I was reminded of another border crossing tale of woe, this one much shorter and not as funny as yesterday’s. When I was about 12, I went to a youth rally in Detroit or Rochester Hills or some other place in Michigan. We went down with a friend from church driving and picked up her niece on our way from Kitchener to Windsor.
The van we were in was pretty much the best conveyance in which I have ever been conveyed. It was super-plush on the inside with four captains chairs (the rear ones reclined and swiveled) and a bench seat in the back that folded down into a bed. There was a TV and VCR, curtains, bells, whistles, partridges, pear trees, etc. etc. I think it belonged to a couple from our church who used it to do six-month road trips or something.
The problem at the border were manifold. Our driver/chaperon was from Texas. She had an Ontario driver’s license and had lived in Canada for many, many years, but was technically an American. All of the kids in the van were Canadians and only one of them was related to her. This difficulty was compounded by the fact that one of our number had not brought a birth certificate/letter from family authorizing this little jaunt. The van also had Oklahoma license plates on it. We were stuck at the border for about two hours and missed the entirety of the Friday night program of the youth rally and very nearly had to sleep in the rapidly-less-luxurious-when-contemplating-spending-the-night-in-it van, but fortunately our billet had waited around at the church building for us.
I don’t remember difficulties in re-crossing the border which is either a sign of my faulty memory or (and this is equally likely), the Canadians just waved us through after making sure we weren’t importing any oranges.
