The Bizarre Biloxi Bazaar

By Mouise Thomas Richards

A story of a boys rise from poverty and the people who inspired him and helped him along the way to achieve his goals. A perspective of the life of a person indebted to the contributions and associations of family, friends, and teachers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479721818

Mouise Thomas Richards

Mouise Thomas Richards was born in Biloxi, Mississippi. He received his B.S. and M.S. in history from the University of Southern Mississippi. Taught social studies in the Meridian Public School system for thirty two years. A three year veteran of the U.S. Army. Now residing in Meridian, Mississippi as a full time artist.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

TEE BOOG IS not my real name. People just call me that. I am a descendant of Cajun families that migrated to Bayview, Mississippi, from Louisiana in the early nineteen hundreds. I was the first person in my family to be born in a hospital. The hospital overlooked the beautiful Gulf of Mexico and was designed in the Georgian-style with red brick exterior adorned with white columns. Huge oak trees with branches touching a lush green St. Augustine grass lawn shaded the front yard. The hospital no longer stands there. A tremendous hurricane washed it away along with my childhood home and all of my family’s earthly possessions. It did not wash away my childhood memories, however. These memories will be with me for the remainder of my life. Hopefully, my descendants will cherish my stories as I pass them on to them, and who knows, maybe they will add more stories to continue the legacy of the Picards, a family that has a rich heritage and claims Charlemagne as a member of the family tree.

The first home address I remember stood on the east end of Bayview peninsula. The small whitewashed wooden structure once served as a grocery store. Daddy bought the building for about $100. A group of men helped him move it from the corner of Barrone Avenue and Jackson Street. They rolled it down the street on old telephone poles. Then they put it on concrete blocks in the center of the lot that my daddy purchased at a minimum price. The city originally paved Jackson Street with oyster shells in the old Bayview tradition. Later, they added asphalt to the oyster shells as part of the blend. The house consisted of one main room with a partition to allow for a back room. The main room served as living quarters and bedroom. The family used the back room as kitchen. Five children slept in one bed. An outhouse was located in the backyard. We had no indoor plumbing, initially. My mother fetched water from an outside faucet and brought the water into the kitchen. Outdoors, she washed clothes on a washing board. A wooded area bordered the east side of our property. My dad’s aunt Taunt Fis lived in an old wooden house on the west side. Taunt Fis’s house was painted red and had a large white front porch. It also had a room attached to the side of the building which was reserved for wanderers who traveled to the area and needed a place to bed down for the night. A house stood directly across the street to the south, and an alley abutted the north end of the property. Our lot covered a section of a low-lying area; and every time it rained, turtles, frogs, and snakes came out of the swamp and into our yard. Daddy spent years trying to fill the yard by depositing dirt or any other material that would raise the lot. There was a giant mulberry tree in the front yard, and across the front of the property ran a ditch, which was later diverted to the other side of the street. My older brothers and sisters told me how much they enjoyed eating sweet mulberries directly from the tree. I was not fortunate enough to taste the luscious fruit because a storm knocked the tree down before I was old enough to eat the berries. I do remember other mulberry trees growing in the area, but I was cautioned to refrain from eating the berries because they were full of worms.

My family had lived in government housing projects before I was born. The Great Depression and World War II challenged everyone, and my family found it difficult to find affordable living quarters.

My daddy did not serve in the military. His eyesight was poor, and in 1944, he and my mother were expecting their fifth child, me. Daddy worked at several jobs trying to support his family. I remember cooling off in the back of the ice truck that he parked in our front yard during one hot summer. At the ice plant, his work was delivering blocks of ice to people’s homes. The truck had a metal flatbed and wooden side boards with the word ICE painted in large red, white, and blue letters on the side of the vehicle. The wood was damp because of the melting ice, creating a distinct and pleasant odor in the back of the truck. Refrigerators were rare. People had ice boxes in which a block of ice was placed on the top shelf to keep food from spoiling. As the ice melted, the water ran into a pan at the bottom of the ice box. When the entire block of ice melted, one had to empty the pan of water and place a new block of ice in the box.

Daddy worked in the seafood factories for a while. He would often become seasick out in the water, so his career as a fisherman lasted for only a brief period of time. He did have the opportunity to work on WPA projects, including the construction of a new Bayview Junior High School. Finally, after passing the civil service exam, Daddy gained employment at the local air force base as a fireman. I always remember him as a fireman. My mother told me later that she believed that when Daddy started working at the air force base, she knew that this would change our family tree by altering our economic status. My mother faced a tremendous challenge as a housewife who had five children and was expecting another child in 1947, when my sister Cecile was born in October. My mother was definitely a survivor and managed to keep the family well fed and clothed.

As the family grew bigger, so did our house. Daddy did most of the work himself, adding a living room and a kitchen next to the original structure. He added a front porch and a the girls’ room to the front of the house. We eventually did away with the outhouse and converted the area between my parents’ room and the boys’ room into a bathroom and a hallway. We had indoor plumbing and a brand-new water heater. We no longer had to warm water in a pan on top of a space heater in the living room in order to wash our bodies. I will always remember the first time I washed myself in a bathtub full of water. It was the cleanest feeling I ever had in my life. I was in the third grade at our elementary school at the time.

