Aftershave and Closeshave

Aftershave and Closeshave

     by Raleigh Reimer’s Boy

I had many experiences with Raleigh products. My father, John D Reimer, sold them for about 18 years during the time I grew up, from 3 to 22. At that point in his life, he fulfilled a longstanding dream of his, ended his Raleigh career and moved his family lock stock and barrel to Abbotsford, British Columbia, where he set up as a real estate agent and became successful at it. Block Brothers was his institution of choice.      The first three or four years that my mother, father, sister and younger brother lived in Abbotsford, they suffered from severe poverty. That, however, is another story altogether. It’s the story of how they sheltered, what they ate, what kindnesses were required of them when a stranger or relative appeared and stayed and how dad pulled himself up by his bootstraps and became solvent. But, let’s get back to Raleigh products.

     I was 16 and I’d been taught, fortunately, by my father how to operate a vehicle. We had two, an old beater 51 Ford that my mother used to take us hoeing sugar beets, and a station wagon, newer and large enough to cart around dad‘s Raleigh goods. Occasionally, I received permission to drive the old beater to visit my friends and traipse around the countryside. Now and then, if I had earned the privilege, dad would hand me the keys to the station wagon. I would pick up my friends and we would find someplace to purchase liquids that had some influence on our mental state and, taking these out into the countryside, we would have some sips (quite a few) of beer or wine or, unfortunately, lemon gin.

      Since in those days, the early 60s, none of our parents consumed alcohol, we smarter-than-the-devil young guys thought we knew something about the sorts of alcohol available for consumption. Of course, we were not very smart about such a thing at all. By way of example, as I said, we frequently bought lemon gin, each of us having a micky of it and, sitting around a fire or lounging on the hood of the car, we would drink it slowly and begin to feel footloose and joyful.

     Now, Braun’s Drugs in Altona sold spirits and wines to townspeople. However, the chances of our disguising our identities enough to fool Don Braun were as likely as my grandfather Zacharias phoning for me to come over and he’d take me to Dairy Dell and buy me a triple-decker vanilla cone. The place that we found we were least likely to be recognized or denied happened to be in Neche, just across the border from Gretna, Manitoba. I was always chosen, given the job of going in and buying the liquor because, the boys solemnly agreed, I did look the oldest. I was tall, skinny as a rail, cocky as a Bulfinch (as Dylan Thomas would have it) and perennially eager. Maybe more eager than the rest, even, to escape the mental state I had been in for most of the week. 

     On the occasion that I’m remembering, dad gave me the car. Terry, Alvin, Joe and possibly Norman, and maybe even Gordon got into the vehicle, I  turned on the radio and we headed for the border seven miles from Altona. A border crossing always comes with some anxiety, doesn’t it? Especially if your purposes are not innocent. Ours were not. We intended to buy liquor, underaged as we were, spirit it across the border and drink it on Canadian soil. I pulled up at the window where a border guard, looking impatient, mean, contentious and worst of all, suspicious, opened a window and, leaning out, asked us where we were from and where we were heading. Then he left the window, came out of the building and stopped at my window. I rolled it down, of course, and he shone his flashlight into each of our faces and then into the back luggage area. After a long pause, he returned to the driver’s window and simply looked at me for a long, long time. Long enough for me to begin to feel quite fidgety and uncertain. 

     “Where did you say you were going?”

     I had told him already and wondered why I had to tell him again but I did and he asked me a third time where I thought I was going. By now I knew that some sort of game was afoot and that I would likely be losing on the count.

     “Neche,” I said. And the other boys agreed, nodding their heads more vigorously than strictly necessary.

     “Are you intending to sell anything?“ he asked, still stern but looking rather innocent. Now he suddenly leaned quite close to my face.

     “No, we’re not selling anything. We’re just going for a ride because we were interested in seeing what Neche was up to tonight.“

     Then he changed in a heartbeat. “You’re not going anywhere with that stuff!” I looked in the direction that he had his eyes pointed, at the back of the vehicle, and then it dawned on me. All of my father’s Raleigh products in boxes and carrying cases, all uncovered, open to the air, lit under bright station lights, brash as anything, filled the rear of the car.

     He wasn’t finished with me yet. In fact, he was just getting started. “You were thinking you’d pull a fast one on us, eh? I suppose I’m going to have to charge you with attempting to smuggle things across the border.” And much more of the same. 

     I was frightened. Very. How could i have been so stupid! I put on my best sorry face and said to him that I had totally forgotten that I was carrying my father’s goods with me. “We were just out having a good drive and decided to go to Neche to have a look. And… You’re right! Of course we can’t go across with these things! Really, I had just forgotten about it! We didn’t want to sell any of them!”

     “By rights I should call your parents!” he said, staring at me and then the others   “But…..I guess I believe you. I probably shouldn’t but I do, and this time I’ll let it go. But don’t ever do something so stupid again! Never! One of these days you’re gonna get into real trouble if you don’t think about what you’re doing.”

     I would like to say that I learned my lesson and that I never made any stupid foolish mistakes again concerning my father’s salesman’s car. But I did, and I continued to have to apologize to people, especially my father, for being thoughtless and foolish and not thinking ahead enough