Slow Down Or Eat It

On an average, we travel about 250 km each day. We live in a town in France that is on the edge of a national forest. The trees are not really big. It’s mostly pine and oak with a lot of underbrush. Organized hunts are a big deal here and from time to time we have seen large groups of hunters waiting at the edge of the trees as dogs flushed the deer or wild pigs from the forest. As you might expect there are signs along the road warning of deer and other animal crossing hazards.
So far, in the five months we have been here, the only things I have seen on the road were a flock of sheep and a couple of dead red fox. I contrast that to my home in Olympia Wa where the common flat fauna of the road consists of squirrel, possum and occasional raccoon. Dead cats, otherwise known as sail cats are also common. A sail cat is sort of like an organic Frisbee, although it does not always go where you expect it to go.
In most states it’s against the law to retrieve road kill for human consumption. Even if you hit the elk yourself, you cannot haul it home and stick it in the freezer.
Republican Rep. Dick Harwood of St. Maries wants to make road kill in Idaho a sport. In West Virginia a similar law was passed in 1998. As a result, the annual West Virginia Roadkill Cookoff has become a national event, featured on the Food Channel. Its dishes include Thumper Meets Bumper, Asleep at the Wheel Squeal, One Ton Wonton, Rigormortis Bear Stew, Tire Tread Tortillas and Deer on a Stick, according to Jan Friedman, author of Eccentric America.
Most road kill are accidental but making it legal to dispatch a critter with your pickup seems a bit much. I have, however, had second thoughts recently.
We had dinner with a really nice family that lives about an hour from our home out in the national forest. They don’t really live on a farm but they have the usual dog and cat and a billy goat named Kaiser. The goat is best described as a “watch goat”. Usually it is tied up, sometimes when we go there it runs up to the car and as soon as I exit it begins to butt me with its horns. I have often wondered what it would taste like with a little barbeque sauce.
After the first course of dried country sausage and bread, the hostess brought out a large pot filled with potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and some kind of brown meat. My wife said she does not understand all that people say because of her limited French vocabulary but she did understand the words “voiture”, “diner” and the word “animal”. I turned and asked her if she wanted to know what she was eating and she said “no, tell me later”. The food was spectacular and we finished with cheese, yogurt and fruit.
The meat had been tenderized by a small white Renault that was driven by a friend and he had given the carcass to this family as a gift.I was just glad it wasn’t their goat.

Thanks for listening, I feel much better.

It's All About The Butter

I have a good friend that says I fry the best pan fried oysters in the entire world. My response is always: “Give me enough butter and I can make your shoes taste good” It’s true. Who would have thought that the fat from bovine lactate, churned and solidified with a little salt could taste so good. Someone once asked Paula Dean’s son what he thought his mother’s favorite desert was and he said “butter”. My grandfather ,CR Snelgrove ate cooked cereal most mornings. I never saw him put sugar or milk or even cream on it. He always put a half a stick of butter on his hot cereal. In case you are wondering how that affected his health, he lived into his 90’s.
My preference currently is old butter. You know, the kind that sits in a cave covered with mold and is finally brought to the light of day under the name of cheese. I am currently making my way down the cheese isle at the local grocery chain. It may take me six more months to sample all the cheeses that are on the shelf. Next to all the ready packaged varieties is a counter with three fulltime employees who have at their disposal about 200 different cheeses. They wield long two handled knifes, ready at an instant to carve off any portion of those giant rounds. I have to stop for a moment. I am beginning to drool.
My assertion that you can eat anything given enough butter was proven once again when I recently brought home a dozen snails. They were previously purged, cleaned and cooked and stuffed back in their shells in a mixture of BUTTER, garlic, and chopped parsley. If you actually think about it, the thought of eating the slimy gastropods that chew up the veggies in my garden is pretty disgusting. I cooked them in the oven until the butter melted and we picked them out of the shells with tooth picks. The French actually have a utensil that holds the shell while you pick out the snail with a small fork. My wife’s response to the first snail was, “they are not too bad.” She only ate one which means that on a scale of 1 to 100 they ranked about a 2 for her. Since I translate for her all the time, I will translate for you as well. “They are not too bad” accurately translated means: “who in their right mind would ever eat more than one of these things.” I ate my half dozen and came away with the conclusion that I could have stuffed the shells with parts of an inner tube from my bicycle and it would have tasted about the same. So much for the old escargot myth of snails being a delicacy. It’s all about the butter.
For right now I think I will stick to the cheese, the yogurt, the ice cream while we spend the next year here.
Thanks for listening, I feel much better.

