BRIQUES ET GALETS

This year’s edition of Le Tour de France is wrapping up and I can only admire the courageous riders who are braving an intense heatwave and climbing treacherous Alpine passes. It’s nice to see the maillot jaune on the back of a Frenchman but, as I mentioned in my post La Grande Boucle, I mostly watch for the scenery, especially the aerial views from helicopters that keep track of the peloton along with stately chateaux nestled in the hills and cute little villages stretching along a river bend. Le Tour vu du Ciel archives short videos that highlight some of the architectural marvels revealed at each stage (addendum: France TV doesn’t seem to allow viewing the videos in all countries; try searching for Le Tour vu du Ciel on YouTube instead.)

This used to be a barn…

Even a casual observer will notice the amazing variety of construction materials used in France. A trained eye would probably recognize a particular region based on the stones gracing its buildings: tuffeau in the Loire Valley, marble in Provence, blue granite in Brittany, etc.

In Grenade-sur-Garonne, there are many examples of houses built with bricks and river stones.

If you find yourself in the vicinity of the Garonne river around Toulouse, Montauban or Agen, you will see countless examples of structures made with briques et galets. Although Romans introduced brick-making in the Toulouse area, builders in medieval times favored wood and mud. Brick was used in Toulouse again in the late 11th century during the construction of the Saint-Cernin church. Sainte-Cécile in Albi was built in 1282 and eventually became the largest brick cathedral in the world. But the high cost of bricks made it prohibitive for common folks.

A “briques et galets” wall adjacent to Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption church in Grenade

Mostly bricks, a few river stones… Window at the Grenade church.

Bricks are made of clay that’s molded, dried, and fired in large ovens. Clay is plentiful along the Garonne and Tarn alluvial plains: draining the swampy river banks provided the raw material for brick-making while reclaiming more land for agriculture and reducing the mosquito population. The rivers also held another treasure: smooth fat galets. Walls build with a combination of bricks and river rocks were less expensive and gradually replaced the fire-prone timber structures from the Middle Ages.

Stables at the château de Merville

While nobles and rich merchants continued to build their homes with bricks alone or paired with cut stones, farmers combined briques et galets to construct retainer walls, barns, and pigeonniers. Many civil structures such as public markets, cemeteries, and city buildings also used the same technique. I first noticed them when my sister moved to Grenade-sur-Garonne.

This old wall has seen better days but it’s still holding up.

Too fancy a wall for Pink Floyd, I guess :-)

Unlike standard bricks that are prevalent in Northern France, brique Toulousaine (or brique foraine as it is also called) is large and flat: its width to length ratio is 2/3 instead of 1/2. Walls made with briques et galets are thick; they provide better insulation and help regulate seasonal temperature fluctuations.

Loveliness at every street corner. Check out those shutters in Cadours!

One added benefit is of an esthetic nature: river stones break up the regimented structure of bricklaying and introduce variations in colors and patterns. Necessity might be the mother of invention but it sometimes leads to artistic solutions as well. Don’t you agree?

It looks like someone chose very large river stones, or got a bit carried away with the concept…

Vocabulary
La brique: brick
Le galet: river stone
Le maillot Jaune: the yellow jersey worn by the leader of the race
La Grande Boucle: the big loop, the nickname for the Tour de France
Le tuffeau: white chalky stone widely used in the Loire chateaux and houses
Le pigeonnier: pigeon house
La brique foraine: from Latin foraneus (coming from outside); suggesting those bricks were not made on site but brought from a brickyard

75 YEARS

The leading stories on French news last week were all about the celebration of a momentous event in world history: the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the Normandy landing that ushered the end of WWII.

La maison Lafon played its part during WWII

Queen Elizabeth II and heads of states gathered to commemorate June 6, 1944 with all the pomp and circumstance that’s appropriate for such an event. French TV broadcast documentaries detailing the preparation, unfolding, and aftermath of that pivotal day, the carnage on French beaches, the ultimate sacrifice paid by thousands of young soldiers in one single day.

