We changed trains in Fort Worth and soon we were in de land ob cotton. Looked pretty bad, too-not much of a crop this year. The drouth really raised hell with the farmers. We arrived in New Orleans Saturday morning and were delivered to the Maison de Ville at breakfast time, short precisely two nights of sleep.
Unfortunately check-out time was three o'clock and our rooms were not available. We carried the banner through the French Quarter until the afternoon. This is a painful and groggy episode which I remember dimly save for one item, Loni's Vieux Carre Lingerie Shop at 218 Bourbon Street. Loni deals in custom-made frillies for frails of really amazing sorts-panties with clutching hands embroidered on same, others with appropriate mottoes, if you happened to be very broad-minded, things which I dubbed bedroom Bikinis but which Loni assured me were "home G-strings." None of these items were built for heavy wear; all were intended to be removed promptly and (we trust) with care, as they were beautiful and fragile.
One mannequin, the mascot of the shop, was seated, completely dressed and quite naked, in the middle of the shop rear. She is known as "Ophelia."
We were tempted but I limited myself to a pack of playing cards, the only non-wearable item offered. The conventional designs on these cards had been replaced by pictures in gorgeous Kodachrome of young ladies who did not patronize even Loni's liberal establishment. After all, were we not about to barter in the bazaars of the cross-roads of the world?-dickering with and outwitting mysterious Hindus in quaint little stalls in Zanzibar for the mysterious treasures of the Orient, then to wait until we returned to the ship to decipher the mysterious cabalistic mark on the underside saying MADE IN CAMDEN NJ FAIR TRADE PRICE $1.75? After all, Loni plies her trade in the States and promises "Mail Orders Filled Promptly."
We dragged ourselves back to Maison de Ville, taking turns carrying the playing cards, and slept in chairs in the lobby until our predecessors checked out-and were then informed that the ship would sail on Tuesday instead of Sunday. This is known as the Missing Top Step. So we went to bed and slept until dinner time.
There was the usual queue on the sidewalk outside Antoine's; we did not tarry. I have never eaten at Antoine's and do not intend to do so ever; any restaurateur who lets his patrons stand on the sidewalk instead of providing room enough to sit down is welcome to the suckers he gets-but I'll be a sucker sitting down, thanks. We went to Todt's on Bourbon, an excellent French restaurant with a German name. Mme. Todt is a tribute to her own cooking. The place is beautiful, ancient, quiet, leisurely, and the cooking is superb. We began to dig our graves with our teeth, wide and deep, a process likely to continue for 40,000 miles.
We wandered away from Todt's, belching gently and walking carefully. We had no intention of spending the evening in the clip joints of the Vieux Carre, no sirree! We were going to a movie. But careful inspection of a newspaper disclosed that nothing was showing but Hollywood's revenge for television. On the way back to Maison de Ville we decided to indulge in a small spot of social research, as we had heard that the town had been cleaned up. We stopped in one of the joints to find out.
It was true. The girls no longer danced on the tops of the bars, but on runways arranged among the customers, an arrangement more sanitary and more convenient. Nor did they strip completely. No matter how many bows they took, each retained a G-string at least the size of a cigarette package and in place of a brassiere (which might have become dislodged in the enthusiasm of the dance) each wore two little stickers based on the principle of the "Posees" which enjoyed a brief rage a few years back, but differing from that adhesive bra in being smaller, say an inch and a half to an inch and three quarters wide. These little modest stickers were often of a natural rosy hue, but some were silver, some were gold, and some were covered with sequins, giving pleasant variety. Some of the young ladies had tassels appended to these stickers, which accented their movements. One had four tassels, two in front and two fastened to the bulges of her glutei maximi. Such was her athletic skill that she could start or stop any of the tassels independently, swinging them in time with the music. The tassels had been treated with fluorescent dye, producing a giddy and pleasing effect of mobile mathematical patterns.
