Werlein's

I was remembering the smell of my cornet case....ancient spit, valve oil, second-hand cigarette smoke, and an accumulation of potato chip funk....

Then there were visual flashes...the scuffed exterior, grungy, stained red velvet interior....

And then with a smile, I thought of Werlein's, a huge music store...an "old school" business, back when stores aspired to greatness....

I remember a gray stone building with columns going up three stories...accented in forest green around the windows. I also remember the gush of air conditioning that hit me on hot summer days... (Those big Canal Street stores were always a good place to be in the summer months.)

Werlein's was about six blocks from the Canal Street ferry, and across from Waterberry's Drug Store where folks caught the Magazine trolly...and not far from D. H. Holmes.

There was something in Werlein's I wanted.....EVERYTHING.

Everything was a big order for a kid like me, but I never left that big store without a smile and some little thing to add to a very personal, very private dream.

One thing that just hit me: I don't think that anyone ever went to Werlein's with me. Like many things I did, it was very private, very personal, and I was very alone.

For a time, my trips to Canal Street were never complete without a pit stop at Werlein's, but I didn't know how deep my love for the store went until, on a trip to New Orleans years later, I noticed that it had closed....just like everything else on Canal Street, it had withered and died as the soul of New Orleans drifted off to the malls.

Soul doesn't come easy!

The connection between my horn and Werlein's is hard-wired into my brain....probably because I started going to Werlein's when JoAnn Young generously put that old, funky, Old's cornet into my life.

The horn created a whole new set of needs, and that meant that I had a whole new set of needs....

First, there was valve oil that JoAnn said was a must if the valves were ever going to quit sticking....

Then there was the Big M Song Book that Miss Tisdale, my elementary school music teacher said I needed....

A bit later, she said that the wad of paper I was using to plug up one of the horn's spit valves would not do.

Pilgrimages that I made to my music heaven on Canal with a light heart.

Mr. Tweety suggested I get a Bach 7C mouthpiece....

I loved it! These were all reasons to go to Werlein's when the money turned up.

That felt good, something concrete to baby and pamper and dream on.

I remember hanging around outside the store just to watch kids coming down the street or exiting the street cars on the neutral ground carrying instruments for repair at the store...or for private lessons.

These kids were obviously well-healed.....

Cases without scars and scuffs meant new instruments, their clothes indicated a whole different social level than mine, and they walked with a confidence and assurance.... I never had confidence or assurance, just a lot of nerve.

But I always felt that there was something in them that we shared... The music.

Music was something that I soaked up, and there was so much inside that it oozed out of me....

Sometimes it gushed.

What really got my attention were the adults of all colors, some with gray hair, coming down the street carrying their instruments.... I had some of these folks pegged for professional musicians...maybe even jazz musicians?

How cool was that!

It was magic to see all these guys! People that had more in common with me than most of the adults I knew.... people I wanted to know because they would understand what I was about and give me their blessing.

It felt right to be near them.

I quickly learned to identify the instrument by the case, and if I was unsure, I was nervy enough to ask people what they were carrying.... flutes, guitars, trombones, oboes, bassoons, violins, French horns, cellos, flutes.... occasionally a big bass fiddle.

As I entered the store, there was a huge glass case that seemed like it went on for miles and miles...and God knows how patient the clerks behind the counter were with me!

There were so many things I wanted to touch and know, especially the instruments.....

And then there were the countless questions I had!

Kazoos, Jew's harps, various rhythm instruments, guitar strings.... That display case was a wonderland!

I remember a Martin trumpet on display that had two interchangeable bells...one straight and the other pointed upward to direct mighty blasts into heaven....like Dizzy Gillespie's.

Straight back from the entrance, on the far wall, was where they kept all the sheet music.

One reason to go there was to be by all the musicians buying music. I will confess to going out of my way to be seen handling something that I thought to be very complex and challenging to play....especially if there was some cute girl close by. I absolutely loved the girls in those dark blue or plaid skirts, knee length socks, and white blouses from the Catholic schools, but I also got turned on to composers and their works by thumbing through those stacks of sheet music the way that some boys flipped through girlie magazines.

