***
So there we were, A----- and I, married less than a week, there in our new home a quarter of the way up Mt. Moucherotte, above Grenoble, France. It was early October 1970.
1
Everyone seems to find it interesting to discuss "Where were you when ... ?" In my generation the events discussed have traditionally been when JFK was killed (or RFK or MLK...), when Lyndon Johnson announced he wasn't going to run for re-election, when the Democratic Party Convention met in Chicago in 1968, and when Neil Armstrong in 1969 made his giant leap for mankind. All but the NASA news was bad, but the tipping point for me was the election of Richard Nixon, November 5, 1968.
I'd met Eugene McCarthy, along with Cesar Chavez, out in California that spring as the Viet Nam unrest was coming to a boil. I helped campaign for McCarthy, although until his assassination I was a little distracted by admiration of Robert Kennedy. Until Hubert Humphrey had parroted LBJ for so long as his Vice President, I'd always liked him too; but of course, as the Convention neared, he was tainted for me as for so many others by his defense of the status quo.
During the Chicago uprising, I began to think maybe this was not the America where I wanted to live anymore. Despite my vote for the disappointing Humphrey, the night Nixon was elected sealed the deal.
I'd taken my little portable TV to a friend's house that election night. One or two other friends had brought their little TVs as well, so that we could follow coverage by several different networks as the party progressed. I didn't usually drink much, but that night as the electoral picture darkened, I got plastered. I don't know how I got home, frankly, but in the morning my car was in its usual place in the parking lot and my TV was beside my bed, still on, tuned to the best news channel in northern California (though the news was still bad).
By then, I'd decided that as soon as I finished up my graduate work - which would probably be in July or August of that year (1969) - I was going to emigrate, probably for good, to France. I'd had a fine experience my Junior Year in Paris in 1962-63, so I thought I could feel more "at home" in that country than in what my native country had become.
2
But then, on the ship to Europe in September, I met A-----. Leaving the U.S. for good didn't seem so certain or so attractive after that. By the time we married a year later, back in her home state, I would for sure be coming back to the U. S. at the end of that year with her in Grenoble.
When we had met, I was on my way to a job I'd been lucky enough to find in Lyon, south of Paris halfway on the road to Marseilles on the banks of the beautiful Rhone River. That job was for only a year, and I hadn't lined up anything back in the States to come home to, so in mid-June I was again lucky to find the next year's job in Grenoble. A----- knew that was where we would be heading if she married me. Maybe it even seemed like it would be fun.
Even when I knew it might be just for myself, or for the two of us, I knew in late June that I had to find a place to live in Grenoble in 1970-71. The run of good luck continued when I learned that Mme. D-----, who lived in a flat downtown, liked to rent out her summer house through the colder months of the year to visiting Americans; it was in Seyssins, a small village up on the Alp where the 1968 Olympic Ski Jump had been in another village much higher up called St. Nizier.
I - or we - would need a car.
But I flew out of Nice to A-----'s home state, met her family and some friends, and asked A----- to marry me; we went down to Texas to meet my family; returned north to plan the wedding and to get married on October 3.
After a three-day honeymoon, we climbed on a plane to Grenoble.
The trip was long. We had to change planes three times. The last leg was bumpy and hot, and we arrived in Grenoble in the middle of the day - after having little sleep for most of two days. We got into a hotel pretty efficiently, but awoke - starving hungry - about 2 a.m. ... We had to find food, but there was no one to tell us where we could. Then too we were lucky; after only about 20 minutes in random wanderings, we found a little neighborhood restaurant across the street from the local newspaper offices.
I hadn't thought to worry about changing planes, adjusting to the changing time zones, getting sleep, or finding food in the middle of the first night in Grenoble. But all that luckily turned out well enough after all. On the other hand, I had been a little concerned first about getting into our house for the nine months ahead and especially about the peculiar French complexities of buying a car.
First, A-----'s and my visit with Mme. D----- went very well, and she gave us our house key. Then we set out to look for a car. I didn't know even where to begin. We found a taxi, and I just asked the driver where we - of modest means - should go to look for a car. He took us to a Simca dealer.
