It started out as a typical Friday... 6 AM run to Georgetown followed by a trip to Harpswell. It was 3:00 when Craig called. "Hey, do you want to drive to Canada today?" ... "Ok, cousin. Whatever you need. I'll be back on the wharf in 15 minutes." "OK", he said, "I'll explain it when you get here. It's complicated."
If you look up the word tenacious in the dictionary, there's a picture of Craig. He never gives up, pounds his head against the wall and usually cracks the wall. So when he said "complicated" I knew this was head banging time.
When I walked in the bait shack office, Pete was talking to Tom, the other driver, about my assignment and he stopped short. "I can't talk to you about this. Craig needs to tell you", he laughed.
Craig walked in soaked from the chest down having just completed packing the 35 crates of lobsters for Canada. He sat down and said "OK, here's the deal. I've got an order from Canada for these hard shells. Good margins. Better net from this one run than from the entire rest of the week. Here's where it gets complicated. I don't have the necessary bar codes to get the truck across the border into Canada and the Canadian truck drivers don't have passports to get into the US. You're the only one who has a current US Passport, no criminal record and a CDL. You need to drive 4 hours to the border, park the truck on the US side, walk across the Canadian Customs, pick up the truck and the bar code from the Canadian driver, drive back through US Customs, hand transfer the 2 tons of lobsters , drive back through Canadian Customs, deliver the truck and walk back across US Customs. I don't know where you can do the transfer. That might be an issue..."
I said, "OK, sounds like a plan. Let's do it." At that point people began flying around, cleaning the bait juice and guts out of the truck, loading the crates, preparing the invoices. I called Connie and asked her to meet me at a truck stop in Yarmouth with my passport. As the last crates were loaded on the truck, the refrigeration unit failed. Small, but critical glitch. New plan. We would have to ice the crates down so the lobsters would survive the trip, so we drove to the Fish Exchange and Craig pumped 3 tons of crushed ice on top of the crates.
I hit the road and met Connie for the Passport transfer. She had brought the entire important papers folio, so I took the whole thing. Perhaps if I hadn't just driven for 9 hours I would have thought better of that decision. At this point I'm just thinking about the mission at hand.
I drove up I-95 to Fairfield and picked up US 201 to Jackman. Once I got above Solon the scenery was awesome, but the road was so twisting and turning, long hills to climb and steep downgrades that I didn't have an opportunity to really enjoy it. Still, I knew I was in God's country. Felt good. Every couple miles there were big yellow signs warning of moose crossings. Hmmm...
I slowly approached the border crossing just as the sun slipped behind the mountains and followed the signs into the US Customs visitor's parking lot. The facility was huge, complete with bright lighting, electronic scanning technology, processing facilities, they even had a couple large windmills. I locked up the truck, looked around for a few minutes. Everyone seemed cool so I walked across the complex, past the line of traffic waiting to get into Canada and presented my passport to the border cross agent. He was puzzled where I was going and why I was on foot. I explained I had to pick up a truck. He allowed me into the country.
It was all going like clockwork. The Canadian drivers pulled up to the curb and gave me the bar code. I headed back to US Customs with their truck and they waited on the Canadian side for me to return with the load.
The US Border Agent took my paperwork and asked what was in the truck and I explained it was empty, that I was going to transfer my load from my truck. "He pointed his finger at me and said "That's YOUR truck in the parking lot?" I nodded. He closed the window and got on the radio. 30 seconds later there were four large Border Agents standing around my truck with their holsters unclipped and their hands resting on their Glocks. I attempted to explain to the irate agent. He told me to shut up. "Think about this" he said in an icy voice, "A locked, unattended truck parked at our facility and no one has any idea what's going on." Immediately Oklahoma City flashed through my mind. I apologized profusely.
They talked for 10 minutes and then laid out the drill. I would park the Canadian truck and accompany the biggest agent into the building where I sat in a detention area while he checked my paperwork. As we walked to the building he asked, "Do you have any money on you or in the truck?" "$30 bucks" I said. He said "Well, I ask because we know the seafood industry is largely a cash business and it's against the law to take over $10,000 across the border. " I said, "Yeah, I wish I had that kind of cash."
He checked me out in the computer and instructed me to accompany him to my truck. I was to stand in front of the truck as he search the cab. It took him 20 minutes and I enjoyed watching the last dim light fading in the sky and the blades of the windmills gliding silently on the mountaintop. Finally he seemed satisfied, had me open the engine compartment and then the box. When he climbed out of the box he walked up to me, got close in my face and said "Why are you carrying all you personal documents in the truck", watching my reactions carefully. "Oh, my wife gave me the whole packet when she brought me my passport" I answered. "When were you last in Iraq" he asked. "What? Never..." I answered stunned at the question. "Why do you have $650,000 Iraqi dinar in your possession?" The thought flashed through my mind "Oh, my God... I'm going to jail." Slowly I explained. My cousin was in Iraq. He bought me $500 US dollars of Iraqi dinar hoping the currency would appreciate. You know currency speculation? He put me back in detention, metal bench bolted to the wall.
20 minutes later he came back, had me back the truck over near the other vehicle while he and 3 other agents strip searched the Canadian truck. At this point I had a guard with me. The agent said, "Do you know the Canadian drivers?" "No," I answered," but my cousin does." Do you know that as the driver of that vehicle you will be held responsible for any illicit material we find?" It was going from bad to worse. I saw a light at the end of this long, dark tunnel and it was sounding like a freakin freight train.
Finally the big agent called over to me. "OK, you can transfer your load." I fist pumped the air and climbed into the back of the truck... to find that the crushed ice had melted and refrozen forming a glacier over the crates. It took me 40 minutes of back breaking labor to free the crates and transfer the 2 tons of lobster, slipping and sliding on the ice, heaving the 100 pound crates, unstacking and re-stacking. I was drenched in sweat when I finished and the 4 agents approached me. "You are free to drive back across the border. Sorry for your inconvenience." said the captain. I noticed that their guns had been reclipped.
I apologized for the 20th time and thanked them for the work they did protecting our country, got in the truck and drove to Canadian Customs. They looked at my documents and instructed me to pull into a lighted area, turn off the truck and stay in the vehicle. Again 4 armed agents surrounded my truck and with a French accent I was told to step out of the vehicle. The 2 Canadian drivers walked over and the conversation turned into French. Finally, after they had reviewed my documents and searched the truck, they released the drivers and instructed me to walk back to their complex. As I was walking back across the security complex, one agent walked in front, one on either side of me and one behind me. It was a surreal feeling and I had no idea what would come next. They stopped at a gate, turned to me and said "You are free to leave the country."
I felt a huge wave of relief as I walked the 100 yards down the deserted gauntlet of electronic and radioactive sensing devices in the stark neon lights back to US Customs. Dressed in duct taped pants and rubber boots, stinking of sweat and fish, I presented my passport for the 4th time and stood for 10 minutes as the new guard got up to speed on who I was and what had gone down over the last 3 hours. Finally he passed my documents back to me and said "Have a good evening. Don't hit a moose on your way down the mountain." I started laughing and didn't stop until I hit Jackman.
I was so jacked up on adrenalin from the events of the evening that I decided to make the 4 hour push back to Portland. My body was humming and my ears were ringing as I climbed in bed with my wife an hour after returning the truck to the wharf. When I got up this morning and recounted the detail to Craig, his comment was "I knew there would be issues... there always are." It was then that I really realized that this was the story of his life. He had driven loads to Canada for 20 years. He knew what I was going into. It's but one of the many, many seemingly insurmountable obstacles that he faces every day. He's my hero.
Tenacious...
