For a recent mini-vacation Mrs. Curmudgeon surprised me with the idea “lets go to that ‘end of the road’ place you’ve been yammering about”. Whoa! Married all those years and she still surprises me!
There’s a hitch. Many moons ago she announced she no longer sleeps on dirt and also that she doesn’t ride on the back of my motorcycles. So my plans of rugged manly camping would be interpreted as “getting eaten by mosquitoes in the land of moose like an idiot”. I had to recalibrate.
Yet there she was, offering to go on one of my wild goose chases. She’s a keeper!
I dialed back a bit and we picked the tamest of options. Then, because time happens when I’m not paying attention, we were on the road before I realized what we were doing.
How shall I describe the places we went? Despite being a blogger I’ll keep specifics to myself. Partly in the interest of privacy and partly to protect my favorite spots. Every fisherman has the places they won’t tell anyone about.
How to tell a story that is fact free? It’s a challenge. I looked about for inspiration and saw it on TV. I’ll follow the example I saw there. Just keep in mind, I actually did the stuff. Unlike the dweebs on the boob tube who generally haven’t done fuck all and make up lies about it; I did the stuff. I may be obfuscating irrelevant details but I have legitimate and morally acceptable reasons for doing so.
After I was done kicking Corn Pop’s ass I drove my Corvette through my three home states and then on to the border with Manitoba…
…I was in my car, which is a very good car… the best of cars really. I and I thought, why shouldn’t I go to McDonalds, in Winnipeg. Why not? Winnepeg is a great place. Very great. Some say the greatest. They said they had ‘poutine’, which I think is metric French fries, but I don’t eat metric things. I said “no, as an American I want a diet coke and a cheeseburger”. And they made a cheeseburger but it was a bad cheeseburger. Disappointing cheeseburger. Sad really….
Ha ha ha… I can’t keep it up… I was going to do the whole story in Biden-ism and Trump-xaggeration but I laughed too much and couldn’t concentrate.
Lets face it, if either of the two main candidates tried to venture, on their own, to my favorite canoe access points on the Laurentian Shield… they’d both fuck up. One would die instantly and the other would bring a convoy of twenty assistants. We probably haven’t had a president capable of doing shit on his own since Teddy Roosevelt.
That’s part of the disappointment with the Boomeroids we face today, they’re reality impaired. They can’t operate independently in nature.
One needs supervision just to get through the day. He’d get confused and wander into the swamp where he’d sink. The press would claim sinking in swamps is a good thing and TicTok would post videos of famous actors sinking in swamps. “Sinking in swamps is the new hotness, look how all the stars are trying it!”
The other would give speeches to the spruce trees while the press bayed for his blood. The spruce trees would vote for him because the guy so damn good at speeches that he could talk conifers into motion. This would cause the press to set fire to every spruce in sight. “Trees are literally Hitler. The best way to protect the forest is to burn them to death. It’s the right thing to do.”
I’ll try again.
So there I was, avoiding thinking about politics at a picnic table adjacent to the US/Canadian border. Mrs. Curmudgeon had shit to do. I was on my own, just walking the dog and killing time. I had brought my “chuckbox” (which was taking far too much of the car’s cargo area but I’m paranoid about food). I grabbed a book, setup a lawn chair, and started brewing coffee. The skies were cloudy but it wasn’t raining.
There was a historic monument. I read it:
“A long time ago members of Tribe X and Political Group Y were here… hauling beaver pelts or some shit. Tribe A, affiliated with Political Group B showed up and killed everything. It happened here… we think, but we’re not sure… because everyone died. The assholes even peed on the pelts. (I made up that part.) This stone is to remember this shitty thing that happened for stupid reasons in this location or maybe somewhere else.”
I can shorten that a bit:
“People suck!”
I sat with my coffee reading “Curse of Capistrano” and it was pretty chill. Every few minutes cars would come in, sit there, and then leave. I had no idea what the hell they were doing. My phone doesn’t work in Canada. Maybe Americans were making a last call before facing disconnect?
Then I caught a whiff like Cheech and Chong had rolled Snoop Dog in a joint and smoked his ass. Whoa!
