Misty Water-Colored Memories

Today was my day to work at the book store again.  Such a good day.  I sold a set of The Great Books ($200--such a deal!) and the store was full a good part of the time--sometimes as many as 6 people at a time.  I also read a good book this week, unlike last week.  I was going to read one of the Alexander McCall books (one that does NOT take place at the Ladies #1 Detective Agency), but it didn't grab me.  Instead I picked up a book by NY Times columnist Calvin Trillin.   It was called "Travels with Alice" and though I expected something along the line of "Travels with Charley," this is kind of a gastronomic tour of a lot of places where I've been.

He describes in great deal a lot of the places we visited in Southern France when Char and I went there with our daughters and with our friend Pat, especially Les Baux, Arles, and Avignon.  He and his wife and their daughters rented a house in the Provence area several years in a row and just "wandered" the area, visiting local markets, buying local produce, eating at local restaurants.  It's the kind of travel I'd like to do if (a) we were rich, and (b) Walt enjoyed eating and paying good money for a special meal.

 

But (a) we aren't and (b) he isn't, so (c) we won't.  But I can live vicariously and I loved sharing Trillin's adventures.  In my book review I talked about taureaux piscine, which Trillin describes extensively. It may be one of the weirdest sports you've ever heard of...be sure to both watch the video and read the description.

Walt showed up right at 6, after his beer at the Irish pub and we started walking back to the car.  We passed the comic book store, Bizarro World and Walt commented on the fact that businesses come and go but this one seems to have survived, though it has moved a lot to various different locations.

Davis is a weird town.  What would be the "downtown" area is pretty small and the neighborhood areas have spread out from there, so this is a place where, if you have lived here for several years, you tend to direct people not by the sites that exist currently, but by the businesses that used to be in certain locations.  You could, for example, say "Start at the corner where Carousel used to be, then walk in the direction of where Discoveries used to be and when you  get to where Bogeys used to be, that's where you'll find Bizarro."

Walt was remembering the various other locations where Bizarro had been including "that little place where the little video rental store used to be."  That reminded us of one of the strangest experience we had during our early years here.  

We were members of that video store and rented movies from there frequently.  One morning I had an irate call from the owner of the store, warning me that Ned and Paul had come in to rent a certain movie (I can't remember now what it was).   The owner refused to rent to them because it was -- and he stressed this many times -- a hard R movie that he didn't think was appropriate for children.

I had never heard of the movie and while Ned and Paul were certainly not angels, I could not in my wildest dreams imagine that they would try to rent that sort of movie behind our backs.  I talked with them about it, and they seemed to be as confused as we were.

I talked with the guy again and he agains daid that he was absolutely certain it was our children because he had seen them in the store with us.  He again told me about the hard R movie and that if I wanted to see it, I would have to come down and rent it in person because he refused to turn it over to kids.

I packed the kids in the car and we drove to the video store.   When we walked in and he saw Ned and Paul he became very apologetic and said that it had not been Ned and Paul.  Instead it had been a friend of Paul's and his brother.  I think the guy gave us a free video rental to make it up to us.

I'm sure that Ned and Paul (and later Tom and David) got into plenty of mischief of which I was unaware, but it was very satisfying to know that in this instance my instincts and what I thought was knowledge about our kids was right.   They really had not tried to rent a hard R movie.

NOTE:  I am spending tomorrow night at my mother's so I can take her to the doctor's on Thursday morning, so the next journal entry will be posted late.