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Experience A Smuggler's Life for Me by Stephen Browne You
meet a better class of people smuggling tobacco and alcohol, and the nice
thing is that they don't arrest you when they catch
you.
Did you ever get to do something that you really
wanted to as a kid? I mean something that adults are supposed to have
grown out of? If you're a cowboy or a fireman, you know exactly what I
mean.
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Stephen Browne is a teacher and freelance writer who has lived in
Eastern Europe since 1991. |
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Well, it happened for me, the dream I'd had since I was 12 years old and
my favorite book "Jim Davis" by John Masefield. It is a marvelous tale of a
young boy in England during the time of the Napoleonic wars, who goes off
with smugglers and has all kinds of adventures.
Though I won't say I've never taken anything illegal
across an international border, I strongly advise you against doing
so.* The drug war made
smuggling just too hard-core for my taste. With profits and penalties so
high, the racket is now run by a murderously ruthless bunch of thugs not at
all like the jolly smugglers of tobacco and French wines and lace that once
made England "a small body of land entirely surrounded by smugglers."
Good idea to grow out of that particular dream.
But it happened for me! I did it. I ran away from home and joined the
smugglers.
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Five and twenty
ponies
Trotting through the dark —
Brandy for the Parson,
'Baccy for the Clerk.
Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie —
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
—
"A Smuggler's Song," Rudyard Kipling
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Well, okay, I didn't run away from home exactly. My wife let me go
off for a few days to attend the 13th American Studies Conference in Minsk,
Belarus. Professor Ivan Burylka of the University of Grodno and I were to do a
joint presentation on American vs. Belarusian humor and I was going to talk
about American utopian communities of the 19th century. My wife would
have liked to have come, but work and the baby limit travel these days. My
wife's an awfully good sport about these things, particularly given the
expense involved and the fact that it doesn't pay a thing.
The journey to Belarus was uneventful and the conference was fun. I got
to sound out the reaction towards America on the heels of Gulf War II.
Among the Baltics and Belarusians, feelings were enthusiastically
pro-American and pro-Bush. (George Dubya evidently made a speech in
Vilnius promising, "There will be no more Yaltas." To say the least, it played
well.) I also had my ear bent by a crusty but charming professor from
Lithuania who wondered how could we Americans have let the lunatic Left
dominate the humanities in American universities? It had made her sick
when she was there. I tried to tell her I was on her side but she just had to
rant to somebody about how damn stupid we were to have let this
happen. I also attended a concert of traditional folk music, saw the ballet
"Spartacus" and went to an embassy party held for an American professor of
literature from the Midwest on her first trip to Eastern Europe. (Somebody
had to gently tell her that rhapsodizing about liberation theology and the
"bearded Christ-like figures" of Castro and Che doesn't play well in Eastern
Europe.)
But the real treat of my little holiday came on the trip back. I fortunately
had a sleeping compartment all to myself. The conductor came by and asked
me if I had any tobacco or alcohol. "No." I replied. "Well then, may I put some
in your compartment?" he asked. "It won't cost you anything." Ah-ha. "Okay,
no problem." He brought a carton of Pall Malls and a bottle of Belarusian
vodka and put them in the cabinet above the sink. So, the conductor is
running a little business of his own across the border. Enterprising fellow, I
thought.
To be drowned or be
shot
Is our natural lot,
Why should we, moreover, be hanged in the
end —
After all our great pains
For to dangle in chains
As
though we were smugglers, not poor honest men?
— "Poor
Honest Men," Rudyard Kipling |
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Usually customs inspections at the borders are rather perfunctory
affairs. I think I've been asked to open my baggage twice in over ten years
— and when they see you aren't nervous about doing so, they usually
stop you before you've unloaded much. Generally they ask you to step
outside the compartment while they look under the mattresses and that's
about it.
Well, this time was different. After the hour and a half at the Belarusian
side of the border to change the undercarriage of the cars (the territory of
the old Soviet Union has a different track gauge), we were held for more
than two hours on the Polish side while customs went through the train with
a thoroughness I'd never seen before. They looked in everybody's baggage,
in the spaces above the ceiling, in the radiator cover, and took screwdrivers
to several panels. Afterwards I saw them walk off the train, one of them
carrying a big sack full of cartons of cigarettes. I'd never seen that happen
before. My wife says they must have had a tip-off.
Fortunately, my little stash was well within the duty-free limit and
caused no comment, not even a request for an explanation. As we pulled out
of the station I asked the conductor if he'd like his stuff back and he thanked
me nicely.
As I stood in the corridor, I saw one of my neighbors with a screwdriver,
taking off a panel next to the car door. He removed the panel and took out
several cartons of cigarettes. "They didn't find them!" I said. "Yeah but they
got the rest of my stuff." He shrugged philosophically, as if to say, "Hey, you
win some, you lose some." You meet a better class of people smuggling
tobacco and alcohol, and the nice thing is that they don't arrest you when
they catch you, they just take your stuff or give you the option of paying the
duty.
So that's how I ran away from home, joined the smugglers and lived my
boyhood dream. Now I think I'll try and find a copy of "Jim Davis" to read
again and give to my son when he's 12.
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| * | Though if you should
choose to become a smuggler, and you are on a train, put it under the towel
waste in the wastebasket of the toilet. Even customs agents find it
distasteful to go through that stuff and if they do find it, it's not in your
possession. |
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