My parents were both great readers. In the family room, my father had built wall-to-ceiling shelves that my parents then filled with books. These were mostly adult books, poetry for my mother, fiction for my father. As I grew up, I came to enjoy his favorite authors: Mark Twain, with “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn,” of course, but also the less well known “Life on the Mississippi,” “Innocents Abroad,” and “Puddn’head Wilson,” a detective story.

They passed their love of reading on to me. I had my own large Philippine mahogany bookcase in my bedroom. It held, among others, the Oz stories, but I was a purist. I had only the original ones, those written by L. Frank Baum himself. The Oz books written by a successor after he died were just not the same. I also had a large collection of fairy tale books, notably the “color” series by Andrew Lang.

My father, an engineer working for a large oil company, was often gone on business, especially during World War II, which America joined after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when I was six years old. My father did not fight in the war as a soldier. He was an engineer, and the military draft authorities considered him more important in that role. Still, Papa would be away for weeks at a time, in the Pacific Northwest and Canada where there were oil deposits. He would send me postcards, including a humorous one showing a giant mosquito carrying off a deer. They were fun, but it wasn’t the same as having him there, reading me grownup stories like “The Count of Monte Cristo” instead of just the Mother Westwind stories Mama read to me about animals named Jimmy Skunk, Jerry Muskrat and Joe Otter.

I was bored staying home with Mama alone while my father was away. Luckily, I was saved by the neighbors. My father was often transferred because of his work, so we rented a lot of the time rather than buy a home. In 1942, we moved to Hillsborough, California. The Hammonds, our landlords, lived next door. They were not demanding or oppressive, the way landlords are often portrayed. They were open and friendly. Mrs. Hammond was particularly kind to me. One day she gave me a great gift in the form of an invitation. “I know how much you love our old house,” she said to me. “Our doors are never locked, you can come in whenever you want.” This was an unusual invitation, but for me, Mrs. Hammond was an unusual person because so unlike Mama. Her dress style was a great contrast to Mama’s. Instead of straight skirts and crisply ironed white blouses topped by cardigan sweaters, Mrs. Hammond’s home attire was faded blue jeans. They were perfect for the gardening she loved. During the war the Hammonds had a vegetable garden, a “Victory Garden” as they were called, the idea being that by growing a part of our own food, we were helping the war effort. I followed their example, and was proud of the carrots, beets, peas and string beans that I eventually provided for our dinner table.

I took advantage of Mrs. Hammond’s offer to visit next door whenever I wanted and I’d wander around the house, a big Victorian that had been in the family for generations. I mostly stayed in the downstairs rooms, which had the most character, where I would soak up the atmosphere of warmth and kindness I felt there. Especially, I’d visit her daughters Kate and Jane. Kate was six months older than I, and Jane, six months younger. They were my best friends. We played together almost every day, always at their house. Sometimes we went up to the attic, which had a trunk full of old clothes we could dress up in.

The Hammonds had only one bookcase, kept in what they called “the music room” because there was an upright piano against one wall. There, I often joined Kate and Jane to practice our scales. Music lessons were a must for nice upper middle-class girls like the three of us, the piano being the most popular instrument.

One day, when it was not my turn on the piano, I drifted over to the bookshelf across the room and explored its small collection. There were mostly medical textbooks left over from Mrs. Hammond’s time as a nurse before her marriage. But I also discovered a slim volume called “The Snow Goose” by the American writer Paul Gallico. It is a tale deriving from a real event of the Second World War, prior to the entry of the United States. It recounts the desperate sea evacuation of mostly British along with French soldiers trapped on the beaches at Dunkirk in northern France in 1940, using many small non-military ships and craft along with British destroyers and other military vessels. In the story, a large Canada goose plays a role in the rescue. “If you saw the goose,” one of the story’s fictional survivors says, “you were eventually saved.”

I read “The Snow Goose” for the first time right there on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room. It is a beautiful story, about a hunchbacked painter, an orphan girl, and a Canada goose, but because the painter dies during the evacuation it is very sad. It made me weep. Kate and Jane, busy working on a duet at the piano, did not notice my tears.

