This entry is going to take me back almost more than 50 years to my high school days in New Orleans. I am not sure why, at this time, the particular person I am going to write about, or the painting that accompanies this piece, have been on my mind. But I think I may have uncovered a bit of what was heretofore a mystery, and that is one of the reasons I want to write this now.

I don’t have a lot of strong memories of my youth and teenage years. I didn’t do a lot of things my peers did. I was serious, bookish but not nerdy, a homebody, a thinker, a loner. I didn’t have many friends, just a couple of guys who were my brothers age ( two years younger than me) and with whom I would hang out and do things. I kept to myself a lot. I never went out and did things on Saturday nights. I guess I was an atypical teenager. That’s just the way it was.
I was also rather industrious and interested in making spending money and saving for college. Thus, since the age of 13 and continuing until my senior year in high school, I had a little lawn mowing business. I had two steady customers for five years and others sporadically during that time or just on occasion. I made about $12-15 a week during the summer and saved most of it. What I did spend of it went for books and my stamp collection.

One of my customers was a couple who lived two houses down from us in the green and tree-filled suburb of Aurora Gardens on the West Bank of the Mississippi River in what is known as Algiers. Mrs. R. (her first name was Edna),was a delightful woman, easy to talk to and very friendly. She had a thick, lush lawn of St. Augustine grass, which I struggled to mow and pick up all the clippings from each week in the spring, summer and early fall. In the humidity of that city in summer i would sweat buckets and it was miserably uncomfortable doing that kind of work.

When done mowing, Mrs. R. would get me a tall glass of ice-cold Fresca and we would sit on her patio and chat and talk as if we were just really good friends. I truly enjoyed that. I liked making a bit of money (not much for mowing lawns in those days compared to now), but it felt good to have the grass looking so neat and good. I took pride in what I did.

Mrs. R.’s husband was a big executive for a large company and I rarely saw him, just on occasion when he would drive up as I was sweeping (no leaf blowers in those days). I remember vividly he always drove a big, new Oldsmobile 98. That was quite a luxury car in those days.

It never occurred to me that it was unusual for a teenager to feel more comfortable talking with adults than with someone his own age. But that was me. It was effortless to talk to Mrs. R. and my other regular customer. I never thought it was anything unusual. I didn’t have any friends my own age and in high school I merely had a few acquaintances.

Mrs. R. was just a very nice person. She also had a hobby — oil painting. One of her projects, which seemed to last for years as she worked to finish it, was copying the unusual and rather beguiliing painting by the French artist Eduard Manet titled “Lola de Valence.” I was always rather fascinated by this large and beautiful copy of the painting which hung in her living room and which I looked at from time to time.
Mrs. R. seemed, despite her friendliness, a rather mysterious person in some respects. I can’t remember much about her life’s story, but she seemed a bit sad to me. Maybe it was the fact that I was young and really didn’t know much about life. But I knew that she found something extremely interesting in that painting. And I never knew what it was.

I think now I do. Quite possibly, the woman in the painting, Lola de Valence, reminded Mrs. R. of herself when she was young. In fact, all these years later I recall her face clearly, but back then it never dawned on me that the resemblance was striking. So in one sense it was a self portrait, and I can imagine that in Lola she saw another side of herself, someone who yearned to travel to Spain and dance and have fun.

It has been almost 40 years since I last saw Mrs. R., but she and her painting are indelibly stamped in my memory. I love to view art and paintings now, especially American art, but I am intrugied by the French artists of the 19th century as well, such as Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Degas and Daumier. As a teenager, I had a keen appreciation for beauty and art. Years later I appreciate even more fully the people who influenced me and who I have admired, including Mrs. R. Her garden, love of painting and kindness toward me, inspired this entry. I never knew what that painting was until recently when I fortuitously stumbled across it in a book, but a little part of my past has come back to me, and with it a little more understanding of the puzzle and mystery of my own life.

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