My French Ride

There is little that can withstand a man who can conquer himself -- Louis XIV, King of France 1643-1715

1986 Peugeot 505

In 2003, when self-appointed patriotic Americans began calling French Fries Freedom Fries, because France would not join the European coalition that backed our invasion of Iraq, I thought of my Peugeot.

I thought back to the mid-Nineties when I had comforted myself in the lush leather driver's seat of my 1986 silver 5-speed automatic Peugeot 505 while scarfing pastry delights from Kelly's French Bakery, perhaps a chocolate croissant whose buttery, flaky bits of crust tumbled like snowflakes onto my lap protected by a clean, white serviette, amid a hint of lavender emanating from the console.

She was an outlier, my 505, as the French are wont to be, although they are quite herdish among themselves: They rush to the nearest brasserie for lunch at precisely 12-noon, no matter what state of business they might find themselves. Once, on the Med in St.-Maries-de-la-Mer in southern France I was dickering with a shopkeeper over an item -- a black cross replica of those you see on the front of the white huts throughout the Comargue, my wife collects crosses -- intending to make the purchase when of a sudden the clock struck high noon.

"Excuse moi, monsieur. I must close the shop for lunch. I will be back at 2 pm."

You have to respect a culture that prizes palate over profit. I'm confident a glass of light rose complemented his repast.

I was smitten over my 505, named Edith after the famed French song-bird chanteuse Edith Piaff. I purchased her from an artist from San Francisco. I saw her sitting in a parking lot with a for-sale sign, did a double take. What is that? An automobile, of course, but what kind? Make and model, if you please.

I paid $3500 USD. I always buy used.

During that period, yuppies were driving Mercedes and Beemers; safety-conscious families tooled around in Volvo station wagons. A Euro invasion had run American cars off the roads. This girl possessed that je ne sais quoi that only the French can articulate: a swooping front hood that bespoke low-cut and sexy, a voiture decolletage on a four-door sedan.

With the 505, the French had made a statement: no more cars that appeared the same coming and going, like the Renault, or none that could be confused with a toaster on wheels. Recall the Citroen DS (albeit the most comfortable car in the world).

I'll never forget the first time I escorted Edith into one of those quickie oil-change places. The attendant took one peek beneath Edith's chassis and exclaimed:

"Oh no! We don't service French cars!"

You have to wonder.

Cabanes Blanches aux St. Maries-de-le-Mer by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

I found my own private mechanic. His name was Willard and he was somewhat of a madman. It goes with the territory. I'd rather have an aficionado who drives the same car himself, than a no-nothing kid who freaks out at the first sign of cultural diversity.

A family man with a profound sense of joie de vivre evidenced by at least four or five kiddos invariably romping nearby, Willard had developed a following as a Mercedes mechanic until he converted. He explained: "I drove my Mercedes to LA and when I arrived my back was killing me. I drive my Peugeot to LA and when I arrive I feel refreshed."

In addition to a tune up and oil change, Willard offered conversation and historical perspective. 

"Did you know that the intifada was started in a Peugeot?"

I never drove Edith to Los Angeles. At the time I worked for an LA-based company with a satellite office in Santa Cruz: my garage. Edith and I were never far apart. The company paid for my travel to SoCal. This obviated my ever getting stranded between Santa Cruz and Los Angeles, looking for a French car mechanic.

In the late Eighties, Peugeot made a push to sell the new 505 sedans and station wagons  in America, through dealerships and ads in high-brow magazines like the Atlantic. By the mid-Ninties they had shuttered their efforts in the US, confirming a cultural disconnect between the two nations.

She was comfortable. She was classy. She was unique: one of only three 505s in town: mine, Willard's and one owned by a surfing bodhisattva who hung out at Steamer Lane.

Edith served as my entry into luxury sedans. My daughter Bryna and her friends were beneficiaries when I taxied them around town to games and practices, typically with the sunroof open and a CD blasting the B-52s from the dash.

Our relationship lasted about two years with your usual ups and downs — Willard left town — and ended amicably. I cleaned her up and placed a for-sale sign in the side window, parked her in front of our house. The following day a woman called who had fallen in love, who obviously saw the same romantic lines I had, a French connection. Sold. $2200.