I continued to find “The Snow Goose” compelling. Seated on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room, I read it over and over. I kept rereading it until my father was transferred to Texas in 1948 and we moved away, when I was 13. Before we moved, I thought, briefly, of stealing “The Snow Goose”, carrying it off with me, but I could not do such a thing to the Hammonds, who had been such good friends to me. I left it where it was.

Years passed before I saw another copy of “The Snow Goose.” I came across it in a used bookstore in Montreal, when my late husband Earl and I were on vacation in Canada. This lovely book would be all mine, forever. It is a nicer copy than the one the Hammonds had, a special edition with four full-page color illustrations: one of the orphan girl with the goose in her arms, two of geese flying over the old lighthouse where the painter lived, and one of the Snow Goose alone in flight.

In my home in Paris where I now live, I have a bookshelf holding books that have special meaning for me. Occasionally, I’ll pick one up just to hold it in my hands or to flip through its pages or to reread it. Recently, for no conscious reason, I found myself drawn to my old and beautiful copy of the “The Snow Goose.” I reread it that afternoon and I loved it just as much as ever. I felt a connection with my six-year-old self sitting on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room. Though I hadn’t picked it up in many years, I realized that the book had been a part of my life for more than 80 years. Yet in the decades that I’ve lived in Paris, I had never been to Dunkirk, even though it’s only about 180 miles northwest of the city. I felt a sudden desire—no, a need—to go there.

I made plans to go on my own for one week this past September. I took the train to Dunkirk, a 2½-hour ride from Paris’s Gare du Nord. My daughter had reserved for me a nice hotel near the beach in Malo-les-Bains, once a distinct seaside resort, now fully a part of Dunkirk. It was from Malo that much of the beach evacuation took place in 1940.

My first day there produced typical Northern France weather, a sky like homogenous gray soup threatening rain, and a brisk wind. Reluctantly, I postponed my plan to stroll by the beach. I settled for visiting the nearby Dunkirk War Museum, Musée Dunkerque 1940 – Opération Dynamo. Operation Dynamo was the codename for the wartime evacuation. Visiting the informative museum was well worth my time. While many of the displays and photos naturally tell about the war, the evacuation and its aftermath, I was intrigued by two photos of Dunkirk and Malo before the war, before they were pounded into rubble by German bombings. In the few hours I’d been in Dunkirk, I could already see that most of what now stands has been built since the war. Always a book lover, I bought two books, one in French, one in English, both titled “Operation Dynamo.”

The following day the weather began to clear. I went for a walk on the paved promenade, what the locals call la digue (the dike), that runs the full length of the beach. I could see far out across the water, beyond the low dunes with gray-green marsh grass growing in the sand. This was one of the sites of the evacuation. There was still wind, but not so strong, and it didn’t buffet the numerous small white sailboats I saw. In a trick of the mind, I imagined that they were part of the flotilla of small craft arriving to carry the stranded soldiers away to safety to the larger ships waiting farther out, to take them on to safety in England.

The next day, I returned to the path along the beach, now with “The Snow Goose” in my purse. It wasn’t the beautiful copy I had at home, but a pocket-size edition that a friend whom I had told about this touching story and about my plan to visit Dunkirk had kindly sent me from England. I found a wooden bench where, under blue skies with powder puff white clouds, I sat and began to read. From time to time, I looked along the beaches around me where the men had awaited rescue and out to the sea before me. I noticed how shallow the water was for a good distance out. For the first time, I truly understood the need for small boats to evacuate the soldiers. The larger boats that had tried to come in to pick up the stranded soldiers could not, because there was not enough depth. Thus hindered, they made easy targets for the German planes overhead, diving and strafing. Still, the little boats were not spared.

