A Historical View

New Orleans was built on a sandbar of the Mississippi river. It was a very poor location physically, but so critical as a transportation point that the city for a while was the largest port in the country. All the commerce between the Appalachians and the Rockies flowed through New Orleans. Through the years levees were built to shut out the water from the city. Meanwhile silt was being deposited in the bottom of the river. As a consequence the river got higher and higher which made it necessary to continually make the levees higher.

In the fifties when one sat on the front porch of a house on the West Bank just behind the levee, one could see ships from a dozen nations proceeding up or down the river far above the porch and the chairs.

New Orleans has always been noted as a corrupt place. In the forties the mayor was reported to own (or collect rent from) every brothel in the town (of which of course there were many). Every four years a reform candidate would come along, but quite rarely with any appreciably improvement. An agency called the Levee Board controlled the port and in effect controlled to a great degree the politics of the place. The Levee Board was so grasping that gradually 95% of the shipping was moved to Houston and/or other southern ports. By the sixties the wharves were deserted.
 

With advancing technology a new New Orleans port was created near the mouth of the river about 70 miles or so south of the city. Gradually commerce came back to New Orleans.

As most people know, New Orleans suffered a big change when Katrina came along. In fact Old New Orleans was gone forever. A strip behind the levee was high enough to escape the Flood - including the French Quarter, Audubon Park, Tulane University - what had been New Orleans in the early days before it spread into thousands of acres of marsh and swamp surrounding the area. Most of that had 10-15 feet of water; that included some very affluent areas, but the 9th ward (where the present writer lived long ago) suffered complete destruction.

Commerce continued after Katrina at the mouth of the river. The other primary industry is tourism; the French Quarter is slowly coming back to its old glory. But things will never be quite the same. Mardi Gras is a pale imitation of what is was in the old days. The real Old New Orleans is gone forever more.

ELLIE'S POST

 

CHILD'S JOURNEY

Originally posted to In Old New Orleans on Saturday, August 29, 2009

 child's journey

(This post was requested by my good wife.)

1943

I was 16. I graduated in Jan of 43. I had
seen an airview of the Duke campus at 10
and resolved to go there for higher education.

My folks put me on the Southerner, the main
line train that ran from New Orleans to
Boston (and maybe points farther north).

I had a seat in a coach car. I was there
23 hours, then I emerged at Greensboro, and
took the milk train which took another four
hours to get to Durham.

What an impression it made. Wow. But it was
nothing like New Orleans. 

Since Larry was taking the Southerner he would have left from this station on Canal Street near Rampart. He lived at St. Mark's Methodist Church and Community Center located at 1130 N Rampart where his father had become pastor the previous year.

New Orleans Terminal, 

Southern RR

Canal Street and Basin. c 1908

Vicinity of Canal and Rampart Streets

"Bird's-eye View of New Orleans, Louisiana". Early 20th century postcard view. Text on back of card: "Bird's-Eye View Of New Orleans LA. This view is taken from the top of Hotel Grunewald showing that section of the City lying beyond the New Orleans Terminal Passenger Station". View shows a section of Canal Street at bottom left. Rampart street is to bottom of photo (someone has labeled it in green ink pen). The building with the large arch fronting Canal Street is the old Basin Street railway terminal. Krauss store visible on Canal just beyond it. Of particular interest is the row of buildings seen fronting Basin Street, including Tom Anderson's, Josie Arlington's, and Lulu White's, and "the District" behind it. This is one of the few published cards showing what history recalls as "Storyville"; from the card's language about "that section of the City" this was clearly an intended focus. The line of the old Carondelet Canal is slightly visible diagonally towards the top of the view. Note the view of the buildings at Canal and Rampart Street which were demolished for the construction of the new Saenger Theater in the 1920s."

St Mark's Methodist Church and Community Center

 

St Mark's Church history
"In 1909, the work of the Mary Werlein Mission moved to Esplanade Ave. and was called St. Marks Hall. Out of this project, a "Church of Nations" emerged and was called St. Marks Methodist Church. The property on N. Rampart was purchased in 1916 and the buildings dedicated in 1924. The church and community center, though separate, shared the facilities. The church was supported for many years by the Board of Missions. Under Rev. Robert Jamieson, he church became self-supporting in 1946. Rev. Jamieson's 'parsonage' was a 5 room apartment on the 3rd floor of the community center."

