At 18, just out of high school, and a bit of a fool about my classmate Heather, I was no longer keen about a summer in France. Vouched for by French and history teachers, passport at hand, and awaited by a host family in the Auvergne, I balked and was Peter again. My parents, once suspicious of a youthful wanderlust, threw my earlier arguments back in my face.
The paraphrasing of Kipling: what knows he of America who only America knows? And Twain: cast off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor. Beyond adolescence, I was ready for the Continent. It was still our duty in those days, only a dozen years after WWII, to reach abroad, to show the young American face, even one with the occasional pimple, to teach and be taught by a transatlantic culture.
Equipped with little more than a third year of high school French, I was forced down to the pier in New York, toward the gangplank of a seedy looking passenger liner. He was to see that the even dozen of us were met in Le Havre by our French tour leader.
The others, seven girls and four boys, all older college students, were chatting in an easy French far beyond my conversational skill. Alarmed at the prospect of a strict French-only summer, I could follow but not really join the two discussions going forward. The ship, I understood, had once been a troop carrier, had sustained the bankruptcies of several owners, was later called The American Banker , and now sailed under a Greek flag.
The boys, meanwhile, were going on about postwar politics in the Auvergne. The French had withstood a terrible onslaught and emerged with their honor intact. We were lucky to be on our way to witness the triumph of de Gaulle. This, before we were even on the main deck. And when we were properly aboard, resting for a moment beside our luggage, he chose my lowered eyes for a target.
