Food, Gardens, and Health

Note how the title goes F, G, H? So it's right that the first word of this blog would be "I."

I met a Frenchman when we were in St. Malo who swore that English food was the best in the world! I couldn’t believe he would say that, or even think it! At the time, I was talking with Olivier and Cécile about how much we love French food. This fellow overheard us and had to put in his opinion.

I agreed on one thing, however. English breakfasts with sausage, eggs, and biscuits (the original McMuffins) are wonderful. The problem is that they are not healthy. Nowadays the health part is more important to me than it was 50 years ago.

Mandy, my daughter-in-law who studied in Aix-en-Provence for a year and teaches French in the local high school, told me about a movie called “The French Revolution,” all about the pesticides in French agriculture – wheat, peaches, apples, and everything in between. I got the film from Netflix. I didn’t want to watch it, but finally, after keeping it for five days, had to.

Scenes of tractors moving through fields and orchards spewing foggy clouds of pesticides, with the drivers dressed in leaky scuba gear, were terrifying. Even more awful were the statistics of cancer rates in rural agricultural communities where you’d think the air would be clean and clear, being far from city pollution. Not so.

The mayor of a small town in the Languedoc, the same “county” as Nimes, decided to do something about the health risks his citizens were facing by farming with pesticides. He declared that the school would provide only organic food to the children. The mayor is leading the new French revolution! The change to organic food was well-received by many of the parents, some of whom decided to go organic at home, too.

The children planted a garden and learned about the rich, full taste of home-grown vegetables. Other communities got interested so the school kitchen expanded to cook for them, too.

Then the mayor took a drastic and courageous step. He brought together traditional and organic farmers to discuss the issues of health and economics.

“If a farmer won’t eat his own produce, I don’t want to, either,” was one of the comments. And after seeing the health problems of those traditional pesticide-spraying farmers, I agree.

The discussion was civil, and I think some of the traditionalists learned that organic can be profitable, and that pests can be controlled by means other than chemicals.

It takes about three years to change a traditional field to an organic one. That’s how long the chemicals hang around, showing up in the produce.

Any search on Google will show that American produce is rife with pesticide residues, evidence that this is a worldwide problem leading to worldwide health issues, and the associated economic issues of health care even for people who think they are eating well.

I have spent the last two weeks working on my garden. Zucchini and spring pumpkins planted inside grew and were transplanted today. Lettuce is up and thriving; chard and kale were planted today. The apricot and peach trees are full of little fruit.

My hopes are high for the fruit trees, which look happy, but out here with the desert wind, the fight might be too hard for them. Nevertheless, I know that whatever survives will have a sweeter and deeper taste than anything gracing the queen’s table.

Visiting Mandy today, I saw their garden. Hundreds of seedlings are peeking out of the soil! They’ve planted tomatoes and zucchini under their pear and apricot trees. What a feast there will be, and it’s all organic for both of us!

Oh, one disappointment: the tulip bulbs from Versailles are languishing. I’m hoping they are soaking up nutrients and sunshine so that next year will be a different story.

The motto for the gardener: Never Give Up! Never Surrender! (Thanks, “Galaxy Quest”.)

I'm Baaaack!

My version of French bread is baking in the oven, sending Paris aromas all over the house. It may not rival the baker [right] in Tours, seen making croissants, but who cares? I even have some goat cheese (chevre) to put on it. One Paris salad added a tiny touch of honey on small rounds of toast with hot cheese on top surrounded by lettuce, nuts, olives. It was superb!

What does this mean, starting out my very first blog in five weeks with food? No big deal. It simply means that the food was stupendous. In spite of consuming all the creamy cheeses and patisserie I could, I was thrilled to weigh myself this morning and find I’d lost a half pound! It was all the walking every day, probably eight to ten hours a day. Not hard walking, but being up and about as opposed to home-based sitting at the computer for too many hours.

Speaking of computers, how delightful to be back on my own computer! There were NO internet cafes open. Most have gone over to providing video games for the young, since everyone (except me) has a laptop and WiFi is everywhere. I will never again go traveling without some means of connecting with the internet.

