Criminal - Brownie Lady

Episode Date: July 15, 2016

Shortly after Meridy Volz moved from Milwaukee to San Francisco, she received a phone call from a friend asking her to take over a small bakery business. Meridy agreed to run the bakery, but she only wanted to sell one thing: pot brownies. Her brownies were a massive success, and soon she was making enough money to support three families. Meridy tells her story alongside her daughter, Alia Volz, who describes what it's like when San Francisco's "original brownie lady" is your mom. 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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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. It was 1969 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I was a flower child, the real deal.

And my cousin's wife and their six-month-old baby were staying with me. And he sent her a package in the mail that contained pot for her to sell and get a plane ticket or bus ticket back. This is Meredith Volz. In 1969, she was 21 years old and, like she said, a big hippie, really into pot. Her cousin was also a big hippie, living in Berkeley, and he'd mailed four pounds of pot to his wife, Patricia. But he didn't address the package to her. That was too risky.

So he addressed the package to his own baby. Meredith drove Patricia and the baby to the post office to pick it up. My cousin's wife went in, got the package from the post office, and when she came out to the car where I was waiting, she offered me either the baby or the package, and I took the package, and I took the package. And we were surrounded by vice squad with guns drawn, and I also had three joints, four roaches, and two seeds in my purse. They were taken into custody and strip searched. A police officer placed the package in front of Meredith and told her to open it. She looked down at the package and then searched, a police officer placed the package in front of Meredith

and told her to open it. She looked down at the package and then back up at the officer and said, I can't open that. It's not addressed to me. And so I refused because it wasn't addressed to me. But you knew what was inside. I did. But the package wasn't addressed to me, so it didn't seem like I should open the package. That's pretty clever. Right. That would have been a federal offense right there. And so I refused, and he ended up opening the package himself. Their mugshots were printed in the Milwaukee Journal the next morning. Under the headline, Male Contains Drug, Young Women Seized.

In the mugshots, her cousin's wife is smiling. Merity is not. You'd think that that wouldn't be front-page news. It was in Milwaukee. And it was a felony. 1969. There was a whole different feeling in the air about people who used pot. Their bond was set at $250. And when they did go to trial, their lawyer argued that it was illegal for the police officer to open the package because it was addressed to someone else, even though that someone else was a little baby. According to the trial

transcripts, the judge said, quote, I don't buy that by golly. But in the end, it worked. The case against the two women was dismissed. She was warned that the police would be watching her very closely. And so Marity left Wisconsin and moved to San Francisco. A nice Midwestern girl no one would expect to become a serious marijuana distributor. They called her the original brownie lady. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. At the time that I decided to move to San Francisco, I was writing and illustrating children's books for the Rockefeller Foundation. I had a pretty good portfolio going when I met this woman named Cherie. And she had a little business on Fisherman's Wharf where she would bring coffee to the lottery in the morning.

The street artists on Fisherman's Wharf at that time had a lottery in the morning for the spots where they would go and set up and sell because there wasn't enough spots for all the street artists. And she would bring coffee, a big urn of coffee, and she baked little breads, like pumpkin bread and different sorts of bread. And then she had just one dozen pot brownies that she had in a special bag. And I happened that day to be working on a painting and decided to do a little bit of LSD at the time. I remember I was a full-on yippee. And she called me while tripping and said, I want to give you my business. Now, at that time, and still, I was very much into the I Ching, which is the Chinese book of changes. And what that is, is a book, is a method

of throwing coins and asking questions and consulting the occult, consulting the oracle. So at the time, I recall that day being very tripped out and tossed the hexagram, and it was supreme good fortune to do it. And that was where the brownie business was born. The problem was, Meredith knew a lot about pot, but she wasn't much of a baker. And in an early attempt, she forgot a key ingredient, flour. And so we were left with a pan of just like liquid brownie. And I recall us sitting with our feet up looking at this pan of liquid brownie and kind of licking it, you know, taking it, just the batter, and onto our fingers and just licking it up.

