Politickles

My papa was a great old man. I can see him with a shovel in his hand. – Clarence Carter

L: Pop ponders how to pick pod from 15-ft. okra stalk (NOLA, c 1968) R: Son with shovel in hand (Brockton, Mass., 1986)

They didn’t call me “Patches” when I was young (why, I don’t know), but I can see my father with a shovel in his hand, and he was a great old man. If he were still alive, he’d be 89 now. He died just after Christmas in 1990. I was working in Appleton, Wisconsin at the time and flew down to New Orleans for the funeral in January. Upon my return, I was fired. 1991 was getting off to a good start.

For as long as I can remember, my dad always had a garden, a vegetable garden, with okra and tomatoes mostly, and whatever he felt like adding in any given year: bell peppers, eggplant, sweet potatoes, carrots, etc. Whence the shovel, which, as I got older, was more often in my hand than his. He was the one who liked okra and tomatoes, but, somehow, it was me who got to do all the digging and weeding. For years I dreamed of escaping from the gumbo plantation and making my way along the suburban white kid’s underground railroad to store-bought food and freedom. Which I eventually did. Funny thing, though. One day, at the ripe age of 30, I finally got married and bought a house with a nice little side yard that just cried out for — a garden! Ever since, I’ve grown okra and tomatoes just like the old man; and some day my kids will remember me, I hope, with a shovel in my hand.

My father, brother, and son are named Crozet (pronounced: cro ZAY). Crozet was the maiden name of my father’s paternal grandmother. There’s a town in Virginia named Crozet, a town in France, and an island chain in the Indian Ocean south of Madagascar. The town in Virginia is named after one of our ancestors, Claudius Crozet, who built railroads, taught at West Point, and (to our family’s everlasting shame) invented the blackboard.

A croze (derived from the French word for cross) is the notch at the top and bottom of a wine barrel stave, and the tool used for making it. A crozet is, presumably, a small such notch or tool. (Claudius’ father was a wholesale wine merchant.) I recently discovered that crozet is also a kind of pasta.

Note to movie fans: A wine barrel, even empty, is extraordinarily heavy. (I know. I make my own wine and have two barrels on a shelf in my garage. Getting them up there by myself was no mean feat.) Arnold Schwarzenegger might be able to lift one over his head, but no normal man could; and even Arnie could not lift a full one. Bear that in mind the next time you watch a Zorro movie and see actors tossing them at each other like beach balls.

My papa was a great old man. I can see him with a shovel in his hand. – Clarence Carter

L: Pop ponders how to pick pod from 15-ft. okra stalk (NOLA, c 1968) R: Son with shovel in hand (Brockton, Massachusetts, 1986)

They didn’t call me “Patches” when I was young (why, I don’t know), but I can see my father with a shovel in his hand, and he was a great old man. November 25th is/was his birthday. If he were still alive, he would be 87 today. He died just after Christmas in 1990. I was working in Appleton, Wisconsin at the time and flew down to New Orleans for the funeral in January. Upon my return, I was fired. 1991 was getting off to a good start.

For as long as I can remember, my dad always had a garden, a vegetable garden, with okra and tomatoes mostly, and whatever he felt like adding in any given year: bell peppers, eggplant, sweet potatoes, carrots, etc. Whence the shovel, which, as I got older, was more often in my hand than his. He was the one who liked okra and tomatoes, but, somehow, it was me who got to do all the digging and weeding. For years I dreamed of escaping from the gumbo plantation and making my way along the suburban white kid’s underground railroad to store-bought food and freedom. Which I eventually did. Funny thing, though. One day, at the ripe age of 30, I finally got married and bought a house with a nice little side yard that just cried out for — a garden! Ever since, I’ve grown okra and tomatoes just like the old man; and some day my kids will remember me, I hope, with a shovel in my hand.

A roomful of academics erupted in angry boos Tuesday morning after political analyst Michael Barone said journalists trashed Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republicans’ vice presidential nominee, because “she did not abort her Down syndrome baby.” — Politico.com

My older brother, Chris, now 53, was born with Down Syndrome. In 1963, my father published a five-part series in the New Orleans States-Item entitled “My Son Chris is Retarded.” The series was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and drew the attention of Kennedy inlaw Sargent Shriver, who, early in 1964, invited my father to serve on President Johnson’s new Committee on Mental Retardation. (The 1963 Prize went to coverage of the assassination.)

I’m the son of two Marines! That may not be so unusual today, but back in 1956, when I was born, it was pretty weird. That was the year Carl Perkins, and then Elvis Presley, released “Blue Suede Shoes.” I remember listening to both sensational versions in my mother’s womb and thinking, “Let me out of here. I want to dance!” Years later, in the early 1980s, I actually got to hear Carl Perkins perform that song, and others, at Tipitina’s in New Orleans.

My mother, Peggy Mengis Duplantier, was one of the first women Marines. She and my father both served with the Corps during World War II. They met in New Orleans afterward, when both worked for newspapers there. Here’s an article my mother wrote for me when I was editor of The New American in the mid-eighties, about “Molly Marine,” the first statue of a service woman in uniform erected in the United States. Here’s another she wrote, about “The Moving Wall.”

My father, Crozet Duplantier, fought in the Pacific (Guam, Guadalcanal, etc.) and served with the occupation troops in Japan. If not for the much-lamented dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he would surely have been killed in the inevitable invasion — and I wouldn’t be here.

As the son of two veterans, I’m doubly grateful on Veterans Day. God bless all our troops, living and deceased, today and always! Semper Fi!

I’ve been reading the Washington Times for roughly 20 years now. During all that time, it was the single best conservative newspaper in America — not that there were that many to choose from, because there weren’t. Until the recent redesign of the website, I would spend an hour every morning reading it. Now, baffled by all the techno-gadgetry and unable to find the great articles and columns I once devoured, I read only two cherished items: John McCaslin’s daily “Inside the Beltway” column and former editor Wes Pruden’s twice-weekly “Pruden on Politics.” The announcement earlier this year that a Washington Post reporter would replace Pruden as editor was certainly disturbing, but I had no idea as a reader what was going on internally and, like an idiot, hoped that nothing much would change. (Just found this article online, which certainly explains things). Eventually, I noticed familiar bylines showing up elsewhere on the Net and wondered what was going on.

Well, it’s official: The Washington Times is no longer the best conservative paper in America. It’s hardly conservative at all, anymore.

My dad did his master’s thesis at LSU on the history of the newspaper he worked for, the New Orleans States, which was subsequently merged with the Item and the Times-Picayune and has since passed into oblivion. Each chapter of his thesis was devoted to a different editor — whose opinions, personality, and sense of style made the paper what it was. For my dad coming up, there were five or six distinctive daily papers in town; for me, only one dull monopoly. I can still remember how excited I was when I first discovered the Washington Times and recognized it as the type of paper (and Pruden as the type of editor) my father had worked for and written about so fondly. Years ago, I even sent Pruden a sorry xerox copy of my dad’s onion-skin thesis.

Such a shame. It was a great paper while it lasted.

Some good may come of this, however. Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, but in doing so it dispersed great Creole and Cajun chefs all across the nation. You can now get a good bowl of gumbo or plate of jambalaya in the most surprising places — and, if that’s not a good thing, what is? Maybe this journalistic hurricane will have a similar effect: destroying a great paper, but sending its able and dedicated alumni on to other publications that will profit from, and appreciate, their skills and perspectives.

I certainly hope so.