On the Street Where I Lived . . .

Today I learned that when I lived in Tours, France, I lived on a street named for Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy, a French composer and music teacher whose students included Erik Satie and Cole Porter. Porter was a student for only three months, while Satie, in typical Satie fashion, felt his own compositions were worse after d'Indy's tutelage. D'Indy was also an anti-Semite.

So this kind of started on a sour note. But still, an interesting voyage nonetheless.

In Blois, the street I lived on was named for Honoratus of Amiens, better known as Saint Honoré, and is the patron saint of pastry chefs.

This was my favorite mission apartment. The building it was in was built before Columbus discovered America, and like all of the buildings on that side of the street, was built at the foot of a cliff or hill. You could enter at street level and climb a few flights of stairs to get to our apartment, or from the back you could enter and go down a few flights of stairs.

In Perigueux, the street I lived on was named for Victor Basch, a French politician and president of the Human Rights League of France and an ardent anti-Nazi. He and his wife were killed by Vichy France militia officials in Lyons in 1944.

Maybe this takes the curse off the Vincent d'Indy connection.

In Toulouse, I lived on a street named for Louis François Gaston Marie Auguste de Roquemaurel, a French naval officer and explorer, who journeyed to Antarctica and throughout the islands of the Pacific.

He was a native of Toulouse and donated many of his relics from his Pacific visits to the museum in town.

And lest anyone think stateside is devoid of character, the house I grew up in is named for Minnie Gibson Hitt, an early Idaho Falls banker and the first female head of a bank in Idaho.

The house I live in now is on a street named for the match point concept in tennis. In a neighborhood with many tennis-themed street names that has a grand total of one tennis court, private. So that's a little boring. If not ironic.