| Biographical Non-Fiction posted July 22, 2020 | Chapters: |
...50 51 -52- 53... 
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New Orleans was different from the South as we knew it.
A chapter in the book Remembering Yesterday
A Bit of Local Culture
by BethShelby
| Background After moving to New Orleans, we soon realized the city had many customs that we would have to learn. It was a change from the South which we had always called home. |
While you spent your first week getting oriented to the new drafting department, the kids and I spent our first week settling in to our new apartment. They got acquainted with several other children who lived in the apartment complex, but I didn't meet any adults. I assume they worked or stayed to themselves. We located convenient grocery and drug stores and checked out the two large malls which were near us. We also discovered some nearby restaurants that looked interesting.
The kids were delighted to find that there was a snowball stand nearby. One of the first ice shaving machines was invented in New Orleans around 1930, and snowballs became a tradition of the area. Snowball stands were everywhere. There were more flavors than you could count and dozens of ways to mix flavors or add calories by topping them off with cream concoctions.
We didn’t realize it at the time, but the part of Metairie where we had located was in the process of becoming known as Fat City. It was dubbed that by a club owner who adopted the name from a snowball stand with that name. This part of the city was becoming the cool place to go if you lived in the New Orleans area.
Louisiana is divided into parishes instead of counties. The most predominant churches in Orleans parish are Catholic. New Orleans is a melting pot of many different cultures and nationalities. It was first settled by the French, and many of the customs and architectural styles still reflect the French influence.
One of the most interesting places to visit is the French Quarter, otherwise known as the Vieux Carre. The original city developed around this area. For a while, New Orleans was under Spanish control, but then during the French Revolution, it came back under the French rule, until the United States bought it as a part of the Louisiana Purchase.
In the nineteenth century, New Orleans was the largest port city in the South and was located on the Mississippi River. The city is surrounded by water with Lake Pontchartrain on the North and the Missisissippi River winding around the Southern side. There are canals crisscrossing the city everywhere. Much of the city is below sea level, and pumping stations are there to drain the excess water when there is a big rain.
Metairie is in Jefferson Parish, and New Orleans proper is in Orleans Parish where you worked. The protestant church we planned to attend was also in Orleans Parrish on St. Charles Avenue, in what was known as the Garden District. That weekend, we attended church, and we were warmly welcomed and encouraged to stay for the noon meal prepared as potluck for visitors.
It happened to be the new pastor’s first day to be there as well. He had a daughter who was Carol’s age and would be in her class at school. We learned the sister church also had a new pastor that day. He, too, had a daughter Carol’s age who would be in school with her on Monday.
The reason the other church had a new pastor was a tragic story. A couple of weeks before, the pastor had been conducting a baptism in the baptismal pool at the front of the sanctuary. Soaking wet, he reached for the microphone in order to say a few words. He was instantly electrocuted. What a horrible thing for a congregation to witness.
On Monday morning, I drove the children to school and met one of the other mothers, who happened to live in an apartment on our same street. She and her husband were looking for someone in order to carpool, and we were able to work out a schedule so one of us could bring the children in the morning and the other pick them up in the afternoon. Like us, they were new to the city, and they had a son in Carol’s class.
When I picked the children up that afternoon, I was relieved to find that the day had gone well for all of them. In spite of Don’s earlier anxiety over starting school in a strange place, he seemed to have adjusted and was getting to know some boys his age. Christi had already made a friend that lived only a street away in another apartment complex.
Since things were falling into place with the children and your job, I got a newspaper and scanned the ads for possible work for me. There was a weekly newspaper that was looking for someone who could do camera work and negative stripping, so I went for an interview and was hired.
The job was located on Airline Highway, which was between where we lived and the children’s school. The hours worked out so that the children wouldn't be alone in the apartments for long before one of us would be home. At nearly eleven, Carol was pretty responsible, and she knew if they were alone a little while, they were to stay inside with the doors locked.
At my new job, I learned I would be working with an older man, who would be doing most of the camera work. Vicente was a Cuban refugee. He had been a ship captain, and the Castro regime had forced him and his family to flee Cuba with only the clothes they were wearing and little else. He was of German decent, but he’d been born in Cuba, so his native language was Spanish. He was a very kind and highly intelligent man, and we established a good working relationship early on.