I reread the “The Snow Goose” entirely that afternoon, occasionally pausing to contemplate my surroundings. In my mind’s eye I could see those little boats trying to dart away from the diving planes. Some got through. Others did not. The little boat in “The Snow Goose” was one of the latter. For the lonely painter and the orphan girl who had come to love him, there was only loss. Although I usually prefer happy endings, such an ending would never have touched me the way this sad one has. I was moved in an unusual way, not to tears for a beautiful tale, but by the realization of how very close this evacuation, a “non-victory” as Churchill put it, came to becoming a resounding defeat. Yet in the final accounting, 340,000 British and French troops were successfully evacuated. They formed the nucleus of an army which would fight again, and, four years later, with Americans now on their side, return to the shores of France to eventually defeat Germany.

Though this was my first time in Dunkirk, being there was like visiting my own past. I thought of the kindness of the Hammonds and our peaceable lives in California. I thought about the effects of World War II on the American home front, with our sense of a just and necessary war, and the effort to engage ordinary civilians, women and even children like me, through Victory Gardens and War Bond drives, events that marked my childhood and have stayed with me as “The Snow Goose” has for over 80 years. As I sat there, watching families now walking peacefully in the sunshine along the beach and looking out to the calm waters and little sailboats sliding on the sea, I realized that I am now old enough to remember a time that fewer and fewer do. I realized this not with sadness or even nostalgia, but with a sense of privilege at having been a part of those heroic times.

© 2024, Alice Evleth

Read the accompanying article Dunkirk 1940, Dunkirk Today: Advice for a Day Trip or an Overnight by Gary Lee Kraut.

The post The Snow Goose Returns to Dunkirk appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

This morning, March 19, I slept late and so was out around 9:30 to buy my breakfast croissant. Because we are in a period of confinement at home, decreed by the government in an effort to stop the coronavirus epidemic, I had with me a printed certificate attesting to my plan to leave my apartment to buy basic necessities, such as a croissant. The atmosphere in the almost deserted street was ominous, and I wanted to make my purchase and get back home as fast as possible.

Going down the rue du Cherche-Midi, I saw coming toward me a dark-haired woman, middle-aged, plumpish, with glasses, who looked familiar. She must have also recognized me, for she stopped, observing the regulation coronavirus distance of one meter.

Then I recognized her. I used to see her at the bakery where she sold me my croissant each morning. I didn’t know her name, she didn’t know mine, but we knew each other’s identities all the same.

She spoke first. “I haven’t seen you for a while, have you been sick? And where’s your little dog?”

At that moment I was embarrassed. I could not admit to her that after having long been one of her faithful customers, I had deliberately switched bakeries. One day, on the weekly closing day of the bakery that I used to frequent, I had tried the croissants at another bakery located just a block or so farther on. They were even plumper and flakier than the ones I had been buying. So I had made the change.

I could not confess my sin of disloyalty to the woman in front of me. Instead I told her the truth, but a different truth. “I fell and broke a bone at the end of December, and I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks. Even after I got home, it was a while before I could walk without crutches.”

“But what about your dog?” the woman repeated. She looked truly concerned about my little wire-haired dachshund Britanie, whom I had always left attached to a hook just outside the bakery door where I, and the bakery woman, could see her easily from within.

Then I had to tell the rest of the truth, and I felt no more guilt, just pain. “Britanie is dead. She was an old dog, she was 14, and she died of a massive heart attack while she was with her dog sitter in the country. It was just before Christmas, on December 21. I was still in the hospital. I never got to see her again.”

“That’s terrible!” the woman from the bakery exclaimed. She added: “You must get another dog. Your dog was such a wonderful companion for you. It won’t be the same dog, of course, but it will be a presence in your home.”

A presence in my home. That was just the way I had always thought of Britanie. “She certainly was,” I said. I assured her: “I do plan to look for another dog, as soon as this coronavirus emergency is over.”

“I’m so glad to hear that,” said the woman from the bakery. She gave me a big smile.

We went our separate ways, I returning home to face another long day of confinement. I thought about this kindly woman and how sympathetic she had been to me. And I thought about the croissants she sold. They are not that much less good than the ones at the bakery a block away. They are a little less flaky, but not enough to make a big difference. On the other hand, the woman at my old bakery is so kind, nicer than the women at the other bakery, who are polite enough but cool, who never noticed my little dog, or the moment when she was no longer there.

Tomorrow I will return to my old bakery and the kindly woman who warmed my heart in this cold, hard time.

© 2020, Alice Evleth

Alice Evleth is a long-time American expatriate living in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

The post The Best Boulangerie, a Paris Vignette appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

At 7 AM my dog Britanie tells me it is time to get up and start our daily routine. It begins with her first walk of the day that includes a stop at Boulangerie Delattre, on rue du Cherche-Midi. There I leave her attached to a hook outside the door while I run in and buy my breakfast croissant for 1.10€.

I prefer a croissant beurre, made with butter as opposed to ordinary croissants, which are made with margarine. The butter gives it more flavor than the ordinary croissant.

“The quality of the butter also makes a big difference,” Mme. Delattre tells me. She and I both remember when butter prices went up and the Delattres experimented with a lower quality. They gave it up in disgust after a couple of weeks and raised their price from 1€ to 1.10€. Cheaper butter produces a chewier croissant, with less taste. The Delattre croissant beurre is flaky, and when small flakes fall off, I give them to Britanie, who watches for them with an eagle eye.

I eat the croissant with my two morning cups of coffee. I love this breakfast ritual, which I have followed for over forty years, first with my husband Earl, who died four years ago, now alone. I have held to it like a treasure, to remember him by.

But today is Saturday, August 12, beginning a four-day weekend which will culminate on Tuesday, August 15, a legal holiday called Assumption. It celebrates the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary to heaven at the end of her earthly life. The French call such cobbled together long weekends ponts or bridges. This holiday looks to me like a consolation prize for those businesses unable to take their fermeture annuelle (annual closing) in August. More businesses seem to close for this one than for Christmas.

The hunt is on

Knowing that Boulangerie Delattre will be closed for the whole month, I go straight to Boulangerie Thevenin on the rue de Rennes, a bit farther from home. Their croissant beurre, also 1.10€, is large and flaky, just as good as Delattre, but I don’t like to leave Britanie hooked up alone by the door in this busy area where I cannot see her from inside.

Alas, their “engineers,” as Earl used to call them, have built the holiday “bridge” and Thevenin is closed. A sign on the door tells me this boulangerie will reopen on Wednesday, August 16th.

Britanie and I walk several blocks further to Eric Kayser at the corner of rue de Sèvres and boulevard du Montparnasse. Eric Kayser is a chain with twenty locations, three of them in New York. I have always distrusted chain stores because their quality can vary so much. After a long wait in line I pay 1.20€ for my croissant beurre, thinking that for the 10 cents more than I am used to paying it had better be good. It is flaky enough, but it has a burnt spot on the bottom.

The following day, Sunday, August 13, Eric Kayser is closed. I remember that the bakery and pastry shop Gérard Mulot, a good deal farther from home, near the Marché St. Germain, is open on Sundays. Better known for its pastries, I don’t find the Mulot croissants as good as either of the other two. They are chewy rather than flaky, and again I remember a burnt spot on the bottom of the last one I had. It also costs 1.40€. But I am desperate, so Britanie and I trek down there, only to find they are taking the whole month off.

On my way home I pass several other boulangeries, including a big chain one, Secco. All are closed today. At last I remember Boulangerie La Parisienne, at the corner of rue de Vaugirard and rue Madame. It’s one of seven shops owned by a baker who in 2016 won the presitigious Best Baguette in Paris competition which made him the official supplier to the Elysées Palace (official residence of the French president) for a year. I stand in an interminable line of mostly English speaking tourists struggling to order in French. My croissant costs 1.20€, it is the largest one I have found yet, and it is nice and flaky. To me, it’s also tasteless. After I eat half of it, I give the rest to Britanie. She nibbles it without enthusiasm.

On Monday August 14th, I assume Eric Kayser will be open, since it was closed the day before. It is, but when I get there around 10:30, they are sold out of croissants. Secco is, however, open, and I take home a croissant that is more than chewy, it is almost tough, for which I again pay 1.20€. This time Britanie gets three quarters of my rejected croissant. She does not lick her dish to get every crumb.

Eric Kayser has announced that its boulangerie will be open on August 15, Assumption Day itself. It keeps its promise. I go early, at 9 AM, and find a breakfast croissant that is reasonably flaky, reasonably buttery, bottom unburnt this time.

By August 16, the worst is over. Thevenin has reopened, and will see me through until my favorite Boulangerie Delattre reopens at the end of the month. I will then be at peace until next August, when Britanie and I will set out again on the Great Croissant Hunt.

© Alice Evleth, 2018

Alice Evleth is a long-time American expatriate living in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

The post Holiday in Paris: The Croissants of August appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

An idea comes to me. Why not an afternoon in a park? I live near the Jardin de Luxembourg, in the middle-class 6th district. It is a formal garden in one part, with tennis courts in another. A fountain created at the initiative of Queen Marie de Médicis has been placed to one side. The garden now belongs to the French Senate. There I can enjoy watching ducks swimming in lines in the center pool, or admire 106 statues, but I must stay off the grass. I don’t feel like going to the Luxembourg Garden today. I know it too well. Since it’s vacation time in Paris, I’m in the mood to try something new and a bit less formal.

I consult Google, make a list of a dozen parks I don’t know. The one I choose is the Jardin de la Folie Titon, on the rue de Chanzy in the 11th district of Paris, a racially mixed working class area some distance from my home. I choose it because it sounds small and cozy, a real neighborhood park, but especially because I have never heard of it before.

When I reach the park I learn that it does have some history connected with it. At the entrance, a sign tells me about it. The Folie Titon was a wallpaper factory built here before the French Revolution, and it participated in that event’s history.

A plaque on a wall on the nearby rue de Montreuil says that on April 28, 1789, a few days before the opening of the Estates General, the factory was burned during a people’s riot that was harshly repressed. Another plaque states that the first manned hot air balloon took off from this site October 19, 1783. The factory was rebuilt, but then demolished permanently in 1880. A middle school now stands on the site, built in the architectural style of the small factories which still exist in the neighborhood. It features broad windows across each floor, overlooking the park. The school is named Pilâtre de Rozier, after the 1783 balloonist.

The Folie Titon Garden is designed with a circular path around a big lawn, where today, couples and families are sitting or lying. There are no “keep off the grass” warnings here. An informational sign tells me about a lily pond at the far end of the park, recently installed to encourage “aquatic biodiversity.” There I see water lilies with tall reeds behind them, and a goldfish swimming around. In front of the pond are a variety of flowering and aromatic plants, honeysuckle, nasturtium, fuchsia, sage, and even a few vegetables, cherry tomatoes and squash.

I sit down on one of the numerous benches placed along the path, and watch the people around me. There are other bench sitters, most of them elderly white men. On the lawn there is a mother with a curly headed brown-skinned boy who looks to be about four. He is having a fine time chasing the butterflies flitting around the plants that separate the lawn from the path. He takes time out from his chase to greet me. “Bonjour,” he says. “Bonjour,” I reply. I can see his mother watching him from the lawn, but she does not get up. She must not consider me scary.

What could be scary is the group of teenage boys clustered near one of the park’s exits, not far from the lily pond. They are blacks and Arabs, and they are talking loudly. They stand very close together, and it’s hard to tell just what they are doing. Are they smoking weed? Could they be a gang? I am apprehensive, but relax when I see that the teenagers are ignoring all of the other users of the park, who are also ignoring them. Nobody seems afraid, so I will not be, either.

Two young women, one white, one black, dressed in summer casual clothes, pass my bench. They must live in the neighborhood, I think.

Just beyond me, they stop and look at the middle school. They have a Paris guide, and one reads to the other from it. Once they have finished reading, they take pictures with their phones, then they leave the park. “Why, they’re tourists!” I think to myself with amusement. I thought the only tourist in this little-known, out-of-the-way neighborhood park was me.

I sit for a while longer, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere, then I leave the park, too. I follow the path the rest of the way around the central lawn. There are fewer people on this side, few trees, no benches.

Then I see the Plaque. It is white marble, with lists of names in columns in black letters.

