All that stressed out self-validating blather from yesterday was for naught and being in the hot seat today was fine and so…

Betcha can’t guess what I was doing 25 years ago today. I can remember it. I’ll let you guess. It was a Monday, if that helps.

I’ll tell a little Customs story instead. Canadian Customs, that is, in a small, northern outpost. Grandroobly told this story a few times in his later years. Grandroobly is the guy on the right in the gunfighter photoooo (as always, click the photo to enlarge). He doesn’t look very much like a grandaddy there, does he? He might look like a dad to some but it was quite a few years before he actually was a dad. A dad to yer favo-rite blahgger, that is. The other guy? That’s his friend Jim, who is one of Henry Sherman’s boys. And he still *is*, although Grandroobly is not. I’ll just betcha the Engineer was named after Jim Sherman.

Anyway. One day Grandroobly took his dad’s car to Canada. I don’t know why and it doesn’t matter. Now, here’s where I’m unclear. I *think* this took place well before I was born and therefore before the International Bridge was built (it opened when I was 10) and, if so, he would’ve driven droven his dad’s vee-hickle onto the ferry. In *my* mind, I always think of him driving across the bridge on this little adventure but I bet he made this trip on the ferry.

Anyway. He got over to Canadian Customs and they asked the usual questions. How long are you gonna be in Canada? Why are you here? Are you bringing in any liquor? Dah-da-dah-da-dah. Are you bringing in any firearms… Grandroobly was not bringing any kind of verboten contraband into Canada and he answered a polite “no” to all of those questions, including the firearms question, like he always did. And so, the nice customs man welcomed him to Canada (for probably about the nine gazillionth time).

Grandroobly did whatever it was he needed to do in Canada and got back on the ferry and went through more or less the same process on the American side. It was only when he had been cleared to re-enter our beeyootiful country (for probably about the nine gazillionth time), that he looked in the rear-view mirror and… YIKES!!! His dad’s RIFLE was in the back window.

All I have to say is that those were slower times. Taking a ferry to Canada. Nowadays there’s no ferry and it can take an hour or more to get back across the International Bridge. I don’t have any words about that but I often think that Grandroobly didn’t really want to live any further into the 21st century than he did.

Signing off for the night,
KW

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.