Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - The Truth is Stranger than Fiction - Shirts & Dave Crosses the Border

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

“That afternoon, in his first true act of citizenship, Dave wore five lacy bras across the border.”  On today’s episode, Stuart tells two hilarious Vinyl Cafe stories about Dave’s encounters with deception. One of the stories ‘Shirts’, is an old one you may not have heard in a long time – but it is worth the wait! Dave’s favourite shirt goes missing from their washing line and is later discovered being worn by his good friend Jim Scoffield. As always, Dave has an interesting response to the dilemma. Even more interesting is the surprising backstory about that tale.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. We have two Dave and Morley stories for you today. Two stories about deception. Although, come to think of it, there's another theme that links these stories. Something even more unusual. But let's wait to uncover that that I don't think I'm ready to go there right away this first story has one of my all-time favorite backstories well I guess I guess backstory is not really the right word post story I don't know the right word you can tell me after I tell you this as I've said before people would often ask Stuart where the stories came from. And I think what they were really asking when they asked that question was,

are these stories true? Are they based on your life? For the most part, the answer to that is no. As I've said many times on this podcast, Stuart was not Dave. Stuart's answer to that question, by the way, was the details and the plot aren't real, but the feelings are real. I love that answer. He used to say that the lens through which the characters see the world was his lens. And so the greater truth was there. But very few of the stories were actually based on anything that happened to Stuart. Very few of the stories were based on anything that happened

in real life. Although there are some, this is one of them. Not every single detail, This is one of them. Not every single detail, but pretty much every detail. Pretty much, this story happened to Stuart, not to Dave. And the neighbor in the story, Jim Schofield, one of Stuart's favorite characters, was actually Stuart's good friend and old neighbor, Stewart's good friend and old neighbor, Sandy. So think about that while you listen to this. This is one of my favorite stories, and almost all of it is true. This is Shirts. The first shirt to disappear was a Hathaway. It was a bold, blue-striped shirt with a formal white collar. It was the shirt Dave was married in. He noticed it was missing one Saturday evening when he was dressing to go out. Morally, he called to his wife, I can't find my wedding shirt. The Hathaway was not the sort of shirt Dave normally bought for himself. He thought it was flamboyant.

a shirt Dave normally bought for himself, he thought it was flamboyant. He felt self-conscious whenever he wore it, but he was proud of owning it and proud he had worn it the afternoon he got married. He had been gloriously drunk the day he bought it. The salesman, an enthusiastic young man in oversized sweater and floppy black pants, kept pouring him shot glasses of licorice-tasting liqueur. Nothing like this had ever happened to Dave before. He usually shopped at Eaton's in those days. He'd already bought a shirt at Eaton's that he was planning to wear at his wedding, a white one. He wandered into the men's store looking for a tie to go with a white shirt. He was looking at a rack of muted, striped ties when the salesman breezed up to him. I'm getting married, said Dave. I need a tie.

This is a happy event, asked the salesman. Dave nodded dumbly. Those aren't wedding ties, said the salesman, waving his hand disdainfully. Those are funeral ties. Dave followed the salesman across the store obediently, and they stopped in front of a display of the most colorful ties Dave had ever seen in his life. The salesman flicked two of them off the rack, and he said, These are wedding ties. The ties were so exuberant, Dave actually took a step backwards. This is a happy occasion, asked the salesman again.

You are happy about this marriage. Yes, said Dave, but that's when the salesman took Dave over to the cash register and poured him his first drink. Yes, but what, said the salesman. Dave didn't know but what. The only but he knew was that he had never worn a tie so, so happy, said the salesman. It's a happy tie. The salesman poured him another drink. Dave threw it back. Eventually he said, okay, I'll take the red one. Salesman smiled. Good, he said. Now, about the white shirt. After two more shots of liquor, Dave blew out of the store with a bright red tie and the blue striped shirt with a white collar. Dave spent some time with the shirt every day during the three weeks before his wedding. Mostly he took it out of its box and laid it on his bed

and arranged the tie on top of it and stared at them. Sometimes he stared for five or ten minutes. He had never owned anything like these things in his life. They made him feel reckless. He showed them to friends and he asked, do you think they're okay? Can I wear them when I'm getting married? His friends said, yes, yes, they were fine. He didn't wear the shirt or the tie often after he was married, but he liked having them in his cupboard. Just having them made him feel dashing. Morley said, no, no, she hadn't seen his wedding shirt.