And pretty soon we were way too high. And we realized that how to make a good brownie, the key to making a good brownie was undercooking the brownies. Why? Because you don't overcook the pot that's in it, that's in the ghee, which is in the brownies. Ghee is clarified butter, and you cook it with the pot. You want it to get hot, but not too hot. And while Meredith was sitting there with brownie batter all over her fingers, she had a breakthrough.

She'd undercook her brownies and call the business Sticky Fingers. So tell me the difference between eating pot and smoking pot? It's a real different high. Eating pot, you digest it and in your stomach and it's just stronger. It's a different kind of high. And it's also easy to eat too much. Like it's a little bit difficult to gauge how much is in a dose. So there were many, many stories over the years that began with, I ate the whole thing, and then dot, dot, dot happened. Because we would recommend a quarter at a time to split it in four. But at that time, it was kind of a crapshoot. Everyone wanted what she was selling, and she was making a lot of money. She fell in love, got married, and had a baby. They moved into a 4,000 square foot warehouse

in the Mission that would become the Sticky Fingers headquarters. You were all living in there with the ovens and the pot and the business. One oven. We had one little Wedgwood oven, one little antique Wedgwood oven with two shelves on it, teeny shelves on it. And that's where all the brownies came from. It was pretty unbelievable. And we didn't use bud. What we did use was leaf. And so that was disposable for all the pot growers. And so we could buy it at a very small price or be given it even because they wanted to get rid of it. That's a pretty good business model. It was great. And every week we designed our own brownie bags.

And we would do a pen and ink graphic on it every week we designed our own brownie bags, and we would do a pen and ink graphic on it every week, and it would be political or spiritual themes or personal themes, and people collected the bags. And so every week there was another piece of art that went out there. And when we went out to sell the brownies, we dressed in elaborate costumes and colorful outfits. And we began to photograph ourselves before we went out to sell so that there's a photo history of what we call the brownie bucks, how we looked when we went out to do this. And there was a theory about not tiptoeing around and sneaking and trying to be low profile.

There was something very, very safe in being extremely high profile. When did you become aware of what your mother did for a living? From probably from the moment I opened my eyes or started breathing. Merity's daughter, Alia Volz. I was often in the stroller when my mom would go out and do her runs and I was part of it. And the customers were, the customers fawned over me and were very sweet to me and I loved a lot of them. I can say that for me the most charged sensory memory, you know, I think we all have a smell, right, or a certain sound that'll take you right back to babyhood, right back to your mom's arms. And for me, if I ever smell pot cooking, especially if I happen to smell pot cooking with chocolate, it takes me right back to babyhood.

They would bake on Friday mornings, thousands of brownies at a time. I think we did the math at one point and it was approximately 2,500 brownies in a weekend, baked in about a 24-hour period and then distributed over the weekend. So upwards of 10,000 brownies a month. This is in 78 and 79 when Sticky Fingers was really going. And that was a huge process. The warehouse or whatever kitchen would be absolutely billowing with green dust. Green dust would get into everything. It would get into your ears.

It would get into your nose. That's right. It had to be dried in the oven first because if it was moist, it wouldn't break down. You know, you couldn't turn it. The ideal was to turn it into a dust, pretty much a dust. And then that dust would be cooked, measured, and cooked into butter. And then chocolate, also in a double boiler, was melted, and then the two were merged with eggs and sugar and flour and poured into pans, and we could make eight dozen at a time. And once those cooled, they had to be cut,

and then they had to be individually wrapped. They were making enough money to support three families, with money left over to travel to Europe. Were there a lot of women running pot businesses in the 70s, or were you a pioneer? I think pioneer. Certainly a brownie business, an edible business. We were written up in Great Ladies of San Francisco. There was a book. And the Great Books of Hashish were my baby picture. There's a baby picture of me standing next to a pan of brownies that ran in the Great Books of Hashish. Did you ever resent it?

I don't think so no um no because i don't i don't think that it that it took anything away from me um as i got a little older i was taught that i couldn't tell other children or other people what my parents did for a living. And that perhaps made for awkward moments in show and tell. But I always said that my parents were artists, which is true, just not the whole truth. But I was taught from a very young age what the consequences might be if anyone found out what my parents did. So I did learn to keep that secret. And I don't think I ever spilled it. That's kind of a lot for a little kid to have to hold on to. If this comes out, then my parents are going to maybe go away.

