Butterfly in the Typewriter

Rising out of a strip of land below sea level and positioned between a flood prone river and the second largest estuary in the United States, New Orleans has always been a city of deep contradictions. In 1930 Herbert Hoover visualized a futuristic New Orleans with a soaring skyline, declaring it “a city of Destiny.” And he echoed the sentiments of French explorer Sieur de Bienville who tried desperately to make his vision of Nouvelle Orleans come true after he founded the settlement in 1718. Surely he had doubts a few years later when the Great Hurricane of 1722 swept the settlement away, although he stubbornly rebuilt it. And Hoover must have also paused before uttering his words so soon after the devastating flood of 1927. Indeed, New Orleans has never done well conforming to an idea or a particular vision. But somehow it lives on as an impossible city, fighting the sinking earth beneath its feet, the waters that want to fill its streets, and the people that have undermined its enterprise from poorly constructed levees to corruption at every level, from mob bosses to mayors.

And Toole was born at a time when New Orleans was making great strides in its efforts to reinvent itself. Neither Hoover nor Bienville would have anticipated that this city of destiny would bet its economic future on a reflection of its past. While cities across the country strived to present the newest and most modern innovations, New Orleans went the opposite direction. Prominent businessmen harnessed the city’s unique cultural heritage, repackaged it for tourists, and marketed it throughout the country. By 1938 Mardi Gras had expanded from a local celebration of social elites to “a national holiday celebrated in the unique city of New Orleans.” The rundown French Quarter or Vieux Carré, once considered a blight on the city, was well on its way toward revitalization through preservation and restoration of its European charm. Strip clubs began setting up on Bourbon Street, echoing the indulgent past of the famous red light district, Storyville. And in February 1938, New Orleans celebrated, with great fanfare, the release of The Buccaneer, Cecil B. DeMille’s film based on Jean Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans. A year later, the battlefield where Toole’s ancestor had fought so valiantly became a national park. With a gilded mirror positioned toward the city’s past, and its deep-seeded sense of isolation, New Orleans began its love affair with itself.

But the visitor beheld only an intended version of the city. A tourist in the late 1930s was presented a kaleidoscopic parade of decadent fare and subservient African Americans, a mask that glossed over the city’s intricate texture. The New Orleanians of Toole’s generation grew up with a unique awareness of the many layers of the city, an awareness that the true city lies underneath the surface where one finds a complex patchwork, a city of cultural divisions carved out of the various neighborhoods, distinguished through accent, mannerisms, and worldviews. Bobby Byrne, a friend of Toole’s, described the genesis of modern New Orleans as “a whole set of little places that eventually coalesced. And you have different attitudes” in each of these places. Of course, only the native would be sensitive to the characteristic differences.

So while John and Thelma had come from the Faubourg Marigny to settle in Uptown, from the Uptown perspective they would always be “downtown people.” And downtown people, Bobby Byrne explained, are “all a little mad . . . some of them are really downtown mad . . . intensely private and intensely nosey.” Thelma would, of course, contest. She always maintained that while she grew up among the “hot-blooded Italians” and “lowlifes” she never mingled with them. Citing her father’s position as a clerk of court, she distinguished her family with its proud cultural heritage. While she observed and impersonated the “dagos yelling at each other” in their raspy voices, she always considered herself superior to them. “We had wicker rockers . . . two pianos in the house . . . and we always had maids!” she declared. According to Byrne, no matter how cultured or dignified she presented herself, the mores of New Orleans took precedence. At least her son would have all the benefits of high society, and she would share with him the stories of the characters of the old neighborhood. Indeed, Kenny’s upbringing in Uptown sophistication with the inescapable dose of “downtown madness” likely propelled him to seek out the unique neighborhoods, looking to observe and understand New Orleanians. He would discover his city behind the mask, delving into all its complexity by way of observing its people. And while he would roam about the town and eventually throughout the country, Uptown was always his home.

