Over the years, my mother, a former milk delivery employee, who had worked for her father, owner-operator, at North End Dairy during the long Depression, made many efforts to educate her young brood on the unexpected and, sometimes, unfortunate aspects of daily life in the Big City. Every day could not be overflowing with joy, happiness and personal safety. There was danger, out there!
Simply put then, every day would not be just another “sunny day at Salisbury Beach with roller coaster rides plus fried clams and French fries for our little tummies.” Life was tough and, also, remember that, “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
According to my brother, Bob, this last message had made an important impact on his developing world-view, as much as any sermon heard at St-Louis Church on a Sunday morn. I, too, had been listening closely and taking notes for further evaluation.
Certainly, after the death of my father in January 1953, the chance that any or all of us might succeed in the world became dimmer. The situation seemed almost hopeless.
My brother and I, each independently, came to accept the fact then that life can, sometimes, seem hard and unpredictable. How does a near-indigent, immigrant family deal with such a catastrophic blow and come up smiling?
The dreams that we had formulated around Roy Rogers and Gene Autry films where the good guys won at the end and the bad guys went to jail needed some serious reevaluation. Also gone, was their guitar music that had filled our eager spirits with adventure, discovery and a longing for those “Happy Trails“.
Unlike the often angry kitchen behavior that I saw displayed, before me every day, by my parent’s grumbling disharmony, the inspiring life and love that shown through musically in movie clips of Roy and Dale together were glimmering proofs that a lifelong marriage partner was all that was needed for my brother, two sisters and me to be happy and secure in our Lowell world.
In contrast, Michelle and Denise, (one was eight and the other only two) were benignly too young to judge the family’s challenging economic situation. Of course, missing their father deeply was an emotional body blow, which they could not fully grasp. Later, they told me about their fear and loneliness over the years. There exists no substitute for a loving father that cares and supports his lovely daughters. Life has many hard messages to teach us, and this one remains mightily important, but tragic.
One day, our father had been there as a reassuring figure, but one, who worked long hours (60 or more) away from the house every week. However, he had been around often enough on Sunday afternoons to make a mark on us as the main family provider, a person ever so ready to keep us feed and clothed. Like my siblings, suddenly, things had really changed for the worse. Like them, I, personally, felt lost and alone.
Suddenly on January 6, 1953 (it was a Tuesday) at St-Joseph Hospital, he was gone forever. Even adults are baffled and confused by the passing away of a close connection. It should not seem mysterious that young kids react with such fear and disbelief. As for my brother and two sisters, our stay-at-home mom managed to keep us all well-fed and on the straight and narrow. Also, her continued but clandestine activities as a hairdresser out of our home brought in some cash. This was plus the income from our two, strong paper routes.
Quickly, my brother and I realized, then and there, that our combined weekly income of $7.00 for delivering Lowell Sun newspapers would fall seriously short of the combined positive, weekly cash flow of $50.00 that had been needed to keep us afloat to date. Since my Dad had been earning $43.50 per week after taxes at Beaver Brook Mills (the Navy Yard) in Collinsville when he worked at his last textile mill job, the Bolduc family had suddenly lost 87% of its earning capacity.
Any economist worth his/her salt would suggest, I believe, that such a loss might qualify as significant. But, what to do? What to do?
Someone was needed to pull a rabbit out of a hat. But, where does one find such a magician in times of stress?
As fervent, Franco-American Catholics from Centralville living in Spindle City, a multitude of prayers were offered up to God, for weeks on end, by concerned and loving relatives and friends to discover a viable solution to our new challenge centered on eating regularly.
We might have been forced to sub-let a portion of our rented tenement to several mill-rats, who needed housing under a room and board arrangement, but our landlady, my mother’s Aunt Alice Charbonneau, might have frowned on our taking liberties with such a revision in our original rental agreement. Maybe, there was a “no sub-letting clause” in the contract?
Note, however, that it was a seller’s market in personal rentals at the time. The Lowell Sun ran want-ads for “room and board” situations on a regular basis. Still, we hesitated to pursue this dubious line of thinking. Only the brave act with such abandon, but we did not feel brave. Actually, our combined family spirits were in a serious slump. What to do?
Since our rent was only $6.00 a week, our combined, better judgment – my mother’s, my brother’s and mine – nixed any proposal to rearrange our financial arrangement with a dominant member of the more successful Charbonneau line in the city.