Even though I wasn’t able to post daily or weekly, I’m going to catch you up by writing several times a week. They won’t be travelogues or even in order, but you’ll be able to share in the adventure and see the photos (a select number of the almost 1000, which seemed like a lot to me, a former film user. In those days, we were super careful about what we shot since there would only be, say, 36 pictures per roll. One daughter has a friend who takes almost that many in only two days! Times have changed for the better. Among my thousand are a few really nice ones.)

The Bass shoes held and were comfy all the way. An inch-long opening came when some stitching tore out, but super glue fixed it up. My yellow windbreaker was superb in wind and cold. The Kelty backpack held everything I needed and more. That’s the quick, brief, equipment update.

All along the way, I was confronted with the question of why I was doing it. I wanted to know that wandering through France would be worthwhile for more than just me and Mary. Even in the triumph of discovery of some jewel of a view, or person, this question might arise.

A poem by one of my favorite writers, Carol Lynn Pearson, answers it better than I can. It’s called “On Nest Building.” Why should a person be curious and have adventures if all they will ever be doing is raising a family? Why should I slice five weeks out of my life to go hither-thither all over France with a friend? CLP answers that mud and sticks will do fine for building a nest, [and I apologize forthwith for making cuts in this beautiful poem]

“But –

If I may fly awhile – . . .

If I may search the centuries

For melody and meaning –

If I may try for the sun –

I shall come back

Bearing such beauties

Gleaned from God’s and man’s very best.

I shall come back filled.

And then –

Oh, the nest that I can build!”

Over the next weeks and months, I will share with you the treasures gleaned from this trip. I hope all our nests will be richer for them. It’s good to be back!

New Horizons and Old Dreams

Because I wasn’t able to pay for this trip all by myself, I feel as if I need to make sure it is worthwhile for other people, as well as me. How that will happen, I’m not sure.

Yesterday at the library, I checked out Anne Perry’s little novel, A Christmas Odyssey, for a quick read before leaving, and guess what I found on page 4, describing one of the characters:

“He was filled with energy of mind and spirit, an insatiable hunger for life that made other people think of new horizons, even resurrect old dreams.”

That’s me! I hope that someone who has been on the fence about doing something outrageous, will take courage and leap because of my example. If that’s you, I enthusiastically push you forward to the edge of the cliff, knowing that your own adventure will be life-changing!

Margie’s recent blog talked about the tiny golden plovers that winter in Hawaii then fly 4000 miles to summer in Alaska! How do they navigate? Margie had thought that the young ones follow the experienced older ones. Well, they do, but they don’t leave until the older ones are too far away to give any advice to the novices. Imagine! You are only a few months old, more used to walking than flying, and one day your mom and dad take off into the great blue sky over the great blue ocean, calling out, “See you in Alaska! You’ll know it when you get there!”

You look around at your fellow birdlets. All are as perplexed as you are, but then a few take a hesitant jump into the air. As the air currents hit the cliffs and carry them upwards, something happens. The land-preferring birds feel the call of high adventure. “Come on!” they call to their buddies below.

The others then find the courage to spread their wings and catch the wind.

What do they discover about themselves on this non-stop 4000 mile journey? I ponder this and have no answer when dealing with plovers, but for myself, I have a few answers. These are not the final ones. I expect more answers will come even years from now.

One of my daughters said, “It may not be until one of your granddaughters goes traveling on her own, that the impact of your adventures will be felt. She will write a three-generation book about us all, and it will bless many lives.”

I have decided to let go of fear. Well-meaning friends send messages of terrorists and crime, my dentist tells of his daughter being robbed twice in Paris. Everyone has a story. But Mary and I will be not be afraid. We will be wary, and alert, but not afraid.

Like Guy de Maupassant, I know that “it is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.” I am eager to joyfully encounter new lives of all kinds, all ages, all circumstances.

Just two more days before Mary and I will hoist our 17-lb backpacks and climb aboard British Airways. Au revoir! A bientot!