Don't Forget To Turn Off The Power

I inspected an apartment in Tarbes and found that the light switch was not working and the young Mormon missionaries who were living there were just leaving the hall light on to see when they used the bathroom. So much for privacy. It would be like putting a microphone in your john and broadcasting it throughout the house. So…. I decided to take the switch apart and see if I could fix it. Voltage here runs about 250V which if you touched the wire, would make you look like this chicken. Being much smarter than I used to be (having once drilled through a 220v line putting up a curtain rod) I turned off all the power to the apartment, removed the old switch and deciding it could not be repaired headed off to the brico.
I have spent a good deal of my life in lumber yards, tool stores, Home Despot, Sears and various other money pits, I was not too surprised to find the French have followed suit and come up with the “Brico”. There are various companies but all the stores are basically the same. Picture Home Despot with all the prices in euros and all the help wearing yellow vests and speaking a language that you don’t understand very well. The rows of home improvement/repair items seem to be endless and the number of people available to answer questions is in an inverse relationship to the number of things on the self. You have probably heard of surly French waiters, but let me assure you, they get their training from the guys at the brico. I finally found a guy in a yellow vest, showed him my broken switch and asked him if he could find me one just like it. He said no, and proceeded to recite the entire Gettysburg Address backwards at a phenomenal speed. I was quite impressed. Then he asked me if it was a two or three pole switch. I told him I did not want to discuss politics. After playing charades for a couple of minutes he handed me three items to replace the one I had in my hand and walked off. He didn’t give me a chance to ask him how the three parts went together, so, just to annoy him I tracked him down and asked where I could find a smoke alarm and a fire extinguisher. He was not amused.
Back at the apartment I stared at the three parts for twenty minutes until I had a general idea how they went together and installed the new switch. I turned the power back on and flipped the switch. No light. Slightly frustrated and not wanting to appear incompetent in front of the two young missionaries, I meditated for a few more minutes, dreading the thought of having to return to the brio and talk with Jean Pierre one more time and it came to me. There was an additional switch on the fixture. Voila, let there be light. There are few things in life more satisfying than a successful repair.
Thanks for listening, I feel much better.

Dead?

Worldwide custom dictates taking something to the host when you are invited to dinner. A flower arrangement, a beverage, a desert or anything else that shows the host you are grateful for the invitation and even more so, grateful that you don’t have to cook that meal at home yourself. Over time, we have been the recipients of some wonderful deserts, lots of bottles of Martinelli’s Sparking Cider, and one time a cheese plate with an opened and half consumed box of Triscuts. We can only assume that our guests got hungry on the way to our house. In our attempt to understand the culture of France and fit in, we have picked up on at least one interesting custom. Chrysanthemums are never to be taken to someone’s home as a gift, ever.
Why? I knew this would come up so here is the answer. On November 1 of each year there is a holiday called Toussaint. It’s All Saints Day. It is a day for remembering all your dead relatives and I guess the almost dead ones also. It was yesterday and all the government buildings, post offices, and most businesses in town were closed including the Huit a 8 (8 to 8) which is the French equivalent of the 7-11 only with different hours. Graves and monuments to those who have died were decorated with…you guessed it, Chrysanthemums. These beautiful flowers are considered the flowers of the dead.

