ACP Year of 1964-65

Yes, after a mercifully brief few days in hospital, David died from a combination of diabetes, lung cancer and liver failure, according to his sister Deb who was with him in his last days. His close friend who lives nearby, had found him unconscious on the floor and took him to hospital on Tuesday 21 October at the prompting of Glenda who had felt all was not right after a phone call with David that same day.

He remained in and out of consciousness for several days even, at one point, enjoying a cigarette from an illicit stash on a bench outside the hospital. Then, after being told there was no way he was going home again, kind of gave up and lapsed into unconsciousness at the care facility where they had moved him.

Those of us who stayed in touch with David over the years, enjoyed a good friend even if most contact was by phone or email. Thank God for e-mail! And thanks in so may ways goes out to his close friend Mickey who happily lives close to David in Sacramento who was able to go right over and get him to hospital. David would probably have preferred to stay home and die in his chair with his cats and computer on his lap, but who was to know how serious his condition was. No one seems sure if he even did.

David and I stayed in touch from the time he left ACP and reconnected in person in our Junior year in Ohio when I arrived at Ohio Wesleyan University (a big mistake!) and he was already at Ohio State. We spent many weekends smoking, drinking rot gut Chianti and making even the cats cringe with our guitar playing and, even worse, our singing. We took one memorable trip down to the Gulf coast of Florida during the worst of the winter where we both thought the other was steering as we gazed at a huge full moon while we motored down the freeway in my ancient VW Bug. Someone was watching over us that night!

Later, I attended his wedding with his wife Pat, something I had no recollection of until a year or so ago I stumbled across the negatives and checked with David. (If anyone wants to see the online album I made for him and which he kindly gave me permission to use as part of a fledging “Wedding Portfolio“.

But since then, we sent regular or sporadic tape letters (we were both to lazy to actually write!) and then when email arrived depended mainly on that. From time to time as my wife and I made a trip to Napa Valley, we would connect, and when David came south we did the same. Never enough and never long enough.

I will miss our discussions and the sense of a long time friend which whom I shared the ups and downs of a life-time of thoughts, fears and progressions through the mine fields of life.

Feel free to add your memories and comments.

Now that the short blurb has appeared in the fall 2006 Au Courant, I hope I can look forward to more participation by fellow alumns, but I also hope that any alumn will comment, not just those from 64-66. Regardless of when you have experienced Paris, especially after the fall of the leaves and through the winter months, you are never the same afterwards. Sure some of the experiences will have changed as globalization has hydroginated world cultures, but even with my sporadic visits to Paris over the years (I usually speed my way to Provence) there is no place like Paris. So welcome one and all. Do share. Peter.

“My Life in France” Julia Child, written by Alex Prud’homme from taped interviews and notes from many memory sessions with Mrs. Child.

Anyone who is intrigued by France and the French and also just as riveted by the history and culture of cuisine in France has got to read this book. Even if you could care less about Julia Child herself (and it is hard not to be entranced by this 6’2” Pasadenian), this book brings to like Paris from just after the second world war up to the mid 1950’s and then France on up to the mid 1970’s or at least her continued cultural and gastronomic ties to the country.

For me, it brings back so many memories of the Paris I remember and the France I remember from my childhood. It was a time when we were there, when France and the French were still 100% French. Sure some tentative inroads were being made that were not French like miniature supermarkets, “Le Drugstore” with hamburgers, of course Coke (drunk warm), Levi’s and a few other things, but everything else was pure French. The cars, the food, the magazines and newspapers. Shopping was still done at all the specialty stores – the butchers, bakers, vegetable stalls and such.

Her husband was an artist and photographer. The book is liberally sprinkled with his black and white photographs of Paris and France. Some remind me of the photos I took when in Paris at ACP. Sadly most of the shots of the city I took were on 120 film and the negatives were misplaced when my parents moved back to the US in lat 1970’s, but I still have the contact prints which are not great but better than nothing. I will try to get some of these up on the website in the near future. But both his and mine show the buildings still with their overcoat of black soot. Do you remember having to either walk under the blue plastic wrapped scaffolding as the sand blasters were at work? The noise and the sand and water running down the gutters? Either that or risking life and limb stepping out in front of traffic to get around the structures? Either way, I kept expecting a tool or a bolt to land on my head. In fact, I think Eric Elbot and I were doing one or the other when something fell very close to Eric. A foot one way of the other and “paffe” he would have been dead meat.

But we were students without the financial resources to wade into anything but the most primitive of French cuisine. A “croque monsieur” or “sandwiche jambon” is hardly cuisine, and one of the living cultural riches that France has to offer, the core of who and what they are is their culinary culture. It defines the people as a whole and each small region individually that make up the tapestry of the country where the differences can be huge. Wine is included in the culinary tableau since it is such an integral part of the gastronomy.

What also should make this interesting to we members of ACP classes is that while Julie Child is distinctly American, from the moment she set foot in France, she felt as if she were returning home. So we get to see France from the point of view of someone who is both very American and also with a love of France and who through her food and passion for French food in particular, sought to help the two cultures come to understand more about each other. She reveled in the total emersion into the French culture. The cuisine created a bridge between the two countries while at the same time her husband Paul was working for the US Government trying to do the same thing through the medium of the arts and cultural exchanges.

