When I was 16, I spent a summer on an exchange program in Krefeld, Germany with 30 other Hoosiers. On the flight over, engine trouble forced us to land in Düsseldorf rather than in Frankfurt as expected. Düsseldorf expected no international flights that day, and so nobody was working in customs. My passport went unstamped; I waltzed into Germany uncounted. How very un-German.
Several weeks later, my exhange group made an 11-hour bus trip to Berlin. On the East German border at Checkpoint Alpha, prominently armed, grave border police in fitted olive uniforms boarded our bus and, without looking at or speaking to anyone, collected all of our passports and took them off the bus. They made us wait more than an hour, our anxiety growing, before they returned with the box and waved us through. Each passport received an East German stamp. The road from there to Berlin was bounded by walls so tall that we couldn’t see over them even from our bus seats way up high. I guess the communists didn’t want you to see the glorious living conditions on the inside, or everybody would want to move there. Several hours later down that road we were easily waved through the checkpoint at the West Berlin border.
A few days later we crossed into East Berlin to see the sights. At the famous Checkpoint Charlie, stone-faced border police once again boarded our bus, collected all our passports, and made us wait for a long time before they returned our passports, stamped again.
In East Berlin I walked in the Alexanderplatz, stood in line to buy a communist propaganda rag, er, newspaper (the top story that day was essentially how President Reagan was an idiot), drank beer and laughed with teenaged East Berliners, and tried to use a fetid underground open-pit public restroom. Shudder. I held it until we got back to the west.
In Berlin, I bought a book called Durchschaut die Uniform, or See Through the Uniform, telling stories of border guards — not only about the distasteful jobs they did, but about the people they were. The last page showed two pictures of four border guards, the first with their stony faces and the second with wide smiles. The second photo seemed so strange! But I got the book’s point, which was to have a heart because these guards were real people. So I decided to put on a pleasant face for them on the way home. As we left, we passed back through Checkpoint Alpha. Dour border police boarded our bus and collected passports. When they took mine, I looked them in the eye and smiled. It was met with indifference. They just took our passports and inspected our bus for things we were not allowed to take out. Thankfully, they didn’t think to inspect my shoes, into which I inserted a carefully folded East German 5 Mark bill. Currency was high on the list of things that were forbidden to take out. Today, I can’t believe how stupid I was to do that. Anyway, inspection successful, they left and we were free to pass through. We made our way back across free Germany to Krefeld.
A few years later, when I renewed my passport. I was really pleased that they returned my old passport so I could keep those stamped mementos of my visit. I wish I knew where that old passport is now.
Six years later, Iraq invaded Kuwait and the United States rode in on its white horse ostensibly to save the day. It was war, and I was draftable, so I was nervous about what might come.
The next day, I went to work, where my co-workers were subdued and serious. I worked as best I could while I listened to news reports on the radio. Midafternoon, the receptionist called from the main building. “Uh, Jim?” she said. I could hear concern in her voice. She paused. “Uh… Jim, there’s a man from the FBI here to see you.”
My mind reeled for several seconds. My passport! They must have a file with my name on it, calling me a suspected communist! They’ve come to take me away!
“Jim?”
“Um. Yes. Tell him to drive across the street to this building.”
I stepped outside to await my doom. Under the gray sky I paced, wondering what the internment camp would be like. Before long, a gray Chevrolet sedan turned in and parked. Out stepped a doughy man in a gray suit. He approached, showed me his ID, identified himself, and asked, “Are you James Grey?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Is there a place where we can talk privately?”
I thought, “Talk privately? Aren’t you here to purge the land of communists in the name of national security?” I was growing dizzy, but I said, “Sure, come inside.” I led him to an empty room and we sat down.
“Mr. Grey, do you know a man named Robert Woolf?”
I’ve heard stories about what happens to cars that are accidentally shifted into reverse while going 40 miles per hour. Namely, the car’s transmission suddenly disintegrates, distributing its pieces along the road. This is what happened to my brain at that moment.
In shock, I managed to say, “Yes, I know Bobby.” Where the heck was this going?
“I need to ask you some questions about Mr. Woolf.”
Bobby, a college friend and roommate, was a sharp, smart guy who majored in computer science and is now well-respected in his field. His senior year, as he looked for his first job, he applied at the National Security Agency. He was pretty jazzed about the job, but he never heard back from them. He applied for other jobs and eventually accepted one in the Silicon Valley. He used to e-mail me complaints about the traffic out there.
“Is this about the NSA job? Don’t you know that Bobby accepted another position?”
The agent paused. He may have swallowed. He said, deliberately, “Yes, every person I talk to tells me that. But I have to do these interviews anyway.”
So for twenty dull minutes he asked me questions about Bobby’s associations and character. I told him what I knew and he went on his way. I felt sorry for the guy having to drive all over the place talking with people Bobby knew, needlessly looking for skeletons since Bobby no longer wanted that job. I tried to empathize with the guy, but he’d have none of it. He stuck to his questions until he had no more to ask, and then he got back into his gray sedan and drove away.
I learned that it’s fruitless to try to connect with a government official doing a distateful or useless job. They just want to get it over with.
But at least there was no internment camp for me!
