420 | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

Amy Ford: So what these are, they're mile marker signs, and there's not a lot of routes
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,
and we have a couple in Colorado. And so consequently those signs kept getting targeted, especially as people are coming
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
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.
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.
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
that our maintenance guys have to go back out. Because those signs actually do matter.
They matter for emergency response and others, as they look at those signs to say, "Hey,
this is maybe where an accident was," and things like that. So after a while, our guys got a little tired of having to
replace the signs. And one of our maintenance superintendents, a while back, said, "You know, instead of
us putting back up a 420 sign, which is just going to get stolen again, what if we put
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
service, but it saves us the hassle, maybe, of having to have these signs replaced all
the time." Phoebe Judge: I think that one's kind of funnier. I think I'd rather have that one.
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.
We've also done some other numbers, as well. So let's just say we have a 68.99 sign, as well.
Phoebe Judge: These 0.99 signs are also getting stolen, and other states with highways long
enough to have a 420 mile marker have the same problem. Do you think it's — do you think it's funny?
Amy Ford: Oh, absolutely. In fact we, in Colorado, if we can't laugh at some of what's going here, and when we
think about all of the neat stuff that can happen on our roadways, or the terrible things
that happen on our roadways, someone thinking one of our signs is clever and yanking it
is something that we definitely can laugh at. Phoebe Judge: Do you know what 420 refers to?
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,
now, that I always think of it in regards to all the events that we have here, various
events at our Civic Center and the like. And so I don't know all of the details, actually.
Phoebe Judge: If you don't know why someone would want to steal a 420 sign, you aren't
alone. Tony Judge: Hello? Phoebe Judge: Dad? [Music ends.] Tony Judge: Yes. Phoebe Judge: Do you have a second?
Tony Judge: Yeah, yeah, of course. Phoebe Judge: I was wondering, what are you doing on April 20th?
do you have any plans for April 20th, 4/20? Tony Judge: Hold on. [Pause, papers rustling.]
On April 20th there's some, couple of appointments that could be shifted, if need be.
Phoebe Judge: Does the number 420 mean anything to you? Tony Judge: 420? I can't think of a thing.
Phoebe Judge: It's a pot thing. Tony Judge: Pot? You mean like in dope, like in marijuana?
Phoebe Judge: [Laughs.] Yeah, like in— Tony Judge: Oh oh oh oh, doesn't that have
to do with the, sort of, code for people who want to let others know that they're marijuana
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?
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.
Phoebe Judge: We're trying to figure out what 420 refers to, specifically. Had you ever heard that before?
Tony Judge: Yes, but I don't know now what 420 means. Just that I recognize it, it's sort of marijuana talk.
[Music comes in.] [Montage.] Speaker 1: What do you mean, 'what does 420 mean'? I don't know where it originates.
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.
Speaker 2: I used to think it was Bob Marley's birthday. I'd sort of heard it in middle school, actually.
Speaker 3: I thought it was a police code. Speaker 4: No. Speaker 5: What does 420 mean?
Is it April 20th? Speaker 6: 420? It's a number. Speaker 7: It adds up to six. [Laughs.]
It sounds like a class that someone should know. Maybe like econ? Econ sounds like it should have a 420.
[Laughs.] Speaker 8: I don't know where it came from. All I know is it signifies the plant, and we all get high.
Speaker 9: Something about marijuana, I think. But I know it's near Earth Day, that's all I really care about.
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.
Speaker 11: I know it's the date, and that's when the people smoke the weed, and they like
it a lot to do it on that day. But I'm not sure how it came about. [Montage ends.]
Phoebe Judge: No one seems to know exactly where 420 came from, but people have plenty
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.
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.
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.
We had long hair, Afros, vests — Dave Reddix: Leather vests — Steve Capper: Sometimes we wore country shirts —
Dave Reddix: And puka shells, and we liked country Western shirts and boots. Steve Capper: Bandanas, hiking boots or cowboy boots.
It's kind of like some — well, the '70s. Dave Reddix: It was the hippie uniform back then.
Phoebe Judge: This is Steve Capper and Dave Reddix. They met in 1969 at San Rafael High School in Northern California.
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
up all the time. Steve Capper: Everybody helped each other with rides, food, lodging.
Phoebe Judge: Were you stoned? Steve Capper: Yes. Dave Reddix: Oh yes. Steve Capper: All the time.
Phoebe Judge: Dave, Steve, and their friends spent most of their free time at school sitting
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.
Here's Steve Capper. Steve Capper: I was sitting on our hangout spot: the wall at San Rafael High School.
And a friend of mine, Bill, came up to me and he said, "Hey, Steve, my brother's in
the Coast Guard and he's been growing some weed. He's afraid he's going to get busted by his commanding officer.
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?"
We said, "Of course." You know, we're like teenage boys, free weed, are you kidding?
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
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
'66 Impala with a killer Craig 8-track stereo. And we smoked all the way out there, and we started our search.
[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
