Steamboat Gothic

It is the most iconic photograph in The Jack Marshall Collection™.

This photograph (above) of San Francisco Plantation, on the Great River Road near Garyville in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, was captured by Jack Marshall sometime in late 1958 or early 1959. This breathtaking home, built in 1856, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. It certainly is one of the most distinctive of the dozens of plantation homes that dot both sides of the lower Mississippi River.

According to the plantation's web site, the home's unique architecture, viewed from some angles, closely resembles the "ornate yet graceful superstructure of a Mississippi riverboat." It is the inspiration for the novel "Steamboat Gothic," written by Frances Parkinson Keyes about a family she imagined lived there.

Earlier this year I investigated Jack Marshall's darkroom at my mother's house in Shreveport for the first time in the 33 years since his death in 1976. The process of discovery was amazing and fun, as each cabinet and drawer revealed new treasures. Now as I study and organize the many prints my father so lovingly printed, annotated and stored, the many variations of this photograph have emerged as possibly the most often printed image of Dad's work.

That's why I selected "Steamboat Gothic," as Dad titled his work as well, to be the home page image on the main web site of The Jack Marshall Collection™ (www.jackmarshallcollection.com) which is launching this week.

To me, this remarkable image of a well-known South Louisiana plantation house is not only one of the best examples of my father's artistic talent, but also provides a perfect insight into how he worked. Another view from below the steps is published at the end of this entry. The key to understanding how Jack Marshall worked can be found in the detail of my sister Mary, somewhere around 2 years old, determinedly toddling her way down the plantation's grand staircase.

If Mary was 2 years old at the time of this photo, I would have been about 4. And although I don't remember the exact circumstances surrounding the trip during which Dad created this image, it doesn't matter. Because the Marshall kids were usually there when Dad was making photographs.

That's the point of this entry.

Jack Marshall almost always had a camera -- or two -- around his neck. Of the thousands of photographs which I am now organizing, a huge percentage are images of my mother, brothers, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, classmates and friends. But while he was taking our pictures, he also always was looking up at the big world around us. And then turning the camera in other directions, for many remarkable, memorable photographs.

By the time Dad took the family out West for our camping adventures, we were totally accustomed to the many extra photo-taking stops along every road, hike, dam, beach, picnic and tour. The memories of all of those places come flooding back to me as I study the tiny images on hundreds of contact sheets, the small index prints of each roll of film my father shot and developed and filed away. Inevitably, there are pictures of Mary and me, or John and David, or my mother, or all of us, standing in front of a National Park entrance, or a motel restaurant, or a "Welcome to Colorado" sign, or a quiet campground or frightening canyon rim. And on those same sheets of tiny family photos often I find stunning images of soaring mountain peaks, roaring rivers, heart-stopping valleys, and sunsets so beautiful I want to cry.

I was there with my living, breathing, happy-in-the-moment Dad, I remember again. I was there when he would say to us, waiting in the car, "Just one more minute." While he watched through his tripod-mounted camera for just the right moment and light to get the photograph he envisioned. Dad was with his family, taking photographs, in his element, doing what he loved most.

I was there once. And through The Jack Marshall Collection™, now you can be there too.

- Tom Marshall, New York City

Mère

All of us knew her by one simple name, "Mère."

Even though Yvonne Louise Goodrich Gifford was tiny in stature, standing just over 5 feet tall in her stocking feet, you can tell by her regal bearing in Jack Marshall's 1960 portrait of her (above) that she was a giant of a woman.

More than a century after her family moved to America from Paris, Yvonne was born on November 7, 1890 in the family home on Esplanade Avenue at the edge of the Vieux Carré in New Orleans. As a toddler, she spoke her family's native French almost exclusively at home. Years later she recalled, "We played games in French, we spoke French around the dinner table, and my mother said we even sinned in French!" At the age of 8, she was made to learn English to start elementary school. She was a member of a well-to-do family that published a daily French-language newspaper, L’Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans. She enjoyed performances from the family's reserved seats at New Orleans' famous French Opera House. But the family eventually fell on hard times. She married and moved around the Eastern seaboard for her husband's work and then was divorced with four young children, a struggling career woman forced to make difficult choices for herself and her family.

