| I was only three, but I remember two things clearlyFirst, we stayed just across Canal Street from the French Quarter in the Jung Hotel, on one of the higher floorsIt was the first building more than two stories high I had ever been in, in the first real city I had ever seenI can remember the awe I felt looking out over all the city lights at nightI dont recall what Mother and I did in New Orleans, but Ill never forget what happened one of the times I got on the train to leaveAs we pulled away from the station, Mother knelt by the side of the railroad tracks and cried as she waved good-byeI can see her there still, crying on her knees, as if it were yesterday
For more than fifty years, from that first trip, New Orleans has always had a special fascination for meI love its music, food, people, and spiritWhen I was fifteen, my family took a vacation to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and I got to hear Al Hirt, the great trumpeter, in his own clubAt first they wouldnt let me in because I was underageAs Mother and I were about to walk away, the doorman told us that Hirt was sitting in his car reading just dolce and gabbana around the corner, and that only he could let me inI found himin his Bentley no lesstapped on the window, and made my caseHe got out, took Mother and me into the club, and put us at a table near the frontHe and his group played a great setit was my first live jazz experienceAl Hirt died while I was PresidentI wrote his wife and told her the story, expressing my gratitude for a big mans long-ago kindness to a boy
When I was in high school, I played the tenor saxophone solo on a piece about New Orleans called Crescent City SuiteI always thought I did a better job on it because I played it with memories of my first sight of the cityWhen I was twenty-one, I won a Rhodes scholarship in New OrleansI think I did well in the interview in part because I felt at home thereWhen I was a young law professor, Hillary and I had a couple of great trips to New Orleans for conventions, staying at a quaint little hotel in the French Quarter, the CornstalkWhen I was governor of Arkansas, we played in the Sugar Bowl there, losing to Alabama in one of the legendary Bear Bryants last great victoriesAt least he was born and rolex submariners grew up in Arkansas! When I ran for President, the people of New Orleans twice gave me overwhelming victory margins, assuring Louisianas electoral votes for our side
Now I have seen most of the worlds great cities, but New Orleans will always be specialfor coffee and beignets at the Morning Call on the Mississippi; for the music of Aaron and Charmaine Neville, the old guys at Preservation Hall, and the memory of Al Hirt; for jogging through the French Quarter in the early morning; for amazing meals at a host of terrific restaurants with John Breaux, Sheriff Harry Lee, and my other pals; and most of all, for those first memories of my motherThey are the magnets that keep pulling me down the Mississippi to New Orleans
While Mother was in New Orleans, I was in the care of my grandparentsThey were incredibly conscientious about meThey loved me very much; sadly, much better than they were able to love each other or, in my grandmothers case, to love my motherOf course, I was blissfully unaware of all this at the timeI just knew that I was lovedLater, when I became interested in children growing up in hard gucci bags discount circumstances and learned something of child development from Hillarys work at the Yale Child Study Center, I came to realize how fortunate I had beenFor all their own demons, my grandparents and my mother always made me feel I was the most important person in the world to themMost children will make it if they have just one person who makes them feel that way
My grandmother, Edith Grisham Cassidy, stood just over five feet tall and weighed about 180 poundsMammaw was bright, intense, and aggressive, and had obviously been pretty onceShe had a great laugh, but she also was full of anger and disappointment and obsessions she only dimly understoodShe took it all out in raging tirades against my grandfather and my mother, both before and after I was born, though I was shielded from most of themShe had been a good student and ambitious, so after high school she took a correspondence course in nursing from the Chicago School of NursingBy the time I was a toddler she was a private-duty nurse for a man not far from our house on Hervey StreetI can still remember running down the sidewalk to meet her when she came omega de ville men's watches home from work
Mammaws main goals for me were that I would eat a lot, learn a lot, and always be neat and cleanWe ate in the kitchen at a table next to the windowMy high chair faced the window, and Mammaw tacked playing cards up on the wooden window frame at mealtimes so that I could learn to countShe also stuffed me at every meal, because conventional wisdom at the time was that a fat baby was a healthy one, as long as he bathed every dayAt least once a day, she read to me from Dick and Jane books until I could read them myself, and from World Book Encyclopedia volumes, which in those days were sold door-to-door by salesmen and were often the only books besides the Bible in working peoples housesThese early instructions probably explain why I now read a lot, love card games, battle my weight, and never forget to wash my hands and brush my teeth
I adored my grandfather, the first male influence in my life, and felt pride that I was born on his birthdayJames Eldridge Cassidy was a slight man, about five eight, but in those years still strong and handsomeI always thought he resembled the actor Randolph rolex replica supplies Sco |
| 