Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Hotel view at Fouras

In the early 1950’s, my father was assigned to First Rochefort and later La Rochelle in France. Our family lived in a little resort town called Fouras, nestled along the coast between these two small cities. In Fouras there were some other American families living but mostly we we were immersed in a rural French community. My mother was a natural linguist and I must have inherited the gene because I got pretty good at speaking in the three years we spent there.

In the final years of my parent’s lives my brother and I were caregivers and during that time we resolved to return to Fouras and see what had changed. In October of this year we acted on our resolution. Katz, asked me if there were any pictures and I resolved to devote some of my blogs to showing some of the snap-shots that were taken and explain the context in light of a time lapse of over fifty years.

This first one shown above is from the hotel in Fouras where we stayed. It’s from the balcony of our room. The hotel was one that caters to tourists providing seasonal condos. October was the beginning of the off-season although the rate didn’t seem to reflect it. Still the room was clean and spartan with a kitchenette designed to attract a family drawn to the beach and sunbathing. When the tide goes out there are mud flats that are said to have medicinal qualities.

I often find in my dreams at night events tied to the geography of the village. I will be talking to someone along the seawall, walking in the market, eating French bread or walking along the rural trails with my dog, Benoit. The streets and landscape is forever etched into my memory and I wondered how much had charged in the half-century I had been away. The answer, surprisingly enough was very little. It was the same place and little had changed from how I remembered it.