The Muses
Remembering the Muses, I hope they remember me
The #Muses have always been with me. Part of my childhood was spent among them. We lived in New Orleans’ #LowerGardenDistrict on #Carondelet Street between #Thalia and #Melpomene (#Comedy and #Tragedy), a very diverse neighborhood. My youngest brother and I spent our summers reading library books and learning, playing board games, including chess and backgammon, and playing cards.
Dad had run away from home. The big house we’d lived in on Third Street near the #RexFloatDen had been dismantled. The new landlord who inherited the property from his aunt, began knocking the walls out at 12:01 a.m. on June 1st, beginning with my room where I slept in bed, Mother sitting watch. Cantoni planned to have the huge fourplex changed to 12 apartments by the first of July, at which time the new tenants would pay $300 rent. My dad had been paying $30.
Mr. Donaville arrived at seven and was shocked to find our fully furnished shotgun had no walls. In the afternoon, his loaded truck arrived at the rear of the newly acquired tenement (2 huge rooms – no bath) among the Muses.
From the balcony that first summer, we watched Mother leave for work. Each day she went to a different house that she cleaned, earning $5 and 7¢ carfare. At the end of each month, she paid the $48 rent (half her earnings), and utilities. We had no refrigerator, stove, television, or washing machine.
Every other Saturday, she took us to the library. We were each allowed five books. After Mass on Sunday, we went with her to the laundromat. After dinner, she cut one #FifthAvenue candy bar in quarters for dessert.
We observed the neighborhood among the Muses. We alternated attending #SaintJohntheBaptist #CatholicChurch on #Dryades (female tree nymphs) between #Calliope and #Clio Streets and #SaintTheresaofAvila on #Erato Street. #CongregationBethIsrael #Synagogue set between #Terpsichore and #Euterpe Streets. There were two family grocery stores – Donze on Erato and Albano across the street from us. Chris Albano’s separated the block. His store set between two dilapidated and deplorable tenements (Black families) plus a trailer (white family) and two huge fourplex shotgun houses and three single story doubles.
Two Black families lived in one of the doubles. The others were occupied by whites – one ancient couple, mature single women, and one lech of a disgusting middle aged man with wandering eyes. One Black family owned the house and a car.
On the side of the block we lived in, a Black man owned a house. The bottom half was used as a busy garage. The owner worked on cars 7 days a week dressed in a white jumper, a #cigar dangling from his mouth. Next door, set way back from the street was a deserted #plantation house. A jagged muddy driveway separated it from the tenement next to ours. Between the two tenement houses, ten families lived in the front and ten in the rear. The tenement in which we lived with the other fifteen families was formerly four grand apartments tenanted by friends of the ancient couple across the street.
We frequented (window shopped) the Dryades Street stores -#Handelmans, #Kaufmans, #BenFranklin, #GordonsJewelers, and #Vogue. Mother got our school supplies from the #A&P on #BaronneStreet. All these places set among the other Muse named streets – #Polyhymnia and #Urania.
The story is - my dad’s family owned property on the west bank of the city. He refused to pay higher rents and my mother refused to live across the river away from her family, and where voodoo was prevalent. He still paid our Catholic school tuition, purchased our uniforms and school supplies. He visited occasionally and always showed up for his gifts on Father’s Day, his birthday, and Christmas.
Over the years, my uncles who drove trucks for #KraussCo dropped off a used refrigerator and TV with squiggly rotating picture. Mother purchased a range from #VolunteersofAmerica.
I dressed well. My affluent fairy godmother hovered in the background. My wealthy godmother was a seamstress and social climber. Over the years, I grew up with the granddaughters of some of the women for whom my mother worked and often inherited their clothes, some still with store price tags attached.
I studied the Muses and they studied me. When we moved, they moved with me and I started to write. I have been neglecting them over the past few months, but they have now reminded me of the many folders of penned words I have on my computer that I should share.
Thank you Muses.