The Caldwells Come To Paris

HOTEL LAUMIERE, Paris
(originally appeared in March 2014)

An unchanged Parc des Buttes Chaumont, Paris 2013

      When I first settled in Paris I officially lived off the Champs-Elysées, but I worked in the 19^th Arrondisement on the edge of the city in the more village-like ambiance around the Buttes Chaumont Park.

     My office was in the apartment of Jean and Nancy, and as I explained in an earlier musing, I connected with far more people around my work address than on the more impersonal Champs-Elysées.

     Though I was barely making minimum wage, and it was never enough to quite see me through until the end of the month, I --like most all the other single people I knew in those days-- ate all my meals out.  Workdays found me generally at the Laumière, a huge, teeming, dirt-cheap restaurant within the neighborhood’s unique hotel.

Lunchtime at Hotel Laumiere 1970

     It was there that I learned the rudiments of what French food was all about.   The menu changed daily, and I remember that most of the main courses cost three francs.  It’s hard to imagine just what that would be worth today, but at the time it was about a half a dollar.  For that amount, I could choose between stuffed cabbage, beef bourguignon, grilled chicken, cow’s liver, etc.  

     Edith Caldwell had been my second grade teacher, and her son, Frank, a friend back in Aberdeen.  Frank brought his mother on a vacation to Paris in 1971, and I served as guide.

     The Caldwells stayed at the Hotel Moscow, which was ironically located on the rue Leningrad (unless it was the other way around, my memory being a little hazy on those details).

     It was still the cold war, and I recall Edith (who had a strong personality and was not above a bit of provocation) commented with a certain humor that she’d hate to see some of the Aberdeen townspeople’s reaction if they learned the name of her hotel.  The insinuation being, it didn’t always take too much to shock in a small southern town in those days.
 

Edith behatted for the Stoneybrook Races, Southern Pines 1972

     Although I had been in Paris for over a year at the time, my French was still far from accomplished.  I was fiercely motivated, however, and carried a little blue English-French dictionary around with me at all times.   It was unfortunately of limited efficiency, as it was ultra abridged, and the translations sometimes misleading.

     Jean and Nancy, who were wonderful employers and very good people, proposed I bring my friends by for a coffee at their home after lunch at the Laumière.  I was thrilled to be able to share with the Caldwells a glimpse into real Parisian life and to show how well I was integrating into the French world.  

Jean and Nancy Gauthier, rue Cavendish 1971

     Before arriving with my guests, I looked up “school teacher”, so as to introduce Edith in correct French.     The normal translation for a small child’s teacher is “maitresse d’école” or school mistress.  Only my little dictionary just left it at “maitresse"!

     A very young child just might call his teacher “Mistress”, but never, never would a grown man present a much older lady as I did: 

     “Nancy, je vous présente ma maitresse.”    

     Nancy was a professor at the Sorbonne and a no-nonsense lady.  She didn’t show any surprise, just smiled warmly, shook Edith’s hand, and without missing a beat said discreetly in French to me, “Oh, most assuredly not!”

     I immediately blushed with the realization of my faux pas, but the Caldwells were undoubtedly  never the wiser to what extent my French was so lamentably lacking.  
  

With Edith at the Buttes-Chaumont Park 1971

[Photos above are mine, below from family archives ]

 

SIDEBAR:  Back to the second grade with Edith and Little Polly

Aberdeen School before the fire (photo by E.S. Eddy)

     I have particularly vivid memories of Edith Caldwell as a school teacher, because it was at the beginning of my second grade in 1949 that the Aberdeen Elementary School burned to the ground.

      It was in the dead of night, so there were no casualties.  My father was a volunteer fireman, and I remember waiting for him to return, standing outside our home with other neighborhood children at three in the morning watching the sky lit up from the blaze on the other side of town.

       Little Polly, who was also in Edith's class that year, had a much better view, as she lived just around the corner from the schoolhouse.
  

Edith at school 1950

 

Little Polly

     After the fire, Edith's second grade settled into an annex to the Baptist Church on Main Street until a new school could be constructed a year later.

     I sat on the front row next to Little Polly, and the clearest memory I have today of Edith's class is of Polly and me singing at the top of our lungs, "Frère Jacques."

