There's something about an orchard that stirs the soul. Keep your eyes on people when they get near one. They get a certain look, a certain calmness comes over them, a sudden sturdiness seems to hold them more firmly to the earth. I've alway had the feeling when I watch people in an orchard that they've come home.

Southern Illinois has some great orchards. The one I am most familiar with is Brautigam's Family Orchard. Brautigam's was a place a young man or woman could find a job. Paying jobs were few and far between for young folks in 1960. In a farming community like Freeburg, young males headed for the country. On the farm, there was hay to be baled, weeds to be hoed, and peaches and apples to be picked. All of these things took manpower, or more appropriately, adolescent power.

My neighbor was two years older than I. We were kind of friends, but not really close. I don't think it was cool to have a younger friend. Anyway, he had worked at the orchard for a couple summers. He mentioned one day that they were looking for help. Having recently baled hay, I figured anything had to be better than that. Baling hay was some of the hardest work you could get. It was hot, itchy, heavy work. It did build up your arm muscles, which was billed as a fringe benefit. I figured I'd go with him and see what orchard work was all about. My arms were plenty big, and hurting.

No resumes'. No job references. The first and only thing to settle was the salary. And there wasn't much to negotiating that. It was two dollars per hour. That was one dollar more than I was getting baling hay. I could see this was going to be easy money. I paid my buddy one dollar per week for a ride, since I was too young to drive. At the time, I thought that was highway robbery.

The orchard resembled a small community. It was for the most part self-supporting. The list of fruits and vegetables and flowers grown was endless. Everything from apples to zinnias. Throw in some chickens, hogs, cows, and a couple ducks, turkeys, and rabbits, and there wasn't much need to do a lot of grocery shopping.

The first job I was assigned was thinning the peach trees. In some years, when conditions were favorable, the peach trees would produce too much fruit. If you were to leave things be, the fruit produced would be plentiful, but small. You could also end up with a lot of limb breakage from the weight. The Brautigam philosophy was to produce big fruit, with as little damage to the tree as possible. That's where I came in. My official title was fruit thinner. With about a ten foot stick, you would whack each clump of developing fruit, hoping to leave just one hanging on the tree. Nothing real scientific, but precision was required. Too strong a whack and you knock off the entire clump. That would not be good. Mr. Brautigam frowned on poor thinning procedure. This was toying with the bottom line. "You went a little thin there. Remember boys, we're in the fruit business."

It's a beautiful sight watching fruit trees produce. First blossoms: Peach, apple, cherry, plum, apricot. Acres of color. A lot of praying goes on prior and during bloom season. Too much rain, not enough, frost, hail, wind, bugs. Any of Mother Natures tricks can affect production. Anything seriously affecting production can really hurt the thinning business.

The fruit, as it develops, needs to be protected from insects. Spraying insecticides becomes a necessity. This is not the better part of orchard work. We were never directly involved with this aspect of the operation. Mr. Brautigam handled this on his own. He knew it was dangerous and we were never present when it was done. It would be years later before the horrible effects of spraying poison would eventually take his life. But it had to be done.

Watching fruit ripen is a great pleasure. Day after day you watch, thin, cut out branches that break under the weight, mow underneath the trees, spray and wait. Excitement is high on the first day of picking. First peaches, the rest follow.

We had our own ceremony to celebrate the coming of the first peach. We looked for the biggest, most perfectly shaped peach we could find. It had to be almost dripping with juice. The picker with the most seniority got the privilege. When the job was carefully done, the peach was haded over to Mr. Brautigam. He would inspect it closely, like one would a diamond. Then he would take a bite and kind of swoosh it around his mouth, not unlike you would with a fine wine. The pronouncement was always the same. Perfect. Each of us would then take a bite. No one worried about germs. We were all in this together.

The retail store was getting ready. It was not fancy, not much more than a garage. But it was functional and practical. No fancy mall with huge overhead. This was down-home simplicity.

The Brautigam daughters, under the watchful eye of their mother, handled most of the retail end of the business. Fruit brought in from the orchard needed to be sorted, graded, and packed for retail. For the most part, only females handled this part of the operation. It required more detail, but most importantly, you had to be polite to the public. Most of us guys couldn't cut it.

I did have a brief career in retailing. As I remember, one of the daughters was sick. In an emergency, I was seen as the most likely to succeed. I lasted approximately three hours. A lady was giving me all kinds of static about our peaches. They were too small. They didn't look ripe enough. They looked funny. I asked her what she meant. She wasn't sure, but they looked different than last years. And the price was too high. Ma'm, I said, it takes a lot of money and manpower to raise fruit. She didn't care. She wanted $1.50 off the price. So far, I had managed pretty well. Than she started in on the pickers. "All this fruit is bruised". Now it was getting personal. I forget my exact words, but they weren't benevolent. I instantly forgot rule number one: the customer is always right. I was back to picking. The daughter made a miraculous recovery.

