Between 1963 and 1967 I lived in Bay St. Louis, Miss., but my dentist was in New Orleans. So every few months I would need to go to the dentist to have my braces checked, and I, beginning at the age of thirteen, would get on board the New Orleans Gulf Coast commuter train at the Bay St. Louis train depot and ride the rails down to New Orleans. It was an interesting trip.
The train would arrive, come to a stop, and I would climb up onto the platform between cars, enter the passenger compartment and find a seat among the many business commuters. Looking out the window was a great adventure, because of the wildly different terrain that the trip would provide.
We would roll southwestward past Waveland, Clermont Harbor and Lakeshore, onward into the marshes of Ansley and the hundreds of fishing camps perched on the bayou banks of southwest Hancock County. Then across the Pearl River bridge, through the Honey Island Swamp and across Pearl River Island.
Another bridge carried us across the Rigolets, and it was an amazing sight to be sitting in the train car looking out over the marshes and suddenly there is nothing but water. You couldn't see the edge of the trestle beneath you, so for all intents and purposes, it just looked like the train had taken flight and was soaring over the waterway.
Then came more marshes, the eastern shore of Lake Catherine, and eventually Chef Menteur Pass. The fishing camps became closer to each other, and the fishermen heading back from the early morning fishing expeditions would wave at the train passengers.
Then, as the train entered New Orleans East, things really got interesting. Rolling through the train yards of Gentilly, where dozens of parallel tracks held dozens of stationary freight cars awaiting their sorting out and hitching up. It was the manufacturing and industrial area around the Industrial Canal. The train brought you through the middle of it all, with each half mile another fascinating array of cranes, fork lifts, and shipping containers.
Once over the canal, the train track right of way suddenly rose considerably higher than the surrounding landscape, and you found yourself looking down on the tops of houses, following alongside the newly-built interstate. I don't remember going through City Park, but maps showing the train tracks going to Union Passenger Station hint that part of the journey followed the interstate through the park, then taking a southward turn along the ancient New Orleans Cemeteries and on the way past where the Superdome would be built.
Finally the train would ease into Union Passenger Station and come to a rest. But my journey wasn't over yet. I would walk from the station to Lee Circle, which is about four blocks, then catch a St. Charles Avenue street car and head over to Canal Street, where my dentist office was located in the Maison Blanche building (tenth floor to be exact).
After a ten minute exam to see how my braces were doing, I would be released and then I'd go exploring on Canal Street. First, the electronic stores with all the latest radio gadgets, including a crystal radio set (red and white) that looked like a rocket ship.
Then to Katz and Besthoff for a hamburger and/or hot fudge sundae, and finally to Holmes Department Store where I checked out the camera section (where my sister Bonnie worked) and the television department.
It was there in the television department of D. H. Holmes that one day in 1963 on my visit to the dentist I came across a group of people all crowded around a television set, sad-faced, and staring at the news broadcast.
It was Walter Cronkite, talking about President Kennedy getting shot in Dallas, TX. People were in a state of shock, I was in a state of shock. President Kennedy had guided us through some pretty tough times, particularly with the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion, when everyone huddled in their homes thinking that World War III was about to erupt. Now he was dead, shot while riding in his convertible on the streets of Dallas.
And I was standing with a group of strangers on the third floor of D.H.Holmes watching the drama unfold. I finally went downstairs, got on the streetcar, and rode to my grandmother's house on Carondelet st., to await my dad getting off work at the Cyanamid Chemical Plant in Luling.
When he arrived, we would immediately get ready to go pick up two pots full of hot tamales from Manuel's Hot Tamales on Carrollton Avenue and head on out to dad's corner at Broad and St. Bernard Avenues.
