If I Had a Blog in 1992

I guess zines still exist, right? But there would certainly be a lot more if it weren’t for the Interweb, which brought production and distributions costs down to, uh, zero.

Anyway, while I worked in Ewing, New Jersey, in 1992, I contributed a couple of essays to a small magazine put together by friends at the local MotoPhoto. The following appeared in issue #1 of The Piece (September/October 1992).

Kilometers From Home

I recently drove to Toronto for two simple reasons:
1) to broaden my horizons by interacting with our neighbors to the North, and
2) if I’m ever drafted, I want to be comfortable with the escape route.

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The road to Canada is lined with dead deer. This eliminated any need to stop at those horribly overpriced rest-stop snack bars. Mmm-mmm-good!

A bit of advice to anyone taking this drive: Make plans to spend the night at the Larry Holmes Commodore Inn in Easton, Pennsylvania. It’s the ideal stop-over for the weary traveler. I stayed in the luxurious Ray “Boom-Boom” Mancini Suite. A word of warning, though—do not miss the check-out time, unless you’re ready to go three rounds toe-to-toe with the former champ. I’m still a little woozy from that uppercut.

At the Canadian border, you must present one of the following forms of identification: an original birth certificate, a valid passport, or a Pepsi “Gotta Have It” card. Across the border, the very first road sign reads “This lane ends—300 m.” Three hundred meters? What is that? Eighteen inches? Five hundred seventy-four miles? You shouldn’t have to die in a fiery car crash just because you haven’t boned up on the metric system.

Learn from my mistakes: Canadians drive on the right side of the road, just like us. (To Mrs. Gertrude Stults of Saskatoon, once again, my sincerest apologies. My insurance agent will be in touch.)

I noticed that Canadian drivers leave their headlights on in the middle of the day. This is supposedly for safety reasons, but I can’t help but think that the Light Bulb Association of North America had something to do with the lobbying effort. I also noticed a dramatic increase in dead deer; the poor guys get hypnotized by headlights twenty-four hours a day!

After feeding on raw game all day, I was ready to sample Canada’s exotic cuisine. This is a strange and wonderful land where McDonald’s serves pizza and Old Milwaukee is an import. I finally settled on that traditional Canadian favorite, cheeseburgers and donuts.

Before I dined, however, I had to get my hands on some Canadian cash. If you go to Canada, I definitely recommend using your automatic teller card. You type in your code and all this toy money comes out of the slot. It’s fun! I was baffled by Canada’s monetary system. They are using every currency idea that failed in the United States—one dollar coins and two dollar bills. And Alan Thicke is on the twenty. Now maybe I don’t have a complete grasp of the exchange rate, or perhaps I’m just gullible, but I’m pretty sure I paid forty-eight dollars for a postcard.

In Toronto, I visited the CN Tower, the world’s tallest free-standing structure. Here’s a fun game—stand in the CN Tower lobby and see how long it takes before some U.S. tourist says, “Hey, Mavis, this is where they broadcast that 24-hours-a-day news. That Ted Turner is something else, I tell ya.” I paid my ninety shekels (or whatever their money is) and ascended to the Space Deck, the world’s highest observation deck. You might think this is pretty thrilling, until you realize you have no idea what you’re looking at! I mean, you go to the top of the World Trade Center, and there’s the Statue of Liberty, and the Empire State Building, and Central Park. In the CN Tower, you look around and it’s all—Canadian stuff. The Molson Brewery, and that’s about it.

One last observation: The streets of Toronto are quite similar to any metropolitan city in this country (albeit with more donut shops). However, their panhandlers could learn a thing or two from our good old U.S. street people. These Canadians are the cleanest, healthiest-looking panhandlers I’ve ever seen. I am not giving my hard-earned rupees to some teen who’s come in from the suburbs and didn’t get enough spending money from Mom. Let’s see some hunger, some desperation, some tell-tale signs of crack addiction. It just proves what I’ve been saying all along: the United States of America has the best beggars in the world, hands down—so how about a little pride, huh?

Although my visit was brief, I left Canada with some realizations about the world around us. I learned the value and beauty of a simpler, less frantic lifestyle. I learned that a smile and a kind word transcends any cultural differences. And I learned that if you unsuccessfully attempt to smuggle a bound-and-gagged Mountie through customs, you should be prepared for a long and thorough interrogation.