1958 Mayonnaise

When we lived in Normandy, my mother used to make home-made mayonnaise.  It became an obsession with her.  Apparently, it's not that easy and sometimes it curdles.  One day I got home from school and she was telling my sister and me how she had made her best ever batch of mayonnaise, and that she was going to give some to her friend Jen.

We were hungry and ready for our "gouter", so my sister went to the fridge and pulled open the door.  When she did, as if in slow motion, we saw the fridge start to topple over towards us.  I remember shoving my sister aside and jumping back just as it fell forward onto the floor with a tremendous crash.  My sister was crying and my mother was standing there, in shock, with a wooden spoon in her hand.  We didn't know what to do.

When my dad got home, we managed to get it back upright.  The door had completely broken off because it fell with the door open.  Everything that had been inside the fridge was left on the floor, splattered, spilled, and broken.  Shards of glass were everywhere.

In the middle of this fiasco, my mother calmly went over and got a spatula and proceeded to scrape all the mayonnaise off the floor and into a bowl.  She didn't give any to her friend Jen, though we ate it.

1956 Le Mascaret (La Barre)

 We went every year between 1956 and 1959 to see le mascaret.  My parents would take my sister and me out of school for the day.   We used to go to Caudebec, a place where the river was deep, and we would watch as huge waves would go by, very fast (they say the waves move with "the speed of a galloping horse" which is about 35 mph), and the water just disappeared.  I remember seeing river rats running along the sides looking for the water.  It was just like multiple tsunamis, the waves would come, one after the other, and it was as though all the water was sucked out behind them. 


According to Google, "Until extensive engineering  works were completed in 1963, there was a huge one on the Seine estuary. La  Barre, as it was called, occasionally damaged moored ships as far upriver as  Rouen (which was farther upriver than Caudebec). At Caudebec-en-Caux it sometimes reached 4 metres high and was capable of  causing severe damage to any ship left moored alongside a quay. It attracted  crowds from miles around." 

Victor Hugo's oldest and  favorite daughter, Léopoldine, died at age 19 in 1843 (on September 4, my birthday), shortly after her  marriage. She drowned in the Seine at Villequier, pulled down by her heavy  skirts, when a boat overturned while they were trying to ride out le mascaret.  Her young husband also died trying to save  her.  People on shore stated that he could easily have swum to safety, but he would not leave her.  Two other people on the boat also drowned.  

1958 "Pas de Poison pour les Enfants"

When I was about eight or nine, we were in Rouen, at the square where Jeanne d'Arc was burned at the stake.  It was a hot day, so we went into a small cafe to get something to drink.  My mother ordered Coca Cola for my sister and me.  The woman in the cafe was shocked.  She said they didn't serve "la Coca Cola" there, "absolument pas!"  My mother was surprised, and asked her why.  The woman replied, "Non non non, et jamais pour les enfants!  C'est la poison!".  My mother laughed, but it was true, it had cocaine in it.  

I never hear about Joan of Arc without thinking about that day.  As a matter of fact, I feel a strong connection with her.  I have had many dreams, especially when I was younger, that I was there, in that square, when she died.

1966 Happy Birthday Mr. Dylan

I went to a Dylan concert in Paris on 5/24/1966, right after he went electric. It was actually his birthday. I got to go backstage with my friend Roland (who was a news photographer) and meet him and shake his hand. I wished him happy birthday and he lit up. He was wearing a green and black houndstooth suit, very spiffy and unlike his usual garb. 

Concert at l"Olympia in Paris on May 24, 1966

The first half of the show was acoustic, and the second half (after intermission) was , and half the people walked out or booed.

Ironically, about 5 years later, I lived around the block from him.  I lived on Houston Street and he lived on McDougal Street in Greenwich Village.

I had all his albums.  I had bought them in Paris, so the covers were all in French. I used to have a bunch of pictures taken by my friend, but I have lost them over the years.

During my classes at the American School of Paris, which was at the small chateau which had been the residence of Mme du Barry, mistress of King Louis XV, I would take Dylan songs and write new verses. My best one was "When The Ship Comes In", I wrote 12 new verses to that one. Then I would have my mother read them and see if she could tell which were his and which were mine. She couldn't.

And now HE's won the Nobel Prize for Literature.  And who would ever have imagined that 50 years later I can listen to that actual concert on my laptop (my what?)