HarleyDad to the Rescue-Part 1

It was many years ago in New Orleans. HarleyDad was night manager in the first service station over the Mississippi River Bridge. Behind us was one of the larger public housing areas built by the government. The night shift began at 10:00 p.m. and went to 6 a.m. It was summer time in New Orleans and somewhere after midnight the air began to cool. And on most nights, but especially Friday and Saturday nights, the night life would begin to slowly come out like shadows slowly becoming longer and longer in those New Orleans cemetaries.

New Orleans cemetaries could always be a little spooky because the tombs were built above ground. During the night (if you ever were in a New Orleans cemetary at night) you were in the City of the Dead, and the dead had skyrisers so to speak. They were not buried in the ground the way the Texans bury their dead-instead they were buried above ground in vaults. So as you walked through a cemetary, and the shadows of the day got low, you could not see above the cemetary but instead walked through it-one spooky vault at a time. The problem as usual was not with what you saw but what you did not see. Then there were the night noises.

HarleyDad went to Junior High for the ninth grade in New Orleans. My Junior High was Pierre Gustav Toutant de Beauregard High School. Beauregard was a general for the South of course in the Civil War. Beauregard was located on Canal Street. Its students were rough. Our most famous school alumni would later be Lee Harvey Oswald of President Kennedy fame. But then HarleyDad was an A Type so didn't care very much one way or the other. I was fairly confident that I could handle myself at least on a one to one basis. And Beauregard was one of those schools where you might have to do that.

Now the mornings were no problem. I got off the Canal Street bus, made the short cut through the cemetary and caught the Canal Street car. Coming home was the same. Catch the street car, walk through the City of the Dead, catch the bus and come home.

Summer no problem. Sunshine no problem. But it was those cold, gray days when winter comes at 4:00 P.M. Those days were different. Instead of P.E., the coaches kept you in and showed the boy's gym class those classic movies of yesterday year--World War II films teaching the soldiers how not to get syphilis. You know the ones---but then again you probably do not .

Then if you did some after school activities, you would hit the City of the Dead about 5 or even 6 when the sun was down.

Some would go around the cemetary. Some would run through the cemetary. Some of us would make our selves walk through the cemetary trying to keep our pace even as our hearts beat faster and faster.

Cemetaries at night in New Orleans could be spooky, and New Orleans had some great ones.

Later when HarleyDad was in College he took a date for a Tour of New Orleans Cemetary Number 1. Some one had told HarleyDad to go find Buddy who had a black man that had worked in the Cemetary since he was a small boy. Well, I did find Buddy. I crossed his palm with silver and thus began one of the most fantastic tours and stories of my life.

Buddy had started working there when he was about six helping out. One of his jobs had and still was emptying the caskets every few years and burning them pushing the bones back to the family vault. Budreaux was about 70 when we got the tour. He had worked there all of his life.

In New Orleans there are family vaults. These things are like safe deposit vaults but large enough in which to put the casket. Decay occurs fast in New Orleans because of the humidity. After a few years they would empty the casket. Push the bones to the back -burn any clothing and burn the old casket. And presto, the Cemetary was ready for the next resident. New Orleans did not have much land and anything buried in the ground floated to the top.

You could see where the caskets were burned and parts of the old caskets.

Buddy showed us tombs with air passages upward and tombs with bells. You see it is was important that people not be buried alive. In those days you were not embalmed. So occasionally mistakes were made. He told stories of how people had been sick and then accidently buried alive including a couple of stories that he could attest to.

He told these stories with a gentle good humor. He took us to the graves of famous New Orleans witches where if you do not make a mark on the tomb you receive a curse.

He told us about having to evict tenants early because of other deaths in the family.

We read epitaphs that were amusing and some which touched the heart.

It was a great tour! You could learn the history of New Orleans by touring New Orleans Number 1. You can bet that you would not sleep for days afterward.

It was New Orleans. It was spooky sometimes. But it was also romantic. New Orleans was a cultural cross roads filled with wonderful and interesting people-both dead and alive. And they mixed together like the aromas of the great French cooking-exotic, alive and enticing. It was a wonderful, mysterious place in which to grow up to adulthood.

And the New Orleans nights were the most mysterious and wonderful of all.

Well, as I said, the shadows were growing long that evening in New Orleans many years ago.