He wondered if he had taken it to a dry cleaner and forgotten to pick it up. He used to drop his shirts at a number of places, and it was possible he had taken the wedding shirt somewhere and forgotten about it. He visited every dry cleaner he had ever gone to. He said, I've lost my ticket. It was a lie, but he thought if he was tentative about the missing shirt, they wouldn't look as hard as they would if he claimed they had it. Nothing turned up. There was another possibility. Morley had thrown his shirt out. The more Dave thought about it,

the more he seemed to remember putting the shirt in a green garbage bag with a pile of other clothes he wanted to take to the cleaners. Morley must have mistaken the bag for garbage. Dave was predisposed to believe his wife might have done this. His mother had thrown out so much of his stuff over the years. Why would his wife be any different? His baseball cards were gone. His cowboy guns, his leather holster, his comic book collection, and most incredibly, his table hockey game. You're 40 years old, his mother said the day he asked where his hockey game was. You threw it out, he said?

She couldn't understand his incredulity, his anger. She might as well have thrown out his childhood. In his memory, he had spent years playing table hockey. If there was no one to play with, he would prepare the ice, pushing a wet lump of Kleenex around the game, pretending he was driving a Zamboni. If his mother could throw out his hockey game, why couldn't his wife throw out the shirt he was married in? The wedding shirt had been missing long enough that it had become something that Morley and

Dave could laugh about. So when Dave said, where's my plaid shirt, the green and brown one, Morley said, I threw it out. Dave had bought the plaid shirt near Kennebunk, Maine. He bought it on the last day of their summer vacation at a factory outlet. It was a wonderful shirt. Green with brown checks, it was a shirt that fit Dave's image of himself. Casual, but dressy at the same time. A shirt you could wear a tie with the way writers do, or university professors, or more to the point, the way Robert Redford did in All the President's Men. It was a perfect shirt, and it was all the more perfect because it was blessed

by so many happy associations. It reminded Dave of the ocean, of the ice cream truck that whistled up to the beach every afternoon. A week after it went missing, Morley said, I think I washed that shirt last weekend. I think I remember hanging that shirt on the line. I can't remember taking it down. Someone stole it, said Dave. Someone came into the yard and stole my shirt. Dave was so fond of the plaid shirt that this seemed perfectly reasonable. It was Gavin, he said.

Gavin lives two houses away from Dave and Morley. Gavin is a writer. He works at home. Writers never have any money, said Dave. He had motive and he had opportunity. He's home all day. It would have been easy for Gavin to sneak into our yard and swipe my shirt. The green and brown checked shirt went missing in the fall. It turned up the following spring. It literally walked through the front door on Jim Schofield's back. Dave and Morley had invited Jim to dinner. He turned up in Dave's missing shirt.

He turned up in Dave's missing shirt. Now, Jim Schofield lives on the corner. He's 52 years old and a bachelor. He's also an artist and a great favorite in the neighborhood. He is from the Maritimes, and he's committed to the spirit of neighborhood. He spends more time than necessary on his front lawn, poking at plants, not so much gardening as gabbing with the river of neighbors as they flow up and down the street on their way past his house, on their way to the arena or the library.

