Tinker
I accidentally met Jane on a Sunday sunny day
walking around St Roch park New Orleans, Louisiana. I have not see her
in the past fifty years. She was one of the most attractive women that I
ever knew in my life. Who went on to become the owner of a very
successful real estate company As we started talking we seem to just
pick up where we left off back in the day. Jane looked over towards N.
Roman st and began telling me how she felt as a very young child growing
up around our childhood park. Jane told me that she had a chilling
silent fear from a remember harmful threat that was always with her as
she walk home from school every school day. No one knew about Jeans fear
of the butcher who was working at the corner food store 9th ward New
Orleans, La.
Fear is a very destructive feeling because it can block
out all of the other emotion that we enjoy our everyday delights with.
Living in fear is just about as bad as it get. Especially for a young
child who is very resilient, but yet can also exaggerate the intentness
of what they are afraid of. Making the fear a permanent emotional
problem, or scar, that must be lived with and over come for the rest of
their life.
When grown ups scare a child or cruelly hurt them, they
are scaring that child emotion for a life time. And I seem to believe
now that is exactly what the sick cruel people like. Hurting a child to
make themselves feel like they are important, hurting children because
of their own insecurity. If I ruled the world I would put all the child
abusing people in jail as fast as I met them.
St Roch park was a playground with a catholic Church and
elementary School called Our Lady Star of the Sea. Jane's part of town
was known as the St Roch Park neighborhood, separating the place that
she lived from the identity of another lower 9th ward neighborhood. New
Orleans had a upper, and lower, 9th ward. Divided mostly by race. The
industrial canal was the borderline between the lower 9th ward black neighborhood, from the upper 9th ward white neighborhood in 1948.
One sunny weekend Jane mother ask her to go buy .25 cents of sliced
ham. If the corner grocery store did not have it, for her to walk over
to the other grocery store across the ave two blocks away. And that was
another corner grocery store that Jane never went to very much. She
would always go to the closer grocery store nearest to her home. Jane
lived in a shotgun house on Almonaster ave, and Franklin ave. Two 9th
ward avenues meeting into a point where Almonaster began and Franklin
ave continue on towards the Mississippi River. Franklin Ave ran from the
Mississippi River to lake shore drive on lake Pontchartrain. Jane's
nearest corner grocery store would turn into a one blocks square
shopping center a half century later. The other corner grocery store
where the monster worked was down on N.Roman st, in the direction of
her St Roch playground, and Jane's school.
Jane never told anyone about her fear of that butcher who
worked there, because of what he said he would do if she ever told
anyone...
As Jane looked over the homes that we see now she could
see the intimate childhood emotions of the people who once live in her
neighborhood. The familiar images of what she see's is very different
from what we are looking at because we see just a strange neighborhood,
homes without meaning to us.
All the youth in her body was jumping alive again as she
started talking to me about her childhood fear of that New Orleans
neighborhood butcher, from so long ago. For the first time after fifty
years, she was finally talking to someone else about how frighten she
was of that man, back then.
The Neighborhood that we now see is the place that she
lived the tender moments of her childhood. Her Grandmother lived in that
red color two story home across from where she lived. She spent a lot
of time with her Grandmother, who would entertain her with her family
pictures, and old time family album. Old radios, and crouched lace, and
shawls, was apart of Jane's Grandmother world.
Who by the way was also a very good cook, everything that Jane's
Grandmother cooked tasted wonderful. Jane's Grandmother had 17 children,
can you imagine that...17 children, no wonder she cooked good?
The neighborhoods of our youth can be appreciated by all of
us who remember our Mother and Fathers, Sisters and Brothers, Cousins,
Aunts and Uncles, friend who became apart of the very emotions that we
feel so strongly about now. The place of our youth is a living unchanged
memory of yourself frozen in the age that we lived there and never
grows old.
Jane started telling me about her first real childhood
friend from around that St Roch neighborhood. "Gale was a few years
older than her and would show up in from of her home asking her mother
if Jane could come out and play. Jane said that she was around four
years old back then, and Gale was six."
Gale mother knew Jane's Mother so the two young girls had
a very relaxed feeling between each other from the first time they met,
and felt free from anything going bad. Jane liked Gale a lot because
Gale would always be patient with Jane about everything they did
together. Gale would bring over her few coloring books and crayons so
Jane and Gale could color on Jane's front porch.
