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“How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?”---Young & Lewis
There is an old adage, almost always true, that anticipation is greater than actuality. But ooh la la, the statement needs an asterisk when it comes to the reality of the City of Light. Henry Miller once said, “When Spring comes to Paris, the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.” It’s not bad in Summer, either.
Quoting Anais Nin: “Sometimes I think of Paris not as a city but as a home. Enclosed, curtained, sheltered, intimate. The sound of rain outside the window, the spirit and the body turned towards intimacy, to friendship and love, an alcove. Everything designed for intimacy. Five to seven was the magic hour of the lovers’ rendezvous. Here it is the cocktail hour”
We arrived from our interminable flight at the St. Germain apartment of our niece Kathleen Ellison and husband Charley McCarthy at a sprightly 8 a.m. on a Friday morning but nobody felt like napping. Hemingway’s movable feast waited outside in all its intoxicating glory. It is the only temptress in the universe, the sole siren on a rock that could induce an 85-year-old grump to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous flying. Then we went outside to play with the kids.
If anyone is unhappy in Paris, we didn’t run across them. It’s safe to say that seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day. Morning temperatures while we were there hovered in the mid-50s, with afternoons jumping to 75 and giving way slowly in the evenings. Most of the citizens do not drive, availing themselves of the ubiquitous Metro and the dependable bus system. Charley daily walks the 30 minutes from his apartment to his job at the U.S. Embassy, crossing the Pont Royale bridge over the Seine by the Louvre Museum. “Sometimes I pinch myself when I realize I get to make this walk every morning,” he smiles. And rightly so. When he was previously stationed in Kabul, they brought him to work in a tank.
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| Above, Amar and Zack at the Brasserie; below, Kathleen, Siobhan and Charley linger by the Seine. Louvre in the background. |
“We’ll Always Have Paris…”
On our first full day, a Saturday, we got up early and let our hosts sleep while we went out for breakfast and croissants-to-go. It was mid-fifties cool and quiet with just the occasional jogger or bicycle-rider to keep us company. The Saint-Germain-des-Pres area is a chic, historic neighborhood on the Left Bank of the Seine known for its iconic literary cafes, art galleries and deep intellectual history. The French Prime Minister lives and works there at the Hotel de Matignon on Rue de Varenne, not far from the Ellison/McCarthy digs.
After a short walk, we ran across a Brasserie called SIP. Though it was not on the menu, Siobhan ordered an egg-in-croissant sandwich, which temporarily bewildered the 3-man French-speaking crew. Then Amar, who knew a bit of English, figured it out. “Is poss-i-blay!” he celebrated, then went back and created this new delicacy. It was delicious, by the way, and next day we went back for more. We’re hoping it becomes standard fare and they put Siobhan’s picture on the wall in appreciation.
A word about the people we met along the way; they were almost unanimously great---warm, welcoming and often funny. Stories we’ve all heard of French aloofness, disdain of Americans and utter rudeness were not experienced anywhere except for the occasional Arab cab-drivers whose indifference is legend. There was little problem with our unfamiliarity with the language. People went out of their way to provide directions. When Kathleen went back to SIP after we left, the staff spoke well of their funny American visitors who treated them like old friends rather than servants, especially “le formidable inventeur de sandwich, Mademoiselle Siobhan.”
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| Views from the tippity-top. |
Visiting The Big Guy
Day two involved a wealth of walking…from our hosts’ apartment down to the Seine and across the river to the Louvre area, home of the notorious clip-board women. Fortunately, we were onto these nasty voleuses thanks to advance notice from our pals at Rick Steves Tours, so we opted not to fill out phony surveys for one babushka while another one stole all our earthlies. Further warnings of pickpockets plying their trade at the major attractions proved exaggerated. Siobhan nonetheless bought me a veritable cell phone harness to wrap around my neck and keep my invaluable blog photos safe.
In the early afternoon, we Ubered over to the venerable Eiffel Tower, originally built as the entrance for the 1889 Paris World’s Fair and intended to be dismantled when the party ended. The city kept the structure despite a ruckus stirred up by writers and painters who complained the massive tower would ruin the classic look of Paris’ stone buildings. The city government retained the Eiffel, however, because its great height made it a powerful radio and military telegraph station. It even helped catch spies during World War I.
The Eiffel Tower is a tricky devil. Walking around Paris, one minute you can’t see it at all, the next it’s tapping you on the shoulder and giggling at your innocence. You are allowed to climb a bit of the tower, but the 674 steps stop at the second floor, and just as well we say, because that’s 30-45 minutes of octogenarian horror. Kathleen’s tickets graciously took us all the way to the top in two installments. The views of Paris below are more than delicious. As one blurb put it, “Paris lies at your feet. The noise of the boulevards can’t reach you here, but the wind catches you and your heart begins to race.”
Siobhan read somewhere that in a healthy wind, the structure moves 3 1/2 inches at the top, slightly more in a big storm. She said she could feel it. We gave her a flute of celebratory champagne and she calmed down.
