Larry's Travel Journals Chapter 4...............Journey to "Philadelphia"

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Chapter 4...........Journey to Philadelphia

 

Sunday, July 14, 2002

 

Bastille Day. We’re in a chateau in France... I write this from a garden overlooking the manor house, the stables and the surrounding forest. The birds are chirping, the wind is moving gently and yes, the sky is blue with cotton candy clouds making their way across the horizon. Not bad eh? Things have been like this for just the last thousand years or so here at Le Grand Noe.

 

Everything in Europe seems “sensible” to me. Nothing is over the top. Everything is real, not “just like” something. The guy at the Hertz counter in Paris wanted to know if we wanted to get a larger car and when I declined he said “ok, you still are getting a big car, at least we think it’s big; you’ll probably think it is a Mickey Mouse car” Actually I continue to think that we are pigs in the states. I’d like to own the Smart car franchise for the east coast U.S. cities. and there ought to be prohibitive taxes on those who choose to drive gas guzzling multi-ton vehicles.

 

After a traditional French breakfast, we took a few km walk this morning to the nearby town. Everything is as it has been and should be- with the notable presence of the satellite dish attached to one of the few homes we saw surrounding the church and cemetery in the town center.

 

I’m reading Synchronicity on this trip. It was recommended to me by a good friend and mentor from my NY days after he read my ramblings from a previous trip. It’s a semi-autobiographical account of one’s man’s search for “flow”. There’s a wonderful quote from Einstein in the preface. He said, “the reality we experience is the product of our thinking” the only way to change the future is to have new ways of thinking. It’s wonderful to read that and think about it while sitting here in this 1,000 year old garden. This world and this reality is just fine thank you so the thinking that created it must be just fine.

 

It seems to me that the modern technologically driven world is out of whack. The clash of civilizations we are experiencing in the world around us is, as was pointed out after 9/11, the last gasp of an ancient world before it inevitably falls to modernity. I have no quarrel with this conclusion and would do what I can to facilitate it but the modern world is not a perfect world and we shouldn’t feel smug when modernity achieves hegemony.

 

Which brings me to Bastille Day. Liberte, Eqalitie and Fraternitie. Pretty dramatic stuff and very revolutionary. A good example of Einstein’s premise that you need to create new thinking to change reality. But while the French Revolution was a pivotal moment for civilization it was the American Revolution that was more far-reaching and world-changing. And it was the American Revolution that led to the epochal events on the beaches of Normandy. I expect to see battlefields and monuments in the next few days but what I really expect to see is the thinking of men- mortals- not Gods. I expect to see John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

 

Monday,  July 15, 2002

 

We left the chateau and drove back to Falaise. We had arrived in Falaise on Sunday too late to visit the castle of William the Conqueror so we planned our day around a return visit. That’s a big deal as the roads are quite narrow and one truck or hay wagon in front of you will make you think you’re back on the LIE or the 405.

 

Two hours to go 3 miles and we arrived hungry and tired. All I know is that God put the French on earth for one reason- to cook. What a lunch. (BTW, God didn’t include any soap- or directions for its use when he gave them their cooking skills. Perfume is functional but good old Ivory soap would do just fine)

 

Well we still haven’t seen William’s castle. It seems that one of the castle’s outer walls collapsed today and they closed the whole complex. It made it for 1,000 years but today the walls came tumbling down. Hmmmmm, Humpty dumpty.

 

So we went off to Caen, the biggest city in the Normandy beach area. Quite nice. Turns out that William built a few churches in Caen and he’s buried here. I told him his house is falling down but he didn’t move from his marble tomb.

 

Caen is a nice medium-sized city. We drove down Blvd June 6 and over Pont Churchill.

 

Pleasant surprise. We drove to our next destination- Cabourg and discovered that we are staying at Le Grand Hotel. This is a belle époque styled hotel in the middle of a very nice seaside town. Even after two days, it was jarring to have a TV in the room, see CNN and access the internet from my room. J’prefer un vacation sans the XV siecle y non le XXI siecle.

