Dear Gentle Reader,
It is difficult and potentially life changing for me to explore the topic of where I come from. I know that the interweb is monitored for content related to "the sect" and that content deemed negative can result in unwanted attention. For that reason I have chosen to not include the names of any people associated with this story, or to name "the sect" outright. Please understand that my relationship to some members of my immediate family could be effected by the way in which this piece is spread online. It's not easy to write this piece so thanks for reading and for respecting the lives of those involved! These are my memories of growing up there and I am sure that others remember things differently and view the group trough different eyes. This is a cathartic exercise for me that I am choosing to share with all of you. Enjoy!
-Marvin
-Marvin
One thing that happens when folks start a sect or a cult of some kind is that they start to develop their own folkways and mores which are very different than the rest of society. The longer the group exists and the more generations that are born into it, the more entrenched those ideologies get, That's why the Amish keep rocking black hats and driving horses. Sure they have spiritual reasons to do so, but really it's because they have been doing it since 1693 and at this point it would be really hard to to change up. It has become embedded in their DNA.
Another thing these types of groups do is to seek out other groups or individuals that live and think like them. Sometimes they even abandon their own group en mass to join another. Several small hippie communes did just that and got in bed with The Sect in the nineteen nineties. The Sect itself has had an on again off again thing going with the Canadian Hutterites since the 1930s. The Hutterites are a bit like Amish, only with cars and cell phones. And unlike the Amish they live in large commune-type settings. Think Communist collective farm meets old school fundamentalist religion with some Canadian "eh's" thrown in. One of he biggest of my middle school adventures involves these people, a bus, wild grapes and poutine.
It all started out innocently enough.
The area around the Sect in upstate New York is prime real estate for wild grapes. The smaller, sharp tasting forbearer of the domestic fruit. And supposedly favored by some for the production of homemade wine. And guess which type of old school religious commune likes to make their own wine? That's right, it's the Hutterites. So like any good sect does when they are trying to keep the warm fuzzy feelings flowing between them and there compatriots, my sect sent it's followers into the fields and forests for wild grapes. And it turns out that the harvest was bountiful, so bountiful in fact that they ended up with something like 50 boxes of grapes. Not small boxes either, but the kind a grocery store or commune would have lying around after buying a truckload of bananas. Which meant that some Canadian dudes were going to get pretty blasted on homemade wine, if they could only get the boxes across the border. The plan was to pack them on a bus and drive north into Quebec and then head west to Manitoba and our brethren.
The thing to remember about cults and sects is that they tend to live outside everyday laws and customs of normal society. Sometimes it gets crazy and people get arrested or get a lot of air time from Nancy Grace. (Warren Jeffs anyone?) Or sometimes it's thinking that your junior-high kids' bright idea of building a Huck Finn raft to sail on the Hudson River is a great idea. (keep an eye out for that story) And then there are the times when no one seems to consider what the Canadian Border Patrol will think when you roll up to the border crossing in an old bus full of unregulated wild grapes... for making booze. I was on that bus along with my mom, dad and brother and sister. We had been "chosen" for this task primarily because my dad was one of the very few who had good karma with that bus. To be clear it wasn't what you the gentle reader are imaging when I say bus. Your thinking of a old school bus painted up in bright hippie colors aren't you? Nope this was basically a retired Greyhound bus with tables that turned into beds. Like the kind a has been 80's metal band shows up to your town in. And it was cranky and needed the kind of love my dad was willing to give.
Yes this was to be our big family adventure. To drive an old bus north to Canada and make our sect peeps really happy, and drunk.
I think my Dad might have had a premonition that our contraband would not be well received at the border. How else do you explain his choice to attempt the crossing of said border far from the main highway and Montreal. Instead he chose a a sleepy town with a tired border, I think assuming that the he could reason with the "good old boy" guards. In hind sight a bunch of weirdos with a bus full of wild grapes was probably the biggest thing that had happened at that crossing since two kids tried to sneak a couple six packs of Molson Ice over from Canada hidden inside over sized hockey sweaters. We were too good to be true.
