1958 Juan Les Pins, BB, et les measles

1956 Ford Sunliner

In the summer we went on vacation to the French Riviera; to be more exact, to Juan-Les-Pins.  We drove but I don't remember much about the trip except that we were driving our 1956 Ford Starliner convertible, the turquoise and white one.  

I think that was the year my grandmother Frieda was with us, which is probably one of the reasons we went to several of the chateaux of the Loire Valley.  

The one I remember the best is Azy-Le-Rideau.  That was my favorite.  We also went to Chambord where we saw a 'son et lumiere' show at night, and a couple of others.  But Azy-Le-Rideau was the one that captured my imagination.  My second favorite was Chenonceau.

Azy-Le-Rideau

Azy-Le-Rideau

Chenonceau

Chenonceau

Chambord at night

Chambord

I remember going to Nice and having lunch at the famous Hotel Negresco (which I called the Hotel the Crisco, much to my mother's chagrin).

Le Negresco, Nice, France

Juan-Les-Pins was a very upscale tourist resort, even then.  The hotel where we stayed, Le Provencal, was very famous, and looked out over the boulevard and the beach.  There was entertainment every night and we usually went and sat on the patio and watched after dinner.

L'Hotel Provencal, 1955, Juan les Pins

Beach, Juan Les Pins

Port du Crouton Marina, Juan Les Pins

Juan-Les-Pins had a great marina where we would stroll around in the afternoon when we weren't at the beach.  

Chris Craft Cabin Cruiser

Chris Craft Wood

I remember in particular my dad pointing out to me all the Chris Craft boats.  He said they were top of the line and we would look at them really closely.  He admired fine craftsmanship.  Sometimes, if we could find an owner around, we would talk to them, with me translating if necessary.  

A couple of days after we arrived, I suddenly developed a horrible itchy rash.  It drove me nuts, I couldn't' sleep at night, and nothing helped.  My mother decided I was allergic to cantaloupe and told me I couldn't eat it anymore.  That was a terrible fate because I had it at least 3 times a day, I loved it. After another couple of days, the rash wasn't any better and she took me to a doctor.  The verdict:  I had the German measles!  The next 3 days, I had to stay in the hotel room in the dark because my eyes were watering so badly.  It was hell.  I couldn't even read.  Finally, for the last few days of our visit, I was allowed to go back outside again.  



The last day, we went to Cannes, and this time we ate in a fancy restaurant.  While we were there, I went to the bathroom, which wasn't just a bathroom.  It was very fancy and had a lounge area with antique couches, etc.  There were about three or four women in the lounge area, all agog.  I kept hearing "Bebe, Bebe est la" and sure enough, there she was, Brigitte Bardot.  She was  gorgeous.  And she was very nice.  She shook hands with everyone, even me.  

BB in what appears to be a Chris Craft

BB playing the guitar

Brigitte Bardot in 1958

I thought she was the most beautiful person I had seen in my life, and I haven't changed my mind all these years later.

We also went to Marseilles and Monte Carlo (see separate posts).  It was a wonderful summer trip.

Juan les Pins by Pablo Picasso

1966 The Jimi Hendrix Experience

The Jimi Hendrix Experience made their live debut in the middle of October 1966 with four dates in France.

Upon his arrival in England, the guitarist’s manager, former Animals bassist Chas Chandler, introduced Hendrix to drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, the duo that would become the Experience. After a week of rehearsals, Chandler put the band on the road supporting the French singer Johnny Hallyday.

The opening date was at the Novelty in Evreux, France on Oct. 13, 1966, and the trek wound up five days later at the Olympia Theater in Paris. Also on the bill were Long Chris, the Blackbirds and, for the final date, the Brian Auger Trinity. Less than a week later, the Experience would make their debut in the U.K. 

Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Hallyday

The concert I saw in Paris on October 18, 1966, when The Jimi Hendrix Experience opened for Johnny Halliday, was their first performance ever recorded!  The band had only been together for about two weeks.

My friend, Roland, was a photographer for one of the Paris newspapers, and he invited me to go with him on his interview with this crazy new artists who played the guitar with his teeth and set it on fire.  Of course, I was thrilled.