Three of the family houses were built with stones from this quarry

When statistics are mindboggling, I tend to focus on something more relatable. Individual stories that capture the psyche of the moment. Personal endeavors that highlight fear and courage, uncertainty and hope, excitement and dread. I’ve never had to put my own life on the line so I won’t pretend to even have an inkling of the kind of emotions that might rush through one’s mind. But reading about Tom Rice, the 97-year-old US paratrooper who jumped out of a C-47 transport plane and landed pretty close to the very same spot he hit seventy-five years ago, brought a grin to my face and some tears to my eyes. I can only imagine the significance of both these jumps for him.

Stones discarded from the old quarry

So what does D-Day mean to me and my little corner of southwestern France? In the wee hours of June 6, in all rural areas of France, a multitude of French men grabbed whatever weapons they could find and regrouped in le maquis. The 2nd DB Das Reich was based in Montauban; on June 8, a long convoy of tanks, trucks, and German troops left the city and headed to Normandy. In Cahors, they split in three different directions. The 1st battalion Der Führer drove through Gourdon and continued on D704 toward Sarlat.

La maison Lafon is barely seen through the trees above Départementale 704

My great-grandparents’ farm was located next to D704, 4 km north of Gourdon. One of the houses on the property –la maison Lafon, named after its builder– sat on the flank of a high cliff. The location had been chosen due to its close proximity to a stone quarry, one of my playgrounds when I was growing up. The house offers a vantage point on the curvy road. It was unoccupied at the time and served as an occasional meeting place for a small group of local maquisards. On the morning of June 8, they gathered to improvise a way to stop (or at least slow down) the column of Germans. They armed themselves with a few hunting rifles. My uncle René –age 18– had joined the group that day and was outfitted with a pistolet; he had never fired a handgun before. The plan was to fell a tree, drag it across the road, and shoot at the Germans.

Cécile’s house and maison Lafon nestled within the trees

Word about Das Reich retaliation against civilians was spreading fast. My great-aunt Cécile had heard how massive the column was; she figured that a tree trunk and a handful of “kids” with hunting rifles (and one gun) would be no match for the German tanks that led the move. As a young bride, she had lost her husband in the very first weeks of WWI and her only son had been wounded during the current war. René had spent the first five years of his life with her; the other youths were sons of friends and neighbors. In this particular case, she felt the strike would be pointless and inevitably lead to a massacre. She persuaded them to abandon their hasty plan and to join a more organized group. It was still early morning when the battalion of loud tanks and trucks moved past the house and Cécile’s anxious eyes. Fifteen minutes later, five miles up the road, five maquisards and five civilians were shot to death while trying to slow down the battalion on the Groléjac bridge. Two days later, 642 inhabitants were slaughtered at Oradour-sur-Glane and their village destroyed.

Entrance to the cellar

La maison Lafon was inexorably linked to René. When my grandparents split up the property between their four children, he inherited that house and the land around it. In the early 70s, after spending most of his working years in the greater Paris area, he returned to his roots with his family and significantly remodeled the house. The original structure comprised four parts: la cave at the lower level, a real wine cellar that always held about twenty oak barriques; at the second level, a small bedroom and a great room that included a fireplace, a stone sink, and a trap door to dump grapes into the concrete cuve below; a large attic; an open terrace to the southwest. During the renovation, the terrace was enclosed and walls were built up to the attic level; the attic itself was turned into three bedrooms; the main floor now includes two large rooms, a staircase, a kitchen, and a bathroom; the cellar continued to house wine barrels until 1977. The musty smell still permeates its walls today.

The view from the new terrace: a change from looking at the main road!

