And Addendum to an Earlier Post

I inserted this, but after my readers had been there, so I will include this little (precious) event here:

Going back to the very beginning of my mariner's career shortly after we left Mobile we put in at Port Arthur to take on a load of aviation gasolene, right at the tip of Sabine Pass. It was a Sunday afternoon and I went ashore. Found a Methodist Church with evening services, went in early and sat down. An eagle eyed usher saw me, came over and welcomed me. Then he cast his eye over the scattering of other early arrivals and settled on a young woman. "Come on over here" he said, "I'd like you to meet Miss ??? (God knows what her name was). We chatted; I sat down beside her.After the service she took me home, introduced me to her parents, and they welcomed me like one of their own. Praise God. I've never seen such extravagant hospitality in a Methodist Church (other than my own!). Going over that incident at lunch with Ellie, I concluded, "that's true Christianity", and very, very rare. They had plenty of reason to fear and distrust travelers. In fact a few years further along that will be demonstrated-- still in Texas.

VE Day

(Going back to the very beginning of my mariner's career shortly after we left Mobile we put in at Port Arthur, right at the tip of Sabine Pass. It was a Sunday afternoon and I went ashore. Found a Methodist Church with evening services, went in early and sat down. An eagle eyed usher saw me, came over and welcomed me. The he cast his eye over the scattering of other early arrivals and settled on a young woman. "Come of over here" he said, "I'd like you to meet Miss ??? (God knows what her name was). We chatted; I sat down beside her.

After the service she took me home, introduced me to her parents, and they welcomed me like one of their own. Praise God. I've never seen such extravagant hospitality in a Methodist Church (other than my own!). Going over that incident at lunch with Ellie, I concluded, "that's true Christianity", and very, very rare. They had plenty of reason to fear and distrust travelers.)

My next cruise was to France, and I had become the Chief Radio Officer (at 18!). Starting out from the East Coast, in the usual large convoy (there was no longer much danger of U-boats by then, at least in convoy), we sailed for LeHavre and Rouen. We keep a close watch, but somehow managed to miss a message for us at BAMS (at a certain point we dropped the East Coast watch and took up the European watch; we were supplying the ETO). Orders came that we were diverted to the Med, Marseilles in fact. But we made port at Le Havre, then moved up the Seine to Rouen; I doubt that it made much difference: 100,000 gallons of gasoline here or there, like peanuts.

I thought this might be (and it turned out that it was) my only chance to see Paris, so up the river I went, spent a couple of days there getting acquainted: fat chance! I couldn't find anybody who spoke English. (I noticed this many years later in Quebec; they claim not to speak English, whether they do or not.) Unlike many ports I visited, they were not very friendly with Americans. At last I bumped into a GI; he took me into the military world, sponsored me for the rest of the day; nice guy!

We sailed back home, and I decided to leave the ship and spend a few days in N.O. Lucky I did because the ship then went to the South Pacific and stayed there the next two years.

My next cruise was a brand new C2 called the Sea Dolphin (couldn't find any records on the web). We took this new ship out of Pasagoula Shipyard (now called the Northrop Grumman shipyard)(There is an aerial vew of submerged Ingalls (NG) shipyard after Katrina also on the web).

The C2's were the greyhounds of WWII merchant shipping. On my first voyage with the Sea Dolphin she sailed from NY to the Med, though the Suez Canal, stopping at Aden (now -sorry I can't remember the name of the little Arab country where the Red Sea opens out into the Indian Ocean-- senior moment). Anyway Aden was a British protectorate, and we stopped there for routing instructions. 3 of us went ashore (the skipper, the Armed Guard Lt, and yours truly). We completed our business before 10 o'clock, and the skipper inquired if we might get a beer. "Not until none" was the reply; the temp was 130 in the shade. And his reply, "I wouldn't stay here until noon for Cleopatra herself". (It give me a kick to remember that incident.)

