A Street Dealer

There was a tremendous demand for drugs in the ‘60s, and the street dealers addressed that demand and filled a vacuum in the market. It was a high-risk business with small profit margins. Students at the University of Colorado and Boulder High School were some of their major customers.

The person in this interview is an American Indian with whom I worked at a local manufacturing enterprise, Puritan-Bennet. He drives a new Saab and lives in an up-scale Boulder neighborhood. Although he didn’t want his name used, I wish to thank him for the interview and his willingness to talk about the past. He moved to Tucson with his girlfriend and his daughter shortly after this interview

So you wish to remain anonymous!

When I first came to Boulder, that’s how I lived. I didn’t have a job when I first came here. I did a lot of drugs. I was hitchhiking all over the country. I had been on the road since I was thirteen and I came here whein I was seventeen, maybe 18. It was about ’68 or ’69.

I was here in ’68 and ’69.

Maybe I sold you some drugs.

I used to buy drugs in the pool hall that was in the basement on The Hill, where the police substation got put.

We were dealing drugs even before the police substation went in up there. I was just hitchhiking and got picked up by somebody going to Boulder. They asked me: “Are you going to Boulder?” I said, “I guess so.” I came up from the South, actually. I got a ride to Denver and somebody pulled up and said, “You going to Boulder?” And that’s really how I ended up here.

So everybody had heard about Boulder.

Yeah! It was pretty well known, even at that time. Boulder was a pretty hip place to go. Of course, I didn’t look the same then. I had hair down to here. (He motions around his hips). Long hair was it! I looked more Indian than anything else.

Dope dealing at that time had already exceeded the brotherly-type of relationship among people. It was all for making money, even here in Boulder. I remember having to get a gun and going after someone myself – but they had already left town. I trusted people up to that point. We were doing a drug deal for some people in Wyoming . . . lots of pot, lots of hash, and I trusted somebody here and they’d set me up. I went after him with a gun! They had ripped me off and a bunch of people who trusted me with their money in about three different states. That was the ending of the brotherly-love bullshit.

Did you catch them?

No. It’s probably a good thing, because (otherwise) I’d be in jail. It involved a bunch of my friends all over the place and I had to face them. They knew I wouldn’t do something like that, but I was set up just beautifully. I was ready to blow some people away, but they were gone. They were out of state in a couple of hours – which was good.

I don’t like to look back at the ‘60s and all I went through. I ran away from home and was hitchhiking all over the country. I left home with a blanket and remember sleeping on the beaches in Massachusetts and connecting with drugs there. I almost got killed there taking some acid. I don’t know how I ended up from the beach there to Boston. I was taking crystal meth at the time. I took it with the acid, but it almost blew me away. I was hanging on for dear life on that one.

It was interesting – people’s attitudes in the ‘60s. I think, as a whole, they felt that our generation was going to manifest the love needed to bring about the change needed in the world as a whole. Then I realized: “Hey, this thing is never going to happen”! I realized that this was an illusion. Since love has to go through the heart of each individual, it has to take place on an individual basis. It could not happen as a whole like that because not everybody is ready for this kind of thing.

I was really rebellious against society. I was away from being in harmony with society for about five years. I decided, here in Boulder, to make the transition. I realized: “Hey. I can’t survive through dealing drugs anymore. It’s getting dangerous. I don’t want to end up in jail.”

So I started off washing dishes. I’ve done everything – dishwasher, cook, all kinds of (jobs). I stayed on the outskirts of a lot of movements. I was too much of an individual. That’s why I ran away from home in the first place. Even when I was doing drugs, I never went to a lot of parties. I never dug parties. I was a very private individual.

When I did do drugs, I didn’t want to be around a lot of people. If there was anybody open to it, they’d be with me, maybe at night or something. I usually liked a one-on-one relationship. If I went to parties, once in a great while, I’d only make contact with somebody I wanted to be with and leave the party or something.

Did you see a transition from the use of drugs to raise people’s consciousness to a hedonistic use of drugs? When the street people came to Boulder, didn’t they bring drug use down to their level, a sort of lowest common denominator of what amounted to drug abuse?