Needless to say we did not make it into Canada that day. And instead ended up "camping" out like aging rock stars on our bus in some tired upstate NY town while the Sects lawyers and the feds tried to figure out the paperwork on something no one had ever tried to do before. We would probably have had more luck had we made our bounty into wine before trying to take it to Canada. We were stuck there for days people. And all the while my Dad ranted and raved like a real injustice collector. How could there not be a box to check on the customs forms for wild grapes was his refrain. A couple days in my Mom and sister were air lifted back to sanity on the Sect's private plane. I was pissed. My sister said it was a white knuckle Cessna ride, so I felt a lot better had they broken out the Gulfstream to bring them home.
Eventually somebody greased the right palm somewhere and we got the green light. But by this time the grapes were starting to ferment right there in the luggage area under the bus. Also my Dad had this idea that if you crossed the border in the middle of the night you would somehow appear less conspicuous or catch the guards napping. Dude had it all backwards didn't he? But we made it across... we were free, in the dark, in Canada. And then the bus broke down.
Yes not five miles from 'Merica while my Dad celebrated his victory, pieces of metal started breaking free inside the engine and flying around breaking more stuff. We ended up on the side of a country road in the middle of the night with a cloud of smoke where the engine used to be. And then when the wrecker came to pick us up the dudes driving turned out to be scary secessionist nuts who lived in rural Quebec in a house surrounded by a giant junk yard. Oh and they spoke no more then five words of English. All I remember is sitting in the kitchen of this dark house in the wee hours of a scary morning, surrounded by a sea of mud, smashed cars and dudes with very dirty hands. Couldn't they have dropped us off at a gas station?
Why or how we ended up hanging out at these French Canadian dudes' "estate" is probably because my dad thinks that he is a good old boy and that he can commune with all other good old boys no matter which country they are from. Dude would probably bro up to the Taliban if he broke down in Afghanistan. The problem is that he can't differentiate between an honest to goodness love-fest and polite indifference. Especially when he starts pushing books written by the Sect's big dog, or espousing marital advice. Thankfully my feelings about the bromance were echoed by the guys with black fingernails so at first light we were escorted to a garage in Montreal where the bus could be properly examined.
I am pretty sure that has an adult I would love a long weekend walking the streets of Montreal with my lady on my arm. The architecture and culture are definitely something to be enjoyed But to a junior-high kid fresh off the compound, the city was an alien landscape. Everything was in French including the menu at KFC. All I could do was mumble and point at the pictures in order to procure chicken and mashed potatoes. In fact without Colonel Sanders' mug on the sign you couldn't even tell it was KFC. Oh and every single person seemed to smoke cigarettes as if the world was ending soon. We needed an exit strategy and luckily my dad came through.
It turned out that my dad had a cousin living in Ottawa who turned out to be our knight in shining armor. The details on this random cousin I had never heard, or how my dad had her number have always remained murky. But she did come pick us up and get us to a place were people spoke English so I was happy. Oh and we got to have showers and change clothes which was something hard to do on the bus. And she took us touring around the Canadian capital, fed us my first rabbit stew and introduced us to poutine, someone's really great idea to mix french fries with cheese curds and cover the whole thing with gravy. And she let us electronics deprived kids watch the World Series on a real TV. The one were they "accidentally" displayed the Canadian flag upside down in Atlanta.
We never made it out to the Hutterites with our haul. I honestly don't know if the grapes ended up in a landfill, were shipped out there without us, or if we brought them back to New York with us. All I know is that as soon as the bus was fixed we turned tail for home. Apparently the mechanics in Montreal left a rag in the engine when they put it back together so we barely made it back. That bus was never the same after that. I am sure even today you could get my dad to go off about what those dudes did to his beloved bus just by mentioning Montreal. And by now I am sure that our Canadian friends have figured out a way to make hooch out of something they can find on their side of the border.