The Gendarmes of Paris

Paris this time around will be a whole lot different for us than it was in the fall of 1961. The Eiffel Tower, the onion soup, the Seine will all still be there, but Mary and I won’t find ourselves flirting with a roomful of gendarmes at 4:00 a.m.

Here’s how it happened: As we told our story, the gendarmes were amiable, flirtatious (because they were French), but skeptical.

“Il n’etait pas Francais,” some insisted. “C’est impossible!” declared others.

“Non, non, c’est vrai!” countered Mary, using up most of her store of French. With her flashing eyes, long dark hair and perfect small figure, Mary was beautiful. That alone should have been enough to convince the gendarmes of the truth of what we were saying, but it wasn’t.

Too excited to sleep, we had gone out at 11:00 p.m. to find a place to have some good hot onion soup.

“Oui! Oui! Bonne soupe!” Mary chimed in. The gendarmes beamed. I was used her effect on men after being her roommate for two years, but it didn’t help my own ego.

The nearby restaurants were all closed so we had to walk a long way down the Boulevard Saint Germain before finding one that was still open. We were seated at a table on the second floor by a window with a view down to the street. A funny scene was taking place there.

Two young good-looking Frenchmen were arguing with a wild-haired “beat” girl – all in black, short skirt, tall boots -- who eventually kissed them both on the cheek and left. When we laughed at this drama, the guys turned to look up at the window and spotted us there. A moment later, they had come upstairs and were introducing themselves to us.

The nice-looking, rather short, peroxided blond claimed to be Richard Villiers, a movie actor. His friend, Pierre something, was not so handsome, but more real. Richard wore the open-necked shirt with suit jacket made popular by Elvis Presley, while Pierre’s blue shirt had a button-down collar with a thin dark blue tie. Their longish hair was slicked back on the sides and loosely waved on top, also a la Elvis.

After our soup, they asked if we would like to go to a “swinging cave,” a small bar with music and poets on the Right Bank. Excited by being able to see “beatnick” Paris, we agreed, knowing we could never find a place like that by ourselves.

We all squeezed into their tiny Citroen 2cv (nicknamed the douche bowl), Mary and I in back, the boys in front. The car, made from corrugated tin, was not very elegant transportation for a movie star. Richard excused this by saying that his other car, a Chrysler, was too wide for the narrow streets of Paris.

“Je ne te crois pas,” I laughed. His little fib wasn’t worth pursuing because we were in Paris at midnight with two young Frenchmen and it was delightful.

First he drove us along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower, parking right underneath it which you used to be able to do at night when no-one was around.

While our friends chatted amiably with a gendarme who happened along, Mary and I got out and looked up through the massive angel-hair girders, all gray against the moonlit sky. What a difference mood lighting makes! When I'd seen the Tower from a distance that afternoon, it had looked like a dirty pile of old steel. Now, close up by moonlight, the transformation was magical. This stop made up for what came next, but I didn’t tell that to the gendarmes, needing their sympathy.

Driving on to the “cave”, the Citroen started acting up. It stalled, and then, after much rapid, excited, discombobulated fiddling with gears and pushing of buttons, started again. The two men were mysterious about the whole thing, and I couldn't follow their rapid French. Mary and I paid them back by speaking just as fast in English, but we were so naïve we didn't realize what was actually happening.

After wasting an hour or so fussing with the car, we were getting no closer to the cave. Finally they said they would have to get out and push. Mary and I, in a spirit of international friendship, got out to help them. For at least forty-five minutes, we pushed that jalopy through tiny streets, wide streets and the wrong way on one-way streets. Romantic, gay Paris.

Finally we spotted a service station about two blocks away which happened to still be open. Richard and Pierre consulted, again in such rapid French I got lost. After coming to some sort of conclusion, they suggested that Mary and I walk down to the station and inquire if the attendant could fix whatever was wrong with the motor, using some technical term I have forgotten. They would stay behind and continue trying to start the car.

We strode to the station, told the attendant the problem, and pointed up the road to where the car used to be! Instantly, we realized what fools we had been. Our purses were in the back seat with our money and passports!