Several of the other men who worked in the stripping department were also Spanish. A couple of them were from Guatemala, and another was from Ecuador. I began to realize New Orleans was like no place I’d ever been before. It was a bit of a cultural shock. I almost felt as if we'd moved to another country.
The printing plant was open twenty-four hours a day during the week. The presses were much larger than any I had worked with before. There were three shifts, and I was on the main day shift. In addition to a weekly parish newspaper, there were several Spanish newspapers and also weekly ads for many of the stores in Jefferson, Orleans and other surrounding parishes which were printed at this plant. The company had a well-staffed art department. The man who headed up that department was French, and he was married to a Chinese lady.
Some of the people we had met at church were from the Irish Channel section of the city, and they spoke with a whole different dialect and used expressions that were new to me. Most of them talked fast and loud and rather harshly. What I called closets, they called lockers. They washed their hands in `zinks'. They put gaz-a- line in their cars. The pronunciation of vegetables was veg-e-tables. They went to the grocery store, not to buy groceries, but to “make groceries.” Instead of asking their children if they needed to go potty, they asked “Do you need to go make?” If they were calling their child it was not "come here" but rather "come by me."
New Orleans is known for its food and gourmet cooking, but that is a subject for another day. There were two vegetables people introduced us to which we'd never eaten before, and they became favorites for us after we got used to them. Both of them grew on vines on fences. One was the mirliton, a member of the gourd family. They looked something like a green squash. The other they called Chinese okra but it is actually lupus that can be dried and used as a course sponge. If picked green, sliced, fried and seasoned with cajun spices, it is quite tasty.
New Orleans is in the heart of South, but the people didn’t speak the slow soft Southern drawl which we were used to. Some say it sounds more like the brogue of Brooklyn. Just across the lake was the city of Slidell, which was more like the South we were used to. Most of the transfers from your Jackson office decided to settle there. I guess they weren’t up for the cultural adventure.
Another group we became acquainted with were the Cajuns or Creoles who were the Arcadian French speaking people who had been forced out of the Nova Scotia region of Canada by the British around 1755. They migrated to South Louisiana and lived in the swamps and bayous below New Orleans, but some had eventually made it back up to New Orleans. They had adopted their own semi-English dialect and many of them brought some interesting customs and a mixture of Catholic and Voodoo religion.
We realized that living here was going to be an adventure we hadn’t expected. I was open to learning all I could about the various people who called this place home. Our children adjusted easily and took it all in stride. You were more inclined to work towards getting back to your roots, where you found life more comfortable.
The kids were delighted to find that there was a snowball stand nearby. One of the first ice shaving machines was invented in New Orleans around 1930, and snowballs became a tradition of the area. Snowball stands were everywhere. There were more flavors than you could count and dozens of ways to mix flavors or add calories by topping them off with cream concoctions.
We didn’t realize it at the time, but the part of Metairie where we had located was in the process of becoming known as Fat City. It was dubbed that by a club owner who adopted the name from a snowball stand with that name. This part of the city was becoming the cool place to go if you lived in the New Orleans area.
Louisiana is divided into parishes instead of counties. The most predominant churches in Orleans parish are Catholic. New Orleans is a melting pot of many different cultures and nationalities. It was first settled by the French, and many of the customs and architectural styles still reflect the French influence.
One of the most interesting places to visit is the French Quarter, otherwise known as the Vieux Carre. The original city developed around this area. For a while, New Orleans was under Spanish control, but then during the French Revolution, it came back under the French rule, until the United States bought it as a part of the Louisiana Purchase.
In the nineteenth century, New Orleans was the largest port city in the South and was located on the Mississippi River. The city is surrounded by water with Lake Pontchartrain on the North and the Missisissippi River winding around the Southern side. There are canals crisscrossing the city everywhere. Much of the city is below sea level, and pumping stations are there to drain the excess water when there is a big rain.
Metairie is in Jefferson Parish, and New Orleans proper is in Orleans Parish where you worked. The protestant church we planned to attend was also in Orleans Parrish on St. Charles Avenue, in what was known as the Garden District. That weekend, we attended church, and we were warmly welcomed and encouraged to stay for the noon meal prepared as potluck for visitors.
It happened to be the new pastor’s first day to be there as well. He had a daughter who was Carol’s age and would be in her class at school. We learned the sister church also had a new pastor that day. He, too, had a daughter Carol’s age who would be in school with her on Monday.
