Americans Doing Lunch

Yesterday, Preston and I went to a six-hour lunch hosted by an American couple. That’s the longest lunch I’ve ever attended. There were over a hundred Americans in attendance from primarily from New York and New Jersey, a French couple from Bordeaux with their daughter, and two British ex-pat couples. I sat with an English teacher from New York, a food columnist for a major newspaper, a retired British man, and the host’s Swedish son-in-law and his parents.

I had an interesting time with the teacher discussing Faulkner . . . she said that she had quit teaching him to her classes because they were bored by him, but this year her class seemed so bright she brought out As I Lay Dying, and they loved it. That was an inspiring story to hear. She had also read From Here You Can’t See Paris. It is a book by an American writer who lived in nearby Les Arques for a year and wrote about La Recreation, a wonderful restaurant. (I met the writer at La Recreation and told him, in my blunt American way, that I wish he would have written the book in a way that leaves the area anonymous so our area didn’t become overrun like Peter Mayle’s Provence. And he replied with typical American reasoning that I should be pleased if that should happen because the value of my property would rise greatly. I told him that wasn’t my objective.) The teacher brought up the fact that in the book, the writer said that the locals don’t bother to get to know the tourists because they figure it’s not worth their time because the tourists are just passing through. And I said that on the contrary, I felt that that the locals were more than willing to meet the tourists but that the fault lay with the tourists who often come across as brash, arrogant and frightening to the polite and quiet locals. The truth of the matter may lie somewhere between my observation and the writer’s, or the reason may be something totally different, such as the locals are too darn busy with their lives to worry about befriending tourists. I don’t bring tourists in San Francisco home to my house so there’s no reason to expect the French to be inviting the summer flood of passing tourists into their homes. However, I do believe that if a tourist wanted to get to know a local, all they have to do is make the overture and they would be welcomed with open arms.

(I made the mistake of saying after the dinner to a Jesuit-trained, ex-State Department career employee who specialized in Saudi Arabia, and was a political conservative that the truth doesn’t exist. Oh boy, did I get an earful which caused him to segue off into a lecture on Saddam Hussein and the Iraq War. Because I’m getting old and no longer have the desire to argue, and because I live in progressive France where people who hold his opinions are rare, I found his vehemence amusing and so I egged him on by asking him a few questions to make him think that I was coming around to his point of view. By the time he was finished with his lecture, I think he left happily thinking that he had converted me to his team. And maybe George Bush will get my vote, for I told my husband that if Bush wins, I’m staying in France. So you see, I have absolutely no reason to vote for Kerry.)

The food writer was a very jolly woman who I adored because she laughed at whatever I said. She was overweight, but that’s an understandable hazard of her occupation. While we were eating salad, she started choking. She raised her arms up in the air. Bob, the very pleasant Brit (who just happed to have sang in the Cahors Chorale on Friday and was very pleased that I had been in the audience) asked her if she needed help, and I thought she was nodding “yes” while she was choking, turning red, and holding her arms up in the air for a second time; but he didn’t attempt to help her and the rest of us around our end of the table just stared at her and were greatly relieved when she recovered from the blockage. I have the feeling, from the way she instinctively shot her arms up in the air, and because she had another slight attack soon afterwards, that she chokes frequently when she eats. This habit must bring panic to the restauranteurs when she shows up to eat with the intention of reviewing their establishment.

The Swedish son-in-law is a product designer in New York. He was very interesting to listen to as he told us about the products he has designed and the reasoning that went into the designs. He had the most amazing eyes. I don't know what color they were, but they were just piercing. I told him that, in front of everyone, and feel as if I might have embarassed him. When he goes back to New York, he starts work on designing a pepper mill for OXO, so the teacher and I were giving him all sorts of “brilliant” ideas which I’m sure he’ll incorporate into his design. His parents were very pleasant people who spoke great English.

The food was amazingly good, even by our high local standards, and all the more impressive, when you consider that it was prepared for such a large group. The lunch was held in an old tobacco barn on the sheep farm of an older French couple who supplement their income by renting out small, very old, and very cute houses they own and by catering large dinners. We had homemade foie gras that was the best I have ever tasted, salad with duck, grilled lamb (which I reluctantly ate, and am ashamed to admit that I enjoyed), haricots verts which were cooked perfectly, a cheese platter, lots of wine, and a dream assortment of desserts of which there was enough for all of us to eat as much as we wanted and we did in hearty American fashion: an apple strudel-type cake, a chocolate cake, a strawberry mousse cake. At the end of the meal they served coffee and a strong liquor which I didn’t drink. However, my son informed me it was tasteless but burned your insides once it went down your throat.

You might remember an earlier post I wrote about the plethora of rented, high-end BMW’s surrounding the luncheon host’s cottage when I mistakenly arrived a day earlier. At the lunch, I was surprised that as the other Americans, whom I hadn’t met the day before, drove into the farmyard for the party, all of them were driving upscale rental cars. But not one of the cars was a Peugeot or a Renault, which would be your normal brand offerings for rental cars here in France. And when I met these people, and was told what they did for a living, the high-end BMW’s became even more puzzling because not one of them had a career that would lead me to think that they make a habit of renting luxury cars when they travel. One man was a teacher from Arkansas and he was driving a high end Saab. There were some nice Volvos too.

Based on this new intelligence, and keeping in mind that no one knows the truth, I have a couple of new theories to possibly explain the oddity of seeing all these high end rental cars:
1. Perhaps the Americans rented these cars to impress the other Americans, because they’re all staying together for a week in this grouping of small cottages and feel the need to compete.
2. The Americans are boycotting French cars because of the Iraq War.
3. Hertz in Bordeaux was simply running a great deal on renting out brand new high-end luxury cars (but some of the people rented in Toulouse).
4. The Americans want a high performance car to drive on the curvy French roads.

Well, I’m acting like a jealous French peasant in a Pagnol novel over these cars. I sit and stare at them, come to all sorts of conclusions, but am too timid to probe further to find out the reason for the phenomenon. Should I find out, “the truth,” I’ll let you know.