I’m kind of doing payback for the Frenchmen that bothered me the summer of ’80 in France. The Italo-French Architect in the Louvre who admired my sketches, the man from Marseilles who followed me off the subway, the curly-headed copain who nuded me in the auberge laundry room.
Now, if I hear un peu de l’accent français, je saute et je parle. So this was my first subject…..
Faridj et Paule, Latteland. Plaza, KC.
I found this jeune homme speaking on his cell au bas de l’escalier at The Palace Theatre on the Plaza. Faridj Air is actually Berber (Northwest Africa, primarily arabic) of origin, but grew up in Paris. His (wife) and mother of his child are from Wichita where she lives with their son on the Plaza in KC. Thus, he wants to spend more time in ol’ Possum Trot to be with his son. But, he caters private parties and lives in New York. When in Kansas City, he also serves a client down in Houston.
He was also doing an event for an artist Patrick Courtois in NYC (Chelsea) over my birthday and there were many French people traveling to New York to attend, so he invited me to come. Being a week’s notice and I just met the garçon, I thought it premature to attend as well expensive at the last minute, but perhaps in a near future life I could live with such abandon. He put me on the phone with Patrick Courtois so that I might hear l’accent français d’un homme de Marseilles, in the south of France. It is quite different, more earthy and guttural but still sec-zee’.
Faridj has many interesting friends from France and beyond. He has another business as a middleman with a group that exports products such as what I would call “elite olive oils” sold in very very specialty food markets, each produced on local farms. As you can imagine, the packaging, brochure about the people and place, and the included pour spout is everything and very well-done. As it must be for a $12 3 oz. can of olive oil…maybe for my purse? Then again, that could be a mess.
So, might point is that he gets it with my website. Or at least the part that has to do with history, place, buildings, people, products, and food. Many of his connections live in French countryside producing food on their land in small family businesses, they invest loving hands in historic French farmhouses for guest travelers, and they make art. They appreciate good food from native growers, fine wine or water, and moments with friends, new and old. I get that.
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Someday I’d like to visit Carignan, a little farming community in the north of France near the Belgium and Luxembourg borders. There’s a variety of red grape from there called the ‘Carignan.’ (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carignan) When my uncle Martin Carignan visited there back in the ’70s they held a dinner in his honor and gave him a key to the city (or so I’ve been told). Apparently, at the time of his visit, he was the only guy in the town of Carignan, France who had the last name of Carignan. Go figure.
I am going to ask Emmanuel when I see him tonight if he has heard of that town. He is from Lorraine. He always comments on how much more we know about our ancestors than they do in France where they just take for granted that they have been in that country for hundreds of years.
Do you think pronounced “Cah reen gnon” though this is just my made up phonetics? I never tracked on your name and stumbled over it in English but with the French association, it’s easy. Très interressant, je veux plus de l’histoire. PM me.
Did you ever do anything remotely French and do you know when your peeps came to America and by way of what? I’m pretty melting pot, long ago passage, and 5th generation Kansas so it’s a snore. Thank you for posting, Thomas.
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