Rick and I recently moved into la maison Lafon, which now belongs to my cousin. After a year and a half in a retirement home, Mom decided to return to her own house and we wanted her to enjoy all her space. We “think” our house will be ready for us at the end of June. In the meantime, I’ve settled at René’s old desk, in an office that exactly occupies the location of the former terrace. The French doors and balcony give me a plunging view of D704, albeit through the thick lush trees that have grown between the road and the house. Seventy-five years ago, my young and foolish uncle was watching that same road, holding a pistol in his hand, thinking he might have a chance to become a hero.

I’m only holding a pencil.

P.S. My grandmother turned the gun over to the gendarmerie after the war.

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Lily sitting at René’s old desk and watching the action through the French doors.

Vocabulary
Le maquis: shrubland; in this context, it also refers to résistance guerilla bands that were hiding and operating in rural areas.
La maison: house
Le maquisard: guerilla band member
Le pistolet: handgun, pistol
La cave: cellar
La barrique; barrel, wine cask
La cuve: vat for grape crushing and fermentation

THIS OLD HOUSE

After I announced my retirement from Joie de Vivre and my impending return to France after thirty-six years in California, I was deluged with phone calls, emails, and beautiful hand-written cards and letters from my customers: although sad to see me go, they wanted to wish me well on my new adventures. And many, many of them were also very curious about this old house I was returning to, the house that Rick and I (along with a team of skilled artisans) will be renovating.

I’ve known this place all my life. It’s located near Gourdon (in the Lot), about 15 miles south of Sarlat. Until moving to the US, I pretty much spent all my summer vacations there, along with most of Easter breaks, and a few very cold weeks at Christmas time (no central heating.) It’s a tiny farmhouse that my great-grandmother Françonette inherited. We don’t know exactly when the house was built but we do know that the (still existing) boxwood trees in front of the house were planted on Françonette’s wedding day, which was around 1870. So, the house is at least 150 years old. Originally, it was a typical stone house of the Quercy. Pigs and chickens were kept at ground level; an exterior stone staircase led to the upper floor where humans actually lived in one “large” room with a walk-in fireplace, and a bedroom to the side.

The house was extensively renovated in 1940. My grandparents were living in the Paris area with their four children at the time; they thought it would be prudent to update the house in case they needed to relocate to the Free Zone, below the demarcation line. At that time, Françonette was staying with one of her daughters; the house was vacant and no longer an “active” farm. The exterior staircase was demolished and the fireplace relocated downstairs. The lower level comprised the main room and a root cellar. An interior wooden staircase was built to lead to a couple of bedrooms upstairs. Running water was only brought to the house in 1966: until then, we relied on the cistern and the well. At that point, the cellar was partitioned to accommodate a tiny bathroom and toilet: we gladly abandoned the outhouse next to the rabbit hutch! An additional bedroom was eventually built on the west side, replacing the old shed. My aunt Maguy gave me a small painting of the house showing the way it looked in the 1960s.

From right to left: the linden tree planted in 1965; the main house; the late 1960s addition (downstairs bedroom); the shed; the cistern; and the 150-year-old boxwood trees.

In preparation for the remodel, we emptied out the house during our February trip. It’s tiny, only 750 square feet, but it has good bones: stone walls that are 18 inches wide and solid oak trusses supporting the roof. Pretty much everything else has to be redone. When the project is completed, we’ll end up with a 1250 sqft, 2 bedroom/2 bath house with a kitchen extension and an office: two essential rooms for me because I just can’t cook meals in the fireplace like my grandmother used to and, duh, I’m only semi-retiring!  That’s going to keep us busy for a while; I’m pretty sure the project will generate a few blog posts.  Stay tuned for updates.

TURNING A PAGE

My friends and customers are always envious when I tell them I fly to France an average of four times a year. They probably imagine that I spend my time sitting in a bistro chair, sampling macarons, visiting world-class museums, strolling the streets of old villages in the countryside, enjoying superlative meals accompanied by excellent –and inexpensive– French wines, and collecting a bunch of moments parfaits along the way.

Well, there is some of that.

