Jim Bradshaw: Strangers at the table opened a new world

Strangers often sat at our Thanksgiving dinner when I was a boy, and I learned a lot from most of them. In fact, those strangers nearly changed the course of my life.           Thanksgiving was always celebrated at my grandparents’ house, which was midway on the route taken by seamen walking toward downtown from the Port of Lake Charles.
 I don’t know whether we were naïve or just more trusting of each other in those days, but if my grandmother spotted a passing sailor about the time dinner was to be served, he would be accosted by a woman wielding a menacing wooden cooking spoon and invited — commanded — to share our feast, even though he was a total stranger.
Thanksgiving wasn’t the only time we’d find a slightly bewildered mariner at the table. She also regularly grabbed sailors, all of whom she deemed malnourished and in need of a good meal, when our large family gathered for Sunday dinner each week. More often than not the stranger became the main object of our attention, an unwitting entertainer and educator.
During the meal the sailor was closely questioned about where he was born, when he’d gone to sea, what ports he’d visited, and where he was going next. Maps came out as soon as the dishes were cleared.
 My grandfather had at least 20 years’ worth of National Geographic magazines in his living room bookshelves, and the maps that came with them. We invariably spent at least an hour, sometimes more, poring over the maps and tracing routes to exotic ports of call. The conversations often lasted well into the afternoon. (Remember, this was before television sets and football games took over our holidays.)
Sometimes we’d pull in Captain Fred Nelson, a Scandinavian neighbor who was in his 60s when I was 10. He went to sea as a teenager and worked aboard the last of the giant four-masted sailing ships.
He was a pilot for the Lake Charles port when I got to know him and first heard his tales about life at sea. At our dining room table, he could compare his travels with those of the younger sailors, sharing stories of trips years apart.
Sometimes he would fetch a canvas-covered scrapbook to refresh his memory about old times and nearly-forgotten places.
Sometimes we had to call in other neighbors who’d gained fluency in European languages when they served in World War II, and who themselves had seen some of these ports that were foreign to me but home to the sailors.
As we traced voyages on the maps, we’d pull out old National Geographic magazines and find stories about the faraway places that our new friends talked about. The accompanying illustrations became much more than pictures in a magazine when our visitor recognized the places and could talk about them.
Because of those encounters, I’d made an imaginary trip around the world before I was in my teens, virtually visiting places and cultures that I otherwise might never have known existed. They were also part of the reason that I thought very seriously as I neared high school graduation about studying at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and going to sea myself.
I think I made the correct choice of a career that has led to a full, rich , and satisfying life, but I still sometimes wonder what it would have been like if I’d followed that path and actually visited the places I first encountered in dining room lessons far richer than anything taught from a geography book.
It has taken me years to realize what an exceptional experience that was — not only because it gave me at a young age a view of the world bigger than many people get in a lifetime, but also because the experience was shared with family, neighbors, and strangers who were still fluent in the arts of curiosity and conversation — arts that were passed on to me and that have played a large part in the vocation that I did decide to follow.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.