TIM HORTON'S DONUTS + BORDER CROSSINGS

So . . . last week at my daughter’s graduation from a small college deep in the heart of Iowa, I met a fellow Canadian Maritimer—originally from Pictou County, Nova Scotia but now a transplant to the Quad Cities area of Iowa/Illinois. His daughter was also graduating. After all the usual “small world” connections were made—he had gone to medical school with about a half-dozen louts who had made my life miserable in high school—we got down to talking about certain matters of importance to Canadians: hockey . . . and donuts. (It was a bit early in the day to talk about beer, which would have completed the conversational hat trick for Canucks.) The hockey part was obvious: the NHL playoffs are in full swing, so we naturally exchanged some thoughts on how they were shaping up. . . . I guess the donut part was prompted by our admiring the two largest boxes (pallets might be the more precise word) of the largest donuts we had ever seen—some unknown saint had brought them to the graduation brunch we found ourselves at. . . .

Anyway, we got talking about donuts and I was inevitably reminded of a little episode I was involved in at a Tim Horton’s donut shop in Salisbury, New Brunswick a few years ago. We stopped there for lunch on our way back to Boston from our annual summer vacation on PEI (which, by the way, must have the highest number of Tim Horton’s donut shops per capita in the world: I think there are at least 9 in my hometown of Charlottetown alone). Standing in the long lunchtime line wondering seriously to myself if we had enough Canadian cash left to pay for our soup and sandwich combos, I wondered aloud (I love to see my wife and our three daughters cringe in public) whether Tim Horton’s would be willing to barter. I then dug into my pocket to see what I might have. First I pulled out a golf tee. Then I pulled out a guitar pick (red). Then I pulled out a ball marker from the Glen Eagle golf course I had played (miserably) a couple of days earlier. I said to my wife and daughters: “All of these should be worth something.” They were not particularly amused, but the woman in the line in front of us seemed to be (unless, of course, her smile was a pitying one, directed toward my traveling companions). . . . As it turns out, Tim Horton’s gave an exchange rate on American dollars, so we were okay. As we sat eating lunch, I commented (tongue only lightly in cheek): “Isn’t this just the perfect meal—a ham and cheese sandwich, a cup of coffee and a donut?” A trucker at the next table overheard me and leaned over to say, “I have this meal every day—breakfast, lunch, and dinner . . .” And then, to complete the lunchtime trifecta, a woman a couple of tables over asked me what I had said after my daughters all gave me high fives for my response to my middle daughter’s questioning whether my sister “was cool in high school.” I replied that I didn’t know my sister when she was in high school (she was two grades behind me). Then my daughter asked whether I was cool in high school. I replied, “I was always cool”—then added “except when you were in middle school” . . . Ah well. Maybe you had to be there. . . .

Anyway . . . about two hours later my wife was driving when we crossed the border from Canada back to the U.S. Noticing that the last name on her passport was different from the rest of ours, the border guard asked, “How do you all know each other?” My wife replied: “We met at a Tim Horton’s in Salisbury.”

Actually she didn’t say that—but she should have! (I would have . . .)

But that reminds me of another time we crossed that same border from Canada to the U.S. and encountered that same guard. (In the interests of national security, I will resist identifying him too specifically—but just let me say that his surname is a slight variation on the name of the Welsh soldier in Shakespeare’s Henry V. I’ll also resist mentioning his wife’s family’s name, but I will say that I’ve crossed through his checkpoint and chatted with him enough times to learn that she is from New Dominion, PEI . . . and that our families have spent summer vacations less than a mile apart on the same south shore beach. But I digress . . .) So . . . we were crossing one time in a Dodge Caravan with darkly tinted windows. I was driving. Peering through the driver’s window, the guard nodded toward the back of the van and asked: “What have you got there?” I replied: “Three daughters and a dog.” He then asked: “Any weapons?” I replied: “No.” Then it was his turn again: “You should have,” he said, smiling grimly and waving us on.