In a large sense, Jim is the neighborhood. And whenever he starts talking about moving back to Nova Scotia, people get worried. Being a bachelor, Jim never entertains, except when he's invited to someone's house for dinner, which happens often, and then he is always entertaining. It's not unusual for someone to look at a large stew on the stove and say, we can't eat all that. Why don't we call Jim? Dave likes Jim because Jim lived in Toronto during the 1960s. He lived on Lowther Avenue across from Joni Mitchell. Dave loves to hear stories about the parties, about the top floor bedroom in Jim's rooming house, about goings-on at the riverboat. Dave couldn't believe it when Jim wore his shirt

to dinner. That was unbelievable, he said after supper. It was unbelievable. Dave was pacing back and forth as if he had just witnessed a murder. Calm down, said Morley, unhelpfully. Calm down? Our neighbor, my friend, he walked into our house wearing a shirt he stole from our clothesline, said Dave. Maybe he owns the same shirt, said Morley. Unlikely, said Dave. Maybe he found it. Maybe it blew off the line and he found it on his lawn. Come on, said Dave. He stole a shirt from our line. If he stole a shirt, said Morley,

why would he wear it here to dinner? Because he's forgotten consciously. Subconsciously, he feels guilty about taking it. He wants to return it. Wearing it to dinner tonight was like it was like a confession. His subconscious compelled him to bring it back to show us what he had done. Why don't you ask him, said Morley. Are you crazy? What if he did take him? What's he going to say? Yeah, I took the shirt. Do you think he's going to admit to stealing a shirt off our line? That night as they went to bed, Dave said, you know how they talk about murderers?

He was so nice. He was a quiet guy. We can't believe he did it. Yes, said Morley. Maybe Jim's like that. Maybe he is crazy. Maybe he wore the shirt into our house on purpose. Maybe he's playing with us. Morley was almost asleep. Dave was sitting up in bed as if he was driving a semi-trailer across the continent, his eyes burning across the bedroom.

Dave? What? You have to talk to him. Think of what you're saying. Dave was waving his hands around the bedroom. Think of the repercussions. If he took the shirt and I asked him about it, it's the end of our friendship. He's our neighbor. I like him. I really like him. Even if he did take the shirt, I still like him.

Maybe he has some weird thing about stealing clothes. I can live with that. I want to stay friends more than I want the shirt back. We'll never know, said Morley. Right, said Dave. We'll never know. Now, whenever you take a stand like that, a stand based on principles, you can be certain that your principles will be put to the test. Dave's test came on a Saturday afternoon the next April, a glorious April afternoon. What snow remained was melting into the gardens. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. The air was warm on your face.

It was good enough just to be alive. Morley was gardening. Dave was carrying things for her. This is so wonderful, she said. She was down on her knees pulling the mulch out of her garden. You pull all the dead stuff up and there's life pumping away underneath it. She took Dave on a tour of her garden. Those are snowdrops, she said. These are daffodils coming. These are tulips. She pulled up a handful of dead leaves.

Pretty soon we're going to be dead stuff too, she said. Thoughts seemed to please her. Dave put his arm around his wife and thought how lucky he was to have married her. Then he looked up and he saw Jim coming down the street carrying a bag of laundry. Jim was limping. My knee, he said. Give me the money, said Dave. I'll take it down and put it in for you. Jim gave him a handful of quarters and the bag of laundry, the laundromats at the bottom of the street. Dave said, I'll be back in a minute.

When he came back, Jim was gone. Morley was back on her knees. It's there, he said. What's there, asked Morley. The shirt's there. My shirt is there. And it is mine. I actually put my shirt into the washing for him. I'm going to steal it back, he said. And then you know what I'm going to do with it? I'm going to wear it over to his house. Morley said, well, why don't you just ask him about the shirt?

This is much better, said Dave, running inside. That night at supper, Morley said, You didn't do it, did you? No, said Dave, I didn't do it. I wanted to do it, but I couldn't do it. I either like him too much or I'm too much of a coward. What if he really is crazy? It's not worth it. All summer, whenever Dave saw Jim wearing his brown and green plaid shirt, he would feel his stomach knot.

