I lived in France from around the middle of September, 1964 to just at the beginning of October in 1965, and at that time, de Gaulle was in power, and he really didn't like Americans. There was a cartoon in one of the newspapers showing him at one of the cemeteries of Americans who defended France in the war saying "Americans, go home." The whole country seemed to have adopted this attitude, and one time there was even a yarn store owner in Evreux who refused to sell me yarn because I was American!
Once we got to the vicinity of the beaches, though, it was a different story! The people there clearly remembered being invaded by a hostile force, and all the fun that entailed, and they remembered even more the D Day invasion. It must have been spectacular for the people who lived there, because all the people we spoke to had very vivid memories of it! And as soon as they realized we were American, they rolled out the red carpet for us.
I went with my daughter, Holly, who was around a year old, and my then-husband. It was a grey, overcast, cold day.
During the ride there, we went through a section of the country where there were lots of fields with hedgerows, which I hadn't seen before. France, at that time, was very scenic because a lot of it was still as it had been about 500 years ago. For instance, we were the only people in our town (Boisset-les-Prévanches) who actually had running water. We had hot running water, too. Several times, I watched the little old lady who lived next door pumping water from the well in front of her house.
Anyway, when we got to the museum, most of the people were allowed to walk around and see the exhibits, like you usually do in a museum, but when we came in, they realized that we were from the United States, and found someone who spoke English to show us the museum. There was a movie about it, and they got special headsets for us so that we could watch the movie in English rather than French.
After the museum and a bit of a walk around the town, we drove along the coast, stopping in a few places to look around, as far as Utah Beach, where we got out to walk a bit. We stayed in the car more than we otherwise might have due to the extreme cold weather that day.
At Utah beach, though, we walked around a bit, although there was really nothing to see at the beach other than the beach itself. Holly's dad pulled off one of her mittens, and stuck her hand in the freezing water of the English Channel. She screamed bloody murder, and it must've been painful. I was stupid enough to put my feet in ice water one time, and I'll never do that again! He said he did it so that Holly could say that she'd stuck here hand in the English Channel, and then he never bothered to tell her about it when she got older. But I didn't notice him sticking his hand in the icy water!
There's not much to tell of my trip. The Wikipedia entry tells more about the actual invasion, but maybe what I can remember is a bit more alive than the bare entry.
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There's not a lot on TV today (other than the White Collar rerun marathon on USA). There's a rerun of Hawaii 5-O, but we're stuck in the doldrums between the May sweeps and the July sweeps. A few new shows will be coming on later in the month because they want people to find them and build up a following before the July sweeps (which actually starts at the very end of June).
Two shows that will start their season tomorrow, include White Collar
and Covert Affairs
, and I really like both of them. Check them out!Speaking of TV, I've been trying hard to replace my ever-increasingly-malfunctioning TV. I've worked my way down to where I'll be satisfied with a 19 inch model, or anything, really that lets me watch what my TiVo is recording.
I found yet another TV from WalMart, and tried to order it online today, but they've got a new thing that's supposed to make your payment more secure. It looks like it makes your payment much less secure to me, and I really didn't want to transmit all the information there is about me over the internet, where it could be a jackpot for ID thieves, so I still haven't found one to order.
I hope you're having a great week!
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