Jane's front porch had a full grown ivy vine from the floor to the
roof. And would cast a nice cool shadow across the warm wooden front
porch. The two girls talked easy to each other back then as they kept
discussing how they felt about the other children who lived in their
neighborhood.
The United States was just recovering from the second
world war and the new cars were beginning to make the daily city traffic
more heavy. The sights and sounds in 1948 was much different then
now...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiHGiUVYpSI
Jane suddenly turned to me looking straight into my eyes and said,
"Gale died when she was 10 years old, kidney trouble. Back then the
doctors couldn't save her because they never knew what they know now. I
lose my best friend after only two years of knowing her."
"Gale lived two blocks over from where I could have
walked straight home from school with out passing by the Grocery store
where the bad butcher worked. But because I walked with Gale to her
house after school I dropping her off to say goodbye, and then I had to
walk past the bad grocery store. So I always walk on the opposite side
of the street so I could run away if the butcher saw me and walked
outside towards me."
"I felt so alone after Gale died I can't really remember to much
until I entered the third grade, I was 8 years old when and where I met
Ted, God have mercy that was the damnedest thing that you ever want to
see. We fell totally in love with each other, openly and totally. We
couldn't control our feelings, every time we were next to each other we
simply had to hold hands, or kiss, or whatever we felt at the time."
"Unashamed pure lust that seem to pull us together like a
magnet force. At first we were always around each other. But then the
grown ups started stepping in between us, so we wouldn't start doing the
wild thing right then and there. Oh my goodness I was only eight years
old and crazy in love with Ted."
"We were a school scandal until Ted parent moved out of
the neighborhood and that was that. Until this very day I really don't
know if Ted parents moved because we loved each other, or not. But yes
he was my first intercourse, and we loved it any place, and every time
we could."
...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqTvMDGegHo
"My
Mother was such a nice person that we never needed to talk much about
Ted because my Mother understood how I felt about him. She simply told
me that sexual feeling like what I was feeling are apart of a person
that I will need to learn to control. That no one simply starts having
sex publicly, that deep emotional feeling like what I was feeling are
more privet and should be treated more responsibly. To become my own
best friend and start controlling my feelings, and talk to her about
those feeling that I was having about Ted in the future."
"That sex was simply a conveyor of deep affection that everyone learns to control."
"I
loved going up town shopping with my Mother we would go hop onto a
street car that rand up Franklin ave for .7 cents. And walk around Canal
Street Department Stores to do a lot of window shopping before we would
buy something. Then around lunch time my Mother and I would sit at a
Woolworth, or Walgreen, or Holmes lunch counter, or booth, and eat a
club sandwich and drink a glass of sweet tea. I loved being
with my Mother up town like that. She was a kind happy person most of
the time back then."
"If they had a children movie at the up town movie
theater like Song of the South, or King Kong, we would go into the Movie
theater, Saenger, Lowe's State, JOY Strand, RKO Orpheum. All those
movie theaters were on Canal street, except the Orpheum that was at 129 University Place."
"History matters to me because once you learn the history of a
place person or thing you can better appreciate it. You can understand
the value of what you are studying better. Not enough people study much
of anything any more. Everything is moving to quickly to study now. I
wonder how all of that living in quick time will affect the overall
health of our culture."
---------------
http://ignatiusghost.blogspot.com/2008/12/rko-orpheum-and-roosevelt-hotel.html
--------------
"Looking back at the buildings and places in New Orleans that was
damaged buy the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina. I never realized what
a alterable long lasting effect that storm had on New Orleans."
"My goodness in some cases the neighborhood and place of my youth has
disappeared, vanished. And are now only still alive in my memories."
"Is there any kind of preparation that you can work at to
help us better handle the forceful emotional reflection of our real
life flashing back at us like this. I feel so shaken remembering what I
once thought was forgotten. The memories are shocking me and I am having
trouble composing myself good enough to tell you more"
"You see, I loved the people that I am remembering a lot,
and not just a little. I am realizing now that they were loving me with
the very best emotion that was in them, and that awareness is starting
to make me tremble because now I thoroughly understand that...My God! I
love them more now than before."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6x0rFqqYeA
"We
was traveling on a yellow school bus on a hot summer day riding with my
Mother and Grandmother, and a bus full of high school children,
parents. And the Holy Cross high school principle Brother O 'Riley. Who
was responsible for the school picnicking field trip going from New
Orleans to the Mississippi Gulf coast, Long Beach Mississippi."