We went to the Olympia and went backstage.  Roland and I went to a dressing room where a black man was sitting on a stool playing a guitar.  He looked up and said hello very quietly, then shook Roland's hand and shook mine.  I told him I spoke English if needed it, but Roland spoke pretty good English.  When he asked Jimi questions, I could barely hear his answers, and the whole time he was just strumming his guitar.  After a couple of minutes, someone told him he needed to get on stage, so Roland said they could finish after the show.

The curtain went up and there was a drummer and a bass player on stage, but no one at the mike.  Then the speaker announced "Ladies & gentleman"  and there was a terrific guitar noise, "from Seattle Washington" and there was another roar from the guitar that lasted a while, "the Jimi Hendrix Experience!" then Jimi came out, with his left hand in the air, playing the chords with his right hand.  It was incredible.  

We watched Jimi perform from the side of the stage.  The audience was spellbound and I was in shock.  The guitar alone was like nothing I had ever heard!  He played it with his teeth, yes, and he set it on fire.  

His set only lasted 15 minutes (though it seemed much longer) and he sang three songs ("Killing Floor", "Hey Joe", and "Wild Thing").  When he was through, there was dead silence for a moment then the entire audience went berserk!  Needless to say, we weren't able to go backstage again.  I wish I remembered more about the concert, but it was sensory overload.  
He wasn't very successful in the US and like many artists, found better luck in Europe.  But it wasn't long before he was a sensation there, especially after Woodstock.

Unfortunately, not so many years later, David and I had flown to Paris for a weekend and were at the hotel talking to some of the Rolling Stones.  Mick said he was heartbroken after Jimi's death, but that he hadn't been able to go to the funeral because there was an arrest warrant for him if he entered the US.

I really want to go visit his grave one day.  It's in Renton.

1969 Woodstock, or Not

I had actually been to the Woodstock area about 2 weeks before the Festival.  Even then, there were lots of signs for "Three days of peace and music".  

A Woodstock sign

David and I had thought about going but he was busy at the recording studio and I would have had to call in sick to work which I did a lot.  Our across-the-street neighbors,, Lynne and Samik went though, leaving on Thursday morning early.  We thought they were crazy because Woodstock is only about 100 miles from New York, but it turns out they knew what they were doing.  They got there early Thursday afternoon and already there was so much traffic that they had to abandon their red VW bus about 5 miles from the meadow.  They just left it on the side of the road, along with many others, keys in it, and hitchhiked with all their stuff to the site.  When they returned to it on Monday, keys were still in it and nothing was missing  They got home later Monday night.

Traffic jam on the way to Woodstock

David and I had considered going up Friday night after work, but by the news helicopters were already showing traffic backed up for miles and over 500,000 in attendance, so we wisely decided against it. 

There was a crowd of over half a million people

Still, I can't believe I missed one of the most significant events of my lifetime!  David was mad because he knew so many of the performers.  He knew some of the members of The Band; he was pretty good friends with Richie Havens, who was the opening act by default; and he knew Arlo Guthrie.  We were both on a first-name basis with Roger Daltrey of The Who.  John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful was there, and of course we knew him from seeing him riding around the Village with his parrot on his head.  We also knew Tim Hardin from when David lived at the Hotel Albert (he later died of an overdose in 1980).  And of course he knew, Melanie (who later because David's star-f**ker moment).  Then, of course though I didn't know him at all, I had seen Jimi Hendrix onstage in Paris in 1966.
 

Arlo Guthrie

The Band

Richie Havens

Roger Daltrey and The Who

Tim Hardin

John Sebastian

Melanie

Jimi Hendrix

To me the quintessential image of Woodstock is Jimi playing the Star-Spangled Banner, fringes flying, bombs dropping, and rockets exploding.  Amazingly, that performance was impromptu and not rehearsed.

Later on, after the movie was released, David and I went to the New York press preview.  The movie was wonderful,  But then, when Jimi started playing the Star-Spangled Banner, a lot of people got up and walked out.  I guess they felt it was disrespectful, but I will never understand why.  After all, my generation was against the Vietnam war; that was the whole point of Three Days of Peace and Music.

1957 The Dog Angel

We had some friends who lived a couple of towns away from us named Miche and Jean LeMaitre.  Their son was at hotel school in Paris, which I thought was wonderful.  I had a bit of a crush on him actually.

