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Vice Blog

NEW YORK - HIGH IN THE SUMMER OF '98

My friend Sam has several of the best stories I've ever heard, garnered over the years by virtue of his outgoing nature and an uncanny right-place-at-the-right-timiness. The following interview faithfully documents events that really did transpire on an August night the summer before Sam started high school (known to 13 year-olds everywhere as "the last good summer").

VICE: Anything you want to do to say to set the stage?

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Sam:

This story takes place in those early days of marijuana when, because of age and inexperience, it could still become a frightening psychedelic.

And just to verify, you were how old?

Ninth grade. The summer going into ninth grade. I was about to go into boarding school. It wasn't a bad kids boarding school. A lot of kids had emotional problems. But they'd also have really good grades. A brainiac fast track to the ivy leagues schools. I had been living in London and came back into America for the summer and was hanging out with my childhood best friends

Greg, Jeff, and Rob

romping around and smoking with in suburban West Chester.

And what was your level of pot-smoking experience at the time?

I'd already been smoking weed in London. I tried to start smoking weed in the 7th grade. I thought I was smoking pot but some kid was selling me oregano for a year. Yeah, but then by the eight grade someone started selling me real weed. "Oh, this is what it means to get high."

Where were you?

In the woods, we were smoking Northern Lights. I don't know if it was my weed or my friends. You know what it was, my friend's older brother had come back from college with bags and bags of the nuggiest weed with like red hairs growing on them. So, we went to the woods with the bong that we made, called Bumblefuck. That was like an office cooler Poland spring bottle with a CPR resuscitation mask as a mouthpiece. We'd only been smoking for a year, so, basically we just ended up freaking out. It was a totally dark night; you know we're getting spooked out and were trying to freak each other out in the little area of woods just between people's houses. It's not really that far in the woods, but far enough to be far in.

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So you were all paranoid to begin with?

Yeah. My terror fantasy would always be serial killer and all these other kids were afraid of police and parents finding out and getting caught.

So you're a bunch of youngsters sitting around in the woods of Upstate New York, getting uncomfortably high, and what happens?

We see a few lights distant in the woods and hear the running of engines and all of a sudden these four ATVs just zoom over out of nowhere. We were all sitting there hitting the bong, and these ATVs just encircled us and we're just shitting ourselves. And these two people in helmets are just looking at us. One of them– a tiny man – starts to take off his helmet.

He was like, "Yo, whats up?"

We were like, "Hi."

He was like, "What ya'll doing?"

We were like, "Smoking weed."

He was like, "That's cool. Ya'll like riding ATVs?" (obviously an invitation to hop on the back of the ATV with him) and my friend Jeff screams "NO!" because he's such a pussy. The guy just goes, "Alright, that's cool. I'll see ya'll later." Just gets back on his ATV and keeps on riding with his crew.

And who was this guy?

DMX! [Ed

yes, the rapper] So, we were invited, essentially, to ride or die. And I guess my friend Jeff chose death for us.

Amazing. Nothing will ever beat that.

When we all came to our senses, we were like, "Jeff! What the fuck dude!"

I must have been terrified too. They were wearing helmets.

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What do you think brought him to Westchester?

I guess DMX lived in a house around town.

Amazing.

Maybe he wasn't even inviting us to ride; maybe he was just trying to make conversation.

ALEX DUNBAR