So if any of you have not yet read this marvelous book, even if food is not your passion, run right out and buy it or send for it on Amazon.com because this is a must read work.

I don’t know about you, but I find a long time goes by without giving a thought to my time in that dim and distant past in Paris. But every so often some smell, ambiance, sound will trigger a very tactile memory; usually something I would not have thought of if I consciously tried. A snipped of Piaf (trite but true), a lemon and sugar or (when I was flush) a Grand Marinier crêpe from the green stand at Grande Armée, the bow wave of the river as it wraps around a base of a bridge, a 2 cheveaux bouncing, the sound of a Mobilette or Solex (I heard these are being manufactured in China now). Unavoidable dog poop on the side walk, water rushing down the edge of the road, stark trees in winter, the smell of the Metro, café tables taking up a side walk, the condensation on the glass walls of a café in winter, human detritus of war panhandling. A sandwiche jambon and the shredded mouth afterwards, a whiff of Gauloise (seldom experienced anymore), a Gallic cold shoulder (also seldom experienced anymore), a blade faced guy with gold orthodonture and rimless spectacles yelling “Priorité à Droîte! Imbecile!” (happened more than once), seven flights of stairs, unspeakable stand up loo.s, battle ax harridans in the concierge booth, a great cup of café crème with a pile of sugar cubes (great then; not so much appreciated now), waiters who took you on sufferance. And so on. It was all the little tactile experiences that you can almost taste today when triggered. I wonder how much different they are for today’s AUP students. What are your memories, full blown or snippets too. Don’t hold back. We may share some of the same without knowing it.

After my life in England and France, I found that not only was I an American at heart, but I was also a bit English and a bit French. After 20 years of owning a vacation home in France and spending time there every one of those years, I am even more so and feel my life is enriched by this. But in my 20’s, it was a distraction and in many ways a burden since I did not feel at home in any country. In England I was not English. In the US, I was not fully an American. In France(especially since my French was and is a sacrilege to that language of the poets) not French. I did not feel I belonged anywhere and did not have the network of friends or community that most of my classmates had leading back to their family, town and previous schooling. Did others of you have any level of this same experience and if so, did you find in the end that it helped you grow or inhibited that growth? Was this limited to personal relationships or did it affect professional pursuits as well? Did it influence your choice of professions? Spur you to choose a mate from another culture?

Speaking personally, I was the world’s lousiest student at ACP. I am convinced it was only by applying a huge curve on the final exams, that the college not only passed me but gave me a sufficiently high score that I was able to actually get accepted to a college back in the US thus interrupting my fall back position of volunteering for the Navy. But I know there were some very fine students occupying the same space as I was and I am interested in how they rated their academic experience at ACP. Things like: without a real campus how did they find they were able to study? Were their studies enhanced by doing them in Paris? Did the academic experience in Paris enhance their college experience when they went on to other colleges and universities? Did you also attend courses offered by French establishments? Did you take advantage of the ACP excursions and did they make any difference? Did this experience actually lead you to international studies and careers?

In addition to my two years in Paris at ACP, I grew up in England attending English boarding schools as a kid and then switching to the US Forces high schools for grades 9-12, so I grew up both as an expat American and an “embedded” foreigner in the British schools system, so I was given a rather unique opportunity to view my fellow Americans through a foreigner’s eyes. But most of my fellow alums at ACP were military kids who, while they often lived in little Americas on US bases, were also exposed to many foreign countries and cultures in a way that kids raised and educated in the US were not. So this is a bit of a mixed theme but revolves around the question “how has living abroad changed your thinking about America’s role and behavior abroad especially your time in Paris at ACP?”

Welcome to the new Blog for the American College in Paris Class of 64-65. This is entirely experimental and designed after several conversations with classmates that I have been keeping up with sporadically as well as a couple I have just reconnected with after 40 years. 40 YEARS!!!! Yeah, well actually this is precisely the point. We are all at a point where we have some life experience and many of us are facing the big “60″ birthday. Most fellow alums are too busy to waste much time in nostalgia. Despite that, since our class did not have a year book and at the time I took snap shots which ended up as some of the only documentation of our time in Paris and created the foundation of my own career as a photographer. So enjoy the scrapbook that is up at http://daprix.com/acp64-65. (If you don’t want your photos included, let me know at peter@peterdaprix.com). The main reason for this blog is that in one on one conversations with the few alums I am still in contact with, we notice that the experience in Paris seems to have given us a different perception of the world than if we had never left the States. It seems to be characterized by an appreciation that the world operates in an infinite set of shades of grey rather than the black and white that tends to be an American approach. We also seem to understand that other cultures can operate quite happily and successfully, at least from their point of view, under different sets of values, ethics, religions, type of political structure, even with rampant corruption. To be sure, everyone bitches and complains about their leaders, but when it comes right down to it, the status quo for the majority of members of populations is preferable to tearing it all down and trying to live with something unknown. Since this is especially pertinent to today’s US foreign policy, I am particularly interested in a wider set of comments from alums as to how they feel their time at ACP and life in Paris help create their view points and how they look at life as a result. So please feel free to express your ideas about your own experiences on any topic here. We may all have more in common that we think no matter our occupation or political stance. Peter d’Aprix “64-’66.