King of the Road

16 January, 2015

San Francisco

Gentilly - 1962

I suppose nearly every neighborhood or community has its oddballs - its characters or "special people." Andy Griffith's Mayberry had Otis, the town drunk, for example. 

My neighborhood was blessed with three, when I was a little boy. There were two brothers, and neither had their right mind. One was quiet and kept to himself. If he did emerge from his house, he walked quickly and quietly, speaking to no-one - his face forever frozen in a scowl. 

 

His brother, however, was quite well-known by everybody in the 7th ward as "Junior." He would walk briskly down the sidewalk, his head cocked to one side, and he would talk to himself - very loudly. 

Whenever one if the neighbors happened to be outside when Junior passed by, he would shout out to that person, addressing them by name, and engaging them in a strange conversation. 

He would always tell whoever he'd meet:"I'm going to see my Daddy!"

It was sad. A few of the locals knew his real story, and all knew that Junior's father was long-departed from this world. Occasionally a new kid would tease him, but others would quickly put an end to any fun at Junior's expense. 

He would attend mass every day at any of the several Catholic churches, and, I'm told, he would sing with the congregation - loud, but sometimes slightly off key. 

There was a third neighborhood character whom I never saw until the first day of school in September of 1962. I had taken the school bus the previous year, but my grandparents' home was walking distance for a child of that time. 

The first day I set out for their place after school let out, attempting to retrace my steps of that morning, I walked steadfastly down Gentilly Blvd. I was doing pretty good, too, until I came to the intersection with Paris Ave. Ahead lay a complicated crossroads where two major thoroughfares traversed each other,  and still another avenue branched off at an odd angle. Add that jumble to the nearby crossing Paris Avenue and it was a daunting experience to a young schoolboy not really familiar with the area. 

I stopped into, of all things, a bar room! "Any port in a storm,"as my grandfather used to say!  I looked around for someone to ask directions, but changed my mind and decided it would be better to just call home and get clearer instructions from my grandfather. There was sure to be a pay phone inside. There was. However, there was a problem: I searched my pockets in vain for a nickel, or any coin at all. I was loathe to approach the "row of fools on a row of stools" to ask for help. So I contemplated my situation, and as I did, this odd old man came sauntering up the sidewalk.

He cut a strange, amusing figure, dressed in baggy pants, ill-fitting shirt, and wore a kind of Derby hat. He was hunched over, was toothless, and kept an unlit cigar in his mouth. 

He came toward me, and seeing me looking at him, boasted:"I'm the King of the Road, Jack!"

I was never shy when it came to talking to people, and my situation made me even more bolder. 

"Well, Mr. King of the Road", I addressed this caricature of a man, "I'm wondering if you could help me: I'm lost," I explained. I  need a nickel to call my grandfather so he can tell me how to get home." I explained. "Could you lend me one, please?"

He did, gladly. Then he waddled off down Gentilly, again loudly proclaiming his royal status to no-one in particular. 

I called home, and got directions. I made my way through the maze of avenues, arriving at my grandparents' safe and sound, thanks to the nickel that funny old man gave me. I told my grandparents about the strange  old fellow, and they knew who he was. My grandfather told me his name, Hymel, and also told me not to poke ridicule at him, because the poor old man didn't have his right mind. I had my sneaking suspicions - from his walk, his dress, and from the way he talked to himself, as he ambled about the neighborhood.

I learned my lesson. From then on, I never left home without at least a few coins in my pocket, and those coins came in handy when I made the happy discovery that my newly learned path home intersected with the route of a Russell Sunshine Ice Cream truck!!

From then on, every time I'd hear the familiar music box tune, I'd stop and wait for the truck to come up Castiglione Street. I never had long to wait, and the same man, wearing a uniform and cap, would jump out and I'd make my request: a chocolate cup. After a few days, I didn't have to ask - he knew what I wanted - and I always had some money to buy at least one delicious treat. 

I quickly discovered that the little orange school bus that I took the previous year also went roughly the same way, and I'd see how far I could get before it would pass me by. When it did, I'd wave to a few of my schoolmates, and they'd wave back to me. There was this cute classmate of mine named Yvonne, and she sat in the back of the bus on the right hand side. When she'd smile at me sweetly and wave, it was hard to believe there was anything wrong in the world.

There was a virus going around, and I caught it. I had fever and chills. My mother worked every day, and I was too young to stay home alone in our apartment. So she took me to my grandparents', where tender, loving care and a generous helping of my grandmother's minestrone soup quickly got me back on the road to recovery.

About three-thirty the second afternoon, there came a knock on the side door. My grandfather came to see who it was, and of all people, it was the ice-cream man! 

"I see that kid every day," I heard him explain to my grandfather. "Today I missed him, and figured he might be sick, so I wanted to check to see if he was all right."

