Road Trip
By STEVE SMITH
Oct. 2, 2007
All of Canada is agog with the spending opportunities presented by our beefed up buck but wait, before you rush off to America to spend your newly muscled loonie, take it from me: It ain’t like it used to be.
As a young man, when a trip to the States was something special, I was an enthusiastic border crosser. Shopping galore with low prices on things we couldn’t get here. Maybe a chance to see a major league ball game. Hundreds of ways to spend your money.
For several years, just before the start of school, I’d round up a few buddies and my Dad’s Plymouth and head south to Cape Cod. We took turns buying $5 worth of gas (which would just about fill up the tank) and, when we rolled in, another five bucks each would get us a decent room (complete with pool and sauna). We’d tool around the Cape, hitting the beaches and shopping for clothes.
But it was a different time. There were many things that were hard to find in Halifax, but were plentiful in the U.S. Levi’s jeans and Rawlings baseball gloves were two of the things that stick out in my memory. My older brother had hammered into me the need to wear only button-down-collar, oxford-cloth dress shirts with a placket in the front and a pleat in the back (preferably made by Gant). He also insisted that I use only English Leather aftershave. All of this was much easier to find in Massachusetts than it was here.
Often, if the schedule was right, we’d make a day trip into Boston to see a ball game. Before going to Fenway Park, we’d always try to make a stop at the KM Pro company, a little, hole-in-wall operation on Lincoln Street where all the official baseball caps were made for major league teams (the "Miliner to the Majors" they called themselves). You’ll have to take my word for it that, to our teenaged-male minds, this was a big deal. Major league baseball hats were not omnipresent like they are now, especially the official, properly sized models. Having one was a real status symbol.
Then it was off to the game. In those days, BoSox tickets were plentiful and inexpensive. I still have a ticket stub from that era showing the price of a bleacher seat at $1.
With those memories in my mind and a strong dollar in my pocket I thought this might be the time to re-enact my cross-border forays. With my wife and son, I began to plan how to put some of our newfound financial wallop to work.
My first mistake was thinking we could see a game at Fenway Park. It’s not so easy now. Boston is one of the elite teams in baseball and their tickets sell out almost as soon as they go on sale. Plus, the price has gone up. The same bleacher seat that used to cost me a buck now sells for $23 (talk about financial wallop). I guess that’s not too bad considering we’re talking a 35-year difference in time. But there’s a catch. You can’t get these tickets from the Red Sox. You have to go through any one of a dozen online scalpers and the cost escalates dramatically up to the $40-plus range for a weekend game.
This dampened my enthusiasm for going to Boston and, when I read that you have to pay $15 to park at many Cape Cod beaches, we scratched that off our destination list as well. We’ve got good beaches here that you don’t have to pay a nickel for, so why cough up for Yankee beaches?
As for shopping, we did get as far as Freeport, Me., which is now a conglomeration of so-called outlet stores. The only thing that’s "outlet" is the money getting "let out" of my wallet.
What a madhouse! Cars and people everywhere. Lineups to try things on. Lineups to pay. Lineups to pee! The prices weren’t all that impressive, either. I’ve gotten over the name-branditis with which my brother infected me, so, name brand or not, a $60 golf shirt marked down to $30 is still $15 more than I want to pay.
About the only thing that has improved about a shopping road trip to the U.S. is crossing the border. It’s true there are longer lineups, but that’s only because there’s more traffic. Dealing with the Customs people is now a breeze.
In the old days, it used to be nerve-wracking. The total you were allowed to bring back was $25 and we’d each spent that while the border was still in our rearview mirror. So we did what any red-blooded, all-Canadian traveller would do in similar circumstances: We lied.
The night before heading home over the border, I’d be out in the parking lot of our Bangor motel, scuffing up my new Bass Wejuns and beating the heck out of my new Reggie Jackson baseball glove. The others would be taking the tags off the back of their jeans or practising their creative writing (the better to fill out our Customs form). We even took the fiendishly clever step of carting a portable record player with us into the U.S. so we could say that all of the records we were bringing back were actually ones we had taken in.
The Customs people, of course, weren’t that stupid, but I guess they figured we weren’t dangerous criminals, as we very seldom had trouble coming back. Occasionally, one of us would have a severe attack of honesty (or bad arithmetic) and overshoot our $25 allotment. The Customs people were cool, though, and usually helped us by saying: "Mr. Murphy, Mr. Moulton seems to have used up his $25. Can we transfer a few dollars over to your claim and help him out?"
So my advice to would-be border bandits is to stay home. It’s not worth it. One gas fill-up today is more than what we used to spend for the entire trip. Motels and meals aren’t cheap any more, either. Most of what they have, you can get right here, if not from a local store then from an online merchant. If you’re looking for real bargains, skip the U.S. and shop at Frenchy’s!