By Joe
Last Thursday, the Lyon glider club, of which I’m now a member, held a wine tasting at its clubhouse at the glider port. (The clubhouse of course has a bar with beer on tap). It was November 18, the 2021 Beaujolais Nouveau release day. “Bring something to snack on”, the announcement said. The idea of a wine tasting at a glider club sounded odd to my Anglo-American ear, but I’m starting to get an understanding of how much of a role clubs and associations play in the lives of French people.
Until now I had never thought it necessary to join clubs or associations, perhaps because family, friends, and the camaraderie of my profession as an airline pilot and pilot union member fulfilled my desire for social connections. As a result I had never really learned anything about such entities in the United States. Barbara says that her dad, who was an attorney in Bend, Oregon, where she grew up, was a member of multiple associations: the Eagles, the Elks, the IOOF, and the Masons. I think that may still be true for many people in the US, particularly with regard to their churches. During his 1835 visit to the United States, the French political scientist and sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville was struck by Americans’ “spirit of voluntary association”, which he thought distinguished American society from the Old World.
Whether it was a result of de Tocqueville or a natural outcome of the spirit of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (the national motto), “la vie associative” now plays a huge role in French life. Most French people belong to one or more “assos”, as they are known here. French associations are even governed by a set of laws that have been on the books since 1901. Practically every town hall in France holds an annual Associations Fair, usually in September after everyone is back from their 6-week summer vacations. (“It’s not true that the French are always on strike,” a French person once told me. “Sometimes they are on vacation!”) In my brief time as a member of CVVL (the Lyon glider club) it’s clear that it plays a very important role in the lives of its members, and a wine tasting is just one of many club social activities.
Coming of age as I did in the SF Bay Area of the late 60s and early 70s, I thought that Groucho Marx was right when he said “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” However, in moving to Lyon and discovering that the French are very much living up to de Tocqueville’s ideals, in defiance of Groucho’s dictum I recently joined two clubs here in Lyon: the local glider club, and the local chapter of Toastmasters. This satisfies multiple goals: meeting people, improving my French, and continuing to be a part of the aviation community. I have to say that I can’t remember ever being welcomed so warmly as I have been at both these clubs.
I didn’t go to the wine tasting at the glider club because we had already been invited to go for a walk and dinner at our friend Georges’ lovely house in the country about 20 minutes south of Lyon. But I did go to the glider club’s annual work day and dinner two days later. Despite the damp, foggy, and freezing weather, 82 of the glider club’s 90 members, ranging in age from 14 to 80, showed up. We spent the day cleaning the vast and ancient hangar, filling potholes in the driveway, building a new pergola, scrubbing glider trailers and various and other sundry tasks. I was glad to have worn long underwear as it never did warm up.
To be perfectly honest, beyond spending a little time working with a high school senior attaching a few bins to the wall for cleaning supplies, I mostly just hung out and chatted with the other members. One, Jacqui, had made his first solo flight in 1965 there at the age of 17, and has been flying gliders as a club member ever since, for 56 years! He told me that at one time the club had 300 members but in recent years many pilots have found alternatives to gliders, such as hang gliders, ultralights, and paragliders, that are simpler and don’t require such an organization to get airborne.
There was pizza for lunch, then a vast dinner of sauerkraut and sausages served on trestle tables and washed down by plenty of beer and wine, for which about 40 people stayed. The club house is normally very chilly but with all those people and a roaring wood fire in the pot-bellied stove it grew quite warm. I finally was dropped off at our apartment at close to midnight by the young guy who had given me and one other member a ride.