We arrived at the dealership around 1 p.m., I think it was. I thought it might take all the rest of that day and at least the whole of the following day to get through all of the red tape. But not a bit of it! Right there on the floor was a four-door, stick-shift sedan that we could afford. That would be fine. The purchase went smoothly too. And the salesman had assumed it was his responsibility to walk us through the insurance and registration complexities. He sent us off in a taxi to an insurer whom he knew; that and the registration went off without a hitch, and by 5 p.m. we drove away in our own car! Wow, my getting happily married had improved the whole world, even French bureaucracy!
So, with surprisingly little trouble, there we were in Mme. D-----'s chalet, having had no trouble finding it in the little village up on the side of a mountain and having a key that worked. The electricity was on, the telephone was hooked up, the gas stove - strange as it was - worked, the heat seemed to be fine... We could settle right in.
The house was set into the side of the mountain, with a steep road coming straight up from the highway from town that seemed far below. If you drove beyond the house on your left and turned left, you could turn around and park outside our little gate. If you kept going on that little street, you could zigzag back down the mountainside, winding slowly - and less steeply - down to the highway. Oh, the house was called and its address was "Les Fenouilleres," the fennels. We didn't see any fennel bushes, but there was a lovely string of raspberry bushes along one side of the house.
The second floor was not open to us. Mme. D----- had explained that she kept her summer clothes and things in the bedrooms up there. We still had plenty of room for us at that time: the kitchen just inside the door from the road on the high side of the steep hill where we were perched, the large formal dining room with its heavy dark furniture beyond it; the bedroom beyond a little half-bath on the right of the kitchen as one entered the kitchen from the little road on the high side, and beyond the bed and bathrooms - next to the dining room - was a little den looking out into the sky behind the little house toward the impressive "Chaine de Belledonne" (the Bella Donna mountain range).
The garage was beneath the den and bedroom. Access to it was from a little unpaved alleyway off the steep road up. You could turn left there and immediately right to mount our steeply paved driveway into the garage. From there, you could enter the basement and go up the stairs to the kitchen. There was nothing distinctive about the garage. In the dank, dark, spider-webby basement there was one, distinctive feature: the "Salle de Bains," the bathroom - with no toilet but the one place in the house where you could bathe.
The bathtub itself was tall. You had to climb inside by using steps. It was narrow and deep. You couldn't lie down, far from it; you had to sit with your knees at least level with your waist. But the water was deliciously hot, and you could fill the tub up to your armpits. I got in the habit of taking with me for my leisurely bath several copies of The Sporting News (to which I had subscribed while back in the States), where I would pore over all that week's box scores...
But I hadn't been entirely mistaken about the complexities of moving into a foreign country. It was weather that ultimately brought this home, first an episode with fog and then... snow!
I had a job, of course, although I could do much of my work at home; pretty soon A----- was coming with me down to work. There was a little American library nearby, and A----- quickly struck up a friendship with the head librarian, as well as with one of the other patrons. One foggy morning I accidentally left the fog lights on when we arrived in the morning, so when it came time to go home in mid-afternoon, the battery was dead.
I didn't know what to do, but A----- went right to her librarian friend for advice. Mme. V------ happened to be nearby too. She volunteered to drop us at the nearest service station about a mile away. So far, so good. But no, the service station people did not drive to dead cars and give them a jump, especially so near closing time. That was apparently how it was done in France in those days. I was welcome to bring the dead battery to them, and they could charge it right up. I believe they even were kind enough to loan me a screwdriver.
A----- and I trudged together through what was now a constant cold drizzle back to the Simca sedan, me worrying all the way if we could get the damned battery out without electrocuting ourselves in the meantime. By the time we had it out, it was growing dark. The service station was about to close! The battery was pretty darn heavy too. I hoisted it onto my shoulder as we hurried back.
But they were able to recharge the battery in jig time, and I was able to haul it all the way back and even hook it up again. Crisis overcome! (And at least I never left the headlights on again.)
As for the snow...
We knew, of course, living on an Alp after all, that there would be snow to contend with. That would have been true down in the city of Grenoble itself, site of the 1968 Olympics. So we knew that at home we would need a snow shovel. At least we knew that once we discovered that the only tools in the garage were for gardening. At least there was a rake.