We left this establishment without having suffered undue financial damage and were just about to turn into our home street when we saw a sign advertising the leopard woman. We went in. The dive was grimy but the show was all that it was billed. I mean to say: where else can you see a naked woman rassle with a full-grown leopard thirty-nine inches from your nose and no bars? This act was all that it was represented to be and it struck me as damned dangerous. Sure, she did her strip by having the leopard claw and/or bite her clothes away, just like Lolita and her Doves and that gal who used to do the same act with a parrot. But the thing that got me was that apparently bad-tempered leopard practically stepping in my half-ounce cuba libre. It made me so nervous I had to sit through the show twice.
The Maison de Ville is a luxury hotel run like a very well run French pension, by a Mrs. Ehrlich, who came down from the Nawth, liked the town, bought this hotel and stayed. It is small, very personal, and very well managed. The new wing was built in 1800, which gives you some idea. The patio is lush, old, and cool, with green moss covering the ancient bricks. There is a wishing well where you may chuck a penny if you have any wishes left unsatisfied, which seems unlikely. A complimentary continental breakfast is served until eleven o'clock in this patio and it opens into the much larger patio of the Three Sisters, where everything is served, from Sazerac cocktails to lobster mayonnaise.
Having seen New Orleans before, we had not intended to spend much time there, but the delay in sailing left us with a couple of days to kill. On Sunday we took a rubberneck trip and found that in New Orleans such a trip is not to be scorned. There are many things there which need to be pointed out and cannot be seen just by poking around-such as the canals that are above the level of the adjacent streets and many old fine antebellum homes which would give a housekeeper nightmares. And there is the cemetery that used to be a race track until one man was refused membership, whereupon he resolved to make it the deadest place in town. He did so-he bought it and it is now a very beautiful cemetery.
Thereafter we wandered down to the waterfront, had coffee at the Morning Call (an obligatory ritual) and found the Gulf Shipper.Captain Rowland W. Dillard was aboard and very kindly showed us around. Captain Dillard is usually Chief Mate of the Shipper, but had just completed a voyage as CO. during the vacation of Captain Lee. We soon discovered that he was a retired naval officer, whereupon we admitted that we were Navy files, too, and became muy simpático in an atmosphere of "Did you know so-and-so?"
We firmly resolved to see a movie that night, several bills having changed-but found that Hollywood's Chinese suicide was still going on. So we started back to Maison de Ville. At the corner of Toulouse and Bourbon, fifty feet from Maison de Ville, is the Old French Opera House. I pointed out that it was much too early to go to bed; why not sit through one show?
We did. At this point begins the confirmation of the Louisiana Purchase. I now own one New Orleans night club, having bought and paid for it. Through some oversight the deed has not yet been sent to me; however, we have been traveling; it may be awaiting us in the States.
The O.F.O.H. promises continuous entertainment. We sat through one show and were just preparing to leave when the first M.C. sat down beside us, the relief M.C. having taken over. "How do you like our show?" he asked. "Fine," I agreed and presently asked him to have a drink. He accepted.
Three hours later I was still buying drinks for him and for a little blonde stripper named Pam. There is no cover charge but the drinks are very small and the prices are high in inverse proportion. I must say at this point that I enjoyed every minute of it, save that all too often I was busy making change or tipping when I should have been giving careful attention to the artistic and uninhibited dancing going on at a point averaging one meter from my bulging eyes.
These div
es on Bourbon Street vary a good bit. I must say for the O.F.O.H. that it smelled clean, it looked clean, the glasses were clean, and the girls were young, pretty, healthy, and looked freshly bathed and not tough. If you are relaxed to the fact that the purpose of the place is to show pretty girls in as much skin as the gendarmes will permit, then the O.F.O.H. is the place for you; it is a nice joint of its sort. The jokes are not too rough and feature neither bathroom humor nor fag humor. Paul, the M.C. who sat with us and helped us complete the Purchase, was half Gypsy, the son of a tightrope artiste and had as his ambition to own and operate a small carnie wild-animal show-toward which he had a fair start, including a boa constrictor that slept with him on cold nights. He was in the market for a mountain lion kitten.
