On Black Friday five years ago, your wife and I told a gathering of people (at my house during our family’s traditional Leftover Potluck) that we were going to try to open one of the two pot shops in town.

Since nothing really seems “real” until it’s named, naturally, the friends and family who’d heard our announcement wanted to help us find the perfect name for this future shop of ours.

My mother’s “Toke of the Town” suggestion was roundly applauded, though I was pretty sure there were naming restrictions as per the Cannabis Control Commission that prohibited “toke” and other “drug slang.” Of course, “Best Buds” came up, given the deep friendship your wife and I had developed in the “thinking about it stages” that had us spending regular time together in the preceding months. But it wasn’t until my son Asher suggested “Littleton Apothecary” that your wife and I knew we had a winner.

Your wife and I—with the help and support of many of those gathered friends and family—were going to work cooperatively, as 50/50 partners, to create something meaningful and important and local.

Embryonic as it was, by announcing our intentions and naming the shop, we were on the hook to get the job done.

Five years later, the job remains not only not done but also, by all appearances, not ever started.

And if it is the case that your wife was paid not to open—a theory I’ve been grappling with for only the last nine months—I (and others) might begin to wonder who with the necessary million-dollar-deep pockets would want to see that happen and could convince your wife to deny and delay and deceive the Town of Littleton?

TTYS,

Jkb