Paris
France, with my son and daughter, was a true adventure. The day we were all due to leave, Graham lost his passport. He eventually found that it had fallen into the trash can…..
He did make it, thought, and arrived in Paris the day after we did. In Paris, we went to Napoleon’s tomb, that was cool. We left the next morning for Annecy. It is my kid’s favorite town on France, at the foot of the Alps, on a beautiful lake. When we arrived, it was Market Day. That is where he and I fell in love with baguette sandwiches. (To this day, it is my first buy when I hit France….yummmmmm.) We saw a couple of great castles, driving around the lake and the kids had a nice stroll in the green and flower filled park.
Graham is a tagger and quite a good artist but he learned a thing or two about tagging in France. One evening we are strolling home from a bar and he decided to leave his mark, “HABITS” on a column. It wasn’t 5 minutes later when an unmarked Police car pulled over and 2 plain clothes cops nabbed him. They put him in the car, which distressed me but at the same time, I had to say “You’re on your own, son”. One of the officers came over and, quietly, told me that I couldn’t come along but that Graham would be back at the hotel before too long. As it turned out, he had to show up at the “Hotel de Police” the following day at 2 pm. He did and they scolded him and let him go, the duty officer grumbling that he shouldn’t have to waste time processing tourists.
The Criminal
Our next stop was Equiblues rodeo, in St Agreve, for 4 days. I was playing with Will Taylor and Strings Attached. We stayed at Le Cabistou, run by Richard and Sylvianne Vincent and their daughter, Capucine. It was 2nd stay there, Mina and Graham’s first. I remember driving up into the mountains and Graham looking out the window saying “This is, like, Lord of the Rings forest!” One day, when the rest of the group went out day tripping, Graham stayed back and read Keith Richard bio, “Life”. He sat on the deck and had wine and cigarettes and, later, said that it was one o the best days of his trip.
Sylvianne, Capucine and the band at Le Cabistou.
AMBIEN NIGHT: Well, the last night of the four day festival, at Equiblues, there is always a big Jam at Chateau LaCour, the 13th century castle where the bands rehearse. All of the musicians just get in a pile and play. At one point, Graham grabbed the acoustic guitar and started playing rhythm to “Workin’ Man Blues”. He stayed up there for a while and had a wonderful time. As we left to go back to the hotel he said “Dad, I really liked playing Country music!” We walked out into the field to visit a horse that he had petted earlier in the day. The look on his face tells the next part of this story….
We had both had our share of wine. On the way to the car he grabbed my arm and said “Whoa, I think I’m hallucinating.” He was “goose stepping” with his legs flying high in front of him. I asked “From what?” and he told me he had taken Ambien so he could get some sleep because I had kept him awake, snoring the night before. 
When we got back to the hotel Mina was still awake. I told Graham to go to bed and got in bed, myself. He started saying crazy shit, like…”How many of you are over there?” and “Damn, I have to get Mick drunk again.”. Mina had her head under the covers looking at her computer and she said “Ambien and Alcohol..this sin’t good.” She said he wasn’t in danger but wouldn’t remember this in the morning. The next hour was hysterical! He aid “I gotta go out to the car and get my gun.” and “Are you the purple bunny?” after a while I got testy and started talking to him like he was three years old. “Graham…go to sleep…NOW!” After a short quiet spell, he quietly whispered…”Mina..are you asleep or do you wanna party?” “NOW, GRAHAM!” At that point he got up and walked over to my bed, bent over looking at me like I was some kind of alien specimen and started stroking my hair, petting me. “Go to bed, son.”
We all went to Provence after that. We had glorious days, markets in the morning, Roman ruins, the castle at Tarascon with St. Martha’s tomb in the church across the street, Nostradamus tomb. He climbed the volcanic needle, 297 feet high, in Le Puy-en-Velay with Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe church built by the Knights Temmplar in the 900’s.
Another cool moment was when we walked out of the Asylum where Vincent van Gogh was, after he cut his ear lobe off, and all 3 of us, immediately, recognized the Olive Trees from the van Gogh painting. None of us are that knowledgeable about art but it smacked us right in the face.
We went to Pont du Gard, the aqueduct that is the second largest thing the Romans ever built. ( Colosseum is the biggest). Each stone weighs 6 tons and in a span of 40 miles, it loses one inch, per mile, from the source to the center of Nimes. An amazing feat of engineering. Their Aunt, my sister, Margaret asked for them to bring her back stones from some cool place so Graham and Mina waded in the river, each finding just the right stone for Margaret.
When we left there, I lost my toll ticket somewhere in the car. When we got to our exit toll booth, I tried to explain to the woman on the other end of the speaker that I’d lost my ticket. (This was, sadly, before Mina learned to speak French) As the episode went along, we all started laughing, including the woman I was talking to. We could hear her co-workers laughing, hysterically, on the other end. She kept saying “Where yo came from?” I kept saying PONT DOOO GARD!!” but that is NOT how they pronounce it, there, because she kept sating “Where? Where you came from?”. Our friend, Kim Miller, was in the car with us that day and every time I run into her, she laughs and says “WHERE YOU CAME FROM?”. Eventually they toll woman said something and gave me the amount I owed. We wished we had the sense to have taken video because it was insanely funny.
A trip to France with my kids was the trip of a lifetime. Seeing my son having aball playing country music was delightful. Watching Graham and Mina, from a distance, walking together in a park, in Annecy, made me teary. The whole thing, the Police, Ambien and the sandwiches, was wonderful.
Annecy sammiches!!
My Entertaining Life-Steve Carter 