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....

Knowing

Emma, my grandmother, wanted everyone to be clear on one thing....
There was a time before she married Joseph Wallace when things were different, very different.
She had not always lived in the squalor of the Irish Channel.
Emma spoke of being brought up in a household where the table was set for each person to have an individual bread plate and butter knife..... The vision of this blew me away.
First, we had no butter.... The oleo-margarine was kept at room temperature in an old Blue Plate jar.
And our table service was just a mish-mash of chipped china and cheap stainless.
The bagged Sunbeam bread never left the table....or the bag.... until we ate it.
Emma would look at me with her big watery-blue eyes....eyes that watered up as she spoke of studying piano, Latin, and German as a girl in upstate New York. How she was drug from there to funky, Irish Magazine Street in New Orleans....it still remains a very foggy story.
And I listened because I was hungry to know....
I had a huge need for knowledge....
There were also things I would have been happy not to know, and I got a lot of that from my mother's sister, Roberta.
Roberta, was a family historian of sorts.... She collected the scandal, the dirt, the failures, the short-comings, the weakness that can be found in any family....and she fed it to me in doses too large for me to wrap my brain around whenever she got the chance.
"Bobby, don't tell anyone I told you this....." My mother would have been furious.
It was like something she was called to do....
At eleven, I was not ready to hear that my mother and father never married....that they were first cousins....that this made my grandfather my uncle....
All this and more just shook me....hard.
Roberta thought anything that was really important, God would reveal to her or give to her as a gift.....the same went for Mibby and Junior. So, she let my two cousins ditch school fairly early.
No diplomas, just tongues and healing services under a revival tent.
It's too bad she didn't take the same view concerning the education I was receiving in her living room.
I hurt when I think of Bert's kids.... As adults, they struggled many times in brutal poverty.
I wanted the world to open up for me....I had so many questions....and I searched without a clue of where to look.
I just knew it was out there.....
We called my sixth grade teacher "Prof", and he was full of all sorts of bits and pieces....none of it organized. And that may have made it even more interesting.
Our class would bounce from fact to fact....one subject over-running another....maybe bleeding over one another....
And then at home there were the Readers' Digests...magazines with little blips of information that teased and taunted me.....between corny things like "Humor in Uniform" and "Life in These United States".....
The library....something on a very large scale was there that I wanted.....
Nobody in my family ever went to the library.... not my mother, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins.....nobody. Nobody checked out books.
Nobody but me....
I wandered that library the same way I went through the tall, downtown bank buildings whose upper floors housed the offices of doctors and lawyers.....
The whoosh of the elevators as my stomach dropped out on the floor....and then the long hallways with names painted on the doors.
Behind those doors were the sounds of typewriters, people talking, dentists' drills, coughs....a hum of importance that I felt a part of just because I was there....close.
At about 10 or 11, I wandered into all the chrome and glass of the main library branch on Loyola Avenue for the first time.......the information desk that offered me no information seemed endless.
The main branch of the New Orleans Public Library....multi-storied. (Some puns come out of nowhere.)
Cold....
The elevator went to the basement with doors indicating periodical storage, rare books.... and the upper floors with endless open stacks. Thousands and thousands of books.....
And that was the frustration.
I knew that these shelves, somewhere, held important things for me, but I had no idea where to begin the search....or who to ask for help.
It took years for me to figure all this out.
I got a library card, and for a time, just checked books out....just to check them out....just to be able to leave the library holding books.....to be seen holding books.
People would know that I thought books were important.....would know that I wanted to know.
And there was the sense of importance I felt in returning these books.
Emma remembered bread plates and individual butter knives.... For me, it's my memories of trying to function, trying to pull together a world out of dysfunction.
And maybe Aunt Bert had something...maybe anything that really is important, God will reveal to us or give to us as a gift....like the hunger I had to know.

Parsley

There are some things that a cook adds to a recipe in order to express something about themselves and the dish....
For my mom, I think parsley did this.
Does anyone know how long dried parsley lasts? Is there a point where it adds nothing to the dish because it has been around too long?
My father, Eugene, returned from a salvage auction in Philly with a chest which I still have in my study.
Eugene searched long and hard to find a "deal", a quick buck, something for nothing, a time and a place where he could find something that would change his downward slide....
It didn't happen, but he did arrive home with some interesting stuff....like the huge can of parsley that we found in the locked trunk... after we broke it open.
Who would have thought that anyone would lock parsley in a trunk anyway?
But there it was, a surplus of WWII, in an olive green can....a huge olive green can with U.S. government all over it.
From what I remember, Mom was still using that government issue parsley for ten to fifteen years after Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge.
It seemed to me that everything about WWII was done on a big scale: the invasions, the weapons, the number of soldiers ....even cooking ingredients!
And I thought it was cool that even army chefs would use olive drab containers.
It's funny to me that of all the other things that came out of that trunk, the only thing I remember is the
parsley.
This parsley was not an everyday ingredient in our house. I always got the vibe that mom used it when she wanted to announce that the dish being prepared was special. So, the parsley stash was whipped out at Thanksgiving or Christmas....times when flamboyant ingredients were called for, and everything available that might add to the turkey's bread stuffing was poured in without conscience.
My mom offered up sage in the same reckless way officers threw their men into the heat of a battle.
The can of parsley outlasted Eugene's presence in our house. The last Christmas it was used, Eugene had probably already died from pneumonia he caught in a rat trap apartment somewhere around Lafayette Square.
Even now, whenever I use parsley in a chicken and sausage gumbo or a soup, I think about Eugene, and the trunk, and its precious contents...and in this sense it has lasted a very long time.
I must also confess that I too search long and hard to find a "deal". Realizing that there is no quick buck, no something for nothing, and no time or place where I can find some material thing that will change my downward slide.... These are lessons that I still struggle with.
I think we all have spices that we use with attitude in every part of our lives.
But for a time, it was parsley in our family...probably more attitude than taste. The Irish Channel was like that.

