It was a long time ago, like almost everything else.  John F. Kennedy was in the White House, De Gaulle was in the Elyseé, Khruschev was in the Kremlin, and I was in the back seat of a 1961 Renault Dauphine. My father was driving and smoking, my mother was reading the map and smoking, and I, too young to smoke, was smoking by proxy. We were tearing through central France at a dizzying 55 mph or so, on those long, straight treelined Roman roads, our objective: Omaha Beach in Normandy, where my father’s infantry division, the 29^th out of Philadelphia, had spent an unpleasant few days sixteen years previously. He wanted to salute a few dead comrades up there. I didn’t care; I was as happy as could be, just looking out the sliding rear window at the passing farmhouses and wheat fields and vineyards and mentally totting up my favorite cars, most of which, quite naturally, tended to be French.

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