LSU Memories

I attended Louisiana State University in the mid 60's, following in my dad's footsteps. He attended for a year just before World War II, but after he and his brother Leo worked on the construction of the Huey P. Long Bridge in New Orleans. While my dad was born in New Orleans, the first Peyronnin settled in Baton Rouge back in the early 1800's. Jacques (Jacob) Peyronnin had come over from Bordeaux, France.

Although I was raised in Chicago, I had visited New Orleans many times in my childhood. I applied to LSU at my father's suggestion and entered in 1965. Baton Rouge was a far different place than Chicago's northern suburbs.

The LSU campus is beautiful. The Olmsted Brothers Firm of Brookline, Massachusetts, created the original design for the campus in 1921. It is admired for the 1,200 live oak trees that shade the grounds of the university and are filled with Spanish moss. The grounds also include azaleas, crepe myrtles, ligustrum, and camellias. Fifty-seven buildings on the LSU campus are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
I began working at the campus radio station in 1966 which was located in the student union. "WLSU, Baton Rouge, Louisiana!", I would announce frequently as a disc jockey while spinning those platters. Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown were all popular. I was hooked.

I lived on campus in the North Stadium dormitory. I had a room on the fourth floor of Tiger Stadium. The rooms were spartan but pleasant. It was an all-male dorm with shared shower and bathroom facilities. I could look west out my window and watch the barges and riverboats slowly passing by on the Mississippi River. There was no air conditioning, so it was hot and steamy much of the year.

Mike the tiger lived in a cage about 100 yards to the northwest of my room. The frequent northwest breezes meant that the pungent odor of tiger poop wafted into my room. Thankfully Mike was the quiet type, only occasionally roaring when he was hungry. Mike was brought into Tiger Stadium for home football games locked in a portable trailer cage. The fans loved him.

My favorite Mike story was the time James Carville, former Clinton aide and LSU alum, stole the trailer cage one night in a memorable prank. They drove through neighborhoods screaming, "You’ all seen Mike the tiger?!?" What a hoot.

My roommate was from New Iberia, Louisiana, deep in Cajun Country. He took me to his hometown several weekends. I remember stopping at bars and restaurants where mostly French was spoken, Cajun style. One year I attended Marti Gras in Lafayette, Louisiana, which, although smaller than New Orleans' celebration, was still colorful and passionate. I ate a lot of crabs, crawfish and seafood gumbo and drank plenty of Dixie and Jax beer!

I learned a few phrases unique to the area. "How's yer mom and dem?" "Where you at?" "Who dat?" And my favorite cheer is, ""Hot boudin, cold coush coush, come on Tigers, poosh, poosh, poosh!"

LSU had more than 20,000 students in those days, but only a few hundred were Black. LSU, like many other southern state schools, had only recently opened up enrollment up to minorities. I shared my dormitory with several of them, and I found out that most had come from throughout the state in hopes of bettering their lives. Many were athletes, and the best of them got to live in a top tier dorm.

The football team had a winning record under Coach Charlie "Cholly Mac" McClendon. Cholly Mac had succeeded "Pepsodent" Paul Deitzel, who won a national championship in 1958 with the help of his tough defensive squad known as the "Chinese bandits." But news was being made on the basketball court where "Pistol" Pete Maravich was setting college basketball scoring records. He was simply amazing and went on to be a great pro.

I can't say LSU was a great educational experience for me. In fact, I spent most of my time at WLSU radio instead of studying in the library. But LSU was a tremendous learning experience for me. The times were a'changing with the speed of a coal barge drifting slowly down the
mighty Mississippi River to New Orleans. There, decades later, the "Honey Badger" will take the field with the "Fighting Tigers" one win away from being the greatest college football team ever.

Thank you dad! And “Geaux Tigers!”

A Beacon of Hope

In the summer of 1964 I took a road trip to New Orleans that shattered my idealistic views of the world around me.

I grew up in the northern Chicago suburb of Deerfield, a placid but growing commuter community. Little league baseball games, or the occasional weekend sock hop, provided most of the excitement for citizens of this upwardly mobile, white color community. By all appearances Deerfield was a delightful and crime-free community with a "be good to your neighbor" mentality.