We'd panicked too soon, though. A moment later we heard shouting and honking a block away in the opposite direction. The car had finally started. Now, because it was so late and the car was almost out of gas, they were going to drive us back to our hotel instead of going to the cave.

At this point one of the gendarmes asked why Richard didn’t go to the service station and buy gas.

“Je ne sais pas,” was all I could say, never having thought of it. Since Mary’s French didn’t cover such possibilities, she shrugged eloquently.

It was a good move because the officers grinned or even laughed.

I continued with the story.

Nearing our section of the city, Richard became quite nervous, saying that they'd have to let us off soon or run out of gas. Pierre argued that it was too far for us to walk, so they compromised and dropped us only ten minutes' walk from the hotel.

We thanked them for a strange evening and started up the street. Almost immediately I felt my purse and realized it was much emptier than when we had started out. My wallet, a nice new red one, was gone. We had been robbed!

Our evening at the Eiffel Tower and pushing a car all over Paris was paid for by losing only four dollars, my driver's license and my Social Security card. It wasn’t much, but still, why would they have done it?

The gendarmes were shocked, every one of them. Like a chorus they repeated (in French), “He could not have been a Frenchman. A Frenchman would not do such a thing!”

As they were agonizing about this inexplicable breach in the Frenchman's code of honor, their Chief, a sour-faced, grumpy, sullen, short fat little man entered the room. I could tell that he thought the whole situation was ridiculous. From his viewpoint, his men were wasting time with two young female tourists. Mary’s beauty apparently had no effect on him.

In the sudden quiet that overtook the room, I stumbled through an explanation, trying to impress the Chief with the gravity of our plight. He shook his head, dismissing our claim to justice and turned to leave.

Suddenly the tallest and most handsome of the gendarmes, with sparkling blue eyes, dark hair, and Errol Flynn mustache, came to our rescue. Championing our cause, he made it clear that it was their duty as Frenchmen to erase the evil done to the national reputation by those unspeakably insensitive creatures masquerading as French. Miraculously, the chief succumbed.

Spreading a huge map of Paris on the central table, he had us retrace our car-pushing route. All the gendarmes gathered round, looking on. After a long pause, the Chief said, “Hmmm. Tsk tsk tsk.” The others echoed him and we waited for the verdict. At last the Chief announced that he could do nothing because the incident had occurred in another “arrondisement.”

We would have to go to the precinct office near the service station and explain the whole thing again. Uttering kindly little sympathies, he waddled back to his inner sanctum, closing the massive door behind him.

“Quelle dommage,” or “How sad,” the gendarmes murmured.

To lighten the mood, one of our new friends pointed ominously toward the Chief’s door and told us that girls caught roaming the streets at 4:00 in the morning go through it and don't come out until the Chief says so.

“Verdad?” I asked, and when I saw their blank faces realized I’d mixed up my languages yet again.

By the time we left the gendarmerie, it was 5:30 a.m. What an entertaining hour and a half it had been, bantering with fifteen or so delightful gendarmes! Of course, Richard and Pierre would never be brought to justice, but because of the charming gendarmes and the Eiffel Tower by moonlight we would call it even.

And that was only our first day in Paris! Fifty years later, we will gladly leave the flirting with gendarmes (or anyone else) to the younger girls. But still, it’s fun to tell the story and see the reactions. Sorry there aren't pictures.

Pablo Neruda's Socks and Me

Walking into the English class where I would be subbing, I quickly checked the lesson plan. “Read with the class ‘Ode to My Socks’ and discuss.” Finding the page in the textbook, I saw that the poet was Pablo Neruda, a Chilean, very important (what makes a poet “important”?). I’d heard of him but never read anything written by him.

How could he have known, when he wrote, that he was telling my story?

The narrator, I’ll call him Bob, receives a gift of colorful, woolen, handmade socks from a neighbor woman. Bob is poor, probably lives in Chile, probably has never worn socks because they are a luxury he can’t afford. The woman is also poor in money but is a shepherdess rich in knitting skills. The socks are her way to say “thanks” for some favor he has done her.

