MY NEW ORLEANS STORY - Part 4 Final

To make sense of this, please scroll down to read parts 1, 2, and 3 first.---------------Hugh Murray
             “What did I tell you?  Huh!  What did I tell you?  Didn’t I tell you they were going to get him.”  It was probably early 1964 when my Uncle Jim greeted me with those words.  I was living with my parents and had returned from a store, and Jim was there on a rare visit.  He was a machinist on ships and had sailed all over the world.  Jim was a few years older than my dad, shorter, but very strong.  They had both been raised in dire poverty; their mother died giving birth to Huey.  Their father had been in the military, but died out West.  (Only upon my father’ death did I learn that he did not just die, he had committed suicide.)

            Jim and Huey were raised in New Orleans near the city dump.  Huey told me he could push his hand against the wall, and it would move away from the floor so he could see the ground.  Breakfast might consist of weak tea and stale bread from which they scattered the roaches.  My dad finished school at 3^rd grade, but use to lie saying he had finished 5^th grade instead.  His “brudder” had a similar education.

            My dad generally worked 5 days a week and drank Friday nights – unless Jim was in town.  They would sit in the kitchen and reminisce about their struggles.  Huey was younger and bigger than Jim.  As a young man, Huey had wanted to be a boxer, and some photos showed him with a developed body.  One of his first jobs was as a bouncer in a prohibition-era saloon.  He allowed the wrong person in the door, and he and other employees were arrested for breaking the law.  However, the newly elected Roosevelt Administration indicated repeal, and the charges against all were dropped.  Nevertheless, finding a job in the Great Depression was not easy.

            Huey met my mother when she was employed as a clerk in a store owned by one of her many brothers.  Her dad had 13 children by two wives; one died and he had remarried.  My mom, Millie, was the eldest from the 2^nd wife.  My grandfather or great grandfather had fled the famine in Ireland, come to Illinois, joined the Union Army, and following the war, ventured South.  My grandfather was in the liquor business, and had a sizable home with a large yard not far from down town.  He and his friends and associates would play poker at his home.  Millie must have been there, for one of his associates was taken with her, and she with him.  They decided to get married.

            When Millie invited one of her older half sisters, the sibling replied, “It would be better if you married a nigger!”  Millie’s mother had been German-Lutheran, but converted to Roman Catholicism on her death bed.  The whole family was Roman.  Millie was rather well educated, having graduated from 8^th grade.  (She may have received a better education than those receiving a BA today.)   She was surely more of a rebel, for when she was going to marry Gus Cohn, she was going to do it in the Reform Synagogue, and she was converting to Judaism.  Only two brothers from her side attended her wedding.

            Gus was short and older than Millie.  I know little about him, because my father, Millie’s second husband, did not like to hear about her first marriage.  Gus sold liquor, had a car, and a Black chauffeur.  Part of his territory was Mississippi.  A Jew, a Black, and a Catholic who had converted to Judaism, travelling in Mississippi to sell liquor may not have been the most popular group.  Occasionally, they would be insulted and denounced by ministers.  Then, in the hotel at night, they would receive a phone call from the same minister, asking to purchase liquor discreetly.  Gus would not sell to them under such circumstances.  At the state line when they returned to Louisiana, Millie said the chauffeur would always give a big sigh of relief.  After a few years, Gus died of leukemia.  Millie, not having been born into the tribe, returned to her family and Catholicism.  But she remained philo-Semitic.

            While most white New Orleanians spoke with a Brooklynese-Jersey type accent, my mother’s was more Northern, more standard Mid Western.  I recall at her funeral some of her sisters speaking about the “goils,” and  referring to older women.  My dad counted, won, too, tree, fo.  In NO an accent usually revealed a religious preference – Brooklynese meant a native and Catholic; Southern drawl meant born elsewhere and Protestant.

            Millie was older than Huey, but she was an attractive blond who stood 5’ 2.  Huey was a bit over 6’.  They were married in a civil ceremony, and later I appeared.  Millie was better educated and helped Huey in many small ways and in trying to get jobs.  When I was a baby, he drove a laundry truck, an electric vehicle.  Because he had a young child, he was not drafted, but worked building ships at Higgins Shipyards, ships which historian Stephen Ambrose credits with helping to win the war against the Axis.  Years later, Huey would die of a cancer associated with asbestos, which he installed when building the ships.  While Huey was building the ships, Jim was manning them, carrying supplies to the Allies.  He said sometimes the ships were made of concrete, and only one torpedo from a German U-boat would have sunk the freighter.

