Silver Men and Smithies

There was a time as little boys we dreamed of going into battle as silver men on fiery steeds with lances poised and broadswords drawn.  But...the silver men are gone with childhood dreams!  At the Musee de l'Armee in Paris old men can relive those dreams. It has one of the largest collections of body armor in the world.  Full metal body armor came into being about the 14th century. You see men wanted to protect themselves in battle. Armor had been around in Greek and Roman times but not full body armor. Not silvermen!

The Roman soldiers wore breastplates and helmets. But not full body armor. Full body armor is usually associated with the 14th and 15th centuries. When men learned how to produce better metal and forming it, full body armor become possible. The metal could be shaped to cover individual parts of the body. Arm, leg, hand, foot and so on. A new type of blacksmith emerged...the armorer. A blacksmith that specialized in making armor. His basic tools were the hammer and anvil. He would have used a forge to heat metal to make it more malleable, so that it was easier to shape. But most of the shaping was done by brute force. Intricate curves were all shaped with a hammer.   The most difficult design problem was to design a suit that allowed freedom of movement while providing protection. Once this design problem was solved the only uncovered part of the knight were the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet.  The armor of the kings and wealthier nobles was decorated by way of embossing, etching, and engraving. Gold and other metals could be inlaid in intricate designs.

Nowhere is there more variation in design than there is in helmet design. The face may have been

enclosed or revealed. There may have been a hat brim or not. Heavily ornamented or plain. Plumed or not. There seemed to be endless variety. One of the biggest problems for the wearer was how well he could see!  Particularly peripheral vision! Whatever the design was, the purpose was the same… to protect the head!

Interestingly enough the weight of a suit of armor was less than you might think. A knight’s armor weighed only 60 to 70 pounds. Roughly the same weight as carried by a modern foot soldier. But the knight rode a horse. Incidentally armored horses weren’t very common. The armorers were no longer needed in the 16th century. Armor was no longer in use. The development of firearms had made full body armor useless.

When, as boys, we dreamed of going into battle as silver men our dreams were spawned by history. Nobles frequently took their sons as young as 12 fully clad in suits of armor into battle.

Just as we as boys had dreamed.

• musee de l'Armee Hotel national des Invalides, 129 rue de Grenelle - 75007 Paris
• www.musee-armee.com

It's About Service...

In our travels we have had some interesting encounters with desk clerks. For the most part they have been positive encounters.  However...it was not always the case.

While visiting Venice we chose not to stay in Venice proper but rather to find lodging an a nearby island. A great idea. The cost was roughly one half that of a hotel in Venice proper. However, little did we know of the  adventure staying on Lido would hold for us.  When leaving Venice we had to catch first water taxi in the morning to get to the train station on time to board our train for Florence. Upon awakening we could find no desk clerk at the desk. We found ourselves locked in the hotel. After  trashing the front desk, we found a key to the door and were able to get to the train station on time. (read more about this in the blog post: Escape from Lido)

In Villefranche-sur-Mer the desk clerk was quite helpful. The French town is on the French Riviera and we had reserved a room on the third floor with a balcony overlooking the harbor on the Mediterranean Sea.  Due to my medical condition I prefer to use an elevator to reach higher levels rather than a stairway. The helpful clerk informed us that he elevator was not very dependable and may stop between floors. But he quickly added that he would get me out if needed! The next day we were going to catch a train for Nice to visit the Matisse museum and leave our rental car in the parking lot. It was one of those lots  where you deposit some coins in a machine that prints a ticket for you to place on the dash of your car showing that you’ve paid to park. Much to our chagrin the ticket dispensing machine was broken. When we spoke with Jacques, the desk clerk, he said he would take care of it. And he did.

Bed and Breakfast hosts have been quite helpful and offered interesting anecdotes during our travels. When in Alaska the hostess, Mrs. Walker, of a B & B encountered a bear while picking blueberries for our breakfast. Her husband entertained us with stories of hunting mountain goats in the mountain peaks. And in Scotland our host  entertained us with bluegrass music while showing us his collection of stringed instruments. We had a breakfast of kippers at the bed and breakfast on a loch.

One of our most interesting experiences was in Spain. My wife, Claudette, makes all our travel arrangements. Many times she communicates with hotels via the internet making reservations. She had spent considerable amount time communicating with a young Spaniard named Javier. Javier was a desk clerk in a Madrid hotel. He was extremely helpful with directions on which subway train to take from  the airport and exactly which streets to walk to get to his hotel. He was an extremely helpful young man. During our stay in Madrid, Claudette decided we needed to do some laundry.  Normally we would find a coin operated laundry and do it ourselves. But in this instance Claudette thought she would let Javier take care of the chore. “No problem,” he said and sure enough did deliver our clean clothes the next day. Much to my surprise, Javier washed my red shirt with my underwear. The rest of the trip I lived in fear of being admitted to a hospital in pink underwear!