 

Tuesday- Wednesday, July 16-17, 2002

 

I’ll backtrack a little now. It’s 11:00 pm here in Creances; the sun just went down and we finished dinner a short while ago. Tuesday we drove from Cabourg to Entretat, a beautiful seaside town north of Le Havre. We took the shore route (which we obviously referred to as “PCH”) and came upon Honfleur along the way. If you’ve ever been to the little towns along Cape Ann in Massachusetts you may have some idea of Honfleur but not really since Honfleur is magnificent and everything else is just nice.

 

By Tuesday night I had overdosed on the food and we went to a supermarket to buy dinner. Ah, a container of hummos and a side of eggplant salad; a few yogurts for breakfast and voila a meal that didn’t require four hours and didn’t have any sauces. Those of you who have seen me, torment waiters, on every continent of the globe to get broiled or grilled food will rejoice in the knowledge that I have surrendered to the cuisine and my lack of command of French.

Wednesday was for the beaches of Normandy. Now if you’re going to read this you need to know that I am a child of the early sixties and was raised in the post-war environment where it wasn’t unusual to hear first-hand accounts of the war. Nazis, Hitler, Churchill, DeGaulle were real to me through either newsreels or in person. (I was on my first visit to the White House when Churchill died and I remember DeGaulle at the head of the dignitaries at JFK’s funeral procession.) The movie The Longest Day made quite an impression on me. So the first thing to say about today was to be struck by how much land is being discussed by “the beaches of Normandy”. In my mind, Juno, Sword, Gold, Omaha, and Utah were sort of next to each other. You know, like “I’ll meet you at the second garbage can from the snack bar”. I just didn’t know that these beaches are spread out over a probably 50-mile area. You can’t even begin to imagine what it must have looked like to be a German soldier looking up and seeing this vast armada filling the sea.

 

A few scenes from the movie always stuck in my mind. First, Henry Fonda played Gen. T. Roosevelt Jr. In my later reading of the Cornelius Ryan book and then reading TR’s biography I learned of Jr’s heroic actions on D-Day. He was a near cripple from rheumatoid arthritis and walked with a cane but wrote to Omar Bradley requesting direct command duty on D-Day- ignoring both his medical condition and the special privilege he could have had as TR’s son. On the landing, he took command of a disorganized and under-protected portion of the landing force and was instrumental in getting control of the beach. A month later he was dead of a heart attack. His was one of the graves I had to see at the American cemetery.  To my surprise, his brother Quentin, downed in a WW I aircraft, was next to Jr. Real people, real heroes, real patriots. It was very moving.

 

The cemetery is a special place. What pride I felt in knowing that this beautiful place is immaculately maintained by the citizens of the U.S. These are our neighbors and they have been given the most dignified and honorable resting place. Here are these rows and rows of graves that list the name, rank, hometown and date of death and nothing else. Everyone is the same. What a statement.

 

In the movies it’s a faceless, nameless soldier that is killed and forgotten as one of the thousands but here you see Ranger John Smith June 6, 1944 and you know he didn’t die in his sleep and we can because of this guy.

 

The second scene from the movie is Red Buttons getting caught by a church steeple on his descent by parachute into St Mere Eglise. I had to see it. In my minds eye the town is a world removed from the beach but it’s actually not that far. Sure enough, the church is right where the movie depicts it, across from an outdoor café where German soldiers were thunderstruck by the sight of this parachutist. To commemorate the event and the saga of Cpl Steele, the citizens of St Mere Eglise have hung a parachute and a mannequin of a soldier on the side of the church! Tres bien!

 

If you’ve read the book or seen the movie you know that the Rangers had to scale the cliffs to take the beach. What you can’t get from the movies (even Pvt Ryan) is how the Americans pounded the plateau above the beach. I swear, I thought it was a miniature golf course there were so many dips and crevices next to the remaining German bunkers. The artillery blasts must have been overwhelming.

 

All in all it was a day filled with reverence and awe.

 

Thursday- Friday, July 18-19, 2002

 

e-mail? I can’t even get electricity to power the computer!

 

A highlight from Thursday was dinner at St. Malo on the north coast of Brittany. It is a walled city that looked vaguely familiar to me and then Jacqui read that Jacques Cartier had sailed from St. Malo and he went to Quebec and so voila.

 

Everywhere you go in this part of France I find myself thinking “this isn’t Disney; it’s real” and then I find out that what we were looking at in St. Malo is a re-construction. Yup, it seems Gen Patton blew the entire city apart and after the war it was artfully re-built from photographs brick by brick.