And then one day he came home and he said, he's got paint on it. Why don't you just say nice shirt and see what he says, said Marley. You don't understand, said Dave. If I say anything about the shirt, he'll know. And then one Saturday in September, Dave took Sam to the library. And on their way home, they stopped to talk to Jim. Jim has a rail fence, the kind you might see at a horse farm. A fence made for kids to climb, for adults to lean on. So while Dave and Jim leaned against the fence, Sam played.

And then after five minutes, Sam said, Look, look, he said, pulling at Dave's pants. Look what I found. He was holding a pair of glasses. I found them, he said, pointing at the sidewalk. I found them by the tree. Dave looked at Jim. They're not mine, said Jim. Sam wanted to keep the tree. Dave looked at Jim. They're not mine, said Jim. Sam wanted to keep the glasses.

They're not ours, said Dave. We should take them home and make a sign in case someone's looking for them. You can make the sign, Sam. You could put them on the fence, said Jim. Someone might find them if you leave them on the fence. And then Jim said, I found the strangest things on that fence over the years. And then he said, two years ago, I found a shirt right on the sidewalk, right here. He was pointing at the sidewalk where Dave often parked his car. And then he said, I figured someone was taking the shirt to the cleaners and they dropped it getting out of their car. So I put it on the fence and left it there for a few days. I figured the guy who owned it would probably come back and find it. No one did.

I've been wearing it for two years. It's a great shirt. A green one, said Dave, with brown checks? Yeah, said Jim. Did I tell you this already? Turned out that Jim had kept the shirt in his house for six months before he had the courage to wear it outside I was afraid someone would recognize that he said first time I wore it was the night I came to your place for dinner do you remember that night? It's a great shirt.

Dave invited Jim for supper again. Jim went home and changed into the shirt. He brought two bottles of wine, but he didn't offer to give the shirt back. No, he said, it's mine now. Dave felt buoyant. Only a friend would say that. I should have taken it back, said Dave to Morley when they went to bed. I should have taken it that afternoon at the laundromat.

I should have stolen it. It would have made a better ending. Thank you very much. That was the story we call shirts, and that is a true story. It's not often I get to say those words on this podcast. That actually happened to Stuart. Stuart lost his shirt, and his friend Sandy, or as he calls him in that story, Jim Schofield, found it and wore it to his house.

Basically, everything that happened to Dave in that story actually happened to Stuart. But wait, it gets weirder. The funny thing about that story isn't that it's true. The funny thing is this. That story, Shirts, was included in Stewart's first Vinyl Cafe book, Stories from the Vinyl Cafe. When the book was published, it was reviewed in a national newspaper. The review was friendly, but the reviewer said that if he had to find fault with Stewart's stories, reviewers always say that, if he had to find fault with Stewart's stories, he would have to say they were unbelievable, or it might have been unrealistic. The stories are unrealistic. And then to illustrate his point about how unrealistic or unbelievable the stories were, the reviewer turned to the example of shirts, the one story in the collection that was literally true. It's just unbelievable, he wrote.

Yeah. Well, what's that phrase? The truth is stranger than fiction. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another story about Dave in a sticky situation. So stick around yourself, okay? Welcome back. Time for our second story now. I've talked a lot about the backstories on this podcast, about where Stuart got his ideas, about what inspired him to write certain stories.

It was one of the most unusual venues we ever recorded in. And that is really saying something because we recorded in hockey arenas and at a summer camp and even on a train as it traveled across the country. This story was recorded at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House in Stansted, Quebec. or depending on your perspective and where you are standing, like literally where you are standing, it was also recorded in Derby Line, Vermont. And that's because the Haskell Free Library and Opera House straddles the international boundary at Stansted, Quebec and Derby Line, Vermont. Like I said, truth is stranger than fiction. Martha Stewart Haskell built the Haskell Free Library and Opera House in memory of her husband. Being of dual heritage, she wanted to create a place that would serve both Canadians and Americans. She foresaw border restrictions becoming an issue, and that's why she stuck it right on the boundary. Pretty cool, eh? I can't

decide if it's provocative or playful. Maybe it's both. Playfully provocative. Either way, I like it. Downstairs in the library, most of the books rest on Canadian shelves. There's actually a piece of tape on the floor that runs right through the reading room, a black stripe to delineate the border. Stuart had an awesome time hopping from one country to the other, back and forth, back and forth, like a kid playing double dutch in the schoolyard. In the opera house, most of the seats are in America, but the stage is in Canada. So I guess that makes it the only theater in the United States without a stage and the only library without books.

