(1) Let’s start with the beeping. At about 2 a.m. this morning, I beep-beep-beep woke us up. While pondering what it could be, after a few minutes of quiet, once again: beep-beep-beep. Out of bed, turn on the light (another beep-beep-beep) and I see that it’s our bedroom carbon monoxide alarm.

You would think that my next thought would be: “we gotta get out of here – we’re about to die.” But, no, it’s more like “why do these things always break in the middle of the night?” I do open a window just to make sure we don’t suffocate, but then I look at the screen on the alarm, which says “END”. There are two rectangular buttons – I push them both (I am still more asleep than awake) and the screen now has two more words on it: “error” and “silence”.

I unplug it, the words stay on the screen, but there is no more beeping, and I put it in my closet to look at more carefully today.

Why do things like this always break at night?

(2) Canada.

A friend put a photo on Facebook yesterday of a snowy Montreal, her home town. It reminded me of my first trip to Montreal. June 1964. One of my college roommates (I will call him D) and I had about a week to spare, so we decided, naturally, to spend it hitchhiking from Boston to Montreal to Quebec City and then back to Boston. We all know that, today, no one would even think about the possibility of doing anything so dumb (and now dangerous), and even then this was far form the norm, I am sure, but that’s what we decided to do. And we did get back on time.

What’s interesting is how little I remember of this venture. For example, we left from our Harvard House dormitory. We must have had a road map. But did we just stand in Harvard Square with our thumbs out and when someone stopped and said “where are you going?”, we said “Canada”? Perhaps. What luggage did we carry? I know we weren’t burdened, but I have no idea whether we had a small bag, or back packs, or what. I do know that the weather was good and that we decided we would wear khakis and sport jackets, so we looked respectable. But did we carry a sign?

It took us a number of rides (5? 10?) to get to the Canadian border. This was probably before the Interstates were open – I remember normal roads through the mountains. I think they were all cars, not trucks. I remember there was one time when we were a few hundred miles from our destination, a woman stopped and told us she was going 9 miles. We took the ride. I remember driving with one or two French Canadians who were wild drivers – we decided we didn’t want to drive with anyone with a French accent.

I know we crossed the border in Derby Line VT (why I remember that, I don’t know). But our ride didn’t cross the border. It let us out and we had to walk across. Sounds easy? But no, I don’t think that Canadian customs at Derby Line were used to two 18 year olds walking across the border. They questioned our intentions, our finances, our connections and so forth. For a while, we thought we might have reached the far point of our journey, but they let us in.

The only earlier times I had been in Canada was driving Detroit to Buffalo on my way to and from Boston and St. Louis. I knew that Quebec was French speaking, but one thing never occurred to me. It never occurred to me that most of the people we ran into spoke no English. And didn’t seem to care. It also surprised me that, having traversed the wilds of northern New Hampshire and Vermont, all of a sudden we were out of the mountains, and into fertile farm country with well kept small towns and villages. It was like we had gone north to wind up in the Midwest. How was that possible?

What’s interesting is that I remember nothing of Montreal. Where did we stay? What did we do? Did I like it? Was I impressed? I have no idea. What I do know is that D told me (I think not until we got there) that his grandfather lived in Montreal (huh? why didn’t he say this earlier – I know his father was from Nova Scotia, but lived in NY state), and that we should visit him.

It turned out his grandfather was 100 or 101 and lived in a nursing home/retirement home (I remember a one story red brick building out in a suburb or country on a large plot of land – very pleasant looking). We visited him on the front porch of this home, and he was old, but seemed alert and well enough and (I think) surprised to see D. I don’t remember if we told him we were coming or not. What I do remember is that he introduced us to a friend of his, who was a woman who I think was 104. Her claim to fame was that she was present when the gun went off at the Oklahoma land rush. That would have been 1893, or 71 years earlier.

I remember when it was time to hitchhike to Quebec (which sounded like it would be easy), it was cold and raining. I also remember that the road was quiet and people weren’t anxious to pick us up. I remember getting a ride to Trois Rivieres, about halfway between the two cities (we debated whether we should take it) and being left in the dark and the rain. I don’t remember if we found a place to stay there, or what we did.

Eventually we got to Quebec City and I remember being charmed by it. Again, I don’t remember what we did. But I certainly remember the ride back to school.

We set out on the road that goes south from Quebec City and gets into Maine in Jackman. Again, seemed simple. And the weather was good. And we know that there were no major towns in between, just farm country. And……there were no cars.

I had made a sign that said Vers Boston. I thought that would do it. But a sign doesn’t help if there are no cars. After hours of standing there wondering what to do, we saw a car coming. Not only a car, but I saw it had a Massachusetts license plate. I waved my sign (the driver told me I that because I was waving it, he had no idea what it said), and the car – a station wagon – stopped. It was someone who imported things from the U.S. to Canada and took this road often. He lived in Boston. He was glad for the company. He took us to our dorm.

Next time to Canada was, I think, 2 years later. But January, not June. F, not D. And a car, not a thumb. Maybe that’s for tomorrow. I remember more.