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.
(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.
posted by Larry Clayton at 2:31 PM
1 Comments:
How fascinating. Your early life reads like a novel. I can almost picture you riding on your bike to those houses full of wayward girls. I wonder if your parents were frightened for you, being on those streets late at night.
900 miles from home at 16. Wow. I left early, too. I was 15, turned 16 a few months later. I didn't find life away from home as adventuresome and romantic as I had imagined.
Post a Comment
<< Home