Despite everything that happened in her life -- the good and the bad -- Mère lived into her 95th year. She read nearly every news article published in the daily editions of The Times-Picayune, the ultimate owner of the assets of her family's long-ago media empire. She welcomed 12 grandchildren and the first of what eventually would number 19 great-grandchildren. Just last summer her sixth great-great-grandchild was born. She worked full-time until she was nearly 80 years old. She outlived not only her youngest child (Gloria Gifford Keefe) and a beloved son-in-law (Jack Marshall), but also several physicians who over the years solemnly predicted her imminent demise.

Now, 119 years after her birth and nearly 25 years since her death, Mère is without a doubt the solid rock upon which remarkable generations have descended and prospered.

But her real legacy is best kept in the many memories precious to her family even to this day.

When I was very young, going on vacation more often than not meant loading the 6 of us in the Marshall family's 1950s-era non-air conditioned Chevrolet and traveling 321 miles, much of it down the two lanes of Louisiana Highway 1, from Shreveport to New Orleans. The trip took all day, and by the time we arrived at her sprawling apartment on Pine Street, near St. Charles Avenue and Broadway in uptown New Orleans, we were dirty, hungry and exhausted.

But we were thrilled to be there!

Mère's kitchen smelled wonderful. The apartment was full of people, including our aunts, uncle and and cousins, who had decamped there to welcome the Marshall clan. Around the cacaphonous dinner table, Mère always happily chirped, "Let only six talk at a time!"

My sister Mary and I got the choice sleeping accommodations, on the airy, screened front "sleeping porch." We looked down on the busy neighborhood sidewalk.

Each night we excitedly snuggled into makeshift bedding and drifted off to sleep with a symphony of unfamiliar sounds in our ears -- the honking cars of big city traffic on nearby Broadway, wailing sirens of New Orleans police and fire units working through the night, and the clanging streetcar bells on "The Avenue" (St. Charles) just a few blocks away. We were awakened at dawn each morning by the smell of chicory-laced coffee brewing in the kitchen and the novelty of loud, mechanized garbage trucks working their way down the narrow street. It seemed to Mary and me that the garbage men probably were paid more if they could bang each can's lid on the sidewalk with the loudest possible noise. We thought it all a grand adventure.

There were some hilarious misadventures too involving the fearsome landlady who lived downstairs. Like the time my brother David, then probably 10 years old and never at a loss for words, upon being introduced to the landlord, is reported to have said, "YOU'RE Mrs. Steckman? My grandmother says you're HORRIBLE!" Or the time I found some green paint, meant for shutters, in the garage and proceeded to apply a coat to a section of white exterior wall. Realizing the trouble I was in, I raced inside and hid under Mère's bed. When the illicit painting was discovered, I was the prime suspect and a boy hunt ensued. I recall that finally my aunt Elise Aimée discovered me. From my narrow floor level vantage point, I saw her upside-down head peering at me. "Here he is!" she shouted to the other searchers. And then turning back to me, she asked, "Tommy, what are you doing under there?" Thinking fast, I replied, "Oh, just resting."

Over the years, life changed, but Mère did not. For a while, she lived in a lovely, small apartment in a building called "The Monterey" on St. Charles, just a block or two from Napoleon Avenue. She loved the corner stores of K&B Drugs, where it seemed that everything, including mouthwash, baby powder, and tissues, was made and sold in the chain's trademark purple color.

Later she lived in an apartment on Jefferson Highway and then finally in an assisted living apartment called Metairie Manor, run by the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans. In fact, though, Mère didn't need much assistance.

Still, she read the newspaper daily. She joked that she turned to the obituaries first and "if I don't see my name, I know I'm going to have a good day." She maintained that she wasn't afraid of dying, but always added, "I'm not ready to go just yet." She reveled in Louisiana's infamous politics and voted in every election. She drank a glass of sherry every night, and she slept soundly.

One day, in March of 1985, the name Yvonne Goodrich Gifford finally did appear in the obituaries of The Times-Picayune. Mère was laid to rest in the Dufour/Goodrich family burial site, Tomb No. 27 in St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery on Basin Street, the oldest cemetery in New Orleans.

