00:00:01
Amy Ford: So what these are, they're mile
marker signs, and there's not a lot of routes
00:00:05
frankly around the state that get to a 420
mile marker. You've got to have a long highway that can
really go across the state to get to a 420,
00:00:13
and we have a couple in Colorado. And so consequently those signs kept getting
targeted, especially as people are coming
00:00:19
in from Kansas and into Colorado. It's right off the beaten path there, and
people like to yank it and take it home as
00:00:25
a memento. And especially so if it was a Colorado 420
sign. Phoebe Judge: This is Amy Ford, she's with
the Colorado Department of Transportation.
00:00:33
The department has been dealing with this
for years. A 420 sign gets yanked, they put out a new
one, and then that one gets stolen too.
00:00:41
What did you — what did you do about it? Amy Ford: One, we were replacing a lot of
signs, and so that was one of those things
00:00:48
that our maintenance guys have to go back
out. Because those signs actually do matter.
00:00:52
They matter for emergency response and others,
as they look at those signs to say, "Hey,
00:00:57
this is maybe where an accident was," and
things like that. So after a while, our guys got a little tired
of having to
00:01:02
replace the signs. And one of our maintenance superintendents,
a while back, said, "You know, instead of
00:01:06
us putting back up a 420 sign, which is just
going to get stolen again, what if we put
00:01:11
up a 419.99 sign? [Music comes in.] Just a 10th of a mile away, still accurate,
still in the right spot, good for emergency
00:01:19
service, but it saves us the hassle, maybe,
of having to have these signs replaced all
00:01:24
the time." Phoebe Judge: I think that one's kind of funnier. I think I'd rather have that one.
00:01:29
Amy Ford: Me too. Because it's sort of unique. It's definitely from Colorado, then, if you
know you got the 419.99 sign.
00:01:34
We've also done some other numbers, as well. So let's just say we have a 68.99 sign, as
well.
00:01:39
Phoebe Judge: These 0.99 signs are also getting
stolen, and other states with highways long
00:01:46
enough to have a 420 mile marker have the
same problem. Do you think it's — do you think it's funny?
00:01:51
Amy Ford: Oh, absolutely. In fact we, in Colorado, if we can't laugh
at some of what's going here, and when we
00:01:59
think about all of the neat stuff that can
happen on our roadways, or the terrible things
00:02:04
that happen on our roadways, someone thinking
one of our signs is clever and yanking it
00:02:08
is something that we definitely can laugh
at. Phoebe Judge: Do you know what 420 refers
to?
00:02:14
Amy Ford: You know what, I don't entirely. But if I remember correctly, it's — one,
in Colorado, it has become such a big celebration,
00:02:23
now, that I always think of it in regards
to all the events that we have here, various
00:02:28
events at our Civic Center and the like. And so I don't know all of the details, actually.
00:02:32
Phoebe Judge: If you don't know why someone
would want to steal a 420 sign, you aren't
00:02:37
alone. Tony Judge: Hello? Phoebe Judge: Dad? [Music ends.] Tony Judge: Yes. Phoebe Judge: Do you have a second?
00:02:43
Tony Judge: Yeah, yeah, of course. Phoebe Judge: I was wondering, what are you
doing on April 20th?
00:02:49
do you have any plans for April 20th, 4/20? Tony Judge: Hold on. [Pause, papers rustling.]
00:03:02
On April 20th there's some, couple of appointments
that could be shifted, if need be.
00:03:07
Phoebe Judge: Does the number 420 mean anything
to you? Tony Judge: 420? I can't think of a thing.
00:03:16
Phoebe Judge: It's a pot thing. Tony Judge: Pot? You mean like in dope, like in marijuana?
00:03:24
Phoebe Judge: [Laughs.] Yeah, like in—
Tony Judge: Oh oh oh oh, doesn't that have
00:03:29
to do with the, sort of, code for people who
want to let others know that they're marijuana
00:03:36
friendly? Isn't that what that is? Phoebe Judge: Yes, marijuana friendly. But it's more, I think, it's—
Tony Judge: Is this being recorded?
