The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History Read Free Page B
Author: James Higdon
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high school in 1971, enough boys from Marion County-including Bobby Joe Shewmaker-had returned from Vietnam as men who brought news that in the big cities, people paid a fortune for the weed growing wild behind their grandfathers' barns, forgotten remnants of the hemp-growing effort during World War II. Due to their upbringing, the young Marion County men viewed the criminality of growing weed as an afterthought at best.
"Oh yeah, it's illegal," Johnny Boone remembered being told. "So, don't get caught."
Thus it began.
Starting in 1971, a certain type of Marion County boy couldn't wait to graduate high school so he could grow himself a great big field of marijuana-and that's how the 1970s rolled into the 1980s, a phenomenon that did not go unnoticed by police and therefore generated a steady stream of headlines in the Lebanon Enterprise year by year, of which these are just a sample:
November 22, 1979: WHO GREW THE POT CROP? POLICE HAVE NO SUSPECTS
July 31, 1980: POLICE DISCOVER SEVEN ACRES OF MARIJUANA ON COUNTY FARM
August 7, 1980: MARIJUANA IS FOUND IN CORN FIELD
August 14, 1980: MORE THAN 45 ACRES OF "GRASS" ARE FOUND AND DESTROYED IN THE COUNTY
September 15, 1982: KENTUCKY STATE POLICE, SHERIFF HARVEST MORE POT
September 22, 1982: POLICE FIND 1,000 POT PLANTS IN RAYWICK BARN
July 9, 1986: POLICE FIND 60,000 MARIJUANA PLANTS
August 6, 1986: POLICE OFFICERS CONTINUE WAR ON MARION COUNTY MARIJUANA
An exhaustive list of marijuana-related headlines from the Lebanon Enterprise would go on for quite some time. Police were even stumbling onto it accidentally:
December 6, 1979: POLICE FIND POT WHILE SEARCHING FOR [COP KILLER] GRAHAM
September 22, 1982: HIGH SPEED CHASE RESULTS IN POT FIND
The story behind these headlines is partly one of how economic hardships manifested themselves in a particular community. By the 1980s, the family farm was crumbling-not just one farm or another particular family but the whole notion of one family sustaining a living off one farm, the notion upon which many in Marion County and elsewhere in America had staked their livelihoods for generations. At the same time, the free market eroded Marion County's primary crop, burley tobacco, from both ends-usage among American adults started to decline as the tobacco companies began buying burley from international markets for pennies on the dollar for what it cost them at home, even though Kentucky farmers practically gave it away at $1.60 per pound.
By 1985, the unemployment rate in Marion County reached 18 percent on its way to 20. While families found it harder to make a living on the farm, few viable alternatives existed for those who sought a way out. Many men from Marion County carpooled for more than an hour every morning to factory jobs in Louisville, working eight-hour assembly-line shifts at General Electric or Ford and carpooling home in time for supper.
The factory jobs inside Marion County, found in a small garment factory, a sheet-metal lithography plant, the bourbon-barrel cooperage and the Maker's Mark distillery-although essential to the county's survival during the Reagan years-couldn't begin to employ all the able-bodied adults looking for work. Many of these out-of-work farmers chose to break the law rather than take a check from the federal government for doing nothing. And as the stakes rose, it only increased their resolve to continue:
August 21, 1980: STATE POLICE SEEK INDICTMENTS IN FEDERAL COURT AGAINST THOSE WHO ALLEGEDLY CULTIVATED "GRASS"
July 28, 1982: STIFFER POT LAWS HAVE NOT STOPPED LOCAL MARIJUANA GROWERS
November 26, 1986: FBI SEIZES 37-ACRE FARM WHERE POLICE FIND DOPE
These headlines from the 1980s signal the changing game of cat and mouse between law enforcement and pot farmers. Stiffer state laws didn't work? Send the pot farmers to federal court. Not tough enough? Take their property. For every new weapon the law used to curtail the Marion County marijuana growers, the growers improvised
"Oh yeah, it's illegal," Johnny Boone remembered being told. "So, don't get caught."
Thus it began.
Starting in 1971, a certain type of Marion County boy couldn't wait to graduate high school so he could grow himself a great big field of marijuana-and that's how the 1970s rolled into the 1980s, a phenomenon that did not go unnoticed by police and therefore generated a steady stream of headlines in the Lebanon Enterprise year by year, of which these are just a sample:
November 22, 1979: WHO GREW THE POT CROP? POLICE HAVE NO SUSPECTS
July 31, 1980: POLICE DISCOVER SEVEN ACRES OF MARIJUANA ON COUNTY FARM
August 7, 1980: MARIJUANA IS FOUND IN CORN FIELD
August 14, 1980: MORE THAN 45 ACRES OF "GRASS" ARE FOUND AND DESTROYED IN THE COUNTY
September 15, 1982: KENTUCKY STATE POLICE, SHERIFF HARVEST MORE POT
September 22, 1982: POLICE FIND 1,000 POT PLANTS IN RAYWICK BARN
July 9, 1986: POLICE FIND 60,000 MARIJUANA PLANTS
August 6, 1986: POLICE OFFICERS CONTINUE WAR ON MARION COUNTY MARIJUANA
An exhaustive list of marijuana-related headlines from the Lebanon Enterprise would go on for quite some time. Police were even stumbling onto it accidentally:
December 6, 1979: POLICE FIND POT WHILE SEARCHING FOR [COP KILLER] GRAHAM
September 22, 1982: HIGH SPEED CHASE RESULTS IN POT FIND
The story behind these headlines is partly one of how economic hardships manifested themselves in a particular community. By the 1980s, the family farm was crumbling-not just one farm or another particular family but the whole notion of one family sustaining a living off one farm, the notion upon which many in Marion County and elsewhere in America had staked their livelihoods for generations. At the same time, the free market eroded Marion County's primary crop, burley tobacco, from both ends-usage among American adults started to decline as the tobacco companies began buying burley from international markets for pennies on the dollar for what it cost them at home, even though Kentucky farmers practically gave it away at $1.60 per pound.
By 1985, the unemployment rate in Marion County reached 18 percent on its way to 20. While families found it harder to make a living on the farm, few viable alternatives existed for those who sought a way out. Many men from Marion County carpooled for more than an hour every morning to factory jobs in Louisville, working eight-hour assembly-line shifts at General Electric or Ford and carpooling home in time for supper.
The factory jobs inside Marion County, found in a small garment factory, a sheet-metal lithography plant, the bourbon-barrel cooperage and the Maker's Mark distillery-although essential to the county's survival during the Reagan years-couldn't begin to employ all the able-bodied adults looking for work. Many of these out-of-work farmers chose to break the law rather than take a check from the federal government for doing nothing. And as the stakes rose, it only increased their resolve to continue:
August 21, 1980: STATE POLICE SEEK INDICTMENTS IN FEDERAL COURT AGAINST THOSE WHO ALLEGEDLY CULTIVATED "GRASS"
July 28, 1982: STIFFER POT LAWS HAVE NOT STOPPED LOCAL MARIJUANA GROWERS
November 26, 1986: FBI SEIZES 37-ACRE FARM WHERE POLICE FIND DOPE
These headlines from the 1980s signal the changing game of cat and mouse between law enforcement and pot farmers. Stiffer state laws didn't work? Send the pot farmers to federal court. Not tough enough? Take their property. For every new weapon the law used to curtail the Marion County marijuana growers, the growers improvised
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