When I ran away from home, I was aware of myself coming from worlds that . . . this world didn’t make sense to me when I came into it. It does now, but it’s not my home here. I was into soul-travel when I was a child, although I didn’t know it by that name. It was a very natural thing for me to leave my body and to trip on out and do things outside.

After awhile, when I was growing up and that thing shut off in my consciousness – that’s what I did drugs for. I wanted to open up my consciousness again. It didn’t matter if people were on drugs or not at that time. There were a few people who were really wanting to raise their consciousness, sincerely, and not burn themselves out and not just for the purely physical sensations, but just to really groove on out from the normal state of consciousness.

As I hitchhiked around the country, I contacted people who were into dealing drugs on the East Coast. I (began) dealing from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore. There was a time when people were searching so much and getting into occultism and witchcraft. I have personally known some witches that have really been sincerely into it – (both) on the negative side as well as (into) white magic.

Was there a preferred drug that you had?

I always liked to do hallucinogens. I liked to move on out. I got as far as into the astral-world, but that was it. There was a time when I couldn’t even find my body one time. I couldn’t come back. It was really scary. I had somebody help me, but I didn’t know who it was at the time. But I did get some help getting back to the body.

Somebody in the astral-plane helped?

Yeah – somebody there.

What is the astral-plane like?

It’s not much different from here, really. It sort of coincides with what’s taking place here. As a matter of fact, the changes take place out there before you see it here. Life there can be something like fifteen hundred years.

The body you use (there) looks physically something like you use here, except that it’s starry. It looks like a million stars just glittering and stuff. That’s the astral-plane. You use that when you’re on that plane.

I was aware of this as a child. It was something that I used as a survival factor. I used to project and know exactly which car was going to pick me up when I was hitchhiking. I would check it out when they would pull over. If it didn’t feel right, then I wouldn’t get in.

A lot of things happened when I was on the road. The people I met . . . I think I wanted to find what love was all about and life was all about. But for some reason, when you start opening up to drugs, you can sort of get sidetracked. All of sudden you’re relying on something outside of yourself for something that you can naturally do.

I looked upon the straight society, the world of conservative, straight society . . . of course I was back East during that time . . . it was really rough to be against society there. It was more open in California back in the ‘60s. Back East they were still wanting to shoot people for having long hair. The attitude was there. If you had long hair, you were really an outcast. It had an adverse effect on what we really wanted to do at that time and what we were doing it for. It was just something that moved into society and we picked up on the drugs. There were a lot of changes that happened in the ‘60s in terms of consciousness.

I’m not putting drugs down, because, as far as I’m concerned, I’m glad I went through it. If I knew what I now know, though, I wouldn’t have done it that way. I would have put less wear and tear on myself and my body. But it did break-up patterns, and it helped me become aware of things beyond myself that I had not been aware of. It helped me, but it only helped me to a point, and that was it. The problem was (that I was) always having to come back. It made realize that this is one of the planes, that it is real, and that it has to be dealt with. You can’t just kiss it off.

Did you set up roots here and get a real job at some point?

When I was eighteen, I was making knives for two years. It was in a factory making Bowie knives and all kinds of other knives.

Was that in Boulder?

Yeah. Western Cutlery. It used to be up where Ball Brothers is. I was still doing drugs then, too. I remember being on acid and trying to operate those machines and things. Other people got cut all the time and I didn’t. I was pretty well-protected.

How has Boulder changed since the ‘60s for you?

I’ve always sensed changes here in Boulder. But then I realized that it is me who is changing – that it is my awareness as well. It’s what I saw in the situation. I was put in the same situations over and over again in drug-dealing situations and stuff, and (yet) each one was different.

You know, Boulder changes as you get more people coming in here, more high-tech coming, then everything switches over into mental mode . . . real fast-paced, a money-making mode. Anyplace we find in our world, and what our world looks like to us, is because of the way we view it. That same situation can be there in the same perspective, but because you’re looking at it from a different viewpoint, you see something different in it.

