Chapter One ( first 5 years)
I was born in a small town in France two hundred kilometers west of Paris in the department of la " sarthe " near "le Mans" famous for its race car endurance called " les 24 hr du Mans" and for its paté called " Riettes" I never really cared for it, too fat... anyway, my parents moved shortly after my birth, so I have no memories of the place. On to the next town ...
"Villeneuve L'Archevêque" This one I remember, we lived in a house with two floors and an attic, a small backyard with some sort of a cellar where they store the coal for eating and cooking, and an outhouse , damn it sounds pretty rustic... don't forget it's 1952-53 just few years after World War Two, I remember the old lady picking up the horse shit in our street to fertilize her garden I beleive?I don't think it was for her field of potatoes, but who knows?...
There was also this guy, who would go from door to door picking up rabbit skins, I was scared of him, my mother would tell me that if I didn't behave she would call "Croque mitaine" that's how they called him... translating this is a bit difficult for me," Croquer " means "to bite" and "Mitaine" glove... Ah ! I just found the translation in Google, Basically Its the "Bogey-Man"! He sure looked like one.
Anyway life was good in this town, I would run free most of the day, with my little friends we would go to the fields, the water mill with a pond full of "leeches" we dare each other as who would go put its legs in the water to see if he would come up with the suckers on them, we had one day a boy from paris visiting some family in our town I guess, we gave him a tour of our territory, first we took him thru a field of nettles,we're all wearing shorts, and then told him that to relieve his burning legs he should soak them in the water of the pond nearby, poor kid, you should have seen his legs when he came out, a couple of leeches were attached to them, he kept on jumping and screaming, we could'nt stop laughing ...
Posted: Friday 12th December 2003, 5:19 PM
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