 

(The Rev Robert Jamieson was my cousin. My Grandmother Louisa Ellen Lilly was the daughter of Robert Hafkesbring and Ellen Jamieson.)

"By this time we were living at St. Mark's Community Center on North Rampart St. on the edge of the French Quarter. It was still in the Nichols School District. I rode the Rampart St. streetcar every morning down St. Claude Ave. to school and back in the afternoon. We lived on the third floor of the community center directly above the swimming pool. There was also a gymnasium. On the other wing was the church, which Daddy served. A fairly small church it still had representatives of 21 nationalities. I
suppose it was pretty close to unique in the denomination. Dad got along pretty well there, stayed four years, the first time he had ever had an appointment that long. He liked New Orleans and had no desire to leave. In fact all the ministers liked New Orleans. Those who got there stayed as long as they could." 

"In 1942 I bought a used bicycle on time (50 cents/week) and went to work as a Western Union messenger (people communicated by telegram in those days). The job was roughly from 4 to midnight, although sometimes I worked longer.

It must have been after Christmas that I found employment as a Western Union delivery boy. For the next few months I rode my bike all over the city. I remember going as far as Westwego--a long, long way from 314 Carondelet, the Western Union Office. I frequently rode as much as 30 miles. The original idea was to work a few hours in the afternoon, but like so many of those low level jobs, they were always short of help, and I worked as long as I wanted to.

I rode all over Orleans Parish that year, and parts of Jefferson and St. Bernard delivering telegrams in dozens of "houses of ill fame"; those girls were anxious to hear from someone. (It was said that every brothel in N.O. was on property owned by the mayor; he was also reputed to be allied with the New York mafia. N.O. was a rocky city in those days, as it has always been.)"

"Graduation day at Nichols came for me in January of 1943--I was 16. We had to dress up in tuxedos, which I found awkward and uncomfortable. I suppose most of the class went on to dances and celebrations of various sorts, but that was not in my world.

The big thing in my world was to get on the Southerner a few days later and make the 23 hour ride to Durham where I enrolled at Duke. This represented a desire to get away from home, especially to get away from my father, toward whom I had harbored very negative feelings for a number of years. I got away, and I never came back (to live), although I certainly did visit from time to time."

Dylan's version of House of the Rising Sun

There is a house down in New Orleans they call the rising sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor girl and me, oh God, I'm one.

My mother was a tailor, she sowed these new blue jeans
My sweetheart was a gambler, Lord, down in New Orleans.

Now the only thing a gambler needs is a suitcase and a trunk
And the only time when he's satisfied is when he's on a drunk.

He fills his glasses up to the brim and he'll pass the cards around
And the only pleasure he gets out of life is rambling from town to town

Oh tell my baby sister not to do what I have done
But shun that house in New Orleans they call the rising sun.

Well with one foot on the platform and the other foot on the train
I'm going back to New Orleans to wear that ball and chain.

I'm going back to New Orleans, my race is almost run
I'm going back to end my life down in the rising sun.

There is a house in New Orleans they call the rising sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor girl and me, oh God, I'm one. 

________________________

Another sad tale connected to this account is the attempted integration of the New Orleans Public School system in 1960. In the vicinity of St Marks United Methodist Church were the two schools which had been selected to have a few black first graders enroll in white schools. The whites protested with demonstrations and refusal to send their children to the schools with the little black girls. When the minister at St Mark's Rev Lloyd Anderson Foreman saw the reaction he broke the boycott by walking his 5-year-old daughter Pam through an angry mob back to school.

"With no other white parents coming out in favor of civil rights or permitting their children to attend school, Rev. Foreman would walk his daughter Pam to school every day, past a gauntlet of curses and threats."

The resistance to integration continues into the third decade on the 21st century.

"Although the city's population is about 40 percent white, the student bodies at public and charter schools are overwhelmingly African American because whites send their children to private schools which are not forced to integrate. Public and charter schools, with highly concentrated African American populations, suffer from underfunding while private schools, with highly concentrated white populations, benefit from private funding."

MERCHANT MARINE

Monday, March 7, 2016

MERCHANT MARINE

Young radio officer Larry Clayton beside the radio shack of the Cuba Victory, his second to last merchant vessel. They were headed to Rio in 1945.
.

1 comment:

Larry ClaytonMarch 8, 2016 at 1:32 AM

Half right, Elie. Cuba Victory was the last of several ships I sailed on between 1944 and maybe 1946 (or 47).

