In 1966, my mother was sick of me hanging around Ithaca getting into trouble and signed me up for a visit with a French family. There were 20 of us from New York State, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. We went by boat from New York to Le Havre. As I remember, the boat was only for students. This was probably near the time when airplanes became so much cheaper than boats that no one took boats anymore. The alcoholic drinks were 15 cents each and I partook of them significantly even though I was just 15 years old. My best memory is listening to the song “Black is Black” on British radio at sunrise just as we were able to see Land’s End in England. Here’s the newspaper article about our arrival in Clermont-Ferrand, France. In 1966, I drew an arrow to me, my “brother” Marc Cubertafont, and his father. IMG_3634

On this day in 2015, I was on my way to meet Marc Cubertafont after 49 years. Margaret was worried that this could be a disaster in that I would be imposing on someone who barely knew me so long ago. I started to worry about it too. The train took 3 and a half hours and was much more fun than the train in 1966, which I remember as being a coal train. I was full of dust and probably the smell of alcohol.

Clermont-Ferrand has a population of about 140,000 and is best known for the manufacture of Michelin Tires. There was no need to spend any time there. I was led to believe that the car rental place was right in the train station. No one seemed to know where it was and it turned out to be a 10-15 minute walk, which wasn’t fun with my heavy bag and backpack. I hadn’t driven stick shift in probably 30 years but it’s almost impossible to find an automatic car in France. I’m proud that I did’t stall at all but I did ride the clutch a “tiny bit” at the beginning. I thought I had messed up when the engine went off when I was in neutral but when I returned the car they told me that it was an energy saving feature. Now they tell me! My drive was a little over 1 hour, through heavy traffic in the city, then very windy mountainous roads with many traffic circles. I was told to follow signs for Solignat and when I got there I thought I was lost. I turns out Solignat is a collection of 4 houses of which Marc Cubertafont, my “brother” from 1966 lived in the third one.