The LeMiatres had a very nice big dog.  Whenever we went to visit them, we usually stayed most of the day because it was fairly far away, and I spent all my time playing with the dog.  One spring day, we went to see them and the dog wasn't there.  When I asked where he was, Jean LeMaitre said that he had taken him hunting over the winter, and somehow the dog got shot.  Jean tried to save him but he lost too much blood.  The ground was frozen, so Jean made him a grave under a pile of leaves and branches, and put a little cross over it. 

This made me very sad because he was a wonderful dog and still young.

About a month later, we got a phone call from Miche that the dog had come back.  Someone had found him and unburied him and taken him to a vet.  The vet was shocked that he was alive, though barely, and called someone at a university.  The vet took him there, where they performed tests on him, and transfused him.  Apparently, he had lost most of his blood, and had been in a deep freeze, like suspended animation.  After transfusions and slow warming of his body, he came back to life.  They got the LeMaitres' name from his collar.  Needless to say, Jean and Miche were overjoyed.

Of course, the dog probably wasn't really dead, he was just at a low body temperature and his body functions had slowed down.  

The university wrote some articles about him and he was on the TV news once.  You could see the place where he had been shot, right in the chest.  He was like a canine angel come back to earth.  I never forgot him.

In a totally unrelated story, the LeMaitres' son had gone to Switzerland for vacation that winter.  He and two of his friends were running for a train, and one of them attempted to jump up onto the train from the platform.  He was hit by the train and decapitated.  I remember hearing my parents discussing it when they thought I wasn't listening.  I had nightmares about it.

1958 William the Conqueror

One of the places Fifi and Jacques and I used to go was to an old ruined castle.  It was about 2 miles away and we would be gone all day.  Ruins really intrigued me, so I asked about it at school.  One of the girls told that it had been a lookout tower used by William the Conqueror, but I didn't really believe her.  She said we weren't supposed to go there, though, because it was dangerous.  When I asked my mother about it, she was appalled that we had gone there and told me not to tell my dad.

Partially restored

We explored everywhere and amazingly enough, never got more than cuts and bruises.  It would have been a longer ride home injured than the time Jacques fell out of the parachute tree.

Restoration

It wasn't until just now (April 23, 2017) that I decided to look it up and I was taken aback to find it.  Not only that, but it has been restored.  I can't believe it.

Restoration showing tower

"Former castle of the count of Evreux, of which the walls have been restored.  Medieval tower with viewpoint dominating the Seine Valley and pathway around walls with drawbridge.  Inside the walls, remnants of wood store and old chapel.  At the foot of the site, an old wash house has been completely restored."

William, Count of Evreux (died April 16, 1118) was a powerful member of the Norman aristocracy during the period following the Norman conquest of England.  He is one of the few documented to have been with William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings.

To think I used to climb around on these ruins.  I wish it was still wild and overgrown the way it was then.

1956 La Maison A Gravenchon

48 Avenue d'Admiral Grasset

Notre Dame de Gravenchon

Seine-Maritime

Normandy

France

Inside the back door was the kitchen.  When I came home from school every day I would sit at the kitchen table with my sister, and sometimes my friends, and we would have '’gouter’'.  It usually consisted of a piece of baguette with sweet butter and cocoa sprinkled on top.  I remember very well taking my baguette outside and trying to swing while eating it and having the cocoa blow off!  In the winter we would have a big bowl of hot chocolate with our baguette and butter, and dipping the bread and butter in the hot chocolate caused oil slicks all over the surface.  

Off the kitchen on the other side of the swinging doors was the dining room.  Sometimes we would play Monopoly, games that went on for days.  Usually it was my sister and me and our friend Colette.  She was actually more our babysitter, but since she was only a few years older than us, we didn't think of her that way.  Those games went on for days and days.  At dinner, we would just push it all aside until the next day.  

What I remember best about the living room was the bookshelves.  

I used to read my mother's books, mostly murder mysteries by Agatha Christie.  

One book I remember very well, though, was a book called 'Mary Queen of Scots‘.  I was fascinated by it, and read it more than once.  

Years later as an adult I found a copy of it and realized it was not easy reading.  I am amazed I struggled through it at the age of 10 or 11. 

 The other thing I remember very well was the record player.  