We perservered to Calcutta (this is already too long to talk about Calcutta during WWII). We had broken the record for the time it took a merchant ship to go from N.Y. to Calcutta (don't ask me how long it was).

We came back via E Africa (Mombasa, Zanzibar, Beira, East London, Port Elizabeth, and Capetown. Heading home from there we found ourselves near the equator when word came of VE day.

Going to Sea


So here I am In N.O., living at the edge of the French Quarter, with nothing to do but wait, drifting perilously close to my 18 birthday, when young men customarily got their 1A draft cards and prepared to go to boot camp. But I was privileged; I had my 2B, military deferment.

My draft card came from a draft board on Esplanade Ave, some 20 blocks north. (Actually that Draft Board had been the first to grant exemptions to merchant seamen, but that was long before my time.) We were at Rampart and Gov. Nicholls, two blocks from Esplanade. During those early (not in N.O.!) days of spring I used to take long walks in the evening, and frequently went as far as the draft board or even to the entrance to City Park.

I had a lot to think about: it was a kind of ageing experience, going from boyhood to manhood, a solitary experience. My mind soared. I read Durant's Story of Philosophy and fell in love with it, but have never pursued it very far.

Some time before my birthday I was enrolled with the War Shipping Administration and got a handsome (for that day) per diem, for which I had to report (briefly) every weekday morning to see if my services as a radio operator were needed.

My 18th birthday passed. Then one day I got word. Take a train to Mobile and board a T2 tanker named Wood Lake, brand new, right out of the shipyard.

I did it, went aboard the ship and found out that I was the third officer. We had to keep 24 hour a day watch of BAMS (Broadcasts to Allied Merchant Ships) from which new routing instructions might come at any moment. But not in port!! I'm getting ahead of myself.

We went out into the Gulf for our shakedown cruise; not much to it for us. We learned that a similar brand new tanker had been torpedoed by a U boat 30 miles off the coast the week before. Not to worry. I was too young to worry!

Eventually we filled up with 180,000 gallons of aviation gas, and ten P38 (Lightening) pursuit aircraft. (My brother-in-law flew one in the Pacific.) We steamed up to Halifax, the staging area for the gigantic convoys they were using in those days. There were 50 odd ships of various sorts. We did 14 knots, considered fast for tankers in those days. Liberty ships did 8 knots; they were the backbone of the military supply system.

In due course we arrived at Liverpool. We radio officers had no duty in port, and I conceived the notion of going to London (might be my only chance). I went to London, looked around, spent the night, looked some more, consider spending another night, but thought better of it and went back to Liverpool.

I got there just in time to catch the last liberty boat back to the Wood Lake, and we were out of there. (If I had spent another night in London, I would have become a castaway, an American castaway in wartime England; I shudder at the thought. Actually it happened to the Second Radio Operator the next trip, in Bristol. By then we were clued as to how fast those tankers turned over, and we were there for the departure. All but Fitzpatrick: a lady's man he showed up at the wharf just after we had cast off. Goodbye Fitz.

I met him years later in N.O. It had taken him two years to get back to the States, all that time working as a galley slave to earn his passage. No salary of course. That boy's disposition had changed tremendously. He was seriously studying printing, hoping to make something of himself after those wasted years.

We were in Liverpool two weeks before D-Day. On D-Day we were in Houston, TX. I remember being on the main street and going into a church, which seemed to be the thing to do at that moment. Glad I wasn't any closer to the beaches of France.

College II



Ruston is some 280 miles north of New Orleans. For generations our family has oscillated between these two locations: N.O. and North LA. LA Tech was much more of a place than it had been when Dad went there early in the 20th Century, and also much less than it is today. It was a middle sized school, and I was more comfortable there than I had been at Duke, among the kind of people I was raised with. (A second cousin from Clayton was also going there at the time, but I didn't learn this until many years later.)

The course work was very easy. I had some of the same professors Mother and Dad had told me things about years before: Whiskers! Windbag! They weren't very respectful of their teachers at Tech. I took violin and played in the student orchestra: we played Meistersinger as I recall.

