Going to Jake’s Funeral
I am parked at the McDonald’s in Rayne, La., in the heart of Acadiana, under a clear, light blue sky, listening to Cajun French music on the radio, making my way east to Metairie, La., to attend a funeral. The deceased was an offshore engineer I worked with for a long time on St. Charles Avenue. I got the news a few days ago. Jake Alford had died. He had been very ill and passed at age 71. His death came as a surprise to me. I had always expected Jake to attend our funerals, as he seemed to have the fewest bad habits of any of us.
The thing about Jake was, you couldn’t tell much about him by looking at him. He didn’t stand out in a crowd. He was conservative, old-fashioned, thrifty, friendly to strangers, intelligent, quiet, unexcitable, stubborn, polite, smiled often, and could at times be grouchy.
It would take years for me to see past the mask of professionalism he wore at work and get a peek at his personal side; his deep connection to the culture of New Orleans. For example, Jake was always in favor of bringing heaps of boiled crawfish into the office for staff lunches during mudbug season. He brought king cakes from Rouses market, not those fancy, expensive ones from Randazzo’s, to the office during Mardi Gras and picked up oyster dressing from Rouses for our Thanksgiving lunches. Whatever the definition of a flashy, extravagant man is, Jake was the opposite of that.
Jake’s specialty was design and engineering services for jack-up oil and gas platforms. He was an experienced, dependable, highly regarded, no-nonsense engineer. His boss said Jake was the best in the business.
I swear, if the boss asked Jake to go to Abu Dhabi to figure out what was wrong with some jack-up rig in the Persian Gulf, he would finish the e-mail he was working on, pick up his leather satchel and drive straight to the airport without so much as a see ya later. At least it seemed that way to me, as if it were no big deal. You could sit with him through a dull engineering meeting and never guess in a million years that he played acoustic guitar and accordion in an Irish/folk/Cajun band and took barely-paying gigs in the French Quarter and around town, just for the enjoyment of it.
Our parent company tried for years to get Jake to move to our headquarters in Houston. Aside from being a senior engineer, he was a vice president of our small firm, a founding associate. I once asked Jake about the idea of moving to Houston. He gave a weak smile and said, “It’s not for me.”
Farewell, Mr. Jake. You had a long, successful career. I didn’t know you well. I don’t think many people at work did. But I came to like you and respect you. I enjoyed seeing you show up an hour early each morning at exactly the same time, trudge up and down the stairs all day to confer with draftsmen and change their drawings, and sit in your corner office giving documents crazy-long file names.
You didn’t leave us any embarrassing stories to tell about you, as far as I know, but I’ll bet they found at least one set of Mardi Gras beads in the back of your desk. You were a hell of a jack-up rig engineer and a good man, which is enough. So, for what it’s worth, folks from the office are going to be at the funeral home tomorrow as you complete your final project. I suspect if you could attend your own funeral you would enjoy the Masonic rites they will perform for you and grumble about the cost and fuss of it all.
Guy D. Johnson is a writer and marketing communications professional. Previously an animation studio owner, daily newspaper editor, reporter and photographer, volunteer fireman, railroad bridge gang helper, FM radio station underling and cave guide. He has lived on farmland trusted to the sun and rain; atop a wooded hill; beside great rivers; upon an arid, high plateau; and at the subtropical coast of the Gulf of Mexico. For 20 years, he worked and wrote in New Orleans.