Vive Les Femmes!
Everyone thinks of Paris as a city for young lovers, and they are everywhere, but the Capital of France is a runway for women of all ages. The streets are safe to walk at virtually all hours and the ladies take advantage, parading proudly through them in self-concocted fashions in tandem or solo, comfortable in their solitude. In Paris, you’re allowed to create your own personal fashion, and these women take advantage of their freedom, knowing the look that best suits them and unafraid to flaunt it. It is not unusual to see a lone woman of 70 strutting down the Champs-Elysees in haute couture or minimalist perfection as if she owned the place---and, of course, she does.
Paris is also the city of eating out, and for this occasion we mean that in the epicurean sense. Surely, someone must eat at home because we see them in the markets buying escargots and andouillette and cuisses de grenouille, but there are 44,000 restaurants in a city with 2.14 million residents as opposed to 28,000 in all the boroughs of New York City, which has a population of 8.5 million. It seems like there are lighted Brasseries on every prominent corner with several smaller companions down the block, and none of them are empty. People-watching from a chair in a bistro is the national sport and everyone wants a piece of the action. We ate at several, particularly La Terrasse Du 7 on Place de l’Ecole Militaire. One night for dessert, they brought out a bowl of mixed strawberries and raspberries and another overfilled with whipped cream. “Vive la France!” I shouted, and ate them every one. The cream, too.
Gilbert Shelton Lives!
There aren’t many people you can go and revisit after a 64-year sabbatical, especially if they live 4500 miles away, but 85-year-old Gilbert Shelton happens to be one of them. Shelton has lived in Paris with his wife Lora since 1985 and is perfectly content to stay there forever. He still has a workshop just off Avenue Voltaire, which he visits an average of two days a week.
I first ran across Gilbert in 1960 while publishing the Charlatan magazine at Oklahoma State University at the same time Shelton was a staffer at the University of Texas Ranger. There was considerable communication between the two of us and Gilbert later visited me in Massachusetts in 1961, when the notion of a new satirical superhero to be called Wonder Wart Hog was hatched. I eagerly wrote the script for the first episode and later migrated to Austin in the Summer of 1962 to help new editor Shelton put out the Ranger. To say it was a memorable six months in my life would be a colossal understatement. It was more like an awakening to all the possibilities of life I hadn’t considered.
Gilbert Shelton is an extremely unique individual, possessed of great charisma and unlimited talents. He can write, draw, play the piano and guitar and catch a fast-pitch softball game without a mask or an injury. A History major at UT, he expected to be a writer but developed a talent for cartoonery and went with the flow, a boon to the zillions of eventual readers who bought up 46 million comix featuring the Wart Hog and later The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Fat Freddy’s Cat.
The Freak Brothers captured the erratic drug-riddled hippie lifestyle of the 1960s and 70s like nothing else could. It was easy for Gilbert because it was an inside job…he lived with the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers every day, doted on their fears and their foibles, celebrated their successes and coined their motto: “Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.”
I revered my six months in Austin despite being poor as a churchmouse and surviving on one meal a day. The people I met were brilliant, the city was impossibly attractive, my days and nights were filled with adventure. I lived with an as yet unheard of Janis Joplin for several weeks there, polished my prose for hours a day in the Ranger office and found my first wife, Marilyn Todd, with whom I later fled to the East Coast, her father chasing close behind. Settled in Florida, I watched my old mentor Gilbert Shelton rise to preposterous heights in the comic book world and I looked forward to the inevitable day I would see Gilbert again. Incredibly, it never happened…until now, in Paris, France, when both of us old goats are clinging to the edge of the cliff.
I was ten minutes early, waiting down the street, and I winced when I saw this old fellow with a cane struggle around the corner because I knew it must be Gilbert. He was very sharp, though, like always, albeit with a bit of a hearing problem in one ear. We talked about the miracle of Austin ‘62 and life in the good old days, about friends who’ve faltered along the way, about the strange ways the chips sometimes fall, about our own expectations for the future. After 80 minutes or so, Gilbert walked over to his wall and took down a framed illustration of Wonder Wart Hog he’d done in 2016 and handed it to me. He wouldn’t take a nickel for it, and I’d hate to guess what it might be worth on eBay, as if that would ever be in question. Then Siobhan, Kathleen and Charley came by to pick me up. We took a few photos with Gilbert and I was suddenly profoundly sad and grateful at the same time because both of us realized this was it, there’d be no more meeting at the UT Chuckwagon or the next class reunion. I looked at Gilbert and told him how pivotal my experience, my time with him in Austin had been to my life and how much I valued him. Shelton is not one to break down in tears, he just smiled brightly and bade us a final farewell. See you later, old man. Long live your fame and long live your glory and long may your story be told.
That’s all, folks…
Tune in next week, Video Rangers, as we meet our pals on the Paris Rick Steves Tour and venture into the bustling world of our camp counselor, Rolinka of The Netherlands.