So in the final days of 1937, John and Thelma brought their precious Kenny home. They enjoyed the wonderment of their newborn child in their house at 1128 Webster Street next to Audubon Park. They celebrated a memorable first Christmas, with a huge tree and newly purchased European ornaments. A few weeks later he was baptized in the Catholic Church at Loyola University. In the late spring of 1938, the extended Toole family spent an afternoon together at the park. There his father, aged but proud, held his smiling Kenny boy high in the air, up to the sun. It appears the child had entered into a warm family embrace.

But neither the new home nor the joyful celebrations could merge the rift that had formed between John and Thelma. For reasons unclear, she took issue with the entire Toole family. Publicly, she never questioned the talents of her husband, claiming him the best of the Tooles, but privately she judged that he had never lived up to his potential. “He could have been a professor,” she remarked. And his decision to leave his steady job of managing a parts department in order to sell automobiles, shortly after they were married, always bewildered her. While he enjoyed some loyal clients at the car dealership, Thelma lamented that he was a fool with money, always claiming herself the main breadwinner in the home. But where Thelma saw foolishness, other people saw integrity. At times, John worked against his own interests as a salesman to follow his moral compass. Before selling an automobile to a walk-in customer, he would often make sure the person could afford it. If a family came into the dealership, and he noticed the children’s shoes were worn through, he would dissuade the head of the family from purchasing the vehicle, suggesting they wait a few months to get the new model.

His nephew, Harold Toole Jr., fondly recollects the success of his uncle. From what he saw, John Toole provided well for his family. Harold recalls,

He was the top salesman at the only top-end car dealership in New Orleans and the surrounding area at the time.... His entire clientele were the who’s who of the then “upper crust” of New Orleans society.

Thelma recalled different anecdotes of his salesmanship. While he certainly had high-end clients, he was not the shrewdest of businessmen. Perhaps eager for one of those generous tips, on one occasion he took out a personal loan of three hundred dollars to cover the initial down payment on a car for a judge. Days later, Thelma had to go retrieve the money from the judge. To put himself at such financial risk for an affluent client while Thelma raced around town teaching music lessons and tracking down loan obligations, struck her as thoughtless. Of course, her issues with John in regards to money or his career choices may have been indicators of deeper marital problems. In a heated moment at the end of her life, she claimed her husband “never honorably supported his multitalented wife and multitalented son.”

Fortunately for John, children often remain blissfully unaware of the ways of work and money. Regardless of the ebb and flow of his income, John and his son shared a mutual interest in automobiles. From an early age, Toole became infatuated with these works of industrial art—an appreciation that lasted his entire life. Before he was two, he was propped in the driver’s seat of the family car for a picture. His hands on the wheel, he turned his head toward the camera, ready to hit the road. On his first trip out of New Orleans, he accompanied his father to Lansing, Michigan, the home of the Oldsmobile factory. At the age of two years, he could identify different makes of motorcars as they drove by: “Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Packard, La Salle, Ford, Chevrolet, Dodge, Plymouth, Studebaker, Buick, Pontiac”—he could name them all. And when he was only five years old, in either an over-eager or oddly oblivious moment, John allowed him to drive around the block in the family car. When Thelma spotted her angel rounding the corner, his eyes just above the steering wheel, peering out of the windshield, she was furious. But her reprimands did not quell the shared love of automobiles between father and son.

And, yet, aside from their interest in cars, John and his Kenny boy never seemed to form a close bond. “Thelma wouldn’t allow it,” claimed Harold. But Thelma once cryptically mused in an interview, John “had other interests.” For the formative years of Toole’s life, his father often sought escape away from the home. And while Toole never lost his affection for automobiles, perhaps an aspect of his father he could appreciate, in his early years his mother was his guide and his mentor.

