An American Redneck in Paris, and Italy Too - part 2

(Murphys Law is still in effect even in Europe. Not sure who Murphy was, but damn he mustve had a hard life.)

An American Redneck in Paris,

and Italy Too _ part 2

 

   This time I had to settle for a cheap seat, because I couldn’t pay that large price again. I had to get out tonight too, because the train workers were going on strike at midnight; mine left at 10:30 pm. Luckily the trains here are on time, if it was Amtrak I would have been screwed. But I did meet two girls from England at the station. They were nice and we talked a couple of hours or so till it was time for me to go. Little did I know, this was about the last time I was going to speak English for a while. And I still had a hard time understanding them.

 

    The 14-hour train ride was uneventful with a variety of people from every country around there. I tried to be nice and friendly like, that’s how I was raised, but they were all rude except this one guy from Norway I believe it was. He was a nice feller and smart too, he spoke 5 languages and was a friendly sort of guy. He was going to Italy to study sculpting. We talked a bit about art and such things as that but it was late and he went to sleep. I fell asleep also sometime during the trip, and when I woke up I noticed that my pocketknife was gone out of my pocket. It must of fell out but I couldn’t find it. I did later find it in my bag with it zipped up. I think that Norwegian guy picked it up off the floor and put it in there for me before he left. That was mighty nice of him I thought. I guess he figured if I woke up and found him with his hand in my pocket it would have been trouble. It could only mean two things, one he was trying to rob me or two he was copping a feel, which neither one I was very partial to. I told you he was a smart feller.

 

     Well I made it to Italy and boy was glad to be out of France, just too many damn French people there for some reason. I meet the people at the train station that I was staying with and with the customary hellos and that kissing on both cheeks thing, (I never did get used to that) we headed for what was to be home for the next month. We got back to their house and I settled in. They spoke a little English and my Italian was bad at best, so we did a lot of nodding and smiling and that was about it. The food for the most part was good, didn’t care much for these things called gnocchi. They looked too much like grub worms for my taste. They had rabbit once too, bought it in the grocery store of all places; I didn’t care much for that either. I’m more of a fatback and grits kind of guy.

 

    After supper that first night, the man of the house and me sat down and watched some TV. They sure had some weird game shows on TV over there. They had this one where the contestants would pick cards, higher or lower, and if they were wrong they had to take off some of their clothes. It was sort of like strip poker I guess you could say but with an audience. It was just a strange show but I never missed an episode of it. The commercials there were different than those in America too, they sure didn’t mind showing nudity in them either. I found that the soap commercials a bit to stimulating if you catch my drift. But probably the strangest thing that I saw on TV there was “Happy Days” with Italian dubbing over them. For some reason “the Fonz” just didn’t seem as cool as he was in English. Anyways, wasn’t long after we sat down the man of the house undid his pants and put his hand down in them. It seemed a bit strange and then he motioned for me to do it too, in my own pants of course. It was a custom or some male thing that they did over there, I didn’t want to be impolite, and so I tried it too. Actually it was kind of comforting in a way, kind of like taking off your shoes after walking all day. I still do it from time to time; if anyone ever says anything about it, I just tell them that it’s an Italian thing. Another custom they had was in the evenings that all the people in the neighborhood would go out on the sidewalks and visit and walk together. This in itself seemed nice, but the women would walk arm in arm together and so would the men. Now they don’t do this back home except in San Francisco or somewhere like that in a big city I’m guessing. Where I’m from, I don’t think they would cotton to that kind of behavior at all. But I didn’t mind watching the ladies doing it. They also closed all the shops and stores down for three hours at lunchtime for everyone could go home and eat with their families. This wasn’t a bad thing I suppose, pretty nice actually, but you sure were screwed if you ran out of smokes during that time.

