The House in Colombes

Before my grandparents retired to southwestern France in 1964, they lived in a three-story townhouse at 24, rue de Prague in Colombes, a western suburb of Paris.  My mother grew up in this house, commuting a short distance by train to her high school near the Gare Saint Lazare and later to the Sorbonne University.  It was in this house that my mother and grandparents, often cold and hungry, survived the German occupation of France and the terrifying Allied bombings of the industrial factories nearby.  And it was from this house that my mother left, in 1946 when she was twenty, for two years as a foreign student at Wesleyan College for Women in Macon, Georgia (!!).

When I was seven years old I spent the summer at the house with my grandparents, my mother and my brothers.  The house stood at the beginning of a cul-de-sac and we children were free to play unsupervised in the streets which had more trees than cars in those days.  I learned to ride a scooter that summer, and then a bicycle.  I remember being at the center of a large pack of children, tearing endlessly around the cul-de-sac on bikes and scooters, going so fast that we seemed to be lifted above the ground and were indeed riding along the walls of the houses and not the streets.  I remember my secret pride the first evening I was able to keep up with the older children without falling off my bike.  It was heaven.

Across the street from my grandparents house was a much smaller house owned by a man named Monsieur Demesy.  He was a good friend of my grandparents and we children were allowed to visit him whenever we wished.  We wished this often because M. Demesy had a special secret in his house.  He would lead us down to the basement and show us a metal safe.  Once unlocked, the safe would reveal a special treasure... chocolate!!  Not just any chocolate but rich, dark Belgian chocolate.  After giving us a few pieces, the chocolate would be locked away again.  We asked our mother why M. Demesy kept his chocolate in a safe and she explained that he had suffered terribly from hunger as a prisoner of war.  He was grateful to the American soldiers who had liberated France, sharing cigarettes and chocolate with the French.  We were Americans and thus privileged to share his treasure.  As I have said before, in France, food is often a symbol for the most important things in life.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&gl=us&ie=UTF8&t=h&cbll=48.918132,2.251124&panoid=GOLsSaHwu1BbZ0rs6cXxWQ&cbp=12,323.39,,0,3.31&ll=48.918045,2.251098&spn=0,0.0012&z=20&ei=kbZHTvG4HKSGyAWi5aHHBA&pw=2