Wild Violets ─ The Years of Hope

It was a different world....streams and woods teeming with fish and game....peeping baby chicks in the U.S. mail....reading at night by kerosene lanterns before electricity came....swimming in the cold artesian rivers in the summertime....steamboats on the Mississippi!! It was the same world.... pop music and big bands....dance fads like the Jitterbug....scrimping and saving for college....a little moonshine now and then for one's friends....avoiding the revenuer....shrimping and crabbing at Mandeville on Lake Pontchartrain at dusk....winding the old Victrola and replacing the needles.... churning butter and ice cream, too! It was a wild world....floods and hurricanes. It was a hard world....the great depression followed by World War II....dear friends and relatives went to war and never came back....segregation-black wards and white wards at Charity Hospital....blank faced men riding the rails, looking for work, begging for food....lots of chores and homework. It was a loving world....full of relatives and friends, feasts and games, chasing fire engines with an aunt in New Orleans....exploring museums....boarding the steamship, "Robert E. Lee," borrowing flowers from the cemetery for Mom's birthday. It was a world of music....Mom singing the old songs....four sisters in the church choir and the glee clubs at school....listening to the big bands when electricity reached Abita Springs....the songs of the birds when exploring the woods. Come join her in these worlds. You'll laugh and you'll cry.