A few words about security. I will hearken back to nearly fifty years ago to illustrate the “then” portion of this essay and to only several years ago for the “now” portion. Forty-five years ago, I was travelling as much as possible. On my journeys, I often made friends and acquaintances, whom I swapped mailing addresses with. To avoid any change of address fees, due to my own nomadic lifestyle, I kept a P. O. box during that transient time.
At one point, I had garnered thirty-seven “pen-pals”, as they were called in those days before the Internet. I corresponded with those people on a regular basis. To me there was no finer feeling than grabbing a fistful of envelopes post-marked from all over the world at the end of a long day pipe-fitting. Some of those missives were written in languages that I did not know how to read.
In Vancouver, that was no real barrier. I simply brought the letters and cards that I couldn't read onto the bus with me in the mornings on my way to work and found an individual who could read and translate them. From Arabic to German, from French to Japanese, I always found willing translators. Usually, the translators were flattered and curious in equal measures. Because these were only random acquaintances, the privacy of the communications was of no major concern to me or to the authors.
Sometimes, the writers knew English. A lovely young woman I met in Spain, who lived in Poland, was one such example. When her first letter came, I was alarmed to find that it had been opened, read and unceremoniously stapled shut. Pasted to the outside was a yellow label from Canada Customs, pointing out this obvious fact, just in case the tampering had escaped my notice.
I was raised to respect the mail. In my house, if your name wasn't on the envelope, it was not your property and you were not free to open it. In the actual legal codes of Canada, letter mail remains the property of the Queen of England until such time as the individual named on the envelope opens it. I went straight downtown with the letter to speak to the Customs man and vent my disgust.
The old Customs man was very polite and patiently explained to me that because Poland was at that time considered a Communist satellite country, we in the free West couldn't be too careful when dealing with those people, especially if they were pretty, multilingual, intelligent blondes with degrees in psychology. I told the man that I was disappointed and angry to learn that this subterfuge, this baby-sitting by stealth, was carried out as a matter of official Canadian policy. The Customs agent shrugged as if to say, “Kid, what can you do?”
Not long after I received a card from Canada Customs instructing me to come downtown and pick up a parcel in person. I went to the main Post Office on Georgia Street straightaway and confronted the same tired old man. He took my package and opened it in front of me on a little stainless steel table. He then told me to pick a random package of Cigarillos Plaza out of the autopsied carton of ten packs. I complied and the fellow opened his Swiss Army knife and sliced the cigarette package in two. He then crumbled the tobacco out of the twenty cigarettes onto the steel slab and handed me the mess.
“The war on drugs, you understand,” he said.
Afterwards, told all my correspondents to write only post cards. My reasoning was that everybody at Canada Customs could freely read them before I received them. Might as well save a step.
Forty-five years ago, give or take a year or two, there was a beer brewery strike here in Western Canada. All the regular drinkers (of which group, I was a young, enthusiastic member, at the time) knew just what to do in order to avoid the disaster of enforced sobriety in the True North, Brave and Free. We fell back on an established and well practised Lynn Valley, North Vancouver tradition. A beer run to the USA!
My brother-in-law was a seasoned Vietnam war vet and had grown up in Houston, Texas in our old neighbourhood of Oak Forest. He agreed to drive my first wife and I down to the border town of Blaine, Washington to stock up on beer. We would be taking his beloved Volkswagen Beetle on the mission. We all gathered up our cash and set off singing. I was twenty, my wife was eighteen and my brother-in-law was barely thirty years old. We experienced high traffic congestion at the Peace Arch border crossing and at the liquor store on the other side of the international fence.
To celebrate our cunning at safe securing three personal maximum import quotas, we decided to buy more beer and carry it back in our stomachs. This is an old smuggler's trick I learned in the Pays Basque. We three set to that happy work in the parking lot of a US border gas station.
Initially, we had a few beers each while we discussed the various possible strategies of the other pilgrims like us. There was plenty of daylight left and thus we reasoned that most of the folks would hurry back home. So, we decided to take it slow and have a few more beers. We told jokes and funny stories from all our collective young days gone by.
Inevitably, a demonstration of how to properly “shot-gun” a can of beer, was called for. I was the expert at this manoeuvre because of my physicist’s knowledge of the Coriolis Effect. I had been taught by a master of the technique down in Texas. My brother-in-law was good at it, but he laughed too much to make any real headway. My wife took three tries before she could “get her done.”