 

At dinner on Thursday at the table next to us were Tony and Marilyn from Covington Kentucky. Normally not a big deal but we haven’t heard or seen many Americans on this trip so it was good to hear a familiar accent. These folks arrived in Paris on their way to Dublin that morning and ended up taking the train from the airport to St. Malo on a whim. We all laughed and enjoyed the difference between us. If Jacqui and I are the ying of travel they must be the yang. No reservations, no plans, no itinerary, no language skills, no maps, no little book of phrases. We’re sitting there as planned as, well, a D-Day invasion and then along come Tony and Marilyn. My French isn’t good enough to save Marilyn from a main course of Herring salad that she swore she didn’t order. I suggested they get out of the country very quickly if they don’t want to starve to death. LOL.

 

Thursday we also went to Mont St Michaels. If I say there were about 25,000 people at this fortress city and church I’m not exaggerating. As usual the place was built in the early middle ages but when it was conceived and built it, was positioned on piece of land that flooded each day leaving it sitting on an island. Hundreds of years later the land has been filled in around it but on approach from miles away it looks as if the city is floating in the air. So here’s this medieval city that rises probably 750 feet in the air and narrow streets filled with these 25,000 people climbing up and some coming down. You wouldn’t want to leave the kids behind for this n’est pas? No of course not, bring ‘em all and don’t forget their strollers- so what if you have to carry the stroller and the baby gear up these old stone steps. You’re 80 years old and want to climb the stairs to the top? Mais oui! Take your time, after all the land doesn’t flood any more and everyone then has plenty of time to buy a post card and a tchatski from the stalls. Hey don’t forget the chien. This is France after all and dogs are part of the family. They go everywhere you go, restaurants, hotels, even Mt St Michael. But, not the last steepest set of stairs. A clearly marked sign says no chiens but hey, that sign must be about your dog, my dog must be ok. After all, he’s like one of the kids they must be thinking. Sure enough, you get to the top and at the entrance to the church I saw three people get turned away for having their dogs with them.  Now I didn’t mind the dogs, the old people and the strollers but this Jew just couldn’t handle a 7E charge per person to go inside the church. Heck, St Peter’s in Rome doesn’t charge, neither does Notre Dame in Paris. On the way back down whistles were blowing and the path was cleared for a stretcher and six medical attendants taking an old woman down for attention. (Perhaps she had a heart attack when her dog was rejected at the top?)

 

Thursday night we stayed in a lovely B&B in a town whose name I can’t even remember today and it’s only 24 hours after the fact.

 

But now we have arrived at the Manoir du Stang in La Foret-Foursnant. If you look at a map of France we’re just about as far west as you can go. I think Boston is the next city west from here.

 

I can’t describe the chateau.  I can’t find the words and I’m not sure that if you grew up in the Bronx you can find the words. It’s just not an experience you expect to have. Jacqui has all the latest camera equipment and in this case a picture will really be worth a thousand words.

 

Saturday- Tuesday, July 20-23, 2002

 

Ok. Here’s what you missed. On Saturday I sat in the backyard of the chateau and started the book recounting the saga of the crew of the USS Indianapolis in 1945. (Drop off A-Bomb, get torpedoed, 900 survivors go in the water, 300 come out after 5 horrible days fighting shark attacks, sleep, water and food deprivation). I started reading, got engrossed and fell asleep. Woke up, went inside to the sitting room, started reading, fell asleep, woke up, went to my room, sat in the reading chair, finished the book. A perfect day.

 

Sunday we drove from the beautiful seaport town of Quimper back to Chartres. We got on the toll road and those of you who live in Orange County and complain about the fees on the toll road there just know that the trip cost 17 euros (effectively 17 dollars). Beautiful construction of the cathedral at Chartres and many people have written of their awe of the building’s magnificence but you know what? I’m burnt out on churches and I’ll keep my other thoughts about the last two thousand years of religious evolution to myself. (Hint- there are no such things as boogie men and all the gargoyles in the world aren’t keeping them away)

 

Monday we realized that Monet’s home in Giverney is closed on Monday so we set sail south for the Loire Valley and the chateaus of the kings. I’m lucky enough to have been to the Forbidden City in Beijing and so I have a point of comparison. It is remarkable that on both sides of the world at the same time that the leaders were establishing monuments to themselves. One difference was that the Chinese Emperor lived cut off from the people- the masses never went inside (e.g. Forbidden meant FORBIDDEN) while Francois I who built Chambord invited his court and the locals to play, relax and hunt on his enormous property (Chambord is 3,000 acres wide- as big as Paris!). Jacqui’s reaction I’m sure is typical, “of course they had a revolution; who needs this much space!”

