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Her name was Nicole and she was quite a character, maybe some kind of hippie, before I knew what hippies were. I have a particular memory - on our return from Pamplona, looking up the alley where I left the scooter, and seeing it still there next to a lamp post on the side-walk. It was a nice alley, very graceful. It was hot when we left Paris and got hotter as we moved south. We took the Metro to the outskirts of Paris near a highway for Spain. We were going to Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls festival like Hemingway. I am sure it was not my idea. She probably wanted to go but not alone.
We each had a back-pack. We were first picked up by a couple of men in a Citroen I think. They were interested in us and wanted to do a lot of talking, and she as some kind of cultural missionary, social gadfly, did most of the espousal for the two of us. They stopped at a store around mid-day and bought French bread, salami and red wine. They then took us out to a nice park they knew for a picnic lunch. It was quite good and very pleasant.
The next thing I remember was the next morning. We were in a gas station and I went into the toilet, as they said in Europe, to wash up and shave, which is what I was doing when the owner burst in, and started yelling at me in French and wanted me out and now ! Nicole was out front between the gas pumps and the highway in a grassy area with her stuff, clothes and everything she had, spread all over the place, in a long trail twenty feet long. I had to bawl her out. And then it was a battle all the way. We would try hitching and no one would stop. She was a mess. I was in green Levis, which is what I mostly wore in those days, and she in cut-off jeans and blouse. I had to make her comb her hair, straighten up and put a pair of shoes on, before anyone would pick us up. As soon as she finally did, after much argument - bam ! someone would stop. It was like that the whole trip.
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