Career Choices for my Brother Bob and me in September 1957 – Part #2
This emotional and economic tumult called the Great Depression was followed by the anxious days of WWII and, then, by a feeble economic recovery in the late 1940s and most of the 1950s.
Sometimes, helping to win an international war can simply leave some winners with an empty lunch pail and no place to go. See Marc Scott MIller’s book published by the University of Illinois in 1988: “Irony of Victory “.
This situation lingered long and long, but in 1955, the Boott Mills closed its doors and the Lowell Experiment wrote its last ledger. About 125 years of textile production (1830 – 1955) came to a screeching halt. If your entire life’s work had been connected to the production of cloth on an industrial scale, how might you and your family handle this pressing new challenge?
“No work” meant “no eat”. This was serious!
Solutions Abound, Elsewhere, Maybe?
Do you stuff all your family belongings into the car and then cram your wife and children – usually, there were several offspring to consider – into the small vehicle, intending to settle far away where the jobs were plentiful? But wait, you never could afford an automobile since your annual income, usually, amounted to only 30% of the national average. But, the Boston and Maine Railroad might provide an escape route for any former wage-earner with adequate savings reserved at one of several local banks.
So, the economic situation might have seemed a bit less distressing for the modestly successful, textile wage-earners living in Little Canada, the Greek Acre, the Irish ghetto located near Bridge, and West-Sixth Streets in Upper Centralville.
Even French-Canadians ensconced in Lower Centralville and living on streets carrying names like Lakeview and Lilly Avenue or Aiken, West Sixth, Ludlam, Ennell, Fisher and Hildreth Streets, plus others, on Farmland or Cumberland Roads could take comfort in their nested, Canuck, Catholic neighborhoods. Dire necessity seemed a bit less dire, with relatives and friends also caught in the same whirlwind.
There is always an inner sense of peace and safety felt by the immigrant when he or she trots onto familiar ground. Curiously, several ethnic groups in the city could depend on these special, sheltered zones to rekindle their cultural and linguistic feelings and connections. One could find safety in these ghetto-like portions of town where folks of a similar disposition could, at least, nurture their financial distress in conversations over favorite foods from the old country.
There is a well-known French expression that nicely summarizes this piece of humanity’s shared values, which goes like this: “Ceux qui se ressemblent, s’assemblent!”, which might be translated as: “Birds of a feather flock together.” We, humans, are very tribal in nature, so we find comfort in sharing our anxiety with others, who are like us.
So textile workers on Austin, Race, and Moody Streets tended to gather in that part of Little Canada to soften the harshness of their lives. The dirt poor Irish, who had stayed alive in the Lower Highlands near Cupples Square, did the same thing while sharing a pint of Guinness or. maybe, a cheaper beer with others late into the night.
Not to be forgotten, however, there were Portuguese immigrant families living near Shedd Park and also Polish and Lithuanian groups surviving on Lakeview Avenue near the Bridge Street crossing. The city was really a clustering of ethnic flavors that had promoted diversity.
The financial distress that gripped Lowell in the late 1940s and into the 1950s was felt across the whole crumbling landscape, which once had produced wealth for the mill owners and a very modest living for the textile workers.
“What to do” was a common cry on the lips of many. My parents and relatives and their friends could find no ready answer. It was curious that most working-class people from the mills – individuals with special skills in the trades like carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc. were better off – shared a popular sense of doom about the future.
“It’s a dog-eat-dog world” could be sensed on the tired faces of others sharing a brief bus ride to downtown Kearney Square.
Naturally, we had been looking forward to an economic and cultural revival that was happening in Lewittown, but that was blossoming far away in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. What about those second-generation immigrants that had once brought prosperity to the Merrimack Valley? What could they expect in their future? And, what about their children?
For us, in Spindle City, the Fabulous Fifties that were rocking elsewhere completely bypassed the Lowell turnoff. Why were we, Lowellians, left out of a national spark of prosperity and hope? Why was the local workforce so slow in “getting with the program”, which was often based on applying new technological skills in electromechanical systems found in the fabrication of household items like toasters, coffee pots, neon lights, televisions, gas-powered central heating, refrigerators and more?
One of the hidden benefits of the big war had been the formation of advanced telecommunications and defense firms such as GE and Raytheon, where required skills included machine tool design, welding, milling machine fabrication plus drafting, microwave engineering, and aircraft construction. However, very few, former textile workers in the city could claim any expertise in these advanced technologies.
