by William Cobbs

Created on: August 16, 2008

I arrived in France with $25 and a friend already there who had a small apartment and put me up until I found a job. I also had a government grant to attend a university with a small($75 a month)stipend. My friend, a former college roomate, had a good job at the Paris American Embassy.
I enrolled at the University of Paris, and received a green card with many benefits. One was to eat at University Restaurants (six of them) two times a day for $15 a month! One received a roll of tickets and with the identity card and a ticket, one could eat very well.

I eventualy(in about two weeks) received a job working for the English Oil and Steel Pool as a stenographer at $100 a month. (My boss later was prime minister of England..Macmillan).
A few weeks later I was recruited into the American Intelligence Service as a courier.

Once established, I found an apartment through a retiring American returning home to the USA for $15 a month.(Rents were fixed by law). Now I had a small but pleasant income, very little work to do, was pursuing three University degrees, and was happy for the first time in my life.

A beautiful American model from New York visited a small piano bar in Paris. I came in, and saw her sitting on a piano bench with an elderly gentleman. He turned outto be SINCLAIR LEWIS, the novelist. In the reslutant conversation with him,I met her.
We liked each other, and eventually were married.
But before that meeting and mrriage, I had led the wonderful life of an American in Paris.
My first friend was a Norwegian girl who had sat by me in a class at the Institut du Pantheon, where I studied eight languages. A wonderful friend, Dina helped me with my language studies and perfected me in the Scandinavian langusges and in my French. She also introduced me to her parents in Norway on a brief visit to that country, where I stood-in in a movie as an actor.(Ingmar Bergman was the young and new director...his first movie).
I had a friend at the American Embassy who knew Alice B. Toklas and many other famous people, including the painter, Vlaminck. I was invited to 27 Rue De Fleurus for dinner and met Alice. My memory of the house is that there were thirty-eight original Picassos on the walls. Alice was old and neat. Gertrude Stein, her friend had died three years previously.
My friend Ralph Murphy took me to visit Vlaminck, who was semi-paralysed and now painted with a brush between his toes, with the help of his wife. He SOLD me a small painting for $75!
At that time

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