TulaneLSU's Top 10 signs of Clearview Parkway of Metairie

Dear Friends,

New Orleans knows loss more than any other American city. Every generation from its founding to present has at least one great tragedy to share. Loss from disease epidemic, violence epidemic, hurricane, and flood fill that pages of New Orleans history. Within this broader landscape of loss have been even more micro losses.

One such loss was the Metairie Muffler Man. His reign over Clearview Parkway lasted for 38 good years before the mob, in the form of the winds from Hurricane Isaac in 2012, violently decapitated him. Rather than usher in a renaissance of signage and public art, this coup led to a vacuum of noteworthy public landmarks along Clearview Parkway that still has not been filled.

I always thought the Muffler Man looked a little like the sign language interpreter for all the Governor’s press conferences. He’s been the guy making signs for decades on TV now. I remember him from my brief stint at LSU as the sign guy at University Presbyterian Church, a modest church that obviously was ahead of its time in the sign language game. Or maybe he looked a little like Bald Bull from Mike Tyson’s Punchout.

(not my photo)

Anyway, I can recall after the terrorist attacks in 2001 that the Muffler Man got a patriotic makeover, with blue pants, red shirt, and a gold crown. His skin was as white as vanilla icing. He survived Katrina only to fall victim to the wave of Saints fanaticism that captured the city after the storm. They repainted him, this time with gold pants and a black top. His skin remained snow white.

Muffler Men have felt the pains of life in New Orleans. A similar muffler man long stood sentinel over the Muffler Clinic in Terrytown. But then local assassins in the 1990s said, “Off with his head” and followed through with it. One wonders if anyone in the Take ‘Em Down NOLA group of iconoclasts got his start here. The risk of being a statue in these parts is quite high. Eventually his head was recovered and sewn to his neck -- clearly the weak link in Steve Dashew’s engineering of these 1963 fiberglass creations.

I wish I had many stories about Clearview Parkway, but I do not. Getting to and driving on Clearview always required a car, and Mother and Uncle rarely wanted to go to that part of Metairie. When the Krispy Kreme opened just before Christmas of 2000, I do remember making a trip there after shopping at Lakeside with Mother. The line stretched nearly to Airline and they had friendly employees handing out warm glazed samples as we waited. It was my first Krispy Kreme, and I am glad there is not one within walking distance, lest my BMI compare to that of the average Louisiana male.

Vague recollections of a rundown 1960s era stripmall where that Krispy Kreme sits cloud my mind. I cannot recall why we would have been there in the early 1990s. Perhaps we took the River route to Clearview for one of my cousin’s ballet classes. I believe that school was where the Reginelli’s is or maybe it was where the first That’s Amore’ Pizza was in that corner strip by West Esplanade across from World Deli.

Anyway, that other strip at the southeast corner of West Metairie and Clearview where Krispy Kreme sits today had a scary white van with a wobbly, white cart beside it. It was hand painted with red letters on its face. Inside the van must have been a generator, or perhaps they ran an extension cord from the convenience store, which I am told was Dan's Grocery, because there was a single incandescent bulb hooked to the van’s overhanging contraption providing the faintest of warm lights for those who needed an early morning or late night snack. In that cart were the creations of Manuel Hernandez, founder of Manuel’s Hot Tamales. By this time, his son-in-law, William Schneider, was running the business and apparently he had satellite carts throughout the Metro. The first cart had its start on the corner of Canal and Carrollton in 1933. And by the late 1950s his cart business had become so successful, Manuel opened Manuel’s Hot Tamale and Chili House at 952 Jefferson Highway. You may know that spot in the sharp curve in the road right before Ochsner, next to a Freemason’s meeting house. When Manuel’s restaurant was there, that area was filled with Italian mob-run businesses and casinos.

We never stopped to try a tamale at the West Metairie-Clearview intersection, one of the great regrets of my life. You see, Mother never let me go to any convenience store as a child except Time Saver, and the Time Saver was on the north side of West Metairie. The exception was made because Mother enjoyed Time Saver’s signage, commercials, and the Halloween gift slips for a free Icee. Mother always chose to dispense those coupons, along with Gideon Bibles, on October 31. The next day, of course, we made our way, like bad Protestants, to the cemeteries where our family is buried, including one Catholic at St. Vincent DePaul's Cemetery.

As most of you know, the origins for Clearview Parkway are 1926 when parish and state officials saw the need to connect Bridgedale, between West Napoleon and West Metairie, to Airline Highway. It, along with the budgeting for Transcontinental just west, was a relatively small project. The year before Clearview’s construction started, work on what would become the Huey P Long Bridge, that beastly creature, began.

It was Transcontinental, not Clearview, that was to connect with the Huey P. This fact is made clear by looking at the two streets names. Why would you name a narrow four lane street that runs through neighborhood after neighborhood Transcontinental? That was the road which was supposed to connect Metairie to the world, through the Huey P’s industrial rail system. Instead, Garden of Memories Cemetery cut Transcontinental from the bridge. I do not understand how this happened. Clearview, on the other hand, was supposed to be a parkway, tree lined, and for recreation, not commerce.

One might also look at map to see the absolute illogic of connecting Clearview to the Huey P. To do so required building a mess of a flyover at present Earhart in order to curve Clearview back west to meet with the Huey P. Neither I nor Uncle is privy to the details behind this boondoggle, but I have little doubt the people of Jefferson Parish were bamboozled by their government, which was Mob run in those days. I am not confident to say that either Broussard or Yenni of the Esplanade Mall were improvements.