Three Years On

Window of women's spa in Kingwood, TX

         As I mentioned in the last post, we just got back from a 3 week stay in the States and right before we left Marianne gave us the okay for another year in France. It’s over three years now so I thought a bit of reflection was in order, especially since my first trip home in two years gave me the perfect opportunity to compare and contrast.

After gaining an astonishing amount of weight during my last trip stateside I was determined to limit the damage this time, but it wasn’t easy. In fact I swear I could feel my belt tightening as soon as we entered American airspace. Compounding the problem is the undeniable reality that an aging body doesn’t shed the excess like it once did. However my adoption of an increasingly sedentary home life at least mitigated things somewhat as I came in at a higher weight anyway. So all in all it had to be considered a minor triumph that I only picked up 5 extras pounds.

HOW TO BE A TOURIST

            A couple of weeks ago we made our second annual trip to the prefecture to ask Marianne* to let us stay here for another year. Among the paperwork required for our  carte de sejour, Cynthia and I have to sign statements swearing that we will not seek employment in France. This, coupled with my language incompetence has the effect of making us perpetual foreigners and permanent tourists.

            As if to prove it, this year Cynthia set for us a touring schedule at times so hectic that I wondered if her doctor had given her only 6 months to live.  We bought a used car back in May and have already put nearly 15,000 kilometers on it. This might not seem like much to an American, but considering that until two weeks ago we were living in an apartment, using public transit and shoe-leather express most of the time, it's a shitload.

            *Marianne is the symbol of France.

           

Collateral Damage

            On the way home from Îl de Ré we spent a couple of days in Bergerac. Our b&b was close to the tiny village of Monbazillac and we spent some time exploring the area. After a visit to a chateau and some wine tasting, we continued on Cynthia's mission to locate and photograph every interesting building, object, scene and vista in France. As we drove west from Monbazillac, along the D14E, which isn't much wider than a 2CV, I noticed what looked like a small grave maker just off the pavement. We stopped and Cynthia got a quick picture of what was indeed a stone marker that read, "Roger HURMIC 1908-1944 TUÉ le 5.3.1944 LORS DU BOMBARDEMENT de ROUMANIERE P.P.L". ("Roger Hurmic 1908-1944 killed March 5, 1944 during the bombardement of Roumaniere P.P.L." Roumanière is the airport at Bergerac I have no idea what the initials P.P.L stand for and if anyone reading this knows, I'd appreciate you leaving me a comment.)

So, as the sun sinks slowly in the West...

         

           We just got back from a couple of weeks on the road, which, in addition to inherent sloth, is why I haven't posted for a while. After spending a week on Îl de Ré, enroute getting my first speeding ticket, we came home long enough to entertain a friend from the States then spent a week in Alsace. The speed cameras are one of the most frustrating aspects of life here and something I'll take up in the future but, for now, let's just say I'm ready to help man the barricades.

The Shot Putter

Typical Nile Cruise Boat

            While trying to decide on the subject for a post, I happened to look through some things I had written eight years ago, after a long trip to Italy and Egypt. At the time I'm sure I had some specific goal in mind but eventually decided the market for caustic travel writing was probably somewhat limited. This stuff has been gathering cyber-dust ever since and rather than just delete it, I've decided to periodically inflict some of it on you.  

          

             I considered the monumental changes in Egypt since 2005 and wondered if I couldn't draw on some of our experiences to pose some thoughtful, timely questions about what life might now be like for some of the Egyptians we met. But nothing I wrote at the time really lends itself to that so instead, I'm going to go off on a few of the bizarre tourists we ran into.

Bleepless In Barcelona

            Okay, now that the bitching about street thieves has been taken care of, I can tell you some good things about Barcelona. First of all, if you want to make a city look even better, put it on a large body of water like the Gulf of Mexico or Mediterranean Sea. This strategy isn't foolproof, as any normal person who's ever been to Holly Beach, Louisiana, can tell you. On the other hand, if it weren't for the Atlantic Ocean, almost every place on the Jersey Shore would be just another town full of Garden State shitheads.

