Recent Novel
The Newspaper Shack
In a city brimming with cultural turmoil amid a push for racial equality, one young boy with a heart of gold witnesses astonishing changes in 1970s New Orleans.
Sixth-grader French Fry and his group of misfit friends are growing up during the first years of desegregation at their public elementary school. Even though the change is slow and the conflict is high, they are often blind to injustice. The friends ultimately handle the transformation of their town very differently but remain loyal to one another—despite the many reasons that threaten to tear them apart.
But can an evolving world truly never impact them, especially when family dynamics come into play? One thing is certain: in a place set on change, some things might just stay the same.
The Newspaper Shack
Chapter 1
I found myself sitting alone at the crowded breakfast counter of a Magazine Street cafe in New Orleans drinking coffee with chicory and reading the Times-Picayune. A short article on page three of the Metro section caught my eye, “Demolition of the condemned Dwight D. Eisenhower Elementary School building has been scheduled. Neighborhood groups celebrate.” They say no one is going to care about meaningless stories told by a tired old man living a simple life. But once everything else fades away, those foggy memories linger. With age and wisdom, I have come to realize that I don’t really remember things as they actually were. It is only the understanding of long-ago events filtered through time, my selective memory, and my own biased perception of events that is at the foundation of the person I had hoped to become. That’s why memories are so cherished—they give personal meaning and context to life’s randomness.
Still, I don’t understand why some people love to keep scrapbooks. Photos bring back the realities of life’s disappointments, poor decisions, avoidable failures and regrets long after it is way too late to do anything about it. Photos also open windows for unwelcome strangers to peer into the innermost circles of personal space. I have only a few childhood photos here and there. I threw most of that old stuff away years ago. I did manage to keep a personal letter from my favorite teacher in an envelope with my name handwritten and a gold star where a stamp would normally go. I have a medal for winning the running event at our sixth grade field day, and I still have a white dress shirt signed by my childhood friends. That’s about it.
Until now, I have preferred to keep my memories locked away in private thoughts, without the unwanted intrusion of the truthful reality photos can dig up. The optimistic and innocent French Fry I was at twelve is gone. Gone because I’ve grown up. In fact, all my former selves are long gone and mostly forgotten. I don’t intend to exhume them from their comfortable graves now, but I have learned not to hide from my restless ghosts either, especially those still stirring in the recesses of childhood memories. I spent years trying to do that, but they always come back.
I took my first breath on November 21, 1963, in the early afternoon, twenty hours before the JFK assassination. It was a cool and sunny New Orleans day when I was delivered at Baptist Hospital weeks ahead of schedule. The doctor showed up dressed in golf clothes an hour too late. “You were delivered by a nurse and a young intern,” my mother always said. I am one of the very last Boomers, like a generational caboose hooked to a long train of seventy-nine million people. In fact, if I had been born on the original due date, January 2, 1964, I would not be a Boomer at all.
Time is not a loyal ally. It was never really on our side. It is two- faced. Time lures us in with youthful promises of happy days and hopeful dreams. Then, without warning, it quickly switches sides, and just like that, childhood becomes history. The clock is now a relentless foe. Time does not show compassion or pity. It ultimately takes everything. The good, the brave, and the villain will all lose without distinction.
Time is the hooded hangman we all eventually must face. The only resistance against sure defeat is in the handful of cherished youthful memories that somehow manage to linger in our minds like an oasis in a desolate landscape of lost dreams. In time, everything of value fades away just as mountains are eventually worn down by flowing water. The struggle’s finale is always anticlimactic. The end is expressed by two simple words, "time's up."