It tripped me out to see 64th notes for the very first time...and all those exotic time and key signatures! I would see some gnarly piece of music that would sober me up for days....and humble me.

(Who would have thought?)

The second floor had small rooms for private lessons and a huge showroom for pianos. One afternoon I paid a kid a quarter to teach me to pick out "I Dropped My Dollar in the Dirt".



I dropped my dollar in the dirt.

I asked my dollar if it hurt.

It said, "No, it didn't hurt."

I dropped my dollar in the dirt.



It seemed like 25 cents well spent at the time!



There was more serious business on Werlein's third floor because that's where there were craftsmen with the ability to restore instruments that seemed beyond hope.

These were sweet guys who tolerated a short, chubby little kid standing around watching them work their magic....tolerated my endless questions as they hammered, soldered and pried unplayable horns.

There was hope here for even my dented, corroding horn if the money ever turned up. Hope for the dented and abused is important to a poor kid...hope that can become part of a dream.

Many nights these dreams would keep me wide-awake envisioning what it would take for me or my horn to be brought around into something wonderful....something to be valued and admired. We're talking about a dream of possible beauty or greatness when everything seems broken and ugly.

These gentle men had that calling, and they so willingly shared their knowledge with me....showed me what was possible to do with products of unavoidable wear or carelessness.

I loved them.



"Werlein's for music!" That was their slogan, and I have JoAnne Young to thank for getting me inside with my need.

Werlein's

I was remembering the smell of my cornet case....ancient spit, valve oil, second-hand cigarette smoke, and an accumulation of potato chip funk....

Then there were visual flashes...the scuffed exterior, grungy, stained red velvet interior....

And then with a smile, I thought of Werlein's, a huge music store...an "old school" business, back when stores aspired to greatness....

I remember a gray stone building with columns going up three stories...accented in forest green around the windows. I also remember the gush of air conditioning that hit me on hot summer days... (Those big Canal Street stores were always a good place to be in the summer months.)

Werlein's was about six blocks from the Canal Street ferry, and across from Waterberry's Drug Store where folks caught the Magazine trolly...and not far from D. H. Holmes.

There was something in Werlein's I wanted.....EVERYTHING.

Everything was a big order for a kid like me, but I never left that big store without a smile and some little thing to add to a very personal, very private dream.

One thing that just hit me: I don't think that anyone ever went to Werlein's with me. Like many things I did, it was very private, very personal, and I was very alone.

For a time, my trips to Canal Street were never complete without a pit stop at Werlein's, but I didn't know how deep my love for the store went until, on a trip to New Orleans years later, I noticed that it had closed....just like everything else on Canal Street, it had withered and died as the soul of New Orleans drifted off to the malls.

Soul doesn't come easy!

The connection between my horn and Werlein's is hard-wired into my brain....probably because I started going to Werlein's when JoAnn Young generously put that old, funky, Old's cornet into my life.

The horn created a whole new set of needs, and that meant that I had a whole new set of needs....

First, there was valve oil that JoAnn said was a must if the valves were ever going to quit sticking....

Then there was the Big M Song Book that Miss Tisdale, my elementary school music teacher said I needed....

A bit later, she said that the wad of paper I was using to plug up one of the horn's spit valves would not do.

Pilgrimages that I made to my music heaven on Canal with a light heart.

Mr. Tweety suggested I get a Bach 7C mouthpiece....

I loved it! These were all reasons to go to Werlein's when the money turned up.

That felt good, something concrete to baby and pamper and dream on.

I remember hanging around outside the store just to watch kids coming down the street or exiting the street cars on the neutral ground carrying instruments for repair at the store...or for private lessons.

These kids were obviously well-healed.....

Cases without scars and scuffs meant new instruments, their clothes indicated a whole different social level than mine, and they walked with a confidence and assurance.... I never had confidence or assurance, just a lot of nerve.

But I always felt that there was something in them that we shared... The music.

Music was something that I soaked up, and there was so much inside that it oozed out of me....

Sometimes it gushed.

What really got my attention were the adults of all colors, some with gray hair, coming down the street carrying their instruments.... I had some of these folks pegged for professional musicians...maybe even jazz musicians?