Bob is overwhelmed by the gift. They are colorful and soft. His feet are unworthy to wear them. Still, he carefully, slowly, deliberately smooths them on over his calloused, lowly feet. Neruda shows us how grateful and undeserving Bob feels, now that his feet have been transformed into two long, shining, heavenly “fish.”

Bob felt about those socks the same way I felt when, just one day earlier, I also received a gift of handknitted socks.

My friend Elaine knitted them during this winter’s long, cold, Colorado evenings by the fire, and sent them to me in thanks for a very small thing I had done for her. The yarn is wool from well-loved sheep, along with soy fiber and a touch of fiber from shrimp and crab shells. How special is that!?! Are you as amazed as I was/am? Has anyone ever knitted socks for you?

I felt like Bob, that the socks should be hung on display on my wall, but instead, I slowly slipped them onto my unworthy feet and was transformed into the Queen of Socked People!

When I tried to explain to the tenth graders how it was, they paid attention, they smiled, even laughed, but they couldn’t understand how deeply Bob and I felt about our socks. Maybe someday they will get or give such a gift and then they will know.

Isn’t that what education is about? A touch, a sound, a word that stays hidden inside you until one day something happens that trips the switch in your memory? Instantly you remember, and it’s not strange anymore – like the day when the substitute teacher told them about socks and gifts of love.

What does this story have to do with my trip to France? I long to find room in my stuffed backpack to take the socks with me and show them to everyone we meet there. Show people that my friend spent her evenings knitting these marvels of rainbow colors for my insignificant feet. I want them to know that some people in America still knit by firelight on winter evenings, surrounded by two dogs and a cat.

Then they will know that America is full of odds and ends that don’t get talked about but that are part of what makes up the better part of us.

My Mother's Curse - Football

This entry has only a tiny bit to do with hitchhiking in France. Still, I must get it out there, get over it, put it to rest.

My mother spent the first day of my life listening to the Rose Bowl game (USC 7 – Duke 3) on the radio (no TV yet). She’d planned it that way, scheduling her C-section and me for the 31st of December.

A lifelong fan, especially of OU, she was thrilled when I was hired by Dave and Dave who did most of the artwork for the NFL. The picture is the program for the 2nd AFL vs NFL contest, not yet named Super Bowl. I only did paste-up for that since I was on vacation from the Metropolitan Opera Company at the time (stage-managing, not singing).

Because I liked the Daves, and they loved football, I developed an appreciation for the artistic side of football (yes, it’s in the photos of guys upside down in mid air or zonked flat out on the ground), but also an impatience with the importance people gave (give) it.

I happily ignored football for years after the Dave era.

It began creeping in again when we (Thrim and I) worked at the University of Colorado during the time McCartney was coaching the Buffs and won (or tied for, depending on your perspective) the national championship. Phone conversations with my mother became non-confrontational as we talked about football – OU still, of course; UCLA, Colorado, and the Rams (Los Angeles’s team until 1994).

Yesterday I watched the Pro Bowl, comic relief between the regular season and the Super Hyped Super Bowl. There were no riots afterwards, nor will there be for the Super Bowl next week, unlike soccer in other parts of the world where fans think a win or a loss is an occasion to burn, riot and steal.

The first soccer match I ever saw was on a cold morning at a hostel in France. Warming up in the kitchen with hot cocoa, I looked out the window and saw two teams running around the field next door in shorts! Shorts! While I was freezing inside a warm room.

This was, again, in the dark ages. Soccer was almost unknown in America. I watched in awe and never forgot those hardy young men running back and forth like basketball players.

When I rank the athletic ability of players of various sports, first comes basketball, then soccer, then football.

It’s amazing to see a 280 lb linebacker do a somersault or a backflip, or go skidding across the grass to be buried under a thousand pounds of the other team then get up to do it again. Weird, eh?

Oh, at the bottom of my ranking is baseball, the sport where men stand around in longjohns and watch the catcher and pitcher throw the ball around.

Now, on to the Super Bowl and then no more football for a long, long time. Go, Lakers!

Analyzing a Puzzle

“Why France?” Thrim asked as we took our walk in the desert.

