Piney Woods Philosopher: Saluting a driving force

By BILL COBBS/Columnist

Piney was thinking back to the days of good presidents. As he drove the streets of Tampa, he remembered drives in Paris. Piney didn’t think he had ever met 12 drivers that he found more interesting than the Paris Embassy motor pool drivers in those old days. There were a dozen of them.
The stories of a few:
They were all French citizens, of course, but each was an individuality of age, background, looks, ability and intelligence. All were happy to get jobs at the embassy for its lowest wages were about three times the average wage of French workers. Louis Wohl was German. He had all of the tenets of the Nazi Germans of that time—stubborness and malignity. Born in Germany, after serving in the Nazi navy, he had gone to the Merchant Marines, and jumped ship in Buffalo, New York. Later he went to the new post-war France and applied for citizenship, which, remarkably, he obtained! He soon owned a small bar-restaurant that was run by his wife, Hilda. He saw the opportunity of getting ready money by being a USA driver, and with his fluent, but accented English, and French citizenship, he got the job. (He had been the chauffeur for a Nazi admiral (Canaris) in Paris during WWII, but I’m certain he didn’t offer Canaris as a reference!)
He was more than genial with Piney… first asking if he had arranged to sell his cigarette ration. (Piney was allowed 10 cartons a month at 50 cents a carton, but they brought $20 a carton on the French ever-ready black market.) Piney demurred. But Louis always had a story and apparently, and affectionately, liked Piney a lot for he would listen to him on the sometimes long trips.
On one such trip, he stopped at a pile of state-owned gravel by a highway. He carefully took a sack from the car trunk and filled it, taking perhaps five shovel-fulls. Getting back in the car, he said with his German accent, “Ve vil haff enuff for my driveway to be graveled in 10 days!“
One day, on the trip to the airport, he spied a small lamb in a field, and leaping out of the car, chased the lamb unsuccessfully about the pasture, handicapped by his large belly and age. 
Getting back in the car, he said, “I luff lambs! During de war, I took de admiral’s car, en I saw a lamb just like dot one, en I snuck up and grabbed him! I took em home, en my vife und kids just lubbed dat lamb so much.. .dey played en played mit it!“
He paused a second and added, “Und it tasted so-o-o-o good!“
Laguadec was Piney’s favorite chauffeur. He was 72 years old and had lied about his age to get his job. The perfect Celt from Brittany, he was a picture of good manners and correct behavior and had spent most of his life as a driver for a French aristocrat. Laguadec treated Piney like royalty, always opening the car door and saluting, and showing up on holidays to drink a small drink of Calvados. He started teaching Piney Celtic Breton, and that was of immense value to Piney years later when he translated Irish poetry for a New York publisher.
Dabadie, Piney’s next driver, was Corsican. He was small and wiry and completely sold on American pop songs, which he sang at a high volume while driving. Piney queried him about the “rumor” that most Corsicans were gangsters. 
“Alas! It’s true!“ he said. “My brothers are gangsters in the south of France. My Dad was a capo in the Neapolitian mafia. I wanted to sing professionally, but never made it. But at least, I’ve distanced myself from my family!“ All this in a mixture of French, Italian and English.
Roget was a middle-class Frenchman. He was huge and well-put together, and very much aware of the niceties of protocol. He talked very little, but getting to be a friend, told a few stories of Bicetre, the working-class area of Paris. Arriving at his very proper flat, Piney met his attractive wife, and 3-year old daughter who was about one-third the size she should have been, but perfectly beautiful. He and the wife explained that she had been that way since birth. They brought Piney small and perfect paintings that the baby had done, exquisite, but tiny, tiny figures. Piney had for his children the finest pediatrician in the world, actually the president of the International Children’s Foundation, a Dr. Brissaux. Brissaux was also a billionaire who lived in the Medici palace which belonged to him, had three Picassos in his office, and was very good with children and very bad with adults. He did not bill any patients, even the wealthy! Roget and wife and baby went with Piney to Brissaux who dumped them in a waiting room and disappeared with the baby for half an hour. Reentering, he said, “I can fix it.“ Handing Piney a slip of paper with a prescription on it, he said in his impeccable English, “This is obtainable only in the U.S. You go often to Washington as a courier. Get this medicine and bring it to me.“ Piney had no idea how to do that, but was sent the next week (it was the last month of the Truman administration) to Washington with a package from General De Gaulle. Arriving in the oval office, and a nasty kicking-out of the office by Truman to await a return message to De Gaulle, Piney went in the Presidential doctor’s office just by the Oval Office and asked the physician why Truman had cursed him and thrown him out of the office. 
He replied, “He’ll apologize when you go in for the reply to General De Gaulle.“ 
Piney bet the doc a dollar that would not happen and then thought about the prescription for the tiny child. “That’s experimental, that drug,“ he said. “But I’ll have it here before Harry lets you back in.“ His word was good and when Piney went back to Truman’s desk for the De Gaulle letter, Truman said, “Sorry I tossed you out like a bum, but I’m overwhelmed, getting outta here!“ It was the Jan. 5, 1953. He had 15 more days in office before the entry of Ike.  Piney went out of the office and dropped a dollar bill with the doctor who grinned and laughed.
Brissaux cured the child and years later Piney saw her as a normal-growth beauty, painting regular-sized pictures!

A writer, Bill Cobbs divides his time between Southwest Virginia and Florida.