My most enduring memory of Mère dates to about a year or so before her death. I was living in New Orleans, and my first child, James, was born in 1983.

One Sunday afternoon I took baby James to her apartment. Mère sat in a rocking chair and held his tiny body close to hers, swaying gently. She closed her eyes and I heard her singing what sounded like a sweet lullaby. I stepped back to take a picture (which I still treasure) and then I leaned in close to listen to her song. But I didn't understand a word ... she was singing in French to my little son. Just as she had been sung to as a child of Esplanade Avenue, and just as she had done with her children when they were little.

In life, Mère often had joked that the tomb at St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery was to be her "final apartment," always adding with a wry smile, "I'm just sorry it doesn't have a window." I understand that the woman I knew as Mère is not really living there of course. But in heaven, no doubt, there is a daily newspaper, some juicy politics and a glass of sherry for Yvonne Goodrich Gifford, our matriarch.

À votre santé Mère!

- Tom Marshall, New York City

Ludendi's Rollerdrome

No Marshall kid ever had a birthday party at Ludendi's Rollerdrome. We were told that hosting a party there was reserved for the rich kids, whose parents were doctors or lawyers or oil men.

At least that's what I was told. My sister Mary remembers it differently. Mary says she was told we couldn't host a roller skating party at Ludendi's because we didn't know how to roller skate.

Judging by Jack Marshall's photo of me trying out my wheels (above) at a late 1950s party, maybe Mary was correct.

But when one of those other kids -- better coordinated or simply better off, it made no difference to me -- invited us to their skating party, it was a treat not to be missed.

Not just because of the roller skating, but because of Ludendi's Rollerdrome.

Long gone now -- reduced to rubble when the great, elevated Interstate 20 cut a wide concrete swath through our hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana in the 1960s -- Ludendi's Rollerdrome even then was a throwback to a bygone era. Its huge expanse of well worn plank wooden flooring certainly had hosted over the years tens of thousands of kids and adults at figure-skating competitions, roller hockey games, birthday parties and "free skating" by the time my generation got around to discovering it.

Ludendi's was a giant Quonset hut of a building, with a four-foot wall around the skating area and stair-stepped viewing areas on one side. At the far end was the only means of ventilation -- a huge electric fan the size of an airplane engine built into the wall.

You would arrive for the party, leave your gift on a table in the front, and then be fitted with roller skates that clamped onto your shoes. Then the games began. Follow the leader, crack the whip, even limbo for goodness sakes -- with a cane fishing pole as the limbo bar -- all while wearing wheels that today would be viewed by every personal injury lawyer as a meal ticket that never expires.

The full selection of Jack Marshall's photographs taken that day shows a variety of skill levels among the skaters...lots of flailing arms, flying bodies, and some kids -- like me -- holding on to the railing. But the constant in every picture is the smiles (see photo below). Every kid at Ludendi's Rollerdrome is smiling.

When the frantic skating rendered everyone good and tired and hot, we'd be directed to sit in folding theater-style seats bolted to one wall. There were many rules at Ludendi's, but the one I remember most was, once you sat down, you stayed put. Because then Ludendi's owner (was it Mr. Ludendi himself? I never knew...) would come along, skating backwards in his personal, high-boot skates, and ask each child in order for his or her soft drink preference. "Coke....Coke...Nehi....Coke...Chocolate...Chocolate...7 Up...Coke," he would repeat loudly, and in the front of the rink, someone could be heard pulling the ice-cold bottles out of the chest, popping off the caps using one of those metal bottle openers affixed to the front of the drink machine, and then placing the drinks, in the exact order they were requested, in a wooden soft drink case. It was an assembly line operation that even Henry Ford would've deemed efficiency itself.

When Mr. Ludendi reached the end of the line of kids, he'd quickly whirl back to the front of the rink, and return with the case of soft drinks, each bottle neck ringed by a Southern Maid Donut (the Southern Maid Donut shop was right down the street from Ludendi's Rollerdrome). You took your drink out of the case in the same perfect order as it had been loaded. And those cold drinks and warm gooey doughnuts tasted better than any birthday cake I had ever eaten.

