The Story of 420 (published in the book "Higher", by Dan Michaels)
By Dave Reddix and Steve Capper of the Waldos
In high school we used to hang out on a wall in the middle of our high school campus in San Rafael, California. We always had the same positions- Steve would sit on the far left, Dave was always to his right, and then it was Larry, Jeff, and Mark- and we’d sit up there every day joking, people watching, and doing impressions to make each other laugh. We called ourselves the “Waldos” and had a lot of fun there. But we never got high at the wall- we went to other places to do that.
The story of “420” really begins with an article Waldo Steve found in Rolling Stone magazine in 1970. Back then it was a true counterculture publication and there was an article about some guys down on the San Francisco Peninsula who were creating the first 3D laser holograms. The article said they were in their offices around the clock, seven days a week, working on an entire city of holographic light. We thought that was incredible. No one had ever seen holograms like that before!
Being the bored high school kids we were, we decided to take a field trip to see for ourselves. Steve drove down there first to check it out and pounded on their back door. When they answered he said “Can I see your city of holographic light?” and they were like “Sure.” They invited him in and enjoyed Steve’s enthusiasm so much they invited him back. The next day at school Steve went back to the Waldos and said, “Hey you got to see this stuff.” So, of course, we all got high and went down there and spent an evening with these scientists. And by the time we left, they were all laughing and hugging us. They couldn’t believe that teenagers were into this, especially (unbeknownst to them) stoned teenagers, and said we could come by anytime we wanted.
We were inspired and decided that instead of going to parties and football games on Friday nights, we should go on more adventures to meet and see as many weird people, places, and things as we could. Waldo Dave called these adventures “safaris” and each week we challenged each other to go on new safaris. We’d get high and then go meet all of these weird people. At one point Waldo Steve even had a safari hat.
Then one day in September 1971, a friend of ours named Bill McNulty tells Steve, “Hey, my brother-in-law is in the United States Coast Guard, and he and these Coast Guard guys have been growing some weed. They think their commanding officer is going to bust them, so they abandoned the patch and said that we could pick it up. And he made a map.” Steve showed all the Waldos the map and we figured out the location was in Point Reyes, maybe 45 minutes west of San Rafael, on a rural wind-swept patch with a lot of cows, forest, and crashing surf.
This was a no brainer: free weed! On our next safari we got out of school around 3:15 pm, but there were after school sports that lasted about an hour (Waldo Larry was a football player, and Waldo Jeff was a manager for the football team). So we all agreed we’d meet at 4:20, when everyone was done. We picked a statue on campus of Louis Pasteur as the meeting spot because we all knew we could sneak a quick puff on the deserted campus before our adventure. We all hooked up at 4:20, got high, and then hopped in Steve’s ‘66 Impala to search for the patch.
We got high all the way out there and then we searched. We scoured the place and didn't find it, but we vowed to keep going out there until we did. Every day we would pass each other in the hallway and say “420 Louie” to confirm our meeting time to go out and search. For several weeks we went out there searching every day. After about the third or fourth week we couldn’t find the patch, so we gave up on the search but we kept using 420 as a secret catchphrase for smoking week. We dropped the “Louie” part and would just smile at each other and say “420”.
It was a reminder, like hey, weed. That was our thing: 420 and a smile. We used it around our parents, teachers, cops, whoever, and they never knew what we were talking about. Waldo Jeff’s dad just happened to be one of the highest lever narcotics officers in the state of California, and we used to pinch weed out of his trunk when he got back from big busts- but 420 has nothing to do with the police code for pot arrests.
So we kept on taking safaris and we kept on saying “420”, and it kind of spread through our school and to our younger brothers. It spread to other high schools and spread further when we went off to college. All the Waldos were using 420 with college people from different cities and different states. In 1975, Dave was hired by his brother Pat, a good friend of Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, to be a roadie for Phil’s side bands Too Loose to Truck and Seastones while the Dead was on hiatus from touring. Dave was getting high and mentioning 420 with guys like David Crosby, Terry Haggarty, and Phil Lesh. They kind of chuckled it off, but 420 spread through the roadies, people backstage, and eventually the Dead community too.
In the early 1990s we started noticing people writing 420 on benches, spraying it on signs, it started popping up a lot. Around 1998 Larry called up Steve and said, “Hey I’m seeing 420 everywhere; it’s even on T-shirts and mugs.” So Steve contacted High Times and got in touch with Steven Hager, the editor at the time. Steve told him our story and that we had all the proof in a huge vault in San Francisco at the Wells Fargo’s world headquarters, which ironically is at 420 Montgomery St. Hager flew out for a weekend, hung out with us, and we showed him all of our early 1970s letters, records, documents, newspaper clippings, our original 420 flag, and other stuff- all of it with 420 referenced in it somewhere. Hager published an article in High Times about us in 1998 and set the record straight.
Now we’re all in our sixties and it amazes us to see how popular 420 has become. What started as our secret code for getting high has turned into something much bigger than the Waldos. April 20 (4/20) is now a worldwide stoner holiday. There is an entry for 420 in the Oxford English Dictionary. The California Legislature even passed the first medical marijuana bill and named it Senate Bill 420. Now 420 is everywhere!