Pat Boone and Joyce

Music...
It was about the only thing I could come up with.
Who would ever pay attention to a short, chubby boy with glasses, thick glasses...with absolutely no athletic ability...and very little brain.
I wasn't stupid, but nobody knew that...not even me.
What I was, at the time, was amazingly awkward and unconditionally sloppy, and I wanted someone to think that there was more. I wanted that badly.
Music seemed to offer hope.
In the musicals I watched and loved, there was a moment when everything would suddenly fall into place for a musician or singer....a person who had formerly been a hopeless nobody....and then all of a sudden......
BANG! Life would be suddenly good for a gifted nobody....
Hold on to something....ok? I wanted to be Pat Boone...."Love Letters in the Sand"..."April Love"....
Pat Boone!
The man was everything I wanted to be....cool, neat, suave, witty.... And it seemed that he had to fight the girls off with a stick.... The nice T-Bird he drove in one of his movies certainly didn't hurt.
In my pre-teen years there was a lot of distance between what I was and Pat Boone.
But to get the ball rolling, I began to practice his songs....over and over again. I even practiced whistling the bridge just like he did on "Love Letters in the Sand".
I was also drawn to Little Richard and Buddy Holly.... But Pat Boone was my main focus.
At the time, upper elementary, I stalked Joyce Stein.... Joyce was perfect....
I would watch her come into class on cold mornings...watch as she took off her coat...
It was like seeing a Christmas present opening itself up....the ribbons in her long, red hair....the wool scarf....and amazing dresses and jumpers....
On warmer days, she would wear a sweater over her shoulders, and it never slipped off. It magically stayed perfectly placed all day.
How did that happen? Did girls like Joyce take lessons in being perfect?
Somebody, probably her mother, put a lot of time into Joyce. There was a grace and elegance about this kid that I was not ready to deal with.
And she was smart! Joyce and my friend, Bubba, were always in competition with one another over grades.
I wasn't.... I was lucky if Mrs. Keith even handled my messy work.
At home, I would perform for my mother, and anyone else who would listen....seriously perform. And I would get my feelings hurt if I even got a hint that they were holding back a laugh. I wanted them to be as serious as I was about this thing.
Something big could come of this....like I might get on the Amateur Hour...or Lawrence Welk...
Who knew? Joyce Stein might notice me...smile at me...give some sign that she knew I was alive.
After school, I would walk down Boudreaux Street....casually following Joyce....singing....
"April love is for the very young. Every star's a wishing star that shines for you....".
Or...
"On a day like today, we passed the time away, writing love letters in the sand....".
Up to Magazine Street, doing my best Pat Boone....and she never turned around....not once....
I found out that she attended the Valance Street Baptist Church on Magazine, and I tried to imagine what she looked like on Sunday morning....
I did get to hold her hand once in fifth grade... They brought us down to the basement of the school to do square dancing.
Boys and girls alike made faces and gruesome sounds signaling how this was a fate worse than death.
Actually, I think we were very excited....
I remember Mrs. Keith trying to get us calmed down and civilized...and I remember Joyce in a wonderful green plaid dress.
As we began to dance,it shocked me how cold Joyce's hands were.
Joyce Stein was supposed to have warm hands...and she was supposed to smile warmly....and that didn't happen either....and her blue eyes were cold....
This would have never happened to Pat Boone.
The music never left me, but I think I realized that my music would never warm Joyce up.
And all I wanted was a smile....but that, I guess, was a lot to ask from a preteen girl who officially hated boys....especially boys who were a hopeless mess like me.
There was other music that would enter my life....but it came later and harder.
Perfection is not all it's cracked up to be.....