My mother played South Pacific and Gilbert & Sullivan all the time ("Brigadoon", "HMS Pinafore", etc.).  She had been involved in acting and musical comedy before she married my dad and she would sing along.  

The refrain of my childhood was my mother dusting while singing "I’m going to wash that man right out of my hair".  My favorite, though, was "Bali Ha’i" from South Pacific.  It still brings tears to my eyes, that longing for a magical place.  I felt it even then.  (Little did I know that I was already there).  

My mother often had bridge parties in the living room and I would sit under the table and read while they played. I loved to listen to the French ladies talk about what it was like living in Normandy during the war.  After all, this was not so very long after the war, 12 years after D-Day.  They said they had to eat cats and that for years afterwards when they heard an airplane they would want to run and hide.  They talked about rationing and bomb raids.  To me it was utterly fascinating.  

I remember once my mother told them about going to the gas station and asking them to check “l’huile and la vinaigre” ("the oil and vinegar").  She had them rolling, I guess, but they forgave her because she was American.  

We had a small w/c right inside the front door.  Every night, my dad would wake me before he went to bed and walk me down to that little bathroom.  Every night, I would pick it up off the shelf beside my bed and carry it down with me into the bathroom and set it on the floor.  Sometimes I would open the front door and take it outside into the yard.  More than once, my dad had to get his flashlight and look for me outside.  When he would ask me what I had in my hand, I would unfold my hand and show him.  The next morning, I would remember nothing when he questioned me, but I knew very well what it was.  It was my miniature horse.   

I don't remember my sister's room at all except that it was bigger than mine and had a big closet in it, which mine didn't.  

My parents' room had a huge armoire in it.  I remember when I opened it, I could smell my mother's perfume (either "Chanel No 5" or "Joy by Patou").  I remember in particular a pale blue Christian Dior suit she had bought on one of our trips to Paris, and a black and white St. Laurent dress that was my favorite dress of hers, ever.  The skirt was vertical panels of black and white, the bodice was black, with a scoop neck and along the neck were black and white squares.  It had short sleeves.   

They had a big window that faced towards the refinery at Port Jerome.  That window had a special meaning for me because of the Flying Red Horse.  (See separate post).  I remember being sick one day and spending the whole day in my parents' bed reading Agatha Christie.  Then I got bored and started to whine, at which point my mother said "Well, instead of whining why don't you do what Agatha Christie herself did?  She was bored and her mother told her instead of complaining, she should just write her own books.  And she did!".  But I didn't.

All I remember about the bathroom was that it had little hexagonal black and white tiles on the floor and a tub with feet.  The window was  patterned glass you couldn't see through.  It was big and the radiator made that wonderful steamy heat when we were taking our baths.

My room was wonderful. It was small, but I knew it was mine as soon as I saw it.  It was at the top of the stairs on the right. Lying in my bed, the door was across from me in the right corner and the window was on the left. There were shutters on the window and the big tree was right outside. In the summer we had to close the shutters to make it dark, because it stayed light past my bedtime, sometimes until 10 pm. I was terrified of the wind because I had read a Bobbsey Twins book about a tree falling on their house.  In the winter and during storms, that big tree made a lot of noise.  I remember both my mother and my dad having to come in and reassure me any time the wind blew.  The shutters helped with that too.

My mother painted a mural on the wall  on either side of where my headboard was. It was of Pookie the flying rabbit and his friends. 

The whole wall behind my bed had low bookshelves and everything was painted white.  

I had two lamps, one on either side of my bed, with burnt orange glass shades, like hurricane lamps.  One night the wind blew in and somehow knocked one of the lamps over and broke it.  That terrified me.   After that, I only used one. 

I realize now that when I lived in the King house in Vernon, TX, I chose the small bedroom at the top of the stairs on the right as our bedroom, and I painted it all pale pale yellow.  Was I trying to recreate my perfect childhood bedroom that I loved so much?

I loved that entire house.  I loved living there.  When we left in 1959 when I was 12, I felt as though I was a tree being dragged by its branches with its roots trying to stay in that familiar ground.  I still feel that way.  

The town of Notre-Dame de Gravenchon no longer exists.  On January 1, 2016, it was merged with Port Jerome into the town of Port-Jerome-sur-Seine.