We set out to find a snow shovel soon after arriving at Les Fenouilleres, first casting about for a good-sized hardware store, which we eventually found. I asked if they had a snow shovel. There was some confusion, maybe because at first I hadn't known how to say "pel de neige" (shovel for snow), but then the man said Yes they had one, seeming to believe this was an exotic request. He brought us a little camp shovel that as a Boy Scout I might have used to dig a little rain trench around the outside of my tent. It folded up. He must have thought I wanted something for digging out my car from a deep drift. When I said we needed something larger, he said they couldn't help us.
I could tell now this enterprise was going to be tricky, but when we got home I got out Mme. D-----'s phonebook and started calling the hardware stores one at a time. A----- and I knew exactly what we wanted, of course: a metal handle on a wooden pole, with a curved aluminum blade at the other end. From our first sally into that first shop, I now knew to call this a pel de neige... When greeted with a long pause on the phone, I usually jumped in to explain that I would need to clean the snow off the driveway to my garage. The usual answer was No, they didn't carry those, maybe when the snow season actually started... We weren't not feeling comfortable doing that.
Fortunately someone at work told me (or maybe it was Mme. D----- herself) that it would be wise for us who lived on a mountain to have chains for our rear tires, and we were able to find those with a minimum of trouble. And I did have to use them often later on, clipping them on for the steep climb up or to go down from the main town highway and taking them off (for down) or putting them on (for up) at the foot of the hill. I got reasonably adept at that, even in my good suit.
One evening coming home, I found it snowing harder and harder as I zigzagged up the back way to our house and decided not even to try to get up into the garage. I parked on the street by our little gate. Next morning, sure enough, the car was buried under about a foot of snow. It was bitter cold too. But using just my hands and feet, I managed to unearth the Simca and clear a pathway into the street ... before realizing that the car wouldn't start.
Well, there was this steep road going downhill just a few feet away. If only A----- and I could get the Simca around the corner, I could pop the clutch on the way down and the car was sure to start. A----- gamely bundled up and came out with me, and the two of us got the car headed out in the right direction. I got inside to guide it and realized that the mailman had presented himself as a volunteer to push with A-----. It worked like a charm, and I was right on time for work.
But the snow shovel saga continued. When I got back home after that first snow, I parked again on the street and went down to the basement from inside. There were several pieces of lumber. I used one board to just push the snow down the driveway all the way to the other side of the little alley below. So I could make it then to the garage... having used the end of a board instead of a shovel.
After ten calls or so, someone at one of the stores said brightly, Yes! they had a pel de neige! I couldn't believe it. "For removing snow?" I asked skeptically. Yes! "From my driveway?" Yes! We headed down into the city to search for this magical shop.
It turned out to be big, brightly lit, and modern, even if it had been hard to find on a windy little back street. What a relief.
Yes! you called about the pel de neige! said the young man inside, evidently the fellow I had spoken to on the telephone. He scurried out back into the storage area. After a few minutes, he came back with an iron coal shovel! Even empty, I could barely lift this monstrous thing, let alone with a load of snow inside its ample scoop.
We did make a purchase in that store, though. I bought a hammer and a few nails. When we got home again, I nailed a small board across the top of the longer board, in a T shape. That turned out to be my snow shovel for the whole season.
Even when I knew it might be just for myself, or for the two of us, I knew in late June that I had to find a place to live in Grenoble in 1970-71. The run of good luck continued when I learned that Mme. D-----, who lived in a flat downtown, liked to rent out her summer house through the colder months of the year to visiting Americans; it was in Seyssins, a small village up on the Alp where the 1968 Olympic Ski Jump had been in another village much higher up called St. Nizier.
I - or we - would need a car.
But I flew out of Nice to A-----'s home state, met her family and some friends, and asked A----- to marry me; we went down to Texas to meet my family; returned north to plan the wedding and to get married on October 3.
After a three-day honeymoon, we climbed on a plane to Grenoble.
