Funny Story - OT, But I Just Have To Share

[Wetters]

Talking about Sno-Seal and tent seam sealing got me to thinking about my husband's and my yearly two-week canoe trips in the Canadian wilderness that we took throughout the '70s. We would drive all night (12 hours from Chicago to Ely, MN, if I recall correctly), take a room, fall into bed for a few hours' sleep. After breakfast, we would leave the car at the put-in point and paddle over the Canadian border to the customs office (required). It was a cabin perched on the high point of an island in one of the lakes.

We carefully maneuvered the boat onto the rocky shore, and on this trip my husband stayed with it while a Customs Officer searched it for contraband. Meanwhile, I went up to the cabin to be questioned apart from my husband by the other Customs Officer. He was a tiny man, something like 4 ft. tall, with a ginormous red handlebar mustache, which I think weighed more than he did. At one point during our laborious attempt at small talk, he asked me (in a perfect British accent), "Do you know your King is dead?"

"President Carter died???" I responded, incredulously.

"No, No," he replied, not without exasperation. "Elvis Presley!"

Wetters

JD, somewhere in my garage, there's a picture of me in my 20s, pulling a canoe (battered Old Town) through a shallow river in the Canadian wilderness.

[JDinVirginia]

"Long live the king!"

Great story, Wetters!

--John

[SeattleDoug]

Thanks for a great story. It helps to add a little levity on a serious forum.

[Patrick]

Wetters,

Great anecdote. Only recently have critics come to understand the contribution he made to popular music and culture.

[Wetters]

Thanks, Guys. Patrick, I must admit that I appreciate his music a lot more now than I did in the day. Much of that comes from the fact that I was a bit young to fully appreciate rock 'n' roll in its early years (5 years old in 1956). My next-door neighbor who was 7 years older than I steeped me in the culture - she and I watched American Bandstand together in the afternoons! When I was a teenager and a young woman, Elvis was on the Las Vegas circuit by then, and that genre didn't appeal to me.

The Customs Officer presented in appearance and demeanor as something straight out of Monty Python, and that definitely added to the misunderstanding and hilarity of our exchange. Talk about a cultural divide....

Wetters

[JDinVirginia]

American Bandstand - not that really brings back memories!

--John