There is also something else: many expatriates easily eschew touristic activities in favor of just hanging out with family. Over the past few years, most of my trips have followed the same pattern: a few days in Paris attending trade shows and exploring a random neighborhood, followed by ten days (or more) around Gourdon to reconnect with my roots and visit relatives.

I expected our latest February sojourn to unfold in a similar fashion but everything felt a bit different from the get-go, just as if we were wandering in a parallel universe. Our arrival coincided with a rare snowstorm over Paris. The views of the tarmac at CDG1 are never spectacular but it felt like we were landing on some desolate planet: white skies merging into white grounds dotted with an occasional gray concrete building. It was beautiful and ghostly at the same time.

Otherworldly CDG airport in February 2018

It was still snowing when Rick and I boarded our train at Austerlitz station. We continued to travel through white-and-gray landscapes. An hour and a half into our journey, I heard a loud sharp noise unlike anything I had heard before. The train continued on to Chateauroux where it stopped for over an hour. Apparently, a very large chunk of ice had come loose from under the locomotive and hit a couple of windows on the last two wagons; they had to be uncoupled from the rest of the train and their passengers accommodated into the remaining cars. Onward to snow-covered Limoges, Brive, and Souillac. There were still a few patches on the ground when we arrived in Gourdon. As my aunt was driving us home, I filled my eyes with a sumptuous winter sunset: a brilliant red disk dropping behind black tree limbs tickling a clear blue sky.

Winter sunset at the farm

The main item on our agenda was to empty out my grandparents’ old house and prep it for renovation. We knew it would be a formidable endeavor: having experienced two world wars, that generation never threw anything away. The house is actually quite small in its current state and hasn’t been regularly occupied for the past twenty years. In my youth, the furnishings were a bit spartan; each object had its place and purpose. After my grandmother passed away, “the farm” gradually became a storage venue more than a truly functional home. While it provided adequate accommodations for a two-week vacation, it was now a mere shell of its old self, no longer imbued with charm, warmth, or soul. Except in my memories.

By the time we were done, we had made fifteen trips to the déchetterie and filled the neighborhood dumpsters with two dozen grands sacs poubelle. We emptied several cupboards, armoires, two attics, and one toolshed; I sifted through just about everything, not wanting to discard anything important. Not necessarily valuable, but meaningful to me. Grandpa’s pipes, still displayed on a horseshoe. Grandma’s scarf, the one she wore to go to Mass. A heavy cotton sheet embroidered with their initials in red thread, part of her trousseau. The wooden high chair that had been used by my dad and his siblings, by myself and my sister, and by my nephews: three generations of French derrières! Lots of letters, lots of Christmas cards, lots of photographs.

An empty attic

One of these photos is introducing the post. I think my grandfather took the picture in 1927. It used to sit on the chest of drawers in the small upstairs bedroom where I stayed. It shows my great-grandparents, pépé Basile and mémé Françonnette who inherited the house from her sister. Sitting between them is my uncle René. Françonnette is looking straight at me; rosary in hand, she seems to tell me it’s now my turn to take care of her house. Normally, I would have been elated to see this photo again after some twenty years but the moment was bittersweet: René died the day before the photo resurfaced. Odd timing; sadness; a sense of finality. People, their homes, their things.

I took one last glance through the bedroom window and closed the wood shutters. I walked down the old staircase, registering the distinct “note” of each step and committing the whole song to memory. I stared at the blackened walk-in fireplace where I had spent countless hours, book in hand. I rubbed my fingers over “1940 Lagarde” handwritten in the concrete threshold by the mason who had last remodeled the house during the war.  I locked the door and walked away, unable to hold back my tears. I turned around and found myself contemplating this familiar house as if I was viewing it for the last time. In a way, I was.

