New Orleans

17 November, 2013

On my crew break at 40,000 feet high over the Pacific, alone with my thoughts I decided to play some music:

"NEW ORLEANS - that's another town, that's another place, that's another life." 

Yes, it's true - it's another life. It seems like ages since I walked the old red brick sidewalks of my home town, and walked past the smiling faces of the neighbors sitting on their front porches of those old shotgun houses. 

I would stop in to visit my grandparents, aunts and uncles. Seems like forever ago, and yet sometimes it seems like it was only yesterday when I was in the back yard, high up in the pear tree, swaying in the cool autumn wind, and heard my grandmother call me in for supper. 

Often enough, I'd get sent to the corner grocery store for a quart of milk, sold in glass milk bottles. And there was real CREAM on too of the milk! I remember the sights, the sounds, and the smells that a New Orleans "back o' town" neighborhood corner grocery had.

Or maybe my PawPaw and I would take an early morning walk all the way to Dixiana Bakery for some fresh, hot French bread!! Once we even bought a Cap Loaf!

There were the occasion trips into town, walking down d'Abadie Street to Broad, where we'd catch the Gentilly-Broad bus to Canal, and then take the streetcar onto Canal Street! 

What memories of everyday life: those nothing-special days were in fact special!!

Since then, I've gone on with my life, and a much older face stares back at me now in the mirror - a face that has seen laughter and tears aplenty. My eyes have seen the world and all its beauty. I walk many other sidewalks now, drive on other streets with unfamiliar names. I go to places that I only dreamed of when I was a kid back in New Orleans. But "that's another story, that's another town, that's another place, that's another life."

Every once in awhile, though, when it's pitch black outside and I am flying high above the highest clouds, over a dark, vast ocean dividing two continents, and I am alone with my thoughts, my mind wanders to a simpler time - a childhood age - an age of innocence - in New Orleans… 

That little boy I can't outrun follows me wherever I go as I relive those happy times. Conveniently, I keep forgetting the pain and loneliness I often felt. Memories can be kind that way. I'm glad it is so with me.

So what of that little boy, you know, Alfred Hüllinghorst's boy? Yeah, that little kid who used to pull his little red wagon down the street picking up pop bottles! Imagine that!

The fellow who used to swing on that swings the at Stallings Playground, yeah, I remember him. Us'ta go to Mr. Yetta's for haircuts. 

That child? He grew up, got married, and had children, and eventually moved away from New Orleans… 

All too quickly my three children grew, and went on to make lives of their own. Don't get me wrong: I love the adults they've become, but dearly miss those little ones so! And now they, too, have children of their own, whom I adore. One day, maybe, when they're older, if I'm still around, I'll tell them stories of another little boy who played on an old brick sidewalk, swayed with the wind atop a tall pear tree - lived and was loved -  in a place called New Orleans… but "that's another story, that's another town, that's another place, that's another life!"