11. Sanglier
One of the things I did not know about Elizabeth before we got married was that she is an inveterate collector. She had a gorgeous small house in the “M Streets” neighborhood of Dallas, known for arts and crafts bungalows. It was full of French antiques and classy art on the walls and stylish furniture. Very tidy. The kitchen was well stocked. The linens and flatware chic.
That looks promising, I thought.
One day I opened a bedroom door and was surprised to see a different sort of décor and style. A room filled to the brim with old New York Times and Walls Street Journals, books stacked to the ceiling, piles of papers and ledgers and files, strewn in between piles of other piles. In the distance I could make out what looked like a window.
Tentatively I asked, what are you going to do with 4-year-old New York Times (I had peaked at one of the dates)? As if I had posed an idiotic question she answered, there may be things in there I want to read again. Seeing that some of the papers had never been read, I decided to let it go and beat a safe retreat. Maybe it was just a one-bedroom addiction.
In France there are various levels of stores dealing in secondhand affairs. First, you have the vide grenier – literally, “empty the attic.” Think of “car boot sale” if you are English. Rummage sale, in other over-stocked countries in the world.
Next level up (not sure about “up” but you get the point) is the brocante. Your French dictionary offers, “bric-a-brac trade.” That sounds right. Slightly tarted-up version of vide grenier. Less, well, junky. (Don’t tell her I said that). At least the things are dry and organized into categories. You will find used books, kitchenware, art of various description, furniture, electronic equipment not out of vogue, and pretty much anything in the bric-a-brac genre. Germans will have used chainsaw blades, underwear, a fan belt collection, and electronic equipment in vogue but broken or missing a part. You can probably pick up a push reel-mower, with rusty blades.
The French are not that tacky.
Next up is the depot vente. In some ways this is just a very successful brocante, a kind of industrial grade version of that genre. There is a very nice one in Aix-en-Provence, though the last time I was there it had moved to a village ten miles away. A sign on the door gave you directions, or what bus to take. I guess they had outgrown their warehouse space. Or were driven out of town due to its now more chic, haute de gamme character. I confess I liked that store. Some very nice “brown furniture” could be found. Armoires and nice dining room sets. Books. Art.
As an aside, I lived in St Andrews, Scotland and had need to fill up bedrooms for making money during The Open Championship. The Scots are so clever when it comes to money. How was copper wire invented? Two Aberdonians fighting over a penny. They had a super Scottish version of the depot vente. Not wanting such good stuff laying around too long, each Friday morning they had an auction. On the Thursday before, you could pop by to see what kind of goods you might want to bid on.
One day upon leaving the auction store in my car, I turned and happened down the street behind it. What was the store when you went down that street? A Funeral Parlor. Those clever Scots. In one side, and out the other.
Finally, you have antiquités. Now we have moved up a notch or two. A famous suburb just above the peripherique in Paris is an entire rabbit-warren of antiquités and all the various genre above thrown in for good measure. I won’t say the name of the place or Elizabeth will start getting excited. You antique lovers know it. Think Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Provence/Luberon area. French Affaires hosted trips exclusively for people buying antiques. You could toss in for the ship container and share it with several others, fill it up, and still come out 50% ahead than if bought in the US. The place is awash with shoppers and clever shipping companies.
At least I was warned ahead of time, before we moved to France, that this was a passion of Elizabeth. The darn establishments post their signs well in advance, not unlike “Pedro sez, 92 more miles,” as you head down 1-95 to the South of the Border Tacky Capital of the Universe.
If she were busy doing something and I spotted the sign first, I’d try to engage her in conversation. What kind of wine was it we had last night? Can you look in your handbag for some Kleenex. After you’ve been married for a while, this is like a blinking light, “Brocante ahead, Chris is asking dumb questions.” Finally, I just gave up and decided to make the best of it. I might just find a nice knick-knack I could buy and re-sell at the next vide grenier shop.
We were in the Medoc during the summer I mentioned above, and the place was filled with these shops, especially in the northern part. Elizabeth would find flyers in the supermarket or on sign boards. I had been invited to play golf with some church people, and I was able to beg off. You go girl. Knock yourself out.
Now I had lived in Scotland and was well accustomed to driving on the left (wrong) side of the road, seated right and shifting with my left hand. So, I felt a bit anxious as Elizabeth got behind the wheel and secured her seatbelt. To drive on the right side of the road, in a car whose steering wheel is on the right, shifting with your left hand, in the Medoc full of traffic circles and tight roads – I knew that she was the champion of the 24-7 brocante marathon, but I was worried all the same. Are you going to be OK? She looked at me with something like scorn. Go play golf. I’ll see you in four hours. And off she went. So much for a husband’s kindly concern.
And sure enough she was there when we came off the 18th green. She shared a drink with our friends from church before we headed out. The good disposition and breeziness meant she had hit the jackpot. I imagined the station wagon filled to the brim.
She hadn’t done too bad a job and there were some nice purchases I had to confess. I was beginning to get the disease myself, I suppose.
One nicely framed picture showed a typical Medoc scene from the early-nineteen century, before Napolean III had dispatched Baron Haussmann. The Medoc, like the lands of Gascony to the south, had once been full of bogs. The land was used for grazing sheep and other small cattle. And those who tended for them wore wooden shoes and worked on stilts. Makes for a nice painting and a piece of memorabilia, I agreed, from our time there in the summer of 2010.
Haussmann brought the Dutch down to introduce sophisticated dike systems along the Gironde and at other key points. The water was drained and then managed, and acres and acres of pine trees planted. So now the Medoc has a delightfully sandy, wooded interior region, with high end vineyards on the west bank of the Gironde.
One thing that remained from earlier days, or perhaps enhanced by the forestation, was the hog. In French, sanglier. When we took occupancy of our gite for the 6-week stay, the owner (a man from church) warned us to be careful if out hiking.
Elizabeth is from Texas, where the hog is so prolific, and Texas-style enormous, and injurious of all in its path, they are culled by men in helicopters. In South Carolina we have hogs as well, but Texans would likely laugh and call them piglets. Elizabeth and I smiled at the kindly host as if to say, hogs we know, thank you.
Well sure enough, you could hear them snorting around at dawn and dusk. One morning we were out jogging and got cornered by momma—or we cornered her, with her babies—and had to beat a quick retreat.
All to say, we learned that the sanglier, like the vide grenier, brocante, depot vent and antiquités are indigenous to France and all over the country.
We were living now in the Forest of Fontainebleau and the Trois Pignons. The sanglier is thick on the ground, joined by its close friend the chevreuil or roe deer. Makes sense.
The Kings of France did not descend on Fontainebleau to hunt rabbits.