Essays by DAR

Kids On A Barge? Mais Oui!

(First published in LA Times Magazine)

It's not so much the expense. Nor is it the fact that they have the metabolism of hummingbirds, requiring food every seventy five minutes. No, the supreme challenge for any parent who contemplates taking his kids abroad, is how to find a place on the Continent where they can escape the clutch of the video arcade.

Which is where a barge trip comes in. Since Double Dragon took over the world, circa A.D. 1985, it is distinctly more difficult to expose youngsters to the pleasures once provided by family travel: a glimpse into other modes of being, a slower pace of living, the Non-Electronic Path to Enlightenment. As I discovered taking two sons to Europe for the summer, zippery blue video lights are everywhere, from campsites in the Ardennes to horse farms on the Coasta Brava, beckoning kids to grow calluses on their thumb pads, just like at home.

Except along the Canal du Midi. Parents may be incredulous, but here is the unvarnished truth: not once for a week of lolling and nibbling and basking and sipping, not once did the subject of joysticks come up.

There was, by way of explaining this, the location. Languedoc, the province traversed by the Canal du Midi, is the deep south of France, a land of medieval fortresses and misty churches -- another century entirely. All 300 miles of leafy canal linking the Atlantic with the Mediterranean feel alive with troubadours, crusaders, the ghost of things pre- Pacman. Only occasionally on our leg of canal, a westward stretch from Beziers to Carcassonne, were we reminded with a whoosh of our century: when a French Mirage jet would periodically scorch the sky about four feet above our scalps. (Nearby Toulouse is the center of the nation's aerospace industry.)

But time-tripping was only half the pleasure. A barge proved one of the only domesticated spaces my kids didn't seem to mind being confined on: a homey 100 foot long pet water monster containing four cabins, dining area, galley, and crew quarters. The sundeck was like a floating outdoor cafe with elbow room, a beamy arena railed like a playpen and dotted with life-preservers (a bit over-guardedly so, since the canal is only about five feet deep). With me reading under my umbrella at one wrought iron table, and they sprawled to draw at another, the perfect travel distance from each other was afforded: within earshot but out of each other's hair.

Then there was the question of company. With the clientele getting younger every year, gone are the days when barges catered only to rich widows and sun-happy retirees. Ashore beforehand, the barge company helped me coordinate a week when other young parents with kids would be coming. Afloat, the cheery British skipper Nick was more than happy to teach my nine year-old card shark Marshall to cheat at Dirty Mary; to tutor my twelve year-old resident scholar Alex in history (it's the oldest canal in Gaul, with some humpbacked bridges bearing original dates from the 1600's); or prop up both kids with fishing poles and straw hats so they looked --for hours! --like French Huck Finns.

What evolved were recreations I thought had vanished a generation ago. Conversation: without micro-chip hypno-stimulation, the kids were actually talking to each other. Non-wheeley biking: their greatest treat was pedaling the towpaths under the lush sycamore shade on either side of the canal on bicycles supplied by the barge. (Motoring along at a meandering 4 mph, the barge maintained the ideal pace at which a child bikes, not to mention the pace at which a recuperating parent takes his Ultimate Jog.) Alas, swimming was out -- microbes and water snakes -- but both kids took turns steering the barge from its stern, a sensation, they reported, akin to maneuvering an armored horse with its visor down. Such chivalry! Within 48 hours, they had gone back hundreds of years.

What it added up to was something unprecedented in my travel experience with kids -- a languorous time. Away from the zap and sizzle, we had succeeded in fulfilling one of the basic kid requirements of travel: to keep moving, but somehow to maintain a modicum of stillness. Feeling nomadic and sedentary simultaneously, 1990's kids were becoming calm.

Time slowed.

But it was the unpretentious tiny towns lining the route that, surprisingly, proved the biggest hit of the trip. We would moor in the middle or within strolling distance of such hamlets as Somail, Roubia, Homps, and set out to go exploring. Except during midday when they took on a guarded mien, presenting nothing but a shuttered exterior onto deserted streets, the labyrinthine byways of these places were far friendlier than in larger French burgs. "Bonjour, mes petits," said the village shopkeeps, tipping their berets to my kids; "Quack," said the family of mallards screened behind the chicken wire of someone's livingroom window. A sign announced the next town twelve kilometers away; kids who were used to jet age speeds realized with a relaxed yawn that it would take all afternoon to get there.

And the food. The food.

"Dad, you ought to see our steakroom!" cried Marshall, upon encountering our twin cabin. The malapropism was apt in light of the fact that we had been loading up on bread and Roquefort for two weeks before boarding. (Nor were we alone in that: With France twice as expensive to visit as it was a few years ago, everywhere we turned there was the terrifying spectacle of well-heeled American families secreting baguettes into their camera bags at the breakfast table.) Languedoc not only grows cheap sunny crops such as olives and dates, it is also home to one of the finest family dishes in the world: cassoulet, a rich ragout of white beans, native goose, lamb, sausage, all bought fresh by Nick's wife the chef along the way.

And the wine. The wine. Disdained for years as plonk, Languedoc wines are at last coming into their own. Vineyards grow right up to the banks of the canal; wine caves compete for tastings. Up-and-coming whites, roses in fighting trim, they make up in freshness what they lack in subtlety. You drink the wines young here. And the young drink the wines.

"Dad," said Alex, "how come whenever I sip this strawberry juice I want to go somewhere?"

"I don't know. But we are going, aren't we? We're moving and stationery, both: that's the beauty of barge life."

"But I mean: go." Advantage number thirty-nine of barge travel: A van followed in case such wanderlust hit. Side-trips included excursions to pre-Roman ruins dating from the sixth century B.C., Narbonne's Cathedral of St. Just that was designed to be the grandest in the world but was never completed. And Carcasonne, the largest double walled city in Europe, looking suspiciously like a Disney set. In fact, Disney is alleged to have modeled his fantasy-castle on this place; in return Carcassonne seems to have borrowed his sense of kitsch. (It's the kind of cotton-candy-smelling place where they sell miniature coats of arms for paperweights and backlight the ramparts with rainbow fireworks. The verdict: "Awesome.")

Back on board again, the canal itself took on suspense as each twisted mile brought painterly views my kids had theretofore experienced only in museums: green tufted rolls of hay (not as picturesque as the stacked constructions of the Impressionists, but nice enough); a field of Van Gogh sunflowers, all slowly rotating their gaze toward us as we proceeded west with the setting sun. One of the most delightful sensations to work its magic on their skin was also the most ordinary: feeling the different currents of air temps, from smoky-cool when the water darkened under a passing cloud to brazen-hot when sunlight recurred, darned by blue dragonflies. Snacking on avocado mousse to the hoarse choir of locusts, my kids sat spellbound on deck each evening as the world turned pale sunburn shades, delicate gradations of hue and shadow the likes of which they'd seen on no video screen anywhere.

The last night, a pool hall in a medieval stone- walled village yielded the dastardly sound: blips, jangles, bells. The only game in town, it turned out to emanate from a laughably outdated (read: fifteen years old) MunchMan machine. Whether it was from their new-found lassitude, a dose of 17th century languor, or just one of those neat reversals that contented travel seems to bring -- I was the only one who wanted to play.