00:03:43
Are you—? Phoebe Judge: Yes, this is being recorded. Tony Judge: There should be a red light that
goes on, so I know for sure.
00:03:51
Phoebe Judge: We're trying to figure out what
420 refers to, specifically. Had you ever heard that before?
00:03:58
Tony Judge: Yes, but I don't know now what
420 means. Just that I recognize it, it's sort of marijuana
talk.
00:04:06
[Music comes in.] [Montage.] Speaker 1: What do you mean, 'what does 420
mean'? I don't know where it originates.
00:04:12
It's the time at which you smoke weed and
is a reference to weed culture. I was in the Navy actually, when I heard of
it.
00:04:18
Speaker 2: I used to think it was Bob Marley's
birthday. I'd sort of heard it in middle school, actually.
00:04:25
Speaker 3: I thought it was a police code. Speaker 4: No. Speaker 5: What does 420 mean?
00:04:35
Is it April 20th? Speaker 6: 420? It's a number. Speaker 7: It adds up to six. [Laughs.]
00:04:45
It sounds like a class that someone should
know. Maybe like econ? Econ sounds like it should have a 420.
00:04:51
[Laughs.] Speaker 8: I don't know where it came from. All I know is it signifies the plant, and
we all get high.
00:04:58
Speaker 9: Something about marijuana, I think. But I know it's near Earth Day, that's all
I really care about.
00:05:04
Speaker 10: I don't know. I've heard the myth that it is a police code. But I'm fairly confident that's not true.
00:05:10
Speaker 11: I know it's the date, and that's
when the people smoke the weed, and they like
00:05:15
it a lot to do it on that day. But I'm not sure how it came about. [Montage ends.]
00:05:22
Phoebe Judge: No one seems to know exactly
where 420 came from, but people have plenty
00:05:27
of ideas — wrong ideas. It's not Bob Marley's birthday. It's not a police code. It has nothing to do with the number of chemical
compounds in cannabis.
00:05:37
So, we thought we'd try for the actual origin
story behind 420. And like all the best stories, it begins with
a treasure map.
00:05:46
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [Music ends.] Steve Capper: The scene? People were wearing bell-bottom blue jeans,
belts with turquoise in them.
00:06:01
We had long hair, Afros, vests —
Dave Reddix: Leather vests — Steve Capper: Sometimes we wore country shirts
—
00:06:09
Dave Reddix: And puka shells, and we liked
country Western shirts and boots. Steve Capper: Bandanas, hiking boots or cowboy
boots.
00:06:16
It's kind of like some — well, the '70s. Dave Reddix: It was the hippie uniform back
then.
00:06:21
Phoebe Judge: This is Steve Capper and Dave
Reddix. They met in 1969 at San Rafael High School
in Northern California.
00:06:28
Dave Reddix: And you could hitchhike anywhere. You didn't need a car. I mean, I used to hitchhike out to the beach,
or Point Reyes, and people would pick you
00:06:35
up all the time. Steve Capper: Everybody helped each other
with rides, food, lodging.
00:06:39
Phoebe Judge: Were you stoned? Steve Capper: Yes. Dave Reddix: Oh yes. Steve Capper: All the time.
00:06:45
Phoebe Judge: Dave, Steve, and their friends
spent most of their free time at school sitting
00:06:49
on a wall, and eventually got the name 'the
Waldos.' And one day, the Waldos got the best news
any of them had ever heard.
00:07:00
Here's Steve Capper. Steve Capper: I was sitting on our hangout
spot: the wall at San Rafael High School.
00:07:07
And a friend of mine, Bill, came up to me
and he said, "Hey, Steve, my brother's in
00:07:12
the Coast Guard and he's been growing some
weed. He's afraid he's going to get busted by his
commanding officer.
00:07:19
He says we can pick it. Here's a map he drew for us." [Music comes in.] Dave Reddix: Well, Steve approached us and
said, "Do you guys want to go look for this?"
00:07:29
We said, "Of course." You know, we're like teenage boys, free weed,
are you kidding?
