THE HOUSE ON PATTERSON
By Dennis Sheldon
 

The house on Patterson was a mile and a half downriver from Algiers Point where the Canal Street ferry puts in on the West Bank.  Valerie and I had crossed the river and were making a pilgrimage, hoping to take a step back in time.

We walked on the road atop the levee, the Mississippi on our left, old Algiers to our right.  Across the river, the New Orleans French Quarter seemed to crouch as if hiding behind the levee, the spire of St. Louis Cathedral at its center.  Freighters from around the world used to line the docks along the river but the port had long since been moved, making room for the tourist attractions that had taken its place.  Jax Brewery was still there, rising above Decatur where for years it blanketed the Quarter with the smell of malts and hops.   Now it was an empty shell, a shopping center hocking trinkets and souvenirs.

The levee road was a broad pathway of white oyster shells reminiscent of the Yellow Brick Road to Oz, though in spring the poppies that grow here are pink not orange.  We'd missed the spring on the levee, when the grass was tall, the poppies in bloom and when the soft wet air smelled of wild onions.  The levee had been our front yard when we lived on Patterson.  We sat in the soft grass of its gentle slope back then and sang while I played guitar.  We feasted on spicy boiled crab, crawfish, potatoes and ears of corn while drinking ice cold Dixie Beer.  We sometimes hung there until the mosquitoes came out at sunset.  The mosquitoes left me alone so I was usually the last to go in.

Patterson runs along the levee on the downriver side of Old Algiers, a narrow street the width of an alley way in California.  Our house, half of a duplex, sat at an angle facing the levee, so close that when a big ship went by, the old house would rattle and hum with the vibration of the ship's engines.  We became familiar with the meaning of various whistles as ships and tugs moving barges up or down the river signaled one another as they passed.

The river was a part of the house, never forgotten or taken for granted.  We crossed it daily to get into the city.  The crossings were an adventure, a time to talk, read or just reflect.  We'd cross sometimes when the fog was thick, the ferry seeming to find its way like a blind man as it headed for the sound of a periodic blast from a horn on the unseen opposite shore.  We'd stand on deck, wet from the heavy mist-filled air, listening and wondering what our chances were a ship would appear suddenly upon us.  On certain winter days when there was no fog, the wind would blow sharp and cold and the river would be the color of rich milk chocolate and the sky a deep blue as clean and crisp as the air.

In summer, the river was slow and predictable.  In spring it moved quick and dangerous, carrying trash from the North and climbing to the top of the levee which kept it from flooding the neighborhood.  We'd watch it rise, looking back down on Patterson, realizing how low and vulnerable the houses sat, the water well above the highest roof top.  When the water receded, it left behind clean white sand beaches.  To find the beaches you had to make your way through groves of trees at the river's edge and there you could sit and remember all that Mark Twain had ever written about the Mississippi.

Valerie and I walked on, grateful that it seemed little had changed in the old neighborhood.  The ferry was new, so was the ferry building, but Algiers Point with its Catholic Church steeple rising behind the local store fronts looked the same.  The old two-story duplex where Kate and Sue once lived was still intact, looking exactly as it had back then, its sloping balcony covering the sidewalk below like the banquettes of old New Orleans.  The river makes a dramatic turn around the Point.  We could stand on that balcony and watch a ship pass then go to the back balcony off the kitchen and see the same ship heading in the opposite direction as it moved upriver.

Across the street from the duplex is a grove of trees, hiding one of those beaches of fine white sand.  A few doors down is a giant brick building which I am told was used as a hospital during the Civil War.  Next to that, a vast open expanse of land spreads out along the road, a prize piece of real estate that had yet to be developed.  From here you can see the Mississippi River Bridge in the far distance.

Here you feel like you’re in the Louisiana countryside far away from everything.  The distant bridge crosses from New Orleans to Gretna, miles from Algiers.  The ferry was always a much more convenient way of getting to our house—convenient, that is, if you knew the ferry schedule.  The fact that we had no phone at the house frustrated many of our friends who found it difficult to make plans to visit us.  It seemed we lived in the boonies, even though downtown was just across the river.

We had walked the mile and a half and were thirsty.  We looked forward to a cold Barq's root beer or red drink, figuring we could pick one up at Sinatra's and sit down on the levee and relax a little.  All of a sudden, nothing looked familiar.  We looked around for reference points.  A chain link fence that crossed the levee just ahead blocked the entrance to the Navy base that was a little beyond where we had lived.  We saw where Whitney Boulevard dead-ended at Patterson then recognized our house.  The windows were boarded up and the entire duplex was abandoned and overgrown.

It then hit us:  Sinatra's, the heart of the neighborhood, was no longer there.  The old market and the house attached to it had vanished without a trace, not even the foundation remained.  Weeds had overtaken the small plot where it had stood.  Tall trees shaded and surrounded the empty patch of ground.  The soul and charm of the place were no more than an echo now.
 

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Joe Sinatra's Grocery looked as though it had been there forever the day I first arrived.  A wood-shingled roof hung over a hard-packed dirt sidewalk in front of the tiny market.  It was the Old South but looked like it belonged on the dusty street of a western movie set.  A Barq's sign with the familiar red and yellow label stood at the edge of the street in front.  The signs were used to announce the daily specials at local bars or neighborhood markets.  This one said simply "Apartment for rent."

I didn't want to live this far down river but figured I should check it out anyway.  I headed towards the store, mindful of my beard and long hair which more often than not provoked ridicule from strangers on the street, be it here in New Orleans or back out west in California.  I wasn't sure just what kind of neighborhood I'd ventured into and so prepared for the worst.

