POINT CLEAR - Alvin G. Gottschall's recently released "Growing Up in New Orleans" (Vantage Press, 1997) was written at the request of his daughter, Anne, who told her father that she would like to know more about his early life.

Whereas most writers discipline themselves to produce so many words or chapters each day, Gottschall, who resides in Point Clear, wrote a series of letters to his daughter.

In his first letter, dated Dec. 31, 1993, he explains that he was born in 1922 at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in New Orleans. By his May 20, 1945, letter he has covered the ensuing 23 years, concluding the book as he tells of his final days as commanding officer of the destroyer USS Mertz.

Along the way "Gootch" Gottschall gives both his daughter and his readers an insight into the what New Orleans was like during the 1920's and 30's. A latter portion of the book is about his experiences in the Pacific aboard the Mertz during World War II.

The book reads much like an oral history, as a lot of the material will be considered folklore by today's standards.

The letters are written in a style that resembles a back porch chat on a summertime evening. In essence, each installment builds toward the goal Gottschall set out in writing the book, and that is to give his daughter an idea of what her father was like.

While growing up in New Orleans, he writes as he describes his early years, entertainment centered around reading such books as "The Adventures of Tom Swift," and "The Rover Boys," listening to radio dramas, like "The Hit Parade" and "Mystery Theater," and turning the street into a hockey rink where a broom, some roller skates and a block of wood, which served as a puck, were all that were needed for a game.

"Every Friday night was the time to go to the neighborhood theaters to see cowboy movies starring Tom Mix and Hoot Gibson," he said. "All for about 25 cents."

A block from Gottschall's house was a mostly black cemetery that provided the neighborhood kids with one whale of a show whenever there was a funeral.

"Colored people (that's what they were called back then" seemed to take funerals very hard, especially the bereaved family and countless relatives," he wrote. "We also heard there were professional wailers added to make things more dramatic. They would cry, shriek, swoon, and sob loudly and a few would try to throw themselves into the open grave.

"As we witnessed everything, the black crowd paid absolutely no attention to us. Sometimes there were singers there with a band. We actually saw Louis Armstrong singing at one funeral. After the ceremony was over, some attendants had to carry away the wailing, struggling family members back to the limos. Then the tempo of the music changed and everyone marched away down the street at a brisk rhythmic clip with the band playing 'I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You.'"

Trips along the Gulf Coast with his parents made an impression on the young Gottschall.

"I enjoyed reading the series of shaving cream signs that attracted your attention. The best one being: Each Time - The Stork - Brings a Boy - Our Whole Factory - Jumps With Joy - Burma Shave," he wrote.

In those days the neighborhood children all played outdoors, and Gottschall could be found playing war or kick the can.

A mulberry tree, located in his back yard, provided a perfect location for a tree house, and a nearby camphor tree's limbs provided support for swings, a trapeze, a set of rings, and a climbing rope.

"This was my domain," he wrote. "From this vantage point you could see the Tulane football stadium on Willow Street, also the Hibernia and American Bank Buildings, the two tallest New Orleans skyscrapers downtown."

Gottschall reflects on a personal experience with social snobbery. It happened while standing in line to buy a snowcone on a hot summer day.

"One day Sen.Huey Long's son, Palmer, came by in his Model A Ford. (He was only 14 versus our age of around 12.) His father somehow got him a license to drive. Palmer was a very obnoxious kid," he wrote. "Anyway, Palmer pulls up behind Charlie's truck while we were giving him our orders. He pushed us aside and demanded that Charlie make as many snowballs as a dollar would cover. So we had to wait forever for Charlie to serve the great Palmer Long. Palmer then dumped all of those juicy snowcones (but one) into the street and drove away howling. The things you can remember!"

Gottschall continues to write of other experiences in high school, in college at Tulane and his years of Naval service during World War II.

In "Growing Up in New Orleans," the author has given his family an immeasurable gift, and to the reader a chance to reflect on their own stories.

Using letters as his medium Gottschall has shown that anyone can write an oral history for their own family. By doing so they'll be recording their own time and their own events, for sure, but their families will be the richer for their having taken time to write.

"Several years ago, my daughter made the remark that I hadn't told her much about my early life. I thought I had, but she insisted that wasn't the case."

That conversation between Alvin G. Gottschall, a retired engineer living in Point Clear, Ala., and his daughter Anne resulted in a series of letters spanning a year and a half and, now in published form, providing a detailed account of growing up in New Orleans during the Depression, attending Tulane in the pre-war years, and serving on a U. S. Navy Destroyer in the Pacific during World War II.

Along the way, Gottschall encounters with remarkable clarity a parade of friends and experiences that provides a virtual "who's who" and "what's what" of New Orleans in the 1930s and 1940s, from being bullied out of line at the snoball stand by Huey Long's son Palmer, to driving a beat-up motorcycle to Kentucky for a summer of farm work, to attending dances at the Roosevelt Hotel.

There were Coke dates, coffee dates, drugstore dates at K&B, library dates, bookstore dates, beer dates at Bruno's on Maple Street or the College Inn on Carrollton Avenue. There were movies at the Prytania or Tivoli.

And, attending Alcée Fortier High School and then engineering studies at Tulane, there was even occasionally time for studying.

In compiling his book, Gottschall includes names and remembrances of more than 1,000 people with whom his life crossed paths, and also provides an addendum of graduation lists from a plethora of New Orleans Schools: Fortier High School, 1932-41; Isidore Newman School, 1939-43; New Orleans Academy, 1931-45; Louise S. McGehee School, 1937-44; Metairie Park Country Day School, 1938-43; Academy of the Sacred Heart, 1938-43; Rugby Academy, 1935-42; Jesuit High School, 1938-43; Warren Easton, 1938-41; Holy Cross High School, 1938-40; St. Aloysius High (now Brother Martin), 1938-41; Eleanor McMain, 1937-42; and Sophie Wright, 1937-42.

Growing Up In New Orleans makes good reading for anyone who has done as the title suggests, or is interested in someone who has.