The opportunity to get my mom to tell me stories is dimming. I took her to a doctor's appointment this week and asked her about a photo she had sent me earlier.
Two things you have to know about her is that 1) she's the best genealogtist you'll ever meet; and 2) She is now like a mad scientist with ChatGPTs image AI.
The photo she sent was this one. It's of my dad and Gerald Getty, one half of the Getty twins. My dad went to school with them and they went through print production classes together in high school East High in the 1950s. Harold, the other half of the Getty Twins, was in the Air Force in England at the same time Gerald and Larry were in the Army in Germany. This would be the 1961-1962 period. Harold had met a beautiful English Rose and the wedding was set. The Army boys got their pass, their wives, and Gerald's car and that's where our story begins.
Mom and Dad would have been 19 and 23, so Gerald and Betty were about the same age. Gerald was driving his little junker car and off they went. They had to drive to Calais, France to cross by ferry into England. That went well. They got all the way to Carol’s parents’ house unscathed.
Mom and Dad spent the night in their guest room while Gerald and Betty stayed at a relatives’ house nearby.
Everyone was excited, until….the company commander refused his permission for them to marry so the wedding had to be called off.
So, back they started for Germany. They made it a ways before the car conked out. This was in a rural spot near a super tiny French village. It was nighttime. Unlike now, when they could have found a pension or an AirBNB, they found nothing in the village. No car repair, no restaurant, and no place to stay.
They knocked on doors until someone agreed, via the quartet’s awful French and the even worse English skills of the villagers, a place for each of them to stay. The bed that was provided to my folks collapsed in the middle. It was a sleepless night.
In addition to all sleeping situation, they hadn’t eaten since morning and they had about 50 cents between them. The family gave them leftover cake and water to drink.
In the morning, they met up and were told they needed to talk to the one person in the village who spoke really good English. Mom referred to her as Bridget Bardot--I believe she was, well, va-voom.
They found Bridget Bardot and while she had some English skills she was far from fluent. Suddenly, various villagers wondered in to “help” Bridget Bardot in translating. Frustrating and comical as it was, they finally arranged to have the car picked up for repair and were dropped at a train station in a nearby village.
They would pick up the car the following week. In those days, you didn’t just get a pass or leave whenever you wanted, it had to be planned and approved and could be canceled at a moment’s notice based on mission needs. I never did hear if he got his car back.
At the train station, they realized they did not have the money to get to Paris where they could get transportation to Germany. With help from the train people, they contacted the US Consulate in France and they wired enough money for tickets to Paris.
When they arrived, they had no money to get to Germany, so they took their 50 cent and bought a 10-cent bottle of wine and spent the rest on a loaf of bread to split between the four of them.
The wine was awful, my mom reported, but it was the best bread they ever had.
I’m not sure who helped the group get home; I believe it was the USO, but they were funded enough to get four train tickets to Germany.
This is a photo of Larry and Gerald standing in the middle of the street with their giant suitcases in that little French village where Bridge Bardot lives. I wonder if her English ever improved?
