Tom Kando
As I mentioned in these pages before, I grew up during and after World War Two in Europe. My parents, my sisters and I were refugees who moved from Hungary to France and then to Holland. We were so poor that we had to hitch-hike to get around. By the time we moved to Holland, my mother was re-married to a Dutchman named Ed.
We moved from Paris to Amsterdam in 1954. Early one summer morning Ed, my mother Ata, and my sisters Juliette and Madeleine grabbed our backpacks and took the Metro to the northern outskirts of Paris. We began to hitchhike, trying to look cute, hoping that some rich French motorist would take pity and give us a ride in the direction of the Netherlands.
It took us four days to cover the five hundred kilometers from Paris to Amsterdam! Most French (and Belgian and Dutch) motorists were unwilling to pick up a family of five, including two males. Therefore we usually stood on the side of the road for hours before a kind soul finally found it in his heart to pick us up.
Hundreds of cars drove by, some jalopies, some fancy Vedettes and Mercedes. Most motorists ignored the hitchhiking family. Some honked, waved and laughed. Once a sadist stopped his Renault hundred yards up ahead from where we stood. All five of us quickly grabbed our bags and started to run toward the car, counting our blessings. When we got close to the Renault, the driver took off laughing, his wheels spewing back dust and gravel in our faces.
Ed shouted some obscenities at the driver, which the asshole probably didn’t even hear.
Truck drivers were the most likely to stop. My family and I found ourselves in the back of trucks more often than inside regular passenger cars. I developed an early contempt for the bourgeoisie, and sympathy for the working class. I concluded that the richer people were, the less compassion they had, and that the rough and tough truckers were much kinder.
On the third day, we were stuck in the boondocks somewhere south of the French-Belgian border, approaching the town of Maubeuge. It was getting dark. This was the empty, desolate landscape of Northern France where World War One had raged for four years, the well-known rolling treeless hills of Flanders. Only a few clumps of trees and a church steeple in the distance interrupted the monotony of the landscape. The road stretched out in front of us as far as we could see, with not a single car in sight. Were we going to have to sleep in the fields of beets surrounding us?
Ed told everyone to start walking. We, the children, started to whine, “Why do we have to walk? There is nothing up ahead! We are tired! We want to sit down!” Everyone was exhausted and hungry, and it was getting cold. We put on our sweaters and started to walk. We kept walking when the sun set, and then we continued to walk in the dark.
Finally we saw lights in the distance, and Ata said: “You see, we told you there was a village up ahead. When we get there, we’ll go to a café, and we’ll have warm chocolate and we’ll buy a baguette and some butter, and you can all wash up in the bathroom, okay? It’s just a little bit further.”
So everyone walked on dapperly. We entered the town of Maubeuge at about eleven p.m. and started to look for a café. The streets were deserted, but a few blocks ahead we saw a building with its lights on. We heard the distant sound of accordion and bal-musette music. Edith Piaf was crooning Quand tu me prends dans tes bras, je vois la vie en rose....
We entered the café. It was smoke-filled and crowded with townspeople sipping pastis and pernods, some of them sitting at little round tables, some standing, some sitting on bar stools. There were loud, red-faced men with berets, women puffing on their gauloises, arguing or laughing. Behind the bar stood a powerfully built matron, a cigarette hanging from her mouth, no doubt the owner of the establishment.
The moment my family entered, there was immediate silence. Dozens of eyes turned toward us. Here was this family of vagabonds, a strange-looking blond man and his woman with three dirty kids, all dressed in assorted second-hand clothes and carrying a bunch of backpacks and paper bags.
“What do you want?” barked the matron.
“Well, we’d like to wash up and have some cocoa”, said Ed.
“We have no cocoa,” the owner shouted back.
“Please,” my mother continued, “we’ll buy whatever you have, we haven’t had anything to eat since this morning.”
“We’re closed.” the woman replied harshly.
Ed was about to get very angry and shout at the obvious lie - there were forty Frenchmen drinking and eating away. But mother continued, now teary-eyed and begging.
“Please, don’t you see how tired and hungry the children are? Have a heart. We won’t stay long. All we want is drink something and wash our hands.”
But the matron was firm. “I told you we’re closed. Get out before I call the police!” she said, approaching us menacingly. “Go back to whatever filthy country you came from! We don’t serve clochards (hobos) here!”
So Ed cussed them out, saying, “You are all a bunch of assholes!” and we left.
I was silent and devastated. My feelings ranged from rage to fear, aggravated by my fatigue and physical discomfort. “Damn these French people!” I thought, “I don’t care. As long as we get to sit down somewhere already.”
We walked to the train station, which took a half hour through Maubeuge’s deserted streets. At least the station was warm inside, and there were benches. So mother laid out some of our clothes on the benches and that’s where we slept.
When we woke up the next morning, the station was bustling with people. Throngs were walking by us, a dirty, disheveled, sleepy family. I could see the disgust, derision and fear in people’s eyes. It was the same look I would recognize many years later when I saw “respectable” people cross paths with homeless panhandlers.
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