Noontime Television Quiz Show – “Strike It Rich”
Concerned neighbors, like Alice Beauparlant and, also, Madame Bergeron, who lived with her family on Dana Street, plus our Aunt Florence (la jeune, the young one) simultaneously proposed that our humble family be presented as contestants on a popular, noontime, TV program that was broadcast from New York City. These neighborhood do-gooders already had television sets in their homes, which was not the case for us.
Maybe, our family’s salvation depended on the eccentricities of daytime TV entertainment? Perhaps, national stardom was in our future? Although naturally quiet and humble by nature, all five of us were secretly crossing our fingers and beginning to think big about a future under Hollywood Klieg lights, all filled with fame and fortune.
Making a good but quite pitiful impression on an audience of generous viewers, both in the audience and watching at home, represented the key to winning a prize such as a new refrigerator, winter mackinaw jackets for every participant and a year’s supply of Fab and Colgate toothpaste, the sponsors of the program.
“Strike it Rich” was the name of the show, and Warren Hull was the toastmaster, who introduced contestants to the audience by underlining the sad and, sometimes, awful details that were crippling them. These might include hospital expenses too great to cover or needing clothes to keep warm in their unheated New York apartment or distress even more heart-breaking. Being pitiful and, yet, proud were qualities for a contestant to display.
Listeners at home or in the audience would pledge dollar amounts from their personal bank accounts to financially help these needy contestants. The winning contestants, who managed to break the biggest number of hearts in the audience, were acclaimed by general applause and given a token gift, effectively a reward, from the sponsors in addition to sums collected from audience members.
Since we did not own a TV, all these program details were, first, explained to my mother and us, four children, by Alice Beauparlant or, perhaps, Aunt Florence, I believe. The specific details remain fuzzy, but long distance telephone calls were also outside our normal, family budget, so someone with more fluidity had to make the necessary arrangements with the TV program director. This was an assignment for an adult, and not one for young children.
The answer from New York City was positive. “Come on down” was the response out of Manhattan. So then, all the adults in our extended family provided us with more information as to our responsibilities as future contestants.
As expected by more mature heads than my own, there was a “quid pro quo” to follow to be considered real contestants. Everything sounds so much more official when expressed in lawyers’ Latin.
Each potential participant was expected to travel by rail to Manhattan, and also to book a room at a local mid-town hotel, which was not too far from the TV studio. In addition, it was expected that actual contestants would appear on the program wearing their Sunday best
clothing. Both of these requirements seemed a bit excessive from our humble point of view as down-trodden, but really decent citizens of the US of A.
However, travel and room expenses were, apparently, not included in our grand, winning sweepstakes, and we were expected to buy new suits for Bob and me plus beautiful dresses for my Mom and the two little girls. But, we really did not have a spare quarter to spend for Wise Potato Chips and tonic (soda pop in New England) at Harry’s Variety Store across the street!
“Unfair!” was our joint response. Sometimes, it is best to first look a gift horse in the mouth. That equine creature just might be toothless!
“Where was the truth and justice that we learned about at St-Louis Elementary School?”
It felt, again, like we were “up the creek without a paddle.”
Our earlier claim of success and victory had been premature and had proven empty and false.
What to do? What to do?
Should my mother consider, perhaps, selling, or rather leasing under contract, her four children to the Barnum and Bailey Circus or to a traveling carnival show where they might earn their room and board, and also get to see the world?
Of course, she never entertained this thought, but from a purely practical point of view, there was some hard and harsh economic reasoning behind this tentative proposal. Other Americans in the previous two decades had run away to join the circus, but did we have the intestinal fortitude – the guts – to do this when the Great Depression was officially over?
It takes grim resolution and gnawing fear to become a circus clown or, possibly, a vagrant or a hobo traveling the rails. However, we, four children, and my mother were still praying to discover a less drastic solution. But, who might there be out there to offer a safety net?
Franco-American Customs and Remembrances
After the Christmas vacation and the funeral arrangements, classes at St-Louis School simply had resumed following a set of lessons planned by the nuns, months before. There was nothing special about my father’s demise since passing away was remembered and celebrated every day at St-Louis Church, next door. These were memorial Masses for the deceased.
Only fifteen years before, a thirteen-year-old student from St-Louis (see insert) had suddenly expired in June of that year. Because she was indirectly a Bolduc, perhaps, she was a cousin, once removed. But, as the death notice in the Lowell Sun suggests, this was not an unusual occurrence. Maybe, though, such a parting would have been hard for a fellow student of the same age? Sometimes, humans don’t seem well connected to their feelings.
Scary Feelings of Being Alone Among Relatives and School Chums
But, somehow, it was eerie for me that nothing was different. It was business as usual. However, I was different, but not the people and places around me.
Did any child in my 8th grade class come up to comfort me? We, classmates, were, generally, pleasant to one another, but cautious not to be too open in the schoolyard.
Maybe, this way of being was the expected, New England, Yankee style when dealing with feelings? But, really, we were French-Canadian transplants trying to survive in a world of rock-ribbed Yankees, Republicans to the core. As a consequence, we were filled with a rich mixture of conflicting feelings on many issues – not just the death of my father.
Curious as it might have sounded to the average person walking by the Greenhalge (public) School or in the vicinity of the Boisvert and Beaulieu Streets, the Franco-American neighborhood, issues around dying and deep, personal grief were everyday occurrences in the lives of the nuns and priests at St-Louis.
However, the human, emotional turbulence evoked by these natural, terrible events were carefully fashioned into special, religious ceremonies like a funeral Mass complete with Gregorian chant and the scent of incense generously dissipated among the believers or, perhaps, a Novena.
In a previous generation, but even in the 1930s, the custom in the community had been to display the deceased person in an open coffin, which was usually kept in the home of the recently departed individual.
The designated undertaker and the beautician, who was needed to make attractive the corpse, had already completed all the necessary procedures prior to visiting hours. Even, Jack Kerouac speaks of such arrangements made at his home on Beaulieu Street after his beloved younger brother, Gerard, had died. People, whose ancestors had previously been subsistence farmers – les habitants – outside villages and towns in southern Quebec Province, south of Quebec City in “La Beauce” still held onto customs going back to the Middle Ages.
In this fashion, the Roman Catholic Church encouraged some of us to further appreciate the fascinating history of the French provinces like Flanders, Normandy, Burgundy, Champagne, etc. and of England including the arrival of “William, the Conqueror”, also known in some pretender families as “William, the Bastard.”
For, at least, one thousand years, Western European history was recorded in monkish annals distributed across the Cistercian, Trappist and Benedictine monasteries of the continent. Religion and historical studies came all wrapped up in one package.
End of Part #2