As the US border guard held the suspicious device he’d found in my car, I wondered why I had been pulled over. And why I was being treated like a terrorist. When I crossed the border from Canada to perform at the Minneapolis Fringe Festival I didn’t think I fit the usual profiling – I wasn’t trying to be anonymous – after all, I was driving my vintage cherry-red 1964 Buick Skylark. I’m part of that large, bland demographic – white, anglo-saxon, male, and I’m not even a suspicious foreigner – I was born in New York City and proudly carry a well traveled American passport. Perhaps I fell into some random selection process, or perhaps the guard had indigestion. Suffice to say I found myself in a small office while the red faced guard in mirrored sunglasses popped back and forth to show me items he’d pulled from the car. He seemed to be waiting for me to fall to my knees and admit that this flimsy ‘performing in musical theatre’ story was actually a front for the international white slave trade (well… OK, sometimes, at the going rates of pay in theatre, I think I might agree with him…). At one point he wandered in with my top hat from the show. ‘And just where will you be wearing this?’ I drew his attention to the flyer for the show that I’d already given him – ‘On stage, like in the picture’. He left unimpressed.
Finally, he came back in with a triumphant, grim smile. He was brandishing a piece of wood with a hole bored through the middle, and now behind him stood another border guard with his hand hovering close to his gun. ‘I found this in your trunk, what is the purpose of this device’. I paused. He was waving a section of a portable coat rack I’d borrowed from my Mom to use in the show. I had a vision of myself driving to Washington DC in my Skylark to thwack George W. Bush with the piece of wood. It was a very unlikely vision, but hey, I guess you can’t be too careful in the war against terror. He flourished my Mom’s old coat rack in the air, staring at me like I was his prize for the day. My Dad’s words came back to me – ‘never, ever, ever joke with a customs guards, they are not hired for their senses of humour’.
I explained the purpose of the ‘device’. There was a long pause. His armed friend coughed discreetly and drifted tactfully away. ‘Would you like me to show you how it works?’ I asked innocently. He glared. ‘No, I think I’ve seen enough! Please move your car.’ And I drove off thinking I’m glad my government is protecting me from all those coat rack wielding music theatre performers who might be trying to sneak into the US in a 40 year old classic car, yes, indeedy… it makes me feel so, so much safer….
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