The reason the other church had a new pastor was a tragic story. A couple of weeks before, the pastor had been conducting a baptism in the baptismal pool at the front of the sanctuary. Soaking wet, he reached for the microphone in order to say a few words. He was instantly electrocuted. What a horrible thing for a congregation to witness.
On Monday morning, I drove the children to school and met one of the other mothers, who happened to live in an apartment on our same street. She and her husband were looking for someone in order to carpool, and we were able to work out a schedule so one of us could bring the children in the morning and the other pick them up in the afternoon. Like us, they were new to the city, and they had a son in Carol’s class.
When I picked the children up that afternoon, I was relieved to find that the day had gone well for all of them. In spite of Don’s earlier anxiety over starting school in a strange place, he seemed to have adjusted and was getting to know some boys his age. Christi had already made a friend that lived only a street away in another apartment complex.
Since things were falling into place with the children and your job, I got a newspaper and scanned the ads for possible work for me. There was a weekly newspaper that was looking for someone who could do camera work and negative stripping, so I went for an interview and was hired.
The job was located on Airline Highway, which was between where we lived and the children’s school. The hours worked out so that the children wouldn't be alone in the apartments for long before one of us would be home. At nearly eleven, Carol was pretty responsible, and she knew if they were alone a little while, they were to stay inside with the doors locked.
At my new job, I learned I would be working with an older man, who would be doing most of the camera work. Vicente was a Cuban refugee. He had been a ship captain, and the Castro regime had forced him and his family to flee Cuba with only the clothes they were wearing and little else. He was of German decent, but he’d been born in Cuba, so his native language was Spanish. He was a very kind and highly intelligent man, and we established a good working relationship early on.
Several of the other men who worked in the stripping department were also Spanish. A couple of them were from Guatemala, and another was from Ecuador. I began to realize New Orleans was like no place I’d ever been before. It was a bit of a cultural shock. I almost felt as if we'd moved to another country.
The printing plant was open twenty-four hours a day during the week. The presses were much larger than any I had worked with before. There were three shifts, and I was on the main day shift. In addition to a weekly parish newspaper, there were several Spanish newspapers and also weekly ads for many of the stores in Jefferson, Orleans and other surrounding parishes which were printed at this plant. The company had a well-staffed art department. The man who headed up that department was French, and he was married to a Chinese lady.
Some of the people we had met at church were from the Irish Channel section of the city, and they spoke with a whole different dialect and used expressions that were new to me. Most of them talked fast and loud and rather harshly. What I called closets, they called lockers. They washed their hands in `zinks'. They put gaz-a- line in their cars. The pronunciation of vegetables was veg-e-tables. They went to the grocery store, not to buy groceries, but to “make groceries.” Instead of asking their children if they needed to go potty, they asked “Do you need to go make?” If they were calling their child it was not "come here" but rather "come by me."
New Orleans is known for its food and gourmet cooking, but that is a subject for another day. There were two vegetables people introduced us to which we'd never eaten before, and they became favorites for us after we got used to them. Both of them grew on vines on fences. One was the mirliton, a member of the gourd family. They looked something like a green squash. The other they called Chinese okra but it is actually lupus that can be dried and used as a course sponge. If picked green, sliced, fried and seasoned with cajun spices, it is quite tasty.
New Orleans is in the heart of South, but the people didn’t speak the slow soft Southern drawl which we were used to. Some say it sounds more like the brogue of Brooklyn. Just across the lake was the city of Slidell, which was more like the South we were used to. Most of the transfers from your Jackson office decided to settle there. I guess they weren’t up for the cultural adventure.
Another group we became acquainted with were the Cajuns or Creoles who were the Arcadian French speaking people who had been forced out of the Nova Scotia region of Canada by the British around 1755. They migrated to South Louisiana and lived in the swamps and bayous below New Orleans, but some had eventually made it back up to New Orleans. They had adopted their own semi-English dialect and many of them brought some interesting customs and a mixture of Catholic and Voodoo religion.
We realized that living here was going to be an adventure we hadn’t expected. I was open to learning all I could about the various people who called this place home. Our children adjusted easily and took it all in stride. You were more inclined to work towards getting back to your roots, where you found life more comfortable.
 Recognized |
I'm continuing to recall memories of life with my deceased husband as if I am talking aloud to him. I'm doing this because I want my children to know us as we knew each other and not just as their parents
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