Even those who are unschooled in the French language may discern that this essay is about radishes and the first President of the Fifth Republic of France, Charles de Gaulle. I do not pretend to be an expert in the affairs of the Republic of France but I believe that it is appropriate for me to comment on this one brand of radishes and on the larger-than-life figure of Charles de Gaulle.
Let us start at the beginning. I believe it is fair to say that both my parents were happiest when they were involved in agriculture. Their love of working to raise things was clearly passed on to me. In my boyhood home in the suburbs of St. Louis, the arrival of March told me that it was time to go to work to spade the garden. My mother and I raised a number of vegetables, which she canned. When my father built the new house in 1925 in Richmond Heights, Missouri, he provided a fruit cellar to store the canned vegetables. Long after I had left home, I kept gardens in Kansas, Illinois, in New Jersey, in Maryland, and then back in New Jersey. My interest in raising things continued until my 83rd birthday, when I became blind. So you can see that my interest in farming or agriculture goes back a long way.
With all the vegetables that I have grown, my desire to eat radishes is among the strongest. That of course is one of the main subjects for this essay.
While I have nothing against the round globular radishes, I greatly prefer the French breakfast or icicle radishes. They are much tastier and they have a certain zing to them. So mark me down as a booster of French breakfast radishes.
Why they are called French breakfast radishes is beyond me. I have never seen a person eating a radish, either a French breakfast or the round globular ones, at breakfast. So I expect that we will have to mark the controversy over French breakfast radishes off to the unknown. Perhaps this mystery will be explained to us in the great by-and-by.
So the first premise of this essay is that I have been a great consumer of radishes all of my long life. In recent years, with the French breakfast or icicle radishes being in long supply, I have been made even happier.
Now we turn to the second part of this essay having to do with none other than the former President of France, Charles de Gaulle.
Early in the Second World War, the country of France was lost to the Germans as the French were still suffering the effects of the First World War. The Germans found France easy to overcome within a short time. Starting in 1940, the Germans occupied all of France. You would think that under these circumstances, a Frenchman would be subdued and would have little to say about the conduct of the war. That is not the way that Charles de Gaulle did things.
When Roosevelt and Churchill met each other, it was de Gaulle who often insisted that he be invited as well. Roosevelt and Churchill more or less ignored de Gaulle. When peace was finally achieved, largely through the efforts of Dwight Eisenhower, the French were given a share in that accomplishment. In reality, their share in the fruits of the victory over Germany was greatly exaggerated. As a matter of fact, I believe that you will find that every biographer of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt recorded that Charles de Gaulle was a glorious pain in the ass. He was a commander who had no troops to command. Nonetheless, he insisted upon the “grandeur” of France to get a seat at the table. But the Allies were victorious and they were very generous in their treatment of Charles de Gaulle.
The war ended in 1945 and de Gaulle became active in politics in France. In 1959, he became the President of the Fifth Republic of France. He stayed in that job for nearly ten years.
Now, what I am about to record is my first dalliance with fiction. I have been encouraged to do this because the owner of this website has stated that great rewards go to those who create fiction. I believe that this is one of those moments when I could realize my great reward.
As you know the French presidents dwell in a place called the Palais Elysée. It was during this period when de Gaulle occupied the Elysée while I was active in my pursuit of growing radishes. I was particularly involved with the French breakfast radishes which we called the icicle radishes. Instead of being globular, they are long and narrow like a spear. So it was that according to my dream or my fictitious account, I gathered a bunch of French breakfast radishes and put them on dry ice. I was traveling a lot in those days and I arranged to visit Paris soon after the radishes were picked. I reached Paris and went directly to the Elysée Palace to present to Charles de Gaulle a token of esteem from the gardens of New Jersey, USA.
Naturally I had the cab driver drop me off at a rear entrance to the Elysée Palace. When I knocked on the door to the kitchen, the man who opened the door was a tall figure whom I instantly recognized as none other than the former general in the French Army, Charles de Gaulle who was now the President of France. He saw that I had brought him a large bunch of French breakfast radishes. Without hesitation, President de Gaulle invited me to join him for lunch. I do not speak the French language except for knowing a few words such as “oui” and “non.” I thought that we would eat in the kitchen. But that is not where President/General de Gaulle took me. He took me to the formal dining room where he sat at the head of the table. I was seated about nine to twelve yards away in another seat. There were just the two of us dining.
There was an officious woman who came from the kitchen with her sleeves rolled up, wearing an apron. Quite clearly, she was the President’s wife. She did not join us for lunch but rather she overlooked things from her perch in the kitchen.
The French breakfast radishes that I had prepared in New Jersey arrived in first-class shape. Nonetheless, Mrs. de Gaulle had re-washed them and placed them on an elaborate silver platter with the root ends pointing toward me. She placed the silver platter with the French breakfast radishes next to her husband, President de Gaulle. President de Gaulle and I were seated so far apart that we had to shout to each other to maintain what little discussion there was.
When I addressed President de Gaulle, his wife, who was lurking in the kitchen, suddenly appeared and said to me openly, “You should not address him as Président de Gaulle but as “mon Général.” Later, when I tried to address him as “mon Général,” the officious wife would appear from the kitchen and say to me, with a great waving of arms, that I should address her husband as the President of the Fifth Republic of France.
