With elections seemingly everywhere this year, we asked our butcher and his wife whom they were voting for in the French presidential run-off.  Mrs. butcher went into a trance-like state and Mr. butcher went into his cooler.  We pressed.  “Oh, no,” she finally said, “we in commerce cannot say whom we support.  That might upset some of our clients.” 

“But we’re Americans.  You can tell us because we can’t vote here.”   She demurred once more.  “Look, we’ll tell you whom we’re going to vote for in our elections.”

No deal.  ”We are business people,” she said proudly.  “We are forbidden to discuss politics in our business place.”  Sort of a private Hatch Act that keeps shops from turning into brawls, I guess.

We shouldn’t have been too surprised.  She is always the most discreet of human beings.  When she saw an article about our book in a regional paper, she waited to mention it until we were the only customers in the store.  “If we get a copy, would you sign it for us?”

When the book was in their hands, it was again a quiet little dance, as she ushered other customers out and then got the book out for our signatures.

Last week we had a chance to prove we had learned our lesson.  She asked if we would be willing to donate a signed copy of the book to the local library of which she has been the treasure for many years.  We agreed.

We packed the book in an opaque bag, and, after we had paid for our purchase, we quietly handed it to her with a “This is for you.”

She smiled the way you smile at children who have cleaned their rooms.  “Our local readers thank you,” she said.

With the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, Memorial Day and D-Day celebrations, we can’t help thinking about two pilots who lie buried in our local cemetery.  They are brothers, both from Southern Rhodesia, today’s Zimbabwe.  One was shot down in June of 1944 in a particularly deadly dogfight almost directly overhead.  The other went down sometime later and the family asked that his body be brought to rest next to his brother’s. 

The two were part of a large contingent of Rhodesians who joined the Royal Air Force and flew some of the war’s most dangerous missions.   Many of them paid with their lives and are buried in little cemeteries like ours throughout Normandy.   

They were daredevils, these pilots.  They’d already shown they were brave and perhaps a bit reckless when they went off to Africa to carve out a different kind of life.  The war probably seemed like another great adventure. 

What would they think of their country today?   Would they have stayed in Zimbabwe when Robert Mugabe loosed his “war veterans” on white farmers and others there?   Certainly that struggle would not have been another great adventure.  They had fought once for freedom; they knew what it demanded of them, their families and their friends.

Not again, they must be thinking. 

At the local cheese fair a few years ago, some English neighbors of ours stocked up and decided to throw a “wine and cheese” party for friends and neighbors. 

 The invitations had no sooner been issued than our phone started ringing.  “What’s a ‘wine and cheese’?” our French neighbors asked. 

“Since it’s cheese, I suppose we should eat beforehand,” said one neighbor.  “But 8 o’clock for cheese is awfully early if we’re going to have dinner first.”

Another agreed, pointing out that they started milking at 8 p.m.  

How to explain that party form that was once so popular in the anglo-saxon world?  It’s sort of like a cocktail party, we said.  That silenced our friends for a minute while they tried to process the information.  “You mean you eat your cheese before dinner instead of after?”  We felt like some sort of alien species.

We tried again.  “Look, it’s more like an excuse for a casual get-together of friends.  They will put out some different wines and cheeses to try for fun.  Then you can go home for dinner.” 

That only muddied the waters.  “But we already know which cheese we like.”

On the day of the party, it was raining, so we drove the half a kilometer to our friends’ rather than walking as we usually do.  Thank goodness we did because we were being watched.  As we got out of the car, a neighbor stopped behind us and ran to join us.  “I was waiting to leave until I saw your car.  I wanted to be sure to go at the right time and I figured you would know that.”   Three other cars pulled in right after.  “I called my neighbor to tell them you were leaving.”

Despite some initial awkwardness and reticence, everyone soon got into the swing of things and the cheese and wine began to vanish. 

We had warned our hosts that we had a scheduled phone call to the States that night and would have to leave on the early side.  So after a glass of wine and a bit of cheese, we excused ourselves and went home.

The next day, we called to thank our friends and congratulate them on introducing the neighborhood to ”wine and cheese.”

They said they were glad we could come even for a short while, “but,” they said, “it was very strange.  Right after you left, everybody else did, too.”

We chuckled to ourselves and tried to imagine the conversations at that Sunday’s lunches with Grandma.  Undoubtedly there was plenty of discussion about the strange habits of the anglo-saxons.

While putting in a terrace in front of our house, we discovered an odd arch beginning just below the ground level.  When we dug down, it turned out to be a large vaulted space for…well, we weren’t sure what.  An old wine cellar?  The passage for a moat? A vault for hidden treasure?  A plain old basement?

What we were sure about was that we didn’t have the money to excavate the whole thing, so we filled it back in, leaving the top of the arch exposed as a bit of a tease and put a small, sloping planting area around it.

Knocking around the house was a plaster cast of a capital of a small column we’d bought it years before at junk shop.  We had never figured out what to do with it.  “Aha! A faux archeological dig,” we said, and thought ourselves very clever.

We dug out part of the garden, buried three-quarters of the capital and invested in a few trailing plants, artistically arranging them so the column just peeked out.   Then we added a few weighty stones.  An instant ruin!  We loved it.

A few weeks later we had a business trip.  We asked our neighbor Madame Mercier to “cat sit” for us and keep an eye on the house. 

On our return, we discovered our little “ruin” was literally in ruins.  All the plants had been dug up and put into a big pot.

Sittiing proudly in the center of our picnic table was our column capital.

Madame Mercier called the second we walked in the door.  “Did you see what I found?” she asked breathlessly.  “There was part of an antique column in the part of the terrace you dug up.”

She had been so excited by her discovery that she dug up the entire garden–rocks and all–to see if there more “artefacts,” but she hadn’t found any.  She thought we would want to do some more excavating, however.  “I was very careful with the plants and potted them for you,” she added.

The plants are now back in the ground, along with the rocks.  We gave the column capital to a friend who said he had an idea for a phony ruin.  “Talk to your neighbors first,” we warned.