Escape to New Orleans

Escape to New Orleans

A novella by Alex and Barbara Wilson

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Alex Wilson

Discover other titles by Alex Wilson at www.wilsonwritings.com

The Ford had a pleasant, deep glass-pack muffler rumble as it motored at a steady speed through the West Virginia night. The three passengers were asleep having exhausted the chatter at the beginning of their end-of-the-school-year ride home. Alan was alone with his thoughts.

Flunked out. No escaping it, I have sure and shootin’ washed out and am returning home with my tail between my legs. If I were honest with myself, I would admit that I actually flunked out mid-way through the second year of engineering at Duke. I denied that it was happening and damned near ruined my health in the process but, here I am, leaving school after two years with no invitation to return, at least not in mechanical engineering. But, what did I expect when I couldn’t grasp calculus, descriptive geometry, organic chemistry and never really mastered my slide rule? It looked great swinging from my belt but, except for multiplication – and that pretty inexact – I never became one with Keuffel & Esser. The only class I didn’t feel lost in was naval history in the NROTC program. Great for navy training but doesn’t score any points in mechanical engineering. Oh, I gave it the old college try by staying up to study night after night after night but it just wasn’t there. During my last semester I found refuge in drinking a lot of beer and smoking non-stop. That, of course, didn’t help.

Why did I think I could – or should – be an engineer, anyhow? Perhaps it was coming from two grandfathers and a father who were engineers. Perhaps my fascination with autos and particularly fast, exotic, innovative autos. The ideas of the 12 cylinder Ferraris and the desmodromic valving of the Mercedes SLRs gave me goose bumps. But, those things do not an engineer make. Engineers know strength of materials and thermodynamics and think in terms of cosigns and vectors and heat transfer and fluid dynamics. I have always thought that I would naturally take to the more esoteric issues of engineering like I took to making my hot rods during high school. Being a minor celebrity in a small and self-congratulatory high school in a minor suburb or a mid-sized Midwest town did not translate to Duke University where those few accepted were the crème-de-la-crème. I was a minnow in a shark tank. Not a shark tank as in gosh, I might get eaten. No one was against me. It’s just that the other fish were faster, stronger and more adapted to the high pressure and sophistication of ‘higher learning’.

My mother and grandmother await me at home. God bless them, I was to be their college man, much to their pride. I hate to disappoint them. Knowing them, they’ll enfold me in their arms and say, ‘We’re so happy you’re home. You must be tired. Would you like something to eat?’

I dropped off the toll commuters who had paid me gas money for the ride -- at their homes in Cincinnati and drove over the bridge to Kentucky, up the Dixie Highway to Ft. Mitchell. When the Ford rolled to a stop under the porte-cochere, I left everything in the car and went in. Mom and grandma came from different rooms with smiles on their faces and arms outspread. ‘We’re so happy you’re home. You must be tired from your drive. Have you eaten? Would you like something?’

It was one of my least proud moments. I didn’t know how to act because, I guess, I didn’t know how I felt. I was angry at myself. I was embarrassed at having blown the magnificent opportunity they had provided. I was confused. I’m sure my response was garbled. I gave them perfunctory greetings and hugs and went up to my old room and shut the door.

My father was in the TB sanitorium watched over diligently by his second wife, Earlene. He had been in and out of that hospital for ten years and he was losing the battle as showed by his cadaverous condition. He never had been a robust man but the disease had taken its toll on his normally bony frame. He was propped up in bed when I visited.

‘I’ve never asked for advice before and you haven’t offered any but I’m asking now. I’m at sea from flunking out of engineering. I always assumed I would follow your path and become an engineer. What do you think I should do now? Join the army? Go back to school and if so, to study what? I really need some help here.’

He did not need much thought to render his opinion. ‘You’ll figure something out.’ That was it. So much for parental advice when it was desperately needed.

But, what should I have expected? He never was much of a father or a husband, for that matter. That’s why my mom divorced him when I was nine. It was appropriate. He was a drinker and a smoker and I saw him pop my mom once with a closed fist. He met Earlene in AA but it never fully took with either of them. His father was a college professor and he was smart but I stop short of saying he was a college graduate. He had an enormous chip on his shoulder from the death of his mother, also of TB, when he was 12 and subsequent benign neglect by his school-immersed father. His rebellion may explain a lot of the rest but it doesn’t excuse it. His smartass arrogance led him to quit college six weeks short of graduation with a double major in mechanical and aeronautical engineering, a decision he later regretted. It affected his promote ability in a field where degrees and qualifications count.

Several weeks later, I was called by Earlene to come to the hospital. Dad was slipping away and ‘this might be it’. I went. He was comatose and lay with labored breathing. After several hours of watching him breathe every minute or so, I decided to go to the lounge for a nap. An hour later, a nurse woke me up and said, ‘It’s time.’ I returned to the room and, within a few minutes, I witnessed the last pulse beat of the prominent artery in his neck. He had slipped away, the ten-year slide mercifully over. I hugged Earlene, got back into my car and drove home in the pre-dawn lightening sky.

I was within ten miles of the University of Cincinnati and, with nothing better to do, decided to take a summer course just to keep my hand in. Although I had shown about the same aptitude for learning Latin that I had for chemistry, I decided to give it another try with Spanish.

Although the university was substantial, serving about 40,000 students, the summer session was sparse leaving the campus uncrowded and accessible. There were few students in class and you could actually drive in and park on the internal campus roads within a short stroll of the classroom.

Summer courses are usually compressed so that what would take a semester to cover in winter school was to be covered in an intense five weeks of everyday long classes. Once again, I was over my head. Spending that much time each day led to a quick bonding with some of the class mates, one of whom was Beth Brodsky. Beth was a good student, focused and a whiz at Spanish. A group of us developed a habit of stopping by the student union cafeteria for a soft drink before going our separate ways. One of those days, after our Coke break, four of us were walking down the winding on-campus street to get back to our cars. I happened to be ahead of the pack and spotted a car ahead that stood out. It was a brand new 1957 Cadillac Coupe de Ville with a gorgeous emerald green finish. I trotted on ahead and grasped the door handle and, doing a low bow with flourish, said something brilliant like, ‘Your chariot awaits, my lady.’ Beth Brodsky stepped up beside me, put a key in the lock and opened the door. We all were stunned and gave appropriate utterances like ‘Wow’ and ‘Hubba hubba’ and ‘That’s some wagon’ and such. Beth smiled, slipped inside and waved to us as she motored off.

After Beth left, the rest of us shared some, ‘Nice car’ and ‘She must be rich’ before we went off to find our own well-used wheels for our commute back to our homes. But, Beth’s out-of-our-reach wheels were accepted and we went back to class and Coke breaks as usual.

Falling further and further behind in Spanish, I got up the courage to confess to Beth that I was slipping under the waves and could use some help. She asked if I would like to try a study session with her. I gladly and gratefully accepted. She suggested I follow her home after class. I followed her about ten miles north (I lived five miles south) into a nice residential neighborhood in a part of Cincinnati with which I was unfamiliar. It was a lovely community dominated by large Victorian homes, many lovingly restored. Her ‘home’, the first floor of a duplex, was on a leafy street of tidy, well maintained houses. As it turned out, her uncle was some sort of city commissioner and was away for the summer. He had loaned her his house to use while she was in town.

‘So, where do you live when you’re not here?’

She was elusive. ‘I travel a lot.’

‘Doing what?’

‘I’m in the entertainment business.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I am a stage performer.’

‘That’s interesting. Are you performing here?’

‘No, I’m on vacation. I