The Pre-School Times

To my knowledge, in New Orleans in the early 1950s, there wasn't much day care. What we had was a maid. Everyone I knew had a maid- some once every two weeks, but some every day. It was the way many black women made money. I remember our maids, but not their names. I don't remember them doing anything but cleaning and sometimes, baby sitting. I do remember that the house was always VERY clean when they left. And they wore a uniform and were always friendly to me. I probably talked their ears off.  My father's entire work staff at his car repair business and service station were all black men- men who worked for that business for 30 years and retired from it. But as a general rule, if my mother went somewhere, I went with her. At least once a month, on a Thursday morning, I would get dressed in a frilly outfit, put on a pair of patent leather shoes, and white gloves, and go with my mother to the area known as "downtown". We would go to Maison Blanche and to Godchaux's, and my mother would shop, and I would look at everyone's shoes because that is mostly what I can remember seeing- legs with thick stockings and sturdy heeled shoes. We would eat lunch at the counter, my mother silent (probably because of her substantial undergarments) and me talking endlessly, and it was wonderful. I do remember one incident when I went to the water fountain at Maison Blanche, and before I could take a sip of water, a stranger pulled me away and pushed me into my mother's jurisdiction. I burst into tears, because it was confusing to be touched by a stranger. My mother was angry for a moment, but she looked down at me and said that I was not allowed to drink from the colored's water fountain, I had to drink from the one for the white people. Who knew? I certainly didn't. The maid at our house drank out of our glasses, used our bathroom, and was allowed to give me a bath. Why in the world was the water different in those fountains? I never made that mistake again, but I never understood it either. Not because I was precociously aware of race, but because I was mystified as to its purpose. New Orleans, no matter what anyone says, was a very integrated city for its time. Witness the incredible number of biracial, if not more white than black, citizens that are there. I knew black people who were so white that it was not clear as to why they were considered to be black. Many with blue or green eyes. I had friends who lived next door to blacks. But there were none in Bienville Elementary School when I got there. Not one. None at the local Presbyterian Church on Elysian Fields. I grew up belonging to Metairie Country Club- where my father played golf and gin rummy, and my mother, once in a great while, played canasta and looked over the jalousied porch windows to make sure I wasn't drowned- and it was white also. I never gave much thought as to what the black people did when they went home at the end of the day. Did they go play golf or go out to eat at places like Mandina's- was there a separate city for them, separate restaurants, separate car dealers, separate beauty parlors? Did they go to their own Morrison's cafeteria or Chris steak house?? Did their dead lie in caskets at Jacob Schoen Funeral Home, while the children played on the huge front lawn while the adults cried or laughed? I just didn't know and I think I was just too young to think the world had to be a different way. I have a picture of myself on a big stuffed zebra- life size- at the Audubon Zoo- and everyone around me is white. I don't know if it is because there were so many more white people in New Orleans in 1955, or if the zoo did not admit blacks every day. Someone other than me, with more time and resources, could look that up. Maybe someone all ready has. But in about 1953, when I was 3 or so, the house on Benefit street was marked for destruction to put a highway through, and we moved to a house on Mirabeau Avenue, where I would live until I entered the fifth grade. And it was white there, too.