New Orleans Memories
I guess this qualifies as a proper subject for this blog. It's a memory of mine and I'm part of the family.
In 1957, my friend Mike Buffett and I decided to go to New Orleans. As it turned out, deciding to go and actually doing it were two different things. And here's how this all came about. Mike had an older brother; Richard Buffett and he was an artist. A fine artist in fact, painting portraits for a living. Richard was a very "cool" guy and Mike and I were fascinated by the stories he told us of his time spent living in New Orleans and painting the portraits of jazz musicians from the "Storyville" area of New Orleans. Musicians like George Lewis and Alcide "Slow Drag" Pavageau. He had their portraits hanging on the walls of his little Hermosa Beach bungalow. The floor in the living room of the house had a beautiful Turkish rug painted on it...(I told you he was "cool".) Since Mike played the clarinet, he was very much interested in the jazz scene in Hermosa Beach and we spent a lot of time hanging around the front door of the Lighthouse jazz club where Howard Rumsey and the Light House All-Stars played. But Richard's stories convinced us that the "real" jazz was to be found New Orleans. And you didn't need to be 21 to go in a bar and listen to jazz in the state of Louisiana.
Our plan was simple; we were going to buy a vehicle that we could live in (campers hadn't been invented yet) and work our way across the United States, stopping to work whenever we ran out of money. Once we reached New Orleans, Mike would use his musical skills to get a job in a jazz band and since I had skills as a dishwasher...success was just around the corner!
We found the perfect vehicle, a 1947 Divco, last used as an Orowheat Bread truck. We bought it for $500 and then sold the bread racks for $100. Then we remodeled the truck, painting the interior an odd, but free, shade of orange. Then a friend's parents blessed us with their old front room furniture. We really wanted beds, but gladly accepted two chairs and sofa, plus one coffee table.
It was about this time that I decided that I should tell my parent's of our plans. Somehow, I had to explain this large truck sitting in the driveway. Strange...but neither one was wild about the idea, and my father was quite emphatic in his denial of approval.
It took a few weeks of friction before it really sunk in that our trip was never going to happen. And that was when we decided to make the truck into a mobile "Party House"! And it served in that capacity for about a year or more...
In 1957, my friend Mike Buffett and I decided to go to New Orleans. As it turned out, deciding to go and actually doing it were two different things. And here's how this all came about. Mike had an older brother; Richard Buffett and he was an artist. A fine artist in fact, painting portraits for a living. Richard was a very "cool" guy and Mike and I were fascinated by the stories he told us of his time spent living in New Orleans and painting the portraits of jazz musicians from the "Storyville" area of New Orleans. Musicians like George Lewis and Alcide "Slow Drag" Pavageau. He had their portraits hanging on the walls of his little Hermosa Beach bungalow. The floor in the living room of the house had a beautiful Turkish rug painted on it...(I told you he was "cool".) Since Mike played the clarinet, he was very much interested in the jazz scene in Hermosa Beach and we spent a lot of time hanging around the front door of the Lighthouse jazz club where Howard Rumsey and the Light House All-Stars played. But Richard's stories convinced us that the "real" jazz was to be found New Orleans. And you didn't need to be 21 to go in a bar and listen to jazz in the state of Louisiana.
Our plan was simple; we were going to buy a vehicle that we could live in (campers hadn't been invented yet) and work our way across the United States, stopping to work whenever we ran out of money. Once we reached New Orleans, Mike would use his musical skills to get a job in a jazz band and since I had skills as a dishwasher...success was just around the corner!
We found the perfect vehicle, a 1947 Divco, last used as an Orowheat Bread truck. We bought it for $500 and then sold the bread racks for $100. Then we remodeled the truck, painting the interior an odd, but free, shade of orange. Then a friend's parents blessed us with their old front room furniture. We really wanted beds, but gladly accepted two chairs and sofa, plus one coffee table.
It was about this time that I decided that I should tell my parent's of our plans. Somehow, I had to explain this large truck sitting in the driveway. Strange...but neither one was wild about the idea, and my father was quite emphatic in his denial of approval.
It took a few weeks of friction before it really sunk in that our trip was never going to happen. And that was when we decided to make the truck into a mobile "Party House"! And it served in that capacity for about a year or more...
posted by Steven | 4:12 PM
1 Comments:
This was my only connection to New Orleans. And I never came any closer than that...what a shame!
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