senior frolic

Now that the editor of the WeHoNews has published a map of France showing the exact location of Meynes I suppose the next thing I’ll see will be chartered busloads of WeHoans showing up in the village square with guide books, cameras and bottles of Evian water. Just remember what I told you: there’s nothing happening here…

Unless you’re lucky enough, as I was last Sunday, to be invited to a luncheon/dance organized by the joyful, gregarious members of the Club du Troisième Age (senior citizens) from Meynes and Sernhac, its neighboring village, who know how to throw a party and enjoy it.

The doyenne of Meynes, Madame Blanchou, invited me and a few other youngsters, who normally wouldn’t dream of going to an old folks’ party, to be her guests at this special event. What made the invitation irresistible, as Mme. Blanchou very well knew, was the menu, catered by a local renowned chef, featuring one of the great specialties of the south of France: aioli.

If you don’t know aioli let me tell you you’re missing something. Aioli is a dish based on a sauce of home-made mayonnaise made from fragrant olive oil and fresh eggs flavored with garlic; not just flavored but reeking of garlic, in exactly the right proportion to give exquisite flavor to the boiled fish and vegetables served beside it. The garlic makes this feast come to life.

The members of the Club de Troisième Age may have grey hair, some may need canes, some use walkers, some are a little hard of hearing and some a little out of breath, but these senior citizens know how to have fun; they love to eat and drink and cut up the dance floor wites orh fancy steps.

We sat at tables of ten and ate family style. The meal opened with a heady Kir accompanied by tiny pastries stuffed with olive paste and anchovies. The aioli sauce was presented in bowls, golden, fragrant, and in copious quantity to spoon generously over our food and dip our bread into. Then came great platters of boiled codfish, escargot, calamari and hardboiled eggs, with green beans, potatoes, cauliflower and carrots, baskets of crusty baguettes to help push things along, and three different wines from a neighboring vineyard to wash it all down.

"We’re lucky to eat with old people," said my friend Pierre as the platters were set down on the tables. "They eat so little; there will be much more for us."

Wrong! They packed it in like there was no tomorrow. The caterer was well prepared and additional platters heaped with steaming fish and vegetables appeared at the tables. After we’d had our fill of aioli we got green salad with two different kinds of cheese: a pungent blue and a gamy goat’s cheese from the region, nobly accompanied by the good red wine.

A DJ provided music that made everyone clap hands, sing along, get up and dance: tango, Paso Doblé, slow, polka, swing, the kind of old style accordion music you associate with French movies of the 40’s, but no rock and roll. Everyone who could stand was up on their feet.

I was impressed by the many ways the women—of all sizes, shapes and styles—found to express their femininity: a bit of lace, a colorful necklace, a hairclip, an alluring show of flesh, a cheerful twinkle of the eye, a sparkle, a flutter; some small unmistakable thing to remind the men that although they were no longer young they were still beautiful in the way that woman can be at any age. The French word for this is coquette, and it is indeed a French feminine quality.

The men were no slackers; they went from table to table getting the women up to dance, changing partners, smoothly guiding ladies across the room with their practiced styles. An American curiosity, I got more than my share of turns around the dance floor.

Suddenly, the music stopped, the lights flickered, then a drum roll, and with a great fanfare the dessert appeared, carried in on the shoulders of the chef and his assistant on a ten foot long platter in the shape of an ancient ship. "Omelette Norwegian," Blanchou told me, and everyone applauded as the flaming dessert was presented around the room.

Coffee was served and more dancing. I couldn’t keep up. Blanchou was still merrily pirouetting around the room when we youngsters finally gave up and went home.

I returned to my quiet stone house in the middle of the sleepy village of Meynes where nothing is happening. All is peaceful and calm, but behind closed doors I know there is life, and love, and joie de vivre.

pictures will come when I return to L.A.

French Provincial

Three days last week I could have baked a cake in the garden, but inside my house with its thick walls of stone I was cool as a cucumber. I swam in the village pool every day until Sunday when, alas, it closed for the season.

Friday the Mistral began to blow; a mighty wind from the northwest that invades the Rhone Valley; it kicked the temperature down 10° centigrade and swept clouds from the sky; it slams doors and windows and forces trees to bend like acrobats; its gusts sound like crashing ocean waves; impressive and disturbing in a strange way.

And still it blows—maddening. Nevertheless, the sky is blue, the sun shines, my laundry dried on the line in the garden in less than an hour.

Anyone remember the sight of sheets and shirts pinned to a line billowing in the breeze? A few years ago I proposed to the West Hollywood Arts Council to set up a clothesline on the grassy meridian on Santa Monica Blvd., hang wet laundry in the morning during rush hour, and take it down in the evening when traffic got thick again. Maybe a little white picket fence to mark the area; I’d wear an apron. Imagine watching this bucolic scene while fuming behind the wheel of your BMW waiting for the light to change or crawling through traffic at 5 mph in your Lexus. They turned me down.

Not many cars on the road around here, but what can you expect at $6.00 per gallon? But oh-my-God they drive fast in their tiny cars; and when they want to pass, which they do, they hug your tail so close you can smell their breath; they keep a hair’s distance from your rear bumper waiting for their moment to arrive.

The grape harvest has begun; tractors chug through vineyards like wind-up toys. The locals predict if the weather keeps up they’ll have a record crop and this year’s vintage of Côtes du Rhone, Coteaux du Languedoc, etc., will be excellent.

Meanwhile, we consumers do our share. Two plus weeks into my French escapade and I’ve already attended several sumptuous, wine drenched dinner-parties and invited everyone back for a grand barbecue in my garden. Twelve of us consumed 60 tapenade canapés, 72 grilled fresh sardines, 2 ½ kilos of lamb on skewers with onions, peppers and tomatoes, mounds of potato salad, fresh steamed green beans, loaves of crusty bread, chunks of local cheeses, curly green salad, bowls of fruit, a cherry chocolate cake and another cream-filled delight called Paris Brest, and 10 bottles of wine—gris and red. But who’s counting? They stayed until midnight then drove home. I felt guilty about that.

What do they talk about at dinner parties in the French countryside? Food, of course, just like we do, and politics: social reform, health insurance, unemployment benefits, taxes, taxes, taxes. Immigration is the big one; theirs come from Africa and speak Arabic. They like Sarkozy’s plan to reform excessive benefits paid by the government for health and welfare; tired of supporting the hordes, legal and not, who don’t work but get paid anyway. Sound familiar?
They’re shocked that 47 million Americans have no health insurance.

Contrary to popular belief the French don’t dislike Americans; they love us but they’re jealous of our advanced technology which has not penetrated the French heartland as it has in America. They feel a little backward by comparison and they don’t like that. They remind me we never would have won our war of independence without their help. And they’re certain we never really put a man on the moon but rather shot the whole event in a Hollywood studio. And don’t forget who gave us the Statue of Liberty.

They’re pleased with Sarkozy’s friendship with Bush and proud that the president of the USA received the Frenchman in his Kennebunkport home. They express genuine grief over the event of 9/11, harbor great desire to visit Las Vegas, and while no one I met supports the war in Iraq I haven’t heard the kind of vituperation one encounters around dinner tables in West Hollywood, including mine. They just don’t understand why we don’t take to the streets in protest, as any self-respecting French citizen would do for anything that meant something to him.

Above all, far beyond everything else, the most important thing in the hearts of every French citizen at this time is the Rugby World Cup: the national passion. They must defeat Argentina in the opening match; French honor rests on it. And in the end nothing matters as long as they beat the British.

Adieu Luciano… Ciao