Border Tales Part Two

 

Why Borders are Useless

 

For these border tales sagas I used pseudonyms to protect the identities of informants. They can out themselves if they wish! 

 

James grew up on the North Shore of Massachusetts on the border with New Hampshire. Two large public beaches were nearby, Salisbury Beach, MA and Hampton Beach, NH. It wasn’t much of a choice for a young man. Salisbury had broad sands and nature reserves, but Hampton had glitz and nightlife. Plus, as James recalled, New Hampshire had “cheaper beer and they sold it on Sundays.”

 

Carrie lives in New Hampshire and doesn’t appreciate how it’s a playground for Bay Staters: “Every Friday afternoon… I-93 North is like a parking lot for all the people trying to escape the confines of Massachusetts. It goes on for miles and hours.” Holiday weekends are “worse,” and she wonders why all of those involved in the constant “exodus” don’t just move. The flip side can be found in perennial Boston Globe rants about New Hampshire residents commuting into Boston for work but skipping out of Massachusetts taxes.

 

Jenny lives in Vermont but crosses into New Hampshire to go shopping. She notes, “There’s no sales tax … but we go there mainly because there are more stores.” She also adds that the COVID pandemic complicates matters. “Both states let us go back and forth because out infection rates are low, but Vermont requires us to bring our own bags but New Hampshire didn’t allow it.”  (It’s now okay.)

 

Janine had a different take. She and her ex-husband had three children and gravitated from the Greater Boston area to Winchester, New Hampshire. For a time, her husband commuted into Boston “but when it came time for the oldest of our three kids to start grade school… we knew that we had to move to Northfield, MA.” In her words, it was “just over the border and a world away.” 

 

As a teenager, Christine lived in New York State on the Pennsylvania line. She noticed that Pennsylvania “had no sales tax on clothing, sold fireworks… and the first day of deer season was a school holiday.”

 

The above stories fall into the category of old state rivalries that have mellowed over time. For instance, Vermont and New Hampshire once had very different politics, even when both were Republican states. New Hampshire Republicans had a decidedly rightwing tinge, while the Vermont GOP was more pragmatic and genteel. Vermont also shifted toward environmental laws and progressive politics sooner than New Hampshire. When I lived in Vermont, a regional barb aimed at New Hampshire held, “What can you expect from anyone living in a state that’s upside down?” These days, border differences are more about opportunity than anything else.  

 

There remain keener differences. When Valerie moved from Vermont to Virginia, she liked the friendliness of Virginians but had little time for their nosiness or pushy religiosity. When her then-boyfriend stayed over, the next morning one of her neighbors asked if she was alright because, “there was a strange car parked in your driveway overnight.” Valerie also wearied of repeated offers from various people to “visit our church.”

 

Ron recalls that the western Wisconsin/Illinois border along Lake Michigan was once “toxic.” It was “notorious for late night crossings, especially on Friday and Saturday,” as Wisconsin had a drinking age of 18, whereas it was 21 in Illinois. This resulted in “hordes of young people driving to the beer bars and back, often drunk.”

 

Bill reminds us international borders can be settings for shady dealings. He teaches in northern Minnesota and one of his students lives part of the year on an island in Rainy Lake, which straddles the US/Canadian borders. Her research shows how Rainy Lake has long been a favorite among smugglers. It’s near International Falls, Minnesota, which was once where Canadian booze came into the United States during Prohibition. These days it’s drugs.

 

The Detroit River is another leaky boundary, but don’t blame Canada. Smugglers always cross borders, which is why there’s a veritable Montreal/Boston/New York heroin pipeline that flows both directions. The sad fact is that big cartels have more resources than law enforcement.

 

Sandy lived in Yuma, Arizona for three years. She recalls, “I liked the option of shopping in Mexico. We met many very nice people that lived in Mexico…. I cut hair of border patrol guys [who] said it was a dangerous job. We did have some illegals [from El Salvador] staying with a friend. Our pastor flew them to Los Angeles. I heard later they returned to El Salvador. The language barrier was too much for them. Their mother had left El Salvador after her husband was killed … by a guerrilla army. The boys later went with a snow bird family to live and attend school in Montana. His wife, sister and brother-in-law came up the Colorado River one night. There were always vultures sitting in the area of the border by the river. Yes, there was some drug smuggling.”

 

Are border battles serious, friendly, smug, or all three? Take your pick. Personally, I grow weary of those overly fixated on “Southern heritage.” It’s a loaded concept that’s often code for unsavory things. Then again, we New Englanders have a reputation for arrogance and coldness that’s often deserved.

 

A likely moral is that border is a mix of convenience, desperation, and opportunism. On the unsavory side, tons of heroin come in from Mexico, but you couldn’t stop it with an impenetrable 100-foot wall along the entire border. Wall-building fantasies remind me of the French who thought that their World War One Maginot Line would protect them from Hitler’s armies. There are these things called airplanes! They and a visa are how an estimated 40% of illegal aliens got to America.

 

Rob Weir