Leffe Blonde: La neige du Novembre
A Beer(y) Flash by Patrick B. Wood
You do realize you guys are heading north, and it’s November, right? they all asked at the family reunion. Something like 50 of us crowded around the rec room of a local church in my mother’s old neighborhood in Indy. Hoar frost had crystallized the fallen leaves on the ground earlier that morning. And we were, like, Yeah, we know, but…
When you’re from as far south as we are, and Christmas is short sleeves and even (sometimes) mowing your lawn, the idea of a white Advent – even if just a single Sunday – is magical. So, yes, we were happy…delighted … to be headed north. And there was something like 6 inches of snow on the roof of the rental car when we picked it up at the airport, and it was after dark, and I got a quick exercise in spoken French and sign language from the girl at the gas station en route au Haute-Ville as we made our way to the Mssr Robert’s Couette & Café: La Québécoise. He kept us up to 3am: let us make a talk! Toasty gas heaters and a bare maple floor and an old man’s stories of a quiet revolution, of leaving the Church and separatism. Snow collected on the window sill; our collective breath frosted the panes.
It snowed all the next day. She and I climbed the hill to Haute-Ville and made our way down Rue St-Jean. Carols in the air and Edith Piaf crooning. Stepped inside a massive fortress of a gray church and wondered at the soaring blue walls stretching up to frescoed heaven – would have never guessed it, to look at the place from the outside. And then off again, through the city gates to St-Alexander's: caribou pâté, pomme frites and Leffe (a first) on tap. C’était très intéressant que toute la bière était belge, et la majorité de la cuisine aussi! An evening ferry ride across the half-frozen Saint Lawrence to Levis and back, our hands nearly frozen on the railing but worth the stinging cold, to see the laser flash of cannon fire that marked the hour along the Plain of Abraham.
Mais, if you want something truly Québécois, Mssr Robert told us: to the antique district en Bas-Ville, to an old diner for meat pies, for poutine and … do you have Leffe on draft? (Bien sur!) And look at your receipt – keep the glass, my friend.
Keep the glass: stylized image of a monastery that sat long ago on the other side of the Atlantic where they first came up with the stuff: magical. Only today it’s collecting condensation as I sit under last summer’s new pergola, sipping something bottled. Nothing truly Belgian, you understand, but something some wag took the initiative to spike with coriander and something else that gives it a high, esoteric twang. I splash in a bit of OJ. November, is it? The grass would need cutting, only we haven’t seen the rain in close to 6 weeks now. I scan the skyline north of here hoping for a cool front, but it may be awhile…
Copyright © 2006 Patrick B. Wood