Le Sud de France 6.0: And then the Indian Cried.

Maurice, a driver of long haul, refrigerator trucks, was sitting across from me at dinner when he began to tap his fork against his wine glass to get everyone’s attention. Standing up he announced, “Yesterday was my last day of work. As of today I am retired.”

Amidst smiles and laughter, all of us around the long, outdoor table raised our glasses and said, “à votre santé!” When he sat down, I leaned over and asked him, “Maurice, what are you going to do now that you are retired?”

He looked at me, grinned, and said, “Make love.”

My jaw dropped and he looked at me quizzically. Pointing to his crotch he added, “Well, why not, it still works?” Then he hugged his wife who smiled shyly.

Welcome to the South of France, to the Looking Glass world, where, as the comedy group, the Firesign Theater, used to say, “everything you think you know is wrong.”

Retirement for Americans is all about moving from one area of accomplishment and competition to another. Things like playing golf, visiting the grandkids, building a second home or travel become the new goals. Making love? Not so much.

a happy guy

Yet, this is what is at the heart of our experience of moving to France. We are learning to see the world anew and we are discovering that it is possible to be happy.

Happy. What a strange word that is? We didn’t move here to be happy. As adults, we had more rational reasons; things like the cost of living, the quality of the food and the temperate climate. How could we have even told friends and family that we were leaving the United States to be "happy" when we ourselves were unaware of what "happy" is.

Sitting under the evening Midi sky, the breezes from the Med rapidly cooling off the day’s heat, sipping wine and listening to Maurice tell jokes about Andorra and Belgium--that I only half understood--for this small moment all the frustrations and trials of moving and resettling didn’t matter. I was just happy.

Proust wrote « N’allez pas trop vite. » (“don’t go too fast.”) What I think he meant, was that we need to take pleasure in our lives in the moment and not to go so fast to the next thing, that we end up not actually living our lives. That is what we’ve begun to do here. We’ve slowed down and are tasting happy.

Ironically though, in Proustian terms, we've done it, in part, by falling in with a very fast crowd.

in the Looking Glass World

I’m talking about bikers, “Les Motos d’Espoir” or Motorcycles for Hope. An association of motorcycle riders who raise money for kids with special needs. In June, they had a big gathering and some friends invited us to join them there.

Arriving at the rally we once again stepped through the Looking Glass. Suddenly, it was as though we were back in the US of A. 
There were American and Confederate flags all over, bandana wearing bikers in Harley-Davidson jackets and tunes like “Oh Diana” and “Folsom Prison Blues” booming over the sound system.

However, we were still in France, the bikers here drank tea and espresso, and had brought along their extremely cute kids--the girls dressed in frilly sundresses, the boys in half shorts--who ran around the grounds laughing and giggling. A very sweet version of biker life.

There was a distinct lack of big beer bellies  and, oddly enough, a lack of actual “chopped’ Harleys. “They are too expensive and too noisy for France,” one biker told me.

Motorcycles clubs are an hommage to American culture rather than an anti-establishment movement. This is a lifestyle of “l’amité” centered around a deep love for all things American. Whenever I hear a French person sing an old Elvis song or a long forgotten Broadway show tune, it makes me think that the French may cherish American culture more we Americans do.

Towards late afternoon, several motorcyclists lined up to give spectators rides around the village on their bikes. One of the kids who they were raising funds for was lifted up onto the back seat of a big three wheeler. It was driven by a guy with long hair, lots of tattoos and a German WWII style helmet. When the boy was secure on the bike, the guy turned around and gave him a big "high five". The boy "high five'd" back and I was quick enough to get a photo of the two of them smiling at the gesture.

Now let me fast-forward ahead about two weeks. I’m sitting at our village café with some of the Motos when who drives up but the longhaired guy. Except today he is in full American Indian regalia. We are introduced to each other and start to talk.

l'indien

His name is Jerry but everyone calls him, “l’indien” --the Indian--a nickname he got because he had lived for six years in a teepee, high in the Ardèche mountains, raising horses and living simply off the land like a North American Plains Indian. French TV did a documentary about l’indien and it made him famous, but it didn’t change him. He still wears his handmade Indian clothing; Cheyenne necklaces and bracelets, a loose deer skin leather shirt and a bison horned, fur covered motorcycle helmet.

It is the Looking Glass world again.

Here I am in a tiny French village, wearing my black cowboy hat and drinking Marseilles pastis with a guy --from Belgium--dressed like a Cheyenne Indian, surrounded by leather jacketed motorcyclists. It is a surreal moment, like something out of a Fellini movie or perhaps, an acid trip, yet the whole scene is infused with that odd glow of “happy.”

We live close to the café and after awhile, I excused myself and went home to get an 8x10 print I had made of the “high five” moment. Returning to the café I gave it to l’indien. ‘Pour vous. Avec plaisir” I said. He smiled, and looked at the print of himself and the little boy.

