My first encounter with Lower Centralville, Lowell, Massachusetts, a place, which is tucked away by the broad bend in the Merrimack River, took place in the autumn of 1944, only a few months after the Allied Invasion of Normandy. Those were exciting but, also, worrisome times for us on the home front since our only shield against Nazi armor were Sunday Masses and private prayers to God at night that, soon, peace would reign again.
According to my parents, the American Army was then battling the Germans in France, but the situation remained very confused and scary. Father Morissette, of the French Navy but located in Lowell, kept his parishioners up to date on the war. Our own family connections to the Oblate Fathers in Massachusetts and in Quebec strengthen our common belief that, somehow, the Americans would win in the end, but we, also, knew that the French Resistance – the diverse sub-groups were unknown to us – were actively involved with sabotage and the killing of the German occupiers.
This part of the story was surreal, but the usual stuff of Hollywood’s WWII movies in the early 1940s. For a young boy, this represented another case of Good versus Evil with the good persons, usually the Americans, gaining a final victory. Shades of worthiness (Ehrlichkeit on the Teutonic side of the issue) of all varieties were never examined and studied.
For ordinary people living in Lowell, most of the world news came to us through the local newspaper, The Lowell Sun, or in the newsreels at the movie houses. Of course, anyone visiting a barber or a hairdresser had the additional advantage of learning the latest by reading recent updates in a Life or Look magazine. Time magazine was also available. Unlike today, the average person was never inundated by a barrage of sordid reality. Perhaps, simply not knowing the news was the best medicine for maintaining a calm composure and hope for the future?
Our pleasant and cozy apartment located in an up-scale, residential, Pawtucketville neighborhood, corner of Endicott and White Streets, became the operational center for several, anticipated and important changes in our daily lives. First of all, Memere Bolduc, my paternal grandmother, would soon be leaving our home and reside in her own apartment, two miles away, on Fletcher Street near Pawtucket Street, which was located in the Greek Acre part of town.
This overlapping ghetto region housed a blend of Greek-American and Franco-American families of modest income. Except for a few, three-story sets of high density tenement blocks nearby, a visitor would encounter, here and there, individual single-family houses complete with fenced-in yards lined with maple and chestnut trees. Since the personal automobile had yet to make its appearance on the broad American scene when those houses were first constructed, yards seldom had a reserved location for a family car. Vehicles were usually parked by the sidewalk directly in front of a house.