I Left My Phone In Barcelona

            

           When you've worked for the FBI, you come to accept that people sometimes expect you to possess powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Sometimes I expected it myself, at least in hindsight. But among friends I've heard, more than once, "I still can't believe you were an FBI Agent." Well, that makes two of us.

 

            Part of the problem stems from being, at my core, naturally trusting of others while doubting my own skills. The trusting part might come as a shock to some that know me but it's true and probably genetic. My father, who prided himself on his business sense, was nonetheless the most easily cheated person I've ever known. Most of the cars he ever bought, mainly from people he knew, were astonishing lemons yet I never heard him express hostility toward any of the sellers. It never even occurred to him that he might have been had. My mother was even more naive. I think they both had the attitude that everybody thought and acted as they did. They wouldn't think of taking advantage of anyone, least of all someone they knew, and neither would anyone else. I've learned otherwise, the hard way, but it hasn't caused the complete suppression of my natural inclinations and there have been occasional lapses of vigilance. I mention all this as a means of defending myself, in my own mind at least, for being robbed by a couple of goddamned street thieves in Barcelona.

Driving Mademoiselle Cynthia

© 2013 Cynthia Hinson

            As you might recall, the last post ended with a thought about the type of car we might eventually buy.

             The last cars we had in the States were a Lincoln LS and a Fiat 500. We bought the Fiat thinking that it might be easier and cheaper to take a car with us, an idea that turned out to be one of the most stupid I ever had. And to get the 500, I had to give up my Mazdaspeed6 (MPS in Europe), which Cynthia was not sorry to see go. Even under the best conditions, I'm not a patient driver with the added curse of a lead foot. The Mazda was only the second car I've owned that I really wanted (The first was the '65 GTO I bought a frightening 42 years ago at the age of 18) and I drove it like the name suggested I should. At 18 this is expected of you but at nearly 60 it borders on pathetic and stupid, even if it's still damn fun. This will not be an issue here, especially since most of what is sensibly priced runs on diesel.

 

            Unlike the Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs and other European makes in the U.S., the average car driven in Europe is an underpowered slug, probably because the price of fuel has always been so high. Remember when we saw Monty Python or Upstairs, Downstairs on PBS, thought all British TV was like that and lamented that we couldn't get it here? The reality was that what we got was the best they had and almost everything else was mediocre to downright awful crap. So it is with European cars and it's hard to decide what to buy.

So long St. Pete

     It's getting down to crunch and time and we're starting to get a little nervous. Actually a lot nervous and to say we've got mixed emotions is putting it mildly. For me, while there's no doubt we're doing the right thing, still, the United States is where we were born and raised, well, I was anyway. But beyond that, everything I have I owe to Uncle Sam. I paid my way through college as an FBI clerk and have been a public servant ever since. When I discovered police work wasn't for me, the Bureau took me back and gave me the career that is now allowing me the freedom to do whatever I like. I'm as American as you can get and I don't want to hear any of that anti-government shit.

     But we're also wondering if we're not a little spoiled. After all, we've got a pretty good life here in St. Pete and for me I've been able to pursue another dream. When I retired from the FBI in 2004, I hadn't intended to stop working but before I looked for another job I wanted to deal with a regret I'd had since leaving high school. I wanted a degree in music.

     I grew up in Springdale, Pa., a factory town about 16 miles up the Allegheny river from The Point in Pittsburgh. Playing the trombone was the only thing that got me through high school. Like most people who play it, I didn't really pick the trombone, it picked me. Somewhere around 90% of the kids who show up for elementary school band without an ax are handed a trombone and I was one of those. As it turns out, however, this instrument suits my personality probably better that any other. Trombone players as a group tend not to take themselves too seriously, possibly because nobody else does either. But when it came time to leave high school and find a career I gave the horn up, believing myself not good enough to pursue it further.

