Chapter Seven
The second time a phone call triggered a precognition came when Roger Brown, Gramma's son, called. As before, the instant I heard his voice saying "Is your (a.m.) there?" I knew I was going to Europe. It would be for my senior year of high school.
I arrived in Geneva the day after my l7th birthday. I had no idea what to expect stepping onto European soil for the first time. Books and pictures and lessons told of medieval knights and fancy clothes and ancient castles. Intellectually I knew Europe was as modern as America but I couldn't picture it in my mind.
I loved what I found: sameness yet marked difference. Things looked different, but they performed the same function; door handles, for instance, or electric sockets and plugs. Phones looked funny, too. And the cars were much smaller. America was still fond of the land yacht. And old people rode bicycles like little kids! And teenagers rode bicycles! Everybody rode bicycles, but some of them had little motors! These were all wonders to me, then.
The first few days I was there I stayed in the Hotel de la Paix on the bank of Lake Geneva. The annual "Fetes de Geneve" was going on at the time and it was a giant party till the wee hours of the night.
For my first meal in this land of gastronomical invention I asked the hotel concierge where I could find a good hamburger.
Another typical American tourist! He sniffed and said most people don't come to Switzerland for the hamburgers; but, rather, preferred to eat the local specialties instead.
I didn’t tell him I liked them with Swiss cheese.
They make a good bifsteak with garlic butter. Yeah, that’s Swiss. Only difference between a bifsteak and a beefsteak is about 1/2 an inch!
I liked their french fries, or pommes frites: translated means fried apples. Their fondue's terrific, too. The Beef Bourguignon was much to my liking.
I’m a Texan. We like meat.
I stayed the first 3 months with the Bouvier family. The father, Maurice, was a vice president of Swissair. Roger Brown had business dealings with him and had made the arrangements. There were two sons and a daughter.
I wore out my welcome with my independence, though. I would go into town on school nights and catch shows at the nightclubs. Though they never knew of the nightclubs, the Bouviers never said anything, but in retrospect I realize I must have scandalized them.
In 1962, the Swiss didn’t allow dating until the kids were 18; children were only admitted into G rated films, cartoon and newsreel theatres, and women weren’t allowed to vote until 1971.
I'd hear the three children in the room next to mine arguing in the evenings. They'd get pretty heated. At first I wrote it off to sibling spats.
One night I heard the little girl, Mirielle, shushing her brothers and I caught the phrase "Il ne comprends pas!" -He doesn't understand. Well, I understood that and from their tone that meant they were very unhappy with me.
I began making plans to move.
Before I did, I did a horribly embarrassing thing. I didn't speak French very well, yet, and one afternoon I inadvertently asked the wife to give me "a little fuck".
I thought I was asking for an innocent kiss on the cheek at a moment that leant itself to the playful gesture; only someone had played the ancient trick and told me the word for kiss was the word for "fuck”.
Lesson: Do your research; look it up!
Nothing was ever said about the incident and they were too polite to ask me to leave.
I moved to a little pension in Versoix, near my school: the College du Leman.
It was a bare bones place but the food in the restaurant downstairs was wonderful.
I ate "commes les pensionnaires". They had a special meal of the day that cost very little and I could put it on a tab to pay at the end of the month. The meals were simple, filling and delicious.
It was a working man's hotel. Lots of road crews, predominantly Italian and Swiss Italian, stayed there. It was one of two restaurants in the vicinity, so it enjoyed a healthy quota of the local's business as well.
The old timers were friendly and jovial. One old man loved Americans and always said a kind hello to me when I sat as his table. He once asked me how old I thought he was. He looked 45 or 50 and I said so. He was, in fact 66 years old. Veritably ancient to me, and a year younger than the a.m.
He asked me to punch him in the stomach as hard as I could. I wouldn't, but he insisted and when I gave him a friendly punch I found him to be made of steel! The man would have put Schwarzenegger to shame. And he still worked a full day on the crews!
