Trees

“I never before knew the full value of trees. Under them I breakfast, dine, write and receive my company.” —Thomas Jefferson

He never lived in Louisiana but the words above suggest that Jefferson had great appreciation for the comfort that trees bring to our lives everywhere. Many of my earliest memories of the deep south are clothed in the grandeur of sweeping oaks gnarled with age and hung with Spanish moss. I doubt it would be far off to imagine that most of the people living in Baton Rouge have similar feelings for the trees they have grown up with, or come to love in their time here. Seeing the city for the first time, a visitor would never guess that twenty percent of the tree canopy was lost when Hurricane Gustav hit the city on September 1, 2008.

The most familiar trees are the majestic oaks and cypress that grow so well in the climate of south Louisiana. Who hasn’t seen a photograph of a plantation drive lined with overhanging oak trees? A variety of oaks are found in and around Baton Rouge, including live oak, southern red oak, cherry bark oak, and shumard oak, along with southern magnolias, yellow poplar and bald cypress.

Some of the photos taken over the past three weeks are below. I’ve made no attempt to attach names or exact locations. All were taken within the city proper.

Laughs in an Empty Room

Easy to understand why the British consider Alan Bennett a national treasure. It started in 1960, when with a group of friends he achieved almost instant fame with the satirical West End review Beyond the Fringe. Bennett has always been as comfortable on stage as he is in the writer’s chair, appearing in plays and television shows too numerous to list, and writing at least fifteen plays that have been produced in either London or New York. He also writes stories, novellas, essays and memoirs that delight readers everywhere.

My first reading of Bennett was his novella Smut, a surprise that suddenly lit up the room. The Uncommon Reader came next, another of his novellas and that one put his name permanently on my library and bookstore ‘look for’ list. Last Friday I hit upon another one and snatched it off the shelf in a flash—a small volume with two more novellas, The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady in the Van. Reading the second will come later, but about The Clothes They Stood Up In I offer a warning that reading it in a public place will draw the stares of people around you because it’s a story guaranteed to make you laugh long, often and loudly.

Maurice and Rosemary Ransome are a long married couple living in north London, in a spacious and comfortable flat that has been home for many years. Theirs is a marriage that has settled into convenience and silent resolve to make life quietly agreeable despite his unsmiling stiffness and her diffidence. One night the two go out for an evening at the opera and return to find their flat has been burgled. But this is not the ordinary burglary where certain things are missing; their home has been stripped down to an empty shell leaving nothing but the standing walls. The telephones, the wall-to-wall carpeting, the toilet paper, the casserole in the oven—every sign of occupancy is gone, the only thing left being the clothes they stand up in.

As bad as it sounds, the disappearance of their domestic setting has some positive results that come in the wake of confusion and a laissez-faire lack of concern by the police. Mr Ransome views the burglary as an opportunity to get a better stereo sound system through the insurance claim while the effect on his wife is deeper, gradually leading her to find new life in the absence of all possessions. There isn’t much in it to ruffle the brusque ways of her husband, but in replacing the bare essentials, Mrs Ransome discovers a new and for her unheard of freedom.

Some weeks pass before a letter arrives directing Mr & Mrs Ransome to an address some distance away. They find there a large storage facility containing their north London flat recreated down to the smallest detail and filled with all their possessions. The young man hired to stay there and look after things has no idea of who or why, but has followed the written instructions of an unknown employer. Of course, they are free to reclaim their belongings, with the comical addition of a few tokens from the temporary caretaker and his girlfriend.

Once everything is put back in place and life slips back to its pre-burglary humdrum routines, Mrs Ransome finds there is something less than satisfying about the return of her old life and all its clutter. She has learned (mostly from newly discovered daytime talks shows on television) during their post-burglary days that she and her husband have not been connected for too long. The earlier lack of confidence is gone and she makes the decision to effect a change in the unfeeling relationship with her husband. But then comes the next blow.

The Clothes They Stood Up In is a short and charming evening’s read. Whether it’s this one or another, give yourself the treat of an Alan Bennett book.

15¢ a Pack

Upon his landing in the West Indies in 1492 natives greeted Christopher Columbus with fruit, wooden spears and dried leaves with a distinct fragrance. The sailors appreciated the fruit but not knowing what they were for, threw away the dried leaves. A few weeks later, two crewmen from the ship reported seeing natives wrap the same type of dried leaves in maize and light one end, inhaling smoke from the other. One of the sailors tried a few puffs and probably became the first European smoker. Fast forward 420 years when men in tuxedos aboard the Titanic were observed smoking cigarettes as they awaited their fate.