Pam, the little blonde stripper who joined us presently, was suffering from a hangover and love. She and the trap drummer planned to get married, but would have to wait a bit as he was buying a new set of traps. She assured us that she could cook. It seemed that everyone in the show was suffering from a hangover, the preceding night (Saturday) having been very drunk out, including among other things, Pam having had her bar bill cut off by the manager and retaliating by taking off her shoes and throwing them at him. One of the girls had threatened suicide and Paul had had to go into their dressing room and quash it. There was no general agreement as to which girl was threatening suicide but all agreed that someone had.
We were supplying the hair of the dog-at house prices.
I don't know how I got out without paying the French War debt as well, but I did, eventually. Actually, both Paul and Pam were nice kids; Ticky and I liked both of them. Pam was 21 and had been a stripper since she was 13, at which time her mother used to take her to and from work. Ticky asked her if she weren't scared when she started. Oh yes! but now it was just a job, a better paying job than working in an office. The girls make $75 to $90 a week. There is no real future in it, of course, and it is inclined to turn them all into habitual drinkers if not alcoholics. I haven't the slightest idea how many of them end up in bagnios-probably most of them get married. If stripping damages their moral fibre, I was unable to discern it.
We went aboard ship the next day, came ashore for dinner, having been warned by the purser that the crew was being paid off and that there were some beefs which might result in bad language and unpleasantness. We finally went to a movie, Veils of Bagdad or some such, featuring Victor Mature in improbable situations. I went to sleep. Ticky woke me and took me back to the ship.
The Gulf Shipper was warped away from dock and headed out into the stream by towboats about 1000 Tuesday morning. We spent all day watching the lower or delta reaches of the Mississippi, counting pelicans and one (1) porpoise. (No score is credited for seagulls.) The delta Mississippi is an improbable place. From the deck of a ship one can see right over the tallest trees to the horizon, stretching around through 360 degrees as in the flattest parts of western Kansas. The highest land seems to be roughly 21 inches above water and the black gumbo mud runs down to China. Vegetation is lush, thick and low, something between canebrake and jungle. But there are farms and cattle ranches back in here, paved roads and many oil wells. One wonders what they do at high water.
Almost down to the Gulf the Delta pilot leaves the ship, at Pilot Town, a town built on stilts, and the Bar pilot takes over. The Bar is a neighborhood rather than a channel-the lower portion of the multiple mouth of the Mississippi changes so rapidly that it must be piloted by a man who has taken a look at it just a few hours before. You can almost see him moving his lips as he comes aboard, concentrating on remembering the latest twist of Old Man River. He takes the ship out into the open Gulf as the sun goes down, then with a sigh of relief turns it over to the skipper.
We went to bed.
Next morning we were out of sight of land, on the open blue Gulf, lying in deck chairs and counting flying fish instead of pelicans. The sea was almost glassy with the ship moving gently, rolling almost imperceptibly and lifting a trifle to long, slow, low swells. Nevertheless it was enough to bother one passenger, who started missing meals at once. The rest of us started getting acquainted-Ticky and myself, Vi and Robert from Hawaii and off on a busman's holiday to the tropics, two couples from the same middle west town who kept much to themselves, and Mr. Tupper. Mr. Tupper was known either as "The Cruise Director" or as "The Owner"-it was his third trip in this ship, he had his own sextant and navigated with the mates each day, he had a stateroom right on the bridge, one which had apparently been intended as an emergency cabin for the skipper in wartime. He was not a seafaring man by profession, but a retired insurance executive from Atlanta, Georgia, who had made a hobby of the merchant marine in his old age and had studied navigation in order to enjoy it the more. He was the life of the party, the benign spirit of the ship, with an endless string of anecdotes and "animal stories," always funny, and with a case of Old Parr under his desk in case something-such as sighting a whale, or a boat drill, or such, should make him and his companions "nervous."
