Ma Rue

Rue Caulaincourt. I would argue that it’s the best street in Paris. But not just rue Caulaincourt, specifically the three or four block section where my apartment is. It took me awhile to understand that what makes my particular part of Montmartre so perfect is that I am situated on the curve of the street, allowing me to see down and up the street from any of my three big floor to ceiling French windows. Outside the windows, tiny balconies just cry out for pots of flowers. I put the last bits of my baguettes on the balconies for neighborhood birds, most often pigeons but sometimes robins that find their way to me.

The street is lined with trees, both home to the birds and harbingers of the changing seasons. When I first arrived at Christmas lights stretched across the street from each light post, creating a cheery welcome to all who entered the little village. After Christmas came the snow, not an every year thing for Paris. This year the snow came fairly regularly and piled up on the sidewalks and in the gutters. The sidewalks were very slippery in the mornings, before any bits of sun managed to warm the ice enough to turn to slush. The slush would freeze again in the late afternoon and make navigating the sidewalks a hazardous enterprise. In March and April the bare trees started to come alive again, first with tiny buds, then bursting into actual leaves; by May creating the familiar leafy bower that lines therue.

Imagine my shock on a Sunday morning in September when I was awoken at 8 am by a horde of city tree trimmers. They closed off the uphill side of the street and teams of them were wielding their chainsaws and clippers from cherry picker lifts. Another was hoisted into the tree by a series of ropes. Neighbors I had never seen were standing in open windows and on their tiny balconies in bathrobes. Trucks followed their progress collecting the massive piles of clippings and hauling them off. By 9 am they had reached the trees outside my windows. The fellow on the ropes was engaged with a woman across the way, on the fourth story, arguing loudly and with expansive hand gestures, telling what to do and what not to do. Three of the workers congregated below, listening to her. They ignored her friendly advice. The next big tree the chainsaws attacked was not only pruned but completely taken down to a one foot high stump. The trunk was then cut into five foot lengths that were soon scooped up by a claw and deposited into a waiting truck.

By the time I left for a lunch engagement the parade of workers had the cutters at the top end of my perfect three block section of rue Caulaincourt, the branch scoopers in front of Le Cépage and the sweepers in front of my apartment. It was quite a nifty little process that amazingly left enough greenery to assuage my fears. What of the downhill side of the street? Would I wake up next Sunday to find more of the same?

Mine is a self contained little village. On that span of the street one will find threeboulangeries, ensuring that one will be open on any given day. I regularly go to Maison Lardeux situated on the square less than half a block from my front door. It’s where I buy my baguette, most of which goes either to the birds or in the trash. If there is one symbol of France I think