Falling for France

Barney's first Paris weekend was a three-day pass spent, as weekend soldiers did in 1956, in a cheap rent-by-the-hour hotel near the Gare de l'Est. He rode the Métro thirty-eight times in three days to learn the city. He went everywhere — the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, Sacré-Cœur, the Panthéon, the Madeleine, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Tuileries, the Palais-Royal. Then he went to the Louvre.

In 1956, before I. M. Pei's glass pyramid, you entered through an inconsequential side door. Inside, straight ahead and up the grand staircase, waited the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Hellenistic marble from the second century B.C. Barney had seen the picture in books. The statue in person hit him with something the pictures had not contained. He went from exhibit to exhibit, not yet a connoisseur, in awe.

Midnight at the USO, December 31, 1956

Barney and his army friends Dan Devine and Wally Sugar — the Unholy Three — got three-day passes for New Year's Eve. Barney, who rarely drank alcohol because of his Olympic training habits, got badly drunk on champagne on December 30 and was still hungover at dinnertime on the 31st. He told the others to go out without him. At ten o'clock he woke up hungry. He didn't speak French. He didn't want to spend New Year's Eve alone in a hotel room. He saw the USO and went in to at least hear English spoken.

Ten minutes before midnight he noticed a cute French girl dancing with a soldier. He assumed she was his steady and resigned himself. Five minutes later, the soldier left her. Perhaps the pressure of the midnight kiss got to him.

The USO closed at 12:30. Martine was with her older sister Christiane, who was consulted on his suitability and who gave permission for them to stay out. Barney and Martine danced at the new Whisky à Go Go until the Métro stopped at 2 a.m., then danced until it started again at 6. He insisted on taking her home — partly as an American courtesy, more to find out where she lived so as not to lose her. She gave him back at 8 in the morning, and Wally Sugar rolled over in bed at the Ebsworth hotel and said: Sick, huh?

The next week, a letter arrived. Martine had gone back to the USO at 4 p.m. as planned, but Barney had already left for the base. She had been waiting on the oysters for her family's New Year celebration. She wanted to see him again.

Every Weekend, the Louvre

From that point forward Barney spent every weekend in Paris. He bought a new Volkswagen instead of his sergeant's used Mercedes — he wanted economy for the return to law school he still thought he'd make. He and Martine visited the Louvre every Saturday. Within a year Barney knew the rooms so well he could have been a tour guide, he says. He could give a painting-by-painting description. After the Louvre: lunch, and a walk in the Tuileries or the Luxembourg Gardens. Her parents began inviting him to stay for the weekend.

In March of 1957 Barney was scheduled for ten days in Italy — Capri, Naples, Rome, Pisa, Florence, Venice — on a German-run tour for $99. He had booked the trip before meeting Martine and could not get out of it. He missed her intensely. On his return he proposed. They had known each other three months. He gave her his Kansas relay medal. She said yes.

Two Hearts on a Black Volkswagen

They were going to marry that July. Two things made Barney slow down: the army could reassign him at any time, and some part of him wanted to go home and make sure this was real and not a French romance. He went back to St. Louis, sat through two hours of law school, and asked himself what he was doing. He took a year's work in insurance. He wrote to Martine constantly. They married in March of 1958, in France. No one from his family could come. His army buddy Gene Czerwinsky was his best man. Barney's friend Bob Ahern lent him his black Volkswagen.

They honeymooned at the L'Oasis hotel in La Napoule on the Riviera, a week's stay including all meals for $125. Tiny, damp, terrific food. When Barney took the car to be washed at the end of the honeymoon, he discovered the sun had baked the USA-and-F hearts into the paint. He offered Bob Ahern to pay to have the car repainted. Bob never asked.

Back in St. Louis, Barney applied to IBM and NCR. Both turned him down — wrong time of year, they hired out of graduation. He ran a personal sales campaign against both companies until each offered him a job. He took great pleasure, he says, in turning them both down. Then he went to work at Kirkland Deluxe Travel as a sales agent, and his career began.