     I doubt if I even realized it was French at the time, and it certainly  was not until about the time of Edith and Frank's Paris visit twenty years later that I actually began to understand the words.

 

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

"Little Polly" and Aberdeen were also mentioned in blog No. 26 "Babe Ruth's 60th Home Run"   (to access, click on title).

John and Yoko 1969

(originally appeared in February 2014)

Early Beatles (Google archives)

      The Beatles hit international super-stardom the year I finished school.   In 1964 I was in my last year at Campbell College in Buies Creek, North Carolina (the only place I've ever lived which was even smaller than Aberdeen),  and I recall their record being played on the radio virtually non-stop.  It was Love-Me-Do, and it was the first time I had been aware of what was being described as the "new sound."

      Whenever you awakened in the morning,  got into an automobile, or crawled into bed in the evening, it seemed Love-Me-Do was within earshot.  In my teens I had been an Elvis fan, and had followed all of the Little Richard-Fats Domino-Bo Diddley rock and rollers throughout the fifties.   I loved the early Beatles hits, but for some reason I never evolved with any pop music after that.

      I not only completely missed the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and everything else that followed, I kind of lost all notion of the Beatles, themselves, after their first couple of years revolutionizing pop music.

      By the time I had moved to London at the end of the Swinging Sixties, I was aware that the Beatles were taken seriously, not only by the kids, but also by musicologists and intellectuals.  Further than that, I didn't really have a clue, and I didn't much care one way or the other about their later, more ambitious music.

     At UPI, there was an older guy who manned a special United Kingdom desk.  He was the established rock music specialist, and cultivated close contacts --probably on his own time-- with many of the top rock stars.  He wasn't generally a very friendly person, and I didn't normally have occasion to work with him, but one day he proposed that I go to pick up a statement from one of the Beatles.

      It turned out to be John Lennon who was just on the point of marrying Yoko Ono.  There was a lot of talk of dissension and infighting within the Beatles, and Yoko was thought to have added to the bad vibes.  It was 1969,  and although the group had not performed for over two years, no one would have dreamed at that time that they were never to appear together again.

Yoko and John 1969 (Evening Standard photo)

     The fact was that John Lennon as an individual entertainer held little interest for me.  Yoko even less.  Had I been scheduled to meet the entire Beatles quartet, I would have been thrilled, but just one of them (and I wasn't entirely sure which was which) meant nothing.  With hindsight today, I find my attitude bafflingly ignorant.

      So it was that with a minimum of enthusiasm and even less preparation, I went off to Apple Headquarters on Savile Row, where the group had its London offices, to pick up the press release from John and Yoko.  


     I was ushered into a large office with white leather sofas around an executive desk.  John sat on one of the couches, I on another, and Yoko kind of draped herself on a cushion more or less at the feet of her future husband.  I don't think she ever opened her mouth, and I erroneously assumed she was overcome with some sort of Asian timidity.

      John handed me the press release which because of his special friendship with my UPI colleague was  to be an exclusive.  He explained that he would be waiting twelve hours before releasing it to anyone else.

Wedding day (AP)

      It was the time of the Vietnam War.  The Lennons (along with most everyone else of my generation whom I knew in London) were vehemently anti-war, and they were announcing a seven-day "bed-in" at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam to celebrate their imminent marriage and to protest U.S. participation in the Asian conflict.

     I cannot conceive today that I would have had no further questions, but I think I found all the information I needed in his prepared announcement.  So after a few banalities of which I have little memory, I thanked them and left.

      Today I cringe when I think how out of touch I was, how oblivious I was to his importance in 20th Century music.   Lennon was very relaxed and friendly.  He may well have been intrigued that I showed so little interest in them, but he undoubtedly knew that his project would be reported throughout the world via United Press International, so he was probably not displeased.

     The only part of the day that has left a really vivid memory occurred after the meeting.   Lennon accompanied me to the door when I left, and as he ushered me onto the courtyard, I heard little squeals  coming from behind the gates.  Just then we came face to face with a group of five or six excited teen-aged girls who proceeded to release a flurry of rose petals in our direction.

      It may have been boringly routine for John Lennon, but it definitely made my day!

Apple Headquarters, 3 Savile Row