Crossing the Lines

 

 

It seems to be a New Brunswick tradition to "cross the lines" now and again to do a little (or a lot of) cross border shopping. Since my arrival in New Brunswick in 1976, I admit that I have succumbed to the attraction of cheap milk, chicken and gas as well as finding a great bargain at Marden's. With the popular practice these days of ordering more bargains on line and having them shipped to Uncle Sam's side of the border there is an even greater reason to "cross the lines".

 

On a beautiful sunny day this week with dry winter roads, the company of a good friend and a senior's coffee from MacDonald's, I set out for Calais Maine, USA. My mission was to do a little shopping and to also pick up some tires that my husband had ordered on line. Sounds simple, right? Well sort of.

After a good snoop in Marden's my friend and I stopped at the place where I could pick up the tires (these are tires for a skid-steer ..... long story see pic below). That was a piece of cake. A nice man put them in the back of my Ford Escape. Okay ..... now we can go for lunch. However, as we joined all the other old codgers at the "golden arches", I wondered about paying duty on the tires when I returned via the Canadian border. Ah, I thought, I will need a receipt just like any other purchase to present at the border and pay duty. So, the two of us opened the back of the Escape and wrestled with the tires and the boxes they were in to look for an invoice or something showing the price of the tires. No luck! ...... Next idea, call hubby and perhaps get him to fax a receipt to the border or to the place where I picked them up. Great plan, except my cell phone doesn't work since I've "crossed the lines". After pushing many buttons on my phone, I finally get a hold of him with a collect call to let him know that I'm lovin this "tire picking up mission". Anyway, to make a long story short, I returned to the place where the nice man loaded the tires for me and used his phone to call and get "sugar muffin" to email the invoice which the nice man kindly printed off for me.

 

All's well that ends well, as they say. I made it across the border without incident, paid the duty on the tires and brought home a few small ticket items from Mardens and Walmart (several of which were for "sugar muffin") ..... oh yes, and of course milk and a full tank of gas! I think the best part of my cross border shopping day was having a little adventure away from home and enjoying a few laughs with a good friend (I highly recommend it) ...... Oh yes and it gave me something to write about on my blog!

 

Wikipedia pic of a skid steer (notice that the tires are actually quite small)