I haven’t smoked since my years in high school and college, but despite that have always had an interest in the paraphernalia of smoking. Look around my house and you would quickly spot an ashtray or two and an old Zippo lighter. One of my strongest memories of watching television as a child was the Old Gold cigarette commercials on the Sunday night Ed Sullivan Show. I can still see the Old Gold Girls dancing in my head—a row of girls, each covered by a giant Old Gold package from the legs up, kicking and strutting across the stage while the musical jingle plays. In my days as a smoker I never once tried an Old Gold, and I don’t believe they are around anymore, but the memory holds strong. Once in a while for a kick I ask a clueless store clerk for a pack of Old Gold Regulars. I’ve never gotten more than blank look.

Cigarettes sales enjoyed a rapid growth in the 1870s but were still considered a novelty, for the most part an urban phenomenon. Americans were attached to their pipes, cigars and chewing tobacco. During this period, William S. Kimball’s Peerless Tobacco Works of Rochester, NY managed to capture an ever increasing share of the US cigarette market with their Vanity Fair, Three Kings and Old Gold brands. By 1917, Lucky Strike, Camels, and Chesterfield were dominating the market. At the beginning of the 1930s, four brands accounted for ninety-two percent of all cigarette sales nationally: Camels, Lucky Strikes, Old Gold and Chesterfield. Reynolds Company decided to raise the wholesale price of Camels from $6.40 per thousand to $6.85. Lucky Strike, Chesterfield and Old Gold soon followed suit and the retail price of cigarettes moved from two packs for 25¢ to 15¢ a pack. By 1940 Old Gold sales had dropped to 5th place while Camel rose to No. 1.

The Lorillard website still lists Old Gold as one of its six brands, but I have to wonder where they are sold since they are not a visible brand in my part of the world and haven’t been for a long time.

For a while, the Old Gold slogan was “Not a Cough in a Carload”, along with the print ad above that appeared in magazines. The television commercial below was used in 1952.

A Pete Hamill Perspective

One kind of reading that has brought great pleasure in the time since leaving Tokyo is stories or remembrances of Japan by non-Japanese writers. Something about the recent distance or separation from that country has made the recollections of others somehow poignant. Another might describe it as mere sentimentality, and there is definitely some of that in it, but beyond these emotional responses there is always the other’s perspective of a culture very familiar to me.

In New Orleans the other day I came across something in a dusty bookstore that I had never seen before, not even aware that it was out there. And that is surprising in that the book was published in Japan in 1992 at a time when books about Japan by well-known American writers were hot under my radar. The book is Tokyo Sketches: Stories by Pete Hamill, published by Kodansha International. Hamill writes in the introductory notes of the book, ‘So much of life in Japan is encoded that a stranger could spend a lifetime trying to crack the codes and still fail…’ He also explains that his stories grew from ideas and impressions gathered during his trips to Japan with his wife, who was born there, that they are about people sharing some common trait: a broken communication, a misunderstood word, a clash of myths and the enormous, unforgiving power of the past.

Of the thirteen stories in the collection, “The Opponent” is among my favorites. In ten fast pages we get a look at boxing in Japan, the action in the ring as well as the politics and fixing that can go on in the fighter’s dressing room. Hamill gives his reader a glimpse of the honor that often colors Japanese sports and the greed that threatens to besmirch both athlete and sport. Hamill has written much about boxing and his knowledge of the sport guarantees that his two fictional boxers are far more than cardboard cutouts. “The Price of Everything” is another fine story, and a sad one about a wealthy but lonely Japanese businessman and his efforts to win over a younger woman.

In a career both long and distinguished Pete Hamill has written about war, about urban riots and has covered local and national politics. He has written about jazz, rock 'n' roll, boxing, baseball, and art. At different times in his life he has lived in half a dozen foreign countries, in the end always returning to New York.

In 1968 he published his first novel. This was followed by a short semi-autobiographical novel. Most of his fiction is set in New York City. His eleventh novel, Tabloid City, was published in 2011. In addition to his novels, he has published more than 100 short stories in newspapers and two volumes of short stories: The Invisible City: A New York Sketchbook (1980) and Tokyo Sketches (1992).

The cover of this first edition of Tokyo Sketches shows a detail of a painting by Kenzô Nakahara, a riverbank with a bridge and Tokyo in the background. Nice cover.

Hidden in Plain View

New Orleans is a fun place to spend a day, or two or three. Find a parking place to leave the car that’s either in, nearby or convenient to the French Quarter, tighten the laces on your walking shoes and strike out. In a matter of minutes you’ll find yourself moving among a throng of fascinating types, most in a friendly and gregarious frame of mind. It is the oldest part of the city and every street corner, every building whether freshly painted, hung in giant ferns, drab or reeking of history is worthy of a moment’s appraisal.

Some of us go for the bookstores, others for the antique shops, and probably a majority for the food and drink. Even the smallest of restaurants could turn out to be the hight point of a day, and the number of friendly watering holes is beyond counting.