I never quit calling a French Fry a French Fry. Fads come and go. When Barbara, our friends Nancy and Steve and I flew to France in 1999 to celebrate Barb's birthday, we rented a nifty new Peugeot in Nimes to experience the countryside of Provence in style. 

C'est la vie!

 

 

 

Poolside in Pomona

The Pomona Plunge 1920 -- later renamed Ganesha Park Swimming Pool -- is still in operation. St. Joseph's Swimming Pool closed years ago, as did many public swimming pools throughout the country. Some closed due to integration after the Civil Right Act in 1964, according to Heather McGhee in her book The Sum of Us, 2021. Private Swim clubs became popular.

There were days in Pomona where I grew up when temperatures broke 100-degrees. That's when I needed a quarter, a fair amount of change when you could get a Snickers bar for a nickel. 

The public swimming pool behind St Joseph's Church and Elementary School on Holt Avenue charged twenty-five cents admission. It was part of an athletic complex that included a football field and dirt track as well as two baseball diamonds, one where Pomona Catholic High School played and another a Little League field where I played. We were warned not to swim on game days because of fatigue.

The pool had a low-dive and a high dive spring board. Each attracted a line of would-be divers waiting to show off with gainers, figure-fours (now called can-openers), flips, one-and-a-half's, swan dives and the occasional mishap of a belly flop. Ouch! That would be me.

Kids from mostly west Pomona, and many who attended St. Joe's Elementary, showed up to cool off and be cool. Two other public pools in town -- at Washington and Ganesha parks -- offered spots to plunge into refreshing water during those sweltering days. I learned to swim at the Washington pool, taught by Coach Bynum.

A fourth option for summer refuge was in the nearby hills at Pudding Stone Reservoir, our local swimming hole, which featured a roped off area with a floating raft and a spring board for diving. Pudding Stone was free but the bike ride up the hill was a bear in the heat. I didn't take that challenge until I was 14.

From 10 to 13 years old, I rode my green Schwinn Corvette three-speed from my house in Kellogg Park to the pool at St. Joe's, maybe three-four miles. My route started on Valley Blvd, which ran west all the way to Los Angeles, about 30 miles away, a useful road through the country before the San Bernardino Freeway (now the called the 10) connected L.A. to the Pomona Valley.

Going east, Valley Blvd met Holt Avenue at an intersection known as Five Points, which featured traffic lights and the convergence of five roads. That's where I pedaled the hardest to make it through the no-man's land of heavy-metal cars and belching smokey trucks going five different directions. 

Nobody heard of a bicycle helmet. Helmets were for football players. 

I wore my swimming trunks underneath my jeans, which I stripped off and placed in a netted green bag with my shirt and shoes. The pool monitor took the bag and gave me a pin with a number that I attached to my trunks so that I could retrieve my clothes at the end of the day.

Mike Powers worked behind the counter, a big, fat guy with a big mouth. He was three years older than me and 300-pounds heavier. He threatened to brainwash me, which meant stick my head in the toilet. I didn't know if he was serious and found out that he was all-talk when he grabbed me, pulled me into the bathroom and told me to scream as if he really was brainwashing me.

Relieved, I went along with it and yelled, "No, Powers! No!"

He wasn't the mean guy he pretended to be. He would later play on the high school football team, which gave him status. Football was big.

Names from those pool days included Tony Purpero, a football linebacker in high school; Billy and Bobby Herrera, great divers, their sister Susan was in my class; Denny Hobbs looked cool with his peroxided hair swept back on the sides; Red-headed Tommy Taylor, my age, and his older brother Pat, a football player and pole vaulter; Kevin Forstner, a gangly southpaw pitcher, basketball point-guard and fancy dancer. And many more I can't remember.

Girls came too but they rarely dove from the boards. They huddled and laughed and made fun of us guys while we were trying to impress them with our diving. I had my eye on Charlene Rasmussen who roller skated in my neighborhood with long ringlet curls.

I was much more naive than my buddy Paul Greene who got busted making out with Linda Grunewald on the lawn at the far end of the pool.

