The New Orleans 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 may 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.