My grandfather and the ice cream man, of course, got into a conversation. "I'll tell you, my grandson likes ANY kind of ice cream..."

The man interrupted:"Oh, no, sir, you're wrong! All this time he hasn't ordered anything but a chocolate cup!"

My grandfather continued:"You didn't let me finish; he likes ANY kind of ice cream... as long as it's

CHOCOLATE!" The two had a real good laugh about that.

One day, some time later, I was on my way home from school, I heard this odd, raspy, yet familiar  voice call out :"I'm the King of the Road, Jack!" It was the old man, waddling down the sidewalk, just as before.

"Hey, Mr. Hymel! I got your nickel for you - the one you lent me to use the phone! Remember?

He remembered. He put it into his pocket, smiled, and then reminded me again that he was indeed still the "King of the Road." We went our separate ways. I'd see him every once in awhile, and he'd always stop and ask me if I remembered the time he lent me a nickel. Then he'd amble off, muttering to himself out loud. 

The years past, and I moved on with my life. We all got older. One day, in a passing conversation with a neighbor, I heard that that funny old man had been shot and killed by police. 

The story goes that he had a little water pistol, and was standing on Gentilly Blvd. in front of BC Supermarket. Apparently he was waving it at police - admittedly not a longevity-enhancing move - and the cops took it for a real weapon. They shot the poor fellow dead on the spot, no questions asked.

Nothing was said in the press, no demonstrations took place, no high-level inquiries nor investigations were held - and no CNN news bulletins were issued, and no movements got started.

There was just a body to be buried. 

To be sure, he was a "man of means - but by no means, King of the Road". Now the King was no more. He was just another wayward soul Orleans Parish had to claim. 

LIMO LINES - Tours and Boors

21 January 2015

Houston

Back in the 80's I used to do city tours. I had the gift of gab and had done extensive study on the history of the City of New Orleans.

People would pay good money to see the city, and I did my best to give they their money's worth. Instead of the normal Turista fare, my customers could go as deep into almost any subject as they cared, and I would tailor the tours to the customers' interests. 

Usually I would give tours to two to four people, but there was the occasional minibus full of folks, but either way, the spiel was very informal and interactive. 

One day I had a minibus full of travel agents, and as I passed the Catholic Seminary, I told them that Walmsley Street might just as well be called the "Catholic Street" because of all the Catholic institutions located on it. 

There was the seminary, the Archdioses for the city of New Orleans, a Catholic Home for Unwed Mothers, and across the street is the home for unwed fathers. In fact, there was everything Catholic on that street but a Catholic Church!

Someone asked me to repeat what I just said about the unwed mothers and fathers, and I happily did. 

Frowns crossed a few faces, and grins decorated others, but there was silence for a few moments, until one gentleman brought to my attention that the thought of a home for unwed fathers was preposterous, and that there was either some mistake in my information, or I was joking. 

"Oh, rest assured, my information is quite correct," I said, "and it is right there, as part of the seminary."

A lady laughed and said:"Sir, I'm sure you're joking. Whoever heard of a home for unwed FATHERS??!"

"Ma"am," I explained, "I'm sure you know that Catholic priests do not marry. They certainly must live SOMEWHERE," I continued, "and that is where they live!"

AUDUBON PARK

There was this friggin' HUGE pothole on the way back from the levee at Audubon Park. 

I used to tell folks that this big pothole was the MUTHAH of all potholes, and that we actually did good business sending them all over the country! I almost believe that one myself. 

On the way to the levee, I'd have to cross several active railroad tracks. I'd stop and look both ways before crossing. 

I'd tell the folks that I almost never get hit by a train.

It would get quiet, then someone would pipe up:"ALMOST?!"

Sometimes, there was a long jaunt upriver to the lovely antebellum plantation homes that at one time graced the 

Southland in great numbers.

When I did those trips, there was a long, boring drive up to where the mansions were located. So I would fill in the silence by talking about the city and state's illustrious history, and occasionally I'd throw in some comical or unexpected commentary. 

As we passed a marshland just east of laPlace, I pointed out the thriving nesting area for the state's egrets. Akin to  San Juan de Capestrano and it's famous swallows, I told them that egrets return to this area to nest. 

I explained that these birds were every bit as famous as the swallows of Capistrano were - perhaps even more so. On-cue, one lady interjects:"well, I've never heard of egrets before!" 

 

I explained that it was none other than Ol' Blue-Eyes, Frank Sinatra, who made the birds famous with his song:" EGRETS? I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention."

One evening I was driving a few people who, as I put it, "enjoyed renting opulence by the hour." Unlike tours, these people used to rent a flashy, stretch Lincoln limousine by the hour to go clubbing. 

Although I saw it as a perfect way to avoid DWI, since a Chauffeur is the designated driver, many of these characters enjoyed playing "Big Shot." This attitude sometimes spilled over onto how they treated their Chauffeur. 