 

So here it is Tuesday and I’m in transit back to LA. I dropped Jacqui off in Paris at the airport Hilton and caught a flight to Heathrow. Cute scene on the crowded Air France flight as a group of Brits returning home cheer and shout “It’s a beautiful grey, cloudy day in London- maybe it’ll rain” as we approach. BTW, we had the absolute best weather on this trip. It was 20-27 (70-84 for the Americans) degrees each day and not a cloud in the sky.  Since the sun sets at 22:30 (10:30pm) we had unlimited sunlight during our stay.

 

Here’s a traveler’s tale of woe. On the way to Heathrow a week or so ago the car service driver warned me that the airport doesn’t allow short trips to the local hotels without a 55 pound fee added on to the fare so you must take the airport operated bus to the hotels. (I have a witness to this BTW). So I arrive back at Heathrow and duly look for the airport bus to the Hilton. So now I schlep out to the curb with a zillion people and my three pieces of luggage. “Bus to the Hilton?” I shout to the driver. No, he says, go downstairs and take the Heathrow Express (train) to terminal 4. Ok. Back inside I go, follow the escalators down and then across an area that is best described as where the Phantom of the Opera must go on vacation. Finally, I reach the train and of course one is just leaving the station. Fourteen minutes later another one comes in and four minutes later we’re at Terminal 4. You look up and clearly marked sign says, “Heathrow Hilton this way!” I walk though the glass door and another sign cheerfully says, “From this point you will be at the Hilton in six minutes!” So I look up doing the “Am I on Candid Camera?” look and

since I don’t see any cameras conclude that my willingness to stay calm and “on vacation” is about to run out. “Hmmm, why didn’t I take a luggage trolley?” goes through my mind but hey, the next sign says, “From this point you will be at the Hilton in four minutes!”, then one for “two” minutes and then voila. I look at my watch and I have been at this little schlep for about an hour since my plane touched down. Guess what the reception clerk asked as I walked up to the desk? “How are you today sir?” (I told him, I really told him)

 

So this week’s Time magazine has an article about the new discovery of another link in the evolution chain that is 7 million years old- 7 million. So here I am dragging across France and getting excited about 1,000 year old towns and civilizations and trying to grasp the historical connections between Brittany, Normandy, England, Ireland, Scotland, eastern Canada when I realize that we’ve only been screwing up the planet for a very relatively short time. On arrival in London a few weeks ago Andrew and I were talking about the current state of world affairs and he suggested that the age of US dominance was in jeopardy and would not last as long as any of the great European dynasties. I felt a bit defensive as after all, we’re not imperialistic and have no claims on anyone else’s land. Now that I’m thinking about it though I’m not so sure. The fact is that Thomas Jefferson saw the American Revolution as the start of an era in which despots were thrown out and the principles of democracy put in place.

 

Which takes me back to where I mentally started this mini-adventure- Philadelphia?

 

What the revolutionaries did in 1776 was remarkable and worthy of the word “revolutionary”. Freedom, liberty, the right to pursue happiness. These are powerful and loaded concepts, not just words. On this trip I’ve touched the historical forces that led to the generational flex point that became the US and I’ve seen the heroes who allowed the revolution to continue.

 

Although most certainly driven by the blinders of my personal experience I can say as honestly as possible that the world is a better place because of those guys in Philadelphia. And you know what? Anyone who would take away what they did is an enemy as sure as William, the Duke of Normandy was to King Harold in 1066. And you know what else? Any people who are trying to govern themselves by these principles are an ally; and you know what else? If we don’t sustain our leadership role and don’t endow the world with democratic values we aren’t worthy heirs of the revolution.

 

The conclusion? OBL, and anyone who thinks he has a point can rot in the bowels of hell forever.

 

Me? I’m going home.