Hippies in Paradise: Tales From the Big Island

I came to Hawaii with very little idea of what I would find, short of great surf, great weather and great beaches-I didn't even know there was more than one island!

But Hawaii exceeded my expectations. Besides the sun and surf, I found a thriving sub-culture of hippie life, surviving at a time when employment was hard to find, especially for haole (non-Hawaiian) long-hairs, by growing and selling marijuana.

Unbeknown to me, Hawaii was at the cutting edge of quality marijuana production. At a time when most of the Mainland marijuana came from Mexico in tightly pressed bricks of mostly stems and seeds, Hawaiian pot growers were producing top-quality unseeded ganja, a much more desirable product. As this Hawaiian pot became known on the Mainland, a sizable underground industry was born, supplying the insatiable demand for better pot.

This book is a memoir of the way it was for us, the new crop of Hawaiian immigrants.