The roof shading the banquette kept the hot summer air at bay outside the little store.  I stood outside the double screen doors looking into the dimly lit interior.  I could hear the fan that seemed to be pushing or pulling the air past me, the darkness and the air leaving an impression it might be cooler inside.  I went in.

The sweet cinnamon smell of a baking cobbler filled the place.  High splintered wood shelves surrounded me, filled with dry goods, including little treasures from the past still waiting to be discovered.  My favorite was the stack of old writing tablets with the Cisco Kid and Poncho on the cover.

Laura Sinatra came down the steps leading from her kitchen and into the store.  It was Laura who was baking.  She was near seventy with thick black hair she kept pulled back in a bun.  She wore a muumuu which I would learn later was her standard summer wear.  Laura lived behind the store with her sister Josie who was also near seventy.  Together they kept watch over their younger retarded brother, Johnny.

Johnny was fifty-five, the child of the family.  He was an Italian man with a full head of salt and pepper hair and a bright round fleshy face that was rarely without a smile.  His smile often belied his mischievous ways.  Laura and Josie would repeatedly scold him with little hope of ever putting an end to his mischief.  He raised birds in the back, mowed lawns in the neighborhood and ran errands which included delivering groceries.

Joe Sinatra had been their father, long since dead along with his wife.  The sisters and Johnny had lived in the neighborhood all their lives.  A journey across the river into New Orleans had always been a rare and special occasion when they were young.  These days, they rarely left the store.

Laura escorted me down the street to show me the apartment.  It seemed she hardly noticed my appearance.  The duplex consisted of two shotgun apartments.  There were three big rooms and an equally big kitchen.  The bathroom was at the back of the house along with an enclosed porch which led out to a small backyard, all for only $70 a month.  It was a lot more space than I needed but it was a bargain, so I took it.

My first job was to get rid of the giant cockroaches that had laid claim to the place.  I had been in New Orleans for six months and had by then devised my own anti-roach program.  I carefully painted the baseboards of every room with toxic poison.  My first night there, I laid on my mattress on the floor, sweating and dreaming heat induced dreams while roaches scattered and died all around me.  The window fan whirred and wobbled in the one window in the room.  In time I learned to control the draft it pulled through the house by opening and closing various windows and doors, directing the breeze to where it was most needed.

Within days, the first of many friends seeking shelter asked if he could move in for awhile.  Richard was a co-worker, a graduate in architecture who later that year would open up his own firm in Washington, D.C.  He stayed just a few weeks.  During his stay, he retrieved scrap wood from the river and built shelves and benches for the front room.

I began to acquire furniture, including five sets of springs and mattresses that doubled as beds and couches in the three front rooms of the house.  A telephone cable spool became a front room table.  Chairs appeared, including an old mission style rocker that is still with me, and there was an armoire or two.  The house quickly began to take shape, instantly coming to life.

Richard invited two guys and a girl to stay.  They were on the road, this being a time when people still read Kerouac.  They eventually moved on as did Richard, making way for the others who followed.  Valerie , Holly and Kate all came, their stays overlapping as they each fled men they wanted to leave behind.  Janie came for a visit, fell in love with the river and stayed on, postponing the beginning of a teaching career out west.

Jorge arrived and took the middle room which was like living in traffic central with people coming and going as they walked from one end of the house to the other.  He came from Michigan, the son of a Mexican father and a German mother, a white boy with an afro.  Chad too lived there for awhile, another architect.  Chad was the straight and narrow one who hid quietly behind a veil of mystery.

Valerie and I planted a garden in the backyard and returned from a trip north to find it filled with gargantuan plants that thrived in the southern sun and humidity.  We gave vegetables to the kids in the neighborhood and to the Sinatras and they all in turn brought us crawfish, crab, gumbo, jambalaya and Sunday platters of food.

We became stoop-sitters, sitting on our porch and watching the world go by.  Summer storms would move through Algiers and we watched as lightning struck up and down the levee, the air cooling slightly, the thunder hurting our ears and the rain falling in torrents.  At night the rainless cloud-filled skies would blink on and off, putting on a show of orange and red neon.  During Christmas, a Navy ship docked in front of the house, strung with Christmas lights.  Cars would pass, neighbors would pass or Johnny would come by, a smile on his face and mischief in his heart.  Life was a spectacle full of ritual and we took the time to enjoy it.

That's why Valerie and I had come back that day.  We wanted to visit a place that had welcomed us and had made us feel at home so long ago.

It was a warm balmy August day, cool by New Orleans standards, the day we returned.  Thirsty, we walked back to a market that had taken over where Sinatra's had left off.  The new market had been a bar when we lived there, alive with locals who drank late into the night.  Now it was a market like any other with all the character of a Seven-Eleven.  Valerie bought a bottle of water, I bought a Coke.  We took our drinks and sat down on the shaded porch of the old house where we'd lived, a house now deserted and perhaps beyond repair.

Over thirty years had passed since we lived there.  Back then, we were in no hurry to get anywhere and so we were able to take the time to appreciate where we found ourselves.  We were young, full of ourselves and still open to discovering the world and the world we discovered amazed us.  Even when we lived there, returning to Patterson Street after a day at work was to make a pilgrimage, as Valerie and I had just done, to take that step back in time or more correctly, to forget time altogether.  Living there on the river, in that house and with each other, let us see, if only for a moment, that it is all so simple.

We were, in those days, like the little kid who falls while learning to walk, only to become fascinated by the dirt he finds in the palm of his hand.

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DENNIS SHELDON majored in film writing at UCLA.  He has had two movie scripts optioned and has worked in television advertising. "The House on Patterson" is from a collection of short stories entitled DRAFT DODGER: Memoir of an American Patriot.  He has just completed his first novel entitled Knucklehead.