HIGH SCHOOL YEARS

Second Day

It must have been 1940 when Daddy got his first appointment in town. Our first hot water and the first alternation between town and country that has characterized my life and made me what I am today. It was another 'between conference' appointment. Dad had been reappointed to Kentwood for the third year--the first time that had happened. Then an opening came up in New Orleans,and Dad jumped at it.

Dad had lived as a child and married in the uptown ("silk stocking") part of New Orleans, but this appointment (to a church called Chalmette) was down on North Galvez St., a few blocks from the Industrial Canal. An industrial area with working class people, it later went completely black. But it was New Orleans, and we were all glad to come in out of the country.

Margaret was at Southeastern College in Hammond by this time. She didn't take kindly to college, and in fact she soon went out to California, perhaps to spend the summer with our grandparents, but she never came back.

She got a job with the Santa Fe Railroad, met and married Jimmy Thomas, a fellow employee and became a southern Californian, as had Grandfather, Grandmother, Auntie, and her family.

I entered Francis T. Nichols High School at the age of 14. It was thought that I would go to Warren Easton, a much older school. The schools all seemed to be going down hill, but Nichols was brand new and the first public coeducational high school in the city. Morale there was good, the faculty was (relatively) good, and it was generally thought to be the best public school in the city. No doubt people related to the other schools had different ideas about that.

I was completely out of the majority peer group community--a callow, undersized, rural boy. Football became much less of an interest. I had a
small group of acquaintances with whom I ate and passed our limited leisure time. I did well academically, got the bookkeeping award, and in
fact ended up ranked second in a class of 150 odd.

The only academic problem I had was Industrial Arts. Everyone had to take Industrial Arts as a general rule. I found myself in a metal working
shop, got an assignment to make a small gauge--actually a piece of metal a couple of inches square with small variations. I did mine, and then took it to the instructor, and he said "good. You get 75." I wasn't used to getting 75.

I talked to Dad about it and he came down to school one day, and they allowed me to transfer to Spanish. That was the end of my mechanical
career.

I enjoyed Spanish. We had Miss Serrano, a real Spanish woman, and we all got along well. Spanish became one of my major interests. I did two years of it in high school and another two years with Professor Castellano at Duke, but didn't achieve any speaking capability. Later visiting South and Central America I did learn to use it a bit in general conversation. In fact at one time I was more articulate in Spanish than in English, not so
much due to a command of the language, but rather because I experienced a different, freer persona in Spanish. Spanish is a very eloquent language. I once waded through Don Quixote and understood
that 50,000 different words appear in it. That meant an awful lot of consultation with the Spanish-English dictionary. On the other hand in
Columbia we were told that the longshoremen had a vocabulary of 60 words.

Edgar Quillen, son of a prominent member of Dad's church was a year younger than I, but in my grade at school. He and I became close. 50 years later Edgar was the only person outside my family that I had known since high school days. Mother and especially Dad often depreciated Edgar (I don't remember just what deficienies they found in him), but he was virtually my only friend, and a good one through the years. I thought they were pretty insensitive not to realize his importance to me. I suppose most or all parents seem insensitive to their children at one time or another.

The day we first arrived in New Orleans I had put on my skates and rolled uptown to Canal Street, some 38 blocks. That was a really exciting place.
I came out in the city center, looked around a bit, and rolled back to 3839 N Galvez St. I needed wheels, but a bicycle had always been out of the question economically. At that time I was getting an allowance of 30 cents per week. Dad gave me a job cleaning up the church which brought
me another 50 cents, and with these financial prospects I contracted to buy a second hand bike at 15 dollars on time. Prior to that I had saved
my money for a couple of years and bought a $3 Spaulding tennis racket, but I had little opportunity to play tennis in New Orleans.

The first summer in New Orleans I started bicycling out to Lake Pontchartrain, a distance of three miles. I gained some proficiency as a swimmer. I also wound up with a strep throat late in the summer. It was just before the advent of antibiotics. Dr. Crichlow came to the house and gave me some sort of medicine and a prescription to drink 6 7-Ups each day. I was a pretty sick boy, but obviously recovered. Dr. Crichlow had brought me into the world, and some time later his son, Bob Crichlow, presided at Daddy's funeral, and maybe mother's as well. He had also been pastor at Bogalusa when we were at Angie/Varnado. The two families thus had a strangely parallel career although we were never close.