 

   The lady of the house took me for a ride to show me around a bit one day. She showed me the regular things like buildings and such, but then she showed me a nude beach that they had there. She wanted to know if I wanted to go and see it, I told her thanks but no thanks. I wasn’t going to go and gawk and I sure wasn’t going to parade around in my birthday suit either. As best as I could make out from her, she said that over there you could go nude on the beach when you’re thirteen years old and up, girls that is. She didn’t mention guys but I suspect that it was the same. Anyway, they could do that until the girls got married then they couldn’t do it anymore. It was all cooking, cleaning and raising babies after that. I found it all a bit strange, you know being so liberal in some things and then being so archaic in others. Since I was staying there, I felt like I should clean up after myself. I always did it at home, so it wasn’t anything different than what I was used to doing. When she saw me doing that she had a pure duck fit over it. She said that it was woman’s work and for me not to do it, she was almost mad about it. I told her that I was used to doing it, so she wanted to know if American women didn’t do that. I told her good luck in finding one that did because I never had. This really baffled her but I guess cultures are just different is all.

 

    Usually in the mornings I’d walk to the sea, it wasn’t that far to go and watch the old men fish and whatnot. There was this one old man in particular that was there every morning like I was and I talked with him a bit too in what Italian I could muster. He was always glad to show me what he caught; it tickled him to death to show those little things. They looked like baitfish to me but I bet he would’ve had a heart attack if he caught a big lunker of a bass like they got back in the South. At night you could also go and watch the heroin addicts shot up on the jetties. They were both interesting to watch I guess but I preferred watching the fishing.

 

    It wasn’t long before that ole fishing bug bit me and I had to buy me a pole. So I bought me one of those telescopic cane poles. It was 21 ft. long, and that’s a short one over there. I guess to have them that long you must be scared of the water or over compensating for a lack in another area. So I got my pole and went down on the end of that jetty thing and started to fish. It wasn’t no time before the water was splashing in front and beside me, I didn’t know what was going on. Then this black rubber ball hit me, like what the f..k? It was that old fisherman on shore trying and succeeding I might add to hit me with that bobber of his. Over there they use rubber balls for bobbers for some reason or other, I guess it’s to hit damn longhaired Americans with. Anyways, I knew enough Italian that what he was yelling at me wasn’t too nice. I did know a couple of those Italian hand gestures and American ones too, so I let them fly. He just kept his mess-up so I hollered some good old American cusswords back at his old ill a*s.  After this went on awhile, I just decided to leave. When I got back to the beach he gave me this dirty look and then the sorry b*****d spit on me and called me a dirty American. So I gave him that Italian sign with the thumb off the teeth thing and the arm up in the arm. I could see by his expression he knew what the hell that meant. I can tell you one damn thing, I’ve had funny looks at me like that before but I never had been spit at or on. Maybe it’s an Italian custom, I can’t be sure but I don’t really think it is. I think he just wasn’t too partial to longhaired Americans, but still ain’t no reason to spit on anybody. Hell I was here by invitation for gosh sake. After that I just didn’t care to fish anymore.

 

     With going fishing now out of the question, I decided to take a daytrip to Florence that was about 60 miles away. So I took a train there to see the sites and view some art that I’ve only seen pictures of in books.  I met a couple of fellers from Texas, they were both about 6’4”, big boys just out of law school. I was so tickled to talk to someone from America that I was about to bust.  I was talking a mile a minute and had them hemmed up as a captive audience for the most part of the next hour.  When the train finally stopped, those boys got off of it like two scared rabbits. I didn’t understand why they were so scared; I reckon I just talked too damn much. I was a bit wound up though come to think of it.

 

      So I went to see the museums and saw all the art, and it was pretty nice to see. But while I was outside, there were these kids, 6-7 of them and they got right up under my a*s. They were tugging at my camera bag and grabbing at my pockets and everything. These little b******s were trying to pick my pockets. I don’t particularly cotton to that kind of thing, so I tried to shoo them away. They were thicker than ticks in a dog’s ear around me and I’d just reached my limit. I took that camera bag with all those telescopic lens and camera to boot in it, and started swinging it around. It was bouncing off those kids heads and backs like a drum. They got the damn message pretty doggone quick and I was sick of this place too. Can’t a man get a little peace and contentment? It was obvious that a longhaired American one couldn’t, not over here anyways.

