As Mother’s Day approaches, I thought I'd tell you a bit more about my mother. I’ve introduced her briefly in articles titled Happy Mother’s Day, Nine Great Tips on How to Have a King Cake Party, and most recently in my post titled Funky Easter Bonnet and Creole Cream Cheese. In that latest article, I said she liked the colors red, white, and blue because they were sailor-ish. In a recent conversation with Mom she confirmed this once again. Upon telling her that I had posted a picture of my brother and me on the internet…me in that red, white, and blue dress, she responded to my satisfaction with, “Oh, I remember that dress, it was sailor-ish.”
The following story I am going to tell you about my mother concerns one trip on a Public Service Bus in New Orleans.
My mother doesn’t drive a car because she says it makes her too nervous. It wasn’t all that uncommon for housewives of her generation not to drive. When my brother and I were kids and she wanted to go someplace she would get us ready and we would take the Public Service Bus, most often heading to Canal Street to shop. Canal Street was lined with dime stores and department stores; some of them quite up-scale and elegant. Those days are gone with the wind as the famous street is now bursting with T-shirt shops and purse snatchers.
Sometimes Mom would insist my brother and I say the rosary on the way to town. This was a Catholic thing to do and it helped to keep us busy on the 30 minute ride. But I was busy enough without having to say ten Hail Mary’s and one Our Father. I hated riding the bus, particularly after they became air conditioned. The air was stuffy, the people were stinky, and I would get nervousness sickness. I cannot tell you how many times I plotted my escape from a Public Service Bus. My imagination would go wild with visions of ringing the pull cord to alert the driver that I needed to exit the bus because I was sick. This never happened but I contemplated it many times. Oh how I preferred the old buses that had windows you could open for fresh air!
On one particular outing, my mom, brother and I boarded the bus and paid our 10 cent fare. We looked for a seat and headed to the rear of the bus. We were the only white people sitting in the back of the bus at the time and my mom was the only person who seemed to care about the man who was laying on the floor with a cut on his head. She leaned over to him and asked him if he was okay. She called out to the bus driver. My recollection of this is a bit fuzzy, but as I recall, no one responded at all. I’ve always wondered if they all thought he was drunk and that’s why they were indifferent.
I have many stories of riding the bus but this particular memory serves to illustrate by mother‘s kindness to strangers.
Happy Mother's Day!
Mom loves Homemade Peach Ice Cream. This recipe is a New Orleans favorite taken from NOPSI’s Cookbook, From Woodstoves to Microwaves. NOPSI stands for New Orleans Public Service, the electric company that ran the buses. Many of the recipes in the book were originally included in customer's bills or published in the Rider’s Digest, a pamphlet that passenger’s read while traveling on the bus.