    Occasionally though, usually around Memorial Day and 4th of July, I'd get the horn out and march with the local fireman's band but that was it. After 1979, when I left the 'burgh for good, even this outlet dried so for about 25 years I hardly touched the thing. Then about midway through the '90's, it became imperative that I have something to distract me from my job so I retrieved my old 2B from my mother's house and joined a community band. After a couple of years I decided to start taking he whole thing more seriously since I was no longer satisfied with being slightly less than mediocre. I found a good teacher, Jay Shanman, and as I got better began to wonder if it was too late for me to ever be any good.

    Because law enforcement (I've never really been comfortable with that term) is perceived as a young man's job, most agencies allow for retirement after 20 years of service and the FBI added the requirement of also being 50 years old. I had 20 years at the age of 51 and did not let the door hit me on the ass on the way out.  The spring semester of 2006, I started classes at the University of South Florida.

   When I decided to do this, my relationship with most teenagers had been mutual distrust and, at best, barely tolerant. But from the first day at USF it became apparent that I was at last among my people. For over 30 years, I was forced into daily association with people who not only regarded jazz with contempt and ridicule but if they listened to music at all it almost always prominently featured pedal steel guitars and alcohol related themes. To be every day with people 1/3 my age who not only knew and dug J.J. and Urbie Green and held conversations about Miles' modal period was, well, (cue Handel).
 
     So I graduated in 2008 and for the last 4 years I've bounced around, picking up gigs where I can but, like a lot of people, but especially trombone players, not as much as I would have liked. On balance, however, I've had more ups than downs, really, although if you've been the one who's had to listen to me bitch it hasn't always seemed that way. I'm writing this after having just finished my last gig here. I've been lucky enough to get to sub regularly with the TomKats, a St. Pete big band that plays every Monday night at the Blue Parrot in St. Pete Beach and features some of the best jazz players in town. In fact. I don't really belong on the same stage with most of these folks but I've generally not embarrassed myself and held my own on the occasional solo.

       I'll probably write more about this later but I want to get something posted before I leave town.  While I've lived here, I gotten to know a lot of some of the best musicians in the Tampa Bay area and, to me, that's infinitely cooler than following guys of Mediterranean ethnicity around Brooklyn all day. And I'll just say here that I consider myself lucky to have spent time with the great Buster Cooper, who most times remembers who I am after I tell him. One of the first things I ever had published was an article about Buster that appeared in the Journal of the International Trombone Association and if I ever figure out how to do it, I'll post a link here. If you don't know Buster, check out the Duke Ellington Orchestra after around 1963 through 1972. Once I got to play hockey with Gordie Howe and this is the musical equivalent as far as I'm concerned.

    At USF I got to take lessons once a week from Tom Brantley and if I could play like anyone, it might be him. Apart from being a great human being, he's a amazing musician - one of those people that when you see and hear him play, you know you're getting all he's got. And as if that weren't  enough for me, my last semester Tom went on sabbatical so I got to study with Keith Oshiro, an alum of both the Maynard Ferguson and Woody Herman bands. Being among these three world class trombonists was the high point of my life in Florida. And thanks to Tom's wife Claire, who was the managing editor of the ITA Journal, I now have a steady writing gig, even if it doesn't pay a dime.

   The first musical experience I had after moving to Florida was to play in the summer jazz band at St. Petersburg college. This is run by Dave Pate, a saxophonist and St.Pete native and it was, without doubt, some of the most fun I've ever had and Pate was a big part of the reason for this. He's played with and for some of the world's best musicians but never, ever exhibited the ego he actually would be entitled to have. These summer bands were always a mixture of old goats like me and kids from grade school to early college. Pate treated everyone the same, made sure everyone soloed and not once did I hear anything but encouragement, even after listening to someone like me hack their way through even the simplest tunes.