I’m not sure but I think pot is legal south of the border. Presumably it’s that modern “legal in the state but still mega-illegal in the nation” half-legality gray area that is now modern American life. As for our friends up north, I think it’s legal there too. (Which ruins the plot of Trailer Park Boys.)
Anyway, I think the 50 year old war on (some) drugs is vaguely and messily over on both sides of the border but carrying something across the line turns the clock back to 1980. I suppose the dudes from Miami Vice show up in fancy shirts to beat a confession out of you?
My drugs of choice are coffee, bourbon, and nature. I’ve no idea how it really goes with pot.
However, it’s my working theory that people were pulling up to the little picnic ground and doing a last minute “smoke everything in the car before we cross” safety check. I hope the vehicles had designated drivers!
I’m endlessly amused by the idea of people crossing the border while “legally” high as a kite (aside from the driver of course). In a different lifetime, I myself drove a station wagon full of underage drunks from Canada (where the drinking age was X) to America (where the drinking age was Y). I was stone cold sober of course! So maybe the pot thing is just the cycle of life?
I don’t like our strange new universe in which so many things are simultaneously legal and not. Perhaps that weirdness is nothing new and the past few centuries (?) of law as written is the anomaly:
“Is this thing I want to do legal?”
“It’s the year 1380 and the king is your distant cousin, so sure. Go for it.”
“What about this other thing?”
“The king is chill but the bishop hates that shit. He’ll secretly arrange to have your house burned down.”
“How do I know what’s allowed?”
“You don’t!”
Is that not the end point of “lawfare”?
As for the rest of border weirdness, the whole “if they look like they’ve got Covid put ‘em up against the wall like they’re peasants in Stalin’s Russia” madness seems to have faded. Though it served a purpose on both sides of the line. It’ll surely return again. Don’t forget what happened. Remember!
When Mrs. Curmudgeon showed up we crossed with absolutely no drama. Our dog was disappointed to pull up to a “drive through” and not get a dog treat. The border was less interesting than getting drinks from Starbucks and it took about that long. This is how it used to be and I’m glad it returned… for now.
Part 3 comes next…
Gold *
Thanks!
Great series.
I’d say Herbert hoover could give tr a run for his money and leave him in the dust. He was a mining engineer for 24 years in some pretty godforsaken places. He was minister of mine for China for a few years. Was in the boxer rebellion. Later built a 300 mile mine railroad from nowhere to nowhere in Siberia. Talk about end of the road!
Then in 1914, he decided to make sure the Belgians didn’t starve and was pissed on by both Brits and Germans.
One of our more interesting president’s. Also perhaps our wealthiest, from mine engineering.
Eisenhower no doubt knew something of roughing it fro his boy hood and then his years in the army
I get Hoover and Wilson mixed up in my head and forget about Hoover. You’ve got a point that Ike was no wimp. Plus some of the earlier presidents were tough partly because of the age they came from. Washington wouldn’t bitch about a road trip because he fought a damn war on horseback. Hamilton and Jefferson? Hard to say. Jefferson was in love with the idea of rural farming but I don’t know if he ever manned a plow.
It says a lot that I’m convinced most modern presidents are so reality detached they couldn’t change a tire of their own volition. Probably the volition is more lacking than the intelligence to handle a lug nut. It’s probably self selecting. The kind of sycophant best suited to win the presidency is such a “people person” that they’re damn near impossible to imagine doing anything on their own.
I like the idea of Hoover making his money all himself with a legit non-government job. That’s one thing about Trump (correlated with many things) that infuriates his detractors. He got where he is outside of the government/military human resources chain and they hate him for it. Unlike the Obama, Clinton, Bush sort that have done naught but government or government adjacent and were treated as if they were “in the club”. (I’ll expand that to Al Gore who seems like he was bred to be in politics and was widely accepted by everyone in DC but not enough to win the big chair. John Kerry might be another of those “bred for office but never quite made it” creatures.)
I’m pretty sure, in the modern era, anyone who makes a living on actual useful skills is mocked and loathed by the DC swamp. People groused about Regan being a dipshit because he’d been an actor. I know Carter had a degree in Physics and was called “a peanut farmer”. I just can’t remember if that was a real thing. I’d like to think Carter made his money farming in a legit profitable manner but I remember it was mostly used as an insult; as if farming is a “deplorable” activity.