Driving in Europe

France, 1978

            I was a hot-shot maritime lawyer, who had a case where my injured seaman-client was seen once in a hospital in Saint-Nazaire, France. Saint-Nazaire is a beautiful coastal town in Brittany where the view and the food are incredible. George Reese had told me about this town. The Germans in WWII had built a thirty foot cement roof over a submarine base there. Their troops refused to surrender when the allies landed, so the allies bypassed them, and the Germans held onto the base until the end of the war.

            I noticed the deposition of one Doctor DeLouche, who had treated my client at the Saint-Nazaire hospital for his minor injuries. My first wife and I flew to Paris where I borrowed my in-residence, writer-friend’s Volvo and proceeded to drive to the coast. When we got to the hospital, my French was so poor, when I asked to see the doctor, the nurse thought my wife was having a baby, wheeled out a gurney, and attempted to hoist her up prior to her heading for the delivery room. I was actually going to let her do it, just to see what would happen. But my wife always had more sense than I and we finally straightened everything out. My wife did not have a baby, I took the doctor’s deposition, and we left Saint-Nazaire.

            On to Quimper to buy some ceramics and where we witnessed a poorly attended communist party rally. Then on to Mont Saint-Michel, the beautiful mountaintop monastery and city, where the breakfast omelet was born and raised. Passing through a small coastal town, I came to point where another road intersected our main artery on the right. Out from nowhere came this WWII Citroen who smacked the right side of our Volvo, my friend’s car. I stopped when I realized what had happened, looked at the Citroen, and saw the entire hood was in the street. Lying next to the hood was this diminutive Frenchman, arms spread wide, and groaning as loudly as he could.

            I said to him in English, “Get up. I don’t speak any French.”

            Oddly enough, this little guy jumped up from the pavement and began screaming at the top of his lungs, “A droit, a droit, a droit.” He kept screaming and pointing to the road he was driving on and finally I understood that he had the right of way at that particular intersection. He began, in a threatening voice, to call the gendarmes but I already knew that in France, if one has an accident without injury, you merely exchanged insurance information on a form supplied by your company and kept in the glove compartment.

            Finally the Frenchman and I reached the nub of the problem. I picked up the hood of his old Citroen and noticed it was previously tied onto the body of his vehicle with a rope. The rope popped in the accident and that’s what caused the hood to fly off. You couldn’t tell the old damage already done to the Citroen from the new damage caused in this wreck. When the Frenchman saw me pick up the hood and the rope, he began laughing out loud and said he would settle with me in francs for about one hundred dollars. My French improved and we settled on the spot.

            Cheapest wreck I ever had.

Italy, 1987

            For my fiftieth birthday, my new wife and I took a trip to Italy during the month of October. We had drunk several bottles of wine during lunch and staggered to the next small town where we were staying the night. As fate would have it, we got hungry again and climbed into our rented vehicle and proceeded to a nearby eatery where we consumed another few bottles of vino. 

            Leaving the parking area of the restaurant, I backed up a little too fast from our parking spot, backed across the main thoroughfare, and smacked into an ancient stone wall, probably erected by the Romans in the first century. As you might suspect, those damned Romans built fairly strong walls back then and the rear of my rental looked like a heat-seeking missile had found its mark.

            As we drove throughout Italy, the little old Italian ladies would cross themselves when they saw our car, because they assumed someone had to have died in that wreck, and they were praying for the resurrection of their immortal souls.

            Very expensive wreck; that one was.

France 1993

            I have an illustrative vignette I cite here in order to amplify the old saws of “know when to throw in the towel” and “listen to advice from others close to you.” My wife, Ann and I were driving in a town in southern France frantically searching for a Michelin two-star restaurant, as we were already overtime on our previously booked reservation. This was a rather small, hilly town, where the terrain made the city appear to be multileveled. I assumed the restaurant was located on a lower level and we were driving on the upper lever. I began looking for streets that would lead us down to our prearranged culinary treat. It was raining cats and dogs.

            I reached a point where I thought I had found the descending street, peered through the driving rain, and noticed that all the scenery looked a little weird. That is, the street looked sort of like a wide staircase. My observant wife immediately gave me a cautionary admonition. “I don’t think you should go down there,” she warned. “I saw a sign behind us that looked like it was a no vehicle route.”