Thelma cherished her son. After his birth she decided to work only three days a week in order to spend as much time as possible with him. On the days she worked, a nanny named Beulah Mathews would look after the young boy, until Thelma, eagerly returning home from work, arrived at the door. On her days off, Thelma and Kenny would spend hours strolling through Audubon Park. She was the only white woman, as she recalled, pushing her child in his stroller; the Uptown women, she commented, would never be seen doing the job of a domestic. And, after a full day out at the park, he still pleaded for Thelma to read to him, often staying up until 11 p.m., immersed in a world of stories. He required at least two hours of reading every night. Most nights, Thelma entertained his demands, but when exhausted from miles of walking in the park, she handed the responsibility over to his father. And even as she found many faults in John, she warmly recollected his poor, dramatic interpretation of fictional voices and how patiently he responded to their son’s curiosity.

Thelma also exposed Kenny to the cultural riches of their city, the aspects of New Orleans he did not see in Uptown. “What he didn’t know about New Orleans,” she claimed, “I told him—Santa Battaglia—the brawls and that hot Italian blood. I told him of that colorful neighborhood where I grew up, the magnificence of my culture, which I gave to him.” Thelma also exposed him to the refined aspects of New Orleans culture. He attended his first Mardi Gras Ball at the Roosevelt Hotel when he was two years old. He had an annual portrait taken of him in his Mardi Gras costume. And at the age of five when he came home one day from school “humming the first four measures of ‘Habanera,’” a song his teacher had played in class, Thelma recognized his “keen ear.” She told him the aria was from Carmen and a few days later took him to see Bizet’s famous opera of Spanish romance at the Municipal Auditorium. From hearing the stories of New Orleanians yelling from the stoops of shotgun homes in the Marigny to attending operas and participating in a royal Mardi Gras court in one of the finest hotels in the South, Toole was introduced to culture as a vast spectrum of class, race, and experience.

He also exhibited a remarkable speed of intellectual development. From an early age, he showed exceptional ability in observation and expression. He once described the voice of a little girl he met at a party as “silver clanging.” And one night when his mother shut off the light to his room he commented, “This darkness is darker than garden soil.” Such remarks charmed his mother. Entering kindergarten at the age of four, he declared he would please his teacher. And he did so throughout his education.

However, at the end of his first year he had not met the required age of five, so he was not recommended to the first grade. The idea of him repeating kindergarten when he had demonstrated the intellectual ability to progress unsettled Thelma. She appealed to the superintendent, citing her son’s talents, and he was finally allowed to continue to the first grade at McDonogh 14 School. After one month, he came home complaining that he “wasn’t learning anything.” The curriculum was too simplistic for him. So his mother made an appointment with the school psychologist to have him tested.

In preparation for the test, Kenny’s father spent hours every day working with him on math. Finally, the day of the test came. He went into a closed room with a psychologist, while Thelma waited outside. She had presumed his strength would be in language arts, but to her surprise he showed exceptional strength in math. And he had scored 133 on the IQ test, with a 160 being the category of genius. But the psychologist, Thelma claimed, said his score “would have been higher” except he became bored with the test and he stopped talking. “I’ll tell you why he stopped talking to you,” Thelma replied. “He was observing you.” His mother often explained how his “great asset” was “studying people and observing everything keenly.” The young boy found people far more intriguing than any tests of the intellect. The psychologist recognized him as an unusually bright and perceptive child, although he was not classified as a genius. However, the request for advancement was approved. And at the age of five, when most children are still in kindergarten learning to read and count, Toole entered the second grade.

The accomplishment of skipping two grades so early in his schooling served as proof to Thelma that she had a genius for a son. She certainly deserves credit for nurturing his imagination and intellect. But it seems her son had little choice in being so successful. From the moment he was born, his mother deemed he was destined for greatness. He was “a rarity in the category of newborn,” she explained, “because there was an aura of distinction.” The nurses at the hospital had never seen a baby with such lively facial expressions, she reported. And Thelma was convinced her child was a natural born leader of sorts: when he cried in the nursery, “everyone cried.” In her remembrances of him as a child, his mother always emphasized his maturity. In a keepsake baby book, Thelma chronicled his early years but races past his infancy, seemingly eager to showcase the development of his mind, his awareness, and his wit. He had “the charm of a six-month-old baby” from the day he was born. It seemed to her he was “ready to get going and achieve” from his first moments of life. And when she told him that he was going to go to school at the age of three, the same age at which she started school, he rebelled. “He had the mentality of a six-year-old,” she explained. From his intellect to his looks, his mother was convinced he was a prodigy. She even thought he shared a “striking resemblance” to the son of World War II hero General Douglas MacArthur. And, of course, at the heart of Kenny’s talents was a devotion to his mother. “I want to please you, Mother,” he said to her, frustrated, one day, “but I don’t know how.”