00:07:35
Some of us had after-school activities after
school. And so we decided to meet at 4:20 p.m. at
the statue of Louis Pasteur on the campus
00:07:44
of San Rafael High School. So we got there and we met up, we fired up
a doobie, got high, and we hopped in Steve's
00:07:52
'66 Impala with a killer Craig 8-track stereo. And we smoked all the way out there, and we
started our search.
00:08:01
[Chuckles.] It looked like a scene from Cheech and Chong's... One of their movies, because we'd get the
whole car clouded up with smoke and we'd be
00:08:11
listening to these 8-track tapes, and we were
talking and grooving and having a great time.
00:08:18
And we're excited to find this patch. Phoebe Judge: Steve, Dave, and their friends
would meet at the Louis Pasteur statue at
00:08:24
4:20, pile in the car, and continue their
search for this dream field of weed. Every single day after school.
00:08:32
Steve Capper: We would see each other in the
hallways all day long. You know, you'd go from class to class, we'd
see each other.
00:08:38
And we would remind each other in the hallways
that we were going to meet at Louis at 4:20.
00:08:42
So we look at each other when we pass by and
we go, "4:20, Louis." Dave Reddix: And the other guy would just
signal yes, nod yes.
00:08:49
Steve Capper: It was actually, you always
smiled when you said it. It was kind of a knowing smile.
00:08:53
[Music fades out.] We're going to get high and we're going to
go do that. So it was always exciting.
00:08:57
So we'd say, "4:20, Louis." And that went on for a few weeks, but eventually
Louis dropped.
00:09:03
We dropped off Louis. Dave Reddix: Well, it lasted longer than a
few weeks. It was several months, and then we dropped
the Louis part and it just became 4:20, it's
00:09:11
a little shorter. Phoebe Judge: How did it spread, do you think? Dave Reddix: Well, you know, we were using
the term in high school and other friends
00:09:20
picked up on it, and then their younger brothers
and sisters started using it. And then years later we would see '420' carved
into benches and spray painted on walls.
00:09:32
And we started going, "Hey, this thing is
starting to evolve here. There's something going on."
00:09:37
[Steve chuckles.] It boggles my mind, what started out as a
little private secret code joke has now turned
00:09:46
into a worldwide phenomenon. Phoebe Judge: A big piece of this is that
Dave's brother was friends with Phil Lesh,
00:09:53
the bass player in the Grateful Dead. So 420 made the jump from San Rafael High
School to the big time pretty quick.
00:10:00
Dave Reddix: And there's tons of people that
claim they started it. But in truth, the Waldos are the only ones
that have documented proof to prove our claim
00:10:12
—
Steve Capper: Lots of physical evidence, actually. Dave Reddix: And we keep the evidence locked
in a vault in San Francisco for safekeeping.
00:10:20
Phoebe Judge: No you don't. Dave Reddix: Yes, we do. Steve Capper: Yes we do. You've got to remember it's 45 years old or
so.
00:10:27
We definitely want to protect it from water,
flood, humidity... Dave Reddix: Fire.
00:10:31
Steve Capper: This is historical stuff. Phoebe Judge: This physical evidence is a
San Rafael High School newspaper from 1974.
00:10:39
One of the Waldos was asked: "If you had the
opportunity to say anything in front of the
00:10:43
graduating class, what would you say?" And the guy just answered, "420." There's also a 420 flag and then some dated
correspondence.
00:10:52
Steve Capper: Dave wrote me a letter in which... There's so many references. One, Dave sent me some weed and —
Dave Reddix: What I did is I rolled a joint
00:11:00
for him and I smashed it down flat and I put
it in the letter. And I said — at the end of the letter I
said, "P.S.
00:11:06
A little 4:20 for your weekend." Steve Capper: So we have that original letter. It's postmarked — we're talking, you know,
early '70s.
00:11:13
Dave Reddix: And people ask: how could you
think ahead to save all that stuff? It really wasn't that, we were just too lazy
to throw anything away.
00:11:21
Phoebe Judge: All of this documentation came
in handy late last month, when 420 was added
00:11:27
to the Oxford English Dictionary. Katherine Connor Martin: I was personally
thrilled to learn what the actual origin of
00:11:33
this word that I was familiar with in my childhood
was. Phoebe Judge: This is Katherine Connor Martin.
