Thursday, 18 June, Chapter Four, “The Big Trip,” 1975-1976 >>>>> >A Teacher’s Journey from Southern Methodist University to North Minneapolis: Foundations for Overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools< >>>>> A Memoir >>>>> Gary Marvin Davison

“I assume that’s a joke.”

 

The Canadian border official, I quickly realized, was referring to a gray work shirt that I wore, purchased when Mom and Dad and Jan and I traveled to Hawaii during spring break of my senior year at Southern Methodist, which we projected as most likely the last such excursion exclusively for our nuclear family.

 

On the back of the shirt read, in jocular reference to a nonexistent institution:

 

“Oahu State Prison.”

 

“Yes, that’s just for fun,” I replied.

 

The official thought the wording so much fun that, sizing Barbara and I up as a couple of hippies in our VW van, and not feeling as jocular as I, he proceeded to empty our glove compartment, to uproot our carefully packed bedding, and chaotically turn the innards of the vehicle upside down.

 

He didn’t find the weed for which he was looking.  If he’d asked, I’d have told him that I was a confirmed teetotaler and despiser of all drugs, not any fonder of the medicinal than an advocate for the recreational kind.  And I’m sure that he’d have given me a disbelieving glance, with no more disinclination to ransack.

 

I’ll say this for him, though:  He was not disgruntled at not having found the sought stash:

 

“Enjoy Canada, eh?  Be careful, and have a good trip.”

 

That was my first experience hearing the stereotypical Canadian, “eh.”  Although by now, given my many subsequent trips to the nation that I now have to teach most of my students lies to north of Minnesota and other border states, I have actually rarely heard that short interjection, Barbara and I did soon after the border crossing hear the remark from a Canadian Mountie, who effectively asked us the next morning what the frick-in fizzle we were doing camping just a bit off a provincial highway.  We were awake, but he roused us from our sleeping bags a bit earlier than we had intended to rise.

 

“We’re  on a long, trip, sir,” I said (Barbara usually let me handle such morning inquiries:  She was not at all enamored with, though she understood the occasional necessity of, such ultra-adhoc locational accommodations).  “We were traveling late and pulled up when we saw an acceptable spot.”

 

“Hmmm---  well---   okay,” said the Mountie.  But lotsa campgrounds in Ontario, eh?  I need to ask you to move on.”  We surmised that we’d be bathing and dining on down the road that morning.

 

That was the second in-person “eh” that I’d heard in my life, from another very nice Canadian official.

 

Although many such ad hoc nocturnal arrangements lay ahead of us once we crossed the border at Niagara Falls back into upstate New York and thence to New England, we were not interrupted again in this manner until we had to roost at that auto dealer parking lot in Miami. 

 

Barbara was much happier for the lack of interruption.