“I’ll fix those wipers for you,” said a tall guy leaning over our windshield. “Just come to Luxembourg.” Guy Maathuis, Vice President of the MG Car Club of Luxembourg, was one of the men attempting field repairs on our car at the Liege MG Day rallye. His suggestion wasn’t a bad idea since Luxembourg was just next door to Belgium. “Here’s my card,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” That pretty much settled what we’d be doing the next day.
As important as they were, the wipers were second in priority to a family question that had nagged at me for decades. As we were passing under an autoroute sign on the way to our family reunion, I asked Jean Francois, “Why did our family leave the city of Tournai and why did they change the spelling?” “They didn’t do either,” he said.
“Our ancestors came from the Ardennes region of Belgium and not Tournai,” he said, warming to the idea of educating his American cousin on family history. “The area was once known for the production of iron products because of the easy availability of firewood. When coal was discovered around Charleroi all the action moved there and our ancestors were out of work.”
I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad on learning this. For decades I’d told our daughters our family came from Tournai and lamely explained away the different spelling as something that just happened so I had to see for myself. Louise, now getting sharper with maps, located the village in an area just below Bastogne, best known for its part in the Battle of the Bulge in WWII. We’d pass right by on our way to Luxembourg so we had to do it.
This is the appropriate time to mention while Louise did the heavy lifting, she now had the assistance of the newly rejuvenated GPS, Mademoiselle Recalculaire. We purchased a new cable in Comines and solved our problem. She was back in action and on the hunt for Tournay.
“Why’d they change their name?” I asked Jean Francois. “It was the custom,” he said. “If you moved to a new area, your last name became that of the town you left. You added “de” (“of” in French) in front of it and that was your new name.” So, that was it. We are called DeTournay because our ancestors moved to Charleroi in the 1700’s to begin new careers in the rapidly developing new business of recovery of earth mineral resources (coal mining.) Another reason to move was painfully clear to me. The village had a church but no bar. No relative of mine could tolerate that imbalance.
Before leaving our ancestral homeland behind, this might be the appropriate time to recognize Danielle Lusk, a woman born in Belgium and a member of the Saban Fitness Center where Louise and I do our daily workouts. “Dany” took the time to sharpen up our French before this trip and, for that, we are extremely grateful. So far we haven’t embarrassed ourselves…or her.
To reach our destination we passed through the center of Luxembourg city and the only place we could find public WC facilities was in their grand old railroad station. Inequities still abound here. Women must pay 1.10 Euros to use the toilet while men pay only .65 Euros to use the pissoir. It was a topic of discussion long after we left town and headed north for our visit to the wiper doctor in the village of Merscheid, home of Mariam and Guy Maathuis.
Louise and Ray