Glory Road Read Online Free

and waited for the drawings.
    Europe needn’t be expensive. A youth hostel is luxury to a man who has come out of the boondocks of Southeast Asia and even the French Riviera isn’t expensive if you approach it from underneath. I didn’t stay on La Promenade des Anglais; I had a tiny room four floors up and two kilometers back, and the shared use of some plumbing. There are wonderful night clubs in Nice but you need not patronize them as the floor show at the beaches is as good…and free. I never appreciated what a high art the fan dance can be until the first time I watched a French girl get out of her clothes and into her bikini in plain sight of citizens, tourists, gendarmes, dogs—and me—all without quite violating the lenient French mores concerning “indecent exposure.” Or only momentarily.
    Yes, sir, there are things to see and do on the French Riviera without spending money.
    The beaches are terrible. Rocks. But rocks are better than jungle mud and I put on trunks and enjoyed the floor show and added to my tan. It was spring, before the tourist season and not crowded, but it was warm and summery and dry. I lay in the sun and was happy and my only luxury was a deposit box with American Express and the Paris edition of the N.Y. Herald Tribune and The Stars & Stripes . These I would glance over to see how the Powers-that-be were mismanaging the world, then look for what was new in the unWar I had just been let out of (usually no mention, although we had been told that we were “saving civilization”), then get down to important matters, i.e., news of the Irish Sweepstakes, plus the possibility that The Stars & Stripes might announce that it had all been a hideous dream and I was entitled to educational benefits after all.
    Then came crossword puzzles and “Personal” ads. I always read “Personals”; they are a naked look into private lives. Things like: ‘ M.L. phone R.S. before noon. Money .’ Makes you wonder who did what to whom, and who got paid?
    Presently I found a still cheaper way to live with an even better floor show. Have you heard of l’Île du Levant? It is an island off the Riviera between Marseilles and Nice, and is much like Catalina. It has a village at one end and the French Navy has blocked off the other for guided missiles; the rest of it is hills and beaches and grottoes. There are no automobiles, nor even bicycles. The people who go there don’t want to be reminded of the outside world.
    For ten dollars a day you can enjoy luxury equal to forty dollars a day in Nice. Or you can pay five cents a day for camping and live on a dollar a day—which I did—and there are good cheap restaurants anytime you get tired of cooking.
    It is a place that seems to have no rules of any sort. Wait a minute; there is one. Outside the village, Heliopolis, is a sign: L E N U I NTEGRAL E ST F ORMELLEMENT INTERDIT. (“Complete nakedness is strictly forbidden.”)
    This means that everyone, man or woman, must put on a little triangle of cloth, a cache-sexe , a G-string, before going inside the village.
    Elsewhere, on beaches and in camping grounds and around the island, you don’t have to wear a damned thing and nobody does.
    Save for the absence of automobiles and clothes, the Isle of the Levant is like any other bit of back-country France. There is a shortage of fresh water, but the French don’t drink water and you bathe in the Mediterranean and for a franc you can buy enough fresh water for half a dozen sponge baths to rinse off the salt. Take the train from Nice or Marseilles, get off at Toulon and take a bus to Lavandou, then by boat (an hour and a few minutes) to l’Île du Levant—then chuck away your cares with your clothes.
    I found I could buy the Herald-Trib , a day old, in the village, at the same place (“Au Minimum,” Mme. Alexandre) where I rented a tent and camping gear. I bought groceries at La Brise Marine and camped above La Plage des Grottes, close to the village, and