How cool was that!

It was magic to see all these guys! People that had more in common with me than most of the adults I knew.... people I wanted to know because they would understand what I was about and give me their blessing.

It felt right to be near them.

I quickly learned to identify the instrument by the case, and if I was unsure, I was nervy enough to ask people what they were carrying.... flutes, guitars, trombones, oboes, bassoons, violins, French horns, cellos, flutes.... occasionally a big bass fiddle.

As I entered the store, there was a huge glass case that seemed like it went on for miles and miles...and God knows how patient the clerks behind the counter were with me!

There were so many things I wanted to touch and know, especially the instruments.....

And then there were the countless questions I had!

Kazoos, Jew's harps, various rhythm instruments, guitar strings.... That display case was a wonderland!

I remember a Martin trumpet on display that had two interchangeable bells...one straight and the other pointed upward to direct mighty blasts into heaven....like Dizzy Gillespie's.

Straight back from the entrance, on the far wall, was where they kept all the sheet music.

One reason to go there was to be by all the musicians buying music. I will confess to going out of my way to be seen handling something that I thought to be very complex and challenging to play....especially if there was some cute girl close by. I absolutely loved the girls in those dark blue or plaid skirts, knee length socks, and white blouses from the Catholic schools, but I also got turned on to composers and their works by thumbing through those stacks of sheet music the way that some boys flipped through girlie magazines.

It tripped me out to see 64th notes for the very first time...and all those exotic time and key signatures! I would see some gnarly piece of music that would sober me up for days....and humble me.

(Who would have thought?)

The second floor had small rooms for private lessons and a huge showroom for pianos. One afternoon I paid a kid a quarter to teach me to pick out "I Dropped My Dollar in the Dirt".



I dropped my dollar in the dirt.

I asked my dollar if it hurt.

It said, "No, it didn't hurt."

I dropped my dollar in the dirt.



It seemed like 25 cents well spent at the time!



There was more serious business on Werlein's third floor because that's where there were craftsmen with the ability to restore instruments that seemed beyond hope.

These were sweet guys who tolerated a short, chubby little kid standing around watching them work their magic....tolerated my endless questions as they hammered, soldered and pried unplayable horns.

There was hope here for even my dented, corroding horn if the money ever turned up. Hope for the dented and abused is important to a poor kid...hope that can become part of a dream.

Many nights these dreams would keep me wide-awake envisioning what it would take for me or my horn to be brought around into something wonderful....something to be valued and admired. We're talking about a dream of possible beauty or greatness when everything seems broken and ugly.

These gentle men had that calling, and they so willingly shared their knowledge with me....showed me what was possible to do with products of unavoidable wear or carelessness.

I loved them.



"Werlein's for music!" That was their slogan, and I have JoAnne Young to thank for getting me inside with my need.

Shadow Memories

Some things I hold as precious are like wisps of smoke... like some of my shadow memories... things that may have never happened in exactly the way I recall them, but they are mine because I need them. The need that I have for my father, Eugene, causes me to hold fast to scant things, wisps of a reality long ago.

In Philly, we lived for a time on Hunting Park Avenue. Here I attended Cleveland Elementary School for two years and learned to ride a bike without training wheels.

It was Hunting Park where I planted seeds from an apple in the gray, hard-packed dirt between our stoop and the sidewalk not long before we moved to an apartment on Cambridge Street. I would dream about these seeds for many years, wanting to return and see if they ever took root. I took joy in this shadow memory, thinking that just maybe something I had done there would be permanent... something that I could return to and claim.

I smile at all this now, These shadow memories...memories of warmth.

On one corner of our block there was a Linton's Cafeteria... and the stop where Eugene, my father, would step off the bus in filthy khakis smelling of roofing tar in the afternoon. For a time I took to waiting for him there....

While I waited, I would study the black carbon patterns on the wall of the huge coke plant across the street...watching people go through the revolving door of the cafeteria or checking out the trolley cars in the barn across the avenue.

I would wait at the bus stop, and as he stepped down, I would throw myself at his legs and hug him tightly.