He assuaged my nervousness on numerous occasions. GSA should give him his passage free and charge the other passengers extra, should they be lucky enough to sail with him.
We passed the west end of Cuba the next night and were in the Caribbean, which looked just like the Gulf. I looked for the furrows I had worn into the Caribbean as a kid thirty years ago, but they were gone. All is change, there is nothing you can really depend on. The Captain gave a cocktail party which made up for it. He put on a uniform for the first time, too (freighters are very informal)-dress whites. Captain Lee is a tall, handsome man in his early forties and looks the way a skipper should look. He has a very heavy hand with a cocktail shaker.
The skipper went to sea as a boy, shipping before the mast, and worked his way up through the hawsepipe through all ratings from ordinary seaman to master mariner. This personal saga of the sea is probably passing today, as a consequence of the founding of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. No doubt this transition represents progress, but one thing is sure: the old-style skipper has a knowledge of his ship and the job of every man in it which cannot be learned in a school room.
Captain Lee kept a very taut ship. There was overt evidence in clean paintwork and well-shined brightwork but the most compelling evidence was negative; the ship had no odor. Almost every ship that sails the sea holds a pervasive, inescapable stink compounded of bilgewater and a dozen other ancient, organic whiffs. In a dirty ship it is almost unbearable; in a clean ship it is so slight as to be inoffensive when the weather is calm, the ports open, and the stomach is easy. But one does not expect it to be missing entirely. The Gulf Shipper had none that I could detect.
Later on we were conducted through all parts of the ship, engineroom, holds, lower passages, crew's quarters, galley, lockers, iceboxes-and I could see why. The ship was clean. Not just reasonably clean, but clean. The Captain inspected the ship each morning from stem to sternpost. When he inspected during our first day at sea I was asleep, with our door closed. He did not knock but noted down that he had not been able to enter stateroom number three and returned that afternoon to complete his inspection.
He did not simply stick his head in, glance around, and ask us if everything was all right. He came in and tried everything himself-plumbing valves, porthole dogs, medicine cabinet door, wardrobe doors, drawers. There was a steel chest of drawers welded to the bulkhead; Captain Lee found that one drawer stuck, so he squatted down, took hold with both hands and attempted to make it work.
He is a large man and powerful. With a sound of ripping metal the entire steel chest parted from the bulkhead and came away in his hands. He looked at it soberly and remarked, "I'll send one of the engineers up to fix that."
Freighter travel can be very pleasant. If you insist on the combination of swank hotel and organized children's party which characterizes a smart North Atlantic liner you will be bored and miserable in a freighter, for a freighter offers only meals, room, and transportation; the rest is up to y
ou. I am not sneering at luxury liners; real luxury can be a lot of fun. Freighter life is a different sort of fun.
The staterooms are usually larger than any but the most expensive in a liner and they are always outside rooms. Ours in the Gulf Shipper had a private toilet and shower, contained two single bunks and a large couch, had three ports, and was roomy enough to set up a card table. Outside the passengers' rooms were wide verandas with deck chairs. There were no deck stewards hovering around; if you wanted your chair moved, you moved it; if you wanted a cup of coffee or tea, you went down to the pantry and got it.
The passengers ate with the officers in the officers' saloon. The service was adequate-one waiter for nine passengers-and the food was the sort known as "good, plain cooking." This can as easily be "bad, plain cooking" but in the Shipper it was good. The chef was no Cordon Bleu but he had a decent respect for good raw materials and prepared them accordingly. There was usually a choice of three entrées and two desserts; I believe that anyone but a gourmet would have been happy with it. Dutch, German, and Scandinavian freighters have a reputation for setting a better table than do our ships. In some cases this reputation may be justified-but I enjoyed the food in the Gulf Shipper.
What you do between meals is up to you. You can sunbathe in a deck chair and count the flying fish, sleep, chat with the other passengers and the officers, read, play cards, study, or even get drunk. Or you can hole up in your room and wish to heaven that you had never left Paducah.
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