The Times-Picayune in New Orleans was a powerful, prominent newspaper in the 1960s. I didn’t realize then what a great experience it was to work there.
George Healy, the smart, fiery editor, made a name for himself covering the 1927 Mississippi River floods as a young reporter.
He wrote a book late in his long career called “A Lifetime on Deadline.” Newspaper people everywhere could identify with it.
There were other legendary writers at the paper in those days. They tutored and mentored us young journalists, and we tried to absorb a smidgen of their savvy.
Pete Baird, a veteran newsman, wrote three one-sentence snippets of commentary a day on current events called “Picayunes.” It had a four-inch spot on the front page, and everybody read it. We all wanted that job but couldn’t match his wit and wisdom.
The newspaper building, with its mammoth presses, massive old linotype machines and noisy, smoky wide-open newsroom, was on St. Charles Avenue at Lafayette Square. We knew when the presses were running, because they shook the place.
Streetcars rumbled along the rails beside the building. We could watch the splendor and lunacy of Mardi Gras parades from the newsroom windows.
Historic, famous restaurants and cafes were in walking distance. We got po-boys, muffulettas and gumbo on our dinner breaks.
Ticker tapes and teletype machines clattered around the clock, and telephones rang incessantly. Dozens of old manual typewriters clanking at the same time created a roar in the building.
Stories typed on rough newsprint and stained with editors’ red ink zoomed in pneumatic chutes between the newsroom and the typesetters upstairs.
We could be working at a house fire or murder scene one minute and then be covering a concert or horse races later in the day.
There were deadly dull assignments like city hall meetings and court hearings and even flower shows when we didn’t know a camellia from an azalea.
Then we might be dispatched to the state capitol and the circus atmosphere of legislative sessions. Tobacco smoke was thick in the chambers and legislators nipped from whiskey bottles in their desk drawers as they passed state laws.
We did some investigative stories called exposes back then on gambling and prostitution. Police raided the places, got some publicity, and the businesses reopened the next day.
Our newspaper press cards got us in nearly any public event in town. Our city press credentials signed by the mayor and police superintendent got us in anywhere.
I fell in love with New Orleans and saw and wrote about things in the city’s streets, stadiums, strip joints, museums and cathedrals that I could never have imagined as a country boy from Springhill who went to college in Natchitoches.
Working in New Orleans and living in the Metairie suburbs in those saner, safer times enriched my life.
My older son had not started to school. He and I soaked up the flavor of old Metairie walking the neighborhoods, riding bikes and at times with me pulling him in a red wagon.
He got his first haircut at Whitey’s Barber Shop. Mr. Mumphrey at the drug store gave him free ice cream cones. We had meatball po-boys two blocks from home at Tony’s restaurant with the red and white checked tablecloths.
There were shopping trips and explorations at the sprawling Schwegmann’s Grocery. You could get a cold Dixie Beer for a dime and sip it while shopping or take home a six-pack for fifty cents. Fresh shrimp were three pounds for a dollar.
We went to the first shopping mall that either of us had ever seen and discovered the Piccadilly Cafeteria with its pies and crispy fried chicken. Our lunch some days was a large order of the best fried onion rings in the world at J.C.’s Restaurant in the bowling alley.
On free weekends, we would romp in the sand and water at Lake Pontchartrain and then ride the Ferris wheel and the Wild Mouse rollercoaster at the Pontchartrain amusement park.
We played on the swings and slides at City Park on hot summer days and cooled off with grape snowcones.
It was a great time and place to begin a career and for a little boy and his dad to start growing up.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES