The Queen's Tweezers

Two long hairs cross an international border with drugs. Why is sand involved?

Good ‘morrow, my friends. 

A reader requested the full story about my experience as an international drug smuggler on the Canadian border. I think the statute of limitations has passed, so I’m happy to oblige.

Road Trip

We’re in the early 90s. Let’s call it 1993. My good buddy – we’ll call him Sully – and I are driving towards the east coast for our junior year of college. Our journey began in San Francisco and we shot all the way north to Seattle to visit friends because we were young and dumb and mileage was just a number. After a lovely visit on Bainbridge Island, we then turned east towards Route 2, a two-lane highway that’s the northernmost east/west road in the country. It runs from Washington state through to the upper peninsula of Michigan about 30 miles (on average) south of the Canadian border.

It was a good trip. We went hiking in Glacier National Park and drove its famous “Going-to-the-Sun Road” which has vistas like this:

We blasted through what felt like endless fields of sunflowers in North Dakota where we stopped for the night in the tiny town Tioga. At sunset, we went for a walk to stretch our road-weary legs and a car slowed to stop beside us. My innate impulse to fear everything shot a spurt of adrenaline through my body as I envisioned a horde of corn-fed Dakota farm boys piling out of the sedan looking to give us the business. 

Instead, the driver side window rolled down revealing a teenage girl: “Who are you guys?” she asked. We were the most interesting thing to happen to Tioga teens in a coon’s age. Soon we were in the backseat rolling around town and enjoying a rather awkward cultural exchange about music and teenage pastimes. Turns out in Tioga, teens were still driving the strip on Saturday nights and girls not in cars, walking the strip, were routinely catcalled as whores. What a fun American tradition!

In northern Minnesota, we drove through a torrential rain storm. Route 2 is not the best kept highway in the country and that section had not been repaved in years. That meant cars had worn troughs into the asphalt and those troughs were brimming with at least two inches of standing water. We were driving a mid-80s Honda Accord hatchback and, in order not to hydro-plane, we had to drive with our right wheels on the shoulder and our left wheels dead center in the lane. That was somewhat harrowing, and based on conditions and visibility, we were probably doing 45mph. 

The only other vehicles on the road, it seemed, were massive semis heavy enough to have no fear of hydro-planing so they were running at their normal 65mph. Every few minutes, while we’re white knuckling the steering wheel and squinting our eyes to make out the white lines at the edge of the road, a semi would pass in the opposite lane, displacing great gouts of water that would obliterate our visibility in a wall of water. One of the scariest drives of my life.

In Duluth, Minnesota, we met up with Sully’s aunt and uncle. The kindest, most Jesus inspired born-agains I’ve had the pleasure to meet. Love, compassion, and doing right by their neighbor was their life’s work. They were great. We went rock climbing and, in an attempt to prove that the ropes I was strapped into were in working order, Uncle Ron told me to let go of the rock face – I was probably thirty feet up at this point – so that Sully, who was holding me on belay, could prove he had me locked in. 

He didn’t. 

Luckily, when I let go the rock face, I didn’t shoot straight to the ground under the full power of gravity. Instead, I fell like one would in a dream – I kind of floated down for ten feet or so, while Sully wrestled with the belay system. No harm, no foul. That said, I haven’t been rock climbing on belay since.

We pulled out of Duluth and the plan was to traverse Michigan’s upper peninsula and crossover into Canada at Sault St. Marie and then drive down the east shoulder of Lake Huron to reenter the U.S. at Niagara Falls. But first we decided to go for a dip in Lake Michigan which involved stripping down to our boxers on a sandy beach in the middle of nowhere and then clambering back into clothes after a quick toweling off. This will be important in a moment.

Canada eh?

Rte. 2 connected into Interstate 75 which took us north to the bridge that crosses Lake Superior. The U.S./Canada border sits smack dab in the middle of the bridge. As we were approaching the bridge, we realized we had a nugget of weed – a chunky little bud the size of a very healthy cherry – that we should probably hide. Sully was driving and I scanned the car for a good hiding spot. We were now on the bridge. Border control was on the far side. Time was short.

This being the 90s and my finances being what they were, my car did not have a CD player. So we had a square cassette rack that could hold perhaps 40 tape cases. I pulled out a case that still had the sleeve but no longer had the tape (oh how I wish I knew which band or mix tape it was) and plopped our little dank bud, wrapped in a sandwich bag, into it. I returned the case to the middle of the rack and sat back confident as a white boy could be that all was fine in the world, which is to say way too confident.

Now, it’s important to note that we were college kids, but not of the izod shirt and khaki short variety. I had hair down to my shoulder blades and big fat mutton chops, as was the style (not really, but I had a look). Sully, who had brilliant red hair, had fused his wiry main into thick dreadlocks. Honestly, they were the most natural dreads I’ve ever seen on a white person. Both of us wore hoodies and shorts baggie as a Wu Tang video. Which is to say, when we pulled up to the inspector in their window booth, our look screamed WEED. We were cosplaying the 90s version of Cheech and Chong. The booth dude took one look and told us to pull over into the inspection line. My scrotum, it tightened. 

We pulled into a line of parking spots under an awning and were approached by a butterball of a man. He was round, but stocky thick, the kind of build typical of Olympic weightlifters. He had a full beard and, in my mind, I immediately gave him the moniker Grizzly Adams. He asked us the typical questions through the driver side window – where were we headed, where were we coming from, how long did we plan to stay in Canada, what was the reason for our visit, are we carrying any contraband? Any drugs or guns? Seriously though, where are the drugs, you dirty hippy-hop reefer-mad stoners!?!?! Okay he didn’t say that, but his face did.

Next, he asked us to step out of the car and wait on the bench by the office. We did as instructed. Another inspector, who was the Laurel to Grizzly Adams’ Hardy – just a tall, lean, crisp uniformed Aryan of a man – came over and they began to go through our car. And by go through the car I mean the Aryan spent almost the entire time looking up under the dash with a flashlight. It seemed they thought we might actually be transporting weight.

Grizzly Adams went into the trunk and pulled out our luggage and our tent and sleeping bags and all the other flotsam and jetsam piled in the back. Then he went into our bags. In my duffel bag, he pulled out my dopp kit with all my toiletries. Inside that, he pulled out a little canvas case that had nail clippers and files and tweezers.

Then, he pulled out the tweezers. He gave them a once over, gave us a quick glance of derision, and told the Aryan in the front seat to stop looking. They approached us and said, “Follow us please.”

So here’s the thing about those tweezers: at some point in the past year or so I had used those tweezers to scrape resin out of a weed pipe. For those of you not privy to the practices of dedicated weed smokers, after a while a black tar resin builds up in a pipe. It’s best practice to clean it out so the pipe can pull smoke. But, more importantly, if you scrape enough resin, you can put it back in the pipe bowl and smoke the resin itself. It’ll do the trick, though for me resin smoke often gave me a headache. But weed smokers without weed will make do. The point being the very tips of my tweezers still had resin residue on them – a sort of brown tar darkening the metal. Which is to say, Canadian border patrol had us dead to rights if dead to rights means proof that once upon a time I had interacted with a controlled substance. 

Interrogation

We were sat on another bench in the office which had the look and smell of a DMV but with fewer despondent citizens weighed down by the incessant pressure of bureaucracy – it was just the two of us dreading the power of the state at that point. The two inspectors conferred with a lady officer at the counter. Sully and I kept our eyes to ourselves. We had no privacy to get our story straight. 

At this point it needs to be said, I do not have the mental composition to be a successful criminal. For starters, I’m an awful liar. Like really bad. It’s not a moral thing, rather it’s an utter lack of imagination. I see the world how I see the world and verbally diverging from my reality does not come easy. Second, I’m an anxious boy. I got no Cool Hand Luke grace under pressure. My mind is a spiral built out of spirals. It’s a long way down when I start spinning. 

So there we are sitting on the bench and I’m trying to understand what we’re facing. I mean we’re clearly not drug smugglers. The cannabis in our car is worth perhaps ten bucks tops. Then again, what are the Canadian laws for bringing drugs into the country? Who the eff knows? We could be facing a harsh talking to, a fine, or a stint at some great white north gulag in the upper reaches of Saskatchewan. Does due process exist in Canada? Do they have the death penalty? I have no idea. 

Grizzly Adams approaches us and points a meaty finger at me. “You,” he says. “Follow me.” I follow. I glance back at Sully, alone now on the bench, and he’s got deer in the headlights eyes but we give each other a subtle nod of assurance.

I’m led to a small interrogation room. There’s a desk and two chairs and there’s a great big roll of butcher paper on a roller on the far wall. The paper drops and extends about three feet along the floor. I have no idea why it’s there. Aryan cop stands against the door looking bored and vicious. Grizzly Adams sits down and points me to the other seat.

The interrogation begins. It’s pretty straightforward. 

“Where are the drugs?”

“We don’t have any drugs.”
“It’ll be better to just tell us. We’re bringing in the dogs. The dogs’ll find it. So just tell me, where are the drugs?”
“We don’t have any drugs.”

Etc. etc. We go over our trip. We go over when I last smoked. I admit to smoking weed in Seattle but not since. I continue to deny that I have any contraband in my car. 