listening to these 8-track tapes, and we were talking and grooving and having a great time.
And we're excited to find this patch. Phoebe Judge: Steve, Dave, and their friends would meet at the Louis Pasteur statue at
4:20, pile in the car, and continue their search for this dream field of weed. Every single day after school.
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.
And we would remind each other in the hallways that we were going to meet at Louis at 4:20.
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.
Steve Capper: It was actually, you always smiled when you said it. It was kind of a knowing smile.
[Music fades out.] We're going to get high and we're going to go do that. So it was always exciting.
So we'd say, "4:20, Louis." And that went on for a few weeks, but eventually Louis dropped.
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
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
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.
And we started going, "Hey, this thing is starting to evolve here. There's something going on."
[Steve chuckles.] It boggles my mind, what started out as a little private secret code joke has now turned
into a worldwide phenomenon. Phoebe Judge: A big piece of this is that Dave's brother was friends with Phil Lesh,
the bass player in the Grateful Dead. So 420 made the jump from San Rafael High School to the big time pretty quick.
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
— Steve Capper: Lots of physical evidence, actually. Dave Reddix: And we keep the evidence locked in a vault in San Francisco for safekeeping.
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.
We definitely want to protect it from water, flood, humidity... Dave Reddix: Fire.
Steve Capper: This is historical stuff. Phoebe Judge: This physical evidence is a San Rafael High School newspaper from 1974.
One of the Waldos was asked: "If you had the opportunity to say anything in front of the
graduating class, what would you say?" And the guy just answered, "420." There's also a 420 flag and then some dated correspondence.
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
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.
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.
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.
Phoebe Judge: All of this documentation came in handy late last month, when 420 was added
to the Oxford English Dictionary. Katherine Connor Martin: I was personally thrilled to learn what the actual origin of
this word that I was familiar with in my childhood was. Phoebe Judge: This is Katherine Connor Martin.
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,"
and people are like, "Yeah, sure. Seems right." Katherine Connor Martin: The OED is a descriptive dictionary of English.
And that means that we don't judge whether a word — there's no such thing as being
'good enough' to be entered in the OED. The only criteria that matter are, is it used enough?
And this was actually a particularly good example, I think, of a word to add to OED,
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?
Katherine Connor Martin: So the main form that we give is 420 as a number, because that's
what we found to be the most common when we were looking at evidence, but we also provide
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
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
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,
they're thinking of the time of 4:20. This word was challenging for some of our British colleagues to understand, because
of course they abbreviate the months differently. And so for them, it's 24. [Laughs.]
[Music comes in.] Phoebe Judge: That a bunch of stoned teenagers on a quest for a magical field of marijuana
are now part of the definitive record of the English language is just wild. Unfortunately, that's all they took away from it.
They never did find that field. Tell me about your plan if you had found it. What was your plan?
Steve Capper: Our plan was to smoke it. [Laughs.] Dave Reddix: We were going to smoke that weed if we found it.
Phoebe Judge: This is your legacy. Dave Reddix: Yeah, I'm sure on our headstones, it'll say, "These are the guys that started
420." Phoebe Judge: [Laughs.] Well, I want to thank you both very much for speaking with me.
This was just great. Dave Reddix: Thank you for having us. Steve Capper: Thank you.
Dave Reddix: And happy 420, and thank you for having us to your 'pot-cast.' [Laughs.]
Phoebe Judge: [Laughs.] Well, there we go. [Music at full volume for a few seconds.]
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The Colorado Department of Transportation says the 420 mile markers on the state’s highways were stolen so often, they had to replace them with 419.99 mile markers. Many people know that “420” represents marijuana — hence the popularity of the mile markers — but very few know why. It’s not a police code, it’s not the number of chemical compounds in cannabis, and it’s certainly not Bob Marley’s birthday. Today on the show, we try to find the real story and in the process meet Steve Capper and Dave Reddix who, as high schoolers, followed a treasure map in search of the illicit crop.

Music in the episode “Ice Cream Sandwich” by Podington Bear “Infrastructure” by Scott Holmes “Bit Rio” by Podington Bear “Good Times” by Podington Bear

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Episode 64 originally published 4/7/2017 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-64-420-4-7-2017

Brief Summary

The episode reveals the origin of 420, featuring the Waldos and their high school adventures in California.

Key points

The 420 Sign Theft. Amy Ford discusses the ongoing theft of 420 mile marker signs in Colorado.
The 419.99 Solution. To combat sign theft, Colorado officials decided to replace 420 signs with 419.99 signs.
The Origin of 420. The Waldos share how the term '420' originated from their high school days.
420 in the Dictionary. The term '420' is officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's sort of unique.

Amy Ford on the 419.99 sign.

1:30WatchDec 8, 2022

Tension

30/ 100Low tension

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