I often went home on weekends. One weekend I started out with a modest amount of money. I proposed to hitchhike until dark and hopefully have enough money for a bus ticket the rest of the way. But I didn't; night came, a bus came, I got on it, the driver asked me where I was going. I said I guess I'll get off at Baton Rouge. He said, where are you going. I explained my quandary. He said, give me your money. I gave it to him; he gave me a ticket to N.O.

A greyhound driver. I told him I would leave the change in his name at the bus station, but of course I never saw him again. People were like that in N.O., and in LA in those days. I'm afraid times have changed, not in a good direction.

One other weekend Dad had come to pick me up. We started for N.O. I was driving. We came into Concordia Parish. It was a gravel rode, very twisty; I took a curve too fast, lost control and wound up upside down in a ditch. Dad said, glad you missed the telephone pole. I said, what pole?

We extricated ourselves from that wreck and climbed up beside the road. Standing there a truck came along, three men got out and looked at us, and one said Lawrence Clayton. Dad had not lived in that area for 20 years, but he was still recognizable (that was his name, too).

We turned the car back into the road. The top was all caved in, but we got in and drove on to N.O. (ca 150 miles). God takes care of fools and preachers.

I was back in N.O. for Christmas at the beginning of the second semester. My 18th birthday was coming up in a couple of months. I didn't want to go into the Army, but I seemed fated to.

However Mother and Dad played rook several times a week with Mr. and Mrs. Mandlebaum. She was a pillar of the church. He was a Jew of course, but gave liberally to the church. In their conversation one night he mentioned a nephew who had gotten his radio operator's license and joined the Merchant Marine to avoid the Army.

Dad told me about it; I liked the idea and managed to get qualified in time to get my 2B draft card, excusing me from military service. It was a close call.

Early College Days

Duke was no picnic: I was small, young looking, and young. Boys in the dorm were girl crazy and talked about nothing but their conquests. (I had none to talk about.) So I said little.

Academic work was no problem-- never has been. I often took a bus in to Durham to see a movie; that seemed like my closest tie with my former life. I saw Casablanca, which had just come out, I believe; it made a vivid impression on me, and still does.

West Campus was crowded with military personnel:an army finance school had hundreds of men packed in the dormitories. We heard them at six every morning (ungodly hour) shouting the orders given them by the drill sergeant. The civilians got even by serenading them (very loudly at ll P.M.)

Anyway that semester was finally over. I had consumed two milk shakes each day and got up to 130 pounds.

For the summer session I took the second half of my physics course. (I have always loved college campuses in summer; they're so quiet.) Dr. Carpenter, the physics teacher was good. And I saw him in chapel every Sunday.

The Duke Chapel dominates West Campus, with quadrangles radiating out from it on both sides. Someone said it was patterned after Princeton. Never having been to Princeton I wouldn't know. Anyway the campus was super-beautiful. I had seen an air view of it in my 8th grade text book, and determined to go there. This was made easy because in those days tuition was granted to children of Methodist ministers.

Near the end of Summer School we learned that the military would basically take over the West Campus in the 43-44 year. The alternative for the few remaining civilian undergraduates was to be housed on East Campus, the Women's College.

I wasn't up for that, so I transferred to La Tech. Tech has a long history in our family. Dad lived in Ruston after his father got his law degree and attended La. Training Institute (which later became Tech).

Beside that, when they had two children in elementary school, our parents enrolled in La. Tech and got their B.A. after three years. Mother was valedictorian and Dad about fifth, I think. Of course he also had a full time job.

Boyhood Days


(This morning I lay around from 4:30 to 5 thinking about "Old New Orleans", so here it is:)

The summer of 1939 or 40 I used to bicycle out to Lake Pontchartrain, some three miles away. (All that area was flooded by Katrina, from the 9th Ward to the Lake.) In those days there was a pretty nice amusement place called Pontchartrain Beach, a sort of mini Coney Island. I would swim all afternoon, then ride home for supper. One day I swam from West End at the New Basin Canal (later called the 17th St. Canal) to the Canal (now called the London Canal). Those were the two canals where the levees were breached by Katrina, flooding the city. They are about 3 miles apart, and with the Flood everything between became a part of the lake. Of course the 9th ward was the lowest and got the deepest water.