The Plaque reads:

“Arrested by the Vichy Government police, accomplices of the occupying power (Germany), more than 11,000 children were deported from France from 1942 to 1944, and murdered in the Nazi camps because they were born Jews. More than 1200 of these children lived in the 11th district. Among them, 199 babies who had not had time to attend school.

“Passerby, read their names, your memory is their only burial place.”

The children are listed by name and age, one by one, first the babies under four, then the children four to seven.

I feel like I have been hit in the stomach. None of my research on the Jardin de la Folie-Titon made any mention of this memorial to these deported children, the largest and most detailed of its kind that I have seen anywhere in Paris. Few people follow the circular path in that direction, where there are no trees, no benches. From the other side of the lawn, I myself did not notice the Plaque.

In 1942, when the deportation of these children started, I was seven years old, the same age as the oldest of them. In 1945, after the war ended and the concentration camps were opened, I saw a photo in Life Magazine showing heaps of naked corpses. I was ten, an age none of those Plaque children ever reached. I have never forgotten that photo, which became the root of my choice, as a historian, to study the fate of Jews in France under Vichy.

As I walk home through the Jardin du Luxembourg, my mind is still full of my discovery at the Jardin de la Folie Titon. My pretty, formal neighborhood park now seems stiff and stilted compared to what I just saw. I am so happy to live in this city where I can become a tourist and can find something that is more than just pretty, that has a personal meaning for me.

© 2017, Alice Evleth

Alice Evleth is a long-time American expatriate living in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

The post Paris Parks & Gardens: The Cross-City Tourist appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Some occasions are more challenging than others. Consider fashion standards for women visiting their near and dear in a maximum security prison. Their dress style depends on their relationship to the prisoner. Mothers and friends choose clothing that is practical—warm coats, pants and pullovers—because the prison visiting room is cold and dank.

For the young wife, a black lace dress with a very short skirt is the ultimate in prison chic. Young wives wear this kind of outfit to titillate their men. No, it’s not being mean. They know that in this maximum security prison, sex in the visiting room is tolerated. That’s why they also wear voluminous scarves, draped not tied in the fashion of chic Parisian women. These scarves will be used to turn the semi-private visiting booths into more private enclosures. The rule for everyone in the drab blue visiting room, from the guard on duty at one end to the other visitors in neighboring booths, is “don’t ask, don’t look.”

The sexy wives do not, however, wear shoes with spike heels. Those don’t make it through the metal detector. These wives know, as do all the other women, that stiletto heels contain hidden metal stiffening. They don’t want to attract attention by tripping the metal detector, especially if they are smuggling in contraband, drugs, or more innocently, chocolate chip cookies. Boat shoes or rubber sandals may not be very glamorous, but in a maximum security prison, fashion sometimes has to adjust.

© 2014, Donna Evleth

Alice Evleth is a long-time American expatriate living in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

The post Maximum Security Fashion appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

An old couple lived in the apartment. I used to see them from time to time in the street. He was a robust looking man, but he had that old man’s shuffle that gets slower and slower with time. Eventually he needed a cane. Later still, the only times he went outside he was accompanied by his wife. Wiry, brown like a wren, she stuck close to his side, ready to prop him up, to help him over a rough spot or catch him if he fell. His face had a grim set to it; these carefully supervised walks were surely not a pleasure, more like a duty he knew he had to do to keep going.

Then I stopped seeing the old man out on the street. I saw him only between the roses of the stained glass window, sitting in an armchair, watching television. Early morning, mid-afternoon, night, each time I walked the dog, he was there, with the television always on.

Today there is a For Sale sign on the apartment, on the window of a little study adjoining the living room with the stained glass. The armchair is empty. The round-the-clock television is dark and silent.

I mourn for this old man though all I knew of him was that he appreciated the beauty of a stained glass window in a neighborhood of anonymous clear glass panes.

I hope whoever buys the apartment will keep the stained glass window of the living room. There are so few beauty marks along my daily dog walk route.

© 2013, Alice Evleth

Alice Evleth is a long-time American expatriate living in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

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