CHAPTER TWO
Shih / The Army
K'un / K'an
Prepare for a "war" --
a test about to take place.
The morning of February 24, 2003, at 5:30 a.m. in my home in the Pacific Palisades, California, an event happened that changed my life forever. I was asleep at the time, having a wonderfully weird dream -- the kind that makes you want to sleep long enough to find out how it ends. I dreamt that I was with beautiful naked women, who were all trying to attack me sexually, and more naked women were outside banging on the glass door demanding to be let in. My wife nudged me awake with her foot and whispered softly, "There's someone banging at the door."
Unsure if I was awake and responding to my wife's words or still dreaming and answering the call of the naked ladies, I got out of bed and made my way down the stairs. I crossed over to the glass front door where I could see a group of armed men wearing helmets and visors standing on the landing. They looked like a group of oversize trick-or-treaters in alien costumes.
One of the men yelled at me to open the door. For a brief moment, I thought, They must be going from door to door warning people of some impending disaster, or maybe an Enron executive has escaped and is running wild, so I opened the door. And as I did the armed men rushed into my house and started going from room to room shouting orders at each other.
The leader handed me a piece of paper and informed me, "This is a raid. And this is a search warrant giving us the right to seize what is listed on the warrant."
I took the paper and tried to read it, but without my reading glasses it was just a blur. In fact, the whole raid was a blur!
One of the men yelled at me, "Is there anyone else in the house?"
I answered, "My wife is upstairs." By this time my wife had slipped on a robe and was coming down the stairs, asking me what was going on.
"I think we are being raided."
"What for?" She replied halfway down the stairs.
"I don't know. They won't tell me," I answered back.
"We will tell you in a minute," the leader replied.
Shelby joined me at the bottom of the stairs, and we watched the armed men run from room to room yelling "clear."
"This is just like a movie," Shelby said. I looked at her and saw excitement in her face. My wife always amazes me with the absolute cool with which she handles everything. She even gave birth to our three children in a very cool way. She is always under control in panic situations. Little things like losing her favorite sweater will send her to therapy immediately, but a situation like having her house raided by twenty or so armed men was really no big deal.
"This is not a movie! This is the real thing!" the leader shouted. He seemed to be sticking close to us to see how we were reacting.
"So, are we under arrest?" my fearless wife shot back.
"No, you are not under arrest," the leader replied.
"So what's going on?" asked Shelby, not the least bit afraid.
I was standing there shivering in my shorts, but I tried to regain my composure and act like the man of the house. "Uh, yeah! What is going on?" I asked.
"We'll tell you soon enough," the leader replied. He hovered around us, directing his men as they searched the house. Shelby went back upstairs to get dressed, while I stood and shivered next to the leader.
"Do you have any drugs?" he asked.
I looked at him for a beat, thinking, This can't be about drugs, can it?
"Yeah, I have some pot," I answered, still shaking like a wet puppy, while thinking, Of course I have pot in the house. I'm Tommy Chong!
"If you tell us where the drugs are it will go faster."
"Let me think." Well, I know I have a big bud in the basement and some homegrown up in my office and a taste in the kitchen, now where else? The cop looked at me with a big smirk on his face. I could see I was making his day.
"I better call a lawyer," I said, not knowing what else to say.
"You don't need a lawyer," he answered back.
I don't need a lawyer? I thought to myself. I was a bit amazed by his response, because in every movie I've ever seen, the perp always refuses to talk to the cops until he sees his lawyer.
"You are not under arrest," he answered back, still smirking. "We will tell you when you can call your lawyer."
I felt weird. Something is not right here, I thought. I'm not under arrest, yet armed men and women in uniform are ransacking my home like World War II Nazi storm troopers. Dressed in military gear with automatic weapons strapped to their sides, they were running from room to room, carrying armfuls of computers to a vehicle outside, while helicopters hovered in the sky over our house. Was I dreaming? Or had I somehow been transported to Iraq, where this identical scene was being played out repeatedly as America attacked the tiny Arab country with full military force?