Detectives in Togas

The very first book I "owned" was DETECTIVES IN TOGAS.
Fourth grade had been a very hard time for me. My parents were in the middle of one of their on-again, off-again things, and that meant changes of address and schools.
It was also a time when I was coming to terms with how I felt about Eugene, my father.
From TV, I had put together a vision of what I wanted my life to look like....ponies, big fluffy dogs, and long-term, secure everything.
It was a vision that I didn't want to let go of...but it was all on a slippery slope.
Eugene kept increasing the angle of descent on the downhill run, and I began to realize that there weren't going to be any ponies.
I got my hands on DETECTIVES IN TOGAS at Thomas Jefferson Elementary. I had already been to two schools that year, and here I was in Mrs. Keith's combined class of fourth and fifth graders.
Mrs. Keith was a short, very thin woman, and her brown hair was as short as she was.
That teacher was one tough woman!. She may have been the toughest woman I had ever run across.... She had to be strict to teach two different classes at once and not have the whole thing be a zoo....
She pushed us hard.
I loved that woman...a lot, and I was sure she loved me. She loved all of us....I'm sure of that.
Our class was like one big extended family, and Mrs. Keith, her husband, and her older son were all part of it. Many of us needed that, and we needed her stories about her son and her husband....and what they did together.
What was Mrs. Keith's was ours for the taking...a life that we could be a part of.
Well, it was springtime and the school library was unloading a lot of books, and Mrs. Keith brought us to this storage room full of boxes. Everyone was allowed to take something that looked good.
Mine was DETECTIVES IN TOGAS, and I have absolutely no idea what drew me to it.
Rich kids in ancient Rome who attended a private school and were taught by a Greek slave...nothing like anything I had run across in the Irish Channel, for sure. Maybe the only thing I could identify with was this pack of boys ratted the streets of Rome the same as I ratted the streets in the Channel.
These little Romans were smart, curious, and brave...even solved a murder.
When school ended that year, I prayed that I would be back with Mrs. Keith for fifth grade. Over the summer I read DETECTIVES IN TOGAS over and over again....through my parent's screaming fights.... through the New Orleans heat....though a drawing back from Eugene....through a growing hate.
Over and over again... It was my connection to Mrs. Keith and the rest of my school family.
Miracles of miracles, my mother and I managed to stay near enough to Thomas Jefferson Elementary for me to be there with Mrs. Keith....again.
There were Bubba, Joyce, Johnny, Alice, Wayne, Peanut, Bruce, Alvin.... Long-term and secure.....
Mrs. Keith had taken a trip around the world with her son that summer, and on the first day of school, there were small presents for each of us....with our names on them.
One of the things I got was one of those Japanese ceramic spoons.
And there were stories and pictures of all that they had seen. (Seeing Mrs. Keith on a camel was a trip!) We were there, in each place, with her.
She was planning on us being back with her! She knew because we were her children....

Joseph, My Grandfather

I flashed on my mother bringing meat home from the Winn Dixie where she worked.
Mr. Harry would allow Mom to slip out with some fine cuts of beef that "weren't quite right"....or "on the verge".
She would open the packages in the sink and smell the darkened meat...sometimes smelling it more than once...and then out would come the salt.
Mom would put the meat under the tap to wet it, rub salt into the steaks or chops...sometimes repeating the process several times until it seemed cleansed and fit to eat.
Then would come the explanations of why the meat was ok...how rich people paid out good money for aged beef...how the general public didn't realize that the meat that was dark and old looking was really the best....how lucky we were.
Mom was like that.
I wondered how much of this she actually believed...or was it all a collection of the lies that the poor tell themselves to make it all ok...all acceptable...and palatable.
I don't know.
But I still have a styrofoam plaque of John 3:16 that we got from Top Value trading stamps. Mr. Harry also gave Mom rolls of these stamps. How all that went down, I don't know, but at least they didn't need to be rubbed down with salt.
The taste of glue is what I remember from filling book after book with the gold stamps....and the catalogue that spurred me on, all filled with dreams that could bought with those stamps. We never managed to get the really big stuff...just a lamp here, a set of Lilly glasses there....a coffee maker, a toaster.
The Top Value Redemption Center was the only place I heard the word redemption used outside of church. "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so....?
I was busy pasting stamps in our project apartment when we got the news that my grandfather, Joseph had died from his run-in with a big white Cadillac right off of North Broad. They had him hooked up for days on all sorts of machinery at Charity Hospital....but now that was over.
Joseph had paid for years for a burial policy that entitled him to a grand throw - down at the House of Boltman on Napoleon and St. Charles...complete with huge limos...a silver metal casket...and a plot at the Garden of Memories on Airline Highway.
Quite a show!
When I saw him in the casket, I thought about meat. It wasn't Joseph with the wad of Brown Mule in his mouth...the Joseph with the penetrating black eyes and jet black hair he dyed...the Joseph who sang crazy songs and cursed bitterly at all he hated...the Joseph who drew moustaches on the only portrait that my grandmother ever had made because he loved to piss her off.
Joseph lived to piss people off....which is why he praised Hitler and Stalin loudly.
He paid for that funeral bash the same way we would lay aside trading stamps.
And I suppose they preserved him for much the same reasons that my mother would rub down the
partially spoiled meat with salt.... He wasn't completely bad, but a lot of people were convinced, from all appearances, that he was too rotten to save.
His wife, my grandmother, thought so. When she was in the last stages of a hideous battle with intestinal and stomach cancer, she made the family promise not to bury her near him.
Like the meat from Winn Dixie, Mom explained away Joseph's life.... even the parts that had destroyed her childhood and her first marriage. He was ok....
Emma knew better.