            Shortly after the war I was in bed near the kitchen and overheard Huey and Jim speaking about old times.  “If only Hitler had won.”  The other agreed.  It would have been much better for the German people.  (Huey, Jim, Millie, and I were all half German, the other half green Irish on one side, Orange Irish on the other.)  Whatever their personal views, Huey later assured me that if drafted, he would certainly have fought against the Germans.  Jim was facing the German enemy every time he sailed the ocean – and there were German U-boats spotted near the mouth of the Mississippi.  As a mischievous child I quickly learned how to start an argument between my parents.  Friday night, when Huey drank, I could turn the radio onto CBS WWL for a program the Goldbergs.  Huey would go into a rant on the Jews, and Millie would nervously endure it.

            Yet things were not so simple.  I was going on 10 and on a Wednesday as the radio was reporting the latest election returns (things were slower then).  “Daddy, who is winning?”  Truman he replied, with a big smile.   Millie than added, But Dewey is supposed to win.  Huey had voted for Truman.  My mother preferred Dewey, but did not vote.

            I don’t know how old I was, but I was quite young, when my mother woke me one morning, “Go beat up your father.”  What?  Why?  Jim and been over the night before, and with Huey they decided to turn off the small gas heater near my bed.  Then they would turn it on again, but without a match to light it.  They would eliminate the sissy son.  Millie stopped them.  She saved my life.  We often read about Muslims who kill their children for reasons of honor – “honor killings.”  It is not only Muslims.  Father-son relations are often difficult.  (Millie saved me then, but she may have lived to rue her decision.  Her last words to me were, "He's no good.")

            I chose to speak Northern, like my mom.  I did well in school and was a good boy.  I had been christened Catholic, but neither parent was particularly religious.  It was simply a way to get ahead in Catholic New Orleans.  Not having much religious training, Millie’s relatives intervened and pushed her into having me attend catechism about 7^th grade.  I rebelled, and it was the only class where I disrupted things.  A few years later, I found the Unitarian Church.

            Shortly after my arrest in the sit-in, I stopped by my parents’ home.  Jim’s wife was there, holding her head as if the world had ended.  Because I had joined CORE and the integrationists, Jim decided to do something to restore honor to the family.  He sent some money to George Lincoln Rockwell of the American Nazi Party.  In the following years when we met, his usual greeting was “How are the burr heads doing?”  He meant the Blacks.  I would roll my eyes.

            I do not know exactly when, but for a time he quit sailing and drove a taxi, a Metry Cab.  He lived in Metairie, the suburb adjacent to NO.  In the 1960s with the new Administration, he would sometimes say, “Oooh that Bobby.  They’re goin to get that Bobby” (meaning Attorney General Robert Kennedy).  I ignored such fulminations.  But he said this more and more when I saw him.  I dismissed such ravings.

            It must have been early 1964, the first time we say each other in awhile.  Jim gloated, “What I tell you?  Didn’t I tell you they were going to get him?”  What do you mean? What are you talking about?” I asked annoyed.  “Didn’t I tell you they were goin to get Kennedy?”  “What?!” my tone rose in amazement.  Then I added, “Well, you said they were going to get Bobby.”  “So they got the other one instead.”  Shocked.  Then exasperated I asked another question, “Who is the they you keep talking about?”  “The mob out in the Parish.”  Out in the Parish meant Jefferson Parish, where Metairie is located.  The mob there was Carlos Marcello.

            In 1964 this sounded so bizarre, I then walked away from such foolishness.  Why should I, a Tulane grad with a BA and an MA listen to the ravings of a poorly educated taxi driver?  My arrogance, my ignorance was exposed in my dismissive tones.  Later many researchers seek to link Marcello, who at times worked with Banister and Ferrie, to the assassination in Dallas.  In early 1964, it just seemed crazy to me, and I changed the subject

            Jim may not have known anything.  He may have just been raving.  But I wish I had listened more to my poorly educated relatives.  I might have learned a great deal.