Long ago! memory pretty shaky.

Saudades

I was 23. The Great War had just ended, but I continued to go the sea, my refuge from being drafted as a GI. I was running between New Orleans and Buenas Aires with a long stop at Santos, Brazil on the way (we loaded her down with coffee).

I had met some young people there of remarkable culture (they all spoke two or three languages), the girls were lovely. I fell in love with a couple of them, Maria Teresa and Wanda; the second one had more substance; she said she meant to go to Medical School.

Those girls were crazy about Americans; they couldn't have treated Jimmy Stewart any better than they treated me. I once asked Wanda why they like Americans so much; her reply: because they're not 'malicioso'; I understood perfectly what she meant.

Now it was my last trip; I hated the thought of giving up Santos, but I knew that if I kept on, I would soon become nothing but an old sea dog.

As the radio operator I had little to do except listen to the radio. Going home I came across Rachmaninoff

child's journey

(This post was requested by my good wife.)

I was 16. I graduated in Jan of 43. I had
seen an airview of the Duke campus at 10
and resolved to go there for high education.

My folks put me on the Southerner, the main
line train that ran from New Orleans to
Boston (and maybe points farther north).

I had a seat in a coach car. I was there
23 hours, then I emerged at Greensboro, and
took the milk train which took another four
hours to get to Durham.

What an impression it made. Wow. But it was
nothing like New Orleans.

Mood Swings

Some people can keep their nose to the grindstone for long periods.

In contrast there are those who work so hard at (any) form of escape that it becomes a grindstone itself; sooner or later they have to escape from their escape.

Most of us have a fairly regular moodswing. In later years we may confess, with C.S.Lewis, that we love monotony, but eventually we have to ease off (or out).

In the course of a long and happy life I've noticed various forms of moodswing at various times:

1. I will omit adolescence; it isn't really worth talking about.

2. During WWII as a merchant seaman life went on pretty routinely while at sea. But at port! oh my! A more concentrated and illumined life broke out with great intensity. (One poor devil had been torpedoed three times; he still went to sea, but in port he went blotto ASAP, to stave off the horrors.)

3. Aboard ship I played checkers with an old boy named Noisy, because he hardly ever opened his mouth except to eat. But everytime he went ashore his shipmates brought him back in an hour or so all banged up from fighting somebody; that was the shape of his escape.

4. In the civilian interlude between WWII and the Korean "police action" escape (for me) was pandemic; a creative routine had just disappeared. (Mother called me part of the 'lost generation'.)

5. Korea: on a D.E. in the Pacific it was much like it had been in the 40's-- we lived primarily during those precious hours ashore.

6. Still in the navy in San Diego in 1953 I rented a house in Tiajuana for intense celebrations on weekends.

7. In 1963 when I began working with alcohol problems (of other people), I found many of the factory workers had no idea of spending Friday any way but getting drunk.
Or take Fred Johnson. He satisfactorily coped with a dreary job and a shrewish wife- for a period! For about three months he was such a good boy that he became president of the Baptist Training Union in his local church.

Then he got drunk! He made the 'chain gang' for three months. Fred did moodswing with a vengeance.

Back in '55 working my way into the usual conventional life of quiet desperation a high school chum and I had regular mood swings at the French Quarter. There were lots of diversions there; we preferred drinking quietly at the Napoleon Bar on Chartres St. where they played classical music records.

One day, after a fairly long period of 'quiet desperation' it came to me that I was going to have to get drunk (not much in the way of drugs in those days). I didn't want to, but I felt like I had to.

The good Lord had mercy on me because soon after I found the ultimate 'escape' in a higher calling. Mood swings continued, and still do today, but the quiet desperation is gone.

May all your mood swings become creative.

This post was inspired by Christopher Phillips latest book intitled Socrates in Love.

Fagley

Move forward from Buenos Aires at 20 to Tulane at 30. Fagley, a priest of science, consultant at the N.O.Regional Research Lab where I worked as a research chemist, and professor of Physical Chemistry at Tulane impacted my life in several ways:

It may have been my first semester on the GI Bill of Rights, providing essentially free schooling to us vets. Anyway, while still working at the lab, I took a night course in Fagley's famous undergraduate Physical Chemistry. He had a reputation for failing half the engineering students (who had to have the course to graduate).

It was difficult, but I was cutting it. A recent acquaintance was trying hard, but without much success. I invited him to my house for the evening before the big exam. I extended myself to teach it.