This became such a routine that after a while I would not even look up. The soiled khakis were enough to identify him and the warmth and the strength I so badly needed.

So it happened that one afternoon I threw myself at this man stepping off the bus.... "Daddy!".... and then sensed something was wrong.... Looking up I saw a confused, smiling stranger instead of Eugene. Why is this man such an important part of the shadow to me? And how could two men could have soiled khakis so similar?

On Friday nights there would be a kitchen full of men playing pinochle , eating pizza, drinking beer, and swearing when they caught bad cards...I would hear them from my bed and feel safe and happy.

When Eugene was working, things were good....

There were nights when he would send me down to the corner bar by the fire station for roast beef sandwiches...there were walks in the summer with my parents to get lovely lemon water ices from an Italian vendor...there were trips to Fairmont Park to swim and ride the merry-go-round....

I remember walking down the street in Philly with my father when we came upon men working down under the sidewalk. The manhole cover was off to the side, and I bent down to see what the workmen were doing...leaning over more and more and more.... Suddenly,I was falling head first into the hole....

In that split second, Eugene caught me by my right ankle.

This memory casts a huge shadow that spans a half century. My father saved me...deliberately extended my life.

I need that memory...need that hero, that savior quick and strong. Eugene....

Some of the rest seems so trivial and small, but I need these too... these shadow memories....

I remember him showing me how to make pancakes....waiting for all the little bubbles to appear before turning them.

I remember him taking me in the back yard to pose in my boxer shorts while holding a broken table leg like a club.

I remember him caring for me when I was sick.

Throughout my early childhood, my parents fought occasionally. These were bad fights where there was pushing and shoving, punches were thrown, and things got broken.... But I thought all mothers and fathers did that, although I never saw it happen on TV...

Within a short period of time it would all blow over... Peace, for a time, was restored. The badly broken pieces of ceramics wound up in the garbage, but some were salvaged... These I remember handling years after, remembering the things done in anger to hurt....and hurt bad.

The bust-ups between my mother and father...when we separated as a family...all this began going down in New Orleans. I'm not really aware what all the fighting was about, but one issue was Eugene not working.... and then there were time times my father got rip-roaring drunk...nasty, mean drunk.

As a child, my New Orleans was full of broken promises... promises of houses we would never live in, ponies I would never ride... a family life that would never exist outside of the dreams and promises of Eugene.

My mother's family despised Eugene, said he was a bum, and a "bullshitter", not be be trusted. But it was growing up in New Orleans' Irish Channel that I learned the uneasy peace I would be driven to make with virtually every member of my family as they lied, cheated, stole, and abused one another in a scrimmage of selfish survival.

Eugene had a really good line and lived his life chasing down the smooth deal, the fast buck....a hustler hunting down something for nothing. Somewhere in me, possibly on a genetic level, I inherited some of this in the way that breeds of dogs share traits.

Broken people break one another....

It was in New Orleans that I began chasing down my own dreams that ...dreams of wholeness and healing.

And Eugene? Well, he lives in my shadow memories.

Bobby, you're a bastard,,,,

Bobby, you're a bastard....

This sums up a series of revelations that were tossed my way in my twelfth year...the year that I ceased living one lie and began living another, the year I was robbed of my identity, the year I ceased to belong.

During my sixth grade school year, I had dinner with my Aunt Roberta and my two cousins, Mibby and Junie.

The Bowers family were big people, and they ate big. At no time in my life have I ever had someone allow six pork chops for each person..... That's a lot of pig!

After the dishes were piled in the sink, Roberta felt the need to share things with me that I was not ready to hear... things that did not help those half dozen chops sit very well on my stomach.

Aunt Bert had a way of dropping information the hearer would never choose to know if they were given the choice...the type of information that had huge, sometimes a devastating impact, information that carried for long distances. The type of information that could rock the very foundations of truth as it was understood by the hearer and create fallout that blistered people in a wide radius.

Roberta loved her work...mercilessly dishing out whole platters of bones that still had meat to be picked.....

Your meat, my meat... It was all good.

"Bobby, Wakeley is not your real last name." (She said this with a smile, like there was joy in me knowing this!)