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Tee Boog’s Boyhood Home

The 1947 hurricane caused great damage to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I was only three years old when the storm hit our area, but I vaguely remember going to a shelter to spend the night and the water had risen up to the windows of the schoolhouse where we were staying. I remember seeing a large tree lying across Baronne Street after the storm. My family would usually ride out storms or hurricanes, which frequently hit Bayview, at our neighborhood elementary school. Usually, it was an all-night affair, and pillows and blankets were placed on the floor of the shelter where people slept until the storm was gone. Folks kept candles and kerosene lamps in adequate supply in case of power outages caused by the storms.

My family made me a spoiled brat from the time I was born. My mother was overprotective of me, probably because I was born with a heart murmur or a hole in my heart and she felt a sense of guilt. At the time of my birth, a heart murmur was considered a worse condition than it is today. My siblings were not allowed to pick on me because of my physical condition. My sister Claudine helped my mother take care of me when I was a baby.

I vaguely remember my early years, but I remember visiting my grandparents’ home before I started school. My grandmother’s name is Ada, but I called her Laut Mom. It was the French name that my brothers, sisters, and I called her, which, when translated from French to English, means other mama. Aristead and Claudine gave her that name. My grandfather’s name is Hypolite, but we called him Poppa. Laut Mom and Poppa were my mother’s parents and lived in a house at the end of an alley in the middle of a block about a half mile from our house.

My mother’s brother, Cleoma, shared living quarters with my grandparents. They all worked in the seafood factory located several blocks away. The family gave Cleoma the nickname Mimin. Fortunately, before becoming completely deaf, Mimin was able to master a third-grade education. He could solve basic math and read and write to some extent; thus he was able to handle most of his personal business transactions.

My grandparents’ property was quite interesting. It was located a couple of blocks north of the Mississippi Sound. The house was a wooden structure with a screened-in front porch. The kitchen had a wood-burning stove with a large brick chimney. A utility shed, an outhouse, and a chicken coop occupied part of the backyard. The garden contained an abundance of fruit trees and vegetables, including banana and grapefruit. A wide variety of flowers filled the air with a wonderful aroma practically all year round. I especially enjoyed the pecans, figs, and sugarcane from Laut Mom’s garden. I enjoyed feeding the chickens and gathering eggs for my grandma.

My family often walked from our house to my grandparents’ home by way of the main street, Hammond Avenue. We walked down Jackson Street, turned right at Berril Street, and left on Hammond in front of a grocery store and a bar and grill. The owner of the restaurant lived across the street from his business. He was the largest man I ever saw. He must have weighed over four hundred pounds. A busy taxicab company operated on the north side of the street, and next to it was a popular neighborhood restaurant. Another grocery store, a service station, a barbershop, a butcher shop, a tent and awning store, a hardware store, and a dry cleaning store were all located on the north side of Hammond Avenue along the way. Crossing the street to the south side of the street, we passed a drugstore and a bakery, which always had a sweet smell. I was most impressed with the odors emanating from the salons as we walked past them. Imagine walking barefooted on the sidewalk one late summer afternoon and feeling the cool air drifting through the swinging doors of a salon. The air had the scent of smoke and beer. The boom of the jukebox made my heart palpitate, and the contrast of the darkness from within and the neon beer signs excited me as I tried to peek inside and take a deep whiff of that wonderful aroma. God, I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to go into such a place.

Hammond Avenue was a busy street during the early 1950s serving as US Highway 90 until the new highway was constructed along the beach. Turn right at Moak Street. Pass the welding shop on the east side and turn left at the alley and you are at 214 Moak Street.

Walking along the alley to my grandparents’ house, we observed and listened to the seemingly hundreds of gamecocks being raised on the property next to the alley. The owner raised the fowl both as a hobby and business. The alley was extremely narrow with a fence on each side. There was room for only one vehicle to squeeze through the alley, which was about one hundred yards long.

My grandparents never owned an automobile. They walked or rode the bus to get to their destination. During the summer, I walked with them to the playground at the catholic school to watch movies. The city recreation department established a program, which included outdoor movies, for older citizens. Employees of the recreation department set up movie projectors and portable movie screens on the school playground, lined up folding chairs for seating, and entertained their guests with a picture show.

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left to right, Jean Pierre, Mouise, Aristead, Drosin, Claire, Claudine

CHAPTER 2

MY FAMILY HAS always been a very special close-knit group to me. So have my extended family and friends. Fortunately, I drew guidance from my family and our church. I had many role models.