            “Bullshit,” screamed the food starved driver. His blood sugar levels and limited patience had dropped to an all time low. “Look at the size of this thing,” he pleaded, staring down what looked to him as a proper street. “I’m going down.” And down I went. Immediately I knew something was amiss. The car bumped wildly as we descended each step. We did manage to bump our way down half of this cement monstrosity, when the stairs angled sharply to the left, revealing the heretofore unseen second section, leading to the street below. The remainder of the lower half of the staircase was about one-third the size of the upper portion. There was absolutely no way the vintage Peugeot could make that turn, because a large brass railing was strung down the middle of this previously traveled, and now obvious to me, pedestrian staircase. It was also obvious I couldn’t back up the staircase, and certainly couldn’t turn around.

            I refused to look at my wife, since she had sounded the caveat emptor long before we embarked on this journey and I really didn’t want to hear the “I told you so” lecture again. Particularly since it appeared the only way out of this predicament was to hire a large crane to extract our little bird from its perch. She sat absolutely silent, staring straight ahead, refusing to look at me, lest she break out whooping in hysterical gales of laughter at my gross stupidity.

            Not to be denied, our hero leapt from the vehicle, importuned the assistance of a local Frenchman to help remove the large brass handrail so I could make the left turn, and hopefully continue the downward bumpfest to the street below. Approximately thirty minutes later, the two laborers completed their task and we drove on, ultimately locating the smooth pavement of the lower throughway. My wife, who remained silent throughout the removal and restoration of the brass handrail, began humming the theme-song from James Bond’s movies; softly at first, and then increasing in volume as it appeared we were finally going to reach out destination. That was the worst “I told you so” I’ve ever experienced.

            Of course, all the local housewives were hanging out the windows of their apartments that lined the staircase, just to see if the ‘dumb yank’ was going to make it. They did produce a nice round of applause at we drove away from the scene.

            “Look before you leap,” is certainly solid advice; and for damn sure, listen to persons close to you when they say, “Don’t go there.” Sometimes that’s easier said than done.         

            As an aside to this Aesopian fable, we arrived several hours late for our reservations at the posh restaurant.  My wife looked like she had been recently peeled from the cover of Vogue, since she remained in the car throughout, while I looked as though I was recently peeled from the back of a garbage truck. I was absolutely filthy, and soaking wet, to boot. My hair hung down in my eyes and I had scratches all over my face and hands. My jacket, shirt, and pants could not have been any dirtier if I had just been declared the loser in a mud-wrestling contest.

            The maitre d’ stared at me over the top of his pince-nez and asked in perfect English, “What do you want here?” as though I were a bum looking for a handout.

            Fortunately, my wife stepped forward, defused the time-bomb by methodically detailing our experiences. After many pardon monsieur et madame’s, we were escorted to our pre-assigned seats. As we poured the last of several well deserved bottles of wine, we began laughing so raucously, that the effete Maitre d’ rushed over to quiet us down, not wanting to further expose us to his straight-laced, well behaved patrons.

            I was the now-famous American asshole (substitute the comparable French word here), who braved the pedestrian staircase in his car, survived, and was eating at his vaunted culinary establishment, displaying the same discretion I had exhibited previously during my vehicular calamity. In this case, “All’s well that ends well.”

San Francisco – 1960 & 2002

            It was only forty-two years between wrecks in San Francisco. The first was in 1960 when I was a newly minted second lieutenant in the air force. While zooming down Nob Hill in my 1955 Buick sedan, I ran into the middle of a cross street and smack into a vehicle that had already stopped at his stop sign and was proceeding forward. I missed my stop sign because I was trying to control the vehicle. I had never seen streets this steep in my life, since the highest point in Louisiana is about ten feet above sea level.

            As fate would have it, the vehicle I struck was owned and operated by the San Francisco Police Department. The two officers were not particularly elated when they exited their vehicle and saw the huge dent in the passenger side. I wasn’t particularly elated either when they said they were going to throw me in jail as atonement for my driving sins. This silver-tongued devil talked his way out of the preemptory jail sentence and got a traffic ticket instead.

            My second accident in San Francisco occurred a few years ago when I approached some road construction and a man hit me from the left. This one wasn’t my fault.

            It’s my story and I’m sticking to it.