In 1975 I had a sort-of girlfriend named Anne, and she had a sort-of boyfriend named Tim,\u00a0and Tim and I got to be pretty good friends mostly because we admired each other. He admired the motorcycle that I kept in my 3rd floor dorm room at Macalester College and my exquisite ponytail, and I admired Tim’s beard, his IQ of 4000 and his Digitoke<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n
Tim<\/p><\/div>\r\n
Bored college students were always looking for new ways to inhale in those days and Tim, being a brilliant engineer, invented the Digitoke. The Digitoke was a modified air compressor with a bowl and screen arrangement on the top that could hold half an ounce of reefer. The rest of the machine was a science fiction-like amalgam of blinking lights, keyboards, readouts, and a hose that terminated in a gas mask-like device that was secured to the head with elastic straps. Tim would invite his friends over, fill up the bowl and use a keyboard to type in length of hit, proportion of air \/ marijuana mixture, and strength of air flow. He’d strap the mask on his customer, grin his fiendish grin, turn on the Digitoke, and play the flame of an acetylene torch over the bowl. After we’d all had our turn we’d listen to Tim’s state of the art stereo, in silence. We’d listen either to some record on the Impulse label (Coltrane<\/a> or Pharaoh Sanders<\/a>) or whatever new Mountain<\/a> record Tim had. This went on for a few weeks until we got bored again.<\/p>\r\n