Both Mibby and Junie smiled knowingly as I tried to wrap my head around that tidbit... It was like this was old news to them, and because they lived with Roberta, it probably was.

For twelve years of life, all through six terms of school, Robert Wakeley. I still have the report cards with comments from my teachers....

"Robert does not work well with others."

"Robert does not make good use of his time and materials."

"Robert daydreams a lot."

"Robert is not working up to his potential."

"Robert complains about not seeing the board. Where are his glasses?"

All of these report cards were signed by my mother Martha Wakeley or father Eugene Wakeley, when he was around.

"Your real last name is Baldwin."

"Robert Barton Baldwin is the name on your birth certificate." (It hit me, I had never seen this document.)

I do remember that every now and then, my school would request a copy of my birth certificate, and my mother would say she didn't have it.....and go get something from a notary that satisfied them for a while.

It could be that when having me in a classroom was more disruption or trouble than my teachers wanted, the birth certificate issue surfaced. Like, if my mother couldn't prove I was born, they could get rid of me....

"Your mother ran off and married a man named Alvin Baldwin when she was about 18, and she became Martha Baldwin." (Looking back, maybe Mom was bored and restless, and she married Alvin mainly to have some sense of change and movement in her life?)

Impulsive, that describes my mother, and just as impulsively, my grandfather, Joseph, talked her into leaving New Orleans and going to Philadelphia with him. From what I understand, this was after the newlyweds had spent only one night together in Alvin's cramped home, where he shared a bedroom with his mother.

Now, my father, Eugene Wakeley, was a real piece of work, believe me, but he had been around pretty much ever since I could remember. We had history, some good, some nightmarish.

What was all this about them not being married? (Roberta then moved quickly with surgical precision....)

"While in Philadelphia, your grandfather and your mother stayed with family, and that's where she met Eugene, her first cousin." (The follow-through was that my mother became pregnant for me with Eugene! This meant that Eugene was not only my father, but my cousin.... And the family connectedness that all this implied made me dizzy.)

"So, Bobby, after your delivery, the people at Philadelphia General asked your mother who to put on the birth certificate as your father. She used Alvin Baldwin's name."

I wasn't anybody's!

"And you have at least one half brother fathered by Eugene with another woman....."

My mother, my mom, was not married to my father? (At the time, I wasn't even aware that people did that!)

The street car ride home was not fun.

I went home that night heavy....heavy with a load I didn't want, a load that I could not lay down, a load that I was too confused and embarrassed to let anyone see I struggled with...especially my mother!

I felt dirty, guilty, ashamed.... a lot like I did when one afternoon Uncle Eddie took me on the levee in his '52 Plymouth and tried to touch me and get me to touch him. Alone and helpless.

After that, our little apartment on Iberville Street became an uneasy place where I felt cut off from my mom. In many ways, she felt like a stranger because I couldn't connect her with all Roberta had told me. I couldn't look her in the eye, but I studied her, wondering how this could all be true...wondering how the same person that drilled into me the importance of truth could have lived out this lie for so many years.

I learned that under pressure people do all sorts of things.

When asked what was true, some writer (maybe Steinbeck or Hemingway?) once said, "It's all true." ....and it was.

After several weeks, my mother confronted me with the whole thing. It seems that my Aunt Bert told my Aunt Selma about the "night of the pork chops", and then Selma told my mom.

Eugene was out of the picture at this point, and within the year he would die in one of the flop houses off of Camp Street, and that left Mom holding the bag. Mom worked hard for the little that we had, a two bedroom apartment in the Iberville Housing Project and furniture from Goodwill....or somebody's will.

Mom would come home from work exhausted, throw together supper and then take a long hot bath. There would be nights when she fell asleep over her plate of food and never make it to the bath. Sometimes, to spend as much time with me as possible, she would have me sit outside in the hall with the bathroom door open and tell her about my day...trusting me not to sneak a peek at her in the tub....and I didn't.

Well one night she called to me to come sit by the bathroom door...."Bobby, I hear Aunt Bert told you some things when you were at her house for supper...." (It was all true, just as Roberta had said.)