Aristead was the oldest brother, and his interests were very different from mine because of our age difference. He was eight years older than me. He had dark hair, which was slightly curly. Although he was the oldest sibling, he was the shortest in the family. He was born in a room next to a blacksmith shop behind a grocery store on the corner of Moak Street and Beach Blvd. I always looked up to him, naturally. Sometimes he taught me how to do things like playing ball and other games and took me to places like the movies. I always lived in fear of his wrath. Sometimes he would be quite rough and slap me around when I got in his way. I hated it but learned to be on my guard at all times. He did not really hurt me. I guess he was just trying to make me tough. Still, he was one of my heroes. He was so much older than me that he sometimes seemed aloof. He had a daring and adventurer streak in him. I remember when he received his driver’s license, he took me for a spin in Daddy’s car. After hitting a couple of garbage cans on a sidewalk and running over the curb several times, he parked the car on the grass on our front lawn. He scared the wits out of me. I jumped out of the car and ran into the house, swearing that I would never ride with him again. His driving habits did not improve much over the last fifty years. At least he demonstrated better driving skills than my aunt Nanan.

Uncle George tried to teach Nanan how to drive his Plymouth one day. Nanan mistook the gas pedal for the brake and ran off the road, hitting our gas meter. Gas escaped from the busted meter’s pipes, and Nanan’s driving days were over. She never attempted to drive again.

Aristead competed in all sports and excelled in football. He was the captain of a high school football team, and his classmates considered him the most athletic boy. He graduated from high school, becoming the first person in our family to have such accomplishment. After graduating from high school, he served in the U.S. Navy for four years. Who wouldn’t be proud of such a big brother? He eventually moved to Houston, Texas, and had a successful career with the U.S. Post Office.

Claudine was like my second mama. She taught me all the necessary social graces that a big sister is responsible for teaching a younger brother. She was a great psychologist. She taught me how to eat my vegetables and how to think during difficult situations. She comforted me and tended to my wounds, displaying nursing skills at an early age. Petite Sur, as we called her, seemed to me to be the strongest member of the family emotionally. She had a kind heart, but she portrayed a stoic figure weathering the most violent storms while remaining calm, cool, and collected. She was so much like Daddy in that she showed very little emotion. It was probably Claudine who influenced me into becoming interested in reading and the arts. She also taught me my prayers and the value of religious beliefs. When she was about three years old, she lost the tip of one of her fingers in an accident at Laut Mom’s house. She was holding a piece of wood while Aristead was chopping board with a hatchet. The hatchet missed its mark, and Claudine’s finger was severed just above the fingernail. She took much of the burden of housework. She was responsible for doing one of the most undesirable chores of all, which was emptying the chamber pot or pot chambre.

One day, I noticed that Mama chastised Claudine for taking time to read a book instead of doing her chores. I heard Mama ask Claudine, Why are you reading that book? Do you think you are rich? You have work to do.

I learned a lesson from that experience too. Sometimes I catch myself wasting time and feel guilty for not doing something more productive. I have decided, however, that there is more to life than just practical things. One must engage in leisure as well.

Mama consoled Claudine by telling her to say three Hail Marys if she had trouble sleeping.

Claudine had a successful nursing career following an extensive training at the Charity Hospital in New Orleans. She lived in Minnesota during her early career. Her artistic ability led her to creating beautiful quilts in her studio in Bremen, Georgia. She taught me how to paint with watercolor and draw simple sketches.

Jean Pierre and Drosin probably spent more time with me while we were growing up than any of my other siblings. When Jean Pierre was born, Aristead called him Baby Jean. Everyone else followed suit and used that nickname. Jean Pierre always played the role of the leader and organizer. He had dreams of bettering himself and set his goals accordingly. He was a conformist, with a penchant for always doing the right thing. He was a stickler for detail, having his shoes shined properly and clothes pressed and neatly folded. Everything had its proper place in Jean’s eyes. As a little brother, I was a nuisance to Jean Pierre. I am sure that I embarrassed him on many occasions. He tolerated me because it was demanded of him.

Daddy decided to help Jean Pierre learn how to be an entrepreneur one summer. He rented a snowball stand and told Jean Pierre that if he proved that he could manage the business, he could keep the profit. One day, Jean Pierre left me alone in the stand while he ran an errand. He told me that if any customers arrived, I should tell them that he would return in a few minutes. While he was gone, a man and his wife came and ordered snowballs. I could barely reach the window, and the customers had to assist me in getting the window open. I did manage to make the snowballs, although Jean Pierre had to clean up my mess when he returned.

Jean Pierre served in the U.S. Navy and settled down in Huntington, Mississippi. He worked as an electrician. He has been an avid golfer all his adult life. He can play a mean guitar and sing Cajun songs with the best of them. I guarantee it! He was a dreamer, always full of big ideas and often reading do-it-yourself-type books, and other useful materials.

Jean Pierre and Drosin were very much into scouting. They went on camping trips and won numerous merit badges, which they proudly displayed on their Boy Scout uniforms. I did not join the scouts, but I learned a great deal of information about scouting from my older brothers.

Drosin was the perfect Wally, the big brother from a popular television show. He was my big brother, literally. He was my bodyguard. He always took care of me. Even the smallest or insignificant things like sharing a candy bar, he always