We have found over the years that the most interesting things in travel isn’t the places, it’s the people.

A Little Bit of Kindness, Please.

Recently, I was in the checkout line at my local grocery when a somewhat unusual incident occurred.  The line was getting quite long and was not moving. It seems there was an elderly lady having a bit of difficulty scanning her credit card.  The more the cashier tried to help her the more frustrated she became. Customers in line were beginning to get unruly. I overheard some saying such things as: “She ought to be in a home”, “poor old thing”, and “why don’t they do something about her?”  Soon a young man with a necktie joined the cashier.  Slim in stature and with a young-man-on-the-way-up attitude he took over the cashier’s job.   His nametag said he was a management trainee. The young man had an air of condescension toward both cashier and the elderly customer. He quickly took charge by grabbing the plastic card from the elderly woman’s hand and swiping  it.

“See,”  he says, “there’s nothing to it! Now move along!”

I felt a bit of empathy for the elderly lady. It occurred to me that one day we would all be old and much like her and probably have a problem with modern technology. Yes, one day every frustrated person in that line would be having problems too. Growing old is a gradual process and not necessarily one easily adapted to.

I remember when I was a child attending a rural school, one of the treats of the first day of school was a new ruler. It wasn’t very fancy or anything.  Just a wooden ruler with a metal straight edge. The local Coca-Cola bottler would give every student a new 12-inch ruler. On the back of that ruler was printed: “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You”.  I don’t guess they give them out to students anymore, or maybe that young management trainee just didn’t get one.

It Was About Cats

A few years ago we were in Montreal for a short visit. We were staying at a bed and breakfast,  the Auberge de La Fontaine. It was a beautiful old building, quite charming really. There was sort of a breakfast room on the ground level where guests would gather in the mornings. The breakfast fare was croissants, muesli, a selection of cheeses and a variety of American dry cereals. I noticed that one fellow put water rather than milk on his corn flakes. He was a tall man, lanky, with a slight stoop. His head was topped with bristly red hair and there were bright blue eyes peering from under bushy brows. There was a slightly hooked nose over the thin lips with a perpetual slight smile. He ambled across the floor with the gait of a farmer or outdoorsman and sat at a small table in the corner.

My curiosity about his eating habits led me to join him at his table. Just why would someone put water on their cornflakes? He welcomed my intrusion and introduced himself as Al Pennington of Morganton, NC. He said his wife was a late sleeper and he would enjoy the company. I said that my wife and I were visiting the city on our second honeymoon and Al said he and his wife had won a trip to the Canadian city in a contest sponsored by their local dairy co-op. After a bit  of talk about the weather, the city and such, I finally got around to asking him why he put water on his corn flakes.  It was quite simple he said. I got us two more black coffees and he began his story.

“As you might have guessed, I was raised on a farm. It was a rather small farm in western North Carolina. My daddy was farmer who also worked in a cotton mill to make ends meet. There were four of us in the family and he hardly made more than minimum wage. We all had our chores to do on the farm too. One of my jobs was to milk the cow in the morning. However, when I was about ten

years old I got the notion that milkin’ was girl’s work. I complained to Momma but she told me to “hush up” and to get down to the barn and not to be late for breakfast. I think I might’ve poked my lip out a little bit as I headed for the barn.” He sort of chuckled. “ I put new hay in Betsey’s food trough and set to work milkin’. I complained to  the milk cow too but all I got was a tap on the head as she swished her tail.

After a few minutes I heard something in the corner of the stall. It was a big yellow cat. It wasn’t our cat though. I had passed Thomas sleeping on the back porch steps on my way to the barn. The big cat stretched and opened his mouth. I shot a stream of milk across the stable into his mouth. I continued milking and not liking it very much. I thought I heard the cat again. Across from me in the corner was the yellow tom plus a gray tabby and a calico. They looked hungry.”

He took a sip of coffee from his cup and continued his story. “I was getting kind of anxious when more cats showed up. Some were hissing. I squirted more milk their way. Betsy was giving up her milk a little slower and my milk bucket was only half full. I guess I had been giving too much milk to

the cats. There were about twenty-five cats in the stable now. Betsy was getting nervous. I had only gotten a couple of more squirts of milk into the bucket when the cow kicked over the bucket. By the time I got back to the house I had only about a cup of milk left. My mother was really upset. I tried to explain about the cats, but she wouldn’t listen. She said, ‘From now on, you eat your cornflakes with water.’  After a few years they didn’t taste quite right with milk. So...That’s why you see a dairy farmer from North Carolina eating cornflakes with water.”

It’s been a few years since that incident but every time there is no milk in the fridge for my cornflakes, I think about that farmer.