When everyone was rested and full, it was back out onto the floor for some more out-of-control skating. The grand finale was when the lights were darkened (despite most parties being afternoon affairs, Ludendi's Rollerdrome still could be made fairly dark inside) and the big crystal mirrored ball in the ceiling began to spin, spraying a mad pattern of moving reflected light points throughout the rink.

And then, high from the sugary drinks and donuts, hot from the relentless Shreveport sun beating down on the rink's metal roof, dazzled by the spinning lights, a bit woozy on our land legs after two hours on roller skates, and probably nursing a major stomach ache from that perfect combination of factors, we yelled over our shoulders one last "Happy Birthday" to the honoree and scooted out to our parents' waiting cars.

Another perfect party at Ludendi's Rollerdrome!

- Tom Marshall, New York City

The Beach and the Famous Family Resort

Jack Marshall's photograph of the giant "Holiday" sign taken in front of the "Famous Family Resort" near Pensacola Beach, Florida, sometime in the late 1950s, is sure to evoke memories of family beach vacations for anyone who might be called a Baby Boomer.

No doubt "Holiday Homes" is long gone by now. But, just as certainly, that wonderful beach is still there.

Stretching eastward from somewhere near Gulf Shores, Alabama, to an indefinite terminus past Panama City, Florida, the white sands and blue-green waters of The Beach comprise, in my humble opinion, one of the most perfect and wonderful places in the world.

Now I will admit I haven't seen all of the world's great beaches. But I have seen some pretty nice ones ... from Waikiki and the Big Island in Hawaii to various ports of call in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, to the Santa Monica pier and Point Reyes in California, to the Hamptons and the Jersey Shore near my adopted home in New York City.

But nothing is better than The Beach, our beach. The sand is blindingly white and so soft and tight-packed that it makes little squeaking sounds when you walk across it barefoot. There are no rocks or pebbles or tufts of grass between the dunes and the water. And the water -- well, if you've never seen it I can't expect you to understand. But it is the most wonderful shade of translucent blue-green that exists on this earth. There is no name for that color.

In my memory, no beach vacation ever will surpass my first trip to Holiday Homes. In those pre-Disney theme park days, from the way my parents talked about The Beach, we believed we were going to a magical place, where children could run and play and where our fun was to be paramount and endless.

And it was ... for one glorious week at a time. We woke up early to the smell of bacon and eggs in the kitchen of the little rented home. During the day, we played in the surf and the dunes, we flew kites and built sand castles and chased sea gulls, and we stopped only long enough for one of my mother's peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. At night, we had roast beef or hot dogs or salmon croquettes. No restaurants for the Marshall family ... the vacation itself was the big expense.

And then we slept hard, lulled by the sound of the surf, only to awaken the next day and do it all over again.

I remember standing on The Beach as a little boy and thinking ... these waves have been washing up here, every few seconds, day and night, since before I was born. Heck, since before my parents or grandparents were born. Maybe even when the dinosaurs were here! And, I thought, if I had been here way back when, and gazed out at the sea as I was doing right then, it would have looked just ... like ... this.

Then, as the Marshall kids got older, we started taking more exotic vacations ... like honest-to-goodness camping trips way out West -- Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, California.

And I don't remember another family beach vacation after those first few.

When my own children came along, I could not wait to take them to The Beach. And for years, we did just that. This time, we made a tradition of the extended family meeting there every summer, and most of the children of us four Marshall siblings got to know their cousins in a very special environment.

This next generation of Marshalls, I have no doubt, some day will give their own little ones the same sense of wonder that our parents made possible for us. As I examine Jack Marshall's photograph of the Famous Family Resort, I am struck by the fact that apparently there is no air conditioning. All the windows are open in the main office, to better admit the cooling sea breezes. Can you imagine a weekend at the Gulf of Mexico now without air conditioning?

I was back at The Beach last weekend. Staying in an expensive "inn" with air conditioning and ceiling fans so efficient and cold you need a down comforter at night to stay warm in the Egyptian cotton sheets. There are fancy beach chairs, too -- for a price. And dinners every night at restaurants with the best food and wines from around the world.