I bought my records at the Deerfield Record Shop, my hamburgers at Harry's Grill and my dad got gasoline at Midge's Texaco. Midge was an interesting character because he was loud, but not in an annoying way. He shouted at you as you arrived, he shouted at you as he filled your gas tank and he shouted at you as you drove away. Sometimes I could still hear him for a couple blocks. He didn't ever have anything important to say, he just liked to talk, and he spoke in volumes. Every one of his customers just went with the flow because Midge was a good guy.

I went to Deerfield's public schools and after school I spent an enormous amount of time playing baseball or touch football in a nearby school yard. We didn't have gangs, fights or violence. It seemed my friends and I were more focused on athletics than academics. But, despite our positive attitude and school spirit, we had trouble competing with the inner city schools.

In the August leading into my junior year of high school I passed my driver's test, a truly liberating event for any teenager. I had come of age. I was mature (I thought). I no longer needed any help from my parents. My mother let me drive her beautiful new Pontiac station wagon to and from school. I would drive by the school entrance every day before parking in the lot to make sure I was seen by all my peers. I was really cool.

But one rainy day Mr. Big Shot (me) pushed the gas pedal to the floor as I turned to the left exiting the school onto the main road. The rear of the station wagon swerved to the far right, then back again to the left. I slammed the brake petal as hard as I could and the car plowed into a ditch. I was not hurt but I was stunned. The damage was minimal but the lesson was great.

The following summer I managed to convince may parents to allow me to drive their station wagon from Deerfield to New Orleans with my close friend Jim. My father was from New Orleans and I had visited family several times there in my early childhood. I had very fond memories of the city.

We hopped on Highway 41 in Chicago and headed south through the farmland and rolling hills of western Indiana. Our first stop was in Evansville, which straddled the Mississippi River that provided the snaky border between Indiana and Kentucky. My Uncle moved from New Orleans to this river town after World War II and started his own construction company and family. One memorable but noisy highlight of our brief visit was when we purchased hundreds of firecrackers in Kentucky, where they were legal, and set them off near my Uncle's home. My young cousins were very impressed.

The next day we took to the road again, alternating turns at the wheel as we drove through Kentucky and the Tennessee toward Mississippi. It was very hot so we kept the windows of our station wide open. Route 41 was dotted with barns and silos, many bearing signs for chewing tobacco or cigarettes. We passed through a stream of small towns, some barely more than a wide spot in the road with a stop light. When we would occasionally stop for food and gas folks were generally indifferent. But I noticed the pace of life was slow, the people were lethargic and most of the communities were very poor.

Along the way I began to notice a profound physical as well as economic separation between blacks and whites. I saw two separate societies living side by side with very little in common. While I was aware of the nascent but growing civil rights movement, this separation was particularly striking because I was being raised in an all white Chicago suburb.

Somewhere near the Mississippi border we jumped over to Route 45 and drove south through Corinth, Tupelo and on to Meridian. As we pulled into the gas station we figured we were a tank of gas and a few hours from New Orleans. It wasn't too long before a state policeman pulled up next to our car. He got out of his squad car and slowly ambled on over toward us.

"Where you boys headed?" he asked in a not so friendly tone. He was very big and very intimidating. He had a pistol, a badge and he was wearing pair of very large Rayban sunglasses.

"New Orleans," I remember saying, "to visit my family."

"Well you boys best get fueled up and get straight out of town," he impatiently warned.

"Yes sir." There was no argument from either of us.

As we headed down U.S. Highway 11 toward New Orleans, we talked about the gas station encounter. We concluded that the policeman had mistaken us for student demonstrators who had come from up north to protest for the rights of blacks. It was an unsettling encounter for both of us.

We arrived later that day at my aunt's New Orleans home. We unpacked and went out for a wonderful dinner of boiled crabs, jambalaya and gumbo. We later walked along tree lined St. Charles Avenue, under the Spanish moss, and hopped on the trolley.

The next morning we teed off at the City Park Golf Course. The weather was already unbearable. Summer in New Orleans combines intense heat from the sun with heavy humidity. The conditions can be especially perilous in the afternoon. But on this morning in August I already found myself soaked and thirsty after just two holes. I went over to a nearby shelter and drank from a water fountain. The fountain was disgustingly dirty and the water was warm. I continued on with my game but neither of us was having much fun.

