The 24 Hours of LeMans? Here in La France Profonde we do better than that. We have the 24 Hours and 1 minute of Vimoutiers! There’s no need to buy tickets in advance, no deluge of advertising to cope with and there’s definitely no worry about the roar of engines destroying your eardrums.

In fact, there is no engine roar at all. The reason? All the vehicles in the race are pedaled. Also, they are homemade, four-wheelers generally set on bicycle tires. Sort of soapboxes with attitude.

And what attitude! One was built to resemble a pirate ship, another an egg with a chick bursting out. Still another was The Wicked Witch of the West. There was also a fish, a squirrel and a Smurf. Best of all was a car covered in fake fur to look like a bear complete with a fish hanging out of his mouth.

The “design” did not stop there. All the drivers–adults, believe it or not, and both men and women–were costumed to fit their vehicules and the “pits” for each of the race entries was decorated to match. The team of the pirate ship hung out in a tent draped with fish net, cutlasses and a skull and crossbones flag.

Our favorite, the bear, had a den in a woods of branches, and as you might guess, the “newly-born” chicken had a nest of straw and hay.

The teams pedaled the circuit around the town throughout the night, changing drivers when fatigue set in. The winner was the car that made the most circuits.

And that was….. Well, to be honest, I don’t know. 24 hours was enough. I just couldn’t last that extra minute to find out who got the cup.

It was a year ago that we spotted an old man shuffling down a road near us. His shoes were untied and he did not look steady on his feet.  Close beside him was a dog, a smallish, shaggy German Shepherd.

The man turned out to be our mayor, Monsieur Genet, and it was the first time we had seen him in months. He looked as if he had aged decades.  What on earth had happened? 

We got out of the car to offer to help, but we could not get close to the mayor. His dog blocked our approach no matter which way we tried. When the mayor recognized us, he reached out his hand to shake ours. Then the dog visibly relaxed and laid down at the mayor’s feet.

Mayor Genet could tell we were startled by his appearance and quickly launched into an explanation.  He had just been released after three months in the hospital, several weeks of the time spent in intensive care.  This was his first outing–a walk around the block, so to speak. He said he was determined to get his strength back in time to perform his son’s wedding the following month.

“But why were you in the hospital? What was wrong?” we asked. The mayor began talking again; his dog shifted positions, moved even closer to the mayor and watched us steadily.

“I had gone to get my bull and take him to the abattoir,” Mayor Genet said.  “As usual my dog was with me.”

The bull, apparently sensinng his fate, attacked as though he had been trained for a bullfighting ring.  The moment the mayor entered the field, the bull lowered his head and charged the mayor, catching him on its horns and tossing him into the air.  The fall knocked the breath out of Monsieur Genet, and before he could get up, the bull gored him several times, leaving the mayor nearly unconscious and unable to move.

The dog, considered the sweetest animal in the community, suddenly turned  vicious, and went straight for the bull’s neck and sinking his teeth in. The bull threw him off, but the dog did not stop even though he, too, was gored and bleeding.

It was enough to drive the furious animal to distraction and give the dog a few precious seconds to grab the mayor’s arm and drag him under the gate, out to safety.

Then the wounded dog took to his heels and ran home.  He created such a ruckus that the mayor’s wife realized something was terribly wrong and followed him back to the field.

It took a series of operations to put the mayor back together, and by then, a group of local farmers had corraled the bull and taken it to the slaughter house. 

They also managed to get the protesting dog and carry him to the veternarian’s for his own surgery and treatment.

When the mayor finally returned home, the dog immediately took up a position next to him, a spot he still has not relinquished.  “He saved my life,” the mayor said to us, and his eyes misted over as he remembered. The dog reached up and licked his hand.

And the name of this brave and noble hound? Well, the mayor must have a sixth sense.

He took the dog in as a little puppy and named him Royale.

Oh yes, Mayor Genet was well enough to officiate at his son’s wedding.  Guests said it was the only wedding they had ever attended where a dog appeared to be helping with the ceremony.

Madame X loved her calvados. Some said she was a little too fond of the apple brandy of the region. She said she would never give it up. When she died the area makers and merchants of the strong liquor mourned her passing and said, “Well, now she’ll have to give it up.”

They reckoned without the devotion of her husband.

It was in the early 1900’s then and Madame X’s hometown of Camembert was already famous for its cheese–but not much else. Like today, it was a sleepy, bucolic place.

When the day of Madame’s funeral arrived, mourners couldn’t help but notice a distinctive odor pouring from the family crypt in the Camembert churchyard. As pallbearers carried the casket out of the church, the door of the crypt was opened and people were overpowered by the smell.

There at the bottom of the crypt was a special coffin ordered by Monsieur X. It was filled with calvados. The pallbearers gingerly lowered the casket on ropes and the liquor sloshed against the sides, spilling over the edges.

The crowd was stunned, but Monsieur X maintained a zen-like calm. “It’s what she wanted,” he said, “to always have her favorite drink close at hand.”

After the excitement of the funeral and all the gossip it generated, the village of Camembert gradually returned to its quiet ways, concentrating on its apple trees and the cows who grazed under them.

One Saturday night, however, the village was awakened by raucous noise coming from the vicinity of the cemetery. The mayor and a couple of city councilmen who lived nearby went to check on the commotion. It was a group of young men from the area, all a bit worse for the wear. The officials sent them on their way.

