A Lid of Weed - WTF

Actually I was in New Orleans, but sometimes visited some good-ol-boy dopers in MS. And they were selling this homegrown weed from Columbia in Mason jars.

Oh and the matchbox was literally sold in those little cardboard sliding boxes, about a quarter ounce.

 

Selling grass in the fifties and sixties was not an exact science. When you purchased grass the seller would take a lid off a glass gallon container and fill it with the grass and then place it into a baggie. Some people would be nice and fill the lid heaping full. Others were not so generous. If it fell off the lid, it wouldn't go into the baggie. Lids sold according to the amount in the baggie: so goes the expression two to four finger lids. They were priced accordingly: between five to ten dollars.

 

I never traced the origins of the word lid - I just knew that when I went to score, I purchased a lid. Really interesting comments though.
A couple of times I was about to ask where the term came from but after I bought it and smoked a little - I lost all interest in knowing.

 

A LID refers to an OZ

 

As I stated earlier - that was always my understanding.

 

Me too. :2thumbsup:

 

It never left, DDo and me still use the expression

 

next time I buy some i'm gonna ask my dealer for a lid and see what he says

 

When you ask - you want to "cop a lid man". Translated - I wish to purchase an ounce of your finest hemp kind sir.

 

Placing grass in a tobacco can is a practice that's been around since the '30's or 40's. I got this info from an old jazz musician that I know. When people first starting doing it they were just referred to as a can. But in the 60's when the expression lid was becoming popular the name was transferred to cans as well. When grass was first being sold under the name lid there were no scales used- everything was just eyeballed. So goes the expression 2 to 4 finger lids. The first time I ever saw a scale used was in 1971.
I believe that a lid being an ounce was more acceptable to the purchaser.
A lid varied in weight depending upon the availability and where you were.
I've seen lids that were as small as 1/4 ounce and others that were in excess of an ounce: whatever the market could bear at the time.

 

Hey bro, I fondly remember 4-finger lids for 10 bucks-many many years ago while living in Monterey

 

UHHHHHHHHH 3 I roll them really big.

Stay Brown,
Rev J

 

I was just a tickle in my dad's trousers

I don't think anyone knows how much a lid is, since it wasn't an exact measurement

 

Damn, I wanted to get that cubit joke in first.

 

Lid was the only term I knew in the late 60's on up. One reason for not using scales was the fact that a scale sat around as a piece of evidence if you got busted. I often read arrest reports that said scales, baggies etc were found and added to the proof of dealing. On the other hand I was often so fucked up I couldn't read a fucking scale anyway.

 

isn't a lid an ounce? an old friend asked me to get him a lid of that dank i always get, since we always switched off to who went to the dispensary, I was oddly confused, until he said an ounce.. so That's what I came to know a lid as..

 

Sort of.... A lid became an ounce once weighing became important. Before then it was a visual measurement.

 

Thats what I knew an approximate ounce was. Sometimes you'd look at it and think or say--'that's a nice fat lid". Or you could look at one and think--"little short on that lid." It pretty much stood for an approximate ounce before scales were used,like Skip said.

 

Thanks for the enlightenment, really appreciate it, as there is so much knowledge I was just born right outside of knowing. Like all the signs that say "No Cruising" while men just in their late 30's tell me how amazing the experiences were, and I'm 21, so feel so left out, but at least we can share and learn vicariously through the collective knowledge of experienced persons like you, so thank you. Though seems insignificant with only stating a sentence, it's that and all the others that make up the retelling of times past. Since I mostly have only dealt with dispensaries and 100% accurate weighing and usually more than purchased, but the lid method sounds amazing, even if skimped out, I'm sure the extra on other times would easily make up for it.