| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Paris-The first meal I ever had in France was in a small bistro on the rue de Caumartin just down the street from No. 37-the office that served for half a century as the Paris bureau of The New York Times. It was to this bureau that Timesmen returned as the Allies re-took Paris at the end of World War II, astonished that it was still much as they'd left it when the Nazis had first rolled into town. As for myself, my arrival took place a quarter-century later-September 7, 1969. I'd just touched down in Paris, for my first visit, on an Air India flight from New York. When I exited the subway at the Havre-Caumartin stop, the streets were as quiet as central Paris can only get on a lazy Sunday afternoon, barely a week after "le grand retour" brought the hordes back from their August vacances to the real world. The Times' bureau was shifting into high gear, churning out copy for the next day's editions. My new boss, Seymour Topping, then foreign editor, had warned bureau chief Henry Tanner that his news assistant would be pitching up there and to treat him right. So with Tanner's door closed as he crafted his story, the curmudgeonly reporter John Hess suggested I duck down the block to a little bistro and have a bite until Tanner was free to begin the process of inculcating me in the French way of life. So I did. I ordered "un hot dog" and was taken aback as they served me a long, grilled dog smothered with melted cheese. Not likely something they'd have served up at Fenway Park.
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