I turned away for a moment and when I looked back, I saw him wiping his eyes. My photo had touched his big heart. The Indian had cried and then, I cried too.

Happy tears I think.

Happy tears.






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Sud de France 3.0 : Calamity Mary and the Cowboys

Yesterday was the beginning of a “bon weekend” in the nearby town of Gignac starting with the “Gignac Esprit Country” fair. It was kicking off at 2 PM with a “Stage Country” show featuring Calamity Mary and the Cowboys, which was to be followed in the evening by “Crazy Country Dance.” As you can see the poster includes an American flag, a photo of Clint Eastwood, a Western landscape and a picture of an American Indian. 

It reminded me of the powerful effect the American West has had on the French culture and of a story I wrote about seven years ago for the New York Times Syndicate. It was about Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West show and the winter they spent camped in the South of France, not far from where we are today.

Buffalo Bill Cody was America’s first celebrity. Before Cody, Americans didn’t much care about the West and certainly didn’t go there. The only fools that would were criminals, out of work soldiers and immigrants from places like Norway who had been promised cheap land but had no idea of what they were getting into. 

Cody had been a hunter and Army scout before he met Ned Buntline, a hack “penny dreadful” writer, over a card game. Buntline was fascinated by Bill’s tales of Indian fighting and his claim to have single-handedly killed millions of Buffalo to feed the workers building the transcontinental railroad. Buntline ended up writing down Bill’s tales embellishing fact and fiction into adventures of over-the-top courage and grit that neatly whitewashed the uglier side of the American West and its hardships. The stories were wildly successful and overnight made “Buffalo Bill Cody” famous.

Now Bill was an old army scout and a pretty smart fellow, so he decided to turn himself into the bigger-than-life character described in the stories.That makes him the first person to re-invent himself and to become a 'brand.' He began the process by letting his hair and mustache grow to resemble the look of the heroic figures in Walter Scott’s popular Ivanhoe tales. He wore a costume of a pair of tall French musketeer boots with a fringed buckskin outfit to complete the look for his character. Soon, to millions around the world, he was the embodiment of the American West; even though by this time the Indian Wars were over, the buffalo nearly extinct and the West was no longer wild. Perhaps that’s why "Buffalo Bill" sold so well, it was a reflection the past.

Photo: Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill.

But Bill wasn't satisfied with being just a storybook character. He wrote stage plays based on the stories and soon appeared as himself, on stage, riding a horse, doing some fancy shooting and rescuing white girls from the crazy Indian savages. He was for all intents the first living action figure and in post Civil war America his exuberance and his confidence raised the hopes of a battered nation. 

But the theater stage was far too small to contain a character as big as Buffalo Bill so within a few years Bill had started something enormous and never seen before,"The Wild West Show.” These were huge productions with hundreds of performers--cowboys and Indians--and dozens of horses and buffalo. Bill would again reenact some of his novel stories, continuing to save maidens in distress, but now he began to take a softer approach with the Indians, they now surrendered more often then getting shot dead. And to appeal to the ladies Bill hired a young sharpshooter named Annie Oakley who thrilled the crowd by shooting silver dollars out in the air.

For the populations of America and Europe's grim industrial cities these shows was the most spectacular and exciting thing anyone had ever seen. So successful and powerful were the Wild West shows that its version of the American West is the one still buried deep in our modern hearts and minds. 

The Wild West show played throughout Europe, for Kings and Queens and millions of ordinary people, all of whom were as astonished as American audiences at seeing living American Indians and a woman sharpshooter.

Then, in 1905, while in the South of France, the tour ran into awful winter weather and was stranded. For Bill it was a disaster until a French marquise named Folco de Baroncelli came to his rescue, offering the show a place to camp on some land along the Mediterranean coast. Bill accepted the offer and pretty soon Lakota tepees were dotting the marshes of the Camargue, near Arles. 

At this point the story gets interesting because the Camargue was already the home to French “Gardiens” who just like the American cowboys ride horses and herd cattle. In no time at all the American cowboys and the French Gardiens were riding the range together sharing cowboy tips. The Camargue is also the home to a lot of French gypsies. When they encountered the Lakota Indians the two dark skinned people realized that they shared a common bond, both were outsiders in their own lands.

Ultimately the result of the Wild West’s tours was to embed American Western culture permanently in France. Today in the Camargue town of Les Saintes Maries de la Mer you'll can find numerous American style tack shops selling American style riding gear and saddles. Modern Gardiens wear cowboy hats and American style cowboy shirts although they are made of brightly colored Provencal fabrics. Travel around France and in almost every town you’ll find a “Buffalo Grille” restaurant with it's little statue of a Bill-like figure greeting you at the door.  

P.S. I wrote this blog  after a visit to Gignac and the next day went to the town of Paulhan for a medieval fête and “vide grenier” (garage sale). 

And there, amidst the crossbows, chain mail wearing re-enactors and tables full odd and ends, I unexpectedly came across more proof of the impact of Buffalo Bill's stay in France.

 Happy trails everyone.

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer