It was about 15 years ago when our rented carriage – actually, I think it was a Volkswagen Passat – drove back in time and stumbled across an enchanting Brittany village named Rochefort-en-Terre.
Cobblestones. Crepe shops. French subtitles.
I was hooked, never more so than when we ventured into the enticingly named Café Breton and saw the menu of galettes, cider and, well, LeBretons.
A whole page-and-a-half in the local phone directory of LeBretons.
I was home. I pledged that night, as sort of a low-budget Rick Steves, that I would return to France one day to toast ciders in the land of my cousins and ancestors.
Which, I hope, explains where I’ve been the past two weeks.
I was celebrating my birthday – and spending the kids’ inheritance – in France, a welcomed respite after being lashed to the mast of an internet media startup for eight months.
We do this ceremonially, if not religiously, my lifelong friend Lonnie and myself. Lonnie and I were born one day apart and grew up in the same New Orleans neighborhood. We shared the same Catholic elementary school class and roomed together in college. We filled the role of best man at each other’s wedding.
You get the idea. This was a (gulp) big birthday, and we decided months ago that we would spend it with our wives in France.
And then came the demonstrators in the yellow vests.
In truth, the French are always remonstrating about something. Railroad workers. Students. Leftists. Rightists.
But the ongoing gilets jaunes protests have not been tied to any specific political party. Indeed, when government officials said they would consider meeting with the yellow vest leaders, the talks were scrapped because no one could agree on who the leaders were.
At first, the prime issue was the impending draconian tax on diesel fuel, and the gilets jaunes safety vest wearers were mostly truck drivers, whose wallets were being hardest hit. But the tax was rescinded last week, and the protestors dodging tear gas canisters and shouting at gendarmes in Paris has expanded to include anyone who has a beef with President Emmanuel Macron and the government. Which is, like, everybody.
All vehicles in France are required to have high-visibility, yellow safety vests, presumably in case their Peugeot ne marche pas on the way to buy the day’s bread. Hence, the demonstrators’ “uniform.”
The shielded police and smoldering vehicle scenes you’ve seen on TV have all been coming from Paris. But the yellow vests have been shutting down roads throughout the country.
Which is mostly how we kept encountering them, as we drove about Provence and Brittany.
Drivers were urged to make their yellow vests visible on the front dashboard, as a sign of solidarity. We added, as many did, a toot of the horn as they waved us past.
On our last day there, spent in Paris, we encountered a brief march of gilets jaunes along the promenade of the Boulevard de Clichy. The police had them flanked, however, on all ends, and they paraded through peacefully.
Still, it made for an interesting time to be visiting the land of my ancestors.
How do you explain the yellow vests movement?
“It’s complicated,” said Jean-Hubert LeBreton, vintner and – though we don’t have the paperwork to prove it – a possible distant cousin.
Jean-Hubert, at age 38, has inherited the proprietorship of Domaine des Rochelles, which has been producing wine for five generations. We made a special trip to the Loire Valley last week to see the winery and meet Jean-Hubert.
There may have been a tasting room involved.
“Monsieur LeBreton?” I said, upon greeting him. “I am Monsieur LeBreton as well.”
My French isn’t bad. (Thank you, professors Madeleine Lively and Mary Williams of TCC for that). But Jean-Hubert’s accented English is better and infinitely more charming.
If the working-class French are so disaffected with Macron, why did they elect him over Marine Le Pen?
“It’s complicated,” Jean-Hubert said, politely declining to explain.
What we did discover during our afternoon-long visit was that news of the Dallas Cowboys’ resuscitation has not yet reached the banks of the Loire. American “football” remains a novelty act in France, home of soccer’s reigning World Cup champions.
I picked up the country’s daily sports paper, L’Equipe, and soccer stories regularly filled the tabloid’s first 23 pages.
Page 24? Team handball’s women’s world championships.
There were three pages of rugby news. A few pages of cycling and skiing. And though this will come as a blow to Jerry Jones’ self-esteem, no mention whatsoever of him or the NFL.
“What I do like,” said Jean-Hubert LeBreton, “is the NBA.
“We love basketball. We follow the NBA. Tony Parker. LeBron James.”
And Jean-Hubert’s favorite NBA team?
Ugh.
“The Lakers.”
Oddly, though soccer in a myriad of languages is now readily available on American TV, NBA games are hard to find on the French télé. When I was there, there was a Raptors-76ers game on one night – at 2 a.m.
“It’s complicated,” Jean-Hubert said of being an NBA fan in France.
On most nights, a prime-time surfing of televised French TV offerings showed no less than six soccer matches, some skiing and the always popular biathlon.
Don’t tsk-tsk, though. Just imagine what a French tourist thinks when he turns on an American TV and sees Stephen A. Smith.
Our itinerary, regrettably, did not include le foot. We were too busy marveling at France’s Old World charm.
France is roughly the size of Texas. It’s drivable, though distant corners are best reached by high-speed trains.
We split our birthday trip mostly into two parts – a few days in a gite near Arles and another few nights near the Brittany capital of Rennes. From there it was relatively easy to make day trips to places such as Mont St. Michel, Les Baux de Provence, the Pont du Gard and the aforementioned village of Rochefort-en-Terre.
The medieval town was aglow with Christmas lights and decorations. Its cobblestone streets were busy with tourists and shoppers.
Inside Café Breton, where the combination of my surname and American accent was a curiosity item 15 years ago, crepes and cider were served with casual French anonymity.
It was my birthday gift to myself.
I made it home with three bottles of LeBreton family wine and a charming new cousin, genealogical proof pending, to remain in touch with.
I’d like to say it’s good to be back at work, but to borrow a phrase, it’s complicated.
Me voilà, Texas.
