Epistles from Pap: Letters from the man known as 'The Will Rogers of Indiana' Part 24

At Sea, Nov. 27, 1949

To the Graphic: We will start with Mattoon, Ill., where my daughter, Aura May Durham, and I went to catch the Illinois Central's "Panama Limited" for New Orleans.

This is a thoroughly-modern, diesel-powered all-pullman train.

Among other things it has a folding removable ladder for all night access to each upper berth, which does away with the porter and his wooden stepladder and small washrooms at each end of the car, which permits the car to add two full sections. Time will tell whether this feature proves popular with the traveling public. The train is fast, the roadbed good. She was on-the-dot into Mattoon and about five minutes ahead at destination.

Our reservations were at the Roosevelt Hotel . . . centrally located a block and a half off Ca.n.a.l St., reputed to be the widest street in the world. The warm, soft dialect we generally attribute to the south is lacking. New Orleans has its own. I can't describe it. You have to hear it.

Well-suited to hospitality

Hospitality here, as well as in about all of New Orleans, is most cordial and unusual. Here is an example of what I mean: I thought it best to get another tropical suit--a rayon and cotton affair made by Haspel of New Orleans. I called the manufacturer's office to locate a retail store carrying the Haspel line. I was connected with the manager, A. Haspel himself. I stated my case.

He answered: "We are mighty proud you like our clothes. Tell you what you do. You go to such and such a store almost across the street from your hotel, call for Mr. A. or Mr. B. and tell him what you want. This is an off season for hot weather clothes. He may not have them. If not, tell him to measure you and call us and we will send down four or five to choose from."

"But," I said, "I want only one suit and in Indianapolis it would cost $25.50 and that is too much trouble for both of you for that money."

He said, "No amount of trouble is too much trouble for us to go to for a man who came all the way from Indianny to get one of our suits of clothes."

And that was what happened. The store was out, but I got the clothes.

THE PILOTS UNION

That evening we went to the Roosevelt Blue Room for 8 o'clock dinner and floor show. I noticed a modestly, yet well-dressed bald headed, rather heavy-set man of about 60 eating alone at the next table. The waiters all knew him as did many of the customers who pa.s.sed.

I said to him, "You are alone this evening. Why not come over and join us in dessert?"

He replied, "I shall be delighted, and consider it an hon'r to be asked to join you and this charmin' young lady, but you must excuse me from dessert." Turning to his waiter, he said, "Bring the bucket over here if you will, Pierre." The bucket was a bucket of Burgundy, fairly well gone. Naturally he asked us to share it, and showed no resentment at our refusal.

It took only a few minutes to discover that our new friend was a "trifle high," and gaining rather than losing alt.i.tude, as time went on. He was a river pilot of long standing, and simply superb at modest elevation.

Putnam County is a bit shy on pilots, but not New Orleans. If I get the facts right, outbound and inbound ships have three pilots--river, bar and the ship's regular pilot. The last takes charge only when the ship is at sea. . . On leaving the wharf, the river pilot is in charge until the bar of the Mississippi is reached--the narrows or jetties where the river empties into the Gulf some 90 miles below New Orleans. . . The "bar pilot" steers the ship through the narrows and out into the Gulf. It is then that the ship's regular pilot takes charge.

It is these bar pilots who have a unique organization, virtually a family affair. To become a bar pilot you must either be born into the family or marry into it. Talk about your tight little corporations and monopolies! Bricklayers and other trade unions are accused of limiting memberships and daily numbers of bricks to be laid in order to hike wages. This "union" does the same thing by means of a sort of birth control feature. It's a honey of a trust. These bar pilots, I hear from pretty reliable source, get from twelve to fifteen thousand per year and work about six months of the year.

Last Tuesday morning, the Director of Commerce of the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans called to invite us on a tour of the harbor, along with some eight or 10 shippers. . . New Orleans shipping is tremendous, second only to New York. I casually mentioned San Francisco and was told that New Orleans had more shipping than the combined West Coast. Generally speaking, it draws the territory drained by the Mississippi River. New Orleans has 10 to 12 miles of wharves. On the trip we surely saw more than 100 ships, barges, ferries and other big water craft. Two ships were unloading thousands of cases of pineapples, so our local A&P store should be stocked with pineapple for you by now.

