France…Saga of a Tour de Farce (Part two)

Choosing bedrooms is the first order of business in a two-week sleepover. Assignments were made based on the most obnoxious snoring habits. Wives signed sworn statements as proof. Nocturnal quiet enjoyment ensued.

Infirmity had a minor vote. Frailty entitlements wear thin. Like welfare, unfair but humanitarian. Strong drink eliminates bad hearts and creaky joints, but not innate laziness. Some suspected closet Democrats had crept in unawares.

The trip was about wine. We wasted no time in procuring ample supplies. We took no chances and purchased the entire stock of a local winery. It was delivered under lock and key by two large Wackenhut trucks with guards. The proprietor effused delight in selling his left-over vintages and laughed uncontrollably while booking reservations to Las Vegas.

We engaged a local chef. His credentials, other than being occasionally sober, were that he had appeared on Martha Stewart. Her post-prison picture was tattooed on his left forearm. He achieved fame with a recipe for beef bourguignon and escargot. Like his flask, he kept the secret close to his vest. The 18 empty bottles of merlot gave us a clue.

We closely monitored wine intake and were cautious not to appear conspicuously-consumptive Americans. Republicans are reviled in Socialist cultures. We devised a method of determining how many bottles were sufficient for ‘enough’ before crossing the threshold of ‘too many.’ The determination was based on conversational decibel levels, measured precisely 3 hours into dinner. The perfect balance was 48 bottles. The results will appear in the Wine Connoisseur magazine.

Dinners were noisy. A certain Francophile used them to pontificate on his superior grasp of French. He desecrated it with a flatulent mixture of Italian and wild gesticulations. Finally we could take it no more, and appealed to his wife for relief. She had a grasp of her own, and used it by grabbing him where it counts. We felt his pain and cringed as she dragged him off, ranting and raving, and bolted him in the broom closet. He returned to polite society after singing 50 refrains of 'O sole mio'. He pouted for days.

Chateau toilettes are dangerous!! Never stand close when you pull the trigger. I did. The mistake cost me my favorite shirt. Toilettes have a button on the top lid…small, large flush. Unintentionally I hit the large flush button. A tsunami of tidal proportions erupted and a giant sucking sound ensued. I swam shirtless back into the bathroom. The sleeve of my shirt hung limply from the bowl. If seated, one could easily have disappeared.

Our washing machine was smaller than a thimble. The dryer operated by candle power. Mold set in. Dirty laundry mounded into monstrous proportions. Men’s underwear fermented. Women pushed and shoved. Finally a man was posted to monitor the laundry queue. Hair pulling slowed significantly and the “B” word was seldom heard thereafter. Hedonists paraded naked in the sunlight for lack of towels. The outside clothes line worked well except for the ravens. The sheets were later incinerated.

Mike preferred the basement. He contrived an invention that enabled him to ingest wine at flow rates measured over a consecutive 48-hour period. The design was simple, patterned after Lance Armstrong’s doping paraphernalia. A five gallon jug of wine was suspended from the rafters. It pumped wine directly into Mike’s veins via an IV. The flow was one liter per hour. He slept with it in the steam room and accomplished a net-zero weight gain with max hallucinatory effects. He has since patented it, “Mike’s Mighty Max.”

Hunger for food and shopping drove us into the outlying villages. Driving was risky when blood-alcohol content was north of 5.0. Except for excellent produce vendors, gypsies and Bosnian refugees ran the markets. Clothing appeared to be used consignments from Russian military outposts. It had the distinct odor of cadavers. Jewelry and tawdry trinkets were made by prison labor on the Isle E$ba. We mourned for The Moulin Rouge cabarets.

More of our Animal House adventures will appear in the final sequel, arriving next week. In it our entire visit will be distilled and epitomized, including the disastrous ‘Fig Leaf Escapade.’ Until then…..


Bud Hearn
September 6, 2012