I can’t remember if I let Ken drive on this trip. He had a permit, was not too swift with a stick. It was my father’s Tercel, standard shift. I may have got the car going, then we switched seats while driving. I had done this once before on the road to Montreal with another person who could not drive stick – Karen Riccardi, an old girlfriend…more about her some other day.
One way or another we got to CT. I recall taking a picture of the woman at the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge tollbooth. A redhead who shut her eyes as the flash popped. She was handing me my receipt. Had to keep receipts of everything, so I could get the money back. I did not have much.
We got to Danbury early in the afternoon. I don’t remember what day of the week it was anymore. A weekday, that’s all. Once there, we checked in to the Ethan Allen hotel. IBM put up potential recruits in nice spots back then. I don’t know what they do these days. Last I heard, kids get signing bonuses and three weeks of vacation. But they also have better grades than I ever did. I don’t think I could even get accepted at my alma mater anymore.
Once checked in, we checked out the amenities. There was a racquetball court, so we got my lacrosse sticks and tried throwing the ball around in there. Several bruises later, we gave up. Hotel patrons waiting to use the court for its intended purpose stared.
Dying for something to do, we went to the downtown Danbury area. All we could find of interest was a place called The Brass Jail. We went in for a few drinks. I told the barmaid I might be moving here and she probably said some nice things about the area that I don’t remember. I learned later that this was a place where IBMers don’t hang out.
Uninspired by Danbury, we decided we had to see salt water, so we headed to Norwalk down route 7. Late day traffic was heading north, so we got there easily. We asked where we could find the waterfront from an immigrant grocer who pointed a lot but did not say much we could understand. We got two travel mugs, filled them with alcohol of some sort, and drove to the first marina we could find. Turns out it was a private place, so we parked our car in a reserved spot and headed for the docks.
It was located deep in some estuary or inlet – we could not see Long Island Sound from there. But we walked the docks and admired the boats, and Ken snapped picture after picture with a point-and-shoot 35MM.
Soon we were confronted by a boat owner or perhaps an officer of the club. He asked what we were doing. We made up some lame excuses and he explained this was private property and we were not invited. He then asked what Ken had in his hand. Ken explained it was a camera. The man asked to see it, so Ken handed it over. He inspected it like it was a transmitter or a bomb, and then handed it back, repeating the innuendo that we should leave right away. We did.
Now unimpressed with two spots in CT, we went back to Danbury. We ate dinner and then retired for the night. I met with an IBM employee for breakfast and then followed her to the IBM offices for my interview. Ken walked downtown and then to the Brass Jail where I met him after my interview.
We decided then that instead of returning to Syracuse right away, we would go to Montreal, perhaps spend the night in a hotel near the border. Plan hatched, we hit the road with a bottle of vodka. We didn’t need much back then.
On route 84, going west, we were approaching the Taconic State Parkway. Ken had heard of this or been on it before in his roving and hitchhiking and said we should take it. I knew nothing about it and decided against it, which pissed him off. He said I was unadventurous. For a guy who never drove, he sure knew a lot about highways in a part of the state that he had scarcely been to.
Instead we crossed the Hudson and got on the NYS Thruway. The plan was to take it all the way to Montreal, which is what the road did. When the road became the Northway, near Albany, we were getting hungry. Karen Riccardi still lived in the area, so I posited that if we visited her, her mother would glady feed us. Olympia Riccardi loved me. Karen didn’t anymore – or so I thought (like I said, details later) – but her parents thought I was the same polite 15 year old that visited years ago.
We exited into Clifton Park, where the Riccardis lived, and I managed to find 31 Garrison Lane (yes, I still remember the address, and probably even the phone number – 518 899 4842). We pulled into the right driveway by sheer luck – orienteering is NOT my forte. A rap on the door got hugs all around. I explained we were just passing through from an INTERVIEW WITH IBM and we were on our way to Montreal. This impressed the hell out of Olympia and Richard Riccardi, so they insisted we have dinner. Even the long-haired hippie freak that was with me was allowed to come in. Any friend of Paul’s was a friend of theirs.
It was some kind of roasted chicken dinner with veggies and potatoes. It was delicious and it hit the spot. Karen was glad to see me, and envious that I was going to Montreal without her. I had gone only the year before, with her, on a whim (more later, ok? More later….). She and her brother helped us find an ATM. We got back on our way before sunset.
As a black, cold, August Adirondack night settled in, my eyes got tired and we needed to stop. The Northway was all oncoming white light and passing red lights. I proposed we stop at a rest stop and park between two tractor trailers and sleep. We went as far as parking between two such beasts, and I reasoned some trucker would pull in later that night or early the next morning, thinking the spot was unoccupied, and handily flatten the Toyota, with us asleep in it. We decided to drive on.