Grizzly Adams opens a drawer in the desk and pulls out a pair of very used rubber gloves. I imagine what he intends to do with those gloves and where they may have already been and I’m suddenly very, very concerned. He asks for my wallet. I give it to him. He goes through it with the gloves on and spreads my bills and cards and receipts out on the desktop. Then he asks me to stand up and directs me to go stand on the butcher paper.

“Take your clothes off.”

I begin the least sexy strip tease in the history of mankind and, as I peel out of my clothes, the sand from the Lake Michigan beach begins to fall off my body and out of my clothes. When it hits the butcher paper, it makes a rattling sound and in the small, silent room that rattling sound is massive like a castanet kicking off the rhythm for a rhumba band. I am the platonic version of a dirty hippy with grungy detritus literally falling off my body as I bare more and more skin. 

I get down to my boxers. Grizzly Adams collects my clothes and methodically goes through the pockets, releasing more sand in the process. I’m told to drop my underwear and lift my testicles. Turn around and spread. I’m awaiting the ultimate indignity of those pre-used gloves. It doesn’t come.

“Okay, put your clothes back on.”

I dress and am led back out to the bench. Sully scans my face for signs of what’s to come. He doesn’t like what he sees. They take him back. I sit on the bench. I wait. And wait. I wonder if Canada gives a foreign national a right to an attorney. I wonder how I will hold up in jail with real drug traffickers. I pretend I can handle it. 

Eventually Sully is led out. He looks like I feel – shaken. Grizzly Adams consults the lady officer at the front desk/counter and disappears into the back.

“Mr. O’Donnell,” the lady officer says. She calls me to the desk. I sign a piece of paper that acknowledges that Canada is confiscating my contraband tweezers. They are now the property of the Queen. Like the dumbest of Americans, I look up from the paper and say “Canada has a queen?”

“We’re part of the commonwealth,” the lady officer says, her voice awash with loathing. 

“You’re free to go,” she says, as I hand the signed document back to her.

Sully and I walk out (we try not to run). Our car has all its doors open and our stuff is strewn about on the asphalt. We repack, hurriedly, and drive away.

Last note: Sully tells me that during his interrogation Grizzly Adams made it very clear that I had already told them everything and they just needed Sully’s corroboration. His answer: “I don’t know what he told you, but we don’t have any drugs.” To this day, I have no idea how I would have handled that situation. Like I said, I’m a bad liar. Like I said, I’m an anxious boy. Props to my boy for trusting me and seeing through their little prisoner dilemma game. 

So, that’s my story of being an international drug smuggler.

Final final: We blazed that bud that night in part as an eff you to the Canadian border patrol, but mostly to ensure that when we reentered the U.S. we were definitely not holding. Also, I no longer smoke. Took awhile to realize that being anxious and having a mind that’s prone to spiraling means weed is most assuredly not a sensible intoxicant for me.

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Internet of the Day

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good

– Family: My brother and sister-in-law and niece are in town. They’re the best. Two of my aunts were recently down from Portland. They’re the best. Saw aunt, uncle, and cousin up in Sonoma last week. They’re the best. A whole horde of us went to a Giants game last week. The game was awful. We had a blast. 

– The Elephant Graveyard: Recently found a video essayist on YouTube who does good work. Kinda does psychological takedowns of fevered internet egos like Elon Musk, Joe Rogan and produced this fascinating read on Jerry Seinfeld’s sudden rightward lean. 

– Quote of the Week: 

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times. 

– Bertolt Brecht 

The Bad:

– Layoffs: My former employer is slowly discarding employees like a cat discarding hair. Meaning they comb and they comb and then they violently cough up sodden hair balls of former empoyees. My employer before that employer, the employer bought by the second employer for a gazillion dollars, had a motto: “Good people are good business.” And, by and large, they embodied that belief system. They hired good people. Kind people. Humble people. Talented people. Hard working people. People who cared about other people and not just career trajectories. Running a business is hard, I will concede that point. But there’s a point where an organization becomes too big to treat its employees as people. They become numbers – assets and liabilities in spreadsheets. When that happens, the people stop being people, stop being human. And human endeavors that lack humanity are not worth the effort. My love to those of you who recently lost your bi-weekly paycheck. And godspeed that you find a new employer who values you for what you are: a talented, kind, humble, hard worker. 

The Ugly:

– I Don’t Know: I mean take a peak around the media. It all seems a little ugly right now. Except for Harris’ chances. Those are looking quite lovely. Anyway, go for a walk. Read a book. Make a cup of tea. Love on your family. As the southerners say, “I wanna hug all y’all’s necks.”

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Finally: