2
Editor’s Note—A long
friendship between an
American reporter and a
French couple he met in -
Cambodia resulted in the
recent visit of two teen-age
French girls to the Connecticut
home of the journalist In this
account he tells how he his wife
were thoroughly charmed by
“Les Girls” who were getting
their first look at the United
States.
RIDGEFIELD, Conn. (AP)
— It was a rare cultural
encounter of the teen kind that,
like a leaping doe, bounded
over the generation gap.
“Les Girls” came to our
house from Provence in France
to practice their English for a
month before entering high
school this fall. Cecile Bose, just
turned 14, was from Avignon.
Elodie Laplaud, her school
friend and my goddaughter,
from across the Rhone River in
Villeneuve-les-Avignon, was a
year older. It was their first visit
to the United States.
I had met Elodie’s father,
Bernard, in Cambodia in 1970
when President Richard Nixon
sent in U.S. troops to destroy
North Vietnamese sanctuaries.
He was an adviser to the
Cambodian government and
his wife, Nicole, was my French
interpreter.
Waiting for the plane from
Paris, my wife, Brigid, and I
wondered what French girls in
the first bloom of adolescence
were like. Incipient Madame
Bovarys full of guile and
precocious sophistication?
Wide-eyed and innocent
Colette demoiselles in Gigi
straw hats and school uniforms
truant from a Monet field of
poppies?
The smiling, slender young
ladies dragging enormous .
suitcases from the customs hall
turned out to be shy and
winsome. Their eyes were wide
with small-town wonder at the
Manhattan skyscrapers
looming ghostly in the haze as
we crossed the Whitestone
Bridge.
The Empire State building
was high on their must-see list,
right after the Statue of Liberty,
who to them still retained her
French citizenship.
“Les Girls” — they were
amused by the code name I
had scrawled on the calendar
for their arrival date — enjoyed
their first taste of com on the
cob, rhubarb, Harvard beets
and “French toast,” which they
had never heard of in France.
They loved cooking out in
the back yard over “carbon,”
charcoal, especially
“hamboogaires,” which they
piled high with onions,
tomatoes, lettuce, cheese and
pickles, smothered with
ketchup and mustard.
They were shrewd shoppers,
frugal with their traveler’s
checks and conscious of
quality. They searched
endlessly for a certain brand of
sports shoe that cost three
times as much in Avignon.
“We are bourgeoises,”
Elodie casually proclaimed. “In
France that is not a pejorative
word.”
They eagerly accompanied
my wife to the supermarket, in
hopes of encountering Paul
Newman, their matinee idol,
who lives in a nearby town.
They were astonished when
the clerk in the cheese shop
offered around generous
samples on the tip of his
carving knife.
“In France,” Cecile confided
through a mouthful of Stilton,
“the merchants never give
anything away.”
At their choice, only English
was spoken outside their
bedroom. I try not to think
what impression their stay here
will make on their English
teacher next semester, but they
were quick to pick up the local
patois: “Gimme a break, will
ya?” “No sweat.” “Get lost.”
An assignment took me to
New Bedford, Mass. The girls
came along. They knew all
about Moby Dick and Capt.
Ahab of the Pequod.
The scope oi their reading
amazed us: “The Scarlet
Letter,” “Huckleberry Finn,”
“Of Mice and Men,” “Gone
With the Wind,” “Catcher in
the Rye.” They knew more
American literature than any
native eighth-graders of our
acquaintance.
Yet they seldom looked at a
newspaper or listened to the
news on TV, which seems to be
the duty of the father in a
French household.
Now “Les Girls” are back in
Megan Mariska, a junior journalism major, took this week’s
attention!! photo of 2nd Lt. Frank C. Janik, Jr., Class of ’86, at the
Texas A&M obstacle course.
France, filling their diaries with
new adventures. This old
house is strangely empty. But
late in the evening, when the
bats fly low and the raccoons
come prowling, the curtains in
the guest room seem to rustle
with faint echoes of “Frere
Jacques” and Gallic ghosts in
soft soprano whisper of Paul
Newman.
Hugh A. Mulligan is a
special conespondentfor
the Associated Press.
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