3
The trip was long. We had to change planes three times. The last leg was bumpy and hot, and we arrived in Grenoble in the middle of the day - after having little sleep for most of two days. We got into a hotel pretty efficiently, but awoke - starving hungry - about 2 a.m. ... We had to find food, but there was no one to tell us where we could. Then too we were lucky; after only about 20 minutes in random wanderings, we found a little neighborhood restaurant across the street from the local newspaper offices.
I hadn't thought to worry about changing planes, adjusting to the changing time zones, getting sleep, or finding food in the middle of the first night in Grenoble. But all that luckily turned out well enough after all. On the other hand, I had been a little concerned first about getting into our house for the nine months ahead and especially about the peculiar French complexities of buying a car.
First, A-----'s and my visit with Mme. D----- went very well, and she gave us our house key. Then we set out to look for a car. I didn't know even where to begin. We found a taxi, and I just asked the driver where we - of modest means - should go to look for a car. He took us to a Simca dealer.
4
We arrived at the dealership around 1 p.m., I think it was. I thought it might take all the rest of that day and at least the whole of the following day to get through all of the red tape. But not a bit of it! Right there on the floor was a four-door, stick-shift sedan that we could afford. That would be fine. The purchase went smoothly too. And the salesman had assumed it was his responsibility to walk us through the insurance and registration complexities. He sent us off in a taxi to an insurer whom he knew; that and the registration went off without a hitch, and by 5 p.m. we drove away in our own car! Wow, my getting happily married had improved the whole world, even French bureaucracy!
5
So, with surprisingly little trouble, there we were in Mme. D-----'s chalet, having had no trouble finding it in the little village up on the side of a mountain and having a key that worked. The electricity was on, the telephone was hooked up, the gas stove - strange as it was - worked, the heat seemed to be fine... We could settle right in.
The house was set into the side of the mountain, with a steep road coming straight up from the highway from town that seemed far below. If you drove beyond the house on your left and turned left, you could turn around and park outside our little gate. If you kept going on that little street, you could zigzag back down the mountainside, winding slowly - and less steeply - down to the highway. Oh, the house was called and its address was "Les Fenouilleres," the fennels. We didn't see any fennel bushes, but there was a lovely string of raspberry bushes along one side of the house.
The second floor was not open to us. Mme. D----- had explained that she kept her summer clothes and things in the bedrooms up there. We still had plenty of room for us at that time: the kitchen just inside the door from the road on the high side of the steep hill where we were perched, the large formal dining room with its heavy dark furniture beyond it; the bedroom beyond a little half-bath on the right of the kitchen as one entered the kitchen from the little road on the high side, and beyond the bed and bathrooms - next to the dining room - was a little den looking out into the sky behind the little house toward the impressive "Chaine de Belledonne" (the Bella Donna mountain range).
The garage was beneath the den and bedroom. Access to it was from a little unpaved alleyway off the steep road up. You could turn left there and immediately right to mount our steeply paved driveway into the garage. From there, you could enter the basement and go up the stairs to the kitchen. There was nothing distinctive about the garage. In the dank, dark, spider-webby basement there was one, distinctive feature: the "Salle de Bains," the bathroom - with no toilet but the one place in the house where you could bathe.
The bathtub itself was tall. You had to climb inside by using steps. It was narrow and deep. You couldn't lie down, far from it; you had to sit with your knees at least level with your waist. But the water was deliciously hot, and you could fill the tub up to your armpits. I got in the habit of taking with me for my leisurely bath several copies of The Sporting News (to which I had subscribed while back in the States), where I would pore over all that week's box scores...
6
But I hadn't been entirely mistaken about the complexities of moving into a foreign country. It was weather that ultimately brought this home, first an episode with fog and then... snow!
I had a job, of course, although I could do much of my work at home; pretty soon A----- was coming with me down to work. There was a little American library nearby, and A----- quickly struck up a friendship with the head librarian, as well as with one of the other patrons. One foggy morning I accidentally left the fog lights on when we arrived in the morning, so when it came time to go home in mid-afternoon, the battery was dead.
I didn't know what to do, but A----- went right to her librarian friend for advice. Mme. V------ happened to be nearby too. She volunteered to drop us at the nearest service station about a mile away. So far, so good. But no, the service station people did not drive to dead cars and give them a jump, especially so near closing time. That was apparently how it was done in France in those days. I was welcome to bring the dead battery to them, and they could charge it right up. I believe they even were kind enough to loan me a screwdriver.