It was fascinating watching them. I used to stand and watch one man with a pick-ax tear up the street. He would hit the tarmac with his ax and then sink the pick into the exact same spot time and again until it was deep enough to lift the section up. His precision was as practiced an accurate as any of today’s computerized manufacturing robots.
Lesson: Practice. Practice. Practice.
The winter of 1962/63 was the coldest in Europe in over 16 years. There was no heat in the rooms and ice would form on the inside of my windows to a thickness of about 1/2 – 3/4 of an inch overnight. I slept under 4 comforters it was so cold. Milk left out (there wasn't a refrigerator) would be frozen in the morning.
And I loved it.
I walked to school a lot of the time for one reason. I wanted to be able to say, "I used to walk to school for miles in the snow when I was a kid your age"!
Really. That's the only reason I did it.
It was cold! Sure I had friends who drove, or were driven, to school with whom I could have hitched rides easily. Too, there was a school bus bringing students from Geneva that passed by everyday. I could’ve caught a ride on it.
But it’s a tradition handed down from Adam...well, maybe not Adam since they didn’t have schools when he was a kid; but his kids probably said it. And I always wanted to be able to say it to my kids, too, and have!
The College du Leman was started by M. Clivaz and patterned after the famous International School in Geneva.
My schoolmates were from around the globe. They were the sons and daughters of corporate officials, diplomats, or delegates to the various international organizations headquartering in Geneva.
That’s the story I heard. The official story. But it seems there was a son of a high ranking American diplomat going to the International School who kept getting into serious trouble.
A lot of people with a lot of money got together and started the CDL to accommodate the errant youngster.
And also to tutor the sons and daughters of persons involved in, shall we say, more clandestine diplomatic endeavors throughout the world.
There were also assorted Middle Eastern princes and princesses as well as the offspring of movie stars and deposed dictators.
Juan Batista’s son, Jorge -we called him George- was a student there. He was always talking about how they'd take Cuba back from Castro some day and restore the land to its former glory.
It is said that when his family fled Cuba they took no clothes; only money in their luggage.
They had a lot of luggage.
In Geneva George had money to burn and he went through cars like most people go through paper cups. He liked to party heavily and was constantly wrecking them...and replacing them.
One night we packed three of us into his latest Mercedes two-seater and went to Lausanne to party. We must have hit half a dozen spots and George wouldn't let anyone pay for anything.
One place kicked us out because George wanted to be part of the floorshow with the naked girls. It was a great time that night and I was thankful we made it back in one piece.
Kate Burton, Richard Burton's daughter, went there. She was only 7 or so at the time. She had a brother with her, too, and it was always amusing to watch the chauffeur hold the door for the two as they toddled out for another day of classes.
I used to hang out in Geneva with other American kids some of whom went to the International School there. I hung with Wendy Condon, Richard -The Manchurian Candidate- Condon's daughter and her boyfriend John “Ippy” Dorrance, son and heir of the chairman of the board of Campbell's Soups.
The Frank Sinatra/Laurence Harvey version of Condon’s film had just been released and Wendy arranged for a special screening for several of us. The entire cinema was ours for the afternoon and we settled in for the thriller. Before it was over the management turned up the lights and told us “there had been an accident and they had not received the final reel”.
It turned out, we learned later, they did have the final reel, but it was too violent for us underagers to view.
Lesson: Sometimes you don’t get the whole picture.
It may be interesting to know Sinatra purchased the rights to the film shortly after its release and unequivocally withheld its circulation until 1987.
President Kennedy had just been assassinated and some thought Sinatra had curtailed it as a sign of respect but there is also speculation that United Artists studio was withholding his share of the earnings.
A few months after the truncated screening Ippy and I flew off a cliff in his Porsche Carrera in Provins, France about 40 miles outside of Paris.
It was the beginning of Fall and we were at our usual hangout, the Movenpick Restaurant in Geneva. On a lark, Ippy asked if I wanted to go to Paris. I said yes. We didn't pack anything, we just left.
