I REALIZED THIS AFTERNOON WHILE EATING a French baguette enclosing ham and cheese...that's au jambon et fromage for those French-lovers out there...
that my earliest impressions of Paris as a toddler were the poodles of circle skirts worn by the dancers on American bandstand in the nineteen-fifties. You can still find photos of Arlene Sullivan dancing while wearing her famous poodle skirt circa 1959.
So I fixated on poodles. French poodles. Oodles of poodles.
Walt Disney of course helped with his 1955 movie "Lady and The Tramp" about two dogs who fall in love. Who can forget the scene where they are eating spaghetti out of one dish on a checked red and white table? European buildings dot the background, romantic candle and baguettes grace the foreground, while they work their way to the middle of a spaghetti strand. It ends in a kiss!
( Click You Tube link on bottom right of video.)
Mother went to the beauty salon every week to get her hair set and put up in a French twist. It made her ravishingly beautiful, like Grace Kelly. Only Mom was a brunette. So - more like Rita Hayworth. All the men wanted her. It formed a strong opinion in my mind about anything French.
Then again, maybe it was her fragrance. Mom's "Evening In Paris" perfume in the midnight blue bottle with gold-domed top, sat on her dresser among the other bottles of Tabu, Topaz, and Jean Nate'.
So I guess in my little girl mind the next best thing to an evening in Paris while wearing a "French Twist" must be a French poodle! From the time I was five, every night I got down on my knees and literally begged God to give me a French poodle.
Dad finally got my sister and I the poodle I so longed for. But for some reason we just couldn't house-train him. So we'd put him in the yard. He'd run over to the neighbors. Or worse yet, blocks and blocks away. Dad would get in the car and search the neighborhood for Francois.
But what really bowled me over was that Dad decided to get rid of our little toy poodle because he wouldn't stay in the yard. Never mind that we could have tied him to a rope. I don't think Dad wanted Francois much, anyway. I think Father was still mad over the German Shepherd that had petrified me as a baby when it either bit me or knocked me over. Guess our dad never got over that. But to me, little dogs like our toy poodle, weren't nearly as scary.
So one day Francois disappeared and never came back. I'm pretty sure Dad gave him away. But I longed for my Francois ever since. Then one day in a park in Paris I met Francois....
Photo Credit: Coleen Clark Copyright @ 2015
TO BE CONTINUED ...in the book: I FELL FOR PARIS.
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