We reached Plattsburgh. I had some $60 in my pocket and I figured I could get a room and sneak Ken in. I’ll spare you the details, but at the first hotel with no vacancy I determined that there were no rooms to be had in the entire town. The front desk manager suggested I park at the edge of the large parking lot where the tractor trailers parked for the night.
I told Ken about it and we figured that, not being on the highway, it would be safer than the rest stop. We parked between two huge Frito-Lay trucks, polished off the bottle of vodka, and passed out. We were so wrecked that we did not hear both vehicles fire up and leave in the morning. We woke to empty space all around us. And splitting headaches.
We went to an IHOP where we ate pancakes and I got some aspirin. We headed north after that and stopped at the border, where I was ordered to park the car and walk into an office to be interrogated. Why, I thought. I cut my damn hair!!! I was tired of this happening to me (more on that, later). I went into the office. Ken was told to stay in the car.
In the office a French Canadian official asked to see my license. He reviewed it and supposedly looked up some info on me. “You have had no DWIs?” he asked, in his accent. No, I have not. “None?” No, I repeated. “Not one at all? That is remarkable.” I stared at him, wondering WHAT in the hell he was trying to get at – when did I ever have the time to get one? I was 21! Oh, the night before….well anway, I was sober, with a clean record as I stood there. He played with my license in his hand, staring at me, pursing his lips. He handed it back to me.
Foolishly, I had to ask a question. I held up my ATM card. Can I use this in Canada, I asked. He took it from me and walked away. HEY, GET BACK HERE, I said. He smiled at me and laughed. He came back and said yes, they had ATM machines in Canada. Wasn’t what I asked, but I wasn’t going to hone the question down to whether the NYCE or STAR network also existed in French Canada. I was tired of border officials, again.
Back on the highway, we reached Montreal before noon and walked around for about an hour. I kept trying to ask for a bathroom in my best attempt at what little French I remembered from Mme. DiVico, and after many attempts, one kind person took pity on us.
Once the loaf was pinched, we left. We were not impressed with Montreal, either.
We chose a route that would take us across the SW part of Quebec province to Massena, NY, roughly – a port of entry called Trout River. We would pass across what I was told are the Plains Of Abraham (but aren’t; it's the Chateauguay Valley). It was flat, with a distant view of a ridge or plateau to the north.
We got hungry midway home and stopped at Ormstown. I forgot 1)we were in Canada and 2)we were in Canada. We entered a nondescript grocery store in this town of 10,000 people. I grabbed some drinks and a candy bar, and Ken got cookies. When the cashier spoke to me, I remembered: we’re in Canada. I tried to remember my French. I stared at here as the gears in the back of my head slowy cranked up. Video of Mme DiVico reciting numbers, and then I got it: she wanted me to fork over something like $5. Then I remembered, we’re in Canada. She stared at the greenbacks, sighed, and called for a manager, or so I gather. One came over with a calculator and a newspaper. She looked up the exchange rate, calculated what we owed, and repeated it to me. I held out the money as if to say please be honest and take what you need and please give me my change. They took US $5 and returned some coins in Canadian. I apologized, in French, and we left.
The town was close enough to the border that they occasionally got someone like me, but not enough.
Back on the road to NY state, we started eating the cookies. They tasted like shit. Ken kept bitching about them but also eating them. I got tired o of listening to him because it was intefering with the Zappa music playing on my boom box, so I grabbed the entire package and threw it out the window.
We were generally pissed off about Quebec. Not Canada, just Quebec. We arrived, gratefully, in NY at Trout River and pulled into the US port of entry. Off to the side, I saw a carload of students standing outside their car with all their luggage. A customs official was removing a wheel. I feared the worst, but I just wasn’t going to take it.
A female officer approached the car. Where have we been, where are we going? How long were we in Canada? What did we buy. I explained the following:
“I just came from an interview with IBM (drop a name!) in Danbury, CT. We decided yesterday afternoon to drive to Montreal on our way home to Syracuse (kind of like going to Miami on your way from NY to LA, proportionately). We spent the night in Plattsburgh, drove to Montreal this morning, left after going to the bathroom, and stopped in Ormstown.”
What did you buy? I held up an empty Snickers wrapper and Ken said he ate all of his cookies.
She was dumbfounded. “You drove to Montreal to go to the bathroom on your way home to Syracuse from CT?
I was certain we were gonna get waylaid, the car inspected inside and out, and we’d do a lot of standing and answering of questions. Here goes:
Yep.
She shook her head. “Move on gentlemen. Just go.”
So we did, wending our way through Massena, Potsdam, Watertown. We stopped at the Salmon Run Mall where Ken had to show me a huge piece of kinetic art on display there. We made it to Oswego before sunset and I was home by dark. I got the job. I don’t remember much about the interview, but I sure remember the rest of the trip.
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