The trip through the mountains in his super sports car was thrilling. The views were spectacular and his handling of the machine was awe inspiring. He knew how to drive the precision car well and pushed it to its limits whenever he could.
We were still in the mountains winding through the woods when, in the distance, we spotted a "deux cheveaux"...a small Citroen...parked on the shoulder of the road directly in front of us. As we approached, it pulled forward a bit and revealed a startled young woman squatting down relieving herself.
Europeans hadn’t come by the modern concept of road side rest stops. They still subscribed to the old “when ya gotta go, just go!” philosophy.
When the car moved, she saw us bearing down on her and shrieked and hopped along trying to keep up with her playful boyfriend.
She looked a little pissed off.
Later that night we were coming out of the mountains down a straight away. We were doing about 100 miles an hour and there was a sharp 90 degree curve to the left ahead in the distance.
Ippy began the breaking sequence and down shifted in preparation for the curve.
Then we hit the railroad tracks which sent the front wheels bouncing. You don't need to be a physicist to know that bouncing wheels hold very little traction; and, instead of curving to the left, we continued in a straight line.
One of the last things I remember was seeing a concrete pylon and a huge tree coming at us. The tree whizzed past only inches from my shoulder, to the right.
All of a sudden we were airborne and in the headlights I saw a chicken coop in the field dead ahead of us.
Time now was slowed to a crawl. I remember thinking I was real glad we didn't hit that tree; and we were real lucky we didn't hit the pylon on the other side of us, either, and that there were going to be a bunch of dead chickens in a few seconds cause, at this speed, we were going to land right on top of them.
The next thing I remember was Ippy yelling in my right ear from outside the car, "Tex! Tex! Where are we Tex? Why are we in water, Tex? I'm in water, Tex, why am I in water?"
Groggily I told him, "We're going to Paris."
"Why are we going to Paris, Tex?” he kept asking. I didn't know right then. Mainly, because we’d never had a reason in the first place. We’d just left.
All I knew was the pain in my nose and my back was killing me.
It was the first time I was ever knocked out. I don't remember hitting anything, but I was surprised we never made it to the chicken coop.
Instead we went straight down about 20 feet and hit the far bank of a small creek. In hitting, I was thrown forward striking the rear-view mirror with the bridge of my nose and snapping the mirror off the windshield.
I had been slouched down in the seat and the thrusting of my body forward and back smashed my back down into the seat causing me immense pain which convinced me I had broken it.
The ambulance came and the workers were great getting us out. One guy got into the car with me and kicked out the windshield and helped them lift me out through it.
They carried me up the steep bank and loaded me up; and then they talked very seriously amongst themselves for a few moments before asking me to, please, bend my legs a little: they couldn't close the door to the ambulance and it was illegal for them to travel with the patient's compartment open.
I was happy to comply.
French ambulances are not built for 6'2" Texans.
Lesson: Learn to act shorter.
At the hospital my French was better than Ippy's and I did most of the talking. After we both tried to explain what had happened they asked me what my problems were.
I told them that aside from a little broken back I thought my nose was broken.
The doctor looked at my nose very carefully and told me it wasn't broken, just bruised. It would be fine.
Then he asked me to stand. I told him I couldn't stand because my back was broken. He insisted.
After agonizingly getting off the gurney, I stood. It was excruciatingly painful to do, but I did it and was grateful that it’s height from the floor was set at waist level.
French waist level.
"Non! C’nest pas casse. Your back's not broken." he announced, “You wouldn't have been able to stand up if it was!"
French diagnostic medicine: questionably, arguably, deniably the best in the civilized world.
And don’t get me started on detached septums.
Most major newspapers in Europe carried the story of the two American students who'd survived "Dead Man's Curve".
Some ran pictures of the demolished car which looked worse than it really was due to the rescue crew's breaking out the window. We were deluged with calls from friends and relatives from all over the world. Ippy got most of the calls but I held my own.
The a.m. never called.
We stayed in the hospital for three days before being released.
