6: TO BE HAPPY, WORK HARD There is so much that has been written, by people so much more professional than I, that I wonder what in the hell I am presuming to do, anyway. POSTWAR PARIS WASN’T ALL CRÊPES SUZETTES AND LADIES SWANNING around in nip-waisted dresses. Not surprisingly, we have the movies to blame for this impression. Pretty much every American movie set during the early 1950s in Paris achieves its historic magic by putting the actors in fedoras and parking a few beautiful old Peugeots on the street and calling it authentic, which it was, minus the shell shock and pieces of cardboard people were still lashing to their feet in place of shoes. During the first years Paul and Julia lived there, there were endless shortages; days would pass without enough coal for the stove, so that preparing a simple lamb chop and a pan of peas was an ordeal. There was a fierce drought in the summer of 1949; vegetable crops and vineyards were withered and wasted by September, causing a steep rise in produce prices.