The question was so strange to me that I couldn’t think of an answer. I didn’t blurt out my first thought, a puzzled “Why not France?,” but kept walking and, odd for me, trying to figure out “why?” I’m impulsive rather than analytical.

Why, indeed, did Mary and I want to ramble around France for five weeks?

Stalling for time instead of answering his question, and curious, I asked, “Where would you go?”

Without hesitation, he replied, “England. The castles, the history, the stories. England.”

What a great idea, I thought. Why didn’t Mary and I think to do that instead of France?

Maybe it’s because France is where we first hitchhiked, taking just a week to get in close touch with people and places. It was such a good experience that hitchhiking became our main type of transportation throughout Europe except in Spain and southern France where we rode our motorscooter.

We had so many friendly, harrowing, exciting experiences that the time stretches in memory to take up a much larger space than ordinary weeks or even years do.

In addition to that first week, we found jobs for six months near Chambley, a tiny town in Alsace-Lorraine, at a U.S. Air Force Base. Waking up every morning in the French countryside, walking the farm road to St. Julien (the sketch above is of a roadside shrine near St. Julien), eating at Renee’s tiny restaurant where I first discovered quiche Lorraine, shopping in Metz and Nancy, also endeared France to me.

The jobs came about because Russia began constructing the Berlin Wall in August 1961, and in October detonated a 58 megaton hydrogen bomb known as Tsar Bomba that still holds the record for the largest man-made explosion. President Kennedy, judging those to be unfriendly acts, called up the Air Force National Guard and sent them to Europe to man a few old unused bases from WW II.

At that same time in bleak December we hit a low point in our adventure, hitchhiking on icy roads, cold all the way through, and maybe even a bit homesick. When we heard that the Air Force might be hiring, we immediately went to Wiesbaden (or Frankfurt?) to apply.

I was hired as the Service Club Director and Mary was my Assistant (they didn’t check qualifications, so desperate were they to have us). For the six months the base was open, we did a good job of running the recreational activities and planning trips for our guys all over France and Europe.

Since we were being paid on a U.S. government payscale and had housing on the base, we were able to save enough to keep us traveling cheaply and slowly for another five months as far as Japan.

“That’s what I mean,” Thrim continued, still puzzled. “You went all the way around the world, you saw all those places, and yet you want to return to France?”

“Yes. Yes, we do.”

My attempt at analyzing the “why” only came up with, “We both loved our time there.” That’s it.

Why France?

“Why France?” Thrim asked as we took our walk in the desert.

The question was so strange to me that I couldn’t think of an answer. I didn’t blurt out my first thought, a puzzled “Why not France?.” I kept walking and, odd for me, tried to figure out “why?” I’m impulsive rather than analytical.

Why, indeed, did Mary and I want to ramble around France for five weeks?

Stalling for time instead of answering his question, and curious, I asked, “Where would you go?”

Without hesitation, he replied, “England. The castles, the history, the stories. England.”

What a great idea, I thought. Why didn’t we decide to do that instead of France?

Maybe it’s because France is where we first hitchhiked, taking just a week to get in close touch with people and places. It was such a good experience that hitchhiking became our main type of transportation throughout Europe except in Spain and southern France where we rode our motorscooter.

We had so many friendly, harrowing, exciting experiences that the time stretches in memory to take up a much larger space than ordinary weeks or even years do.

In addition to that first week, we found jobs for six months near Chambley, a tiny town in Alsace-Lorraine, at a U.S. Air Force Base. Waking up every morning in the French countryside, walking the farm road to St. Julien, eating at Renee’s tiny restaurant where I first discovered quiche Lorraine, shopping in Metz and Nancy, also endeared France to me.

The jobs came about because Russia began constructing the Berlin Wall in August 1961, and in October detonated a 58 megaton hydrogen bomb known as Tsar Bomba that still holds the record for the largest man-made explosion. President Kennedy, judging those to be unfriendly acts, called up the Air Force National Guard and sent them to Europe to man a few old unused bases from WW II.