Anyway, Stuart was inspired by this weird and wonderful venue, and we decided to go record a show there. And to go one step further, he wrote a story inspired by the location. This is Dave Crosses the Border. We're here today in this wonderful old theater straddling the border, celebrating the boundary that joins our country. Dave, having grown up in Big Narrows and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, grew up with certain ideas about these things, about borders and customs and paying duty and things like that. The whole town of Big Narrows had a certain laissez-faire attitude to these things when Dave was a boy. So it would have been hard

for him to have thought any differently. Everyone, and I mean everyone, everyone from Chief Mattson to Father McHale were born and bred dyed-in-the-wool smugglers. A habit, no doubt, left over from Prohibition days and possibly from before. Just as their ancestors worked ships full of rum down the main coast of Boston Harbor, so they too slipped back and forth across the border. And if they went by road instead of by sea, and if they moved their contraband into Canada instead of out, the underlying attention was the same. They were ducking duty. Paying duty seemed pointless. Duty was for other guys. The most favored port of call when Dave was a boy was Bangor, Maine. Still is. To this day, people from the Narrows make

pilgrimages to the malls of Bangor. It's a nine-hour drive. Now that seems like a long way to travel for a pair of pants. Think of it as a migration. They can't help themselves. The urge to shop lands upon them and off they go. Some of Dave's earliest memories involve trips to Bangor. Trips home were always in the dark. Dave and his sister Annie would lie in the back of their dad's old country squire, one of those big boat-like station wagons. There's probably an unconscious connection there to the ships, I mean, and to the rum runners who sailed

them. They would cruise along Highway 2 like a clipper ship. Annie and Dave in the back curled up in their sleeping bags, each of them cradling four bottles of rye. Their job was to convince the border guards they were asleep. And if they did, and they always did, they got a dollar. Dave was in grade one when he was fully initiated into this world. Somebody was getting married, and Margaret and her friend Winnie were hitting the outlet store in the mill in Lincoln, Maine. Margaret told Dave he was coming with them. Wear your hockey sweater, said Margaret.

It was a strange request for a June morning. But you did what you were told back then. While his mother and Winnie went to the mill, Dave wandered around Woolworth's basement, staring wistfully at the hamsters and the budgies. He was waiting on the sidewalk like they told him an hour later. About 15 miles before the border, Winnie pulled off the highway into a wooded picnic ground. She parked right at the back, out of sight of the road. They barely rolled to a stop and Winnie was out of the car and was ripping their packages open. While she did that, Margaret unbuttoned her blouse. Dave watched all this in astonishment.

His mother taking her blouse off, tying sheets around her waist, and stuffing pillowcases into her bra. When she finished, she motioned to him. Take off your sweater, she said. That afternoon, in his first true act of citizenship, Dave wore five lacy bras across the border. Dave eventually learned that Winnie's picnic round was a regular stop for the citizens of Big Narrows.

You could pull in there any time, day or night, and likely as not find some kid from the Narrows scuffing up a new pair of sneakers. So when Dave turned eight, and he'd saved a little money of his own, it seemed only natural that he would hold on to it for the next trip to Bangor. By the time they went, Dave had $12 burning a hole in his pocket. He knew exactly what he was going to get. He went right to Woolworth's and picked up a box of candy bars and his first ever watch.