I don't remember how he came out, but I got 100, almost unheard of for Fagley's students.

That fall I enrolled as a graduate student in Physical Chemistry, with Fagley as my professor. At the beginning of the term he told us we would all receive B's.

His lectures were a trial for him and for his students. If he could go as slow as possible (for him) and we could get on our tiptoes with attention, the two minds occasionally met.

I was there (near a window), but I wasn't really. My mind was a thousand miles away, thinking about a call to be a minister. Fagley was working patiently, and I got it (sort of), well enough to light up a cigarette.

He gave no overt indication that he had noticed that; he just advanced his pace about 300% and started scribbling formulas on the blackboard faster than anyone could possibly grasp.

I had chosen Fagley for my teacher because I discerned that he was a priest of science. But I suddenly realized that he was emotionally quite immature. "Was that the mind I wanted to take as my guru?"

Soon thereafter I went to Fagley and confessed to him that I was about to enter the ministry.

Now here's the shocking thing: he informed me that I was the third of his students to take that course.

Glory be!

Cripp and Josephine

Here's a story about N.O. without me as the main character for a change:

Cripp and Josephine were our heroes from way back. They resided in the New Orleans Zoo, if not quite the equal of the Washington Zoo, then a good second. Elephants, giraffes, lions, tigers, panthers, a wonderland for any child. But the whooping cranes were the piece de resistance (spelling???).

In the old days there were fantastic flights of whooping cranes, but in the 1960's they had dwindled down to one pair, Cripp and Josephine-- another priceless treasure of New Orleans.

But Cripp and Josephine were very prolific. Today their progency has increased to a modest flock. In 2000 "The wild whooping crane population at last count was 182." (quoted from Wildlife Sanctuaries & the Audubon Society: Places to Hide and Seek University of Texas Press.

Yesterday's local paper, the Ocala Star Banner, had this item: "A group of visitors on their way to Marion County from the north soon will give a new meaning to the term "snowbird." These birds come from Wiscosin, led by an ultralight (airplane). We're invited to go to the Dunellon Airport on the day they arrive. They will be led to the nearby wintering area, and the pilot will return to answer our questions about the flight.

It is so good to keep in touch with the greatx grandchildren of our old friends, Cripp and Josephine.

B.A.

For a 20 year old American the interesting thing about
all of these South American countries is that all of
the wealth and culture of the country seemed invariably
concentrated in the capital. In Argentina this was true
in spads.

One of the prettiest, most modern, cultured cities in the
world, or so it seemed to me. My first trip there I
disembarked and started heading over toward what
seemed to be the city center. I collared a man
I was passing with this query-- in very awkward Spanish:

"Puede Vd .. uh.. decirme.. uh donde esta .. uh Avenida
Corrientes." He looked at me rather quizzically for a
moment, then said, "Oh, you mean Corrientes St. It's
two blocks straight ahead." I thanked him --- in English.

There was actually a large English colony in B.A.
(Actually there's also a large American colony in
Brazil. These were the descendants of my Confederate
cousins, who couldn't abide Reconstruction in their fallen
country and took up residence in a place where slavery
still happened (though not for long). I heard of a man
named Larry Clayton, but didn't get a chance to look him
up.)

The English in Buenos Aires were my first close
exposure to perfectly bi-cultural people. They looked,
spoke and acted just like the Brits and also fit in
perfectly in the Latin scene. Unbelievable!

I was sitting in a barber chair (we Americans were very
well treated there), and I must have commented on how
nice everyone looked or some such inanity. A man
responded like this: "In Argentina everybody dresses
like a millionaire." I thought for a moment and
replied, "In America the millionaires try their best
to dress just like ordinary people."

I met some naval cadets; they took me aboard their ship
and really seemed to enjoy my company. We all felt like
princes in those ports during and shortly after the war.

In Montevideo I went into a bar to eat: filet mignon
with all the trimmings for 25c. What really broke me
up was the string quartet provided as entertainment in
that place. Those people lived well-- in the capital.

Our last trip included two disasters. On the way over
we were approaching Belem, on the Amazon near its mouth. The Brazilian pilot managed to put us on a sand bar at the entrance. He pleaded insanity at his trial.

We were on that sandbar for a month. Had to get a ship
from Merrit-Chapman ; they unloaded the entire ship to get us off that sandbar. The Brazilians robbed us blind, more than all the profit of that cruise.