The "White Glove Treatment"

I was about eight, and my mother had sent me to live with Emma, my grandmother...Selma, my mother's sister...Eddie, her husband...and schizophrenic Sidney, my mother's brother.
I remember being shaken...softly shaken.... from a sound sleep in the middle of the night. Everything was dark.
I didn't surface out of sleep all at once. Selma drew me out of sleep like one would draw out a bucket from a well. She called my name softly....Bobby....Bobby. Awareness of details came to me slowly, but Selma was in no hurry....Bobby.
Selma held a flashlight...letting it dance around...to her face...to the knife she held...the same knife my grandmother used to cut up chickens.
Her eyes danced, wild...and her smile was mean, showing lots of teeth....mean. And she was wearing white gloves.
"Aunt Selma? What are you doing?"
"Bobby, they're all dead! I have killed them all...."
Selma then went on to tell me how she had murdered everyone in the house. Eddie, Sidney, Emma..... And now it was my turn.
As she went on, I cried, I begged.... Hope? Well, there seemed to be none. It was my turn to die. My terror brought her amusement. She wanted me to beg...to plead. And she laughed and preened in
the face of my fear.
Why?
Selma explained later that this madness was a punishment for my bed wetting, my poor conduct reports from school....just for everything....including the holes I tore in the knees in my pants when I fell playing outside...including the shirt that got torn during a fight at school...including breaking my glasses.
She put down the knife...the flashlight...rubbing her gloved hands together as if she were warming them for the task to come. Selma spoke of strangling me, and I would be dead like the rest.
This night was later referred to as the night Selma gave me the "white glove" treatment.
Selma joked about it! And she shamed me by describing the terror and fear I exhibited as she played out the scene.
Why?
Goodness came about through punishment and shame.
There were nights when she would have me drop my pants so that my knees would be bare.... then she would pour raw grits or rice on a sheet of newspaper and have me kneel on them.
I would beg to get up, just as I begged for my life that night.
And the stories of me on grits and rice were also told with the same lightness...and I felt the same shame.
Why?
It seems that my mother had spoiled me...and this called for drastic measures. Something had to be done....quick.
There was the night Selma was so outdone that she took the shade from a floor lamp...and then held my bare arm against the hot bulb.
All for my own good.
I learned many lessons about goodness and evil in the St. Thomas Housing Project....for my own good.
There was a German boy, Eric, that lived near our building. I loved his accent.
Eric and I had been friends for a few days when he invited me to come up to their apartment. He wanted to show me something funny.
He and I entered their home, and nobody was there except his grandmother....and she was totally deaf.
Eric told me, "Watch this!" Eric went behind his grandmother and began to call her all sorts of mean, profane things....and then he laughed.... I was stunned.
Why?
Eric's laugh...and Selma's laugh...to me they seemed the same.
And they were!
Sick.... I never played with Eric again. Sadly, I spent years trying to gain the approval and love of Selma. And sadly I tried to see the necessity and humor of the "white glove treatment", the raw grits and rice, and the searing light bulb.
It took years...long years....to see Selma and Eric as the same....to see that I had a lot in common with Eric's old, deaf grandmother. We were both unable to hear what they were saying....
The deaf woman and I? There was no blame....there was no excusable reply to "Why?"

