Postcards

Tom Storer · July-23rd-2005, 06:05 AM

Let this be a thread where JCers away from home can check in from a cybercafé or other access point to post vignettes of their holidays.

Last Saturday I left on vacation with wife, son, son's pal, going from Paris to Marseille to pick up a rental car and drive up into the southern French Alps. At the Gare de Lyon, as we shuffled in a hurrying, luggage-laden mass to board the train, myself and son's pal were separated from wife and son. We all knew which car to board, so I wasn't worried. We trek along and sure enough, there's car 5. We knew it was car 5 because there was a big paper sign on it that said VOITURE 05. Me and pal boarded, stowed luggage, awaited wife and son.

Time passed. Wife and son didn't come. Panic city. Called wife's cell phone using pal's cell phone (for once I regretted not having one of my own). Wife reported she and son were sitting in car 5 wondering where we were. Total confusion. Two car 5s?

At the last minute a railway employee revealed the problem: we weren't on car 5, we were on car 15. The big paper sign was in error. Thank you, SNCF. Along with several others who had made the same mistake we fled madly along the platform and dived into the real car 5 just before the bell rang and the doors closed.

Things have been much calmer since. We're hiking up the beautiful wooded flanks of mountains and clambering around at considerable heights looking out at spectacular vistas. No climbing, just hiking. It's wonderful.

Oh, and a jazz link: in the middle of the panic on the platform on Saturday morning, who should come ambling in front of me but David Murray. "Mr. Murray!" I exclaimed. "Hello. I'm a fan." Murray shook my hand and said, "You going to Nice?" "No, Marseille." "I'm going to Nice. Going to play down around there somewhere." "Have a nice trip!" "Yeah, you too." He ambled away and I returned to panicking.

Monte Smith · July-23rd-2005, 09:17 PM

Excellent postcard!

moneyp · July-23rd-2005, 09:56 PM

Tom, best time to visit Paris: late-July early-August or Christmas?

hornplayer · July-23rd-2005, 10:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mone peterson

Tom, best time to visit Paris: late-July early-August or Christmas?

I know I'm not Tom, but imo, Christmas. July =/August is HOT, (lots of places w/o ac) and full of tourists. Plus, lots of places take their vacas in August, and are CLOSED! Christmas is beautiful The City of Lights has even more of them, and the Christmas decos at Notre Dame are spectacular. everyone is happy, and not so many tourists, so you get better attention.

clinthopson · July-24th-2005, 02:25 PM

Nice idea, Tom

Pete C · July-24th-2005, 03:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mone peterson

Tom, best time to visit Paris: late-July early-August or Christmas?

Agreed with hp.

Monte Smith · July-30th-2005, 04:37 PM

The family and I took the opportunity of a break in the heat to make a daytrip into the bucolic countryside of the Virginia Piedmont district. We visited Mr. Jefferson's house at Monticello and posed for photographs in front of the gigantic, colorized back of an enormous nickel.

Tom Storer · August-7th-2005, 05:32 PM

Hey, Monte Jr. is getting taller and taller!

Monte Smith · October-7th-2005, 04:37 PM

I went to Massachusetts, a Republican behind enemy lines, so of course I had to have a Kennedy sighting.

I hoofed it halfway across Cambridge to visit the house of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It really was an endeavor because I had my own boy in a stroller, my pregnant wife, but also my sister-in-law with her twins and newborn in this unbelievably huge TRIPLE stroller. It's the infant's answer to the Humvee. Not exactly made for antiquated urban sidewalks of the Harvard Square variety. So we reach Longfellow's house at 105 Brattle; this is also the Revolutionary War headquarters of George Washington and his Continental Army in 1775 and 1776. Anyway, we get there at about a quarter to twelve and I find out there is no tour at noon. We'll have to wait until one. "Hm," I say, nervously eyeing four easily disgruntled youngins, "There's no way we can just pop our heads in for a quick looksee?"

The woman at the gift shop and ticket counter is firm. "Absolutely not. The home is furnished not just with period pieces but the actual artifacts from both Longfellow and Washington. No one gets in without a tour guide and he won't be here until one o'clock. No exceptions."

Just as I'm about to walk sullen and shrunken shoulderly back to face the music (it was me who came up with the great idea to wheel our progeny across town for this), into the gift shop storms a fellow declaring that he's with Senator Kennedy's office. "Oh!" says the ticket counter lady, "we're ready for her!"

I poke my head out the door at what has now become a commotion. Sure enough, several giddy park police types are helping Eunice Shriver out of a van. She's come to visit the Longfellow house. Doesn't she know there is no tour at noon?

"The Senator gives us an awful lot of help with fund-raising," the ticket counter lady says, by way of apology (I hope).

"Is there some kind of event...?"

"No, but the Family is very fond of the revolutionary history of this house. And Mrs. Kennedy used to read Paul Revere to the children when the Senator and his sister were kids."

I was buying a copy of the same for young Gungadar and said so. "God, I hope he doesn't become a Senator."

Eunice was aided into a short lift (she's very skinny and frail) and elevated up to the Longfellow house. I was given the bum's rush. Fortunately the garden is nice and it was a lovely day. All was not lost. And I had the titilation of coming close to a lady who the people to whom I tell this anecdote, most of 'em don't really know who she is. So there's that.

Here's Gungadar in front of the place:

Tom Storer · October-8th-2005, 05:17 AM

He looks a handsome lad there, does young Gungadar. Must be Carmen's side of the family. But no pictures of Eunice?? No autograph? No getting Ted's cell phone number from her? You're just too self-effacing.

I can picture it...

"Hello, Mrs. Shriver. Would you be so kind as to give me Senator Kennedy's personal cell phone number? I'm Monte Smith."

"THE Monte Smith??"

Monte Smith · October-9th-2005, 06:57 PM

As Shriver is not a public figure, I didn't feel it was right for me to holler at her the epithets I reserve for other Kennedys. And its a good thing, since as my sister informed me when I told her of my Kennedy sighting, there already exists bad blood between the Kennedy and Monte Smith clans.

It transpires that in her professional capacity as a buyer for an interior design center, my sister outbid a Kennedy at an auction. This was Michael Kennedy, one of the rapists (alledged; statutory). Later that year he skiied into a tree and my sister won't swear that it wasn't out of the stinging gall of getting defeated by a Monte Smith.

Huzzah!

Tom Storer · October-10th-2005, 04:54 AM

Tsk, tsk. Very poor taste.

But it does evoke the thrilling possibility of Monte Smith/Kennedy clan feuding à la the Hatfields and the McCoys. I can see that being a great sitcom.

Monte Smith · October-10th-2005, 10:21 AM

I guess the basic message is "don't fuck with the Monte Smiths."

For instance, here is a photo of my boy Gungadar at Gloucester, MA during our recent vacation. He's crushing a rock with his bare hands! True, he's chosen to display this awesome power while at the same time sucking on a pacifier, something I wouldn't do. But that's probably a difference between generations or, possibly, an indication of Gungadar's questionable maturity. But he'll learn.

Back off, mere mortals!