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Koos Koos…Do You?

The Source

Koos Koos…Do You? Since he’s old enough to defend himself, I’ll finally tell the tale. Morgan/Scott county lawyer and almost-judge Rick Crews was nearly arrested with me in Paris, France. Rick was a senior in high school and was a part of a small caravan of area kids I’d taken on a whirlwind tour of France, Switzerland, and a couple other places I’ve long forgotten. The rest of our tour group was off visiting the grave of Jim Morrison in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Since Rick and I had no particular interest in spending our Parisian days calling on the graves of dead American rock singers, we opted for a day of seeing the sights. This was in the pre-Euro days when an American traveler had to watch his money closely and exchanging dollars to francs was a daily ritual. Being our last day in France we didn’t want to end up with a pocketful full of French cash before heading out to the Swiss Alps, so Rick and I cruised the back streets of Paris with two criteria: cheap and English-speaking. Finally running across a little bistro with the sign “English spoken” on the door, we went in and found we were in a café serving only North African cuisine. Fine with me. North Africans seemed a healthy lot. Unfortunately English was only spoken here on Tuesdays and Thursdays and we took our table for two on a Friday. I stared at the menu and found that everything on the menu was a form of koos koos, small, round little ricelets that can be accompanied by nearly everything. Koos koos and beef, koos koos and chicken….all God’s children got koos koos. I looked at the price listings, I asked Rick to dump out the contents of his pockets and we figured that between us we were good for two orders of koos koos and kabob. …and only if we ordered nothing to drink. When the waiter came to take our order I did the usual point-and-talk-loud version of Chevy Chase ordering for his family in “European Vacation,” and the waiter seemed to understand what I was saying. I have no doubt that he was inwardly chuckling. That’s when the rather large man at the next table started shouting, “No! No!” I’d seen him come in and take a table to himself. The guy was decked out. Three piece suit, rings that were worth more than my home in Arenzville, and two front teeth made of gold. As soon as he heard us order, he began to holler “No! No! Wrong!” The waiter looked at him. “Wrong! They want beef! Beef! And Pastis!” We couldn’t afford the beef and I had no idea what Pastis was. The large, rich man stood up and came over to our table. “May I sit?” he asked. “Uh…sure.” The guy plopped himself down beside Rick and I and while the waiter hurried off to place our order for the most expensive thing on the menu, the Frenchman explained in very broken speech that he was taking English lessons and noticing that we were American, wondered if he might “practice” on us. Frankly, my mind was elsewhere, wondering what item of clothing I might be able to sell in order to pay for our meal. Then they brought the “Pasis,” a clear-liquid made from anis and containing what must have been about 300% alcohol. Rick sniffed it and looked at me. I nodded as if to say, “Go ahead and drink it. He may have a gun.” I drank my snifter of high-octane moonshine and could feel the burning liquid make its destructive way down my throat. The fellow talked on and on, asking what we’d seen in Paris, what we think of the French, and why the New York Yankees have so much money. They brought the beef and koos koos, we ate it (pretty good), more pasis (pretty bad) and it came time to find a way to either sell Rick’s American jeans or run down the street to avoid being arrested. I reached for our bill and the Frenchman put a death grip on my hand. “No! No! I pay! I pay!” Then he said something that I will never forget. “I am people! You are people! We are just alike! No?” Were it not for his gold teeth I might have kissed him. We’d been saved. No prison sentence, no selling of Rick’s clothing, no phone call home asking Dad to send cash, and I’d be home in time for the Arenzville Burgoo. A perfect day. The sights, sounds and smells of foreign lands are a true delight, but as you travel this summer I hope you have a chance to make a truly human contact and perhaps discover that I am people..you are people…we are just alike, okay? And I’d love to continue this tale to tell all Rick’s law clients about the night a few days later when he was caught stark naked trying to get into his hotel room when two ladies from Idaho came up the stairway, but alas…I’ve run out of room.