"The heat was very unconformable inside the school bus
even as the school bus moved down the Highway speed limit. At that time
air condition was not the advanced technology that it is now. Brother O
'Riley began singing "that's an Irish lullaby," and other old Irish
songs that seem to really please the parents chaperoning the children.
The heat became less important as everyone began singing along."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc96aXTJFh0
"By
the time we arriving at Long Beach, Mississippi. The local school, and
church picnicking area became the starvation picnicking tables for
around 75 people young and old. Everyone was starving as they couldn't
seem to hand out the very good tasting sandwiches, and potato salad,
drinks, fast enough. I could just feel the unstable behavior of the
hungry people acting almost desperate. The location of the pick nick
area was right on the Mississippi Gulf of Mexico, and its white sandy
beach. Only the double Hwy with a neutral ground of green stood between
the streets, that was between us and the beautiful white sandy beach."
"Back in the late 1940s early 1950s the Gulf of Mexico
waters on the Mississippi Gulf Coast was crystal clear. When you went
swimming you could see the sandy bottom all the way out until the deep
drop off. Even then the water stayed clear and somewhat blue. The
Mississippi River running out of Louisiana darkened the water color into
the Mississippi Gulf coast and it was always referred to as the
Mississippi River sound. The real blue water was more east towers
Destin, Florida."
"A lot of people who lived on the Gulf Coast
of Mississippi lived and worked in New Orleans and it always seem like
hundreds of people, or even thousands were traveling between the two
places. From New Orleans to the greater Mississippi Gulf coast of Ocean
springs, Biloxi, Gulf Port, Long Beach, Pass Christian, Bay St Louis,
Waveland, Clermont Harbor, Lake Shore."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsQOsi__JWQ
"I
have never known a more tender and kinder person in my life than my
Mother was, She was always there for me when I needed her the most. All
the way until her death when I was sixteen year old. So that made two of
my best friends that I lost to death very early in my life."
"Remember when I told you about my Mother sending me to
the corner grocery store after .25 cents of ham. Well sure enough they
were out of ham. And I went over to the other corner grocery store on
N.Roman st. I walked into the back room where the butcher shop was and
this unshaven man smiled at me that made me feel dirty. I ask him for
.25 cents of sliced ham, he ask me how do I want that sliced. I never
knew what he meant, so I said I don't know. He then ask if the ham was
for sandwiches. And I said yes. Then he said, you want the ham sliced
into thin slices then. I said, I guess so."
"He ask me my age, I told him that I was eight years old,
and he step out from behind the butcher counter and walked up to me and
just stood over me. He looked towards the front of the store where
another man stood behind the cash register. He then walked back behind
the butcher counter to cut the ham."
"I became very scared over the way that this man was
acting and I stood very close to the big picture window next to the wall
facing the outside street. People could easily see inside the butcher
shop and that awareness made me feel better."
"How would you like to come over to my house next door here and play with my young cousin after school, or anytime you could?"
"I never said a word, I just looked at him cutting the ham."
"Well what do you say? as he wrapped the ham."
"I just kept looking at the ham."
"Look
he said do you see this sharp knife, if you tell anyone what we were
talking about I am going to cut your head off, understand?"
"I grabbed the wrapped ham and walked up to the front
cash register, paid my .25 cents, and left. Running quickly away from
that grocery store slowing down to just walking faster going home."
"After Gail's death I stopped walking down N Roman st
all together, once in awhile I would forget and realized that I was once
again about to walk past the bad grocery store. So I would cross over
to the other side of the street and walk faster until I felt safe going
home."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3APWm-DrRQ
"Many
more years were to come and go Joe, but I never did forget how scared I
was over that encounter with a real petafile. I never told anyone
because I just wanted that moment to go away forever, if I would have
told my Mother she would have exploded all over that guy. And that would
have been a very long drawn out process. But after a couple of years
went by. I found out later that he went missing, never to be heard from
again. You know how the New Orleans police were back then."
They would walk people like him out into the surrounding
swamp where the quicksand was, and only the police would come out alone.
So I imagine that's what happend to him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8xJ3RjF70
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to be continued...
The PA.
