The title of this issue’s column is French for Random Connections. Yes, there is a French connection in this article. It has nothing to do with Gene Hackman, but it does pre-date the release of the film, The French Connection, in 1971.
Before I get to that, an unusual connection occurred recently involving my wife, Abby. She ordered a product from Seedsheets.com in April of this year (2020). She chose some different herb seeds which would be packed in pouches embedded on a sheet 12 inches in diameter. All Abby would need to do, is lay the sheet in a pot of soil and water it. Small stakes, used to hold the sheet in place, would also alert her, via a phone app, to water. Sounded great. But after a couple of months of waiting, Abby simply forgot about it.
In the middle of September, we were watching an episode of Jeopardy, which we normally record so we can skip the commercials. One evening, we were watching the actual broadcast. During the commercial break between the first round and the double jeopardy round, we started flipping. We stopped on CNBC to find a young man pitching Seedsheet on Shark Tank (rebroadcast from November 6, 2017). Abby turned to me and said, “OMG, I just received my Seedsheet delivery today.”
Read more ‘Random Connections’ articles here: https://theconnectionsnj.com/category/random-connections/
Now back to the fall of 1967, Mesdames et Messieurs. I started taking French in the 10th grade. As with a lot of language instruction at that time, our textbook had social dialogues, such as, “My name is so and so, what is your name? I live at so and so, where do you live? Is there a restaurant nearby? I like blue. Do you have it in blue? How much does that cost?”
In one of our beginning dialogues, a French speaker responded that she lived at 45 Avenue Foch in Paris. I must have repeated this dialogue hundreds of times between the classroom and practicing at home.
It is not surprising to find Avenue Foch in a textbook, as it is a famous street, with gardens, emanating from the Arc de Triomphe. The picture shows it in modern times, but it was opened in 1854 during the reign of Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1929 it was renamed after World War I hero Ferdinand Foch.
In the summer of 1968, I attended my final summer of sleep away camp. There were 150 campers, 148 Americans plus Richard from London, and Bernard from Paris, both in my section. One day I was demonstrating to Bernard how I learned French in school, reciting dialogues. When I got the one on addresses, Bernard responded, “You are joking, yes? 45 Avenue Foch is my address in Paris.”
Incroyable, n’est-ce pas?