Hence it’s considered bad taste to show up for dinner carrying a big pot of mums. Now you know.
thanks for listening, I feel much better.

Hit The Road Jean Pierre (Jack)

We drove to Bordeaux the other day to a meeting which started at 10 am. There is a freeway near our town but the entrance is really out of the way and on top of that it is a toll road. When the French decided they were behind the rest of western Europe in the freeway department, they didn’t have the billions of euros it would have taken, so they turned the project over to private enterprise. The only catch is you have to pay a toll based on when you get on and off. If I take the freeway to Bordeaux it gets me there fifteen minutes sooner but 11 euros poorer. So……I take the old national highway. Picture this, a two lane highway just barely wide enough for two cars, lined on each side by gigantic London Plane trees that were planted to keep the driver of the horse drawn cart from getting a sunburn. Speed limits are 55 mph except where posted otherwise. There are 15 small villages on the way to Bordeaux so I have to slow down to 43 mph in each town.
Out on the highway, I set my cruise control at 55 and expect to be passed by every other car headed in my direction. The process is as follows: (I am sure they teach this in French driving classes)
1. Tailgate to within two feet of the car in front of you
2. When there is the slightest opening (not necessarily when there are no oncoming cars) whip to the oncoming lane and pass at the highest possible speed. No need to wait for all oncoming vehicles to clear.
3. Return to the lane at the quickest possible moment, preferably within five feet of the car you are passing.
4. Continue to do the same until you reach your destination. Use of turn signal is optional.
Driving on French highways is a lot like the most memorable ride I ever took with my Dad. We had been to Yellowstone Park because he took a couple of days vacation for the 4th of July. For some reason he felt that we all had to attend a barbeque at my uncle John’s early in the afternoon . We left West Yellowstone at 11 am. Picture the traffic on the 4th of July. Picture a very busy two lane highway from West Yellowstone to Salt Lake City. Picture my dad setting a land speed record for a Chevrolet as we traveled 351 miles in 3.6 hours. (This is typically a six hour drive). No talking was allowed. We were going so fast, I finally got down on the floor in back of the passenger seat and said every prayer I ever remember hearing. No sense in looking out the window, we were going so fast everything was a blur. We passed 256 cars, 95 trucks, a herd of sheep and an airplane headed out of Idaho Falls to Las Vegas. Usually, a trip like that would call for a pit stop for a Coke and a bathroom break. No such luck. If you had to go, you quickly forgot because every sphincter had gone into emergency mode within the first 10 miles. I kept seeing the headline in the local paper when I closed my eyes. It read: Family of 5 Killed Instantly When Their Car Passed 11 Cars And Slammed Into An Oncoming Cattle Truck. No Cattle Were Hurt.
Thanks for listening, I feel much better.