   Another thing that's given me a lot of pleasure here is seeing some of my USF classmates doing well and making their way as teachers and musicians. Mark Feinman, a great drummer, and Jon O'Leary, a really sensitive piano player,  helped me get through my junior recital and now, along with Alejandro Arenas (another USF classmate) make up La Lucha, a group here in St. Pete that is really making a name for themselves. But beyond their own group, they're some of the most sought after sidemen in town and so I get to show up at their gigs and act all cool and hip 'cause I can tell people I've played with these guys.  I'm hoping to see them at Marciac some time.

   I'm going to miss all this but I'm hoping to have some of the same experiences now in a different language. If you're reading this and I've played with you somewhere along the line, thanks. Thanks more than you know. For all their foibles, I've found musicians, by and large, to be the real deal and I'd rather hang with them than anyone.

  After we find a place to live, I'm not going to have a lot to do for awhile so I'm planning on, not only total immersion language training but immersing myself in my horn again. Since this seems like a pretty good way of making the transition into a new culture, it will be a good time to work on some things I've been needing for a long time. For one thing, all the French sax players I've heard appear to prefer the same tempos as their American brethren so it might be a good time to learn to keep up.

   So long St. Pete, I'm gonna miss you. You were just starting to feel like home. Who knows, I might be back some day but if not, look me up. If you're in Bordeaux just listen for the out of tune trombone player trying to make the changes to some Django tune.

What's In This For Me?

                 Although I’d always dreamed of living somewhere outside the U.S., until I met Cynthia short trips into Canada and Mexico were as far as I’d made it. She, on the other hand, grew up the daughter of a guy in the ahl bidness and had lived all over the world.  In 1970 I passed up a free trip to southeast Asia and, except for the possibility of being blown to smithereens, had always felt like I missed something.

            I was an FBI agent for 20 years and saw a lot of the United States, including a few places I could have skipped. But I always liked being on the road and seeing things I’d never seen. So, not surprisingly, I married someone also infected with wanderlust who decided to take me across the ocean. The first couple of trips were to the UK and Italy but Cynthia kept bugging me about going to France, which I resisted probably because I believed a lot of the same bullshit about the French that most Americans seem to. I can’t think of another place that provokes such strong reactions, at least amongst the flag-waving types. Of course, now that I know it pisses those people off I’m not doing much to disabuse them of the idea I could be some kind of closet socialist.

            In telling others of our plans, one of the most surprising reactions has been the number of people who ask, “Have you ever been there before?” I’m not sure how to respond to this – “Holy shit, I hadn’t thought of that?” “Now, you mention it, no. Gee, thanks, we nearly spent our life savings on a whim!” So I just smile and say, “Yes, a couple of times.”

            This was not a simple decision. The first time we visited France, it was the result of my having bought the trip as a Christmas present for Cynthia. As I said, I had no more desire to see France than the next xenophobe but from the first few hours in Paris, I knew this place was for me. I can’t entirely explain it but despite the fact I can’t understand a word anyone says, I never felt out of place. And when we sat down in a café with all seats facing the street, that clinched for me. I just sat there drinking in the tourist fashion show, like Swedes wearing clothes it looked like they found and, on a cool day, Brits in sweaters and trousers that were in style when Harold Macmillan was prime minister.

            Coming home we always said the same thing, “What if we just sold everything and moved here”, followed immediately, from me at least, with a “Yeah, right.”  Besides, as long as my mother was alive, I never wanted to be that far away from her. Needless to say, we were close, but when she died last year at the age of 93, the last thing keeping me here disappeared. We did home exchanges to Paris and Bordeaux in July of 2011 and when we came back, that was it. We started making plans to move.

            Ethnically speaking, I’m half German, a quarter Swede and ¼ French. My great-grandfather, Auguste Durand, came here sometime in the late 19^th century to mine coal. Makes you wonder how shitty a French coal mine must have been if crossing the Atlantic to work in an American one represented upward mobility.  So maybe there’s some genetic connection. All I know is I’ve always felt like I could belong over there. We’ll see.

Well, here goes.