A nurturing guidance eventually turned to eager encouragement that chased prestige and success. Thelma celebrated how he was “always two years younger than his classmates,” and yet they still looked up to him. She emphasized how he could stand in judgment of them. “Those children thought I was Shakespeare,” he bragged to her after a class presentation. He often referred to his classmates as “those children” when speaking to his mother. In that phrase she heard his earned sense of superiority. But certainly such posturing would have social consequences as well, even among children. If the young Kenny distinguished himself from his classmates with disdain, one wonders how he would cultivate relationships.

Yet, classmates of Toole do not recall him having a superiority complex. They do remember, however, the immediate attention he gained as a student. Jane Stickney Gwyn, one of Toole’s former classmates, recalls how he was “a bright star from the moment he entered McDonogh 14.” One day their teacher wrote “arctic” on the board, and each student had to pronounce the word. They all lazily dropped the middle “c,” pronouncing it “artic.” Only Toole stood up and pronounced it correctly. Of course, having a mother who was an elocutionist gave him an advantage.

Any sense of superiority Toole held above his classmates was tested when he started putting on weight. For a time in his youth, Toole became quite plump, and unfortunately he suffered teasing from other children. He quickly identified his wit as his best defense. As Thelma reported, one day he endured the taunts of one of the sons of the owners of the Leidenheimer baking company, makers of “Zip Bread,” a brand widely used for po’boy sandwiches throughout New Orleans. When the Leidenheimer boy called Toole fat, he quickly retorted, “Doesn’t your daddy make Jip bread?” The response delighted Thelma, although she always maintained he was never chubby; she preferred the term “brawny.” Nonetheless, Toole remained self-conscious about his weight his entire life.

In addition to his sharpening wit, he impressed his neighbor and fellow student John Geiser with his intuition. On the first day of school and months thereafter, Geiser walked with Toole the seven blocks to McDonogh 14. One of the lasting memories that Geiser has of Toole is a rather off-handed remark in 1942. The United States had been involved in World War II for almost a year and Roosevelt still gave his fireside chats on the radio, but television was an emerging medium. One day Toole described television to Geiser as “a mixture of movies and radio” and then predicted, “After the war, TV will be as popular as the radio.” Considering this prediction became quite true, Geiser remembers it as an astoundingly prescient comment to make at the time. Toole was always sensitive to his surroundings, and it was clear, even to him at five years old, the world was quickly changing.

During his early schooling, the social climate of World War II and the following afterglow of the victory dominated the tenor of the time, especially in New Orleans, which served as a final stop for many servicemen before heading abroad. The war unified the country, and schools made it their responsibility to indoctrinate students with ardent patriotism. As evident in some of Thelma’s sheet music titled Songs for Schools at War, children sang about the poorest of Americans giving up their “tebacker” and “smelly beer” in order to purchase war bonds. “Uncle Sam sure gets our bet,” they sang. The mentality of sacrifice and investment in the war effort proliferated through every aspect of American culture.

And as the war came to an end, Toole grew into his boyhood years and no longer posed doll-like in pictures with Mardi Gras costumes. For a time he enjoyed typical diversions of an American childhood. He swam at Audubon Park, played catch in dusty fields, and tossed a football with friends. Pictures of him around five years old suggest the possibility of a budding athlete. But Thelma maintained that her son never liked sports. “He was an artist,” she declared. And she was happy for it because, while she “celebrated champions,” she knew nothing about athletics. Besides, she had taken some measures to ensure her son would not fall into the brutish recreation of physical force. His baby book was bound in pink silk, and she had one of his baby pictures colored in hues of pink. And she had nurtured his love for Shakespeare and opera. He was intended to be a sensitive child. And while he showed some artistic talents in sketching, she identified he would be a great performer. Not only were his observations astute, but he proved to be a talented mimic as well. When he came home from school one day and impersonated the “stentorian voice” of the principal lecturing and reprimanding the student body, Thelma saw in her son a natural born actor.