But going back to the past: in 1941 Dad got "lower Slobbovia" again, a little Methodist Church on Bayou Lafourche, some 60 miles south of N.O. We didn't move down there; we rented a house a block from where we had been living. Dad would go down to his appointment on Saturday and come back Sunday afternoon.

One weekend I went down there with him. The next day, Dec. 7, we were driving back home and turned on the radio for the CBS Symphony; the music was interrupted to announce Pearl Harbor; we were at war with Japan.

Not much changed for me (right away). I had 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.

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.)

In 1942 Dad received a better appointment: St. Marks on Rampart St. (the northern border of the French Quarter). The church was part of the St. Marks Community City, a good sized building with, among other things a gymnasium and an indoor swimming pool. It was a small church; however there were representatives of 21 different nationalities among the members. That cosmopolitan flavor has always made N.O. an infintely charming place.

We lived on the third floor, above the swimming pool. We were a couple of miles west of Nicholls High School, and I took the St. Claude Ave streetcar each day back and forth, the same school I had been attending.

Graduation for me was January 1943, and the next day I boarded the Southerner, which in those days went from N.O. to Boston. I got off at Greensboro and proceeded by a milk train to Durham to enroll as a freshman. Quoting Maria again I was only sixteen; and home was 900 miles away.

Introduction



This blog will focus on my adventures in New Orleans (primarily 1895-1961). In the words of Little Dorrit I was born there. And unlike Big Dorrit, my father was born there, too-- in 1897. His father had come from Clayton, La, a little town where his father Capt. John M Clayton, CSA presided in magisterial splendor.

My grandfather was studying law and sired my father during this interval, also working at the Custom House still standing near the "foot of Canal Street" (where it meets the River). The family lived "uptown", near the river, Audubon Park, and Tulane, in an area that later came to be known as the 'Silk Stocking District'.

In due course (in 1926) I was born there. A few months later my father, who had "joined the La. Conference", that is to say given himself up to becoming an itinerant Methodist preacher, moved to North La to take up his first parish. (North La is about as different (culturally, ethnically, and every other way) as Michigan is from GA.). (I was to repeat this motif some 30 years later, which is to say, from the most wonderful city in the world- at that time- to Lower Slobbovia, in the course of "giving myself up to becoming an itinerant Methodist preacher".)

It was 13 years before Dad got appointed to a church in New Orleans, a little underprivileged church near the end of the 9th ward. This could be unofficially designated as the 'armpit of N.O. (with Katrinka it became the most deeply flooded and devastated area of the city). But it was New Orleans, and in that we all rejoiced.

That is to say, all but me; I felt a vague sense of dislocation; the day we arrived I put on my skates and made for Canal Street, some 38 blocks west. I looked at the exciting scene, turned around and skated back. In the words of Maria Sharapova, the great Russian tennis prodigy, I was only 13.

In the course of time I got used to the 9th Ward; there were compensations. It appeared at first that I would have to attend the boys' high school many miles away, but just in the nick of time, a new high school was established 10 blocks from our house, and it was coed!, positively the first public coed high school in New Orleans.

(My wife debates this, informing me that the school in Algiers where she attended was coed, but of course we did not consider Algiers as part of N.O., although the people there did. Much later in this story Ellie was to commute from her home right across the river from the foot of Canal to Newcombe College, the women's division of Tulane in the far west, a journey that included riding successively on the ferry, then the street car, then a bus. She did this for 3 years, and got most of her homework done in one of those vehicles.)


ETC. This blog will not focus on Katrina, except now and then as the occasion arises. Hopefully it will also be less wordy than this introductory post.