TIME IS A SEASONING AT ANTOINE'S

That evening the director and his wife took a local Democratic official and his wife and Aura May and me to Antoine's for dinner. Antoine's is an inst.i.tution. Established in 1840, it has served food uninterruptedly, and is now owned and operated by a grandson of its founder.

The building, tableware and linen are severely plain. The waiters are noiseless and speak many languages. No bands, orchestras or entertainers--"You go to Antoine's to give your palate an undisturbed treat." No bar--"It is people who drink without eating who become paralyzed by alcohol." Yet it has a narrow wine cellar a block long, containing well over 5,000 bottles. The oldest wines date back to 1884, the oldest brandy to 1811.

Its gallery of celebrities contains over 2,000 autographs and pictures of distinguished visitors. Besides the main dining room, it has 15 others. One room's floor, the Mystery Room, is covered with sawdust. Guests have included Marshall Foch, Sarah Bernhardt, Will Rogers, Jenny Lind, Caruso, Edwin Booth, "Gentleman Jim" Corbett, General Pershing, down to enough U.S.

Senators and Congressmen to ruin anybody's country.

The present head waiter has been there 40 years, his predecessor 50 years. Bus boys must serve an apprenticeship of 10 years. Time is a necessary element in the proper preparation of food at Antoine's. If you are in a hurry, Antoine's recommends you go to the corner drug store.

But let's get back to dinner before it gets cold. We started off with a c.o.c.ktail of something. I think our host said it contained applejack, champagne and some other ingredient. It had a white collar like the beaten white of an egg. Then came "Oysters Rockefeller," so named because of the richness of the sauce . . .

The recipe for this sauce is a closely guarded family secret. The dish consists of six oysters on the half sh.e.l.l. A much used pie tin is filled with rock salt to hold the heat indefinitely. The oysters covered with the sauce are imbedded in this salt and baked. The concoction, pie tin and all, is served on a plate.

Due to the salt, the oysters and sauce will remain hot for perhaps a half hour. Many a worthy brother's and sister's tongues have been blistered. Since 1899, the management has given with each order a post card showing the number of your order. Mine was 1301744. And so, figuring six oysters to each order, we find that the actual number of oysters used to date has been near eight million.

I had fish--Pompano en papillote--pompano served in paper bags (rumor hath it that the paper bag retains all the flavor), with Pommes Soufflees, or a glorified branch of fry or potato chips blown up like large flat pea pods with peas removed.

Dessert consisted mostly of Cherry Jubilee. Large, fat cherries are put in a metal bowl and covered with brandy. The lights are turned off over your table. The brandy is lighted with a match.

The waiter stirs the cherries, flames and all, until thoroughly hot and the alcohol in the brandy is exhausted. Then he takes them to the kitchen, pours them over ice cream and something and brings back the portions, hot and cold. A Presbyterian deacon could eat Cherry Jubilee without a twinge of conscience.

All this took from 8 to 12 p.m., followed by a ride around the old French section, listening to the music of jazz bands as we pa.s.sed the dance halls, winding up the evening's entertainment about 1 a.m. at the Morning Call--another New Orleans inst.i.tution in a cla.s.s of its own. Here rich and poor, young and old, meet on a common level and eat delicious doughnuts and drink cups of combined hot milk and hot coffee poured together simultaneously.

Nov. 24th, we sailed on the Del Mar. The ship's management distributed brightly a.s.sorted paper tape to the pa.s.sengers gathered at the rails of the different decks and the farewells and bon voyages began. A Negro jazz band a.s.sembled on the wharf.

One dancer was as nimble at catching coins tossed from the decks in an old plug hat as he was on his feet. The ship sailed at 4:20 p.m.

