Coincidental Journeys

A series of coincidences has led Steve Hallam a world away to Ville Platte, La., and has led him to publish his father’s memoirs as a diplomat in the U.S. State Department.
“The main part is about his trip to Baghdad from Washington, DC,” said Hallam about his book A World Away. “Then there’s a second part. It’s about the Baghdad bazaars. And then the third part is about the Tripartite Conference in Moscow, and that’s the first time he kinda rubs elbows with the big wigs. He sees Molitov, the Russian foreign minister, and American Secretary of State Cordell Hull.”
Perry Hallam, a native of Pierre, South Dakota, began his journey travelling to the West Coast where he boarded the MS Granville. Steve Hallam recounted his father’s experiences trying to find the ship.
“He proceeds to the West Coast where he is desperately looking for this freighter that he’s supposed to be on,” he said. “And it’s like the day before he’s supposed to leave, and he still can’t find this boat because everyone’s suspicious of everyone asking questions. This is right at the outbreak of World War II.”
While waiting on the West Coast, according to Steve Hallam, his father stumbled into the Underwood Typewriter Company office where they let him use a typewriter.
“He said he was there three hours, and he didn’t know why he was doing all this,” said Steve Hallam. “In fact there’s another female in their typing, and she said ‘What are you doing writing a book?’ because he’d been in there three hours. And he wrote in the book he really didn’t know that’s what he was really doing or not. So, that’s sorta the same as why I transcribed it.”
The twenty-two-year-old Perry Hallam then boarded the ship and embarked on his journey to Baghdad. He recorded his memoirs along the way and put them together in a manuscript that was never published.
His son Steve transcribed the book in 1990 and sat on it for about 30 years until he decided to publish it after retiringas associate editor from The Gazette. He said, “So I had some time, and it didn’t take long because I retired less than two years ago.”
“I really didn’t know where to begin,” he continued. “Where do you get an ISBN number? How do you market it? But this publisher Page Publishing will charge you like $3000 or $300 for 10 years, but when the book’s out there they get 20-percent of each book but not until I recoup my investment of $3000. So to me that was kinda an incentive for them to do more that just print the book. They market it right now.”
The main thing Steve Hallam learned about his father while transcribing this book was his sense of humor. “He had a kinda rye sense of humor, or maybe it’s dry,” he said of his father. “I can’t cite any specifics, but I remember going through that, and I was surprised that he would say something like that because he was kinda authoritarian when I was growing up.”
The main thing Steve wants readers to take away from reading his book is his first observation of it. “I put it off so long, and then when I finally got around to working on it, it just fell together,” he said. “I mean it just took care of itself, but of course that’s the manuscript. I had the manuscript.”
His only regret about the book is not dedicating it to his late wife Linda Sanders Hallam who grew up in Morrow south of Bunkie. The couple met in Jackson, Ms., while they were both reporters at a local newspaper. They then moved to Gainesville, Fl, and taught as adjunct professors at the University of Florida. Linda Hallam died while in Gainesville, and her parents told Steve they had a vacant house in Morrow. This kicked off the coincidences that led him to where he is today.
“So I moved over there, and then Mary Foster-Galassothe library director over here found this job at The Gazette that opened up just as I moved here,” he said while perched on one of his barstools in his kitchen on a Thursday afternoon in early April 2017. “That’s one of the coincidences that have happened since moving.”
“So I had to drive from Morrow to The Gazette everyday, sometimes twice a day, on the WPA road, the worst road in Louisiana,” he continued. “And so very quickly I determined I was gonna stay on this job, and so, another coincidence, this house came up for sale just as I decided I was gonna buy a house. And so it was easy to make the decision. I moved in here. So that’s how I got here.”
Hallam also shared his collection of model boats, rockets, and planes as well as his vast knowledge of ancient Roman history, which is the subject of a possible other book.
It will be about “how I went from South Africa to Ville Platte via Ancient Rome and a few other places.” He said, “When I was in the Navy we were out 75-percent of the time, so we were out three weeks and be in for a week. So we didn’t have much time in port, but whatever time we had we spent a lot of time at either Pompeii or Herculaneum. I was interested in Rome before I went there, but I really got an education when I was there.”
He pointed out three pictures that he had printed out. The first is of Naples Harbor, the second is of a cross that was discovered at Herculaneum, and the third shows Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Naples Harbor.
“So the day after I printed those three pictures out, I get this book of Pompeii that UPS delivered,” he said showing off the book in his living room. “And so it’s from my son for a Christmas present. So the next time I talked to him I said did you know I was putting this stuff together, and he said no. Coincidence. Another coincidence.”
Hallam’s current book, according to a press release, can be purchased at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble.
As he wrote in the postscript- “The fortune teller at the pyramids didn’t get my father’s future quite right. He never went back to the pyramids, and he had one son and one daughter... not two. He never made a ‘lot of money,’ but he did make it into the middle class... We lived in South Africa, Wales, Brazil, the Azores, and in the Washington, DC, suburbs... My mother told me the story about them sitting in the balcony of their high-rise apartment... All of a sudden, a man hurtled down right in front of them. They never learned who he was or if that fall was the result of an accident, suicide, or murder.”