My Aunt Ruby was never one to shy away from an honest conversation.
She was a regular fixture at our home growing up, and was well known for being blunt to the point of rudeness.
I always loved her dearly, because she would sneak me little candies out of her purse when my folks weren’t watching. When I was a teenager, Aunt Ruby started spilling the tea on the old family secrets, the things my mom and dad would never tell me in a million years. It turns out my grandparents were cannabis farmers, and most of the family nest egg came from the old marijuana business. Right after the Vietnam war, my grandpa came home and fell in love with a war protestor, who was also a cannabis farmer. He went with her back to her property, and decided to help her expand the marijuana business. The old man had developed a taste for high grade cannabis when he was overseas, and thought the American stuff tasted like garbage. Working together, my grandparents turned her small grow into the largest marijuana operation in this part of the state. Grandma handled all of the marijuana business, and grandpa worked just as hard to make sure no one messed with granda. Because of his violet record in the war, neither the cops nor the other marijuana rivals wanted to mess around with him. After my mom was born, they sold off the marijuana farm to one of the rivals, and moved to start a new life, free of any criminal enterprise.