MORE WORDS!    

Before I start to talk about words, let me tell you a story about my first trip to Paris.  I stayed awake last night thinking about it.

It was in the 1950's and I had swapped my cigarette ration for a place in a group trip to Paris. 

I think we traveled on the Orient Express, stopping at a train terminal replete with signs in French that I couldn't relate to, but which my future bride's family supposedly spoke. I guess that Canadian French had morphed into something different through its proximity to English.

A massive omnibus carried us to our hotel. The group contained only males and so, along the way, the bus stopped so we could all use a "pissoir" that stood in the middle of the sidewalk.

Our hotel was in an old but elegant building.  

Across the street was the headquarters of the French Communist Party.  From their windows they spotted the only person in our group wearing a uniform (Didi Davis was a farm boy who loved looking like a soldier, even in "The City Of Light!")

After spotting Didi, windows across the way opened and things began to fly.  Ducking quickly inside, we survived,  No Gendarmes ever appeared.

Now, what does an American do when he visits Paris?  Well, he makes a pilgrimage to "The American Bar."

That was where I met the European correspondent for the New York Herald, Art Buchwald, a very well-known humorist. He told me about the book stalls on the left-bank of the Seine, where I bought a copy of James Joyce's Ulysses, banned in the U, S.

As a twenty-year-old man, missing my American girlfriend, I purchased some provocative French pin-up pictures.  When I got back to my barracks, I shared the pictures and we all posted them under the covers of our foot-lockers,

In a surprise open foot-locker inspection by a newly commissioned second lieutenant, the neophyte became intrigued with the pin-ups on my locker and after some moments of quiet contemplation, he exclaimed loudly: "Who is the sex fiend who lives here!"  No answer was forthcoming, so he slinked off.

Our Paris group visited all the tourist stops in Paris.

  The one we liked best was the "Eifel Tower."

C'est fini.  Let's talk about Words tomorrow.

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