We will arrive in London, Ontario in five minutes and I am flooded with memories from the past: Paul and I stopped in London for the Shakespeare festival when I was a teen. We saw a rock opera called "Billy The Kid."

Paul and I drove all over this province at one time in his little Datsun. He let me drive it on occasion, so I guess I must have had a license. I remember grinding his gears to dust, much to his dismay. I must have ruined his transmission and probably did a number on his differential, as well.

Years later, Paul's eyesight got so bad that he gave up driving altogether. But it’s neat to see how well Linda and Paul still manage to get around town without a car. It's downright inspiring! (And I’ve had a ball taking taxis from A to B.)

One thing I must say about Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto: Public transportation is a real presence. A reliable way to get around. A person can even go to the store and pick out one’s groceries and have them delivered for just a few dollars, no matter how much food they bought.

That’s the way things should be: Taxis, delivery services, reliable, affordable public transportation. And there is money to be made in such a scheme. So why do we as a society throw so much of our money and resources at automobiles? Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, when you get right down to it.

This is not to say that Canada has all the answers. I’m sure I would not be able to take my dog on a bus into the hills, and I would have to rely on fitting into a bus schedule to get somewhere.

But if there was a reliable way to get around town, we could all cut our driving habits in half, and that would make a huge difference regarding our reliance on oil producing nations as well as the effect that drilling for oil has on the environment. Good for future generations, as well.

5:30 pm Port Huron. The café car announced on the public address system that it would close down and, feeling my health return in the form of a voracious hunger, I decided it would be a good idea to get a sandwich.

So, there I was, studying the luncheon menu with $15 Canadian burning in my wallet and the announcement from Hell is made:

"Attention! All passengers will have to get off, remove their luggage and board a bus that will take them to the American side. At that time you will have to pass through American customs. Your bags may be searched, and you will be interviewed. After you pass the through customs, you will board a bus that will take you across the bridge where you will re-board the train and continue your journey."

I nearly lost it. There I was, holding my cranberry juice and onion roll with roast beef and cheese, facing the nightmarish prospect of having to reassemble gear and transport it across a maze of systems: Returning to America was not going to be as easy as crossing the border into Canada.

“There’s a tunnel they usually go through — The first tunnel they every built under a river. A civil engineering marvel," I hear somebody say. "But the US closed it off to train traffic since 9-11 coz they're afraid somebody's going to want to blow it up. So we're going to have to take a bus over the bridge instead.”

So, I returned to my seat, devoured my meal and turned to the husky fellow who was sitting next to me, “Listen, man, I hate to say this, but do you mind finding another place to sit? I've only got a few minutes to get my bags together, and you're kind of in my way.”

“No problem,” said the linebacker, as he moved into an empty seat across the aisle, thinking that this process of reassembling my bags would take a minute or two.

Ten minutes later I am sweating profusely in a panic, trying to jam everything back into my bags and wondering where my “slumber masque is.” My seatmate had long given up on me and found another seat as all my stuff begins to spill into the aisle, on the floor, everywhere. But I keep at it, fully aware that losing my mind would get me nowhere.

Finally, my bags were all packed and strapped onto my wheeled contraption. I know that there will be a rush to the door so I decide to be the first one off the train.

I make a final check of the seat and head down the steps, clunk, clunk, clunk. People were watching me, figuring out my intent and they start collecting their stuff as well. I get my other bag, and when the train stops and the door is open, I am one of the first off.

Being frazzled, I desperately need somebody to talk to, somebody to lean on, somebody who can help me schlep my shit. I started chatting with a nice guy named Gerard from Chicago. Gerard is the man, an older guy from the Alan Ginsberg era. “What you got in there,” referring to my main bag, “a block of cement?”

It's OK I tell myself: This man has a sense of humor. And that is what is required here, a sense of humor. So Gerard and I exchange pleasant conversation about art, drama and whether it is a bad thing that we Americans appear to be losing our civil liberties.

“Definitely,” he says. “Soon they’ll be lining us up. And I’m always the one that they think is suspicious.”

Well, not this time. Gerard glides through customs like a hot knife through butter. A few questions and he’s out of there, ready to reboard the bus and cross the river.

I, on the other hand, am regarded with suspicion by a motherly looking customs agent who writes “C-1” on my entry application.

She asks the usual questions. Then she wants to go through all my luggage: Every bit of it. Every pocket, every crevice.

No problem, for once, I have nothing to hide. Maybe my innocence raises suspicions. Perhaps I look, as Uncle Mike suggested, “like a Palestinian terrorist!”

(It’s so much easier to glide through American customs with my 87-year old Mother by my side. But I don’t mind the scrutiny. I keep reminding myself, after September 11, “everything is different.” )

I find myself growing fond of the customs agent. She’s just doing her job, and she does seem very nice. Maybe this is the way she shows her love.

She finishes with the first bag, somewhat disappointed that she didn't find a baggy of something illegal. Now she wants to inspect the other bag. The bungee cord wrapped bag. The Nightmare Bag from Hell. OK, fine, go for it. And she does.

She opens my big bag and looks at it like it’s a giant Russian nesting egg.

“A bag within a bag,” she muses. “I don’t like bags within bags.”

“Listen,” I tell her, “I will never, ever carry a lot of stuff again.”

“Everybody’s packing heavy today,” she says in a conversational tone. But even though she seems to like me, I’m still a C-1, and she seems determined to find some piece of evidence.

“So, what’s your sister doing in Canada?”

“She’s a Canadian citizen. She married this Canadian guy.”

“Oh, I see,” she said. Then correcting my grammar, “She married a Canadian.”

The story is more involved than that, but I don’t want to get into it because she doesn’t seem interested in me anymore and, for once, I am not sweating profusely. She has done her C-1 inspection for the day, and I'm free to go.

“You’ll have to zip it all up yourself,” she says and signals the next person to step up to bat.

I carry all my stuff to the side and start reassembling it. Pissed off that I have to repack again.

But there is no hurry. There is plenty of time. I get it all together and throw my stuff into the bus, and after waiting for another half hour for everybody to clear customs, we get on the freeway and make our way back to the train that has crossed the tunnel or bridge that separates Canada from the US.

Enroute a lady notices that she doesn’t have her passport because she left it at the customs office. There is nothing anybody can do about it, however.

8:20 p.m. Gerard and I have drunk one entire bottle of a locally grown red wine and are working on our second, but this is white wine, which he calls “choir boy piss,” and I don’t know if he means this as a compliment or insult.

Gerard won’t touch any more of it, so I share the rest of the bottle with a French man across the aisle. He is more than happy to oblige.

My health remains good and is getting better. The weather looks pretty murky out there, snowing heavily for a while, but then subsiding and now clearing.

We are running about a half hour behind schedule, which isn't bad for Amtrak. And Gerard is snoozing by my side.

---

This marks the end of the TWENTY-EIGHTH installment of "The Last Hoorah." If you'd like to start from the beginning, then please click this page.

Thank you for visiting Chucksville.
Please sign my guestbook.

Return to Top of Page

Google search is simple: just type whatever comes to mind in the search box below and hit ENTER or click on the Google Search button. Google will then search the entire chucksville.com website for pages or documents that are relevant to your query!