Andre J de Saint Phalle

Novelized memoirist writing cinematic prose. Trilogy "The Spaces Between": just published "Surfing The Interstates,” writing "Sahara Dust," developing "Green Mountain Flash."

On August 1, 2025, Andre J. de Saint Phalle published "Surfing The Interstates" here on his substack. The story follows his two-month odyssey in the summer of 1973, when at twenty-one he hitchhiked from New York to California and beyond. He began as a traumatized runaway from a broken home—guarded and impulsive, clinging to music as his only constant, finally escaping a dominating father whose control was suffocating him.

The road teaches him what home never could. Through chance encounters with strangers, he discovers vulnerability and authenticity, tastes communal joy. A one-on-one meeting with Jerry Garcia teaches him to listen to his instrument, to let it guide him. UFOs defying physics above Bixby Bridge crack open his sense of the possible. But the journey extracts its price: Steve's death, his stolen guitar—losses that leave him open and raw. In that breaking, something new emerges. Psychedelics and desert visions, mountains and ocean shores, all conspire to complete his transformation.

By journey's end, the lost boy becomes something else entirely: a seeker drawn to water's fluid wisdom rather than the highway's endless loop, ready at last for the kind of connection he’s spent his whole young life running from.

Over fifty years later, Andre still ponders the question that haunts every mile of that summer: why some people are born to leave.

Born in New York City in 1952, Andre moved with his family through seven homes across two states following his father’s ambitions. Eight years later, they landed in Armonk on twenty-five acres of what seemed like paradise—an 1865 farmhouse sprawling beneath a pair of giant, but doomed Dutch Elm trees, with fruit orchards and gardens, a greenhouse catching morning light, and an in-ground pool that sparkled like a promise. It was there, amid all that beauty and space, that he learned paradise could also be a cage. His education traced a restless arc through American privilege—from St. Patrick's Elementary to the progressive experiments of Whitby Montessori, the ivy-covered walls of Phillips Exeter to a transformative year abroad in Rennes, France. Barred from his dream of film school, he studied at Penn until the Vietnam protests shut it down, then drifted over the next decade through the New School, SF State, and UCLA, collecting credits but never degrees, working full time, always seeking something just out of reach.

Between 17 and 27, Andre moved through America's edges and centers. He started as a production assistant for documentary filmmaker Francis Thompson in Manhattan, then became a projectionist in a velvet-lined screening room at MCA-Universal, watching executives sell idiotic shows to the masses. When that world felt too small, he hitchhiked west—7,000 miles with a guitar and backpack. In California, he picked plums in Healdsburg's orchards, washed dishes and pumped gas in Santa Rosa, sold a movie projector to Jerry Garcia at Gasser's in San Francisco, and eventually landed back at Universal Studios in Hollywood as an apprentice film editor. Each job taught him what he didn't want to become.

At 28, Andre chose uncertainty over salary. He painted houses in Westchester until the pull of somewhere else grew too strong. In 1983, he and Thea Ramsey established Windsurfing Antigua, teaching tourists to fly across turquoise waters with the Caribbean trade winds. They ran the school for four years, creating a sandcastle paradise on Jolly Beach until the Sahara dust came and Thea's cystic fibrosis called them home. She died in 1987 at 37, leaving Andre unmoored.

What followed was a decade of geographic and professional wandering—launching a windsurf video magazine in Hood River, founding a snowboard publication in Connecticut, returning to Antigua to find only ghosts. Technology finally gave him an anchor. As the internet bloomed, he became webmaster for Stratton and Stowe ski areas, translating mountain culture into code. He founded GMATV, a public access station in Hyde Park, democratizing media in rural Vermont.

In 2002, Andre married Veronica. Together they built Saint Phalle Photography, documenting weddings from Vermont's green mountains to Anegada's white sand beaches. Their documentary style captured unguarded moments—the spaces between posed smiles where real life happens. The 2008 recession shuttered the studio in 2012, but not before they'd witnessed hundreds of beginnings.

Though he never had children of his own, life brought him a stepson, stepdaughter, and four step-grandchildren. Four golden retrievers have shared his journey since 1980, with one still by his side, along with a loyal black lab. He and Veronica remain in Vermont, where she creates multimedia paintings incorporating tatted lace and forest findings while he continues writing his memoir trilogy and plays in his home recording studio. They both enjoy photographing Vermont landscapes and their two big dogs.