Although I never heard "HOME, James," there was definitely a time or two that the treatment was there. My party wanted to go to 4141, back then a very trendy club in Uptown New Orleans. We were heading down fashionable St. Charles Avenue, and I had just pasased up the atrever the club was on, heading another two blocks to the nearest place where a left turn was legal.   

This passenger yells from the back:"Do you know where you're going?"

(I really wanted to say - "Lady, be happy I can drive this jalopy! I just got out of REHAB last week!!")

I did, however, reply, biting my tongue:"Yes, Ma'am, I do know where I'm going, and I can also read the 'No Left Turn' signs that are posted on every corner. 

There's First Class... then there's Low Class. 

千里之行, 始于足下

千里之行, 始于足下

Thousand mile journey begins with first step.

October 3, 2014

Houston TX

When I was seven years old, my grandfather sent me some toys he bought for me in Taiwan.  He included a letter to my mother, referring to the toys:"… unfortunately the instructions are in Chinese; a lot of good they will do him!"

I enjoyed the toys immensely, but after playing with them for awhile I perused the instructions that came with them. I found the writing FASCINATING! 

I got a piece of paper and a pen and began copying out the various ideograms that were neatly printed upon slick paper. 

I had no idea what these symbols meant, and there was no way to find out, yet I did the best I could to trace out the complex characters I saw. 

My mother came upon me, lying on my stomach on the living room floor, writing Chinese, and she asked me what I was writing.

"Mommy, just LOOK at THIS!" I exclaimed, showing her the pamphlets and instruction sheets. 

"Mommy, one day I'll be able to write like this!" I told her, matter-of-factly.

"Hmmm...That's very complicated" she stated, as she studied the sheet of incomprehensible hieroglyphics. "Honey, you can't learn to write something so hard..."

"Well," I retorted, "CHINESE kids can! And if THEY can, so can I!"

I had taken the first step!! 

Soon enough, I bought a "Say-It in Japanese" booklet from the local Acme Supermarket, and learned a few basic little phrases in that language. My grandfather taught my how to count to ten in Japanese. 

A man at our apartment building said hello to my mother in the lobby, then squatted down to my level, and, smiling, asked me:"so, what do YOU want to be when you grow up?"

As quick as thought, I answered:"A POLYLINGUIST!"

The years passed, and I confined my language studies to French, which I studied in grammar school, but I hadn't forgot my interest in Chinese and Japanese. I sometimes borrowed a Chinese dictionary from the library, and began to study the writing. 

One day, in early 1968, I went to Doubleday Bookstore on Canal Street in New Orleans. I went up to the sales clerks behind the counter and asked for a Chinese dictionary. 

THEY LITERALLY LAUGHED ME OUT OF THE STORE!!

One BILLION Chinese speakers in the world, and I am weird for wanting to learn their language?

That made ME laugh.

On a trip to San Francisco a few years later, I stopped into a Chinese bookstore in Chinatown and purchased my first Chinese dictionaries, along with calligraphy brushes, ink, and 3 posters of writing instructions. 

On the 3-day train ride home to New Orleans, I taught myself how to look up an individual Chinese character. This was a major milestone. 

At first, self-study was limited to the written characters, with little or no attention paid to the pronunciation. Later, in Paris, I purchased some texts for learning Chinese, with pronunciations written as part of the course. I worked through the texts, but reached a plateau.

Living languages should not merely be the objects of academic study - they should be SPOKEN!

Otherwise if what use is this learning?

One day while out of town on business, I stopped for lunch at a Chinese restaurant. 

"Hey!" I thought, "Why don't I try out my Chinese on them and see how it goes?" 

I had never before uttered so much as a single word of the language to another living soul, but there is always a first time.

I swallowed hard, and walked through the door. I was greeted by a Chinese lady, and I said something in Chinese to her. The poor lady screwed up her face and said she could not understand me. 

I repeated what I had said, to no avail. 

"I'm trying to speak to you in Chinese." I said apologetically. 

"Oh," replied the bewildered waitress, "Is THAT what that was?"

[Well, that went well!] I thought to myself, now a bit embarrassed. 

I am sure a few fellow diners there that day got a chuckle at my expense. I wasn't laughing. 

I sat down to a delicious, spicy meal, and, while eating, I referred to my notes to see if I could improve. 

The waitress took an interest in what I was doing, and she patiently taught me the correct way to pronounce a few of the phrases I was learning.

The next meal I tried out my

freshly-tutored words, and was greeted warmly by a most surprised restaurant owner. 

Investing in phonograph records and later cassette tapes, I was true to my quest to learn some more Chinese!

FORTY years after my initial visit to San Francisco's Chinatown, I stopped into a Chinese restaurant, read the Chinese-language menu, and ordered my food in Chinese. 