Ippy had been carrying a pistol in the trunk of his car and the gendarmes were very interested in that. We had to pay a visit to their headquarters before we would be allowed to travel on to Paris. He convinced them of who he was and how he was a possible target for kidnapping and that he carried the weapon as personal protection. Everyone knows Campbell's soups and they accepted his story and bade us safe journey.
It wasn't until 1985 that I learned I had, indeed, fractured my back in the accident.
I went to a doctor after having hurt my back shooting a commercial in Houston and he found I had suffered a compression fracture. He also found an old compression fracture of a vertebrae in my lower back...right where I'd hurt it in France!
I never sued Ippy, though, or asked for any money. Ippy's family paid the hospital bills.
I quite possibly could have made a fortune in a settlement.
A month or so later I returned to the States. I sat next to his mother during the Geneva to Zurich leg of the flight. She was more than gracious to me and even handed me the bag just before I vomited.
“You’re looking a little green there,” she’d said.
Lesson: Nothing trumps class.
We were on the same flight back to the States, but she was in 1st class and I was in coach. She made a point to say goodbye to me when we landed.
In Geneva, another place we used to hang out was Joe's American Bar.
Joe, a Swiss, spoke unaccented American English and catered to an eclectic mix of American and international students. His bar was a cozy little hideaway down a stairwell on the main drag, the Rue du Rhone.
In the back room he had a great pinball machine that, with the right touch, would ring up fantastic scores if you caught the ball on the clicker mechanism. If you could catch it in the right place you could vibrate the machine just enough to force the ball to advance the clicker over and over.
It was a sign of considerable skill and a badge of honor to be able to sustain the shaking over an extended period of time without tilting.
The U. S. Marines assigned to the American Mission in Geneva hung out there too... and there was some serious drinking going on of an evening when those guys were there.
One of the marines was Bill Hugg.
In 1969, 7 years later, when I was working as a barker at "Coke's" in San Francisco's North Beach, Bill came roaring by in a Cadillac convertible.
I was standing out front on a beautiful afternoon touting the fine looking completely naked women who danced within to any and all passersby. Bi11 recognized me about a block after he passed me, slammed on the brakes and parked.
All I noticed was some nut slamming on his brakes and storming my way down the sidewalk.
He yelled, "Tex!" at me and I knew it was someone from my days in Europe, the only place I was called that.
Small world, isn't it?
We reminisced about old times. He let me in on how pissed off everyone was at me for barfing my guts out the window of the Marine's Villa the night I'd visited there.
It was the night a particularly good crop of new Beaujolais wine had come out. The regulars at Joe's attempted to drink up the entire bottling in that one night.
Not wanting our partying to end, a group of folks and I had been invited to the villa to continue the festivities after Joe's closed.
On the way we'd almost been drowned when whoever was driving the cramped Volkswagen bug we were packed into aimed directly at Lake Geneva and almost made it into the drink.
I reminded Bill it was I who'd yelled at just the last minute and saved the whole group from certain death, not to mention the security of the American Embassy.
I told him I thought that more than made up for the fact I was drunker than a skunk that night; and, anyway, since the bathroom was occupied I just found the nearest window to hang out of and released my stomach's contents into the garden below: organic fertilizer.
That's what had upset the guys in the villa: I'd missed the garden! Turns out I drenched the Marine's official VW Van along with the wall of the villa itself without moistening the veggies at all! And it had been Bill who had the duty the next day -meaning he'd had to clean it up!
I bought the drinks at Coke's and settled the score.
It’s a small world!
Lesson: Carry your own bags.
Six years after that chance meeting in San Francisco I was living in Amarillo, Texas trying to be a great and famous Concert Promoter. I was bringing two country groups to town: Jerry Reed and the Austin based group: Asleep at the Wheel.
It turned out the manager of the Civic Center was Carolyn Hugg. Bill's sister!
Bill uncannily breezed through town for a brief visit with her and called me when she told him I was there, before heading on to points unknown.
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