PAUL ROPER
HIT In the summer of 90-91, I had just turned 8. My parents took me and my three siblings on a monthlong road trip around the country. I have many happy memories from this epic adventure, but one in particular has a delicious aftertaste. On our travels, we visited my parents’ friends from university days, Leigh and Jenny — wonderful, resourceful people who lived on a large block of land. They had a wood-burning stove, kept beehives for their honey, and a friendly cow who provided them with milk. The lasting impression came from the bread that Leigh would bake in the wood-burning stove. I fell in love with it immediately. Over the coming weeks, I kept referring to “Leigh Bread” and would ask my parents whether or not we could get some. My parents started buying the closest thing to Leigh Bread readily available in supermarkets (Vogel’s). Seventeen years later, I relocated to the United States for a while. One of the things I missed the most was toasted Vogel’s. I would get people to smuggle it to me. One day it dawned on me, I knew a guy with a recipe that could sate my hunger. I got in touch with Leigh, who happily provided me with the recipe. After a few tweaks (to account for the strange American flour), I was back to enjoying my favourite loaf of all time, Leigh Bread.
MISS In 2015, I moonlighted as a tour manager. I was at the helm of a Sprinter van, driving the Dum Dum Girls from Toronto to Boston. We had the day off so everything felt leisurely, until the US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) came into view. There were two queues for vehicles, one clearly marked with a sign for “RVs” and the other, unmarked. “Okay,” I thought to myself, “I’m not driving an RV, so I should not join the RV line.” I pulled up to the border control window. USCBP Officer: “Sir, can you read English?” Me: “Yes.” USCBP Officer: “Then why aren’t you in the RV lane?” This guy? Angry. He didn’t like me, and had decided to turn my day upside down. I briefly contemplated arguing my case but I didn’t want to roll the dice. As instructed, I pulled the van into the vehicle inspection area. After an hour or so in a cold waiting room, they called the bass player into the back room. Four hours later, they let us know she’d been arrested for possession (she had prescription medication but no paperwork to prove as much). We would have to pick her up from the Buffalo City PD lockup. Her court hearing was the following day at 9am. While everyone else was at dinner, I drove to the lockup and bailed out our precious bass player. Forking over a large sum of cash is not fun, but it was a huge relief to get her back. She ended up spending the night in Buffalo while we drove overnight to Boston. Following her court appearance, the next day she flew to meet us at The Sinclair, and the show went off with a bang.
See Paul Roper’s work The Temple of Involuntary Thought on Tuesday as part of Artweek Auckland, October 6-14, artweekauckland.co.nz