We finally got off, did our business in Belem and went
on our way. Going back was a sad time for me; I was
saying goodbye to those wonderful people in Santos
who had put me so high; romances were ending.

I fell into a depression. I had the benefit of music in
the radio shack, and I heard Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano
Concerto. That work still haunts me.

The last disaster: cruising up the coast of Brazil two
messboys got into an altercation, one of them threw a
plate that cut the other near the temple. It wasn't
bleeding bad, but the purser just couldn't stop it.

We had to put in at Fortaleza to get a surgeon. Once
again the Brazilians robbed us blind.

Coming up the Mississipi on Jan 1 the pilot was bent
on getting to the Sugar Bowl. Half the time we were
on one side of the river, and the other half on the
other side (you know it's quite serpentine). Duke
was playing somebody. I would have dearly loved to
see that game, but no chance. (I believe the pilot
did get to it-- some of it anyway.)

Back in New Orleans: I had made up my mind I must
give up sailing. Either that or resign myself to
being nothing more in my life. Back to Duke I went.

The port of New Orleans practically evaporated soon
after that. The corrupt levee board was stealing
everyone blind, and the steamship companies came to
prefer the Houston Ship Channel. Houston became a
megalopolis, and from then on the population of N.O.
remained around half a million. Until Katrina of
course. Who knows what it will become now.

(At some more recent time, with modern inventions,
N.O. has made a comeback as a port. There are
three 'ports of N.O.' apparently. One at the
mouth of the river that deals in oil. Somewhere
else the wheat barges offload to deep sea vessels;
then what used to be the port, the wharves along
the river adjacent to the city.)

A South American Paradise

As stated before this 'B.A. run' was all any seaman
could wish: getting home regularly, lovely adventures
in those wonderful Latin countries. Brazil was my
favorite, and among ports Santos was the best of the
Brazilian ones:

Santos was the coffee port (probably the greatest
single importer of coffee in those days). Right at
the foot of the escarpment that leads up to Sao Paulo,
which at that time was a faster growing metropolis
than any other in the world. But Santos was relaxed;
the elite lived along the beach. You could swim, but
there were usually more exciting things to do.

At 20 I was still something of a reclusive, innocent
of most of the habitual pastimes in which seamen
engage. But like most young men I was interested
in a relationship.

I was in the radio shack one morning when the phone
rang; a young woman spoke; apparently she thought I
was someone else. I couldn't figure out who to direct
her to. But lo and behold you wanted to talk with me.
More than talk, she invited me to meet here at the
beach. I met her, and she was upper-class!!

Well this may sound very conceited-- until you
understand the circumstances. Believe it or not,
this was the sort of thing that upper class young
women in Santos did in those days.

Maria (I won't give her middle name) introduced me
to many of her friends (boys and girls). We had
wonderful times at the beach. My favorite activity
was to sit with some of those friends in the sidewalk
cafe of the main hotel watching the paseo.

(The paseo was the every evening social: people went
around in a circle: the boys counter clockwise and the
girls clockwise. Oh joy!)

These were idealistic and (very) literate people (I
had never met anybody like those Santistas). Most of
them spoke three or four languages; they were musical;
the girls generally went to 'normal' (even in my day
normal meant, even in the good old U.S.A., a
teachers' school).

It was the thing for these young women to go to
teachers' school, maybe teach a year or two before
taking up 'real life'.

ITEM: Strangely enough to these girls American boys
were just like movie stars. I can't explain it: maybe
we were war heroes (BTW Brazil had the only Latin
American expeditionary force in World War II).

But I think the real reason was deeper; I once asked
Wanda, my second girl friend there, why they thought
so highly of American boys. Her answer was revealing:
because they're not malicioso.

For my part they make wonderful companions. With no
duties on the ship while in port I spent a lot of time
on the beach. I thought seriously about settling down
there. I got a room at a pensao on the beach. Now
this was something else: $7 a week for a room,
breakfast, and two six course meals. I was eating
irregular hours by Brazilian standards and often the
only one in the dining room.

The waiter would bring me the first course and stand
there near my table. I would finish it and push back a
bit; he was right there ready to fill my plate again --
with the first course. I learned to say no mas! no
mas!. Then he would bring the next course. Oh my.
I've never seen (before or since) anything like that
pensao.

There's lots more to say about Santos and S.A., but it
will have to await another post. Thanks for reading, if
anyone has.