Bridging generations

• By ED CULLEN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: May 18, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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One evening, Roland Saurage and some neighbors sat talking in the house Saurage grew up in on Reymond Avenue when a train rumbled by at the end of the backyard.

Conversation stopped as the train pulled by a diesel engine ran under the Perkins Road Overpass bordering Saurage’s side yard.

“There wasn’t the vibration when we were growing up,” said Cary Saurage, Roland’s brother. “The engines were steam. We’d run to the back fence to watch them go by.”

The house, built in 1947, was home to four Saurage children, their mother, Alma Lee, and father, H. Norman Saurage Jr., head of Community Coffee.

Norman’s father, Henry Norman “Cap” Saurage, began roasting coffee in 1919 in his store, Full Weight Grocery, in Dixie, next to the Standard Oil Refinery, in north Baton Rouge.

The overpass, which was finished in 1937, figured in the daily adventures of neighborhood children.

“I watched them build it,” said Peter Bahlinger, 82.

Today, as many younger residents walk under the Perkins Road Overpass as over the narrow structure on their way to work or to the bars and restaurants across the tracks.

“I’d like to see lights and paths under the overpass,” said Saurage.

The drifts of litter under the overpass come from the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Roland Saurage said, and from people in cars crossing the overpass.

Some of the debris comes from squatters who camp under the overpass.

“There were always hobos or their belongings under the overpass,” Cary Saurage said. “You’d see the smoke from their campfires. I remember one coming to the door and momma giving him food.”

“No one locked their doors,” said Cammie Lapenas. “There were hobos under the Perkins Road Overpass, but they were friendly.”