Crossing Over

I was sitting in the front seat, sipping on a Tim Horton’s and reading Maclean’s magazine when we pulled up to the US border crossing at Niagara Falls. My wife had our passports in hand and I knew she had all the answers for where we were going and how long we would be staying, so I was not paying much attention as we pulled ahead for the twentieth time in the half hour we had been waiting in the Customs line. My wife was having one of her ‘cold’ days so the heat was cranked away up in the Chevy. I had peeled off a couple of layers of clothing in response to the 35 degrees Celsius, (92 degrees once we crossed the imaginary line) and was sitting there in my long red Stanfields’ underwear, Tilley hat on to reduce the sun glare, my loosely tied Corel snow boots on my feet. Transport Canada says we should be dressed for emergencies in winter.

The young fellow at the booth must have just finished a refresher course with Homeland Security because he had all his questions ready. He started off by asking if we were importing any fruit or vegetables, not being interested in guns or dynamite. My wife said no even though there were two oranges, former residents of Florida, in our snack cooler. My wife can circumnavigate the truth as well as anyone and she might have bluffed the two oranges into the States if I had not muttered, “exporting”. I figured that since we were not citizens or residents of the said United States, we could not import; being Canadians, we would be exporting things into the States.

“What did you say?” the keener asked.
“Nothing – I was just reading this article by Wells in the magazine – he rankles me some,” I said.
“Who is he?” the agent asked my wife as he indicated me, “Is he really a Canadian?”
My wife passed him my passport, but muttered, “Sometimes” under her breath. Mistake number two.

The young man refocused his camera on us so I gave the camera a quick smile, intentionally not matching the frown on my passport photo that Canada Customs insists be our demeanour when getting a passport photo. I should mention that I had shaved the night before to save time in the morning when we wanted to be on the road early, so I now had a grey five o’clock shadow. Also, Alex my barber had cut my hair really short so I would not have to be searching for a barber as soon as we got to Florida. Oh, and my bottom plate was hurting my gum so I had it wrapped up in my handkerchief and in my underwear pocket. Mr Stanfield surely knew how to design a pair of men’s long johns when he added that breast pocket! I guess I did not match the passport photo, because we were told to pull into the inspection station.

As we drove to the indicated space, my wife scolded me about making unnecessary comments to Custom agents. I should have known better, but I blamed it on the heat in the car. One other time I had told the border guard that we had no cigarettes, no booze – only fudge to declare. I guess that agent grew up in a home where ‘fudge’ was used for the F word, because they stripped the whole car and found nothing but the pound of fudge that we had bought at a candy shop in Mackinaw Island.

We were invited to step out of the car and into a warm office. They would not let me put on my zip-off pants nor my sweater. Those border security people surely do have good cameras and microphones because the old guy now interviewing us played the whole thing back to us, including my clearly muttered “exporting”. The older black gentleman looked at our passports and then asked me to explain.

I gave him my thoughts on the importing and exporting and his only comment was that is was a fine line I was treading. “I guess that explains that part, but why are you dressed in your underwear?” he asked. “I seen you Canadians wearing some funny stuff when you cross the border, but I got to admit in thirty-three years, I never seen anyone in red underwear. A man, anyways,” he said, smiling at some almost forgotten memory.

“Okay, let’s start again,” he said. “Are you importing or exporting any fruit or vegetables into the United States?”
“Two Florida oranges,” I said. “I guess we are re-patriating them, so to speak.”
He raised an eyebrow and my wife said, “Bill, shut up.”

He scanned our passports into the system and must have gotten a favourable reply because he gave them back to my wife. He confiscated the two oranges, glanced in the trunk, nodded his head at my left-handed golf clubs saying he was a fan of Mike Weir, and then said we could go. “But first, I need a picture. You,” he said indicating me, “come over here and stand where I can get the background of the Customs office. And take those teeth out again – I want this to be a true-to-life picture for the Customs Agents Monthly newsletter.”

I can see the caption now: “Canadian, eh?”