A----- and I trudged together through what was now a constant cold drizzle back to the Simca sedan, me worrying all the way if we could get the damned battery out without electrocuting ourselves in the meantime. By the time we had it out, it was growing dark. The service station was about to close! The battery was pretty darn heavy too. I hoisted it onto my shoulder as we hurried back.
But they were able to recharge the battery in jig time, and I was able to haul it all the way back and even hook it up again. Crisis overcome! (And at least I never left the headlights on again.)
7
As for the snow...
We knew, of course, living on an Alp after all, that there would be snow to contend with. That would have been true down in the city of Grenoble itself, site of the 1968 Olympics. So we knew that at home we would need a snow shovel. At least we knew that once we discovered that the only tools in the garage were for gardening. At least there was a rake.
We set out to find a snow shovel soon after arriving at Les Fenouilleres, first casting about for a good-sized hardware store, which we eventually found. I asked if they had a snow shovel. There was some confusion, maybe because at first I hadn't known how to say "pel de neige" (shovel for snow), but then the man said Yes they had one, seeming to believe this was an exotic request. He brought us a little camp shovel that as a Boy Scout I might have used to dig a little rain trench around the outside of my tent. It folded up. He must have thought I wanted something for digging out my car from a deep drift. When I said we needed something larger, he said they couldn't help us.
I could tell now this enterprise was going to be tricky, but when we got home I got out Mme. D-----'s phonebook and started calling the hardware stores one at a time. A----- and I knew exactly what we wanted, of course: a metal handle on a wooden pole, with a curved aluminum blade at the other end. From our first sally into that first shop, I now knew to call this a pel de neige... When greeted with a long pause on the phone, I usually jumped in to explain that I would need to clean the snow off the driveway to my garage. The usual answer was No, they didn't carry those, maybe when the snow season actually started... We weren't not feeling comfortable doing that.
Fortunately someone at work told me (or maybe it was Mme. D----- herself) that it would be wise for us who lived on a mountain to have chains for our rear tires, and we were able to find those with a minimum of trouble. And I did have to use them often later on, clipping them on for the steep climb up or to go down from the main town highway and taking them off (for down) or putting them on (for up) at the foot of the hill. I got reasonably adept at that, even in my good suit.
One evening coming home, I found it snowing harder and harder as I zigzagged up the back way to our house and decided not even to try to get up into the garage. I parked on the street by our little gate. Next morning, sure enough, the car was buried under about a foot of snow. It was bitter cold too. But using just my hands and feet, I managed to unearth the Simca and clear a pathway into the street ... before realizing that the car wouldn't start.
Well, there was this steep road going downhill just a few feet away. If only A----- and I could get the Simca around the corner, I could pop the clutch on the way down and the car was sure to start. A----- gamely bundled up and came out with me, and the two of us got the car headed out in the right direction. I got inside to guide it and realized that the mailman had presented himself as a volunteer to push with A-----. It worked like a charm, and I was right on time for work.
8
But the snow shovel saga continued. When I got back home after that first snow, I parked again on the street and went down to the basement from inside. There were several pieces of lumber. I used one board to just push the snow down the driveway all the way to the other side of the little alley below. So I could make it then to the garage... having used the end of a board instead of a shovel.
After ten calls or so, someone at one of the stores said brightly, Yes! they had a pel de neige! I couldn't believe it. "For removing snow?" I asked skeptically. Yes! "From my driveway?" Yes! We headed down into the city to search for this magical shop.
It turned out to be big, brightly lit, and modern, even if it had been hard to find on a windy little back street. What a relief.
Yes! you called about the pel de neige! said the young man inside, evidently the fellow I had spoken to on the telephone. He scurried out back into the storage area. After a few minutes, he came back with an iron coal shovel! Even empty, I could barely lift this monstrous thing, let alone with a load of snow inside its ample scoop.
We did make a purchase in that store, though. I bought a hammer and a few nails. When we got home again, I nailed a small board across the top of the longer board, in a T shape. That turned out to be my snow shovel for the whole season.
***
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