My brother, who had been fascinated with cars and trucks since his birth, it seemed to me, had already acquired some of this professional experience by working afternoons and Saturdays in a local car repair shop located near Ouellette’s Cleaners on Aiken Avenue. For Bob, it was clear that someone with keen mechanical skills could expect to make a good living in Lowell by further honing his technical know-how and blending these qualifications with wise customer care, which he had acquired as a successful newspaper boy in the previous four years. As a businessman, he already had shown his “professional stuff” even before the age of eleven.
In contrast, my work experience over the previous five to six years had not shown any specific career-type focus to better meet the challenges of the mid-fifties. I, too, had managed to deliver the Lowell Sun newspaper to about 50 customers over a four-year period. This had meant a daily commitment, Sunday through Saturday, with only three days off per year during the Holiday Season. Such was a good start for building a future, but this future seemed quite uncertain to me at the time.
More on these individual differences later in this article.
Some Details on Available Avenues
Just as I was ready to plunge into science, math, and engineering at Lowell Tech in the fall of 1957, my brother, Bob, was starting his high school years at Lowell High while already deeply committed to working with the many tools needed in the auto repair business.
For Bob, V-8 engines, a 435 Horse Power block, pneumatic tools, torque wrenches, spark plugs, differentials, dual carburetors, timing belts, air or water-cooled engines, and more were music to his entrepreneurial ears, and there was good money to be made by someone totally dedicated to opening his car and body shop.
But, how would he ever finance the start of his own business? That would require financial backing from someone – a banker, perhaps – in the community. But, in 1957, where could he find such a benefactor?
Individual Career Directions
Our individual preparations for these lifetime career directions could not have been more different in content or in associated learning modes. In addition to dealing with the needs and individual temperaments of customers, his work involved the daily use of electromechanical and pneumatic machinery and tools required in that line of enterprise.
Included in this array were hand tools such as hammers, pliers, screwdrivers, vice grips, levers, torque wrenches, hydraulic lifts, scales, etc. plus electrical equipment like motors, DC and AC, bimetallic switches, solenoids, transformers, inverters, and more.
For me, the Russian successes in international confrontations, which had led to the Berlin airlift in 1948, plus advances in nuclear weaponry – the first Russian atomic bomb had been tested in 1949 and their first H-bomb in 1953 – spelled out an urgent, American need for advanced engineering talent.
Also, their capability in aeronautical engineering as evidenced by the successful launching of the Sputnik earth satellite on October 4, 1957, clearly and proudly showed the whole world their national superiority in creating space vehicles, which potentially threatened the US homeland when these vehicles were coupled to thermonuclear warheads.
The Cold War was possibly turning into a new, hot world conflict. Whole cities could suddenly be consumed in a mega display of nuclear and thermonuclear anger. Civil Defense stations had been set up in Lowell and in most cities across the nation to offer citizens a bit of protection and safety if an enemy A-bomb or H-bomb detonated near a concentrated downtown area of a city.
The US Congress and citizenry were, finally, awakened to the harsh reality of a possible international conflict, World War III, bearing consequences of unimaginable nature.
Maybe, I could find an interesting slot for myself in an engineering or scientific capacity given that my skills and interest in algebra, trigonometry, Euclidean geometry plus Pascal’s work on early probability theory had been the hallmark of my studies at St-Joseph’s Boys High School. In addition, the General Science course that the Marist Brothers offered at that institution had been one of my favorite learning experiences ever to date.
So, there seemed to be an attractive set of possibilities open to me, especially, since the US government was beginning to show definite interest in funding advanced engineering studies across the nation.
So, in the autumn of 1957, Bob and I had the beginnings of individual careers that, hopefully, would carry us to an interesting lifetime of personal achievements.
Postscriptum:
The Cold War, which began just as the last open hostilities of World War II came to a halt, reshaped the attitudes and expectations of everyone on the planet.
Would human life be forever different now that Russia and the United States had long-range bombers capable of delivering nuclear and thermonuclear wrath on cities all over the world?
In the fall of 1957, this atomic terror had been working on our nerves already for the past twelve years.
To begin to appreciate the political flavor of those times, the reader is encouraged to review the contents of the following two articles. The first covers the magnificent aerodynamic essence of the B-52 Bomber and the second addresses the non-stop diligence and dedication expected from the men and women of the Strategic Air Command, AKA, SAC.
See: B-52 Bomber.
End of Part #2