I suppose so. I suppose so. At the same time, they were so confident that they wouldn't get busted that I think that trickled down. My parents were not living in fear. And therefore, I didn't feel threatened. I knew that I had to play by certain rules, and I understood that from a very young age. But I believe that I felt as long as I did that, that we would be safe. It's only in retrospect as an adult that I become aware of what the consequences might have been, which of course were very

serious. I could have lost my family. It never happened, fortunately. 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. While Meredith never got caught, the culture was changing around her. Harvey Milk was assassinated. 900 people died at Jonestown. And remember, Merity was a woman who took very seriously

that ancient Chinese text, the I Ching. When you consult the hexagrams of the I Ching, you ask a question. It's said to help you make a decision. And so even though Merity was a huge success, really a celebrity, she began to worry. Eventually, the business, which was really rolling, it was really big. It was maxed out. It was more than we could even do. And hexagrams started to not look good. Because remember, the Qing was a silent partner right from the beginning. And hexagrams, which were talking about misfortune, and eventually AIDS hit the city, and then everything changed. And just people, you know, you'd see them one day, and the next day they'd have, you know,

carposi, sarcoma on the face, and then the following week they were in the hospital, and then they were dead. And it really, literally swept the city. It was a sweep. It was very, very sad. It must have been horribly sad. It was horribly sad. It was tragic.

And the brownies served a different purpose at that time. Because it increased appetite. It helped people sleep who were sick. It was one way of elevating the depression, incredible depression. You know, people losing everybody, and you'd get one guy, the survivor, you know, of a whole group. It just was terribly sad. And so it just seemed, if I look back at that time, there's a whole wash over the whole thing of sadness. And the brownies just gave a little comfort, I think. you know, magic that was in the business from the beginning,

with the costumes and all of it, just kind of went to maybe being a servant. I mean, it was very, very different after AIDS hit the city. She shut Sticky Fingers down in 1979 and moved her family to Northern California, to an area known as the Emerald Triangle, because it's the largest marijuana-producing region in the United States. When we left the city and went up north, eventually it seemed like a good idea to come down once a month with a little batch of brownies.

And that was nice because it could make just a little bit of pocket change and then go back up north and be in the country. And eventually, you know, that phased out and my life went on without the brownie business. When you've seen pot become legal and are, I mean, you have seen over this time of something that was vilified in the beginning of your whole career here, you know, felony charge. And now today, pot is everywhere. I mean, there are shops and stores in San Francisco all over.

It's becoming incredibly well accepted. What has it been like for you to watch this whole thing evolve? It's about time. That's what I say. It's about time that that, you know, that is accessible for people. You know, it's just, yeah. That's what I have to say about that. It's really about time.

It's past time, you know? But I was glad to have had that in my life. It's certainly colorful. And I love color. What do you make of the argument that it's dangerous? Bull. I say bull to that. Yeah.

It's not dangerous. No. There's so many other things, if you ask me, that are dangerous right now. And it's so, so small to be such a huge issue, really. Do you still smoke? I do edibles. And particularly when I paint, I don't smoke because my lungs, you know, I'm almost 70.

My lungs are not quite what they used to be. So I protect that and occasionally do a little, if somebody has a vapor, a vaporizer maybe, or when I paint, I love to do a little edible and put on my music and paint. When word got around that the original brownie lady was getting out of the business and leaving San Francisco, she says a lot of people tried to buy her recipe. She wouldn't sell. Instead, she baked one last batch and printed the recipe right there on the bag for all to see. Below the recipe, it says, Power to the People. And right on top, in big letters, she wrote, Give it up and you get it all. Thank you. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of the 14 best podcasts around.

We couldn't make this show without the support of our sponsors. If you'd like to learn more about sponsoring Criminal, you can email sponsor at radiotopia.fm. And thanks to Adzerk for providing their ad-serving platform to Radiotopia. Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Radiotopia from PRX. L-spotulinum toxin A is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness may be a sign of a life-threatening condition.

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