"Take Mr. Chong upstairs and have him put on some clothes," the leader ordered one of his men. I guess he was tired of looking at my morning hard-on. I was escorted upstairs and walked into the closet, where my clothes from the previous night awaited me. As I reached for my blue jeans, the armed guard took the clothes from my hands and expertly searched the pockets. He found my pocket knife and laid it on the dresser.
"Sorry, I'm just doing my job," he muttered, almost to himself.
I noticed that many of the armed raiders were embarrassed and would not make eye contact with me. They seemed puzzled and embarrassed as the raid progressed. They all knew me as one half of the comedy team Cheech and Chong, America's favorite stoner comedians. We had entertained them with our records and movies dating back to 1971. Some if not all of the raiders had grown up with our crazy stoner comedy that made what they were doing totally ridiculous.
As I slipped on my pants and shirt the guard casually asked if I had any weapons. Of course, I told him the truth: "No, I do not have any weapons! I don't believe in violence."
My answer did not seem to satisfy him, so he continued to rummage around the closet until he found our small cash box. He asked me for the key. I dug it out of our secret hiding place and handed it to him. He then ushered me downstairs where he reported to the leader.
"I found it," he said quietly. The leader and the guard made eye contact. They were quite pleased with themselves until they opened it and found cash and jewelry but no weapons. Thinking back, I now realize how badly they wanted to find a weapon, any weapon! They were happy to find the cash, but it was the weapon that could have gotten me a substantial jail sentence. I could have and probably would have received ten years in jail had I been in possession of a gun that day, even if it was properly registered.
Thank God I don't believe in guns. They scare the shit out of me. I believe that guns have a vibe of their own and will attack you when you least expect it. The three years I spent in the Canadian Army Cadets taught me all I needed to know about weapons of human destruction. I've seen what guns can do to people, especially when they think they are not loaded. And it's always the stupid people (Dick Cheney) who get hurt or hurt someone else by not respecting guns. Like one idiot in the army cadets who held a match to a live round to see what would happen. He lost his thumb and finger finding out. Now that was stupid.
The beautiful thing about comedy is that no matter what happens we comics always see the funny side. In the middle of the raid I had to take a shit, but when I started for the toilet, the guard told me to halt. I let him in on my predicament and he told me I'd have to wait until his boss gave me the okay. Luckily for all concerned, the boss told him to let me do my business but to go with me. I told him I didn't think that would be such a good idea. I'm sixty-six years old, and being anywhere near an old man when he takes a morning shit could ruin a man forever. They took my word for it and I was allowed a private dump.
As I stood in my own foyer surrounded by all these gun-toting agents, my initial shock subsided and I was no longer the least bit frightened. I knew we had done nothing illegal. Our glass factory in Gardena, California, was a legal operation. We were an incorporated company paying our fair share of state and federal taxes. In fact, the company was undergoing an audit the day of the raid.
So what was the problem? Weed? Oh, that. Yes, they did find almost a pound of grass that morning. It took them a couple of hours, but they found the weed that was given to me by my fans and for which I had a legal prescription from my doctor. The prescription was for my own personal medical problem, which was . . . stress brought on by shit like this!
Ironically, weed was never listed on the Feds' search warrant. The DEA raid captain had to hand write an addendum to the warrant that he had me sign. The whole operation was strange indeed. So the question of the day that had yet to be answered: What horrendous crime had I committed that took all these guys with the helicopters and the flack jackets and the automatic weapons and God knows what else to terrorize my wife and me? The leader, sensing the time was right, announced the reason for the raid.
"Bongs," he said.
"Bongs?" I repeated.
The DEA leader looked at me, his smirk getting bigger. He cleared his throat and announced in a rehearsed manner, much like a wimpy news anchorman, "Chong Glass and Nice Dreams Enterprises are the targets of this expensive and dangerous early morning raid, which was part of a nationwide raid on bong companies across America, called Operation Pipe Dreams."
This "crime-stopping" event that was being filmed by all the major television networks was the "brainchild" of the attorney general of the United States, who was announcing the details as the raids were being conducted.
"Bongs?" I repeated. I re...
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
