Workshop and holidays

My father was an engineer and he was also a maker. A maker of that time without a 3D printer, with casual tools. He knew how to make furniture and how to work iron.

I was always fascinated by what he was doing and spent many hours with him on Saturdays and Sundays, 'helping' him as a 10 year old kid can help his father: by just being with him.

His workshop was in the basement of our apartment of Metz. The building was old and the basement was large and dark. I will always remember the smell, a mix between humidity and old things. I will also remember forever the smell of my father's cigarettes, the worse ones in France at the time, the 'Gauloise sans filtre' (Gauloise without filter) that I hated so much. He smoked all the time. My mother and older brother Philippe were heavy smokers too. It was a nightmare for Patrick and me in the car when all three smoked at the same time with us coughing in the back and begging to open the windows. They opened the window, two centimeters! 'Look it's open, stop complaining!'...

I followed my father's work in the workshop with passion and envy. Like a nurse helping a surgeon I was the one giving him the tools, asking questions after questions on what hew was doing and why.

I also spent time in the dark corners of the basement. There was a 'hidden corridor' that scared me and where I used to go with a flashlight, exploring and discovering with fear all the rubbish left by the previous tenants. At the end of the corridor was a old bathroom with a bathtub that made my imagination wander.

The workbench had a self-made circular saw constructed with the motor of a washing machine, incredibly noisy and scary. So exciting and dangerous for me!

He built so many things in this cave that the list would be too long. I remember particularly the holiday trailer. We used to go for the summer holidays to the town of Antibes on the French Riviera for the two month of the summer holidays. We had a little boat, a 'Zodiac Mark II' with a 33 horse power engine and we needed a trailer to carry it. 

The trailer was his masterpiece. He made it from A to Z, soldering the frame with an electric soldering machine, using the wheels of a used car. It was big and heavy. From a simple trailer to carry the boat, it slowly became equipped with a picnic kitchen, easy access organised storage areas etc. He made me participate to the construction, most of the holes in the iron tubes were made by me with the metal driller. I was so proud!

I spent all the summer holidays of my childhood in Antibes on the French Riviera. We rented the first floor of a large house, very close to the beach with an immense garden. The riviera was not as constructed as it is today, the garden was immense and un-cared for, and led to remaining parcel of forest that we used to call the 'little forest'. The place was mostly un-constructed, there was even a farm with greenhouses that we used to watch with binoculars.

I was always the first one to get up. My first reflex was to go in the garden in the fresh and wonderful morning of Provence. The smell and sounds of nature will forever remain in my memory. The garden was full of fruit trees with peaches and plums, juicy, sweet and delicious on which I rushed after getting up.

One of my favorite place to play in the early morning was the remaining of an old sail boat under the plum tree, the perfect place for my imaginative mind.

Some evenings we went through the little forest (it was a shortcut) to Juan les Pins, the city near Antibes to have a drink at a cafe. One of the cafe had a Scopitone and I was always begging to go there. It rarely worked as it was such a delicate machine and was so expensive. But one time, it was open! I was fascinated by the inside and spent the whole evening staring at the repair-man.

Another fascinating machine I encountered in those evenings was the famous Sega Killer Shark arcade machine, one of the first real arcade game, entirely electro-mechanical. The sound of the shark when you kill it is still in my ears.

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Out of the two month we usually spent there, my father could only come for one due to his job, usually in August. We all were excited when he arrived as he brought the Zodiac with him.

The boat was parked in a small harbor in Juan les Pins, a wonderful and quiet place with a few boats. Now a large touristic complex with millionaire yachts. 
The name of the boat was 'Onkrakrikru' a rather unusual name for a boat, taken from a comic strip.

We used to go for boat picnics in 'La Baie des Milliardaires' (litterally the Billionaire's Bay), eating sandwiches and fishing under the Eden Rock, a famous 5 stars hotel in the Antibes Cape, and even sometimes bathed in the hotel's pool by climbing the ladder that led to the sea and passing for residents!

Antibes was close to the city of Cannes, and in the month of August, Cannes hosted the famous yearly firework festival. On the evening, we would take the boat for a night trip to the festival, in the dark under the moon and stars. There was one big danger in the trip that we called 'Le Truc a Sous Marins' (literally The Thing for Submarines), an old unused iron buoy, large and dark, lurking in front of Antibes. We even got close to bump in it, which would have been catastrophic in the night. So the tension was intense each time until we passed the threat.

And we could watch the firework from the sea, an incredible experience with stronger sounds of explosions and magnificent view without the crowd.

Unfortunately, my father died when I was 12, of his sin, tobacco (brain embolism). He would have been so interested by computers and my life would not have been the same. I would not have chosen to do vet studies and would have certainly become an engineer like him. 

But AMOS would certainly not have seen the light.