Q: Do you remember Illiec?
JL: Yes. That was a happy time. I liked Illiec and I had a lot of freedom
there. And it was, you know, a wild spectacular scene.
Q: Describe it for me.
JL: Relatively small island, very rocky, wind swept, tides that moved up and
down forty feet. I used to enjoy going out with the adults and digging razor
clams, looking for abalone, rocks along the shore, stones. Those kind of
things.
Q: Was it a refuge?
JL: Perhaps, because it was so isolated that there wasn't a whole lot of
attention there.
I think the reason the family went to Europe in the first place was to a find a
refuge of sorts. And the public attention was considerably less in England and
in France then it was in the United States at that time.
Q: Can you describe the house for me?
JL: You should ask my mother that because she had a strong affinity for it. It
was, I would say, a small chateau, although as a small child it seemed pretty
big to me. There was no plumbing. There was no electricity. And you get your
water out of a pump. The day to day tasks to live were much more primitive
than we're used to here. You could look straight into the rocks and the sea
and watch the waves and the tide go in and out. I can remember a Coger eel
dead on a rock that you could see out there and that to me was impressive, a
big dead fish. I can remember the fields in the back, the trees and a little
hill. The road coming in, the French contracting crew that tried to blast a
rock, they were trying to find a place to punch a well. There we were, my
father and I, hiding behind another rock, watching the fireworks.
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