The watch was a Timex. The candy was Three Musketeers. They were advertised on the Howdy Doody show, and you couldn't get them in Canada. Kids in big narrows would do anything for a bite of a Three Musketeer. On the way home, they stopped at the picnic ground to straighten up. would do anything for a bite of a three musketeer. On the way home, they stopped at the picnic ground to straighten up, as Charlie put it. As they got ready to leave, he rested his arm on Dave's shoulder.

Remember, he said, you can declare the candy, but don't mention the watch. Made Dave feel grown up. Also made him nervous. And when he saw the guard in his uniform standing beside the little customs booth, a rogue wave of guilt washed over him. His parents had always taught him to obey the law. This suddenly seemed so wrong. As his father inched toward the hut, Dave started sweating.

By the time they rolled to a stop, he was weeping softly. The guard bent over and peered into the car. Now, Charlie was a master at this game. Charlie was one of the best in town. Why, Charlie used to take lint from the dryer with him on these trips and would use it to line the pockets of any new pants they bought. That's how good Charlie was. So when Charlie rolled down his window and the guard said, do you have any drugs or alcohol to declare? Charlie, who happened to have 160 ounces of rye under the front seat, nodded at the kids in the back and he said breezily,

If I did, don't you think I would have used it up by now? That sort of line usually worked like a charm. Unfortunately, Charlie's charmed life was about to end. Charlie had finally met his match. Because this guard had long ago learned that if there were kids in the car, he should ask the kids to tell him about their trip. He had long ago learned that little ones inevitably rat their parents out. I feel like I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know. Nodding absentmindedly at Charlie's little joke, the guard stuck his head in the front window and looked Dave and Annie up and down.

As he did, a smile creased his face. He had a feeling. And when he had a feeling, he was seldom wrong. He barely hesitated. He looked right at Dave and he said, nice watch, son. Charlie, who was sitting in the front seat, let out a long, slow exhalation. I got it in Bangor, blurted Dave, but my dad told me not to declare it. The guard beamed at Charlie.

Gotcha, he said. But he said it quietly, so only Charlie would hear. That was the last time either Charlie or Margaret asked the kids to lie, and the last time they lied in front of the kids. From then on, when they went to Bangor with Dave and Annie, they only brought back what they were allowed, though Dave did notice that if they went without him, they seemed to come back with a lot more stuff. As for Dave, well, ever since that horrible afternoon, Dave has declared everything he has ever bought at any border crossing he's ever crossed, right down to every last pack of gum,

making him perhaps the only person raised in Big Narrows who has ever paid duty without duress. He followed the rules, though I would be lying if I didn't tell you that he didn't wonder from time to time if he could, you know, make an exception every once in a while. And knowing that, you might understand what went wrong this summer the last time he visited the United States with his family they went to Saratoga Springs New York went for the weekend Dave and Morley Sam and Stephanie they went to see a show Dave's old friend Bobby Kugel a promoter called and said they should come he. He had arranged backstage passes and everything. Bring everybody, said Bobby.

And they had a grand time, hung out for sound check. And on Sunday, before they came home, they went to the mall. Of course, everyone went over their limit. Of course, everyone went over their limit. And so as they rolled north towards the border, they all knew there'd be a stop so they could declare their purchases. Because that's the way Dave did it. After lunch, Morley gathered all the bills into a pile in her lap and she began adding them up. It added up to way more than Dave had imagined.

Way more. As he drove along, Dave was trying to figure out the duty in his head and just how much that meant they had spent when you added in the hotel bill and the gas and the food and exactly how much there was in his checking account. Their little weekend jaunt, those free tickets, had actually been an extraordinarily expensive escapade. That's what he was thinking when he spotted the picnic ground. And he was seized by a spasm that he will never understand. He saw the sign, and at the very last moment, he jerked the wheel, and he took the exit, leaving the highway with a squeal, and he rocked to a stop beside a picnic table behind the outhouses, and he looked at his surprised family, and he said,