At one point in this tailgate-less party, my Mrs. had to relieve herself of her excess water. The gas station was now jammed full of like-minded parties and the washrooms were all occupied with line-ups only seen at an outdoor rock concert. She was a Colonel's daughter and not to be dismayed. She marched off to the back of the establishment where the bushes were thickest. Brother-in-law and I stood sentry duty a short distance away.
My little coquette got in position successfully but halfway through her intended operation, she out-balanced on a rogue wave of mirth, and in slow motion, fell away backwards down a steep slope, well-sown in brambles. She giggled all the way down and crawled laughing, all the way back up.
She was unhurt in any serious way, but covered from head to toe in long, angry red scratches. I spent many anxious minutes alone with her, pulling thorns out of her backside. With her jeans back in place, she was fairly presentable, except for her arms, her face, her hair and the overall mud.
Prudently, we all decided to get our cargo back home and set off for the North side of border. It was only a ten minute drive without traffic. We enjoyed about three minutes of free progress and then became mired in the longest line of automobiles I'd ever seen. It was a muggy Summer and the afternoon sun was coming in at eye-level through the driver's side window.
Presently, my poor brother-in-law could brook no more interference. He pulled out to the right of the line and sped like an ambulance for a half mile. When the border guard’s sheds loomed into view, he politely signalled his intention to merge left back into the line. His gentile courtesy fell on blind eyes.
With his best war-face, he edged his Beetle closer and closer to his chosen target car. That vehicle unfortunately happened to be full of uncivilized ruffians which angered him somewhat. After all, he had put his ass on the line to keep everyone of them free to stay home and drink beer. In a series of moves that Mario Andretti could have taken tuition from, he managed at last, to insert himself into that unforgiving line of vehicles.
My wife and I both cheered from the back seat. Then, the first orange traffic cone hit our windshield. Wham! Incoming!! We were under attack!!! While we had been busy congratulating each other, one of the varmints from the car behind us had sneaked out of his unit and had lobbed the large plastic missile at us. Its trajectory was such, that it made a very loud, hollow ker-schmuck!
Next, a shit-rain of mortars began. Other, copycat combatants inspired by the first salvo, had taken heart and joined the fray. We were well and truly at war. Our side managed to score some direct hits. We also knew how to swear properly, which sapped the resolve of our enemies, to a degree. When we ran out of ammo near to hand, we got back into the relative safety of the vehicle to check on the female. The car in front of us cruised up to the Canadian border guard's gate.
The next thing I became aware of was a man in a blue uniform coming forward and vehemently motioning for some idiot to pull out of line and proceed to an empty booth to the right of our position. We waited with anticipation, eager to see those fools behind us become POWs. Wait a sec! What the hell? That misguided and angry guard came up to our vehicle, slapped the window and jerked a big flashlight in the direction of the interrogation hut.
Ignominiously impelled by the epic, sarcastic hoots and raucous gales of laughter from those drunks behind us, we limped into the DMZ. Another highly animated guard approached the Beetle and politely asked us to step out. My wife was not very tightly wired when it came to dealing with authority and as I began to disembark from the back-seat, she tossed up her last half-dozen beers directly onto my fatigues.
Luckily, none of us had eaten anything for fear of wasting valuable stomach space intended for beer, so my unexpected shower was entirely liquid. It did, however cover me from head to toe in a ghoulish broth. I literally staggered out of the car. My wife came out right behind me, suffering a fit of the prettiest giggles you ever heard. Once started, she couldn't stop the mirth machine. The mud and blood on her clothes was thankfully dry now. I considered telling the guard that her scratches were from having undergone an old Cherokee rattlesnake fang ritual and that my young medicine woman was even at that moment in an altered state due to the ceremony.
I decided against that tactic, when I saw his skeptical expression. He pointed out a garden hose and suggested that I use it on myself before joining the other two in his little room for questioning. After a good, cold wash on the crowded pavement, which sobered me up considerably, I entered The Box. As our Senior Officer, my brother-in-law was receiving our orders for the next stage of our overland assault. My wee wife was collapsed in a leather chair, trying to breath in between peals of healing laughter.
The Canadian Border Patrol agent told us that our license plate number and vehicle description had been radioed ahead to the Surrey RCMP, Vancouver City Police and the North Vancouver Detachment. Incredibly, he had decided that due to the special nature of the beer strike crisis and the ensuing border traffic volume, we were free to proceed directly home. We were warned that if we turned one block out of our way homewards or incurred the tiniest driving infraction, we would all be clapped in irons. We thanked that man, saluted him and promised to do exactly as he had ordered. We kept our promise.
