Only the Good Die Young

I still remember my first trip to New Orleans. It was with my Dad's sister, Aunt Carmol. Carmol was a school teacher in New Orleans and she was quite a woman. When WWII broke out, she joined the Marines and served with them throughout the war. She was a liberated woman, even during a very un-liberated time in Louisiana. When New Orleans first integrated, it was at her school and she walked the children into the building every morning to insure their safety.

When I was eleven and my brother Jack thirteen, she took us to New Orleans for a visit, and a grand tour of everything cultural in the venerable old city. We stayed with her and her husband Tack. We didn't go alone. She also brought two very young north Louisiana school teachers. I can't remember their names but I will call them Sandra and Dolly.

Sandra and Dolly were as excited about their first visit to the Big Easy as Jack and I. They were both young and pretty and they flirted with Jack and me all the way to New Orleans. As best as I can remember, it was the first time that I fell (no, tumbled head over heals!) in love.

Aunt Carmol showed us the French Quarter, the zoo and the museums and we saw little of Sandra and Dolly during our visit. Before we left, however, we all took a night time excursion to the Lake Pontchartrain Amusement Park, Sandra was Jack's date, Dolly mine. The memory of riding through the Tunnel of Love with Dolly still remains as one of the all time highlights of my life.

Aunt Carmol died in her forties of a kidney disease that could have easily been cured today. I miss her but I feel that she is still somehow with me. Her early passing goes along with my theory that only the good die young, in which case I expect to live until a hundred-twenty, or so.

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