00:11:39
She's the Head of U.S. Dictionaries at Oxford
University Press. I can't believe that someone said, "Let's
put 420 in the Oxford English Dictionary,"
00:11:48
and people are like, "Yeah, sure. Seems right." Katherine Connor Martin: The OED is a descriptive
dictionary of English.
00:11:57
And that means that we don't judge whether
a word — there's no such thing as being
00:12:02
'good enough' to be entered in the OED. The only criteria that matter are, is it used
enough?
00:12:10
And this was actually a particularly good
example, I think, of a word to add to OED,
00:12:14
because it's widely known, but there's a lot
of misinformation about it. Phoebe Judge: So It's the digits that are
in the dictionary?
00:12:22
Katherine Connor Martin: So the main form
that we give is 420 as a number, because that's
00:12:27
what we found to be the most common when we
were looking at evidence, but we also provide
00:12:32
several other variants. So we have 4-20, 4:20, 4/20, and then four-twenty
written out as words, because of course it's
00:12:45
said four-twenty, even though it looks like
the number four hundred and twenty. And the variety and the punctuation there
is probably due largely to the fact that it's
00:12:56
often interpreted as a time of day or as a
date. So when you see that forward slash, someone's
thinking of April 20th, and if you see 4:20,
00:13:04
they're thinking of the time of 4:20. This word was challenging for some of our
British colleagues to understand, because
00:13:13
of course they abbreviate the months differently. And so for them, it's 24. [Laughs.]
00:13:19
[Music comes in.] Phoebe Judge: That a bunch of stoned teenagers
on a quest for a magical field of marijuana
00:13:25
are now part of the definitive record of the
English language is just wild. Unfortunately, that's all they took away from
it.
00:13:33
They never did find that field. Tell me about your plan if you had found it. What was your plan?
00:13:42
Steve Capper: Our plan was to smoke it. [Laughs.] Dave Reddix: We were going to smoke that weed
if we found it.
00:13:46
Phoebe Judge: This is your legacy. Dave Reddix: Yeah, I'm sure on our headstones,
it'll say, "These are the guys that started
00:13:52
420." Phoebe Judge: [Laughs.] Well, I want to thank you both very much for
speaking with me.
00:13:56
This was just great. Dave Reddix: Thank you for having us. Steve Capper: Thank you.
00:13:59
Dave Reddix: And happy 420, and thank you
for having us to your 'pot-cast.' [Laughs.]
00:14:05
Phoebe Judge: [Laughs.] Well, there we go. [Music at full volume for a few seconds.]
00:14:22
Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer, Nadia
Wilson, and me. Audio mix by Rob Byers.
00:14:29
Special thanks to our intern, Alice Wilder. Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations
for each episode of Criminal.
00:14:36
You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And if you're new to the show and like what
we're doing, write us a review on iTunes,
00:14:42
subscribe, or tell a friend. We're on Facebook and Twitter, @CriminalShow. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North
Carolina Public Radio, WUNC.
00:14:53
We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX,
a collection of the best podcasts around.
00:15:00
Shows like The Truth. The Truth is a radio drama that sounds more
like a movie than an old-timey broadcast.
00:15:07
It's odd, and surprising, and beautifully
written. In a recent episode, "Miracle on the L Train,"
a woman has a very unusual conversation with
00:15:15
a subway announcer. [Music fades out.] [Clip from "Miracle on the L Train."] Woman: What do you want with me?
00:15:19
Subway Announcer: In seven minutes, the tunnel
to Manhattan is going to collapse.
00:15:21
Woman: What? Subway Announcer: Everyone will be crushed
to death, unless you can get them off the
00:15:26
train. Kind of like the movie Speed, but different. [Clip ends.] [Music fades in.]
00:15:32
Phoebe Judge: Go listen. Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight
Foundation.
00:15:34
And thanks to Adzerk for providing their ad-serving
platform to Radiotopia. I'm Phoebe Judge.
00:15:42
This is Criminal. Jingle: Radiotopia. From PRX.