In that same bleak December we hit a low point in our adventure, hitchhiking on icy roads, cold and maybe even a bit homesick. When we heard that the Air Force might be hiring, we immediately went to Wiesbaden (or Frankfurt?) to apply. I was hired as the Service Club Director and Mary was my Assistant. For the six months the base was open, we ran the recreational activities and planned trips for our guys all over France and Europe.

Since we were being paid on a U.S. government payscale and had housing on the base, we were able to save enough to keep us traveling cheaply and slowly for another five months as far as Japan.

“That’s what I mean,” Thrim continued, still puzzled. “You went all the way around the world, you saw all those places, and yet you want to return to France?”

“Yes. Yes, we do.” France, in a way, was home.

I Am an Important Target Market!

WooHoo! Listen to this! A study [by Hawes, a guy] in the Journal of Travel Research showed that we female travelers in the 70-and-up group are as sensation-seeking as younger ones, but that those between 50 and 60 aren’t. We non-male 70s love the uncertainty of unplanned adventures.

When we were 22, Mary and I lived by Europe on Five Dollars a Day and the Youth Hostel Guidebook (or whatever it was called). Every day was full of glorious uncertainty. Hostels were about $2.00 for a dorm room including breakfast.

No planning even worked in places like India and Thailand where we would watch the other airline passengers climb into hotel buses and be whisked to their American-style lodgings while we opted for a YM- or YWCA or cheap hotel and a local way to get there.

I feel only slightly guilty about all the planning we’re doing for this trip. A recreational glance into the availability of hostels/hotels in Paris proved to me that if we wanted a place to stay, we better book it now. One thing led to another as I spent an additional day planning out each stop and then two mornings making hostel/hotel reservations on the Internet.

It proved to be a good idea because I finally realized how quickly thirty-five days can fill up when you want to go to so many places. I had to cut out some of the choice ones for equally choice ones, remembering, for instance, that Mary really wanted to see Carcassone and I really wanted to see St. Malo. We won’t get out to the tip of Brittany. We won’t get to St. Puy, the place with the church stuck on the pinnacle of a high, skinny mountain, and we won’t see the china factories in Limoges, along with a hundred other wonderful places. What we do see will be fantastic!

But it won’t be like this was, our first day (November, 1961):

“Our next ride was with a great giant of a woman, Lianne, in a tiny Citroen 2 CV like the one our Parisien outlaws drove [more about them in a future entry]. Full of energy and enthusiasm, she would have turned off the road and jounced over a farmer's field if the spirit had moved her. Showing us one of the dozens of maps she had with her, she assured us we'd never make it to Dreux that night and that instead we should head for the hostel at Ergal.

“Fine, but where was Ergal? Off the main road. She'd take us part way then point out the direction and we could walk it.

“It was a fine evening, just before dark. Silhouettes of trees at the edges of the fields were just visible against the sky. Tiny diamond-pointed stars peeked out and night fell blackly around us. How exhilarating, walking freely down a dirt road through the countryside without traffic or buildings crowding around.

"About two miles later, when we'd all but given up hope, an arrow tacked onto a tree pointed the way to the hostel. A few minutes more and we were in Ergal, our first provincial village.

“There seems to be no more than 50 people living here. Just after we got checked in to the hostel, we had to walk down the road to the farm for milk. An empty wine bottle from the hostel served as the container for rich creamy milk that must have only recently left the cow.

“We then found the grocery store and bought sausages, bread, chocolate, fruit, soup and vegetables, probably enough for an army but we were hungry after our busy day. The people there were friendly and curious, recognizing us immediately as hitchhikers, which assured us we were now professionals though it was only our first day at it.

“The only heat in the hostel was from the stove in the kitchen where we lingered as long as we could. It's a wonderful old house built out of stone hundreds of years ago. The family that runs it was very nice, and the room we had was so cold we had to wear our mittens, coats, and six blankets to bed.

“Hitchhiking is so much fun! All day we've felt so free, as if we could walk as far as we wanted, in any direction, and still meet friendly, warm people at the end of the road.”

Not to fear, Mr. Hawes. These two older women will still have plenty of unplanned adventures and find warm people at the end of the road!