Dad was not able to please the working class folks at Chalmette, and Conference found him reassigned to Golden Meadows, down on Bayou Lafourche, almost to Grande Isle. He refused to move us down there;
instead we got a house a couple of blocks from the parsonage, and he went down on weekends. I remained in school at Nichols.

A few times I went down to Golden Meadow with Dad. One weekend in December I remember especially. We were coming back to New Orleans after the morning service, listening to the New York Philharmonic on
the radio when the announcer broke in to tell of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The war became a matter of great engrossment to everyone.

In spite of the war or maybe because of the war I found the 10th grade quite a drag. The intellectual level seemed minimal, no challenge, and no social fulfillment to speak of. It must have been after Christmas that I went down and found employment as a Western Union delivery boy. For the next few months I rode my bike all over the city. I remember going as far as Westwego--a long, long way from 314 Carondelet, the Western
Union Office. I frequently rode as much as 30 miles. The original idea was to work a few hours in the afternoon, but like so many of those low level jobs, they were always short of help, and I worked as long as I wanted to.

I remember visiting quite a number of brothels--most of them were in the area between St. Charles and Claiborne just above Canal Street. We all knew of course that Mayor Bob Maestrie owned all the brothels in New Orleans. I never had any business with the girls other than to deliver their telegrams. On another occasion I found myself singing in the Blue Room, a fancy lounge in the Roosevelt Hotel. It was a singing telegram to a soldier; I remember that he gave me no tip, although I frequently received tips for my services.

I received 30 cents per hour for the work and used and maintained my own bicycle. When I worked 40 hours, it came to $12. I frequently worked over 40 hours. Over 40 it went to 45 cents per hour. A few times I worked well into the morning and slept in rather than going to school. It was okay
because school was so undemanding. That was a long spring, but it finally ended.

By the end of school that spring I was ready for something better. I answered an ad for a magazine selling crew. Started out across country. We were supposed to tell the customers we were trying to win a contest in which the prize was flight training so we could be fighter pilots. Something
just about that ridiculous. I simply couldn't do it. One credulous lady believed my story and I felt guilty as hell. We went down to Grand Isle.
The rest of them went to a honky tonk, but I walked back to the motel. The thing came to a head in Houston. One of the others suggested we
get a job in the ship yard. I wrote home or phoned for money, but instead Dad came over and got me. The whole thing was a complete disaster.

Reflecting on it I see that it represented my desire to get away from the stifling environment at home. I was just turned 16. Well I managed to
get a job as a bookkeeper at Black, Rogers Insurance Co. I spent all day writing line by line entries in a journal of insurance transactions. $75 per month. I wore a coat and tie and went up to the 4th floor (or some such) in
one of the main office buildings in New Orleans. I had in a measure gotten away from home. September came, and I intended to keep my job. Dad wasn't worried about that. He probably figured I could get a high school diploma any time I wanted to. But at the last minute I got cold feet. I told my boss I was going back to school. He was disturbed at being left in the lurch, but I agreed to stay on another week or so to allow him time to get a replacement.

I went back to school, hating it. Mother knew how I felt, and she did something really generous. She bought me a violin, and that of course became my major interest. Karl Kilinski gave me a lesson every week, and I made good and quick progress. It was that violin that made it possible for me to get through that last semester of high school (I had enought credits to finish in January).

By this time we were living at St. Mark's Community Center on North Rampart St. on the edge of the French Quarter. It was still in the Nichols School District. I rode the Rampart St. streetcar every morning down St. Claude Ave. to school and back in the afternoon. We lived on the third floor of the community center directly above the swimming pool. There was also a gymnasium. On the other wing was the church, which Daddy served. A fairly small church it still had representatives of 21 nationalities. I
suppose it was pretty close to unique in the denomination. Dad got along pretty well there, stayed four years, the first time he had ever had an appointment that long. He liked New Orleans and had no desire to leave. In fact all the ministers liked New Orleans. Those who got there stayed as long as they could. Rev. Melbert at First Church stayed 18 years.

Graduation day at Nichols came for me in January of 1943--I was 16. We had to dress up in tuxedos, which I found awkward and uncomfortable. I suppose most of the class went on to dances and celebrations of various sorts, but that was not in my world.

The big thing in my world was to get on the Southerner a few days later and make the 23 hour ride to Durham where I enrolled at Duke. This represented a desire to get away from home, especially to get away from my father, toward whom I had harbored very negative feelings for a number of years. I got away, and I never came back (to live), although I certainly did visit from time to time.

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