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, 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 grim kitchen comportment that I saw dissplayed, before me every day, by my parent’s grunbling disharmony, the inspiring life and love that shown through musically in movie clips of Roy and Dale together were glimming proofs that a lifelong marrriage-partner was all that was needed for my brother, two sisters and me to be happy and safe 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 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 mighterly 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.
On January 6, 1953 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. some 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 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 producton 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 V 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 V. 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?
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) 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 rely 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.
But, somehow, it was eerie for me that nothing was different. It was business as usual. However, I was different, and 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 into a world of rock-ribbed Yankees. 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 Conquerer”, 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.
A Social Sign of Hope and Relief – Sunshine, maybe?
One sunny day in February, 1953, and upon my returning home from school, my mother introduced me to a Miss Carol with whom she had been conversing over a cup of coffee and a piece of home-made marble cake. Miss Carol, whom I would get to know and like, in the coming months and years, was, apparently, a social worker at the Massachusetts Social Security office, probably out of Boston. Someone with an interest in our well being had contacted her office regarding our plight.
Except for the Charbonneau political connections that were mentioned above, no one in our strata of society qualified as worthy of an interview with anyone of bureaucratic importance. Yet, this connection had been completed and an effort launched to, hopefully, assist us.
Issues around Social Security and government assistance to a particular set of distressed individuals had been the subject of political debate in the US Congress since the middle of the Depression years, or around 1935.
These disagreements had clearly fashioned the opinions and attitudes of both Republican and Democratic voters in my home state and, particularly, in the minds and feelings of Lowell’s minority groups, namely the, Irish, Franco-American, Greek, Polish, Lithuanian, Jewish, Russian and native Yankee persons. Nothing had been cleanly resolved, but World War II had temporarily set aside these brewing, political conflicts.
But, in 1953, attitudes regarding the U.S. government providing even marginal assistance to destitute persons or families could easily ignite a mini-bon-fire of acrimonious debates in any local bar of the city.
However, as a newly minted fourteen-year-old, such political harangues going back to the mid-1930s were outside my immediate scope of political awareness. For purely practical reasons, my family and I needed some work forthwith. A government agency called Mother’s Aide, which had grown out of the Social Security Act of 1935 carried the more official moniker of “Aid for Families with Dependent Children, AFDC, might be there to help in our case.
Special attention was being afforded to single mothers, widows usually, with two or more young children, especially if this caregiver lacked the required workplace skills needed for gainful employment. The main idea was to allow such children to live with the mother in the safety of a home.
Maybe, such assistance was also available to a husband in such a situation, i.e. widower with several young children and someone having no marketable skills. But, in my cursory readings, this situation never came up for discussion.
As a staunch, Franco-American, Republican mother of four, and the daughter of a successful, entrepreneurial, Republican father from a generation before, my mother must have felt deeply torn between accepting welfare assistance from the government and her own family values with those rock-ribbed achievements and goals.
However, she, too, had seen personal friends being crushed during those long years of unemployment, which might have rendered her final decision easier. Yes, she decided to accept a modest, monthly, family allocation from Mother’s Aid, which in addition to our Uncle Lucien’s check for $25.00 per month, permitted all five of us to survive, but just barely. Plain and simple, we had become wards of the state – not an envious label to carry.
However, we were, fortunately, never expected to wear a public badge to make all comers aware of our dilemma. Such a token of shame might have been required in 12th century France, which might have prompted local troubadours in public squares to fashion new rhymes outlining the pitfalls of penury.
Later, my mother confided in me that the days of the Depression were harder for those people at home than the long years of World War II.
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.
In summary, after checking out several empty trails, all promising real relief (un soulagement), only Mother’s Aid came through for us in the winter of 1953 when more belt tightening no longer calmed our stomach pains. Yet, however, even after things calmed down, we no longer could hold our heads quite as high. Even though my father had held four jobs, one regular and three part-time, he had not succeeded in being able to take care of his family. Curious but true.