The Streets

I felt safe...no matter where I went in the city.
The streets were mine, and they were lovely...little peeks of old cobblestone, patterned brick sidewalk here and there...and the roots of huge oak trees that tore up the cement... causing it to look like the badly broken bridgework of an old woman.
But I felt safe in these streets. They were mine.
I remember nights, walking home from places with my mother...The street lights pooling light every so often, punctuating the blackness..... I loved it.
And then my mother's voice, "Bobby, if anyone tries to hurt us, I want you to run...."
I never understood her fear...these streets loved me. Everything I knew about them shined, like the
obsolete streetcar tracks nobody bothered to remove....like the wet asphalt after a rain.
Their smell is connected to my grandmother Emma...somehow. I think about smothering myself into Emma's damp house dress and apron as she worked in the kitchen. Her sweat, the odor of security...and the streets.
"Mom, we're ok."
It's so easy to be brave when there is nothing to fear.
Home was another matter.
Home was an on-again, off-again brawl...with hidden scandal...unforgiven hurts...broken promises ...neglected responsibilities...shame...secrets...lies.
Fear...lots of fear....especially fear of exposure.
There was a truth about the streets that I never found at home. Honesty and openness seemed to thrive in the streets....they demanded it. My family demanded something very different.
There was Eddie...he was married to my mother's sister, Selma.
Right about the time I arrived in New Orleans in the mid-50's, my cousin Mary Ida told her mother, my Aunt Roberta, that Eddie had showed her "dirty" pictures....and had "touched" her.
My family never recovered from this.
There were huge profanities thrown back and forth in the courtyards of the St. Thomas Housing Project...vicious phone pranks day and night ...along with threats and counter threats....
It went on and on for years.....with brief periods of uneasy peace....sub-surface hostility.
Sisters at war.
And Mary Ida? Besides Mary...and Eddie, I may have been the only one in the family who knew the truth.
Eddie showed me the very same pictures and tried to molest me too....but who could I tell? Nobody believed Mary....so, who would believe me?
Eddie looked at me as I sat in his '52 Plymouth...."Bobby, don't tell anyone. You see how everybody thinks Mary lied....they won't believe you either."
I kept my mouth shut....but I knew....like Mary knew.
When I looked at Eddie I always thought I saw a slight, knowing look...maybe even a smile....daring me to say something.
I felt ashamed....soiled....
I was a coward.
How could I describe to my mother what Eddie had shown me? How could I tell her what he was and be sure there wouldn't be more war....or be sure that I wouldn't be called a liar.... like Mary?
The streets were safe.
Years later, childless, Eddie and Selma took in a young prostitute who was pregnant. They adopted her baby and named her April Lynn. Eddie abused and molested his daughter at will for years before she left home and became a prostitute like her mother.
The truth came out....but it came out in the streets, not at home.
April eventually gave birth to a baby that was born with no eyes, another that was profoundly retarded.
In her late teens, Mary married Alvin, a Pentecostal preacher, and traveled with him as he held tent revivals all through the South...proclaiming liberation and truth.
I spent my childhood in the streets escaping the horror at home.
It was in the streets that I found the wedding ring I gave my wife...found it while tripping out of my mind in the French Quarter.
It was in these streets that my wife and I sold our pottery
It was in these same streets that my wife and I brought our children to experience the musicians and clowns....the food and the funk....
Safe....

Seasons

Audubon Park was an amazing place for me. There was an open-air stage made to look like a Greek or Roman ruin, and that was close to the lagoon where they rented boats. A train ran all through the park and passed by the zoo.
The branches of live-oaks hung low to the ground...making it easy to slither up into the trees, and we boys played "king of the mountain" on a dirt mound called Monkey Hill.
The seals played in a huge pool and bellied up on a smooth rock island at its center. I wanted to be a seal and fought the urge to jump the fence to be with them...particularly during the summer.
And then there was a dreamy merry-go-round with lots of ponies all about...and mirrors reflecting the strung lights...and music, like syrup in the air.
Around and around....and with each round a chance to grab at a ring. I would stretch out far...had to have that ring....
I never slipped off my horse, but it was worth the gamble...the risk...
Each time around the urgency was there, but then the ponies would became still, the mirrors didn't catch as much light, and there was no more syrup in the air.....just children, some laughing....some crying as their parents took charge of them.
And when the carousel emptied, so did the desire I had for the rings I grabbed at.
Situations give things their value.
Many things I did as a child were associated with a particular season of the year...and they had a sweetness only then. When the season passed, so did the magic.
Mardi Gras is the ultimate example. Night after night...parade after parade, I would snatch and grab at the beads, trinkets and doubloons. It's a good thing my mother never found out the insane chances I took. But I filled my room with this treasure...sometimes grabbing handfuls of it...letting it run through my fingers. I was rich!
After Mardi Gras? Who knows what happened to it all? And it didn't matter, because the season was gone.
During the summer, it was marbles. I filled CDM coffee cans with the marbles I won shooting marbles with neighborhood kids.
In the spring, I collected baseball cards and flew kites.
The fall was the season for tops and a game called "spike".
War was muti-seasonal.
Kids would divide up into teams and gather up acorns, pine cones, chinaberries ....anything that could be thrown....and the war would begin.
I remember finding a whole mess of chinaberry trees...and filling bags with their fruit. But the berries rotted in the bag before I had a chance to use my stash. The season had passed.
Situations give things their value....but my mother didn't seem to understand this.
Once we got free tickets to the circus at the Municipal Auditorium. As we went in, the smell of popcorn was everywhere, and I threw some huge hints....more than once.
I can hear her, "Bobby, I can buy you enough popcorn to last you days and days for what it will cost for me to buy you one little bag here at the circus."
How could I tell her about the rings on the carousel...and Mardi Gras beads...and marbles and chinaberries.....?
How do kids explain to their parents about seasons?
Maybe seasons are something that parents have to remember about. They used to know about seasons when they were kids...but somehow, they forget.
I did.