While all of this was taking place, President/General de Gaulle kept the silver tray of French breakfast radishes close to him. Later, as you can see by the heading of this essay, I asked the General or the President to please pass the French breakfast radishes to me. I repeated this request on several occasions. Finally, Madam de Gaulle emerged from the kitchen where she had been canning tomatoes. The juice from the tomatoes was all over her blouse and apron. Being the daughter of a Marseille dockwalloper (longshoreman) she said to the President/General, “He asked you to pass him the f’ing radishes. At that point, there were only two radishes left out of the fifty that I had brought. The president put both of the remaining radishes into his mouth and they disappeared. So indeed I was left totally radishless.
As soon as President de Gaulle had finished the French breakfast radishes, he indicated that the meal was over as he arose to leave. His wife came out of the kitchen again and told me that a cab would be waiting for me as soon as I stepped out of the kitchen door. Neither the President/General nor his wife ever uttered the word “Merci” to me for bringing them the radishes. I was ushered to the back door of the kitchen of the Palais Elysée and I simply left. There were no such words as “We’ll see you sometime soon” or any such endearments.
It was at this moment that I thought of Sir Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt who had labeled de Gaulle as a “glorious pain in the ass.”
Now what I have told you of my lunch with General de Gaulle may or may not have occurred. My belief or my imagination is that it really did happen. Of course, I have a vivid imagination as the rightful heir of all essayists. Be that as it may, I took this cab to the Paris Hilton where I retired to a room overlooking the Eiffel Tower. I began to think of the immense view as a lovely small restaurant called “La Flamberge” entered my mind. Since I was still hungry I went to La Flamberge and enjoyed a wonderful meal but it was served without French breakfast radishes. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the cuisine as always at that lovely little restaurant.
So you see that all is well that ends well and that my lunch with the President or the great General is marked down as a triumph. But no matter how you cut it, de Gaulle ate all of the French breakfast radishes and never offered to pass the plate to me. I suppose that this is in keeping with French custom but it struck me as thoroughly rude.
De Gaulle and his wife are dead now so if you have a desire to go to Paris, you must remember to bring your French breakfast radishes with you. That is the only way that you can guarantee that you will have some radishes to eat.
E. E. CARR
October 3, 2012
Essay 700
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Kevin’s commentary: The big 700. That’s actually pretty damn incredible. Totally nonscientific estimation by my part puts average essay length at round about 1,200 words. Perhaps at some future date I will find the actual mean; 1200 represents a quick mental median of all the essays that I have published, verified to be time-consistent through to 2000 through randomly word-counting two essays per year from the last dozen years. So again, while definitely not exact, I feel good about it. I suspect that the actual average may be somewhat higher — 1280 or something. Just a gut feeling. Anyway, that puts the total cumulative length of Ezra’s Essays into around 840,000. Even with the most conservative estimates, the man has put over three-quarters of a million words to paper in the wake of his stroke. I honestly think that that’s incredible and ought to be celebrated somehow. Tomorrow I’ll dig into my box of Pop-related memorabilia and see if there’s anything suitably neat to post here to commemorate the occasion.
For his part, he appears to have celebrated by writing his “first” piece of fiction. I put the word first in quotes because Pop is a world-class bullshitter and there are elements of fiction in many of the stories he likes to tell in person. Many of these revolve around his notable long-jumping career and the like.
Nevertheless I am flattered that Pop agreed to dabble into this particular breed of fiction, which is new to me and ostensibly new to him too. But I enjoyed reading it and hopefully he enjoyed writing it sufficiently to consider writing additional fictional pieces in the future. One has to figure after 800,000+ words of unadulterated truth about one’s life, an author runs out of true things to say. Helpfully there are an infinite number of untrue things to say. So perhaps in the end, Pop’s transition into fiction will be driven more by pure math than anything else.
Congrats on your seven hundredth essay, and thanks for writing. Here’s hoping for many more, Pop.
Pop’s response:
Hey Kevin,
I prayed about this essay since it was written and fervent prayer has yielded one inevitable conclusion. My luncheon with President de Gaulle actually took place and somewhere around here I have the toothpicks which I lifted from the de Gaulle dining room to prove it. From now on I would suggest that neither you nor I should ever doubt the power of prayer as it relates to a dining situation. I was taken back by Madame de Gaulle admonition to her husband to please pass the f’ing radishes. I would not think that a Frenchman in his own home would ever refer to French Breakfast radishes as f’ing.
But I would remind you that Dell Van Buren Barbee, the car wash expert at the filling station where I worked, once said that, “if God invented something better than f’ing, he kept it to his-self. Those words have been my guiding light for more than 80 years and I expect that they will continue to guide me until I “cross over Jordan” to find my heavenly home.
When you backwardly reach the essays written between 2000 and 2005, you may find that your calculations on the length of the essays is a bit short of the mark. Those essays, all of them hand written, would probably exceed the length of the essays written recently. Please refer to “The Four Stars of David” for example.
Pop