Really story of petanque in America

Who would you trust to know more about petanque, someone who learned it on Miami Beach or someone who learned it in Provence? A famous American journalist who makes his living off satire and exaggeration, or an obscure American seminarian? There is more to both native and export petanque than you read in Dave Barry’s column, “French deserve credit for an effortless sport” (BDN, Jan. 3-4). Classifying it as a “sport” misses the mark. Let me explain.

In the farming hamlet of Les Vincenty, near Orange in the south of France, there’s a homestead that has long been a vacation home to a couple whom are university professors of church history in Germany. In the summer of 2000 they hosted a class from Bangor Theological Seminary that went to France to study the interplay of wealth and poverty in the medieval Christian church. Among the studious rigors outlined on the course syllabus was an afternoon for the Mainers to learn petanque. And so we did.

The episode provided a welcome mid-term break in the fast-paced class. In the morning we had visited a Cistercian monastery high up in a mountain valley. I was most impressed with the workroom fireplace designed to burn logs, practically the whole tree trunk, wedged into the fire upright. After the typical al fresco lunch of very French treats cooked over a tiny, antique backyard grill at Les Vincenty, those of us who could respond to anything outside the circle of lounge chairs grouped under shade trees, gathered around the petanque court in the farthest corner of the yard. Eck, our host, turned up the wattage in his gleaming eyes, which positively glittered with gallant deviltry as he explained the sequence of play.

From Barry’s column, it would appear much of the charm of native French petanque (which, we were told, is the game’s name only in the southeast of France) has been lost with its translation into American sports vernacular. In France, it is not a sport as we know sport – grunt, grit and sweat in expensive attire, with fitness the reward dangled just beyond an ever-receding finish line. No, in France petanque is a game of social combat enriched by a sharp eye for a target, a sharp wit for repartee, and – as Barry noted – a crucial modicum of muscle control.

Our host handed out two sets of four steel balls, worn from much use, each set marked with distinctive designs of incised lines. The court was an irregular patch of bare dirt in a back corner of the yard, also worn by use much as the footpad under a child’s swing is trampled here. The game’s “pig” has lost its identity in the migration to America. In France, the tiny target ball is “le cochon,” or “le petit cochon,” the little pig which controls the score – much more colorful than Barry’s “point ball.” Like children, we dug base lines with the heels of our sneakers, and set to pummel our opponents. It was not to be.

Our first tentative, sometimes awkward tosses grew both bolder and subtler as we learned the eye-hand coordination needed to place our team’s balls near the pig while knocking away the opponents’. These steel-on-steel collisions give the name to the sport, and do indeed give it a French accent. The dry breeze of Languedoc played its part, fanning our hot faces as it ruffled the large leaves of overhanging trees. Insects not quite like any we knew hummed and buzzed in the rural quiet of early summer’s afternoon. A decidedly “other” water sprinkler cast arcs of sun-glinting droplets into the air. Our cheering section kept dozing off.

Given the ragged and indeterminate edge to the playing field, its ungroomed surface and seminarians’ unredeemed killer instincts there were soon points to discuss. Eck referred with a crooked shrub branch, measuring ball center to ball center to see who was closest to the p’ti’cochon. Eck replied in all gravity that never in the history of the game has there been a tie – the point has always been adjudicated. We noted his impish grin.

The game went on in a round robin, as one person would drop out to let another give this cross-cultural experience a try. The reason I am qualified to write this report is that I stepped back into the game the most often, and was therefore declared the winner. It was a pleasant afternoon.

Upon returning home, I, of course, played up this “petanque championship.” Grandmas are good storytellers, and they do not often have new athletic achievements to brag about. I told how I had nearly bought my husband a petanque set, but didn’t because of the need to be able to lug my own luggage around the rest of France. In the context of the entire class abroad, petanque became a treasured memory. Yet that is only Chapter One.

In the midst of the hurly-burly of an all-family Thanksgiving that fall, my daughters presented me with a boxed set of Eddie Bauer bocci balls they had found by scouring the Internet. Snow came early that year and stayed all winter, so it was not until a nephew’s graduation party in June that we had an opportunity to share the game. What happened then is, to me, the real story of petanque in America. The sport proved itself to be a melting pot game, a mixer and an icebreaker.

Everyone could play and enjoy success. A shyly adolescent girl cousin beat the football captain nephew. In-laws who never have that much to say found themselves in the heart of family play. Fathers sometimes beat sons. Little boys who had to toss the balls (bigger than the French ones) in both hands beat bigger boys who play Little League. Teenagers hung around all afternoon. Women, some of them anyway, did not just sit on the sidelines. Games and challenge games went on until nearly everybody had left and it was almost too dark to see. By acclamation, the petanque balls have become expected at family parties. Thank you, my European friends.

Sara Gallant, of Waldoboro, is assistant librarian on Bangor Theological Seminary’s Portland campus, where she will graduate in June with an M.A. in Bible studies.