JDM on the Hippies of Amsterdam

"Back to the ship for lunch, and then into town on the shuttle bus to do some shopping. The bus went right to Dam Square, where hippies congregate on the shallow steps that surround the war memorial in the middle of the traffic circle.

"Even in 1977 they had begin to look like the relics of times past. Little burned-out girls with their dumb doleful faces, sticky spill of hair, buttocks humble under the pale caked denim. Hairy desperado types, khaki and sweat, knapsacks and Aussie hats, their planned air of savage freedom compromised by an uncertainty around the eyes, a vague look, a listless way of moving. There was a constant motion, a shifting around, a perpetual slow investigation of one another, and among the hundreds were the old predators, trying to look young enough for credibility, and the very youngest victims, trying to look old enough to be with it, because this was one of the places of the world where it was all supposed to be: all the grass, all the badly played guitars, all the crotch crabs and stubborn clap and raggedy philosophies anybody could ever dream of. Each evening these drifters of the western world would slowly gather up their gear and obediently vacate their central refuge long enough for the local civil servants to hose the area clean with lots of high-pressure water. And then they would amble back to damp concrete, spread out once more and continue their endless investigations of one another."

-- from Nothing Can Go Wrong (1981)

JDM on Custom Agents

"Dorothy and I have come back into the country at many places and encountered many varieties of behavior in Customs lines. Each port and airport seems to be a fiefdom, where the behavior is a product of the quality of leadership of the Customs Agent in Charge. Arrogance, indifference, insolence, and contempt flourish at some stations, while at others there seems to be an attempt to help the returning citizens make the best of a clumsy situation.

"The worst we know of is Miami International Airport. Coming back through Miami is a degrading and exhausting experience. Politicians and officials are hustled through and never get a chance to see how wretchedly the incoming people are treated. As the carousels pile luggage into the stifling room, long lines of people shuffle toward the inspection stations, pushing all their luggage along the dirty tiles, sometimes for up to five hours.

"Miami is the gateway to the United States for much of Latin America and all the Caribbean Islands. By the time foreign nationals reach Customs, they have been cleared through Immigration. In Customs, foreign nationals, unless of middle years and fashionably dressed, are considered guilty until a search proves them innocent. Bored inspectors make them dump all the contents of suitcases on the counter and unwrap every gift being brought in, and then they exhort the visitors to 'hurry up, hurry up, get that stuff packed and move along.'

"U.S. Customs has built up over their years in the Miami International Airport a heritage of hate and resentment that no amount of official Good Neighbor acts in other dimensions can hope to outweigh. It is in Miami that the most obvious discrimination against the poor and the dark-skinned persists.

"Customs inspectors are border guards, secure in their authority and their seniority and their immunity from any kind of discipline which might arise as the result of a citizen's complaint. In any confrontation, they have the ultimate weapon, that big book of rules. Their goals are the proliferation of paperwork and the avoidance of any decision which might get them into trouble. At their very best, their beefy jocularity is patronizing, like a prison guard who tries to be a nice guy."
 

Nothing Can Go Wrong (1981)