The fruit season runs all summer, well into the fall. Most of us were returning to school in late August. This was always a major problem for Mr. Brautigam. Help was suddenly hard to come by. We would rush out after school, but there was always baseball. Fall baseball was unique to schools too small to field or afford a football team. Practice usually started before school officially did. This was a problem for orchard workers who fancied themselves as baseball players. Mr. Brautigam seemed to understand our dilemma. He knew work was good for us and would teach us the responsibilities we would need in the adult world, but he also knew it was not the most important thing at this stage of our lives. Two things took precedence over work: baseball and studying. You had to be doing okay in school. We always tried to get girls added to that list of things more important than work, but he wouldn't buy it. He was patient with us, usually.

Two dollars an hour was pretty good pay, but as it worked out, not near the most enticing benefit of the job. Both Mr. and Mrs. Brautigam's mother's lived on the property. For the noon meal, and occasionally for dinner, if we were working late, they cooked. And they cooked. And we ate. Brother, did we eat. After all, we were growing boys.

We usually ate between twelve and twelve-thirty. There was always a choice between two meats, potatoes, three or four vegetables, and desserts. Fried chicken, pork roast, beef roast, meat loaf, hamburgers, pork chops, rabbit, turkey. Fresh tomatoes, corn-on-the-cob, broccoli, radishes, turnips, green beans. And for dessert, peach pie, apricot pie, rhubarb and strawberry pie, blackberry pie, cakes, strawberry shortcake , coffee cakes, cookies, muffins, and always fresh fruit cocktail, with whatever fruits were in season. The only thing store bought was the bananas, and I'm not so sure about that.

There were usually about seven or eight of us around the table. No bite was taken until Mr. Brautigam said a prayer. It usually referred to a bountiful harvest and a plea to keep us all safe. We were all young males, ages 14-18, who were convinced Mr. Brautigam was trying to kill us with all the hard work. I think we figured eating a lot was our way of getting even. It's hard to imagine exactly how much we might have consumed. One of the grandmothers always said she might as well have opened a restaurant, at least she would be paid for her efforts. I remember her saying she could have fed fifty people with what we ate. I don't doubt she was right. I sure hope I thanked your.

The orchard was a good place to work. I spent some of my best summers there. I never had a complaint, deserved most of the lectures I got, and learned to enjoy fine, home-cooked cuisine. I learned a lot about people. After we were done in the orchard for the day, I always hung around the retail store for a while. Not necessarily helping, which I only got one shot at. Just watching and listening. Sometimes, my expertise would be called on. What variety of peach is best for eating? For canning? What apple variety would come in first? With all of this knowledge boiling inside me, I was eager to dispense some of it.

People were always extremely interested in the goings on in the orchard. Everyone always seemed to me more alive, more animated, more energized, invigorated, relaxed, more down to earth, when they stepped out of their cars and entered the orchard world. Most wanted to pick something. It seemed almost an instinctual thing.

Long before the U-pick concept became popular, we would take certain people into the orchard to pick their own. I became kind of the head of this experimental project. I suppose my eventual need to try and help people was already evident, even then. Anyway, I would take out people that I knew, or those that Mr. Brautigam requested. Sometimes I think he had a knack for knowing who needed to go. Someone who needed to touch nature, to experience the actual act of choosing the fruit, placing the ladder ever so delicately against the tree, climbing high enough to pick the chosen fruit, feeling it snap from the tree, understanding that sometimes you set your goal, your choices, too high, knowing that you at times need to move on, re-prioritize, eventually coming to understand just how this all came to be, this intricate collaboration between man and nature. Not until years later did I come to understand the full meaning of this experience. I don't believe that any of us at the time understood this to be life, in a nutshell.

The orchard is still there today, but is coming under severe development pressure. The last time I stopped, some years ago, I found Mr. Brautigam to be very sick. We laughed about some of the things that had happened during my time in the orchard. He could remember things about each of us, and over the years there had been a lot of us. He never did claim much more than to give us a job. On that day, I had an opportunity to let him know otherwise. My mother called not long after and said he had died.

He was a good man and raised a good family He was true to the orchard and knew if he treated it well, it would treat him well. He had no regrets, even knowing that it had cost him his life. He worked hard and treated us with respect. If there's an orchard in the hereafter, I'll bet he's in charge.

