Reader's Digest Got Nothing On Me- Most Memorable Person #1

A friend, Lamont sent me this I think. I've kept it, its from the New Orleans Times-Picayune from 1999.  When I met Fred, it was 1973, I was 21 or 22 and working for Cary Beckham at his Magazine Street store. Cary had only recently hired Fred. What was written in this obit I had no knowledge of. What Cary didn't tell was the most interesting parts. Here's the Fred folklore- (don't know how true) He got divorced and hitchhiked to New Orleans and for the first week or so, slept under the Canal Street Ferry Wharf. He decided he wanted to work in a bookstore, so he started showing up at Cary's shop on Royal Street in the French Quarter and volunteering to help around the shop with an idea of learning the business. Cary said after a few weeks of accepting Fred's free help, he felt so guilty that he hired him to run the store in the evenings and the weekends. Story was that Fred was an orphan as a young child and raised in an orphanage. During the time I knew him, he had a boarding house room somewhere and had bare bones belongings. Only one pair of shoes and one jacket. He didn't believe in having more. He only slept a few hours a night and would nap sitting up in the bookstore for fifteen minutes at a time. He spent the long nights reading. He loved books. But he also loved people unconditionally. He would smile a beaming smile at you when you walked into the shop. He knew your name if you came back. I loved the man. He must have been in his fifties when I was there and worked for Cary at the other shop.

He loved James Oliver Curwood. 

When I went back to visit in '86? I ran into him early in morning in the French Quarter. I hadn't told anyone I knew that I was coming to visit. We went and had a bear claw and coffee and I walked with him to open the bookstore on Royal Street. He hadn't changed a bit. Had spent twelve years selling books in that little shop in the quarter. I was sad because his teeth had gone south. He had no money, no dental plan, etc. etc. He had  this bright white smile when I had known him before. Everyone in the city who read books, knew him. You wonder if his daughter knew him.