Miss Gloria

2/23/2007 2:34 PM

Miss Gloria

In the very center of the city of New Orleans where Broadway and Colapissa intersect stands a shell of a building. If you were to venture a look inside this structure what you would find would be of no surprise: every color of mold, fallen ceilings, chemically degraded metal appliances, toilets filled with 18 month old human waste, broken windows, and -- the water line. It is of no surprise because we have seen this over and over up and down the streets of Gert Town, and elsewhere in the Crescent city. There is an inexhaustible and indescribable sense of loss and pain inside these damned spaces.

But this is not all that you find. There is tangible evidence in the rubble, little clues, to an unwritten story about the intangible. There is memory here in this place. You see hand written menus, warning signs against using large bills, a stove, deep fryers, paper plates and a bucket full of grease. Each, among others, is simply a fragment, a piece to a puzzle, that once considered with one another will begin to tell us a story. This story is about a building, a space, where certain events took place. These events shaped and served a community for many years. It is imperative for the health of the community that these pieces be picked up, dusted off and brought back together, with the corner stone, by the woman who is behind it all: Miss Gloria Caulfield.

On LaSalle Street in the city of New Orleans a twelve-year-old Gloria is cooking a steak in her mother’s restaurant. The year is about 1964, and she has never cooked a steak before this point, but a man has ordered one and her mother is too ill to help in the kitchen. Her older sister, who has been put in charge for the day, as asked her little sister to take on the challenge. Gloria has seen her mother make many steaks and just simply does the same. Gloria’s sister serves the steak to the man waiting in the dining room. She leaves, to only be called back to the table in just a few minutes. The man exclaims that it is the best steak that he has ever eaten and that the restaurant must surely have an exceptional cook. Gloria’s sister suggests that he might want to meet this great cook and tell her himself. The man quickly agrees and out comes twelve-year-old Gloria. Well, he quickly refuses to except the fact that such a young girl could create a steak so well prepared. His suspicion rises to such a level that he proceeds to search the kitchen for “the big old lady that made this steak.” Well, he finds neither a big nor an old lady, only twelve-year-old Gloria.

She had at that point found herself another talent, because Gloria wasn’t just any 12-year-old. To put it simply, she was good at helping people, and she enjoyed doing it. According to Miss Gloria she grew up around many elderly people and they always needed someone to help them deal with simple yet difficult everyday challenges. She didn’t just help those of her family; she grew up serving many throughout her community with their need for someone to support them in their old age. This fostered an attitude of service in Miss Gloria, so much so that as a teenager she dreamed of opening an assisted living home for the elderly.

So what does this all have to do with a shell of a building on Broadway and Colapissa? Well, either by good planning, chance, or, according to Gloria, providence: she found a way to bring her great talent of cooking and her great desire to serve her community into one effort. She opened her own restaurant in the Gert Town community. Gloria turned this small building into much more than just a place to eat great food; it became an icon of the community. Miss Gloria’s was a place to meet, a place to get the latest news: a true community center. When asked, those in the community talk about how among all the crime in the community Miss Gloria’s block was the safest because she didn’t allow drugs near her kitchen. As one resident remarked, “you just don’t mess with Miss Gloria, everybody here knows that.“ But beyond this, Gloria had found perhaps her most important and fulfilling service to the Gert Town community: she has a strong belief that everyone should get to eat. She has even shown concern for my thin physique, commenting, “Jared, we are going to fatten you up while you’re down here.” With this attitude, Miss Gloria started her famous one-dollar breakfast to make sure that everyone could afford to eat. In Miss Gloria’s words, “No one should begin a day without a good meal, I just couldn’t turn hungry people away.“ She carried this so far as to have an IOU book for the homeless of the community. “They paid me when they could if they could, and they got a good meal to keep them going,” said Gloria. At Christmas she would open her doors for a free meal to everyone. She would cook until she ran out of supplies just so they had something to be thankful for on Christmas day. Miss Gloria’s Kitchen became the community focal point, the place to talk about your day, and get much needed help and support. She successfully did what so many of us strive our entire lives to do-- take what we are good at and use it to improve our surroundings.

Since the storm, Miss Gloria, like the pieces of her restaurant, has been scattered from where she belongs. She still lives in Gert Town but has been forced to find work elsewhere because of the conditions of the restaurant. But she is still serving. Every morning she gets up to go assist an elderly couple of 73 and 80 deal with their day-to-day age-related difficulties. I have no doubt in the strength of Miss Gloria and her ability to make the best of any situation, in fact it almost brings me to tears of shame to see her resilience in the face of such hard times. In light of this, any effort to help her would hardly be a waste, because she seems to be able to make great things out of very little. The community of Gert Town is our greatest concern and challenge. How does a community have the strength to rebuild itself without the very elements that have shaped and defined it for years past? If the people of Gert Town are to pick up the pieces of their lives, dust them off, and bring them back together then they are going to need the cornerstone of their community back in service. The community needs Miss Gloria’s strength, spirit, and most importantly her great food to continue the story of Gert Town.

jared