For many, afternoon and early evening is a time for meeting friends, new or old at one of those friendly watering holes. If conditions are right you will find a comfortable spot at or around a table on the patio or sidewalk and in no time at all meet four or five people straight out of John Kennedy Toole’s picaresque novel of New Orleans life and dialect, A Confederacy of Dunces.

Whatever time you end up at Café du Monde for coffee and beignets—and everyone does at some juncture of the day—you’ll find a hundred or more crowded tables dusted in powdered sugar and watched over by more waiters than anyone would have thought possible. Those not patrolling sit lined in chairs waiting for a summons and counting their tips. Don’t be surprised if one of them is a long time finding your table hidden in plain view. For this day weary reveler the best time is late at night just before paying the ransom on the car and driving the seventy miles home.

Po’ Boy

Étouffée and gumbo are dishes that have attained the status of icons in Louisiana cookery, but there is one more that shouldn’t be left out of any roll call that summons the flavors of south Louisiana. For several days the notion of a big, hearty oyster po’ boy has been haunting my lunchtime thoughts. Po’ boy is another name for a submarine sandwich, called a sub in some cities, hoagie in others. The name given to the submarine-like “po’ boy” has an interesting history connected to a 1929 streetcar workers’ strike in New Orleans. Sometime in the mid-1910s brothers Benny and Clovis Martin left their home in the Acadian region of the state for New Orleans. Both brothers worked as streetcar conductors until opening a coffee stand and restaurant in 1922. Their years in the railway employees’ union and those spent working as streetcar operators eventually led to their small coffee stand becoming the birthplace of the po’ boy sandwich.

During the four-month strike against the streetcar company in 1929 Benny Martin served free sandwiches to his former colleagues in the union, and Martin’s employees began to joke about the strikers being “poor boys.” Not too surprising that the sandwiches were soon being called poor boys, shortened in the Louisiana dialect to po’ boys.

What makes a po’ boy special is the bread, and a good quality French bread freshly baked is essential. New Orleans French bread has a crunchy crust with a very light center, the result of being baked in old brick ovens. The loaves are about three feet long and maybe six inches in circumference. For a po’ boy the loaf is cut into foot-long pieces, which can be halved for those wanting a smaller sandwich. Traditional versions are served hot with a filling of fried chicken breast, shrimp, oysters, soft shell crab, catfish, crawfish, Louisiana hot sausage, roast beef and gravy, or other regional variations. When ordering a po-boy, the server usually asks a question of one word: “Dressed?” It’s not as silly as it sounds and refers to the po’ boy and what you want on it. A “dressed” po’ boy has lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise, with pickles and onion optional. On a non-seafood po’ boy some will add mustard.

Lunch on Thursday was at Parrain’s, a popular restaurant in Baton Rouge not far from LSU. My friend Raymond and I went there the last time I was in town and enjoyed a delicious lunch, so with that memory, along with po’ boys in mind, we figured Parrain’s was a good bet. The daily specials included a softshell crab po’ boy that Raymond was quick to order, but the oyster po’ boy with a serving of peanut cole slaw was my choice. Mmm… Good! And the bloody Marys weren’t bad either.

A. Hays Town in the Cabinet

Company, cousins, home cooking, and conversation, ingredients for a satisfying evening of reconnecting with people and stories long missed. My cousin Evelyn sets a table that many look forward to, none more than myself. Stuffed salmon and broccoli salad, my mouth waters.

In the den with coffee later, talk turned to Louisiana architect A. Hays Town and a book of his sketches, The Architectural Style of A. Hays Town. My cousins were longtime friends of Mr Hays and his family, and for many years were involved in his building, providing the millwork for dozens of his projects. Our conversation took an intriguing turn when Evelyn told us a story that ended with a treasure revealed.

A painting done to commemorate a trip down Bayou Teche in 1919. The steamboat is the Suwannee, a lumber boat of the Williams Lumber Company.

In conversation one day, Mr Town mentioned to his millwork consultant (Evelyn’s husband) that he had for some years been painting pictures as a hobby. His remark was something along the lines of, “I’ve been painting these pictures—memories of childhood—the past few years and don’t have anything to do with them. Think I’ll use the pictures for my Christmas cards.”

Evelyn said she had a stack of Christmas cards from A. Hays Town, and for a moment there my mouth hung open. A few minutes later she brought out from a cabinet eleven of those cards and for the next half hour we pored over the cards, the images and the handwritten seasonal wishes of Christmases past from the architect-painter.

This painting shows a house with chimney somewhere along the bayou.

A top of the line Nikon camera would have been ideal, but with nothing more than an iPhone and ordinary lighting I started clicking the shutter.

Some of the cards include no information about the cover image and that omission leaves the what, where and when to guesswork.

A few of the personal notes inside the cards