We arrived in France and spent our first night in Barbizon, an artists’ colony near Fountainbleau. It’s charming and not overly commercial (like Carmel and Mendocino in California). The next day we took off for Fountainbleau. As you turn down a mundane city street, the palace appears suddenly before you, as if you stumbled upon a spaceship plopped down on a rue.
We were searching for the childhood home of my friend, who spent time growing up at age seven in a tiny village near Fontainebleau, Fontaine Le Port. After stopping by La Poste, we finally obtained directions. This spot wasn’t on our map and was so tiny it didn’t even have a boulangerie or café. The mairie was closed, but we hollered up at an open window (very politely, of course, with multiple litanies of ‘Excusez-moi de vous dérangez’). A young girl with multi-colored highlights in her hair, giving her the appearance of striped locks, eventually poked her head out the window and then telephoned an older woman who worked with her in the mairie (when it was open) and this delightful woman and her spouse came down from their home to show us around.
They drove us around the village and pointed out every residence where an American lived currently or indeed had ever lived. They showed us her husband’s childhood home, the château, winery and vineyard being restored by the sultan of Oman (and pointed out all his security cameras). They even took us into their own home (2 complete strangers from a foreign country!) and offered us drinks and food. My friend’s former home had been occupied by a coiffeuse who had recently died and the home was locked up tight. The coiffeuse had sold her house as a viager (reverse mortgage), but she lived to be one hundred years old and the man who bought the viager never got to live in the house!
They also told us a tale from just before the end of World War Two, when an American parachuted into the forest at the edge of their village. He had been seriously burned and was picked up by the Germans who took him to a hospital in Clichy where he died. Apparently the American soldier had a one-year-old daughter he never got to see before he died. Our guide to the village spent twenty years trying to find the soldier’s family, which he finally managed to do. The soldier’s family came over to Fontaine Le-Port and the town had an enormous fête in their honor and unveiled a memorial they had constructed for the soldier. To this day they remember the young American soldier killed only days before the end of the war.
And this day in Fontaine Le-Port, two other American strangers were treated like honored guests by this charming couple.
Right now we’re in rural Burgundy without reliable internet access and I’ll be posting as catch can.
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