I did not handle this well and began to deconstruct......

I was on the street more...the Quarter, the Central Business District... watching people, especially families, parents with their kids shopping, eating, laughing.

I'd go all over the Irish Channel and the Garden District on my bike and scope out homes, yards...particularly homes that looked warm, fantasizing the lovely things that were going on in the rooms of houses.

I wanted in!

I wanted to belong and feel solid and whole.... I wanted a history, something that was good and true and right....tied in with a whole mess of family that had always been and always would be....solid.

When people get married, they share a lot of things...including a name....parents share a name with their children.... I had nothing to share that was really mine, and I never would....

Who was I?

My grades fell off, I began getting into fights with my very best friends.... I felt mean and angry,full of shame and anxiety. How could I ever begin to explain this to anyone when I didn't have a good grip on it myself?

Being able to talk about all of it would have been a gift, but there was a hard and fast rule in our family against doing this. (I suppose this rule was made by people who feared discovery.)

As I scraped through the rest of the school year, my mother and aunts fabricated a plan that would tear me away from my city and my name... My mother's brother, Clifford, agreed to take me up to Arkansas where he pastored a small independent Baptist church in DeQueen.

He coasted in one day in the early summer ready to assume the perceived need in my life for male influence, remove me from the damaging contagion New Orleans housing projects might bring my way, and move me into an environment where I could launch out with a new name, no questions asked. (Nobody really asked my feeling about being separated from my mother, the streets of my city, and my name. These were all I had....)

Clifford moved fast....so fast that it sometimes would take your breath away. If change was to happen, he saw no reason to dilly-dally around with it all. The best time for change was now...right now. As a young man, Uncle Cliff escaped the whole dysfunctional mess of our Irish Channel family and moved up North. He was a damaged person who turned to Jesus, got married and prepared to become a pastor at a small Bible college somewhere in New York State.

Things, and sometimes people, may get left behind, broken, or bruised, but he operated with the speed of a battle field surgeon... Maybe that's how he survived it all...?

And he was ruthlessly blunt.

He arrived at our place on Iberville Street, and within 24 hours, he had decided what I need to take with me....and what I didn't need, too....including what sheet music I carried in my cornet case. The only jazz that went with me to Arkansas was carried in my head. To whatever degree Cliff could control it, I was to leave worldly things behind...like anything with a back beat or a groove.

Ethnic cleansing combined with identity theft.

As we rode up to DeQueen, my uncle informed me I was too fat and would be put on a diet, requested that I calll him and his wife Mom and Dad because it would be easier on their children.... And as we cruised along somewhere between Shreveport and Texarkana, he approached the topic of the name change.

As i watched the movie of grass and trees out of my window, Cliff opened with, "Bobby, you're a bastard."

There went any legitimacy I ever had....gone.