It must have pleased her immensely when in 1948 he joined a youth theater troupe offered through the parks and recreation department. The Traveling Theatre Troupers was a rather large group of children and adolescents that performed plays on stages throughout the town. Thelma eagerly supported her son’s interest in acting. When he was cast to play the minor role of a Chinaman cook in a performance of A Leapyear in Arizona around Mardi Gras season, Thelma had a Chinaman suit made for him to serve as both his costume for the play and his Mardi Gras attire. Made of eye-catching lavender sheen, he proudly wore the costume in the production and paraded it through the streets of New Orleans during Carnival. He donned heavy makeup on his face to make his eyebrows look long and dark and his eyes appear almond in shape. When in character, he raised his cheeks, pursed his lips, and squinted his eyes, making all “the farcical expressions of the Asian face.” The production took place at an outdoor theater in a park, and Thelma recalled how children playing in the distance looked at her son gesturing at the back of the stage. “Look at the Chinaman!” she heard them exclaim. For a moment, he had stolen the show. He took this character to Charity Hospital to entertain the elderly, a performance that was broadcast on the radio.

Racial stereotypes in performance art were despairingly common in Toole’s day, especially in the Jim Crow South. In Mystery at the Old Fort, Toole played Dick Bishop, “a boy . . . full of adventure”; and of course there was Chief Charley Horse, “an old Indian,” surely played by a white youth. And in a summer production of Crinoline to Calico, much of the entirely white cast, along with Toole, performed in blackface. Granted, blackface has an elaborate history in theater performance, especially in New Orleans where the krewe of Zulu, comprised of African American members, satirically parades in blackface every Mardi Gras. The musician Louis Armstrong even appeared as the King of Zulu in 1949. But in Uptown, the young actors were playing the traditional role of minstrelsy, one that would die away with the civil rights movement.

Whether her son gestured as a Chinaman, danced in blackface, or played more conventional roles, Thelma felt that the directors at the Traveling Theatre Troupers underappreciated her son’s talents. So in the summer of 1949, when Toole was eleven, she started her own youth theater troupe, the Junior Variety Performers. She put together variety shows of music and dramatic interpretation, as opposed to full plays. Members of the group do not recall feeling Toole was given undue preference. However, in Thelma’s own recollection, she intended to place him center stage from the first rehearsal to the last performance. When the troupe was to give a gala at the U.S. Marine Hospital to the theme of “romance in words and music,” she searched the library for material, but ultimately decided to write it herself with her son cast as the star:

I composed various lovers for him, very quickly. When he came home . . . I said, “Son, you are going to do this for our gala performance.” It was in two weeks. I said, “I am going to read it to you, and tonight you study and give it back to me tomorrow.” He could memorize as I could. So he gave it back to me. It was a little better than my rendition. He was the star. It was a beautiful production.

Theater was serious business in the Toole home. Between the ages of eight and twelve, there were many photos of him taken that appear staged, almost professional, as if they might serve as headshots or promotional material to land much larger parts in theater or film. The newspaper featured his photo to promote performances. He appeared on television in a show called TeleKids. From September 1948 to May of 1949 he was a guest newscaster on a popular New Orleans radio station. And throughout his days as an actor, the coverage in the local media suggests that he now preferred being called by his full middle name, Kennedy.

As Toole strutted on stage at his mother’s prompting, it is easy to cast Thelma as a typical stage mother, but many of her students cherish their memories of the productions they put on. One of her students, who later became an accomplished lawyer and returned to help Thelma with her estate at the end of her life, always attributed his clear speech to her tutelage. She made rehearsals and performances fun for the young actors. She expected much from them, and, in turn, they learned a great deal. In the end she made them feel like stars.