A dozen or so years ago, my current wife had occasion to go to Florida. It was Winter in Vancouver. She needed a heavy coat to wear to the airport and wanted me to keep it in our car for when I picked her up a week later. We parked the car and went into the modernized Vancouver airport. I had been flying out of YVR since the Sixties, when it resembled a large Greyhound Station and one could almost walk out on the tarmac to greet the planes. It had been greatly expanded, pimped out with West Coast Native art pieces and shopping venues but still lacked affordable, healthy food. Still missing a decent book-seller, it had sadly lost the homely warmth it had once possessed.
Before, there had been lots of cheap parking nearby, now there was lots of expensive parking far away. My wife and I got inside and checked in at the desk of her chosen airline. After quite a while in line, we gained audience with an airline clerk who said we must go backwards and use a machine that we had already passed, in order to pay the Airport Tax. No signage had alerted us to this requirement and the clerk was unequipped to take our payment.
I went to stand in the new line so my wife wouldn't lose her place. When my turn came, I inserted my debit card and got a nasty on-screen message that I should have used a credit card, instead. The human cattle behind me started to dance around and bunch up and I sensed a stampede. I was irritated, but cognizant that we were running out of time, so I attempted to use my credit card. This action triggered another red-hued abortive message and a nasty loud beep.
The fellow behind me started to audibly grind his teeth. The airline clerk yelled across the busy lobby like an Arkansas hog-caller and I learned from her ruby lips what she hadn’t bothered to tell me prior to entering the Airport Tax line. Apparently, I should have used my wife's credit card, because the airline ticket had been purchased with her card. My wife produced her card and we were ready for the next step.
We were directed to join another long line for the checking of the boarding passes. A young South Asian man in a private security company uniform was doing that duty. He had set his cordon at the mouth of the entrance to a duty-free shopping corridor. There was smoked salmon, perfumes and maple syrup candies. At the opposite end of this duty-free shopping zone, there was another opening, beyond which yet another line had been organized for the final approach to boarding the US-bound flight.
I asked that young man if I could accompany my wife through the shopping aisle to wait with her in that final line. He grabbed her ticket, grunted something unintelligible and handed the papers back to her. We walked ahead through a sea of people that were meandering aimlessly into and out of the shopping zone.
We arranged ourselves into the new line-up. There was an old, Sikh man standing behind a wooden podium in that area of the airport. He wore the same private security uniform as the previous young man in the boarding pass line had. The new line snaked around until we were next in line to go through a set of turnstiles. Here, there was a young South Asian woman in the ubiquitous black uniform.
Kissing my wife goodbye, I took her beloved Winter coat for safekeeping in our car. On my way back to my vehicle, I decided to ask the security lady to outline and clarify for me how airport protocol had changed since my last flight decades prior. Halfway through my question, the lady guard grew visibly upset.
“Yoo not fly too-dey, guy?” she gasped, simultaneously slapping a small microphone which was strapped to her left shoulder.
She pressed a red button with an urgency bordering on panic. The next picture in my mind, was of the poor Polish man who had been stun-gunned to death in this very airport only a year before. The whole world had seen that tragic video. The security personnel who killed him, had the same vacant expressions as the young lady in front of me. Crustacean eyes, behind which lay a simple set of memorized operations, with no personal cognition or discretion allowed or expected. If a situation does not fit the training model – press the button. I was already moving away.
When I passed the old Sikh guard, I felt safe enough to ask him the same question as I had asked the girl.
He replied instantly in a monotone voice, “I see yoo notting, guy. I heer yoo notting, guy. I tull yoo notting, guy.”
This said, he repeatedly pressed his red button on his mic, which was also clipped to his left shoulder. I was already moving away.
I got back through to the shopping area and abreast of the first guard as I exited that space. A quick scan showed me that I still had a few seconds before what ever back-up had been summoned by the other two would appear. So, I asked the young security fellow if I had been correct in going where I had waited with my wife.
“I toold yoo, guy! Yoo cannut passing! I toold yoo, guy!” he shouted in a shrill tone like a dog that has been kicked., while angrily pressing the button on his mic, which was strapped to his left shoulder.
The Borg were no doubt assembling, but again, I was already moving away. My Cherokee eyes told me that the elevators, escalators and staircases that communicated with my intended exterior exit, were currently clear. I didn't even roll a cigarette until I was home and dry. I decided that evening that I did not enjoy airports as much as I once had.
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