Cowboys and Mardi Gras Indians

Cowboys and Mardi Gras Indians
My attempts at being a cowboy were not good... No gun and holster set, no bandanna, no hat....nothing would ever make a little chubby boy with Coke bottle glasses look like Gene Autrey, Roy Rogers or Hop Along Cassidy.
Mirrors don't lie, and I was terribly disappointed about what I saw in mine....disappointed and frustrated about my failure to come up with an image for myself that fit. But it did push me to look inwards and search for something I could do well.
I have always loved running my hands over something to feel its lines...its form. There's pleasure to be had as a surface undulates under a light touch.
Steel, clay, wood, flesh, glass, stone.... A form, no matter what the material, can be seamless, endless...go on and on...
At some point I wanted to imprint myself on to something that would give that kind of pleasure. First I wanted to experience my hands on something I had done...and to feel the swelling pride of achievement...and then I dreamed of sharing my work with others, bathing in their admiration.
Eyes can be hands, floating pleasurably over a surface... Thoughts can be like that too....the stuff we gently stroke and caress as we dream and recreate ourselves in a desire to be more...to be happier.
Ears, in a very cerebral sense, can slide over rhythm and sound and transport us...
I wanted that, all of it. As a boy, I worked very hard to project myself into another place, another time, where I could be more...more to myself and more to others....
I have always been a dreamer....
I wanted to produce something that would grab at the senses...something that would announce my worth. Frustration consumed me as I tried to come up with a means of presenting my magic, my wonder, my soul to a world that seemed unappreciative, unresponsive....a world unaware of what I was and what I was about.
One summer morning I decided to see how many people noticed me... after I had already decided that nobody really did. I put a huge red sticker in the middle of my forehead and then waited for someone to say something, anything. Nobody said a word, and that made me really pissy...in such a foul mood that by supper, I had gotten a whipping for being sulky.
What does a half blind, short, chubby kid do?
God knows, there had to be some way for me to let the world know about the richness I could feel flowing through me! Where could I aim the gush in me that wanted out.... quickly and violently.
I wanted to be valued....noticed....heard....
Everyone wants to be heard.... right?
My quest took me all over New Orleans...the parks, up and down the avenues that bisected Magazine and St. Charles, the Central Business District and Canal St., through the French Quarter and its shops and galleries, office buildings and libraries, onto the campuses of Loyola and Tulane, into churches and museums.....even hospitals. Where did I fit?
In New Orleans, music seems to transcend the physical, the economic... all that limited me.
The people I most admired, loved, valued...they were connected to music in some way...even the singing cowboys. Music energized me in a way that nothing else did.
Music had the ability to give me chills... or to zap me with a bolt of something this little white boy couldn't explain. In New Orleans, music is both....so beautiful and true...so physical and full of funk.
I wanted some of that!
The people of New Orleans have always treated kids like me with understanding and generosity. They see to it that music is something everybody can have a taste of...a swinging jam that anyone and everyone can sit in on.
There are enough churches, Mardi Gras parades, clubs...endless venues for kids to be bad until they get good. And there's always a sympathetic audience that will boogie to anything with a beat.... I got some of that love and encouragement.
My city loved me and was willing to pay me some attention...even if I was a flop as a cowboy.

Dinosaurus

1960 found us living on Iberville Street, one block off of Canal.... I was 12.
It was the year Joseph, my grandfather, died after being hit by a car. He was on his way home from buying some Carter's Little Liver Pills, a bottle of One-A-Day vitamins, and some Brown Mule chewing tobacco at a drug store on North Robertson Street, right off of Broad.
I always thought that Joseph would live forever...that his mean, sadistic ways would go on and on.
The wake of brokenness he created in the lives of his children went on for decades.
Joseph made his drug store run at the beginning of every month when his check came in, and then he would go to the grocery and buy a whole case of Borden's evaporated milk...and that's what he lived on...canned milk and wheat bread.
If something was precious to you, Joseph would find a way to mock it, spit tobacco juice on it, steal it or destroy it... and then laugh....
When I was three, I hit him in the head with a fire truck while he was sleeping. When I got older I was glad I had done it..... Somehow it evened the score.
I remember my Aunt Selma commenting on the fact that they found the bottle of vitamins unbroken in his coat pocket after he was run over.... And I remember thinking that we never know what things in our lives will remain unbroken and whole and which things will be shattered.
There seemed to be no logic to it.
1960 was the year the Joy Theater, across from the Krauss store, showed the movie Dinosaurus.
The theater put a huge dinosaur on top of it's marquis... and there were loudspeakers that I could hear two blocks away in our apartment, on the fringe of the Iberville project.
Over and over...day and night..." DINOSAURUS!" (dinosaur sounds) "DINOSAURUS!" ...again and again....for weeks.
My mother did a lot of things to "make me happy"...and the majority of times, this involved her spending money she didn't have... (Mom was bringing in about twenty-five bucks a week at the time.)
I never knew how to tell her that money couldn't fix what was going on inside of me... that taking her money only made me feel worse....
The guilt!
What was wrong with me? Did I look so bad that it prompted her to give me money so that I could be happy?
Well, one Saturday morning, she handed me fifty cents and told me to go to the Joy.... When I asked if she could really afford it, she told me not to worry about it because she wanted to "make me happy" ...and "have a good time".
I took the money, went to Woolworth's and got some popcorn (two jumbo bags), and bought my way into the Joy for the first showing.
Dinosaurus! Seven times....
I left after the last showing of the night and walked home...numb.
That day, as I sat in that dark theater, I did a lot of crying. I felt bad about taking my mother's money, and I cried because I wasn't happy....and there was nothing to fix it...
Not even seven showings of Dinosaurus.
I felt alone...so alone....I cried...because of the loneliness...because I didn't like myself...because I wanted a real family, like on TV...because a movie is a poor substitute for a family.
And it was completely out of my power to make any of this better.
The T-rex that is accidentally unearthed kills a lot of people before the hero hops onto a bulldozer and pushes the creature off a cliff....and then the screen is filled with a big "The End?"
For the dinosaur, it took a bulldozer... for Joseph, it was a white, '59 Caddy.
The End?
I think about Joseph... His children have all died, except for my mother. Roberta, Clifford, Selma, Sydney....all gone. And I am the only grandchild who grew up around him in New Orleans that is left.
I hope that monster never returns to cause more pain.... I hope that it is now safe for us to have something precious....
Mom, that would make me happy.