 

    After all of that, I was ready to get the hell out of Florence. So I found a payphone to call the people I was staying with to tell them when I was going to arrive back at the train station. It was the weirdest phone that I ever saw too, it was a payphone all right but there wasn’t anywhere to put the money into it. I looked that phone up and down; the whole thing befuddled me to no in. Gee wiz I thought, so I just decided to call the operator and see if she knew what to do because I sure didn’t. I called and when I finally found one that spoke English, she said that I needed some sort of phone card or other and that it didn’t take real money. What kind of damn payphone was this, doesn’t even take coins. Things sure are different over here I thought. Anyway, it being 1991 I didn’t even know what a phone card was for that matter; so I asked her where did I get one and how do you use one. That was just too much trouble, besides I wasn’t quite sure on what she was talking about anyways. So I asked her if she could make a collect call for me, and of course she couldn’t do that either. All of this made me wonder what an operator over there was suppose to do, because it sure seemed like they couldn’t do anything. I should have asked her I guess. I just said to hell with it all and got on the train to go back to Livorno.

 

   I went to a gentleman’s club with the man of the house and his son one night while I was there. I really didn’t know what to expect but he said we were going to play billiards. It was really pool but it sounds fancy when you call it billiards. Those were the longest tables that I’ve ever seen; you had to have glasses just to see the balls on the other end of the table. I don’t know why those tables were so long, you could of made two American ones out of just one of those. Anyway, that sure was a fancy place; the bartender was even wearing a tux. So I decided to get a Coca-Cola, and he brought it out with no ice in it. It was a big drink too and warm. I asked the fella for some ice and he brought out a sheet of plastic with ice cubes sealed up inside of it. This was the weirdest thing that I’ve seen, it looked like ice cube bubble wrap. Then he real gently took some scissors and cut one out like it was made of gold. He seemed mighty proud of himself doing that like it was a big deal or something, and then he gave me one of those looks like if that was enough. I just motioned my hand to say, “Keep them coming.” That seemed to piss him off a bit, but hell I want some ice in my drink. For some reason they don’t use ice over there, but all in all it was a fun little trip to play pool.

 

Part 1- http://www.writerscafe.org/link/195185/

 

Part 3 - http://www.writerscafe.org/link/173073/

 

 

Reviews

[Brooklyn Darkchild]

This is the funniest something I have ever read. I just wanted to scream. You've captured the concept of culture shock brilliantly, your imagery was splendid, and your personality shined through the whole piece. There are a few technical errors floating around: you spelled 'clothes' cloths, etc., but not so many as to take away the story's impact. They should be easy to fix. I can't wait to read more.

[Blue Bard]

You really Got that Twain thing going in this one man. Or maybe it's Andy Griffith. The whole truck driver down the "special road" was absolutely hilarious. Those truck drivers work awful hard. Priceless.

[Conspiration Libre D'es..]

Thats what I love about France - so many French people. In London you can travel in parts and never see an English person! Oh yeah, my dad does the pants thing as well. Always thought it was to check to see if everything was OK down below. What was the problem with where you were fishing or was it an aversion to Americans? My favourite bit had to be when you went to Pisa and had a pizza. I was hooked (fishing joke - sorry. Don't throw a ball at me...). Hope the next part follows soon....

[Adam Greenfield]

Great storytelling. You describe the situations with a style that's inviting and easy to follow. Very well done. One thing I noticed in the first paragraph is the sentence in parenthesis. In my opinion, I think it could work just as well without the parenthesis. Just a very tiny thing I noticed in a great piece. I really look forward to the next (and unfortunately last) part. Thanks for the request!