don't follow pat

During the fall of 1974, I was 20 years old and living in France. I went there to learn French, and I hoped to be able to ski in the French Alps. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would be asked to join the French hot dog ski team.

How did I make this French connection? It all started in ninth grade at Madison West Junior High, when I was failing my French class, blamed in hindsight on my then undiagnosed ADHD.

What to do? I decided to simply stop taking a foreign language altogether. This worked until the end of my sophomore year in college when I was shocked to learn from my advisor that I needed at least four semesters of a language to graduate from the UW! I was paralyzed, realizing that there was no way that I could ever pass four semesters of college French. I needed a Plan B.

My French Connection

As luck would have it, my older brother Mike was living in Paris on a Fulbright scholarship with his French wife Françoise. Her sister Genevieve lived in a small village outside of Besançon in northeast France, with her husband Gerard Lallier and their two young children.

In the City of Besançon was an immersion language school, called the Centre de Linguistique Appliquée (CLA) (https://cla.univ-fcomte.fr/home/). The Lalliers generously invited me to live with them while I went to school. Could this be the answer to my predicament?

So I hatched a plan. I dropped out of the UW and instead enrolled in an 8-week French immersion course at the CLA. After that, I planned to go to Chamonix to practice speaking French, and of course to ski. My brother Tom had spent the winter there a few years before, and I could not wait to check it out.

In early October, I went to Paris and spent a week with Mike and Françoise. When they weren’t showing me the incredible museums and other historic sites, I was on my own to walk the streets and discover places like the Louvre, Montmartre, and Notre-Dame.

It was then that I also realized how little French I actually remembered from 9th grade. I was barely able to communicate even basic needs, like “I would like to buy a baguette.” I remember asking my brother (who was fluent in French) what the difference was between être (to be) and avoir (to have).

Learning French by Total Immersion
Toward the end of October we went to Besançon, and I moved in with Gerard and Genevieve and their two children. This photo shows me with Mike and Francoise and the Lallier family in front of their home in Auxon Dessus.

That day started my complete and total immersion into the French language and culture. To help me learn, they agreed to only speak with me in French while at home. I began each day riding a school bus into the city with children who squealed with laughter as I struggled to speak with them in French. I then spent the entire day in class, where only French was spoken by instructors and students.

To make it even more difficult, the French postal workers were on strike for the first six weeks that I was there, and I had absolutely no communication with my family and friends in the U.S.–something that would be unimaginable today given ubiquitous access to cell service and wifi.

The eight week session went by quickly, and I progressed from speaking no French at all, to being able to understand simple conversation and communicate basic needs.

However, to say that these two months were difficult would be an understatement. I missed my family and friends (especially my girlfriend Katie L’Heureux), and remember many nights sitting alone in front of the kitchen fireplace.

And I have a vivid memory of dreaming and hearing people speak perfectly fluent French–but when I attempted to respond in my dream, my lips moved but no words came out.

Moving to Chamonix

As the eight-week session came to an end, I started planning my trip to Chamonix. I signed up for a weekend ski trip with students in the CLA, to Les Gets in the Alps (https://www.lesgets.com/en/). We had a great time, but instead of returning to Besançon I took the train in the other direction, to Chamonix.

My first night there, I stayed in a youth hostel in the center of Chamonix. The next day, I skied alone at Le Brévent; the ski area located in the center of town. I had skied in the Rocky Mountains in the US, but I had never seen anything like the spectacular views from the gondola looking over to Mont Blanc.

About mid-day, I noticed that I was the only person skiing in the entire resort. When I asked the chairlift operator why that was, he said “C’est le jour de l’An.” Even though my comprehension was improving every day, it took me a few more runs to figure out that it was New Year’s Day.

A few days later, my brother Mike and Francoise came to Chamonix for a visit. We rented a chalet up the valley, and Mike and I had a truly memorable experience exploring the runs and skiing together at the Grands Montets.

I finally felt like my two-month immersion in French was starting to pay off, as I could understand most conversation and communicate fairly well. And perhaps because I came to France with almost no foundation in the language, I had developed quite a good French accent.

More French Connections

Some time during that week, I dropped by the Hôtel La Sapinière (https://www.chalethotelsapinierechamonix.com/en) to follow up on a recommendation from my brother Tom to meet a friend named Patrick. By chance, Patrick was working at the desk and we had a great conversation. In fact, it went so well that he invited me to move in with him and his roommates at a nearby chalet.

What I did not realize at that time was that my French connection would deepen over the next few weeks, I would meet people who would become lifelong friends, and that I would be invited to join a French hot dog ski team, named the “Poods.”

Stay tuned for the rest of this story in my next blog, “My French Connection 2.”

Afterword: Mission Accomplished

After skiing in Chamonix and touring with the Poods, I returned to Madison in the summer of 1975. I was still facing the reality of needing four semesters of a language to graduate. To my surprise and delight, I discovered that I could take an advanced French course and get 16 free “retro” credits for four semesters of French (French 101, 102, 203, and 204)! All I needed to do was get a B or better…

So I enrolled in French 227 (Conversation and Composition Intermediate Level) in the fall of 1975. During the first class I think that I impressed the instructor with my fluent conversational French. But the next week, she asked me to stay after class and shocked to learn that I did not know how to read nor write.

Not to be discourage, I spent countless hours in the language lab, and managed to get my composition grade up from an F to a D. When averaged with my A in the conversation part, I somehow squeaked by with a B in that course.

The next semester, the UW granted me credit for the four semesters and 16 credits of French, that I never had to take. Thanks to the help from my family living in Paris and near Besançon, my Plan B worked and my predicament was solved.