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On November 16th, 1991 eight of us loaded in to my two-seater Toyota minivan and headed south out of Ottawa on the old highway 16. It was a surprise birthday road trip for my best friend and roommate Jojo and we were headed to Albany to see the Jerry Garcia Band, who I knew only as “isn’t he the main guy in the Grateful Dead?”
This would mark my first experience seeing any sort of “jam” band and not coincidentally the first time I would cross the border to see a concert (come to think of it, I guess I had only been in the US once before this, on a family trip to Disneyworld when I was seven years old). With peace signs duct-taped onto the big, round fog lights mounted on my old van’s bumper, the eight of us were decked out in our finest tie-dyes and hippie clothes when we pulled up to the US border at Ogdensburg, all smiles.
We were quite unprepared when the border guard asked us for ID. Everybody started fishing through pockets and purses and handing their drivers licences and library cards up to me in the drivers seat. It was around this time that it was discovered that Anne-Marie had accidentally left her purse in the gas station just outside of Ottawa, and inside her purse was both her ID and our tickets for the evening’s entertainment. I gathered up what we did have and handed it over to the scowling border guard.
“Pull in,” he said. Like he was going to say anything else, right?
So we pull in, pile out of the van, go into the station and get separated and searched. Soon the scrutiny we were afforded due to our youthful, carefree appearance and our equally carefree attitude towards having everyone’s ID with us when trying to cross into the US was heightened. A pill of unknown providence had been discovered embedded deep in the pocket of a jacket worn by one of the gentlemen in our party. A couple of the guys were immediately strip-searched, everyone was patted down again, the van was searched top-to-bottom, and I was told that when they discovered what sort of illegal substance was in that pill they would be permanently and gleefully confiscating my vehicle and I’d have a mere five minutes to clear it out of any personal effects as I would never be seeing it again. We would be left to our own devices to get back to Ottawa and we sure weren’t going to be heading into the US this evening.
Now here’s the thing: Jay was one of Anne-Marie’s house-mates and it really, honestly wasn’t his jacket. The garment in question had been left at the house after a party several months before and it just sat on a hook near the door waiting to be recovered by it’s owner, should they ever come by again. Everyone who lived there would randomly throw on the jacket for a quick run to the store or to shovel the walk; heck I probably wore it once or twice when I was over at their place hanging out.
In short, the pill didn’t actually belong to any of us and none of us knew what it was, though Jay said he thought it looked like a Dristan tablet.
So the border cops got out their big black moulded plastic boxes full of drug-testing equipment and a crew of them went to work trying to identify what exactly the eight of us were trying to smuggle into their country so they could banish us and steal my van. They broke off a little piece of the pill and put it in a ziplock baggie full of clear goo. They shook it around hoping it would turn orange or some such colour but it didn’t. They broke off another piece and put it in a different baggie of goo and the bunch of them stood around and watched eagerly, wringing their hands and praying for purple. And…nothing.
As I watched them break off piece after piece and saw their mounting frustration I was struck by the irony of the situation. These men and women who worked so hard to keep their border safe were going crazy looking for drugs. They looked a bit like heroin addicts searching in vain for their next fix.
In the end they kept breaking off pieces of that pill until it had no more pieces to give. They ran out of pill before they could figure out what it was made of and those poor border guards seemed really, really disappointed. I swear they were hoping against hope that we were trying to bring illegal drugs into their country and when they found that no, in actual fact we were being cool and trying not to break their laws it kind of pissed them off. How weird is that?
We were three hours going through this fiasco, until finally the border cops gave us back our ID’s and handed me the keys to my van: we were now welcome to enjoy their wonderful, free country. Of course the problem was we were currently not interested in going to Albany, we had to immediately floor it back towards Ottawa and try to find Anne-Marie’s purse.
Which we did and we did, finding everything safe and sound at the Esso station, and now horrendously late for a concert we had every right to be ridiculously early for we whisked through the din headed south once again.
On the bridge leading back to the Ogdensburg border crossing we tried to compose ourselves as dignifiedly as possible – were we in for another three-hour shakedown that would make us miss the show altogether? Should we just turn around and go home and avoid what may be an extended stay at the border? We decided to swallow our fears (etcetera) and press on.
“Weren’t you guys just here about an hour-and-a-half ago?” the guy in the booth asked.
“Yes,” I answered, eighty fingers and eighty toes firmly crossed.
“Go ahead,” he said, and with a wave of his hand off we went, many lessons learned in pre-9/11 America.
After stopping for a quick hippie dance party in a pretty roadside state park we plowed on to Albany, arriving at the concert in the middle of the last song of the first set. It was Let’s Spend The Night Together by my current favourite band, The Rolling Stones – not a bad start.
The setbreak ended with the lights going down on Lay Down Sally, one of the only Eric Clapton songs I seriously respect (probably because in it he so successfully channels JJ Cale), and a recurring problem with Jerry’s guitar kept the song going for a good twenty-five minutes, most of which was taken up with swirling keyboard solos from Melvin Seals to cover the lack of guitar soloing.
It soon dawned on me with great surprise that Jerry Garcia was in a cover band, as the rest of the night saw the room grooving to exemplary versions of Waiting For A Miracle, And It Stoned Me, Tangled Up In Blue, and so many more. It was a grand awakening for me to hear what could be done with the music of others, how just a smidgen of harmonic material could fill blocks and blocks of time with joyous music, and how a crowd of true music lovers acted in the presence of such predictable yet unpredictable greatness.
I joined the crowd as we burst onto the sidewalk outside of Knickerbocker Arena and ran smack dab into my first Shakedown Street, the wandering independent commercial circus that follows The Grateful Dead and their offshoots criss-crossing America from parking lot to parking lot. A freaky pop-up outlet mall for what was then a burgeoning fringe of society, I was shocked and wide-eyed for the next hour or so. I bought the first t-shirt I saw which I later realized was used – I had purchased someone’s laundry – and I still have it. There were grilled cheese sandwiches and gooey ganja goo-balls, whippets and dollar beers. It was a spontaneous Mardi Gras of activity and all of it overtaking the city streets on a chilly night.
I was enthralled.
I drove us back home after the show, none of us sleeping. It had been an exciting night for everyone – we all went to our fair share of concerts but I don’t think any of us had ever experienced anything like this before and we raved about it like kids on their way home from a candy store free-for-all as we drove north along the dark highway. We were nervous as we approached the border back to Canada but were welcomed with open arms and Timbits by Mounties carrying red and white hockey sticks who bowed to us and politely sang songs of moose and maple syrup.
Or so it felt in comparison to going the other way.
Todd Man Out 