Pot-addled hillbilly plans secret underground railroad to flood Trump's America with Muslims

I've been working on the Farm Manager to ditch Falling Downs and move back to the Maritimes.

Already have a spot picked out, right on the ocean, a mere twenty minutes north of Calais, Maine. I know the neighbourhood well. Used to frequent the highways and byways of the Quoddy Bay area back when I toiled at the drydock. The bay was a thousand fishing boats, one RCMP patrol boat, and a US Coast Guard presence so slight you could go months without seeing any sign of it. The Canadian Border Patrol had a wee office on Deer Island, where it was not unusual to find a locked door and a sign advising you that they'd be back in fifteen minutes.

Life's been good here at Falling Downs, and it's sad to think of leaving, but the time may be nigh upon us. We're not getting any younger. I miss the taste of sea salt in the air. We enjoy good health, more or less, for now at least, although the twin spectres of creeping dementia and pending manganism haunt me daily.

The Farm Manager is up and down about my plan. Her main objection seems to be what are we gonna do for money. I did some research, and it turns out there's lots of jobs in the general area. Mostly "seafood processing" jobs. In fact, there's such a shortage of workers that one of the local companies had to dump tons of lobster at the landfill just because they couldn't find workers.

Dig a little deeper into this labour shortage, and a couple of things become apparent. First of all, the seafood industry on the east coast has, over the past ten years, become heavily dependant on "temporary foreign workers." That's because the locals balk at standing in a refrigerated building in rubber boots, gloves, and aprons for forty-four hours a week ripping apart lobsters for minimum wage.

But world events have conspired to change these very local circumstances, and that's where the pot-addled hillbilly sees a once in a lifetime opportunity. Now, I know the regular reader will be skeptical, (hi Bob!) because most of my once in a lifetime opportunities have ended in bankruptcy court, but I think I'm on to something here!

Consider the aforementioned world events:

• the rise of Trump
• Trump's  promise to ban Muslims from America
• the flood of Muslim refugees out of countries that America's foreign policy (ie bomb Muslim countries) has made uninhabitable

So here's how it's gonna shake out, and no, me and the Farm Manager aren't going to be standing on one of those seafood processing assembly lines for nine hours a day, soaked through and freezing cold as we rip the claws off live lobsters... temporary foreign workers from Syria and Afghanistan and Iraq are!

As Donald Trump well knows, most of those folks who have walked to Germany REALLY want to be in America, and they know Trump won't let them in. They also know that Canada is right next door. So they see a chance to go to Canada as temporary foreign workers, and bingo! Next thing you know, the labour shortage in east coast seafood plants is solved! 

But that is only step one in my brilliant plan. Once these folks are here in their thousands, nay, tens of thousands, step two kicks in. 

These folks have already demonstrated that they are not averse to paying smugglers to get them over borders, and there's tons of locals in New Brunswick who have been making a mockery of the Maine - New Brunswick line for generations. Hell, when I worked at the drydock, there was guys who'd take your booze order on a Thursday and it would be waiting for you in the parking lot on Friday. So now, instead of making ten bucks taking a forty pounder of Crown Royal into Canada, they'll be making a thousand delivering a Syrian migrant to Bangor!

And me? I'm just the broker... keep my hands clean and collect the money!

What could go wrong?

But time is of the essence, as they say. With the creeping dementia, there's always the risk I could forget parts of this plan, which is why I wrote it down here. 

And the pending manganism - that's a variant of Parkinson's disease brought on by exposure to welding fumes, can leave me vibrating like a cheap sex toy when I'm having a bad day.

So we gotta move fast.

When you click on this blog and find the name changed to "The View From Quoddy Bay," you'll know we're there.

Drunken welder waves wang from International Bridge

The St. Croix river separates Saint Stephen New Brunswick from Calais Maine. One Sunday in '91 my buddy Fudge from the shipyard had a bit of a thirst on, and since the beer stores in NB didn't have Sunday hours at the time, he decides to make a run to the border to quench his craving.

The St. Croix isn't much of a river. You can walk across it in hip waders and keep your socks dry. In fact, on any given day you'll see a couple dozen guys fishing in the river, God knows what's in their hip waders. Could be stuffed full of dope for all I know. I've heard you can cram ten pounds of bud into a pair of chest-highs with no problem.

So Fudgie drives down to Saint Stephen, parks his car, walks across the bridge to the duty-free on the US side, picks up a suitcase of Coors, and heads back. Gets to the Canada Customs shack, they ask if he's got anything to declare. Well I got this two-four here but I been over for a couple days so that should be ok.

You watch these guys fishing in the St. Croix. Fishing is one boring pastime. You can only watch them so long. Sooner or later you lose interest. The fishermen can stand in that damn river all day. Eventually they get out.

The customs guy says to Fudge, couple of days my ass, I saw you walk over ten minutes ago. No way pal. Off you go. So Fudgie traipses back to the US side.

A guy stands in the river for six or eight hours. Does he get out the same side he went in? Well, you'd have to be watching for six or eight hours to know for sure, and even then, how sure would you be? A fat middle-age white guy in a lumberjack shirt and hip-waders standing in the middle of a river could be from anywhere. Even the Homeland Security types lose interest after awhile.

Fudge gets back to the US side. You can't bring the beer in. Why not? You owe us the tax. Well, Fudge knew the price of a suitcase but he didn't bring tax money. Fudge is fucked.

Border crossings. Back in the day we had a flood of guys head up here because they didn't want to go and kill the yellow people. Good for them. Unfortunately, almost all of them ended up in the bowels of the Canadian university system, where they totally constipated the tenure tract for the next several generations of aspiring academics. Hell of a price to pay, but I suppose it saved some lives on both sides.

Fudge decides he's done screwing around with the bureaucrats. He takes his suitcase to the middle of the bridge, right where the flags are, and pops open a Coors. He's gonna show 'em they don't mess with the Fudge.

Fudge was an old-timer at the shipyard. He once told me a story about when things were slow in the Saint John drydock, how the US Navy came up and recruited the laid-off lads to go and work in the yards down in Bath. Ya, I was drunk when they hired me, I was drunk for the two months I was there. I was drunk when I quit. Never did a lick of work. All I remember is riding around the yards on a bicycle.

After about six beers Fudge has to take a leak. So he does. From the middle of the bridge. Two guys come running out from the Canadian side. Fudgie steps a couple of feet to the south. You can't touch me. You don't have any authority here. You're infringing on American sovereignty.

Fudge knew his rights. The Canadians are on their radios trying to get the US guys to come and sort this out. Fudge sits down on his suitcase, two feet over the line, and cracks another beer.

In every war you hear the stories about the regular guys who would rather sing Christmas carols or play soccer or drink beer or smoke a joint with the guys on the other side. It happened in the Great War. It happened in the next war. It happened in Viet Nam. There are soldiers in the IDF today smoking hash that came from their enemies in Lebanon.

The Americans never did come to the aid of their Canadian colleagues. Even in those distant pre 9/11 days they had bigger fish to fry. While old Fudgie was spending the day watching the fishermen and taking an occasional whiz off the bridge, they busted a young black guy driving a brand new Jaguar across the border with three white women in it. That pretty much kept them tied up for the rest of the day.

Fudge tired of the game about four in the afternoon. Still had a couple of cans left in the case. The border guys turned him over to the RCMP, who kept him in the Saint Stephen lock-up overnight. By then the New Brunswick beer stores were open.

All's well that ends well.