Now there's "The Orchard," an eighteen-hole golf course with $250,00-$350,000 homes surrounding it. "The Orchard" would like to buy the orchard. They call this progress. I've weighed my feelings about the situation against my memories of the place. My belief that something magical happens to people when they visit an orchard, something you just can't quite explain. I respect the orchard for teaching patience, hard work, simplicity, survival, and making a living from what is given. Even though golf has replaced my days of picking fruit, I'm not so certain "The Orchard" can claim these same things. In fact, I'm pretty sure it can't.

-You know you've had enough to drink when:
* you start getting chummy with people you despise.
* words come out of your mouth that you don't recognize.
* ugly starts looking pretty good.
* the thought of getting up and leaving becomes a horrible idea.
* you know you should be leaving, everyone else has, but there is still beer in the refrigerator.
* you fall and can't figure out why everyone is so much taller than you.
* you forget your name.
* you wake up in the morning and the person next to you is a stranger.

-You know you've had enough to eat when:
* taking another bite would result in you being arrested for unnecessary consumption.
* the dessert begins to talk to you.
* the button on your pants becomes a potentially lethal weapon.
* throwing up feels good.
* no one else is left at the table but you and that pumpkin pie.
* you're eating alka-seltzer between courses.
* you get arrested on the way home for carrying an oversized load.

-I've never gotten over the fact that:
* Santa Claus is also the Easter Bunny.
* Enlisting in the Salvation Army does not get you a military pension.
* Stores start getting ready for Christmas before Thanksgiving.
* The New Year always starts with a hangover.
* Santa Claus always wears red. What's with that?
* Christ had to be born in a barn. Where the heck was the Holiday Inn Express. Or Motel 8. Think of the PR?
* Christmas really isn't at the end of the year. I think this is a Sam Walton trick.

Last night I stumbled across a quote that might be a fitting ending to my ideas about drugs, drug users, and drug sellers. A quote from Salvador Dali: "I do not take drugs-I am drugs." I'm hoping he was talking about that natural high I mentioned.

THE FIX

So what do we do about drug use, abuse, and sellers? The fix is not as easy to come by as "the fix." I can go down to any main street U.S.A. and have what I need within ten-fifteen minutes. The same holds true for small town U.S.A. as holds true for Chicago, as holds true for L.A. You can get any drug you want, at Alice's Restaurant.

While it's hard to pin down why a person may use drugs, there is no such mystery surrounding why they are sold. They do it for the money. It's easy money, although a career wrought with danger. As it works out, in a recent study done in Chicago, the easy money theory is not all it's made out to be. Taking into account the time street sellers spend buying, selling, defending their territory, and bailing themselves out of trouble, they make about minimum wage. And oddly enough, most continued to live with their mothers, long after they should have departed. Over the short haul, drug dealing looks to be lucrative and a way to improve your economic status. But like drug using, drug dealing is not going to work for long. It's a downwardly spiraling career choice, full of myths and misinformation about how it can take you from a miserable existence to one of glamor. It won't. We need to expose this myth.

Putting drug sellers in prison is for the most part an unending and expense process. You break the law, obviously you should pay. That's how it works. But the sentences need to be reasonable. The mandatory, three-strikes-you're-out mentality is wrong. It is irrational and full of exceptions to the rule. Every situation is different. We need to allow for that. For granted, this takes some judgment and common sense. That shouldn't be too much to ask from our judicial system.

Drug users are another story. Addiction is a disease. It can be helped. It should not be a crime to be an addict. If there's to be a sentence, it should be to treatment, not to prison. There should be conditions, but they need to be realistic. We know addicts for the most part are going to relapse. We know they are not going to be happy, being forced into treatment. We know they are going to have a hard time finding a job, particularly if they have a felony charge against them. We know they will do whatever is necessary to protect their addiction and livelihood. The conditions under which treatment needs to occur need to be enormously flexible. Unfortunately, most treatment programs, and the legal system, are enormously inflexible.

Cannabis use should be decriminalized. Make no mistake, there are problems with chronic, long-term use. But remember, there are problems with chronic, long-term use of alcohol and nicotine. If we were to judge on sheer problems generated, those two would have to go first. The evolution of drug use, with the advent of crack cocaine and meth, has made cannabis something of a non-issue. Still, cannabis is the number one targeted drug in our "War Against Drugs." Our prisons and jails are full of minor drug users and sellers. WE NEED TO RADICALLY CHANGE OUR APPROACH. I'm not convinced that cannabis should be legalized, but I am firmly convinced that we need to make its use less of a crime, perhaps a misdemeanor. It would take some serious thinking to come up with a plan, but the time is long past due to sit down at the table and bang something out.