We passed near the same shelter on the ninth hole. This time I noticed an electric fountain. As I walked up to get a drink I spotted a sign on the wall. "WHITES ONLY," it boldly read. I walked around to the other side and above the fountain I had earlier used a sign read, "COLORED." I was stunned for a moment. I then went back and took a long cool drink from the electric fountain. I expressed amazement to Jim and we both just shook it off.

We called it quits after 9 holes and went back to my aunt's house. Later that day, as dinner was being served, I told her what had happened.

"You drank from a colored fountain!" she responded firmly.

"Yes, and it was filthy," I said.

"You should never do that," she admonished me, "you can get sick."

She explained why there were two fountains. She announced that "the colored" knew there place. She said most were good people but some carried diseases and others were criminals. We had to be careful. Besides, she observed, this is the way life has been in the south forever. Then she pointed out that "Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the country." She noted that whites live along scenic Lake Michigan while most of the blacks live in housing projects in the inner city.

I had a hard time accepting her comments and pushed back. But it was clear that she was not happy. And I realized she was correct in her observations about segregation and Chicago.

We never discussed the incident again, avoiding the subject for the remainder of our visit. But as I visited the French Quarter, the Garden District and other sites, I saw other "WHITES ONLY" signs. I also saw that blacks were barred from many restaurants and clubs. New Orleans was a two class society.

When we returned to Deerfield, I clearly recognized I lived in a homogeneous society sheltered from racial divisions. I had failed to pay sufficient attention to how our communities, our cities and our country were divided along racial and economic lines. Millions of Americans who dreamed could not fulfill their hopes because of pervasive prejudice and discrimination. The words of Emma Lazarus were not reality: "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

The trip to New Orleans in 1964 made me a better person. Sadly much blood would be spilled over the next decade in an effort to put in place the legal framework necessary to eliminate most racial barriers. This nation has since made major strides to achieve racial equality as well as gender equality.

Not all the wounds are healed, and racial discrimination is not fully eradicated. But today, forty-four years after my trip to New Orleans, most anyone can fulfill their dreams. Today America lifts its lamp for all.

The End of a Generation

On Wednesday, Edgar Ursin Peyronnin died at the age of 91 near Los Angeles, California. His death marks the end of a generation.

Joseph Felix Peyronnin and his wife Dabie, my grandfather and grandmother, lived in New Orleans and had seven children; three boys and four girls. Mary, Clare, Elma, Joseph, Leo, Edgar and Nona were all very special! Grandfather Peyronnin, who was an attorney, died suddenly in the early 1920s. The family had to give up their nice house for a succession of smaller homes, including one of those very narrow "shotgun" houses.

Grandmother raised the children by herself and most of them had to do some work to help pay the bills. I remember my father telling me that he began working when he was 11 years old. As the country slipped into a recession life became more difficult. The eldest daughter, Mary, took on a larger role managing her siblings and working. Both my dad and Uncle Leo worked on the construction of the Huey P. Long Bridge, which crosses the Mississippi River close to New Orleans, and was opened in 1935.

Over time the children went their separate ways. Two sisters remained in New Orleans; Clare married Roland Brierre and Nona, a career teacher, never married. Mary moved with her husband David Barrow to the Chicago area; and after World War II my dad settled there as well with his new wife Dorothy. Elma and her husband moved to Louisville. Leo and his wife Charlotte settled in Evansville where he began the Peyronnin Construction company. And Edgar ended up in the Los Angeles area, where he lived with his family for more than 50 years. His second wife and he raised two beautiful girls in their beloved Ojai.

Over the years I visited my aunts and uncles and noticed striking physical similarities and personal traits. These traits included: intelligence, great inner strength, integrity, a tremendous work ethic, extreme stubbornness and the need for control. They were doers, achievers and builders. If they set their sites on something they made it happen.

Uncle Edgar's death has caused me to reflect on his generation. These survivors of personal tragedy, the Great Depression and World War II. Each of them had to overcome many obstacles in their life. They scraped, sacrificed and shouldered a lot of responsibility as they were robbed of their childhood, forced by tragedy to grow up young. Yet they were energetic, for the most part optimistic and very positive about each day.

Edgar's death closes a chapter for me. But while we will never see a generation like this one again, we can carry their spirit with us every day.