ALAN writes:

It is a challenge to keep up with the pace of progress in St. Louis:

Less than 24 hours before you posted my essay on St. Louis last Saturday, another black male was shot multiple times and killed by a black male on the same street and two blocks away from where a black male spent his last moments eleven days earlier.

That street forms the western boundary of 21 acres of land that Catholic nuns in 1862 chose for the site of their Maryville Academy of the Sacred Heart.  A Catholic college for girls, it opened in 1872 and stood there for a hundred years, a five-story building with a Gothic chapel in an oasis of trees, lawns, and sunken gardens surrounded by white-stone walls.  The plan of studies for girls in the 1800s included character training, self-control, manners, courtesy, and penmanship.  For recreation, they played croquet and practiced archery.  The school was always a part of the nearby parish’s annual Corpus Christi Procession.  In the early 1900s, the school was visited by Mr. and Mrs. G.K. Chesterton.

Blacks have now killed people in the residential area on all four sides of that property.

My boyhood pal and I walked past those white-stone walls one sunny day in the late summer of 1959, knowing that a new shipment of Topps baseball cards had just arrived at Carl’s Market, a corner grocery store, and eager to trade our nickels and dimes for a few packs of those colorful bubblegum cards.   Neither his mother nor mine was rich enough in imagination to think that our innocent boyhood pleasures along that street would one day give way to barbarian blacks killing each other there.

— Comments —

Paul writes:

Oh, yes. I remember baseball cards and bubblegum.  In my case, I suspect the bubblegum was the main draw.  And yes I remember the corner grocery, “Roy’s.”  My grandmother had a corner grocery about five blocks away from Roy’s as the crow flies.  My mother would have me walk the four blocks and ask Mr. Roy for sugar or whatever, unless I was going to a neighbor to ask for sugar when it was late.  I was so young the memory is fleeting.  No school buses in those days.  I walked a mile to a great all-white public school.  My parish was notable statewide because of its superintendent of schools.  (Davies maybe?)

It was an extremely white-protective parish (site of the Battle of New Orleans) and has remained so.  Unusual.  It used to be controlled by smart Judge Leander Perez, a major Huey Long ally.  (The smarter Long had to telephone him to stop stuffing the ballot boxes with 100% Long votes.  See Huey Long, T. Harry Williams.)  Perez was excommunicated by Pope John or Pope Paul for refusing to integrate the schools.

My wise mother saw the coming conflict and moved us out to a “higher-class” parish, where I still live.  (Sorry to my friends from those days, but my Catholic high school was only about six blocks from The Parish; and many used to make friendly fun of the very few—oddly—students from The Parish.)

The final straw was in my fourth grade on Mardi Gras day when mother realized the coming conflict.  Our French clan would dress in costumes and gather around a pickup truck on the wide neutral ground (median) at the border of The Parish and New Orleans to watch The Parish’s excellent parade.  It had to turn at that corner because parades are not allowed to cross parishes or towns.  I suppose it is a law enforcement problem (not the inane “issue”).

Crippled Aunt Maria (Ma’ rhee ah, not the English Ma ri’ ah), whom one could barely understand because of her heavy French (not Cajun) accent, would cook delicious Crêpes Suzette.  (Our inappropriate grandfather had refused to teach his children French.)  The ritual was ecstasy for us children and our parents.  We would be bursting with joy as we ran around in our costumes.

So there we were joyful standing on the truck catching trinkets when the parade stopped, as they are wont to do for many reasons.  The blacks had to stand on the New Orleans side of The Parish line, across the street from the whites.  They pulled a man from a float and beat him.  We were horrified.  It was New Orleans’ territory, so I don’t know who stopped it. I don’t recall anything more.

At some point, we crammed into the pickup and had great fun riding around under a tarpaulin as it began raining.  “Mr. Vic” a land poor (but rich) Carambat, who had eight children, owned the pickup.  He would seek my banker father’s advice.  They were childhood friends since they lived only blocks apart.  My father would get frustrated when Mr. Vic would not sell some of his land to provide more for his family.  He kept his family poor though he was a sweet, kind, shy man.  I recall one of his pretty daughters telling me to “throw it anywhere” when I asked where to throw some trash.  His “estate” was a junkyard.  He would buy stuff because it was cheap and never use it.

We used to be in ecstasy when we would go to “Mr. Vic’s Place.”  It was about 200 acres in the now tony Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain (Lac Pontchartrain).  He had many more properties in New Orleans.  We had a great time refurbishing the main cottage one weekend: rat poop dropping from the ceiling on our faces.  We were all, except my unusual brother, used to renovating and took to it with joy.  We used an outhouse.  No electricity.  The campfire pork chops and potatoes were devoured after a hard day.

My wonderful, funny uncle used to enjoy repeating how I said, “Oh I won’t eat that,” when watching the fat drip from the chops as they were cooking.  I was not a big meat eater then, but I wolfed down the chops.

So much for blacks often portrayed as saintly victims of whites who never touched them or wished them harm.  We just wanted to be separate from them for obvious reasons.  They were and are numerous.  If only they would recognize our irreconcilable differences, accept responsibility for their culture, and devise a proper culture they can be proud of.

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