Okay, everyone out. What's going on, said Sam. Well, Dave was already out himself. Dave was already out of the car. He'd already popped open the trunk and he was already unloading the packages and now he was sitting at the picnic table tearing them open and pulling off price tags. What's going on, said Sam again, staring at his father in amazement. Dave didn't answer. Truth of it was, Dave didn't know. Maybe something had awoken the rum runner spirit of his ancestors, or maybe he was reaching for the carefree

spirit of his father or maybe it was something more prosaic. Maybe the prospect of his looming visa bill had driven the caution from his soul. Whatever it was it was not about to put itself into words. All he said was come on. Come on he said. They'd never seen him like this. And truthfully, it scared them a bit. But they all did as they were told. They took turns in the outhouse, slipping out of their old clothes and into their new ones.

Come on, he said again, holding out a pair of pants to Sam, just like his father had held out things to him. I already have pants, said Sam. Put this pair on over, said Dan. Then he lined them up, and he checked them, and he pronounced them ready. And they all waddled back to the car, walking like pudgy summer snowmen. And off they set. They were five minutes from the border.

Before they climbed into the car, Dave collected all the empty bags and stuffed them into one. As they pulled out of the picnic grounds, he rolled down his window and tossed the bag of bags toward the garbage bin. He looked left and he looked right. The highway was clear. He felt an odd sense of liberation. Everyone else felt confused, anxious, and hot. The customs officer waiting for them in front of the little booth looked incredibly young. He was, in fact, 22 years old, fresh out of college, fresh from 16 weeks of training and interrogation and interviewing. This was his first posting. This was his first Sunday night. The training had been incredible. He had listened while senior guards shared their war stories. He had role-played scenarios. He had worked as a secondary and watched primaries

unravel people. And he had been at it two weeks now and he hadn't made a single bust. And the older guys were beginning to rag him. He looked at Dave and waved him forward. As the car inched toward him, he sighed. Another family, back from the malls. There'd be no glory in catching someone with another pair of undeclared sneakers. He was looking for real contraband. Dave was grinning up at him now. To be honest, it was more a leer than a grin. at him now. To be honest, it was more a leer than a grin. A little alarm began ringing deep in the guard's subconscious. Good evening, sir, he said. Any drugs, alcohol, or tobacco in the vehicle?

Why, said Dave, trying to affect the breezy attitude of his father. What do you need? The young guard frowned. The alarm was ringing louder now. His spidey sense had begun to tingle. He looked Dave up and down and he said, that's a nice sweater you got there, sir. I've been looking for one like it. Where did you get it? Got it for my birthday, said Dave. My mother gave it to me. She lives in Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, actually, and Dave's story was getting way too complicated. And it would have been much more believable had there not been a price tag dangling from Dave's neck. The guard held up his hand.

He looked into the car. The whole family was wearing several layers of clothes. He sighed. He was tempted to let them through. He wanted more than a family of duty dodgers. And they all looked like they were suffering enough. And that's when he saw the bag of bags hooked on the back antenna. There was something about this that didn't add up. there was something about this that didn't add up.

At school, they had been told the famous story about the old man and the wheelbarrow. The old man lived on one side of the border and worked on the other, which meant he crossed the border every day. And every day when he crossed, he pushed a wheelbarrow full of sand in front of him. Every day day the guards sifted through the sand, but they never found anything, nothing. On his last day of work, on the day of his retirement, the guards took the old man aside and they said, we've known you for 25 years. And for 25 years, we've known that you've been smuggling something in the sand. But we've never been able to figure it out, and it's been driving us crazy.

This is your last day. Please tell us what you've been smuggling. Well, the old man looked them up and down, and he smiled. Thought it was obvious, he said. I've been smuggling wheelbarrows. The guard could feel his heart accelerate. He looked at Dave at the obvious layers of clothes, at the sweater with the price tag, and now at the bag of bags. Nobody could be this bad.