Surely her son enjoyed the theatrical endeavors, as well; he certainly gained many of his talents of expression from her example and direction. But it would only be natural for him to grow tired of memorizing lines, singing, and dancing on cue—especially if it never held the magic it did for Thelma. Jane Stickney Gwyn, the same classmate who recalled Toole’s clear pronunciation of “arctic,” witnessed this fatigue when she saw Toole every year at Cornelia Sansum’s birthday party in her grand home on Constantinople Street. Sansum was an elderly woman with white hair, who always wore white dresses and white gloves. She loved to read the newspaper in her gleaming apparel, but she detested the black print that rubbed off onto her gloves. Gwyn would be dragged to the party to play a sonata on the piano, and Toole would have to recite some poems. Neither Gwyn nor Toole relished performing for the elderly woman, but she always had delicious cookies and punch. And the novelty of an elevator in her house provided a source of infinite amusement to two bored adolescents. After Gwyn and Toole satisfied Sansum and the other guests with their performances, they commiserated, loaded up with petits fours, and rode up and down the elevator, getting thrills from occasionally tripping the failsafe mechanism.

Such glimpses of Toole appearing like an average child, eating cookies, playing in an elevator, or being teased on the playground, are rare testimonies from this time period. Much of what is known of him in these early days comes directly from his mother. In her narrative, he appears as a person of perfection. In interviews she focused on stories about his early childhood. And many of her recollections, documented in her early eighties, verge on a hyperbole that can be difficult to believe. One of his grade school teachers supposedly confided in her that her son’s “vocabulary is superior to Dickens.” Any proud mother deserves the right to sing the praises of her child, but Thelma left a severely limited depiction of her son at a young age. From her memory, it seems as if her genius boy appeared on the earth to begin his brilliant undertakings, suffering the occasional fool who did not recognize his talents. Beneath this veneer was a powerful and complicated dynamic between mother and son. Undeniably, Thelma was his greatest advocate. From his first breath to her last, she believed his brilliance was limitless. But her drive could be relentless, and at times it must have risked overshadowing her son’s own desires and interests.

While father and son bonded over automobiles, mother and son came together in performance art. But the years of his impressionable youth were coming to an end. And every parent-child relationship must navigate the inevitable current toward independence, especially during the turbulent teenage years. Near the end of eighth grade, Toole must have lost interest in acting. Thelma cast him in one more show that she directed for the Lakeside School of Speech and Dramatic Art, a school he did not attend. She recalled her son’s “resonant, far-projecting voice, dramatic flair, and stage presence brought warm praise from the audience.” His adieu came with honorable applause. But his final role as a young actor seems a more fitting end, pointing toward the scholar he would become. In the fall of 1950 he modeled for a public service announcement that urged the public to read and study in well-lit areas. With no costumes, props, or heavy makeup, he sits at a table doing homework under a lamp. Shortly after that appearance was published in the New Orleans Item, he quit the stage troupe, and Thelma shifted her classes to focus on elocution.

The glories of theater were the dreams of his mother. And she savored some notoriety from her labors as director. In November of 1948 a review of the Traveling Theatre Troupers, written with flattering enthusiasm, equates the two-hour variety show to “having a front row seat at a Broadway musical.” It goes on to state, “The high quality of the entertainment was a tribute to Mrs. Toole’s experienced and sustained coaching.” There is no doubt her son enjoyed performing, donning characters, and doing impersonations. But the stage was not his forte. Besides, he would find his city so full of interesting people that one did not need the theater to experience rich characters and intriguing plots. His days on the stage would certainly help him in his future literary pursuits. He recognized that the most interesting stories occur through characters and dialogue, not lengthy narration. While he would carry such lessons with him, his entrance into high school was a time to explore his own life goals, to define who he wanted to be, as he narrowed his interests in observation, mimicry, and writing. And once he crossed over that threshold into high school, he asked his friends and family to call him Ken.