Hello EFBloggers Its story time again!
So, a few years back I was on tour in Europe with my band, and it came time during this leg of the tour were we would have a few days of down time before continuing with the rest of the tour.
At this particular moment we were in France, and in being so, I decided to visit a very close cousin of mine living in a small old sleepy village within Aix-en-Provence area. I love these places; small local business still owed by the same families for generations on; cafes, pastry shops, restaurants with peasant rustic-earthy old school cooking, and vineyards – ahhhh yes the vineyards. Small, with only a few acres providing some of the most outstanding fresh reds and especailly their world known dry-Rose’; these Rose’ are the best in the world bar non! In towns like these, everyone knows everyone, it is very local friendly and self sufficient to each others specialties. For instance you can just walk up and buy what you need from the vineyard for only a couple of bucks a bottle of for a little more buy a container which carries a few gallons – plus allowing you down to venture in their cellars touring their fermentation process in the huge oak vats, and having a taste right from them; simply no hoopla, just a way of life were nothing much changes – I found it simply bliss, and have retuned a few times since.
Anyway I’m getting away from why I wanted write this little tid bit in the first place (sigh!)…
So here I was hanging with my cousins in his little rustic style restaurant he owned then; he too is a musician and in his restaurant he would sing and play acoustic guitar – French and Italian folk songs, pretty cool stuff. One night after closing we decided to go to one of those local cafes in this small semi-unscathed WWII town for drinks; french local favorite, Pastis.
While sitting there chatting, something caught my attention; a small wooden wall on a building across the darken street. As I looked and barely make out, a figure of a person on a poster, and although I could not really make it out from that distance, my eyes were drawn to it anyway.
After a while I asked my cousin what that building was, he mentioned that it was the local movie theater, but it was only opened on weekends, and since this was week day, it was closed. A few minutes latter I mentioned that I wanted to walk over to see what this poster on wall was calling my attention so much. So we walked over and well, Well, WELL! My eyes grew big football sized marbles – it was a poster of none other that our man Flynn, wow! Gentleman Jim. The poster was a copy of course, and not in full color, more to the style of sepia, very cheaply made – I told my cousins that I had to have this poster -problem was, it was put up with some roll on paste/glue, in the same way you would find on many walls of the streets of New York. He told me that we beter not for we may get in trouble if a gendarme happens to come by, but I told him that this has been up for such a long time that don’t believe its of real interest to the owner of the theater any longer, in fact we might be doing him a favor to remove it for him.
Well they said they would be at the little ice cream shop down the street waiting for me. Ok I said, and started to peel the poster off the wall; unfortunately it started to rip in places from the dried up glue they used to post it, plus its cheap paper of which it was printed on.
Eventually I did get it off the wall, rolled it up, and for the rest of my tour it was packed away until I got it back to the states. I tried the best I could to fix it and re-cover the damages, but as you can see in the pic, that was the best I could do.
It is a cheap copy for sure, nevertheless it is still a gem to me, another Errol Flynn jewel I have in my pocession (not that I have anything of great value from EF) for keeps sake.
Actually the adventure adds a lot to my posters personal value; I felt like a cat burglar who never got caught with the taking in the crown jewels. LOL! It adds adventure to conversation.
Not much there yet I hope you can see the my joy in it…
Au revoir mes amis….
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— Sergio
