class to class, you see each other

and we would remind each other in the hallways that we were going to meet at Louis at 420. So, we'd look at each other when we passed by and we'd go, 420 Louis. And the other guy would just signal yes, nod yes. And it was actually, you always smiled when you said it. It was kind of a knowing smile. We're going to get high, we're going to go do that. So, it was always exciting. So, we'd say, 420 Louis. And that went on for a few weeks, but eventually Louis dropped. We're going to get high. We're going to go do that. So it was always exciting. So we'd say 420 Louis. And that went on for a few weeks, but eventually Louis dropped. We dropped off Louis. Well, it lasted longer than a few weeks. It was several months. And then we dropped Louis part and just became 420 as a little shorter. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention,

and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you?

And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. How did it spread, do you think? Well, you know, we were using the term in high school and other friends picked up on it. And then their younger brothers and sisters started using it. And then years later, we would see 420 carved into benches and spray painted on walls.

And we started going, hey, this thing is starting to evolve here. There's something going on. It kind of boggles my mind what started out as a little private secret code joke has now turned into a worldwide phenomenon. A big piece of this is that Dave's brother was friends with Phil Lesch, the bass player in The Grateful Dead. So 420 made the jump from San Rafael High School to the big time pretty quick. And there's tons of people that claim they started it. But in truth, the Waldos are the only ones that have documented proof to prove our claim. Lots of physical evidence, actually.

And we keep the evidence locked in a vault in San Francisco for safekeeping. No, you don't. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. You've got to remember, it's 45 years old or so. We definitely want to protect it from water flood, humidity. Fire. This is historical stuff.

This physical evidence is a San Rafael High School newspaper from 1974. One of the Waldos was asked, if you had the opportunity to say anything in front of the graduating class, what would you say? And the guy just answered, 420. There's also a 420 flag and then some dated correspondence. Dave wrote me a letter in which there's so many references. One, Dave sent me some weed.

What I did is I rolled a joint for him and I smashed it down flat and I put it in the letter and I said, at the end of the letter, I said, P.S., a little 420 for your weekend. So we have that original letter. It's postmarked. We're talking, you know, early 70s. And people ask, how could you think ahead to save all that stuff? It really wasn't that.

We were just too lazy to throw anything away. All of this documentation came in handy late last month when 420 was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. I was personally thrilled to learn what the actual origin of this word that I was familiar with in my childhood was. This is Katherine Connor-Martin. She's the head of U.S. dictionaries at Oxford University Press.

I can't believe that someone said, let's put 420 in the Oxford English Dictionary, and people are like, yeah, sure. Seems right. The OED is a descriptive dictionary of English, and that means that we don't judge whether a word, there's no such thing as being good enough to be entered in the OED. The only criteria that matter are, is it used enough? And this was actually a particularly good example, I think, of a word to add to OED because it's widely known, but there's a lot of misinformation about it. So it's the digits that are in the dictionary. Well, so the main form that we give is 420 as a number because that's what we found to be the most common when we were looking at evidence. But we also provide several other variants. So we have 4-20, 4-20, 4-20, and then 4-20 written out as words because, of course, it's said 420 even though it looks like the number

420. And the variety and the punctuation there is probably due largely to the fact that it's often interpreted as a time of day or as a date. So when you see that forward slash, someone's thinking of April 20th, and if you see 4 colon 20, they're thinking of the time of 420. This word was challenging for some of our British colleagues to understand because, of course, they abbreviate the months differently. And so for them, it's 24. That a bunch of stoned teenagers on a quest for a magical field of marijuana are now part of the definitive record of the English language. It's just wild. Unfortunately, that's all they took away from it. They never did find that field. Well, tell me about your, I mean, your plan if you had found it. What was your plan?

Our plan was to smoke. We were going to smoke that weed if we found it. This is your legacy. Yeah, I'm sure on our headstones it'll say, these are the guys that started 420. Well, I want to thank you both very much for speaking with me. This was just great. Thank you for having us. Thank you. And happy 420.

And thank you for having us to your pot cast. Well, there we go. Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohr, Nadia Wilson, and me. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks to our intern, Alice Wilder. Thank you. or tell a friend. We're on Facebook and Twitter, at Criminal Show. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around.

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