Took the Parisians for a mosey through the Stockyards. They saw USA motorcyclists dressed as "USA motorcyclists" and one man dressed as John Wayne. Somewhere near the gift shop corral, Michael and I spotted a family dressed identically in black dress shirts and blue jeans stamp down a lowly bush as the SLR portrait artist zoomed in around their huddled figures in front of a weathered old barn-like door.
I told the Parisians that Americans love railroad tracks, brick walls, urban alley ways, and red barn doors as backdrops and props in their portraits. What does this say about us, I think? I think it must be something to do with the first images that we've ever seen of ourselves as Americans. It has something to do with those Old World urban immigrants, Mid-West homesteaders, Western pioneers and the tracks that linked them all, and the walls that those people stood in front of as the flashbulb exploded on them.
Parisians had a good time, bought a painted cow skull. To mark the occasion, I gave them some small leather cowboy boots for their yet to be conceived child. They gave me elegant dark chocolate from Paris and a box of addictive little pastries called "Calisson D'Aix."