by Carolyn Smyrl

erhaps because American armies liberated the city of Metz and the Lorraine area during World War I and World War II, the people in Metz are extremely friendly toward Americans. With Frank and Morgan’s German-like appearance, we were often mistaken for Germans. When the shopkeepers we were dealing with found we were Americans, especially American Texans, there was an obvious thawing in manner.

We had made numerous friends in Metz on previous travel-study visits, and it was nice to renew those acquaintances. We were treated to wonderfully prepared meals in several French homes. The townspeople were apparently pleased with our efforts to learn and speak their language. They were sympathetic and helpful when we became stuck on a word.

One custom, that of closing stores from noon to three in the afternoon, was difficult for us to get used to. Fortunately, the restaurants and cafes remain open during that period, so we could generally pass the time happily if we found our shopping cut short by the closing. The holiday of All Saints, which fell on Friday that year, caught us unprepared. We were caught without groceries; the American Express office in Paris was closed along with all the stores, so we were unable to transfer funds; and a former student of mine from Robert E. Lee, Ryan Hilber, who was a Rotary exchange student in Mannheim, Germany, visited us for the weekend. Fortunately, we found our favorite pizzeria open, so we did not go hungry.

Ryan was the first of several visitors we welcomed. We met Donald Whisenhunt, former vice president of the University of Texas at Tyler, in Paris and gave him a whirlwind tour of the city. Frank’s cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Eldred Wilson of Flint, came to Metz and made a tour around the country with Frank and the children. Frank’s niece Marianne Smyrl, who was spending her junior year of college studying at the Institute for American Universities in Aix-en-Provence, joined all of us at Christmas time for a second trip to Carcassonne and then returned to Metz for a visit. Frank and the children acted as guides through the city for several members of the UT Tyler travel-study group which came to Metz in June. Vivian’s friend Mary Kay Wisener remained after the tour group returned so that she and Vivian could visit Normandy and the South of France.

News from home was welcomed throughout the year. We soon discovered the International Herald-Tribune which was generally available at the train station where we had to transfer for the bus to the university. We soon exhausted all the English books we had brought with us, and were happy to find several English-speaking bookstores in Paris. We bought James Michener’s Texas the first week it was released and worked out a schedule for reading it because each of us wanted to read it first. We soon discovered the city library and began checking out French books that until then we had only read in translation. It was marvelous to begin enjoying French literature.

Since Frank taught in the English department, it was not surprising that we made some English-speaking friends, too. Some of the women were Americans who had married French men. The week of Thanksgiving, we were invited to the home of one of the members of the English faculty for lunch. We sat down at the table at 12:45 and did not get up until 5 p.m.

This was one instance where the exchange brought mutual astonishment. M. Lejosne was the guest of my family in Tyler for Thanksgiving dinner, and he could not believe the way a whole turkey dinner was wiped out in twenty minutes’ time. He told my sisters that such a meal in France would have lasted six hours.

One of the American women at the dinner we attended told me of a specialty import shop in Sablon which carried canned tortillas. I checked it out the next day, and sure enough, there were several cans of Old El Paso brand tortillas. I bought two cans, steeling myself against the price—over $4.00 per can. Back at the apartment, I mixed a concoction of herbs and spices to resemble chili powder. Then, Morgan and I scoured the cheese shops of the city until we found a reasonable facsimile of Cheddar cheese, ground the rump steak into hamburger in the manual meat grinder I had brought from Tyler, and surprised the family with homemade chili and enchiladas for our Thanksgiving dinner. We may have started a new family tradition. On weekends we enjoyed traveling by train to surrounding points of interest. We visited the cities of Nancy, Reims, Luxembourg and, of course, Paris. It was such a rich experience to get acquainted with Paris beyond the tourist level of visits to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. We went to the city at least once a month and finally got to see some of the things we had overlooked on previous visits. We toured the Conciergerie, St. Eustace Church, Chateau de Vincennes, and the Les Halles area. I finally got to the Louvre on the right day to find the room where the Code of Hammurabi is housed open. We at last had the leisure time to walk the maze of little streets on the Left Bank.

One aspect of French life completely eluded us: the French attitude toward money. Frank and I opened a charge account at the largest department store in Metz, only to find out when we went to pay the first bill that the store would not accept a cash payment for the charge account. Not having a French bank account, we had to get a money order from the post office. The postal clerk, when he heard our predicament, laughed and said that the really strange thing about such a policy was that the store would have to bring the money order back to the same post office that issued it to get it cashed. We never quite understood that.

We were frequently amazed by the scrupulous honesty of the people. One day on a crowded street in Metz, a man tapped me on the shoulder and returned several franc notes that had fallen from my pocket. Frank lost his entire wallet, filled with all his credit cards, passport and identification papers, on a city bus in Metz. It was found and returned to the driver, who turned it in to the bus office, which wrote Frank a letter that it was there. When he got it back, everything was still in it.

Morgan’s lycée afforded him rich opportunities to travel, as well. His class made several trips to Paris to participate in cultural events. He saw a spectacular presentation of Julius Caesar and attended an international trade fair of technology. Often they would make up a special train to take about a thousand school children to Paris from Metz for the various events. One trip that he found especially interesting was to the ancient Roman city of Trèves, which is now in Germany. He got to accompany a group of younger students to London for a week, where they lived in the homes of English families while meeting daily to sightsee in and around London. His French had progressed to the point that the English family with whom he stayed thought he was French and were surprised toward the end of the week when he told them he was American.

Vivian was able to visit the city of Moulins, site of the 1624 witch’s trial that was the subject of her senior honor’s thesis. She uncovered new sources on the subject in the archival material there, and found a man in the library with extensive knowledge on the subject. She was amused but shocked to be asked if her interest in witchcraft was “historical or practical.” The area still has practitioners of the dark art, it seems.

The illness of my father, W. F. McWilliams of Tyler, brought me back home in February, so I missed the adventurous travels of my family in the spring. They visited Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy during the spring break from school.

Would we do it again? We probably would. The severe financial cost, much greater than anticipated, was offset by a list of intangibles that we would not trade. Both children are securely bilingual. Frank’s and my language abilities are strengthened. We made contacts and friendships that will endure a lifetime. When we return to France, it will never again be as mere tourists, for we have left a part of ourselves there.

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