Emerging from the cool water, I rested on my stomach on the hot concrete. My prize was a nickel bag of crunchy, salty corn nuts that tasted better than ever when I was wet and tired, soaking under the sun, the twinge of chlorine smarting in my eyes.

I had practiced a one-and-a-half flip off the low dive and it was time to try that dive off the high board. This particular day I had gotten a ride to the pool and my father came to pick me up. I wanted to show off in front of him. I met him at the chain link fence that surrounded the pool area. 

"I'm going to do a one-and-a-half off the high dive. My first time. Watch me!" 

"Okay, I'll watch," he said in his spare baritone voice. 

The high dive, or three-meter board, is three-times as high as the low board and when I reached the top of the ladder and stood on the springy board that stretched out above the blue water, the pool appeared smaller and farther away. Everything seemed farther away. I stood alone above it all.

I gathered myself, took my three-step approach, bounced once on the end of the board and soared up toward the sky, feeling my body tuck and turn in the air. I finished one flip but wasn't quick enough to lift my hands to protect my head entering the water. My timing was off. I flopped, hitting the water squarely on my chest and face. Smack! It stung. 

I jumped out of the water and walked over to my father. He was laughing. I wasn't prepared for his reaction, but then again, I wasn't prepared for a belly flop. 

"What did the lifeguard do?" I asked.

 "He laughed," my father answered.

I decided to stick with the swan dive from the high board, which was actually more of a show-off dive.

 

Thrice Told Tale

Fractal geometric design in which any chosen smaller or larger part is similar when magnified.

You may have noticed a drop in the number of Talking Surf Stories you've received lately. This is because my production level has hit a snag. I've been stuck. 

Everything I've written I've torn up and tossed in the trash. I like to blame it on my spider bite which turned into a case of infectious cellulitis in my left leg. I thought I was out of the woods and back on my feet only to discover that the antibiotics I had taken to fight cellulitis caused a second infection diagnosed as clostridium difficile, aka c-diff.

C-diff is an inflammation of the colon. It's serious. In some cases it can be fatal. My doctor put me on new antibiotic, vancomycin, to negate the c-diff. With the new antibiotic bailing me out of a miserable few days of severe diarrhea, I figured I could move around, try some gentle yoga.

While attempting a simple cat pose with my toes bent, I encountered a new pain in the second toe of my right foot. Within a day that toe swelled to the size of large sausage the color of deep purple. Simple, I thought, I'll just massage that foot and see if I can hasten a quick recovery.

Wrong. That foot followed suit, and puffed up as if I had inflated it with an air pump. This was my heretofore good foot. What was going on?

At urgent care the next morning, the doc showed concern because of recent cellulitis in my left foot and leg. Could it have traveled to my right foot? He called the infectious disease doc and after commiseration decided to put me back on antibiotics to treat possible cellulitis, while also extending the vancomycin as a preventive measure against more c-diff.

I found myself on double antibiotics. The battle in my body was incurring yet another invader. 

I'm not a guy who likes pills or staying put. I've got to go, walk, bicycle, practice tai chi, surf, be active. What about my doggie who needs to be walked?

It's been two months and the act of a simple walk around the block is tres difficile. My feet hurt. It could be arthritis, tendinitis or gout. I'll take door door number 4: none of the above.

This is the short version. Talk to my wife, or my psychiatrist, and you will hear the long, incommodious version accompanied by violin, as I've explained it to a stable of doctors.

I forgot to mention the aggravating internal itching I've been dealing with. Ever felt like your skin, that sack of flesh that holds your body together, is your enemy?

Hey, it's all fun and games with a dose of aging. I know it could be worse. Much worse. I could have shingles, or been taken hostage by the MAGA cartel. I already feel forced to watch and hear the former guy over-and-over every time I pick up the news: a horror rerun that would have Edgar Allen Poe on his knees pleading.

I didn't know he was still President.

I can't walk a mile but I can see a mile's worth of yellow-orange hair on every station and newspaper. 

This is the best I can do. Every moment is precious. My family is wonderful. My friends are great. Note to self: don't delete.

Enjoy your Labor Day weekend!