Untitled

The block of time in which I grew up in New Orleans was a period of vast transition. There was so much hope and anticipation that the city would grow and sprawl as so many other cities across the South seemed to be doing. I remember constant comparisons between New Orleans and Houston, for example.
But for some reason, New Orleans never got the juice.
The grids for the planned growth were optimistically drawn out in the form of highways that let to nowhere much. The city fizzled.
Black New Orleans proudly advanced the cause of civil rights and the recognition of the importance of black culture in the city. But it was slow going...involving demonstrators being hosed down by firemen at city hall...demonstrations in front of businesses down town.
As I was growing up, most blacks had jobs as maids, doormen, custodians. restaurant help, sanitation workers...mostly subserviant roles. Even during Mardi Gras, the black flambeau carriers lit the way for parades they had no real part in....except for Zulu and the Mardi Gras Indians.
The machine of segregation was in full throttle...and this was a rather harsh reality to a white kid born in Phildelphia...a kid who stole his first kiss in kindergarten from a little black girl.
I rode the city transit system quite a bit...there were no school busses. Every morning the busses, trollies, and street cars carried white business men into the center city, the maids and yardmen out to homes in Lakeview, and kids like me to a variety of private and public schools all over the city.
For seven cents a person could travel the whole city. But for blacks, it wasn't the price of public transit, it was the indignity.
There were two holes on the back of every seat...there were also wooden signs that read "No Colored Beyond This Point". There were two pegs on the sign that made it possible for the sign to be mounted on the back of the bus seats.
When a white person entered a bus and there were no seats available except those occupied by black, he could move one of the signs in back of a seat...causing the black(s) occupying that seat to get up and stand so the white could sit.
If a white was already sitting in a seat, and there was still a seat available next to him, no black person could occupy that seat. This made for a very interesting "game" among white kids going or coming from school. When they got on the bus or trolly, each white kid would take a seat all to himself...meaning that the seats available to black passengers were very limited.
Although I didn't participate in this cruel game...some of my friends did. My attitude adjustment toward the whole rotten thing came one afternoon when a heavy, older black lady got on the bus with bags of groceries. No seats were open to her in spite of seats next to white kids.
The lady stood trying to manage her bags and keep her balance at the same time as the bus stopped and started. In short order, she fell with her purchases rolling all over the floow. I immediately thought of my grandmother, Emma. I saw Emma on the floow...I saw Emma's purhases rolling all over the bus.
What was happening here was wrong...very wrong.
I helped her pick up her stuff. This was not some noble gesture to somehow salvage race relations in the South...but shame. Biting, head-hanging shame. This was not some stranger...this was my grandmother...somebody's grandmother.
I was changing...more aware.
The separate water fountains, bathrooms, entrances to movie theaters...separate shcools, housing projects, waiting rooms at doctors' offices....
And our churches....?
When civil rights legislation got serious, lovely public swimming pools were filled with concrete to avoid integrating them.
I wonder if it's coinccidence that New Orleans fizzled when respect and tolerance fizzled? ...Did it all happen when the "city that care forgot" forgot to care?
The racial intolerance I observed was at least one of the things that disillusioned me with "Bible Belt" Chrisitanity...and into a life style that promised love and acceptance...and a mind-opening drug experience.

Rodney

There was a large Baptist Church out on the Airline Highway that sent its blue and white busses all over the city of New Orleans..."The Church of the Open Bible". It had a big open neon Bible on the roof and a sign..."God said it, I believe it, That settles it."
One of those busses passed through the Iberville Housing Project...my mother and I and a lot of people we knew rode that bus three times a week to services. Hunched Mr. Tweety, my jazz hero, was there, and Miss Margie, a big woman, who Mr. Tweety knew from the old days when the speakeasies heated up the city.
I loved that big church. It was, in many ways, my family. Sure there were a lot of rich members, but there were also a lot of folks exactly like me, my mom and the rest of our bus from the projects. And people cared about us...really cared.
That Baptist church was also my social life. There was a gym, a bowling alley, and a youth program with lots of activities...and we fit. People saw to it that we got there...and when we missed a service, there was always somebody that found out why.
But I probably liked the rides to and from church more than anything else. These were my people...
Tweety told me that Miss Margie was really something back then...quite a singer. But it was not easy to look at the older lady on that church bus and connect her with the hot music of the 20's. It was great when these two got started unearthing their part of the jazz age on the way to church...and I just sat quietly taking it all in.
Back in Philadelphia, I made the first spiritual decision I remember. My mother took me once to this huge church...my overall memory of the place takes in a gray stone exterior...with an interior of dark wood and dim light.
I don't remember what the sermon was about, but toward the end of it all, the preacher invited people to say "Yes" to Jesus. That pulled at me...the idea of saying yes to Jesus, and I told my mother so. "Mom, let's say yes!" And we did!
I had no idea what I was doing, but I think it was important.
Retarded is not a word we use much anymore. There are much more polite, kinder, politically correct ways to refer to people who are slow...but back then when people spoke of Miss Margie's son, they just threw it out there..."You know, Rodney...that retarded boy!"
I remember Rodney as very good looking and well dressed. He looked sharp...Miss Margie saw to that. But he had a lot of the mannerisms of his mother...a guy in his 20's or 30's acting like a woman in her 50's or 60's. Rodney got on the bus with a hanky in one had, dabbing his eyes and face, clutching a huge Bible in the other arm...holding the book close to his chest, like it was precious to him. And even though Rodney couldn't read, it was precious.
Rodney was merely imitating the only adult he was with most of the week.
Nobody made fun of Rodney much...who would want to make fun of this gentle soul?
In the way of a small child, Rodney loved everybody. But the thing that Rodney was most known for is that he said "yes" to Jesus at every service....every time there was an altar call.
When Bro. John-Paul would wrap up his sermon, he would step down from the pulpet and invite people to come, and Rodney was most often the first to go and take the pastor's hand...dabbing his eyes, looking broken and grieved...hungry for healing in his life...responding to the same sort of pull I felt as a small boy...
That's what Rodney did.
Who knows how many other people reached out to God during those sevices because of Rodney?
He went first.
As the congregation sang, "...Open wide Thy arms of love. Lord, I'm coming home." ...Rodney couldn't go home fast enough!
Rodney's gift was saying "Yes".

