New Orleans was different in the 1950s...

By Bob Mathews, Neighbors Magazine

Something happened to New Orleans in the middle of the last century that is happening in Baton Rouge today. The people in New Orleans did not realize the ir city was changing back then, and most of us don’t realize that a big change has swept over the Red Stick during the last decade.

I heard myself telling a story to an old friend the other day that brought all that to mind. I told him the tale to illustrate the point that my mo ther was a very brave woman, but it also tells about the change that has overtaken the Pelican State ’s capital city .

See, I grew up in a small apartment on top of my dad’s laundry and dry cleaning plant on Tulane Ave nue in New Orleans . Back then , the only way to get in and out of the bigg est city in the South was Tulane Ave nue . It was about the time when the possibility of building the Interstate was being discussed in the pages of the Times-Picayune .

Believe it or not , it was a time when the city was so safe that we would leave our family station wagon parked on Rendon Street , which ran under our bedroom window . T he doors were always u nlocked and the ignition switch (which all the cars had back then) did not lock automatically when you removed the key. Our car sat on Rendon Street day and night for years with the doors unlocked and the ignition switch in the “on” position . I t never occurred to us that anyone would steal our car. That is just how it was back then in New Orleans' CBD.

I mean , think about it. When we moved to Kenilworth 11 years ago , we did not have to keep our storeroom locked and we would never have thought of locking our car s in the carport. D on’t try doing any of that today. We Kenilworth residents live in the very heart of the downtown area of the largest city in the state. The same can be said for people in Pollard Estates, Bocage, Westminister/Pine Park, Oak Hills, etc. , etc.

At some point in the early 1950s my dad decided it would be a good idea to build us a house in uptown New Orleans so my brother and I could attend Tulane University . Of course, my brother graduated from Southwestern Louisiana University (now ULL in Lafayette ) and I am a proud LSU alum .

Anyway, dad built this very nice 1950s-style house with knotty pine paneling and terrazzo floors in the family room , and we became commuters. From then on , e very evening when we closed our business , instead of just climbing the stairs , we had to get in to our station wagon and drive about ten miles to our new home in the uptown area near Tulane University .

O ne evening we went to get into our car and guess what – no car. Someone had stolen our dark green 1952 Chevrolet Bel Air station wagon, so we called the NOPD. While we were waiting for them to arrive , my mother caught the Tulane Avenue bus down to Carrolton Avenue where she transfer red to the Carrolton bus which stopped just three blocks from our home. (She could walk those three blocks in the pitch black dark of pre- daylight savings time without any cause for concern.) Her job was to get the Buick out of the garage and come back for us so we could get home.

Back at the Superior Laundry and Dry Cleaners the police had arrived , but before long my mom shocked us all by driving up in our station wagon. She had discovered our car in the parking lot outside the Katz and Bestoff (K&B) Drugstore on Carrolton. She quickly got off the bus and stole our car back from the thieves. She thought she was being heroic , but even at the age of nine or ten I thought she had done something very foolish. The police were flabbergasted until they received a report about a stolen car on Carrolton in front of the K&B. They were told to look for a dark green Chevrolet station wagon.

 The mystery was solved when my dad asked the name of the people who had reported my mother for stealing their car. It turned out to be the couple down the street . They were in the rent-all business and they had a station wagon just like ours. A pparently the husband drove home early that afternoon and when the wife went to leave their business she walked around looking for where he r husband had parked their car . She took our station wagon thinking it was theirs. The two cars were pretty much identical , and the poor woman never knew the difference. We all had a good laugh, and the man drove his station wagon to the K&B and rescued his wife.      

Anyway , the point is that since about 1970 , uptown New Orleans is not a place where it is safe to walk around alone after dark, and you have about a 50-50 chance of having your car stolen on any given day despite all the modern locks and burglar alarms anybody ever devised.

But t hat story explain s what is happening in Baton Rouge right before our eyes. This from a time back when I was attending LSU and you would see two cars stopped on the brand new Interstate with their drivers caught up in conversation. Things they are a-changin ’ , my friend.

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