Does anyone know their name?
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| Lambesc |
Photos: I am seen in my Security 
Uniform (red, 18th Century) guarding against 20th century American tourists, and with our band, wearing the special blue shirts of the Café le Pénalty on the rue Grande. We are the shortest two. The tallest is
Uniform (red, 18th Century) guarding against 20th century American tourists, and with our band, wearing the special blue shirts of the Café le Pénalty on the rue Grande. We are the shortest two. The tallest is
Eric Barcenilla
, the harmonica player, who sometimes (currently) shows up on our facebook page. And Pierrot, with the guitar, who loved to sing "Honky Tonk Women." Marsha has the bouquet of flowers and I wish I could remember the name of the drummer, but we rarely had a drummer at the Penalty where we played every Friday night. The Champignon (Mushroom) Column. Letter V/November 16, 1994 —
Before we left New York for our year in France, we went to see Andy Christensen who teaches French at Mt. Markham High School. He told us about the book, "A Year in Provence," by Peter Mayle, and he lent us the videos that had been made from the book. Apparently he shows the videos to his French classes each year. (The entire series of six episodes can be seen on Amazon.)
Provence is the name of the region of southeastern France where we are now — 1994 — living. It was so called because it was the original province of the Roman Empire. Peter Mayle lived in the mountainous region known as the Luberon, just to the north of us. Our town of Lambesc is mentioned on page 39 of Mayle's book, when he talks about going to a restaurant run by an 80-year-old woman. Unfortunately, that restaurant is closed now because the woman passed away.
Anyway, we have read the book, so we should have been forewarned about the mushrooms. There is quite a lot about the danger of mushrooms — champignons, in French — in the chapter entitled "October." There is the story of three men who died after a supper of "ill-chosen" champignons. They were discovered by neighbors, still sitting at the dining table, paralyzed, their eyes staring wide open.
Our friend Graham, an Englishman who retired to Lambesc, told us he was going out mushroom hunting in October. He said the locals were very secretive about their mushrooms — they'd rather you slept with their wives than tell you where they found their mushrooms, he said. I think he was exaggerating, but we got the message.
At the beginning of October, the outdoor markets began to display a wide variety of mushrooms. There is always one man at the market who specializes in edible fungus, but now it seemed all the vegetable stands had one or two varieties: delicate trumpet shapes; chunky looking bruisers of orange and blue; black, odious looking things that whiffed off a cloud of dust, and the normal mushrooms, Parisienne, like the ones you find at the supermarket.
Back at the chateau we noticed that fungi were sprouting at the damp bases of trees, and one particular brand was quite plentiful. Marsha decided these orange beauties were just like the kind we had seen at market. That evening I walked into the kitchen and there she was, spooning a small bowl of freshly cooked orange mushrooms into her mouth.
"Try some," she said, with a come hither smile. "They're really good."
I'm not quite sure what possessed me to join in this gastronomic experiment; simple stupidity, perhaps, plus the fact that I'm easily led into Marsha's adventures, but before you could say "toadstool," I was loading up a bowl of these tempting morsels, and downing them with relish. (As in "heartiness," not pickle.)
Two hours passed. We were eating popcorn and watching TV when I was overcome by a wave of nausea. The next moment I had my head over the toilet bowl. When I got back from the throwing up I noticed that Marsha was still OK, but within a few minutes she followed suit. We were both sick and we knew it had to be the mushrooms.
I never thought of death. I remember lying on the bed hoping that at least I might have a hallucination or two when I heard Marsha on the telephone to our Texan friend, Ray, describing the mushrooms as "bright orange." Ray has been living in France several years and might know about these things. The next thing we knew the Fire Brigade ("Pompiers") were at the gate with their ambulance, lights flashing.
By this time Marsha was much sicker than me, with chills and sweats, but she did manage a little joke before we were whisked away to the emergency room at the local hospital.She pulled out a big bag of the offending mushrooms to show the pompiers what we had been into. They selected one to show the doctors at the hospital and told her to make sure and throw the rest away.
"Oh, no," she said, smiling feebly. "These are for lunch tomorrow."
The pompiers were not amused.
We spent the night on I.V.'s at the hospital and somewhere along the way we were told that these particular champignons were not life-threatening. Once we had purged them from our systems, we would be fine. And we were.
Of course we became the butt of a lot of jokes, and generally the talk of the town. We ran into one person who seemed surprised to see that we were still alive — you know how stories change as they are passed along. My daughter, Justine, arrived for a visit and regaled us with a story of a man who died from eating mushrooms from his own front lawn. (see previous post.) She failed to see any humor in our great mushroom caper.
In closing, I would like to put in a good word for the French medical people. From the pompiers to the hospital nurses and doctors, everyone was marvelous. But the best thing was the bill, less than $100 for both of us. Thank goodness for their national medical plan. Mind you, that is still a pretty expensive bowl of mushrooms.
Au revoir!
The other photo is taken in downtown Lambesc, across the street from the cafés. The main clock tower is called "The Jaquemard" which features a little family of characters who move around when the clock strikes.
Found two new mushrooms on our lawn this morning;
Our chateau was a lot of work, too, but all maintenance. Cutting the grass, cleaning up the grounds after the latest Mistral (big wind), and, most of all, taking care of the dogs.
When we arrived there were 22 dogs: 18 Cavalier King Charles spaniels and 4 Big Dogs. Then suddenly, within hours of our arrival, there were 22 spaniels, 4 puppies were born to Patapouf. And to top it off, we brought our own dog, Cammie, a pretty little Border Collie.
The new mushrooms are documented here, with the same quarter for reference. The goats are here in our chateau grounds because the shepherd would bring them through every few days and they'd do a little trimming in the extensive gardens. We got free/cheap goat cheese at the local market because we were part of the system.
We need a contemporary photo of a mushroom merchant (
Eric Barcenilla
?) You could combine the mushroom stall with a glass of pastis. There is a picture of the center of Lambesc with the pharmacie sign: that's where we looked up whether the mushrooms were killers or not, after the fact.
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