The first time I saw Paris, the place de la Concorde was filled with thousands of bikes. It was the 1950s. They looked like flocks of birds, whirling around and then stopping at lights. I later saw the same phenomena in China when I visited Kunming. Evidently our Cadillac got scratched while it was parked in Paris.
In 1961, we moved from the ends of the earth, Oklahoma, to Paris. What a shock. I remember arriving at the port of Le Havre France and taking the steam locomotive driven train into Paris. What a surprise to see greenery, stone houses, and old villages, as we made our way down the Seine valley. We we no longer in Kansas, Toto. The smells were different, the air was different, the talk was different ‘French’, and the people were really different. Our father picked us up in his VW Karmann Ghia. He later purchased an Alfa Romeo.
We stayed at a hotel for the first week; the beds had these weird long round pillows; traversants. And the food. We used to order sandwiches of ham and salted butter on a freshly baked baguette - heaven. With a coke in a very small small bottle.
We stayed in base housing, more like tenements for the poor, high rises at Garches. My mother hated it. So we moved our onto the ‘economy’ as it was called. We rented a house in Medan on the Seine, where we met our new American neighbours Pat and Lee Barton. Lee was nudist, Patricia a prude. A strange and exotic couple who had moved to Paris and were living the life of Ex Patriots to the hilt. I remember our house was hugs, and cold in winter. We had to have Kerosene Aladin lamps to heat the rooms. We attended American school, taking the Military bus, back and forth. I hated it. I had a group of guys who I called friends, we promised each other we would see each other in Harvard university, youthful dreams. One was the son of my father’s boss, a Marine general who had fought at Guadacanal. I staid with him at his parents in their apartment in Paris. He had a trottinet.
I remember one of my teachers, who took an interest in me, and gave me a science lab. I stuck a piece glass pipette in my finger and I remember the trail of blood I left as I walked to the nurses. I got out of the school after two years. In the summer I took French immersion course at the Nato high school and I learned how to speak French in a couple of months (I am exaggerating, but I did speak some). I applied and was accepted into the Nato High school which was part of a French Lycée. It changed my life. I was with tons of foreigners, and some Americans, and I made friends. It was incredible experience. I learned French, most of my classes were in French. Except for English and American geography. I was soon the top in all my classes, except for French where I had a handicap in spelling ( I still do, probably mild dyslexia).
There was an old woman in the village who would speak with us, in French, while most of the villagers ignored us. She was a happy woman, always full of good cheer, even if we didn’t understand her. She died happy they told us.
The days were long, starting with a drive in a military vehicle - sometimes a Land Rover driven by a British soldier - and then going till 5 pm. I learned how to memorize texts. The French love rote learning, never asking for any creativity or original thought. My history teacher - who looked like a Cro-magnum - loved me and thought I was a genius because I just spewed out his lecture notes.
One day some French girls invited us to a boom at their house, I was too young and shy to appreciate what was going on. My brother danced with them. The French were mostly distant, except the young were more open to Americans.
We moved three 3 times in France. From the military barracks to Medan, then Triel and then VIllenes. My mother was never satisfied.
We traveled during the spring break, but one spring time I was sick with strep throat; I had bouts of it on and off. They put me in hospital. Probably due to my fighting Tuberculosis when I was young; the anti-biotics cured me. We did to to the Scandinavian counter; lots of blonds. And to Spain and Morocco. Our last trip was to Turkey and Greece.
My mother wanted us to continue are ‘art training’ that we had started in Oklahoma, so we attended classes given by a South African and an American. That changed everything in my life. I started to learn how to draw and paint academically. We learned the Maroger medium - an old format used by the old masters. Our teachers lived in an un heated hovel in Evereux. I was fascinated by their life. They traveled to Spain in summer. They invited my brother to go with them one time, but our American friends told my mother that it wasn’t a good idea; as the two artists were homosexual. Dumb mother. My friends also told us about about the White House were you should never send a virgin to the Kennedy brothers….
My father would be gone most of the time, at bars or flying or in his workshop doing wood projects. He build us wooden ships to scale. A cruiser and an air craft carrier. They were wonderful works of precision; he destroyed them before we moved back to the state.
My father was an alcoholic. He would spend his time at bars, showing up late at night driven home by ‘bar’ friends who took pity on him. He was spending money like it was water. He was a mess. He finally almost killed himself in his Alph Romeo. But it didn’t stop him, he had his pelvis broken and arms and legs in casts. We saw what was left of the car, it was a miracle he survived.
In 1971 I returned to Paris, as I have described in other posts. Here
