Personae Non Gratae

Personae non Gratae (n): Plural for a person who is unacceptable or unwelcome.Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary

An international man of mystery. That’s me, minus the mystery. I grew up with a big imagination in small town Pennsylvania, in a stunning sketch of pastoral beauty nestled between the Blue and Tuscarora Mountains of the Appalachian chain. Picture rolling green hills dotted with small dairy farms and commanding grain silos. This is God’s country, mostly Protestant, settled by the Scots-Irish and Germans. Paradise on earth, but limited in horizons for a hick kid full of wanderlust fuelled by Verne and Hemingway. What’s out there? Will it embrace me?

My post-Perry County travelogue included stints in Texas and then California, first southern and then northern. I was living in San Francisco in my late 20s when I met the exotic Alexandra, an exchange student from Paris getting her MBA at SF State. I tumbled, we married, kids happened, and my wanderlust went trans-global.

Alexandra was born in France to a Spanish mother. We made regular visits to Paris and Barcelona in those early years, and these were my first experiences in foreign lands. My language skills were impressively bad, but no matter. I’m a chatty guy, even in broken Spanglish, and Alexandra’s family invited me in with arms wide. He’s trying, isn’t that cute!

Later, we committed that our 3 pooks would have European dirt under their fingernails, and so moved to Provence in 2003. I was back to the pastoral landscapes and rolling hills of my youth; add in the Mediterranean lifestyle.

Through these adventures I’ve always enjoyed persona most grata status, albeit with some good-natured ribbing. In Texas I was that damn Yankee from north of the Mason-Dixon. In California, the Texan in Tony Lamas. In France or Spain I was the indecipherable American at your dinner table.

My old Tony Lama boots still step out on occasion.

A side note here: The French are truly bad at distinguishing English accents.

Oh, tu es anglais? was a common query at aforementioned dinner parties. Non, I’d reply, je suis américain. Ohhhhh d’accord, un américain! Oh là là!

To avoid confusion, I just started introducing myself as Bill the American. Bottles popped, merriment ensued.

Stormy admiration

The contentious rapport between French and Americans is a story that plays well on both sides of the pond. The truth is, however, that a lot of love and respect exists between the two cultures. Both are fiercely proud and highly accomplished along those distinct dimensions that matter most to each. Food and fashion and big trucks and fast trains and tech giants and bloomy cheese and good rosé on the cheap: I’ll let you segment out who excels at which.

French support for America stretches from Lafayette and our country’s founding through Desert Storm in Iraq. American GIs fought alongside the French in both world wars, liberating the country after the Normandy landing in 1944. US flyboys still do rotations through the French Air Base at Salon de Provence, not far from Aix, to share expertise and enjoy the southern sun.

Washington and Lafayette tour Valley Forge, 1777.

This all adds to a mutual respect, if sometimes begrudging. My circle of French friends in San Francisco bubble to the top of any dinner party list; always great conversation and excellent taste in wine. How can I help, Bill? Oh, just bring a bottle of something. Similarly, I got invited to a lot of French parties and events in Provence when living there.

I place great value in this French-American relationship. I get deeply upset with anyone or anything that fucks with it.

There are only so many insults, tariffs, threats to security, and unhinged tweets about total annihilation before a people get fed up and the red carpet gets rolled up. Russians became personae non gratae in Europe after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Yes, they could still visit, but the reception was, and remains, notably frosty. One is always curious, does he support Putin and the war? I’m guessing that South Africans experienced this disdain during the Apartheid years and Israelis are feeling a bit of a chill now.

I’ll be spending time in Europe this summer. I’m happy to call San Francisco home again, but look forward to re-immersion in a bit of French joie de vivre with family and old friends. As an American, will I be warmly embraced as I enjoyed in the past? By my good friends, yes of course, but by the odd waiter here or unacquainted dinner guest there? Putain, is this guy one of those Trump bastards?

I deeply disapprove of our president (as do 60% of my fellow Americans as of this writing) and consider his many actions this past year unexplainable, unconstitutional, and possibly criminal. I cringe at my inclusion in the Personae non Gratae Club, but accept that now I am, and will need a strong soap (or little white lie) to wash off that smell.

Oh, tu es anglais? Uh, … oui, vraiment anglais.