Skip to main content

The Southern Connection


Dad left Illinois during the latter part of WWII and joined the Merchant Marines.  He sailed out of New Orleans, primarily to the Caribbean, Central and South America, avoiding the war altogether. After the war he met my mother, married her and he bought a liquor store on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter.  At some point he sold the business and they moved back to Illinois.  My parents started having children while still in New Orleans. Both my sister Elizabeth and I were born there.  All of the others; Sue, Jane, Leslie, Carl and Don were born after we moved to the mid-west.  Big families were more common back in the day, especially for Catholics.

Mother's side of the family were all from New Orleans.  My Grandmother was of German descent named Olga Voelkel.  We all called her Gannie, even after we grew up.  Her first husband was Jewish, named Nathan Dreyfus. We called him Grand Father.  They had two daughters and then divorced.  Gannie remarried another Nathan, this one was Nathan Jones.  Everyone called him "Jones" so it wouldn't be confusing.  We called him Bapa.  I believe he worked for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  Grand Father remarried too, to a woman named Nell.  We saw them only a few times as children spending most of our time with Gannie and Bapa when we visited.

Mother had gone to private grade school and high school then went on to LSU.  I'm not sure if she graduated.  Her sister was Elizabeth but everyone called her Betty, and as small children we called her Boudie.  She married a man named Stafford Maheu who was a book-keeper and wholesale pearl merchant.  Then later he owned a small gift shop on St. Charles Avenue in "the Garden District" and worked as a private club manager.  Aunt Boudie was a School Teacher.  They had five children; Courtney, Ford, David, Mary and Charlotte.  All but Ford still live in New Orleans today.  

Our family was a lot closer to my mother's side of the family and we still stay in contact with them today as adults.  I’ve always loved New Orleans.  I think it’s because it was so much more, so different from the place I grew up.  The variety of people, the food, the music, the climate, everything about it.  It was my entrée into “the real world” outside the boundaries of my childhood. 

In future blogs I'll probably delve deeper into the New Orleans experiences... when I was 17 I "rode away" from home to New Orleans on my Honda Super 90 and stayed there for 4 months, the first half of my senior year in high school.  Then when I was 24 I left Missouri again for New Orleans and began what would be a long hotel career.
 Relatives in New Orleans


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paradise Lost

I know the Army was having trouble keeping people as the war wound down. They had a Lieutenant in the company who asked me twice if I wanted to re-enlist and offered me bonuses to stay.   This was ludicrous because I was not a good soldier and they should have known that by now.   I had a terrible attitude even though in my own mind I was fairly intelligent compared to my comrades in arms. Every draftee and many of the regular Army guys like myself had a “short calendar.”   My enlistment was 3 years and I had one that covered 1972, 1973 and 1974.   I started mine about 6 months into the enlistment, knowing even then that the military life was not for me and I just needed to mark my time until I was discharged and could get on with my life.   In looking at my calendar you could see the gradual angst that developed by how my daily hash marks were marked off in pen.   It was unlucky to start counting the days until you were into your last year. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beginnings

Over the past few years I have begun to recall so many things that have happened during my life.  Most of it has been very good as I have done well.  I have achieved.  I have thrived.  Most of it has been interesting and memorable (to me), and some of it has been bad for me and for others who are, or were in my life at the time.  I could say that everything good was because of my effort and all the bad was someone else fault but that would be dishonest.  Most of what is bad is definitely my fault even though others may have played a part in it.  Bad decisions have bad consequences most of the time.  My blog is only to remember it, to record it, and to pass along a few life lessons. So I will start adding to this on a semi-regular basis.  I will include snippets of experiences that I've had that made an impression on me.  Some of it will be just opinions on controversial issues from the past and current events.  You may not agree a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Streaker of the House

With my new hours as CQ I had so much more free time that I decided to get a civilian job and make some extra money. The Army pay for a Spec 4 wasn’t gonna cut it.   Jobs were advertised in the classifieds of the newspaper back in the day and I found one in a restaurant.   I applied and was hired as a Busboy on the spot.   It was a high volume coffee shop that featured fresh baked pies adjacent to a shopping mall.   With my cooking experience I thought for sure I’d be a cook in no time but it was not to be.   They needed full time cooks and I had to have a special schedule, and they didn’t serve much steak so there wasn’t a demand for a broiler cook.   After about a month I went back to the classifieds and applied for a job at a Liberty House Department Store in the mall as an Assistant Display Artist.   I was always good at art and drawing in school and convinced them that I could learn on the job and again, they hired me on the spot.   ...
Post a Comment
Read more