Memories and Value

The strangest things from my childhood have stayed with me.... I carry odd snapshots and movies around in my head....
Odd notions, smells, clips of conversations....

The bloody slush that remained when a street car ran over a dog and how I couldn't eat ketchup for a long time....
I started noticing the labels of ketchup bottles more.... Ketchup could be written as "catsup"... which I read as "cats up" and saw as something bloody spewing from a cat...and this reminded me of the bloody slush on the track....
All this may be why I tend to choose brands that go with the "ketchup" spelling... even today.

Before I came to New Orleans, I had never seen a dragonfly...never experienced how lovely they are in the sun.
I remember roaming around the beautiful grounds behind the Sara Mayo Hospital on Jackson Avenue with my cousin Mibby (Mary Ida) capturing these lovely creatures.
Mibby said that her mother, my Aunt Roberta, would beat her if she found out that we were tearing their wings off...
Dragonflies don't cry out....but helplessly cling to your fingers with their sticky legs and curl their long tails. I remember their silence.
Mibby and I shared our feelings of guilt and swore we wouldn't do it again....but we did.

One afternoon, on the way to the Kingsley House on Constance Street, I cut across a lot, kicking through the remains of a demolished building.
Among the old bricks and trash, I spotted a crushed metal box....sure that I would find treasure.
But there was a tail sticking out of one end of it. I had to know.....
With a stick I was able to flip the lid open....and see a huge black and white rat...smashed.
How did a dead rat get inside of that box? Did someone smash the metal box to kill the rat?
Good questions....
And some questions stay with you... and many times they are questions that were never asked or properly answered. Questions like....What gives something value?
You see, Kingsley House had an after-school program for kids in the Irish Channel. I think it came about right around the time the the St. Thomas Housing Project was built.
Behind the safety of huge brick walls, there was a playground, a sheltered area with a jukebox and board games, and workshops. The soundtrack for Kingsley House would be Buddy Holly and the Crickets....
Can you imagine 5-6 elementary school boys in a workshop full of electric saws? Well, neither could they...
There was a middle-aged man with a carpenter's apron. He promised to make each of us boys something to bring home if we would just watch and be quiet....and not touch anything.
The smell of the wood being cut, planed and sanded was wonderful....but I hated the shrill sound of the saws....still do.
We each left with an unfinished whatnot shelf made up of two wooden squares that fit together.
The man told us to bring it home, and our fathers could help us stain and varnish it.
Yeah sure... Most of us had no fathers...or stain...or varnish...
Walking home swinging the wooden thing around, it meant nothing.... I didn't make it, and I had no hope of seeing it finished and hanging on the wall.
An old woman sitting on a stoop called to me... She asked to see what I had and where I got it.
She offered me a quarter for it.... It was hers!
The value of things was something that kids in the Channel had to work through. Many of us spent our lives selling things too cheaply....or spending what little we had on trash. The important things seemed way beyond our reach....or we were totally unaware of them.

Dead dogs and ketchup, tortured dragonflies, crushed rats, and what remains unfinished with no worth.
Memories....