By happy coincidence, our offspring visited us at the same time a short while ago. The quartet – myself, My Life’s Editor, our son the IT maven, and our daughter the philosophy professor – was last together on an everyday basis in the time of our dogs Molly and Bingo, science fairs, and school pickup lines. Since then, college, jobs, and the addition of spouses and sprouts intervened.
On our last day together, I suggested we go to a new French café on the beach for a late breakfast. I called to see if reservations were necessary. I threw out a “bonjour” to establish my high school French creds. A very French voice said, “We can never tell. There might be a rush!” I reserved. Inspired by visions of omelets, lattes and flaky croissants with jam, we drove to the café.
There were many tables and few customers. French tchotchkes decorated the walls – framed Tour Eiffels and fabrics stitched with “Ooh La La”s. It was as if there had been an explosion in a secondhand shop in the 12th arrondissement of Paris and all the debris was shipped to St. Pete Beach. Our server was a bubbly lady of middling age with seamed mesh stockings, a short black skirt, a white blouse and a feathered black cloche hat perched tipsily to one side. Her accent puzzled me, somehow not quite French.
Soon, quiches, croissants, and omelets were demolished. All that remained on the plates were crumbs and raspberry jam smears. We told family stories over hot coffee and lattes. Our bubbly server appeared. She held up a microphone and a well-traveled computer tablet, its screen a spider web of cracks. She scrolled through a list of tunes. “Do you know a French singer?” she asked.
“Mais bien sur! Edith Piaf!” says I. She beamed. “You know, perhaps, a song?” I answered, “Vous avez ‘Milord?’” It was as if I had created a disturbance in the force. The chef came bustling out of the kitchen, a grey-haired, spectacled, well-fed lady in an apron. She was the real deal – a Françoise. Our server turned out to be almost French – a Canadian. They gathered behind me. The three of us burst into “Allez, venez, Milord. Vous asseoir à ma table…” and we were off.
There was a time – frankly, any time up until they started college – our offspring distanced themselves from cringeworthy parental behavior. Our very presence was concerning. My Life’s Editor was told to drop them off before she reached the school entrance. That might have been because I had our elderly Toyota painted a bilious shade of blue. It is a testament to their maturity that they watched my café performance with benevolent smiles.
Edith Piaf’s life was dramatic and tragic, her songs full of grief, struggle and passion; she was more French than escargot and Château Latour. I envision her trilling “Non, je ne regrette rien” in a dingy Marseille café, a couple of Gallic types slouched at their tables, listening with dour expressions, wearing berets, cradling glasses of absinthe in front of them. Eyes squinting in the smoky pall, they draw on their Gauloises cigarettes.
At least that was how I pictured her my sophomore year in college after I had taken a French literature course. I became ironic and worldly. I grew my hair longer, wore jeans, wrapped my Weejuns in tape when the soles started falling off, and wore a blue work shirt under an Army surplus store jacket. I opted for Marlboros since Gauloises cigarettes tasted like an asphalt road. As the year wore on, I decided to strike a more scholarly image, switching to English Oval cigarettes, which came in a box and would not get crushed in your back pocket. The look conflicted with the Keuffel and Esser slide rule tucked in against my books when I trudged up Hillhouse Avenue to the engineering school. The faculty did not accept my belief that test answers should be enigmatic and creative, as opposed to being merely accurate. They took away my slide rule and sent me packing into the benign world of liberal arts, where words rule over numbers.
I got into singing as a Boy Scout. On the road to Camp Broad Creek in a yellow school bus, we belted out “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and “My Uncle Bill Owns a Still on the Hill.” By my senior year in college, I had graduated to French drinking songs like “Chevalier de la Table Ronde.” Knights of the Round Table sing they want to die in a wine cave, feet up against the wall, head under a wine spigot. There is a theme here.
Yale was a seething morass of people who wanted to sing. Every fifth student had a pitch pipe tucked in a back pocket. They cluttered up hallways and vestibules, crooning. You would be in a men’s room stall, or sitting in a carrel in the library, and singing would erupt. There are 17 a cappella undergraduate singing groups at present. Born in Mory’s Saloon (where else?) in New Haven in 1905, the Whiffenpoofs are the most famous.
Senior year, my roommates and I overdosed on Casablanca reruns and were marinated in nostalgia for the 1930s and 1940s. We taped lyrics to Bogie and Bacall-era songs on the shower wall. By graduation we had “Deep Purple” and “Stardust” down cold. Our signature showstopper was “Ragtime Cowboy Joe,” a classic for sure.
I realize some readers would rather stick the pointy end of a 6” Eiffel Tower replica up their nose than sing. But singing is good for the soul, in a group or alone in the shower. It releases endorphins, serotonin and dopamine, the feel-good chemicals, into your brain. Thomas Jefferson sang. Woodrow Wilson sang. It is unlikely that our current President sings. If he does, it would be in front of a mirror. The song: “It Had to Be You.”
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Marshall Craig 