Jack and Dianne

Talcon 00:03We're going great. Okay, so today is February 16, 2025, and we're with Jack and Diane in Athens County. I'm Talcon Quinn. I'll remind you guys if there's anything you want to say, scratch that, please do. I'll start with you, Jack. How old are you?

Jack 00:27I'm 76. And

Talcon 00:30Diane?

Diane 00:3074.

Talcon 00:33Jack, where did you grow up?

Jack 00:35I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, until I was 13, and then my parents were a home further out on Long Island in Nassau County. So I grew up through high school in a place called North Woodmere, Long Island.

Talcon 00:49And then, how did you end up in Athens County?

Jack 00:52Well, I went to Miami University for undergrad work, and.... and I traveled a bunch after I got out of college. Wound up back in Dayton, where my wife, former wife, is from. I worked for the Dayton Free Clinic and Counseling Center, and some other members of the counseling center were starting a cooperative community here in Meigs County near Harrisonville, and the free clinic and counseling center had a retreat on this farm in Meigs County, and I went out on the retreat, and I really liked being out there. And I had already separated from my wife, and asked if I could join the community, and I wound up in Meigs in 1973. August of 73. That's how I got here.

Talcon 01:47What about you?

Jack 01:49Well, you know,

Diane 01:51I grew up on the east side of Cleveland, and went to college in Springfield, Ohio, and hung out with a bunch of people from Yellow Springs. They were part of some of the people who started the community in Meigs County. So came down visiting them. Had wanted to live in the country and grow my own food and have that whole experience. And we were "Back to the Landers", and so I started coming to Meigs County in '74. Bought some property there. Moved down permanently in '77. I think that's about it. Is that that where we're what brought you to the area?

Talcon 02:55What did your family do? Like, what was your family background?

Diane 03:01My dad was an engineer; mechanical, electrical, aeronautical. He worked for big corporations. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, And they were absolutely dumbfounded by me wanting to live in the country. They're like, "What?

Talcon 03:32What about for you, Jack?

Jack 03:34My parents were also dumbfounded about why me wanting to live in the community, grow my own food, you know, all of the things that I did when I first got here: milk cows, goats. My father was a manufacturer's rep for a variety of furniture companies. He sold industrial furniture for offices and for schools, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. Although she was very active in my elementary school years. Because you know, if we needed a mom to go out on a class trip, my mom was always the one that went along on the trip, and so that's what they did.

Talcon 04:21So urban middle class backgrounds?

Jack 04:25Absolutely.

Talcon 04:25Moving to Appalachia, Ohio to homestead.

Jack 04:31Well, the transition was helped by the fact that I went to a small college and went to a college in a small town, you know, where I got really interested in in rural existence. I while in college, I co-helped, co- facilitated, and then led a recreational program in a community outside of Oxford, where the college was, on a couple nights a week with a bunch of folks. You know, so I got my first taste of what Appalachia was like, and what the local culture was like, and so I got that and my first experience of that was in college. So, kind of clued me in. And how I, you know, one of the things about OU is when I was at in college. I came to OU for a concert and to see some friends here that I that I knew through some other friends, and so that was my first experience at OU. And OU was vastly different than Miami. Here, the hippie element had already really occurred at OU, whereas in in Miami and Oxford, it was barely noticeable. So.

Talcon 05:41How old were each of you, and when did you first learn about cannabis? Did you know about it growing up? Did you just like learn about it through a friend?

Diane 06:11 I first found out about cannabis in high school. There were a group of students that everybody knew smoked pot. I didn't in high school. I didn't start smoking pot until I was, I think, a junior in college, and it was one of my roommates that turned me on. It was much more available in college than it was in high school.

Jack 06:49I don't remember anybody. You know, there might have been kids I would have thought might have been smoking pot in high school, but I don't think we really ever came up as a topic. Or I didn't know anybody who who did for real, and it was my college roommate in my sophomore year in college that introduced me or turned me on to smoking pot. So I would have been 19 at that time.

Diane 07:17How old was I? I was probably let's see, 21.

Talcon 07:25What was like the vibe about it overall in mainstream culture at that time, like in high school and then in college?

Diane 07:38Well, it was definitely known that it was illegal, and in college, though, although it was illegal, there was kind of a casualness about it, especially in in like Yellow Springs. You know, you go to the movies, and the whole place smelled like pot, you know. And there were police officers around and everything and it was just kind of ignored. It wasn't like you know people were trying to bust everybody for smoking pot.

Jack 08:21So at Miami, being a vastly different school than say, well, than OU, people who smoked pot was a small percentage of the overall campus. But I will say that from the time I first started smoking as a sophomore to my senior year, the growth in the number of people who were smoking pot or doing any other type of drug grew quite a bit. quite a bit. You know, the late '60s was a era of turmoil and social protest and civil disobedience, and you know that just swept the campus, and of course, all the people who got arrested for protesting the war, you know, almost all of them were engaging in in drug use. I bought my first pot to sell in college, And what else? You know, I mean, there's just so many stories to be told.

Talcon 09:29So you bought your first amount of weed to sell. Was it like an ounce?

Jack 09:34I bought a pound and I divided into ounces and sold it.

Talcon 09:38And how would people? How did you know who to sell it to? How did people know to find you?

Jack 09:43Well, so I did this in my senior year. By then, it was easy to find people to sell it to. It was not something I had to do too clandestinely. I mean, by that time, the people who were engaged in smoking pot was a pretty large community. Again, smaller smaller percentage in the campus, you know. I have no way of really accurately estimating. Was it 10% of the campus, 20% of the campus? I mean, you know, we're talking about 12,000 students, and I can't imagine more than a couple 1000. At and that would be maybe at the high estimate, there were actually, but I mean, so as a person who smoked pot and did drugs, basically all my relationships were with people who did the same thing, and so it was you know it seemed like a large community, similar to like living here and being a liberal, and this being a very liberal community, and all my, almost all my friends are liberals.