GRANDMA WALTON IN THE TUNNEL

The combined populace of Windsor and Detroit must be enlightened about the Border. Capital "B" for Border, because only one is in question: the Windsor/Detroit division. If a traveller desires barbarous persecution, let that traveller pour his masochistic self through the Windsor/Detroit Tunnel.

Returning through the Tunnel to Detroit is akin to escaping gravity and achieving orbit. Each time I have entered the Tunnel I felt I was being slung into an abyss, accelerating through a halfgloom hung with shadowy expectation. Excitement grows. Yellow tiles flash by like the smiles of a million Bucky Beavers who have not used toothpaste. Finally:

The light at the end of the Tunnel. Finally: The warm eye of a waiting star. I reach my immediate destination.

"Where you from?" asked a leathery plasti-cop, an Immigration Officer.

I thought it was obvious I had come from the Tunnel, but I answered compliantly, as I had learned to do: "U.S. citizen." The plasti-cop retorted, "Seems to me you just came from the Tunnel." A grin revealed that this was Immigration Humor. He squinted into the chaos of my back seat. "Got anything to declare?"

"No, sir."

"Have anything to eat or drink over there?" he asked and twitched his head in the direction of Windsor which was "over there."

"Oh, gee..;" I thought aloud, "a cup of coffee at work."

"How long ago?" he asked and rapped his boot against one of my tires. He was testing for diamonds, I suppose.

"Oh, fifteen minutes."

"Fifteen minutes?" He leaned in the window. "I'd say you got something to declare, then, wouldn't you?"

Rather than pay duty, I deposited my "acquisition" at the Customs Office. Not only did I legalize my entry in that way, but I also learned that my blood sugar was a bit high.

Two weeks after that I spent a luxurious afternoon with friends aboard a cruiser on Lake St. Clair. We had cast .off from a Canadian dock and returned to the same one. I had been in the sun all afternoon and I mentioned that fact in passing as I checked in at the American side of the Windsor/Detroit Tunnel.

After my suntan diminished I was allowed to re-enter the United States. I considered it sheer folly to pay duty on a Canadian suntan, and I refused to do so.

During my imprisonment I was displayed before classes of trainee plasticops. The Instructor used me as an example. "Notice the face! The eyes! The sinister lips!" All the trainees nodded in agreement. They observed the evil glare of my eyes,.. .lies had molded my lips and face into a visage of foreboding. Even my brother, who was training to be a plasti-cop, concurred with his classmates.

"You snake!" he screamed as the rest of the class filed out, "Deviate!" He tightened the leather straps that bound my hands and feet to a slab of pine board.

The instructor visited my cell. "How's the suntan?" he queried as he turned off the 5,000 volts that ran through the bars of my cell.

"I can't tell."

In the darkness of solitary confinement, it was an honest answer.

"Enjoy the food?" He continued with his pedantry.

"Yes, sir. Very good meal."

One meal in one week has got to be good.

"Listen, would you like a cigarette?" He punched one from a pack of Fall Malls. I thanked him and started to put the butt in my mouth.

"No, no!" he exclaimed. "That's the wrong end! It doesn't have a filter, I know; but there is a right end and a wrong end."

He was one of a very few Americans who can differentiate ends.

"This is the right end." He pointed to the right end. "And the wrong end," he smiled; "plays for the Lions."

This was subversive torture.

"Why are ypu here?" I said as I lit the cigarette from his lighter and tucked the smoldering butt behind my ear. I had' seen Cagney do that in one of his movies. It scared the hell out of the jailer who snuck extra beans and franks to Cagney after that. But the Instructor was not impressed and continued to talk.

"I want to thank you for letting our trainees use you as a model for devious Americans. You are very good, you know."

"Thank you."

"I mean, you really look sneaky."

"Urn..."

I presumed from his gleeful appearance that he was complimenting me. To Immigration Officers there's nothing more enjoyable than a sneaky face.

To arsonists, fire is beautiful.

In the days following my release, I crossed with surprising ease through the Tunnel and into the United States. Then the new class of trainees graduated and started working the Immigration Booths at the Border.

"The eyes!" exclaimed a new border, guard. "The lips! The face!"

I sighed mournfully and prepared myself for another stint in jail when, suddenly, the guard said, "All too sly! All too sneaky!" He fumbled through a pamphlet to a section marked: "Too Sly...Too Sneaky."

He studied the section with haste, rolled the pamphlet and jammed it into his pocket. "Go ahead." He waved me through the Border.

I learned from that experience. If you seem to be sneaky, fhen you are not suspect. If you appear to be innocent, then you are laden with guilt. Ah! The psychology of it!

I imagine that the Gerber Baby and Grandma Walton would get twenty years to life if they smiled at an Immigration Officer. There is no room in this world for innocence.

As an experiment I decided to test my theory.

I pulled up to the Immigration booth at the Border. "Citizenship?" asked the officer.

"United States," I said and paused before I added "goo-goo."

Before I completed the final "oo" I was tagged with a pink slip, stripped, poked, jabbed, interrogated, X-rayed and generally humiliated.

Maybe I shouldn't have worn the diaper.

If I have taken anything positive from these experiences at the American side of the Windsor/Detroit Tunnel, it would be this: I have learned the value of human life.

Human life? Its value?

Yes, gentle readers, I owe the attainment of this info to the Immigration Office.

I happened to be iathe Immigration Office, booked for smuggling pharm: aceuticals (I had placed two drops of Murine in each eye). A young couple entered the office. They were screaming and wailing as the followed an officer carrying an infant. The tot had been born in Canada and the Immigration Officers wanted the American parents to pay duty on the child.

"For what?" bellowed the father. "How can you possibly place duty on a human being? Do you have Rate Tables for babies? For people?"

"Now don't you get yourself all riled up," said the officer. "Rules is rules. We can't cover everything in these here

Rate Tables, but an unusual importation duty is based on the closet related

thing that is the Tables."

I peeked over the grieving mother's shoulder. That's when I learned from the Immigration Office the value of Human life.

The officer was reading from a column that denoted the Importation Duty on "Ground Beef/Pound."

"That'll be $7.89," said the officer.

The room was silent, save for the infant who protested: "Goo-goo."

I agreed with the kid. From previous experience I never would have thought that the Immigration Office held human life in such high esteem.