It seems that when one person is able to see more of a situation than others around him, then all of a sudden others start changing around him as well. They start seeing different things in the same way. To me, that’s what raising the consciousness is about. Since a foundation is being built in society here in Boulder, as well as on an individual basis, it has its interweaving.

Boulder has changed a heck of a lot. As a matter of fact, at this point in my life, I want to leave Boulder. It’s too big for me. I don’t like driving up and down the streets here. I think that if Boulder reflects the nation as a whole, then we are becoming more selfish and very greedy in our whole attitude, even though we have plenty in this country. I think Boulder has changed a whole lot. But I think a lot of it has to do with how I’ve changed.

Everybody wants to make a buck and everything is so expensive here. It has grown too much. I personally don’t like Boulder anymore. A lot of people have changed and a lot of people have gotten locked into the Boulder scene, whether it’s professionally, or drugged, or high-tech, or whatever – and I don’t know if any of them will move from that place or not. I don’t think a lot of them have, and that is what is setting the consciousness of Boulder right now.

Like Rigor Mortis?

Exactly! I think we can see it in our own lives. We get locked into a pattern, a certain way of thinking and feeling. All of a sudden we feel uneasy with that . . . the way we’re thinking and feeling, and we wonder what is going on. (We’re) changing (on the) inside and, all of a sudden we have to create changes out there as well.

Do you think some places are more conducive to consciousness-expansion than others?

Every city has its own feeling to it and its own state of consciousness because of the people that make up the consciousness there. Every city that I went to, and every town and every place, as I moved into them . . . I could feel the consciousness. You can feel what kind of town it is. I used all this stuff for survival. I knew what towns to avoid. You’d just get a feeling for it and move on. Being on the road, that’s what I had to do for survival.

There are certain geographical places where there is a certain energy there. There are certain things happening. There are certain people coming and going in certain areas all over the country. It depends on where you are at and what you bring to light for yourself in any situation, in any place, in any town.

When this country was founded, it was because people needed a place where they could be free and be creative. I think Boulder was like that when I first came here. You could almost get into anything, any religion, any type of sex, any type of drugs, and any type of anything here. Boulder had everything. It still does, actually, if you want to get into these circles of things.

Boulder had been very special to me up to a point, but now I feel it’s just like every place else. It still has the mountains and its consciousness, but now I feel like I’m ready to move on to someplace else. There’s so much to learn and this whole world is a learning experience.

The last paragraphs of this interview are comments made by the girlfriend of the man I had just interviewed. She had sat next to him during my interview with him.

I came to Boulder in ’66. I had just graduated from college with a degree. I didn’t come to Boulder because it was Boulder, but because my cousins lived here and I got a job through them. I remember Boulder (then) as a great place.

I worked hard in school and was pretty sheltered I guess. A wallflower, my brother called me. So I wasn’t into the stuff that was going on, like the Beatles. Otherwise, I didn’t feel like I was part of that kind of movement. So I just came to Boulder and worked at the National Bureau of Standards. It was a really scientific environment, and at that time it was really terrific because it was very open to people where were coming in. They had a lot of money and they were growing. It was a very fun kind of place to be. I felt kind of out of what was going on up on The Hill and at the university. I didn’t feel like I was part of the university anymore.

I remember down at the old hotel that never got going (the Ruins where the Justice Center is today), the people started a garden, and they had this garden going and then somebody went in one night and just destroyed it. I guess it seemed to me like that time was (a time of big change).

People, maybe at the place where I was involved, thought of all these people there as “the kids” . . . maybe being connected with the University or as street people. We thought they were going to move on, times were going to change, that this was going to be a passing fad. Then it got rougher and rougher, where the police were doing more things and people started to protect themselves . . . maybe feeling that they had to protect themselves from that.

I think that was also the time when some of those people who were my age (in their early 20s) started having real jobs and started moving in. The rest of us were saying, “Wait a minute. These people aren’t going to leave.” There were those health-food restaurants that started, like the Carnival Café, and they started becoming established. They started really settling in. I think people started saying, “Wait a minute! This isn’t how we had planned (our community) to change.”

Copyright 2026   S. Byron Gassaway