The Trunk

In the corner of my study is an old steamer trunk covered with wood-grained adhesive paper...and it's very precious to me because it goes back as far as I can remember...linking my infancy and early childhood in Philadelphia with my life in New Orleans..the city that crowds my sensory memory with its earthiness, its funk.
I arrived in New Orleans by plane when I was seven to stay with my grandmother Emma. Where my mother ever got the money for that ticket...and why she felt so motivated to get me out of Philidelphia, I will never know.
The trunk that had moved with us from apartment to apartment in Philly came to New Orleans a year later than me...along with my mother, Martha, and Eugene, my father. It arrived, along with everything we had ever owned, but I didn't see any of it for months and months.
With no employment waiting in New Orleans, no place to live, and no cash to speak of, Eugene had the trunk and everything else we owned shipped south. He and Mom rode the Grayhound.
We wound up in a tiny, furnished apartment on Magazine Street. All our stuff, including the trunk, went into storage. The shipping company wanted the freight charges before releasing anything...and the company also planned to charge us storage fees on everything that had been shipped. And we really didn't have room for the stuff anyway.
Rolling around in my kid's brain were visions of all the wonderful things that were waiting for me...toys I had left behind when I left Philadelphia...including my very first bicycle...clothes...stuff.... And the longer I waited, the more glorious the dream of being reunited with all of it became. I think this was true for my mother too.
I remember that apartment on Magazine very well...it's where I came down with the chicken pox...it's where I learned my states and capitals...and it's where I saw more roaches than at any other time in my life. The cans of roach spray my mother bought did very little good.
With a broom stick and a spring clothes pin, I made a rubber band gun...and with it, I had a lot of fun picking roaches off the walls.
My mother cried in anger and frustration at all of it...especially the roaches, I think.
My mother and father both managed to find jobs...Eugene even kept his for a while before my mother wound up supporting us all...again.
It took a very long time...maybe a year or so, but my parents made payments to the freight company...and finally we got another apartment near Louisiana Avenue...and we got our stuff, including the trunk.
My heart broke.
It all looked like junk. Many of my mother's things had been broken in shipping, I had outgrown the clothes..my bike was too small for me, and I was too old for most of the toys. Our dreams had been handled too roughly and they had been in storage too long.
Out of all it, the steamer trunk still survives...
Years later, my mother bought some contact paper with a wood grain and spent hours applying it to the trunk. But it wound up looking exactly like an old trunk covered with contact paper.
Of all the things from my childhood, this trunk is the only thing that has always been there. It's ugly and grungy...tacky as the contact paper that covers it...but it's tough...and it survived.
It's my link...

The Trunk

In the corner of my study is an old steamer trunk covered with wood-grained adhesive paper...and it's very precious to me because it goes back as far as I can remember...linking my infancy and early childhood in Philadelphia with my life in New Orleans..the city that crowds my sensory memory with its earthiness, its funk.
I arrived in New Orleans by plane when I was seven to stay with my grandmother Emma. Where my mother ever got the money for that ticket...and why she felt so motivated to get me out of Philidelphia, I will never know.
The trunk that had moved with us from apartment to apartment in Philly came to New Orleans a year later than me...along with my mother, Martha, and Eugene, my father. It arrived, along with everything we had ever owned, but I didn't see any of it for months and months.
With no employment waiting in New Orleans, no place to live, and no cash to speak of, Eugene had the trunk and everything else we owned shipped south. He and Mom rode the Grayhound.
We wound up in a tiny, furnished apartment on Magazine Street. All our stuff, including the trunk, went into storage. The shipping company wanted the freight charges before releasing anything...and the company also planned to charge us storage fees on everything that had been shipped. And we really didn't have room for the stuff anyway.
Rolling around in my kid's brain were visions of all the wonderful things that were waiting for me...toys I had left behind when I left Philadelphia...including my very first bicycle...clothes...stuff.... And the longer I waited, the more glorious the dream of being reunited with all of it became. I think this was true for my mother too.
I remember that apartment on Magazine very well...it's where I came down with the chicken pox...it's where I learned my states and capitals...and it's where I saw more roaches than at any other time in my life. The cans of roach spray my mother bought did very little good.
With a broom stick and a spring clothes pin, I made a rubber band gun...and with it, I had a lot of fun picking roaches off the walls.
My mother cried in anger and frustration at all of it...especially the roaches, I think.
My mother and father both managed to find jobs...Eugene even kept his for a while before my mother wound up supporting us all...again.
It took a very long time...maybe a year or so, but my parents made payments to the freight company...and finally we got another apartment near Louisiana Avenue...and we got our stuff, including the trunk.
My heart broke.
It all looked like junk. Many of my mother's things had been broken in shipping, I had outgrown the clothes..my bike was too small for me, and I was too old for most of the toys. Our dreams had been handled too roughly and they had been in storage too long.
Out of all it, the steamer trunk still survives...
Years later, my mother bought some contact paper with a wood grain and spent hours applying it to the trunk. But it wound up looking exactly like an old trunk covered with contact paper.
Of all the things from my childhood, this trunk is the only thing that has always been there. It's ugly and grungy...tacky as the contact paper that covers it...but it's tough...and it survived.
It's my link...