     I can't imagine too many people will be reading this but sharing the details of ones life, however inconsequential, seems to be how it goes these days. I have been contemplating this for several years if for no other reason than to make me write. Like at least half the planet, I'm a frustrated writer who imagines the other half of the planet will eagerly hang on my every word, once they discover my brillance. It is, of course, horse shit but the plain truth is my wife is tired of listening to me and this is as good a way as any to pontificate.

     Currently, my wife Cynthia and I are preparing to leave Florida and the United States to try life in Europe, specifically France. I'll explain this in more detail as my inherent laziness permits but just to get the ball rolling I'll open with something I wrote when we first decided on this move:

      My wife, Cynthia, and I are thinking of moving to France. Our motivations range from "We love it over there" to the time honored American tradition of believing the country is going to hell in a hand basket. We both have spent large parts of our life packing and I seem to recall reading somewhere that this could be a sign of mental illness. In her case, her father worked for an oil company so rootlessness is part of her genetic makeup. Although I've lived all over the U.S., my first 18 years were all in the same place, a factory town near Pittsburgh. A few of the my subsequent dozen or so moves were transfers that weren't my idea but the rest were and usually fell under the heading of grass being greener. The biggest of these, from Pittsburgh to Phoenix and New Jersey to Florida, didn't and haven't quite worked out the way I planned. So, as convinced as I am that this is a good idea, I'm a little gun shy and approaching it with a degree of caution. With that in mind, I assembled a list of pros and cons: things that make a difference to me and helped to decide - Is this really such a hot idea?  Some of these reasons need no explanation and others I'm not sure I can explain anyway.  All I know is they please or bug me and are mainly intangibles that, taken individually don't mean much but together push the weight of evidence heavily one way.

      So far the only cons I've been able to muster are a higher cost of living,  ubiquitous Euro-pop and I can't understand what anyone is saying. On the other hand:
1. As anyone who's ever been seated in a restaurant within earshot of a yammering ignoramus can tell you, "I can't understand what anyone is saying"  is definitely a pro, as are:
2. There are few people wearing Crocs.
3. Even fewer huge fat guys wear cut off sweat pants and Crocs. There is no better way to say, "I don't give a shit what I look like and I can prove it."
4. Along these same lines, few, if any, old men wearing high-leg shorts they purchased during the Carter administration.
 5. Gas is $9 a gallon. Some people might think this a con until you consider it means few shitheads in Escalades and Hummers.
6. Possibility of never hearing "Sweet Home Alabama" again. *
7. No stops in France for Toby Keith's "Locked & Loaded" Tour.
8. As far as I know, no candidate for President of France has ever implied his or her election to be the will of God.
9. Low likelihood of turning on TV and accidentally seeing Joan Rivers
10. Lack of choices on my car radio has reduced me to listening to NPR.
11. I understand enough French to know they say "I said" or "I thought", and not "I'm like", "I was like","I go" or "I went."
12. Hoping never to see Flo the insurance person again
13. When you flash your headlights at someone driving too slow in the left lane, they actually get the fuck out of the way. Every single time.
14. The mere existence of France, more than any other country on earth, pisses off the people most responsible for the U.S. being in it's current condition.

* or "Free Bird", "Hotel California", "More Than a Feeling","Africa", "Peaceful, Easy Feeling", "Take It Easy","Rocket Man", "Benny and the Jets", "Go Your Own Way", a song I've never known the title of but they play it at hockey games and based on the only lyric is called "Hey", "Born In the USA", which reminds me, "God Bless the USA" and "Wind Beneath My Wings", almost everything by Billy Joel except "New York State of Mind" but especially "Uptown Girl", "For the Longest Time" and "Movin'Out", anything by Neil Diamond, AC/DC, Aerosmith, The Steve Miller Band, Rush, Journey, KISS, Tracy Chapman, Judas Priest, Metallica, in fact all that heavy metal hair band shit,  Do-Wop, a lot of the music from the '60s, half of the '70's, most of the '80's and everything after the '90's and any other song they've been playing twice an hour for the last forty fucking years. Exempted from this is most jazz, which the French regard highly, play as well as anyone and live venues are plentiful and accessible.

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