It was only after the party was repeated on several successive weekends that a suspicion crept into the minds of the more cynical villagers. Had Madame X been separated from her beloved calvados after all?

Monsieur X stormed down to the cemetery and opened the crypt. Inside was a tube of the type used for siphoning apple juice–or calvados–from barrels.

The coffin was dry.

Exactly what happened next has been lost in the fog of history. Were the cops called? Were the young men arrested and charged with grave-robbing? Was the calvados any good?

Whatever, Monsieur X refused to accept defeat. He had the coffin refilled and the crypt fitted with a heavy, barred door.

Every now and then there was talk of “evaporation” from the coffin and sometimes neighbors said they could hear happy laughter in the cemetery on soft, summer nights,. But others pointed out that evaporation was the “angel’s portion” of any spirit, so perhaps what they heard was nothing more than angels enjoying themselves. Certainly there was no evidence left of anyone’s presence. Come morning, the crypt always looked untouched.

And so it does to this day.

“Your phone has been ringing busy since last night,” said a neighbor who arrived at our door late one morning.  “I’ve been trying to invite you to dinner this weekend, but I can never get through.  Your phone must be off the hook.”

Oh no, we thought.  Our cat has done it again.  She has the habit of jumping up to the window to survey her property in the winter; in the summer that open window is her preferred means of entry and exit.  Sometimes the phone beneath the window becomes her launching pad. Then her jump jiggles the receiver just enough to make our line ring busy, but not enough for us to notice what’s happened.

We went to the phone, but it was securely on its hook.  Our cat was, shall we say, ’off the hook’ this time.  As if to prove the point, she chose that moment to hop out of her basket and rub against our legs.  “Please don’t blame me,” she seemed to say. “I’m innocent.”

While she purred, we picked up the phone and listened.  Nothing.  The telephone in our bedroom was well-hooked, too.  So was the one in our office, but all of them sounded dead.

With no mobile phone service reaching us, we followed our friend home to call the telephone company.

“We’ll check the line and call you back,” they said.  A few minutes later, they called.

“Your phone is off the hook,” said the technician. 

No, we told him, that was not the case.  He insisted it was and said we had to verify it.  No matter what we said, he remained unconvinced.  We sat down in our friend’s kitchen, had a cup of coffee, talked about the upcoming village fete, and then dialed the phone again.

“Our phone is definitely NOT off the hook,” we announced.

“I’ll check the lines again,” he responded.

“Look, we could be going back and forth like this all day.  Couldn’t you just send someone out?” we asked.  Muffled discussions ensued at the other end of the line, and then this: “Okay, but not until tomorrow.”

The next morning we spotted a France Telecom van near the little cement hut where all the area lines meet.  From our kitchen window, we could see a man going in and out, then crawling into the van and driving our way. 

“Everything seems okay on the line, but your number is ringing occupe,” he said.  “I think one of your phones is off the hook.”

Mustering our self-control, we swallowed our comments.  Instead we invited him in to check for himself.  “They all seem all right, not one off the hook,” he pronounced after a tour of the phones in the house.  A snide ”Oh, really?” quivered on our lips; we surpressed it.

“There’s got to be another problem,” he decided.  I’ll see about the lines inside.”  We sighed.

Ordinarily this would be a pretty straight-forward job.  However, a few years earlier we had had the brilliant idea of hiding all those unsightly electric and phone lines.  In our top floor office where the ceiling angles down to meet the floor we built a sort of mini-wall or brick skirting board and tucked the cords behind it.  We had also cleverly built-in the electric sockets. Naturally we had sealed the top of this muret or little wall, and it looked great. 

It was not cleverness we were feeling, however, as we watched the technician tear the whole thing apart, following the lines around the inside perimeter of the house. 

“Nothing wrong here,” he said as each section was ripped up and the dirt and plaster board flew.  He even seemed rather gleeful as the chunks of mortar hit the floor.

There was only one more bit to go when a triumphant “Aha!” was sounded.  “Here’s your problem and I know who the culprit is.” 

There beneath our formerly lovely muret was a wire with a tiny bite out of it–and the telltale droppings of a mouse.  Obviously the taste of phone lines was not to the mouse’s liking; he had only sampled and not stayed to chew his way through.  But he had done just enough to make our phone sound permanently occupe.  One little bite from him and we had one enor-mouse mess.

We should not have been surprised; mice are a fact of country life.  Every winter they head for the house as the weather gets colder.  One night as we curled up in front of a blazing fire, a field mouse popped its head up through a crack in the floor beside the fireplace.  It was nothing but big ears and puzzled eyes, as cute as a stuffed toy.  And our cat thought it was HER toy.  The ears quickly vanished down the crack with a squeak.  It was, of course, not an only child and we had to take forceful measures to move its family out of our house.

Soon thereafter we installed a new dishwasher that had been temporarily stored in our barn.  Nothing we did would make it work.  We called in a repairman who laughed when he pulled the machine out of its slot under the counter.  “Here’s your problem,” he said.  “Mice have gnawed away part of the tubing.”  Our big-eared friend and his family had taken their revenge.

Back upstairs we watched as the technician patched the lines.  How could such little creatures turn our lives upside down?  We resigned ourselves to some continuing battles and to cleaning and rebuilding the muret.

But at least the phones worked again.  We called our neighbor to say we would be there for dinner.

The evening was very nice.  Our phone line saga was the hit of the party.  The guests all laughed and made witty little knowing comments about country life, but no one, we noticed, offered to help us clean up the mouse-made mess.