But The Beach itself has not changed. Not one bit. Not since I was a youngster ... perhaps not even since the dinosaurs roamed the Florida Panhandle.

And that brings me to this entry's final photo (below). I study it closely. It is of a little boy -- me -- at the edge of the water, testing my courage, and learning first-hand about how great and vast and wondrous that big ocean really is. And now, silently thanking Jack Marshall for taking me there, and making that memory possible.

- Tom Marshall, New York City

Dad's Lawn

Back in the 1960s, before "green" meant anything other than the color of 7 Up bottles, Jack Marshall was in love with St. Augustine. Not the actual saint, nor the city in Florida, but the type of lush, green grass that grew on our lawn and the lawns of countless other proud Southerners.

Dad cultivated our St. Augustine lawn on Atlantic Street in Shreveport as if it weren't green at all, but pure gold.

He fertilized the lawn each spring, watered it faithfully through the searing hot Louisiana summers, luxuriated in its cool comfort in the fall, and waited patiently through its maize-brown dormancy each winter.

And every Saturday, from early spring to late fall, he mowed. That is, until his sons were old enough to do it for him.

My older brothers, John and David, got their turns in the mid to late 1950s. And then, sometime in 1960, in the summer of my sixth year, it was finally my time.

You cannot imagine my elation at being allowed to operate our lawn mower -- a huge, heavy, reel-type contraption with a giant spark plug and a scalding hot muffler astride its smoke-belching Briggs & Stratton engine.

To start the engine, first you opened the choke and then you carefully wrapped a knotted-end rope around the metal crank. After that you steadied yourself with one foot on the mower wheel and gave the wooden-handle end of the rope a mighty tug. If you were lucky and the engine "caught," you had to very quickly turn off the choke and adjust the throttle. More often, you had to repeat the entire process two-three-four or maybe even a half dozen times until finally, gloriously, that engine sputtered to life.

All of which seemed mysterious, possibily dangerous, and unimaginably exciting to little Tommy Marshall.

Once the mower was successfully started, you knotted the pull-cord on the handle (because inevitably you needed it again later), jerked on the knob to engage the power assisted wheels (Dad's concession to "progress") and finally started to actually cut the beautiful green expanse of St. Augustine grass (see Jack Marshall's photo of me wrangling the mower beast, above).

This all happened under Dad's watchful eyes. He nodded approvingly when I got it right, and he offered a gentle course correction with a steady hand when I struggled. Then he stood aside as I criss-crossed the lawn, feeling in my heart a pure, innocent, utter euphoria.

When the job was well under way, if he wasn't edging, pruning, or sweeping, Dad would sit on the concrete front steps, shirtless, sweaty and content, smoking a Camel cigarette and surveying his domain with obvious satisfaction. (When he died of malignant melanoma at age 55 in 1976, I often thought of such days. He quit smoking a couple of years later, but the sun must already have done its damage to his fair skin.)

Two years after my initial lawn mowing experience, we moved to a new house. Dad's dream house was was built to his exact specifications -- including a custom darkroom to better indulge his life's great passion for photography -- by A.E. "Swede" Johnson and his team of carpenters, electricians and plumbers.

That house had an even bigger lawn of St. Augustine grass, and Jack Marshall had placed each piece of sod firmly and lovingly in place. In time the grass grew thick and full, and hosted countless whiffle ball games, birthday parties, scout troop meetings, badminton matches and dogs, cats and other pets of every size, shape and color. My mother still lives in that home and enjoys that grass every day.

I now live in New York City, in a tiny apartment on the 28th floor of a Manhattan high-rise. The view is spectacular. But I have no grass, no lawn, and no yard work to do on summer Saturdays. On my almost daily runs in Central Park, a few blocks from my grassless home, I often stop and watch workers mowing one of the park's many lawns. I still am drawn to the beauty and smell of freshly mown grass.

At such times, though, my thoughts are more likely to be 1,400 miles and nearly 50 years away from New York City in 2009. They are with my Dad, Jack Marshall, on his lawn of St. Augustine grass in 1960s Shreveport. It is how I imagine heaven surely must be.

-Tom Marshall, New York City