TIME FOLLOWS ME

CHAPTER SEVEN - LICENSE PLATES AND THE BORDER

CHAPTER SEVEN

LICENCE PLATES AND THE BORDER

Going down the road, or highway, you see an odd assortment of people and vehicles.  I would read the license plate and see where they were from, Arizona, California, New York, Manitoba and Ontario.  All these folks were going somewhere or had already been a long way.

Each day we drove and smoked.  We fell into quiet, just watching the white lines approaching then disappearing in the rear view mirror.  With the window rolled down, my arm resting out, you'd get a tan on one arm and not the other.  The wind blew my hair into the back seat.  Speaker enjoyed the ride us much as any of us.  He would have his blanket next to the knapsack and have his nose out the window for many a mile.

From looking at a map we could see that after Kenora, we'd be in Manitoba soon.  The trees seemed to loose height the closer we got to Manitoba and almost like magic they disappeared, were gone, and the road stopped winding, and went straight ahead as an arrow on a road as flat as a pancake.

To get to the States, we'd have to take a road south off the Trans Canada Highway.  Rich, "The Dude," knew about crossing borders.  I didn't, so I'd let him do most of the talking.  I had a driver's license with me as my only identification.  The prairie roads are very narrow and only lead to small towns on the other side of the border.  The farms are huge containing many hectares of farmland where the farmers wave back at you, after you wave to them.  Sometimes, you'd get a really big wave, and other times just a nice polite wave.  I guess they wondered if they knew who was in the car.  But most knew their neighbours and their vehicles so I was inclined to believe that they were just being friendly, one farmer to another.

The border was different.  Rich had a special hiding place for the bags of weed.  We would have a big joint before we hit the border was the plan.  Rich stuffed the bag in the heater hose of the Valiant under the dashboard.  They would never look there if they checked us.  You could see the hose hanging down attached to the manual sliders that controlled the heating.  It was a sweet simple design.  I think Rich and I did some singing as we went along and broke into song as we approached the checkpoint.  We might have been singing a Cat Steven's Song, "Goin' To Find Out" and I think this was partly out of nervousness.

It was hot and sunny and we had our windows rolled down to get rid of some of the smoke and it was also stinking hot.  The border patrol guard, all hat and mirrored sunglasses gave a quick glance in the back seat and saw my rather large knapsack and saw that it wasn't quite congruent with the rest of the load, at least to his eyes.  He asked Rich where he was from and where he was going.  Rich said he was going to California and had his American passport for identification.  Then he asked me where I was from and where I was going, and I told him Duntroon.  He asked me how much money I had after I told him I was traveling.  He said that wasn't enough money and he wouldn't let me cross the border.  Rich tried to talk to him into letting me pass, but to no avail.  The border guy said Rich could go through, but Rich just turned around and we headed back north.

We were a little annoyed but Rich said, "No problem.  We'll just keep heading west and go to the next border crossing.  They will let us through!"  I thought this might work so we drove on like ants marching to our own drum.