The Ticket

I got a ticket today. Actually the term is contravention and it means that I did something wrong. What you ask? I know that would come up so here is the answer. We drove to Pau the other day to help some young sister missionaries find a new apartment. We were supposed to meet them at the rental agency which just happened to be in the middle of town. Parking is very limited and as a result people park everywhere. They park just about anywhere they please but no matter where you park you still have to pay for it. Somewhere on the street is a machine where you enter large quanties of odd looking coins, push a button and receive a small piece of paper with a time stamped on it which you put on the dash board of your car. As you all know, I am a diligent follower of the rules, so when I found a parking place I dutifully paid for the parking and put the paper on the dash. Apparently while we were at the rental agency the local cops took a good look at my car and wrote me a ticket. The ticket is a two part device with the cost on the front and a written explanation on page two. The ticket said I owed the city of Pau 35 Euros and if I didn’t pay within 30 days the cost would go up to 75 Euros. It seemed a bit steep for a parking tickets but I could not read what the cop had written inside. The French apparently did not have Mrs. Gessellman for 3rd grade writing class because all the words were written in a style that must drive genealogists crazy. I got a friend to translate for me and he told me I got a ticket for not displaying a current insurance card on the windshield. I checked after our discussion and discovered that it had expired in 2010. It’s the equivalent of not having a valid or current insurance card in your possession or in the car in the states. Here in France you are supposed to put them in a little carrier stuck to the inside of the windshield. I think I will have a little chat with the guy in the office who is responsible for all the cars and send him the ticket. The French have a habit of conducting rolling roadblocks at all hours of the day and night to check for proper driver’s licenses, insurance, an identification card, or a note from your mother saying it alright to drive. So our vehicle might be grounded until we can get a proper card.
The last time I got stopped by a policeman and thought I was getting a ticket, I was riding my bike east on Lacey Blvd at about 25 mph in the bike lane (yes it’s slightly downhill there) and got red lighted by the local constable. Turned out he just wanted to look at my bike. I let him look and then pedaled quickly home for a change of clothing. My only other ticket in the last 15 years was in front of the State Farm Regional Office in Dupont WA. I was clocked going ten over the limit but only cited for no insurance because I could not find my current insurance card. The fine was $150. I went to court. Court in Dupont was presided over by a retired hanging judge from someplace in rural Arkansas. I had to sit through all the criminal cases and watched as this judge declared the guilt of each defendant. Burnt toast came to mind. When it was my turn, I respectfully explained my situation and produced my valid insurance card. To my amazement, the judge declared, “Charges dismissed! Assessing court costs of $150." Some days you just can’t win.
Thanks for listening, I feel much better

Oh MY!

Tonight I witnessed one of the greatest tragedies of life. The squandering of at least 40 combined hours of time by an incompetent musical director. How do I get 40? There were 20 musicians, mostly young and inexperienced who suffered through the ineptitude of a disorganized, chaotic, and uninspiring first rehearsal perpetrated by a director who should have known better.
We are now living in St Pierre du Mont in France and my wife would like to play in a string ensemble if we can find one. We visited the local conservatory last week and were told that an amateur group meets on Friday night for a weekly rehearsal in preparation for a series of concerts. She was invited to come and observe and join if she were interested.
We arrived at the appointed time, 7:00 and went into a small but nice recital-rehearsal hall. There were about 20 high school aged string players and about a half a dozen adults all just milling about; talking and socializing with their friends. About 7:20 a much harried looking woman of vast proportions descended the stairs and called the players to order. Roll was taken, chairs and stands were found and the conductor then proceeded to pass out three pieces of music. Tuning was done by the conductor taking each instrument and plucking the strings with her thumb and handing the instrument back to the player. She did this with each player including the adults. No “A” was ever given so the pitch from each instrument varied from player to player. It was kind of like taking a small sample of yellow paint and matching 30 other samples to the sample just previously matched. What you get is an entirely different shade of yellow for each sample. By the time the tuning was completed it was almost 8:00. Not one single note had been played. She even checked the tuning of the adults in the group.
The first piece up was Bizet’s Carmen. Both Carmen and Bizet should ask for their money back. The conductor’s technique was reminiscent of someone beating a snake with a stick. I think she quit beating when she thought the snake had finally died. I know I had. Her comment at that point was “Wonderful. Now let’s number our measures.” Exit Frank and Barbara stage left.
Here is the point. These people were cheated out of what could been a wonderful musical experience. An experience of learning, appreciation of great music and above all the satisfaction of working with others under the direction of an inspiring conductor to play some of the greatest music ever written. Never mind that they may have all been inexperienced. They deserved better.
Instead they got incompetence bordering on criminal action. This woman stole their time and gave them nothing in return. One can only hope that in the next life she is assigned to a place where the only music be heard is bagpipes or “Lady of Spain” badly played on an out of tune accordion by a chubby pre-adolescent with acne.
I am now going to practice my guitar.

Thanks for listening, I feel much better.