I walked down those narrow streets of Chinatown where I first walked as a teenager, and looked at all of those signs in Chinese, and I COULD READ THEM!

It has been forty-six years since I received that box of toys from a land so far away, with those instructions in that strange language about which I was so curious.

My Grandfather had little idea that a few toys bought in a faraway place would have such a profound and long lasting  effect on his little grandson.

It all began when I took that first step. 

MY OLD NEIGHBORHOOD

11 January, 2015

Houston, TX 

Mrs. Chaney Gets a Fright!

Mrs. Chaney was an old, practically deaf lady who lived with her daughter, Marguerite, in the river-side of a shotgun on d'Abadie Street, near the Fair Grounds. 

Her little back yard ended at the old cypress fence at my grandparents' side yard. 

Next to her, in a tidy single house with a neatly-manicured lawn, lived two widow ladies: Miss Pauline and Miss Pearl. 

These two sisters used to get up at the crack of dawn every day, and hang out their laundry on a line. 

Soon enough, one of the two would call out loudly: "ChaaaNEEE!!! OH, Chaney!!"

I know about this, because, between the banging of galvanized buckets on the concrete, and the hollering over the fence for Miss Chaney, it was hard to get any sleep after 5:00am!

As a young boy, I slept in an upstairs bedroom overlooking Miss Pauline and Miss Pearl's tiny back yard.

I'd throw open the sash, and listen in attentively to the latest neighborhood gossip. 

For awhile, they didn't know I was there, but one day I chimed in, as if I was part of the conversation, and the ladies were startled to see a little boy looking down on their morning activities, and commenting uninvited on something they were saying. 

I'm my defense, it was hard NOT to hear everything that was said, since they had to speak loudly on account of Mrs. Chaney's deafness and all. 

I have a sneaking suspicion they changed some of the content of the gossip from then on, knowing there were little ears listening. 

Mrs. Chaney was known throughout the neighborhood as the "Deaf Old Lady," and some people thought that was funny. I saw nothing at all amusing - the poor lady couldn't hear well. What's funny about that?

My grandfather even told her:"Chaney, you're so deaf, you can't even hear yourself poop!"

"HEIN?" she said. 

My grandfather had to repeat the silly question all the louder, to the delight of a few passing neighborhood urchins, who busted out laughing. I really think he asked her that for the benefit of those kids.

"Oh, I don't DO that! was the ladylike reply. 

One day there was quite a ruckus at my grandpaw's. Mrs Cheney was screaming, and she was quickly joined by Miss Pauline and Miss Pearl, hollering "ALFRED! ALFRED!! Come here!"

Right away, both my grandfather and my grandmother burst out of the side door, and went up to the fence to see what all the commotion was about. 

I was inside, too, but quickly made a beeline for where the action was. 

I got there just in time to see my grandfather run out of the front gate and disappear around the corner. 

It seems as though Mrs. Chaney had somewhat older plumbing fixtures. There was no grid to keep things from coming up the toilet drain. 

That day, a huge RAT had emerged from Mrs. Cheney's toilet, and was running around in her bathroom!

When I heard what happened, I nearly split my sides laughing! 

I laughed so hard and so loud that my grandmother began to fuss at me to cut it out. That made me laugh all the more - if such a thing was possible!

I heard my grandfather's voice coming from over the fence. There was a great deal of noise and a few off-color words from the frustrated Merchant Marine.   

Between all the shrieking and yelling of the three ladies, my squealing with laughter, my grandmother's fussing, and my grandfather's yelling and cussing - not mention loud banging noises coming from the Cheney house, the whole neighborhood began to assemble at our front gate. Nearly everybody within a block or two came to see what all the fuss was about. 

Soon enough, all was quiet once again. My grandfather returned wet and disheveled, but triumphant! What came up through the sewage pipe was what my grandfather described as a "River Rat" - a mean, nasty thing almost as big as a CAT! How (or why!) it managed to slither through the commode was beyond all comprehension. 

Although eager to tell the tale of how he slew the beast, more eager still was my grandfather to shed his soiled duds and take a long, soapy bath. 

I wanted to see the creature, but was admonished that rats carry many diseases, and were filthy creatures. That I believed. 

It was probably the very next day that a new chamber pot was installed at Mrs. Chaney's. The plumber personally guaranteed that it was a physical impossibility for any rodent to pass through the grate in the toilet he just installed. 

Mrs. Chaney later confesses to her neighbors that she was somewhat leery about using it, or even going into her bathroom, but after all, one must heed Nature's Call, right?

The only thing lingering was one question I had: Was Mrs. Chaney ON the toilet when the rat burst out of the sewer??

Sadly, this was a detail that all those involved took to their graves. Thus this was left up to a 7-year-old's wildest imagination.