It had to be a diversion, a distraction, a bunch of wheelbarrows full of sand. The guard said, Could you step out of the car, sir? For the second time in his life, Dave was marched into the customs building and taken into a small room. Dave was thinking his goose was cooked. He was thinking there wouldn't just be duty to be paid, there were going to be fines,

maybe even some sort of record. As the young guard watched him, he began to get excited too. The guy was clearly unraveling. What could possibly be in the car to make him so agitated? Alcohol? Cigarettes? Guns? be in the car to make him so agitated. Alcohol, cigarettes, guns, whatever it was, it was significant. That was for sure. It was probably drugs. He was about to make his first big bust. If he played this right, there would be a press release. If he was lucky,

he might get quoted in the paper. He went into the room. He sat in the chair facing Dave. He said, is there something you want to tell me? And that's all it took. Just like that, Dave began spilling his guts. Wait a minute, said the guard. He'd start by asking where the drugs were. Where are the goods, he said.

They're on my person, said Dave. Where, said the guard. Dave thought of the shoes, the two pairs of pants, the five pairs of socks he was wearing. Most of the contraband is below the waist, he said. So much for dinner, thought the guard. This your first time, he asked. I was busted when I was a kid, said Dave. Mostly I learned from my parents. My mother used me as a mule. My wife has some on her, too, said Dave. But my kids

are carrying most of it. As the guard stood up, Dave added one last thing. I guess I should tell you about the stuff we ate. It was Dave's first cavity search. When they were done with him, they went over the car with a fine-tooth comb. They didn't find anything but the clothing, of course. And Dave finally managed to convince them that there was nothing to find. I swear to God, said Dave, you've got it all. But all the same, they were there for three hours. And somehow in the confusion, somewhere between the unpacking and the repacking,

between the listing of their purchases and the checking of their IDs, the actual paying of the duty was forgotten. Well, said Dave as they drove away. That worked out well. No one else said anything. Until five minutes later, when Sam showed them the turtle. I found him when we stopped at the picnic ground, he said. A northern redbelly, protected under the Endangered Species Act. The turtle had apparently slept through the search.

He was in the box with a board game, said Sam. Dave nearly had a heart attack. But I didn't buy him, said Sam. He didn't cost any money. We could drive back, said Sam, and we could come back through customs and declare him. Morley turned to the back seat and smiled sweetly at her son. Declare that we've just brought a protected species across an international border? We don't need to tell them that, sweetie. They don't mind that kind of thing at all.

Dave's only response was to step on the gas. Thank you. That was the story we called Dave Crosses the Border. We recorded that story at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House in Stansted, Quebec, a very cool theater that straddles the Canada-U.S. border. We've got to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a minute with a sneak peek from next week's episode. so stay with me. That's it for today. We'll be back here next week with a special episode. We're going to play one of the most requested Vinyl Cafe stories. And we're going to play some music inspired in part by that story. All of that, and we're going to share a conversation that I had over the summer with my good friend Danny Michelle.

Here's a clip. What are you laughing at? What are you laughing at? One of my favorite memories, which I have a recording of too, that I i don't think you know i have is so good is we were playing somewhere and you guys had to have some type of like ad thing sent in to say promoting a show for something and so you just needed to record stewart saying tomorrow on the show this and and uh I had my computer with my recording software so you were like can you just in this dressing room before the show can just record Stuart and they'd set up catering and and Stuart was Stuart was super concerned

that he was gonna miss oh dinner dinner he's gonna miss to miss dinner. So he was kind of like, let's just get this done. And you kept making him do it over and over. And in between takes, he would say, oh, the chicken's going to be gone. He's like, the chicken's going to be gone. And you're like, Stuart, just do it. And you do it. And you guys, and I have the recording.

It's so special to me because I listen to it. And in between is him oh my god should we play it and here it is do you want to hear it yeah I do

I have it I've never ever heard this this is this is his concern with having to do this at this time that he would miss dinner

that's next week on the podcast you don't want to miss this one backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is my friend, Greg DeCloot. I'd give him the shirt off my back. Theme music is by my pal, Danny Michelle. You'll get to know Danny a bit better next week on the podcast. The show is produced by Louise Curtis and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.