SHIPBOARD AND ST. THOMAS

To The Graphic, Greencastle, Indiana

So we approached Charlotte Amalie, the only sizable town in the Virgin Islands, all white and gleaming in the sun and closely following the narrow sh.o.r.e lines. The high hills start almost abruptly from the sh.o.r.e. St. Thomas Island has a population of perhaps 12,000. Of these, Charlotte Amalie has well over half.

Taxis--good enough taxis--took those of us who wanted to go into town. . . When we met another taxi head-on at the top of a hill, he was on his left side, and so were we on ours. Woe is me, I thought. Here is where one of Russellville Bank's oldest directors gets directed to the nearest hospital, if any. . .

During the time I rode taxis there in Charlotte Amalie I never got used to left-hand driving. What makes 'em do it? Even Aura May flinched. And I--I pushed the driver's seat forward some three inches or so.

HOTEL 1829

One Walter J. Maguire owns and manages Hotel 1829. He and his wife "Pete" are natives of New Jersey, living in C.A. for some 10 to 12 years, since acquiring Hotel 1829. Yes, you have guessed it. The hotel was built in 1829, and it shows it. Stucco, brick and some frame. All doors and windows remain wide open. At least until a hurricane comes. The original tile floors remain, showing considerable wear. It has a mammoth combination kitchen, bar and dining room, with built-in ovens and walls hung with quart to five gallon shining copper cooking utensils. All cooking is done with charcoal and gasoline stoves. The second floor sills are closely s.p.a.ced and exposed from the first floor. I don't know the dimensions of these sills, but if one loosened and fell on one, one would never know.

The hotel has a honey of a patio, like you see in travel bureau literature. All first floor doors are double and fasten from the inside with glorified gatehooks that look like the twisted lightning rods on Mrs. Bridge's brick house west of Greencastle, only bigger and heavier. The one hanging on the inside of one of the front main double doors was about three feet long and the "staple" it hooked into was three-quarter inch solid iron.

Hurricane insurance, probably.

Hotel 1829 has a maximum capacity of 24, although if remodeled for efficiency and waste s.p.a.ces done away with, it could accommodate 124. Reservations are required and one hour notice for lunch and three hours for dinner. Rates: $10 per day per person, and up.

C.A. is a free port. Silverware, souvenirs, straw hats and sandals, cigarettes, wines and liquors and vegetable markets are predominant, but the greatest of these are wines and liquors. Old Gold cigarettes and the other three or four princ.i.p.al brands retail at 90 cents per carton, no tax. French champagnes like Moet and Somebody, $3.50 per bottle.

By the time we got there, the market was about closed. It is quite a place. It occupies a short block for length. The market has a roof; the sides and ends are open and the stalls are made of cement. A few stragglers remained with odds and ends of oranges, bananas, limes (4 for 5 cents), lemons, potatoes, peppers and things of that sort.

WATER SHORTAGE

Probably the biggest problem for Charlotte Amalie is that of good water, particularly drinking water. It is scarce and during the dry season, very scarce. Mr. Maguire told me drilling for wells is out of the question. They are either dry, or salt water. St.

Thomas has no lakes, natural ponds, rivers or streams. It is even said that women sometimes wash their hair in the ever-present Coca-Cola. As a result of the water shortage, large patches of steep mountainside are cemented with water catches at the bottom for the rains when they do come.

All the police, the woman behind the window at the post office and the school children were Negroes, neatly dressed. No race problem here that I could see. A very few women carried loads balanced on their heads. When the ship docked about five or six rowboats of boys gathered on the bay side. The idea was to throw pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters down and they would dive for them. They rarely missed. . . They stayed from 10:30 a.m. to 3:40 p.m., when the ship sailed. One of the ship's officers told me the average take was three to four dollars.

Since leaving the island of St. Thomas we have moved steadily on.

The ship averages something in the low 20's of our land miles- per-hour. . . Now we are far past the eastern hump of South America, have crossed the Equator, turned back southwest and are running along the coast of Brazil, and tomorrow we dock in Rio.