I don’t know about you, but I find a long time goes by without giving a thought to my time in that dim and distant past in Paris. But every so often some smell, ambiance, sound will trigger a very tactile memory; usually something I would not have thought of if I consciously tried. A snipped of Piaf (trite but true), a lemon and sugar or (when I was flush) a Grand Marinier crêpe from the green stand at Grande Armée, the bow wave of the river as it wraps around a base of a bridge, a 2 cheveaux bouncing, the sound of a Mobilette or Solex (I heard these are being manufactured in China now). Unavoidable dog poop on the side walk, water rushing down the edge of the road, stark trees in winter, the smell of the Metro, café tables taking up a side walk, the condensation on the glass walls of a café in winter, human detritus of war panhandling. A sandwiche jambon and the shredded mouth afterwards, a whiff of Gauloise (seldom experienced anymore), a Gallic cold shoulder (also seldom experienced anymore), a blade faced guy with gold orthodonture and rimless spectacles yelling “Priorité à Droîte! Imbecile!” (happened more than once), seven flights of stairs, unspeakable stand up loo.s, battle ax harridans in the concierge booth, a great cup of café crème with a pile of sugar cubes (great then; not so much appreciated now), waiters who took you on sufferance. And so on. It was all the little tactile experiences that you can almost taste today when triggered. I wonder how much different they are for today’s AUP students. What are your memories, full blown or snippets too. Don’t hold back. We may share some of the same without knowing it.
Peter D'Aprix '64-'66
Merry Staser:
ReplyDeleteDecember 26, 2006 at 4:57 pm
I was quite pleased to see this blog and the wonderful pictures. I was in Europe as an Army brat. My father had been stationed in Verona, Italy and I had graduated from high school at Marymount International School in Rome (only spent one year there). I spent a year in Madrid taking the Curso Para Extranjeros and then decided to apply to the American College in Paris.
I remember so well that fall. The school sent me to an address 27 Rue du Faubourg St. Honoree….directly behind the American Embassy. It was a mansion. I took “rooms” there for $75 a month. There was one other girl there and she was a model for the Ford Agency. I used to see her face on the magazine covers as I walked to the Church. She introduced me to Salvador Dali one fall afternoon.
Can anyone spell the name of the Western Civ. teacher..Dr. Schokowitz (?) I was majoring in Spanish and had one of the best teachers I ever had…a young blonde woman who had her Phd. from Middlebury, Vermont…(name?) Barbara Williams became a friend over the year…I just heard from her today in a Christmas card.
I loved all the sights and sounds and I remember searching all over to find Gallois cigarettes here in the States…I believe the factory has closed down.
The best thing for me at The American College were the excellent teachers I came in contact with..they set a high standard and I never forgot it. With many more memories….Merry
Peter D'Aprix:
ReplyDeleteDecember 26, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Hey Merry!
Thank you for contributing. I have a feeling we passed like ships in the night at ACP (I think I read that somewhere but it could not be more appropriate) as I did with I think quite a number of others. Too bad the school sent you to such déclassé address. Must have been intollerable. I, on the other hand, lived it up on Hotel Tulipe, just around from the school, and enjoyed the merry sound of the mops and buckets being swilled and filled outside my bedroom window. On warm, sunny days, I even have the benefit of cheerful conversation with the femme de ménage with her semi-peroxide hair through the same window as I bit into my croissante. Same delightful old dear saved my modesty on more than one occassion when the jeton ran out for the shower on the 2nd Etage with me still covered in soap and shampoo! Actually, now that I think about it, the jeton was designed to allow you to get wet, soap up and then it always stopped and they would only sell you one jeton at a time. Very “haute gamme”.
Many years after ACP, I too had a connection with the Ford agency when I was a journalism/photo student at BU as I did a photo story on a Swedish model working in New York. She was just coming down with bronchial pneumonia as a result of a December swimsuit shoot in a freezing studio where they splashed cold buckets of water on her from morning to evening. I wonder if they did that you your friend in Paris? If they had, I am sure there was no central heat to save her either!
I wonder about the Gallois too. I was able to find them when I returned to the US to BU. The tobacco is still grown in the Dordogne. But you don’t smell the distinctive fumes in France the way you once did. I think someone told me that they are being produced in China now but that is probably just a myth.
Really nice to hear from you. Have a great 2007.
Peter.
Merry Staser:
ReplyDeleteJanuary 6, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Enjoyed the jeton story. I had a large bathtub with “gold” fixtures. I had a sitting room with a three wall mural of Versailles. My room had a large marble fireplace with a gilded mirror above and Roman busts. Floor to ceiling red velvet drapes, a four-posted bed with a pink satin cover complete with round bolsters…my desk was immense and leather covered (saw one like it at the J Paul Getty Museum). I had an oriental carpet and a large red velvet chair. However…the whole place was dated and hadn’t really been kept up for years. Our garden joined up with the American Embassy garden. My landlady was a tiny New Yorker who wore only leotards, large shirts and rubber gloves….she was terrified of her husband who she was divorcing. She must have been in her sixties and every evening she dressed in one of her Chanel suits and went to the corner bar and had a drink. Reminds me abit of the movie Sunset Blvd.
Everyday I walked past DeGaulle’s residence and then crossed the Seine on the Pont d’Alexander. I assumed that all people did what I was doing.
I so love all the details on your site. Wonderful. Merry
Peter D'Aprix:
ReplyDeleteJanuary 10, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Hi Merry
I wish I had known you. I would have come over with a bottle of plonk to ingratiate myself so I could make use of your gold endowed tub? I only got one bath a week and that was in the basement with a generous 3″ of tepid water with my land lady’s delicates creating a nylon forrest to navigate! Eric Elbot and I supplemented this Wednesday event with a Saturday Metro ride down to the American Student Center where we could swim but had to have a shower first. We usually dispensesd with the swim in favor or the luxury of hot water in an unending spray! Eric who lived in a 7th floor maid’s room with a cold water faucet at the end of the hall and a Turkish loo at the other end was even more grateful than I was. Ah! The good old days. My mother tended to burn the contents of my luggage home rather than inflict the horrors on herself and the washing machine.
Actually, the first lodging I had was in a fancy upmarket apartment in the 16th not far from the Arc de Triomphe but a long way from the College. There were two graduate students from Stanford who studied from dawn to late at night and even while eating dinner with the battle ax who rented us our rooms. Mine was a dumbed down version of yours with 16′ ceilings, wide windows that looked out over the courtyard, antiques and spindly guilded chairs, a desk from Versailles and, as an afterthought, a narrow appolgetic cot in the corner that sagged to the floor even without me in it. No one spoke a word. I took a month or so of that and rather than go out of my mind, moved into a modest room near the school with a dear old lady all of 4′ 10″ in high heels with those marvelous heart shaped lips created with bright red lipstick over her upper lip with the rest layered in pancake. She was very sweet and eventually died on her chaise longue while I was having a party in my room off another courtyard at the end of a loooong corridor. I hope it was just a shut down of her system rather than the shock of unbridled freshmen waiting out the electric strike so they could get back to their digs on the Metro when it started up again. Funny how you forget these things until someone reminds you with recollections of their own. That was my freshman year. Hotel Tulipe was my sophmore year.
Happy New Year.
Peter