You know those people that make a big impact on you for some crazy reason and whom you know don't remember you at all even though they have become legendary in your stories. So it is with Smoky McGee and the Walnut Man.
Paul and I met the Walnut Man in Saumur France at an interesting museum that talked about the process of extracting oil from nuts. The Walnut Man had a passion for nuts that I have never seen--he loved nuts. When he told us that alas France was Ninth in the world for walnut production you could hear the sadness and deep disapointment that such a thing could be. The US is number one in the world for walnut production and China number two--but it takes twice as mant nuts from China to make a kilo of oil as it does from the US or France. So since our tour we have been full of all kinds of nutty facts and Paul does a great inpersonation of the Walnut Man.
Smoky McGee--now here is a character! We were staying in Caen after visiting the WWII Museum of the Peace. We checked into our one star motel. We decided to go out for kebobs and save some money. Thus we went out for cheap kebobs--the cheapest food in France other than bread. I had settled down to sleep and Paul was sewing some gear.
Suddenly I awoke to Paul yelling at me to get up. The smoke alarms were going off. I hurried up and struggled to get dressed and we stumbled down the stairs. We met a group of fellow lodgers at the bottom. It appeared that there was no fire just a false alarm. One dishelved man in a suit paced back and forth. Then a thin blond woman walked down the steps and haughtily took a big puff of her cigarette accessed the situation calmly walked out the door at the alarms continued to scream and into the attached bar and returned with the hotel manager.
He proceded to eventually shut off the alarm and then he and the blond started screaming at each other in French and pointing at the alarm boxes. Eventually a black man who was a guest there joined in on the yelling as well. Smoky McGee kept her cool just yelling between smokes. Paul and I did not know what to do--after about 5 minutes we decided to just go back to our room as it did not appear that the place was in immediate danger. Paul checked our fire escape route and determined that we could walk out on the ledge and jump down to safety. I decided to go back to sleep.
Just as Paul was finishing his safety check and had crawled back inside there was a huge crash the sound of glass smashing everywhere. Paul ran to the window and the street was covered with glass--we did not know what had happend. Then upon climbing out on the ledge Paul saw Smoky McGee her back was covered in blood. Paul thought that she had been stabbed. Soon most all of the fellow lodgers were down in the street. We stayed in the room--after all the yelling from earlier we had no idea what had taken place. Soon we found out that the woman had fallen back first through the solid glass door. She stood out in the street covered in blood and glass all mixed in her hair and smoking. We were so suprised there were no cops or an ambulance. Around 45 minutes later an ambulance finally showed up and later the cops arrived. She put out her cigarette and got in the ambulance.
Her room was left open all night in the hotel. As we were getting ready to leave the next morning after a crazy night of dreams--the alarms went off. Smoky McGee had returned to the hotel...