Canal Street

I haunted Canal Street. There were so many places to go, so many things to see, but like most of my childhood I was alone when it seemed that everyone around me was in groups. And that's how I took it all in....alone. A kid in a bubble, floating along through downtown ...before the malls killed the central city.
There were so many places to go... At the International Trademart, I would go into the various travel agencies and come out with all sorts of posters and pamphlets of places far away. I would make up some kind of story about doing a project for school, and with that lie came tons of stuff.
The posters went up in my room, the pamphlets I would read...filling my in the blank places on my mental map.
And the Trademart was so conveniently close to the Algiers ferry...good for free rides to Algiers and back ...as long as I wanted to watch the barges and freighters push through the chocolate water.
There was Werlein's music store where I spent endless time talking to the instument repairmen on the third floor as they worked on all sorts of horns. These were friendly guys who put up with the endless questions of a curious kid with nothing to do but watch and ask.
One floor down from the repairs was a whole floor full of pianos. Kids would be walking in and out for their lessons...some were better than others. There would be families pricing instruments...huge grands that would never fit in our house.
At street level, the glass cases filled me with lust... There they were, brand new horns with no dents, no scratches, all sitting in plush cases of deep blues and reds.... Sexy before I knew what sex was.
And the sheet music for sale...with people I could tell were real musicians flipping through stack after stack...some carrying instrument cases, looking important.
When I got thirsty, drugstore soda fountains were good for a glass of water...Walgreen's, Waterbury's... Drugstores were different then...with lunch counters, small juke boxes every so often.
One time I saved up and bought my mother a bottle of Chanel #5 at Waterbury's.
If I was really broke, I would put a nickel in the paper machine, grab a big handful of the Times-Picayune
and become a newsboy.
I loved being downtown, playing some kind of role.... going to the Grayhound station and milling around being a passenger....going to the huge main branch of the library being a student...going to Charity Hospital's emergency room being a patient.... but the thing about the emergency room is that sometimes I saw and heard harsh things as people bled and moaned with pain.
Thom McAn Shoe Store was many times a stop because there was a machine that x-rayed your feet, showing you how your shoes fit. I don't know how many times I went in to see the bones in my feet.
And Woolworth's? Oh man, that store had EVERYTHING. Tropical fish, endless toys, a lunch counter... This store was a main stop. On Saturdays, all sorts of gadgets were demonstrated...things that sliced, diced, and were ready to change your life in significant ways.
Woolworth's on Canal was also the site of the first civil rights demonstration I ever saw. Black people serious about wanting to eat at the white counter were crowding the street carrying signs and singing.
It looked dangerous...like something bad could happen....like something fragile was about to get broken.
I watched.
The Roosevelt Hotel. I'm surprised I got in, but there were important things to do there. ....check out the rich people, walk on plush carpets, use a bathroom where there was a friendly black man to hand me a towel...a cloth towel. And the gift shop was a whole other world of china, sculptures, glassware, jewelry... And nothing was decorated for Christmas like the Roosevelt!
Kress', Maison Blanche, D. H. Holmes, Krauss'...all the workers in these huge stores knew me...and never lost patience with my aggressive enjoyment. I looked at everything, touched everything, and if at all possible, tried things out...electric putting machines, punching bags....
I could fill a whole day, moving from wonder to wonder...but alone. I would walk on the fringes of groups of strangers because I wanted so badly to be with somebody, anybody. I watched them enjoy my city, my street....talking, laughing, with the potential of carrying some of it home...the potential of making some of it part of their lives. But I was in my bubble with nothing comiing in and nothing comeing out.
My bubble... It was there even at home. I decided early on that nobody noticed me or gave me much thought. One morning, I got a red sticker, put it right in the middle of my forehead. ....just to see how long it would take someone to notice it. Nobody...not one person said anything about it all day.
That evening, I was in an evil mood... I was alone.
But the rhythm of Canal Street, noises like rumble of the street cars, my ritualistic stalking....As New Orleans gathered me up in her arms, rocked me, distracted me with her charms.... for a time I wasn't lonely...just alone.