So, to summarize:
1. Try to get reasonable information about drugs, drug use, and sellers. Remember, everyone, including the government, is giving you their biased viewpoints. Gather information from different sources and look to how they are substantiating that information. I've given you personal information in this three part series, backed by what I have seen happen over a 20 year career in alcohol and drug counseling. By necessity, it's all biased.
2. In life, there are givens. One seems to be that we all want to somehow feel better, happier. Drugs of all kinds afford us that opportunity. They provide us with a shortcut, we think, to the promised land. Drug use, and consequently, abuse, will never go away, mainly, as I see it, for the above reason. There would be no drug problems, or sellers, if people didn't want drugs. It is a problem that needs ongoing review, policy changes, and innovative solutions.
3. Drug abuse and dependence can be overcome. The best combination to date is treatment and an ongoing support group. Remember, it may take repeated treatment episodes and support that may last a lifetime. But recovery is possible.
4. We need to rethink how we treat addicted people. Prison is not an answer.
5. We need to decriminalize cannabis.
6. And finally, we need to each take the responsibility for showing our young people that life can be fulfilling, rewarding, and happy, in a non-drugged way. That we are capable of facing the world, with all its ambiguities and disappointments, without the use of drugs. If parents do not model this type of behavior for their children, the cycle of addiction will continue to grow. No prevention in the world will overcome them watching us attempting to make our lives better and more tolerable by continuing to use drugs.

THE REALITY

A war on drugs will not work. Maybe a war on indifference. Perhaps a war on negativity. Or how about a war on injustice? But a war on drugs is doomed to failure from the very start. Because no matter how many drugs you intercept, no matter how many pesticides you drop on marijuana or poppy fields, or how many walls you build to keep drugs out, or how many people you put in prison, we will not stop people from wanting to use drugs. It seems to be human nature, to want to feel different, to want to feel better, be happier, to wanting to find a shortcut to answering "the great mystery." We get fooled into thinking that drugs offer all that, and than some.

I've always figured that life is about finding happiness. Not the tee-hee kind of happiness, but "the happiness," that contentment, satisfaction, love, security, joy, on top of the world kind of happiness. It's hard to maintain, but I'm sure you've felt it, at least on occasion. That kind of happiness doesn't come cheap. Because the path is filled with challenges, one looks for a shortcut. And there is no more available hope for immediate relief than drugs. Drugs can take you away from your troubles, away from the challenges, the pressures, the failures, the poverty, in a way that nothing else can. It's available, fast, but unfortunately, unforgiving. The "happiness" is short lived, if at all. What seems like a heavenly experience soon turns to hell. You find yourself on a one-way street to nowhere. No one who becomes dependent is spared the trip. Not the rich, the poor, black, white, female, male, grandma, grandpa, husband, wife, kid. The line goes straight down in an indiscriminate manner.

People look for that high. While physiologically explainable, a high is pretty much different for every addicted person. I suppose it's not so much that the high is different, as it is the high is used for different purposes: to forget, to remember, to have energy, to settle down, for sleeping, for to stay awake, to have more sex, to not wanting to have sex, to looking for God, to forgetting about God. The reasons are endless. This is one of the unfortunate problems. There is an easy answer to ending drug use-simply don't use anymore. But there is no easy answer to why a person uses in the first place. This complicates treatment, making it hard to get at the root causes. But than again, maybe you don't need to get at root causes. Just quit.

The high numbs us to our pain. It transports us to a place we think is good, but turns out bad. As it ends up, the high can be approached in numerous non-drug ways. Runners talk about getting to a high at a certain point in their run, meditation, yoga, relaxation, can get you there. The mountains, the ocean, the forest, make people feel high. Achievements, accomplishments, successes, excelling at something, be it guitar playing, basketball, quilting, cooking, writing....a whole host of things can produce this "natural high." Of course, you have to do those things, you have to work at it. It's easier to walk out to the street corner, go to the bar, or get a prescription from a doctor that you know you're not going to use correctly. It's faster, it's immediate, but it's not real.

You can stop one drug only to find yourself addicted to something else. To gambling, to working, to sex, to religion. To all the above. Addiction is the mistaken belief that we can solve our longings for a better life, for a happier life, that we can "fix" ourselves, with a drug rather than with "blood, sweat, and tears." Such a belief is always a mistake.

The reality is there are hundreds of reasons why people use drugs. So where does this leave us? How can we beat something people want so badly? What can we do? Where do we get "the fix."