Recall that uncle Henri IV. Charbonneau, the lawyer, had been a powerful, political figure as city solicitor of Lowell for many years. Somehow, we might have been able to hang onto his successful coattails? Also, his sons, Yale and David, were my mother’s first cousins, so our secret aspirations regarding salvation through family connections might have resulted in a harmonious resolution to our newly discovered penury.
Here, I am reminded of a favorite comment culled from the Bolduc family’s private guidepost sayings on life. My first encounter with this bit of homespun philosophy was in French, but the English version also shines with a stinging conclusion, i.e.
“If wishes were horses, then, all beggars would be horsemen.”
But, this hackneyed and threadbare wisdom of homespun philosophy only highlighted our burning disarray.
Again the Charbonneau and Boisvert business trail-blazers from several decades prior had become urban celebrities with frequent references to their success stories appearing in the Lowell Sun. In contrast, we, Bolducs, were simply near-kin, like red-headed cousins from some New Hampshire dairy farm in the sticks. Our humble celebrity status might have even been an embarrassment in the eyes of our better-clothed relatives.
Still, we remained always respectful of their good fortune but, even as a fourteen-year-old, I realized in my stomach that we were different – also, and a little unwanted. We did not fit into their socioeconomic condition, which had long-lasting consequences for us even into adulthood.
Returning now to Aunt Alice Charbonneau, through good fortune and family connections, her retirement income seemed to have been tied to rental income from several, multi-family properties that were in need of moderate to serious repairs and upkeep. But, her situation may not have been unique, however.
During the thirty-five-year disintegration of Lowell’s textile factories (1920-1955), many, large and attractive, middle-class houses in the Upper Highlands, on Andover Street and in Upper Centralville (above Bridge Street) had been converted to multi-family tenements. Even successful, middle and upper class individuals faced a painful readjustment of their life style when the the local mills slowed down production. Then, the New York Stock Market came crumbling down over their disbelieving ears like a house of cards built on shifting sands. There was plenty of hurt everywhere. Even the well-feed and well-to-do felt the pinch.
Industrial shifts in textile production processes over the previous century had stressed the day-to-day operations of Lowell’s manufacturers to the point where several had moved their operations to the Carolinas (North and South) where labor costs were lower. This exodus of jobs going South had a profound effect on the well-being of everyone in Lowell. For more details, the reader is directed to an in-depth, socioeconomic study of this topic entitled: “The Course of Industrial Decline” by Laurence F. Gross.
A Few Final Economic Gasps
Even in 1953, the local economy still looked bleak all around. It was not only in Lower Centralville (our part of town) where some cupboards and a pantry or two seemed bare.
A crucial, city-wide revitalization of the workforce plus technical innovations were on the wish list of the city council members. But how could anyone refurbish quaint, wooden bobbins, rusty, metal cranks and shafts and cracked, leather, conveyor belts dating to the turn of the century (around 1900), and turn Lowell into a manufacturing powerhouse once again?
However, to be fair, it behooves us to recall that the financial good fortune of the extended Charbonneau family – those family members born before 1900, in poverty-stricken Quebec towns and villages – resulted from hard work in the millinery business, subsistence-farming, logging, lumber production and mining.
Other members of the clan had managed successful careers in retail sales on Merrimack Street in downtown Lowell. One relative from the previous generation stood out as an example to follow. His was a particularly lucrative career that he fashioned for himself as a lawyer and Lowell city solicitor for decades. He was the well-known local, political figure, Mr. Henri IV Charbonneau.
My mother always spoke of him with loving pride and admiration. Maybe, every large family needs to lay claim to an outstanding member of the group as proof positive as to their worth in the community. Henri IV. Charbonneau played that role to bolster our spirits as we floundered like gasping fish on the deck of our Ludlam Street tenement after the loss of my father.
Newspaper notices of the social success of several of these Charbonneau family members stand out as quite remarkable. They were the doers and shakers in the retail world, but where were the Bolducs at the time? More on this issue later.
Help on the Horizon?
Somewhere along the line, members of the Saint-Vincent de Paul Society of the St-Louis Church appeared on our humble doorstep to gauge our household situation with the hope of lightening our load – more on this, later. But financial relief seemed only like a vague fantasy in the minds of these individuals suffering from a case of excessive optimism. Surely, there must have been a pill available to these delusional folks to reintroduce them to the harsh, day-to-day reality of quotidian life on Ludlam Street.
To date, piety and good wishes had proven inadequate to soothe our frightened stomachs. Again, after several weeks of confusion, another, possible solution from the clear-blue sky appeared on the horizon. Maybe, we were blessed after all?
End of Part #1