Vocabulary
Le wagon: railroad car
La déchetterie: the dump
Grand: large
Le sac poubelle: garbage bag
Le derrière: butt

Through the bedroom window

LA GRANDE BOUCLE

How my grandfather Albert liked his Tour de France! Every afternoon in July, he would take a break from working in the fields, turn on the radio, and sit down at the kitchen table to listen to the live broadcast. When they finally got TV reception at the farm in the mid-60s, he could actually watch his favorite riders comme en vrai. Jacques Anquetil, Raymond Poulidor, Eddie Merckx were his heroes. Personally, I found the race extremely boring and saw enough close-ups of hairless legs pushing on pedals to last me a lifetime.

I've changed my tune, though. Not because I suddenly developed an appreciation for la petite reine: I just enjoy the scenery. The increased use of helicopters transformed how the race is filmed and won over a new group of spectators: armchair travelers who discover the variety of the French regions without leaving their living room and the 64” flat screen. It’s cheaper than a plane ticket and, if you care at all about the race itself, it gives you a fantastic overall view of the stage leaders, the peloton, and everyone in between. Muscular calves are getting short-changed but I don’t mind that.

Le Tour de France is believed to be the most popular sporting event in the world: where else can millions of fans watch champions compete in the most prestigious bicycle race sans débourser un centime? Just line up along the road; catch goodies thrown from la caravane, arm yourself with a bottle of sunscreen, or an umbrella. The weather can be unpredictable even in the middle of summer.

In July 1997, Rick and I spent a few days at my sister’s apartment right outside of Paris. That third Sunday of the month was the final stage of the Tour and the riders were scheduled to barrel around our corner right after lunch. The guys walked down the street to catch the action and a glimpse of le maillot jaune. It was a hot day. Francoise and I decided to stay in. We turned on the TV, hoping to spot our husbands’ sexy calves. No luck…

Vocabulary
La Grande Boucle: The Great Loop, nickname for the Tour de France
Comme en vrai: in person, lit. like in real (life)
La petite reine: nickname for a bicycle, lit. the little queen
Sans débourser un centime: without spending one cent, free
La caravane: the (publicity) caravan, a procession of advertising floats and vehicles that precede the race and distribute giveaways
Le peloton: the pack
Le maillot jaune: the leader of the race (he wears a yellow jersey)

Official Le Tour de France website

SMELLING THE ROSES

My grandmother’s house has sat uninhabited since she died twenty years ago. Restoring it and bringing it up to modern standards will be our retirement project (yes, I do enjoy the convenience of central heating.) In the meantime, the wood shutters remain closed except when we visit or when my sister checks in with my nephews during school breaks.

Grandma’s days were packed with all the typical activities of a small farm: tending to the chicken and the rabbits, picking and canning vegetables, working in the vineyard, fetching water from the well, stoking the fire in the cantou, preparing meals for the family, washing clothes and sheets by hand, sewing her own dresses and aprons… all essential tasks to supplement my grandfather’s modest pension.

And yet, she always found time to take care of her beloved flowers. She was especially fond of the three rosebushes planted by the front door and the kitchen window. One plant produced roses the size of small cabbages, or so it seemed when I was haute comme trois pommes. They were an unusual blend of pale yellow and delicate pink; I couldn’t escape their heady scent when I walked by. The other two were pourpre, that deep blackish-red color of luxurious satin or velvet. They produced tight buds like the ones sold in floral shops; their beauty was only matched by their intense fragrance.

Lack of care and a few harsh winters were fatal to a couple of grandma’s rosiers but the scraggly red rosebush by the porch still manages to produce a few flowers every May. What a treat to see and smell these beautiful roses! That plant is a sexagenarian, a true survivor. I hope it will hang on a few more years so I can lavish it with the TLC it deserves. And continue to feel grandma’s benevolent haunting.

Vocabulary
Le cantou: large fireplace in a country kitchen
Haut(e) comme trois pommes: literally “high like three apples;” of short height, referring to a young child
Pourpre: cardinal red
Le rosier: rosebush