At the time Trump was still only the beginning of a construction since we are the same age, but in the 1950s specimens of the breed were already moving around.

   It was before De Gaulle sent them back to the States that my father got into an argument with one of these GIs on the loose, a chewing gum guzzler who had hit our black Traction with his big scarlet Buick in an intersection, in Royan where people had come to build sandcastles there while sucking popsicles. The whole family was in turmoil, my mother devastated, my brother with an ear injury and my sisters in tears. I listened without really understanding. I was too young. “Salaud de Bobitch!” I thought I heard. It must have been the ultimate insult to see the gesticulations of the protagonists around the smoking cars, ours with fan-shaped wheels.

   For a long time the expression stuck with me until the day I discovered that the bastard in question was nothing but a son of a bitch; an asshole to whom anything is permitted; the worst as well as the best; the worst especially, without any consideration for others; arrogant, liar, narrow-minded, lynching, ignorant.

   The guy in the Buick thought the road was his, with stop signs everywhere, even low walls to prevent others from crossing the intersections. What was that bunch of Frenchies blocking his way? Niakoués, Latinos, Sioux, Negroes, people from elsewhere? He charged like a buffalo, pulverizing our bodywork. I can still hear the sound of the impact, the screams, my father thrown from the car with one of my sisters in his arms and the insults shouted by the slaver. He barely drew his colt.

   A kind of Trump before his time!

   “Hey, guy, you’re a real son of a bitch!” our father shouted at the cowboy who still thought he was riding his mustang in the depths of the far west.

   Born in Kansas and recently freed from the resort offered by the Nazis in Compiègne where a few good French people sent these fucking Ricans away in the forties, that is to say if my father knew their customs and their language. The other was quite amazed and lowered his cackle. « Damn! Must have been thinking under his Stetson, fellow westerner! »
So he continued his invectives, his bad faith and his pretensions to discuss reparations, responsibility, diplomacy. But it was too late.

   His dented Buick contemplated our misery. Ours, a car, was destined for the scrapyard. Our popsicles had melted before we even sucked them.

   As will their country if our friends across the way let this son of a bitch Trump through.

   Hey, Trump, you’re a real son of a bitch!…

   (I wrote this post on August 02, 2016)