Cars, Buses and Taxi Cabs
Since few people could afford to own a car, it was great that the City of Lowell ran a broad set of interlinking public bus lines across the entire town. Naturally, anyone could call East End Taxi or Yellow Cab to have a professional driver pick him/her up and ask to be dropped off at a specific destination.
But such a ride might cost the customer $0.55 plus a tip while a bus ride might only amount to a dime, $0.10 and no tip. Few people in our circle of friends chose the private elegance of a cab when the savings found in public bus transportation was so rewarding.
But, it remains important to note that a housewife could hop onto a bus by the lake at Lakeview in Dracut and, within fifteen to twenty minutes, find herself at the corner of Textile Avenue (now called University Blvd) and Riverside Road to do some casual shopping at the local, Ace hardware store there in Pawtucketville.
Also, once in the neighborhood, she might have walked to visit relatives and friends on White or Endicott Streets, but also on Textile Avenue and on Riverside Road. Her various options might easily have occupied the remaining hours of free time available to her with many interesting possibilities. In this case, all that she would have needed was a bit of energy, some muscular strength and a pair of old, but comfortable walking shoes.
On the positive side, I might add that since the war’s end,
only a limited supply of newly manufactured household goods were commercially available to the general public. So, there still existed a copious supply of old but comfortable walking shoes in everyone’s clothes closet or open-air porches that dotted these rather large tenement blocks. So, this was, yet, another reason to be counting our post-war blessings. Fortunately, there were plenty of old, broken-in shoes and boots to go around. No scarcity there!
Canuck Relatives and Friends
Usually, the remaining descendants of our Quebec immigrants – aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents – still residing in these clean, fairly attractive, multi-story, tenement blocks, would graciously invite a relative, or an adopted relative, to spend some time over cakes, pies, gorton , AKA greton (a head cheese spread) for sandwiches, fresh pea soup plus hot coffee and tea to discuss the happenings reported on the radio (WHDH or WLLH) or described in the Lowell Sun, our local newspaper.
A beer, usually, was not offered, of course, and certainly not in the daytime, but a tiny glass of brandy might be recommended for a variety of common ailments such as a cold, a headache, fatigue, la grippe, poor nerves, and, of course, bitter and inclement weather, which, occasionally, challenged our New England days. But, we tried to take it all in good stride, but dotted with gruff and colorful humor and some occasional rumblings.
Movie Theaters in Downtown Spindle City
At any time, there were often several, new films to be seen downtown in Lowell at the Strand, the RKO Keith, the Merrimack and also at the Rialto. The latter choice, however, might only appeal to movie customers of less than distinguished tastes. Folks of even coarser appetites might even gravitate toward the Capitol Theater near the main Boston and Maine, B&M, train depot.
That part of town, way up Jackson Street from Central, flaunted an industrial and slightly greasy character worthy of admiration by grimy workers deep in the art of rusty machine tools, grinding gears and clanking iron parts. To make a good impression, a young man might not choose to take his new girlfriend on a first date to the Capitol Theater. Of course, we, humans, all have our own set of tastes, so, perhaps, some young men did, indeed, choose to let caution fly to the wind.
There is no accounting for tastes as Cicero might have suggested. These young Lotharios might have gone to the wild side. But, for me, I remained quite reserved and boringly conservative.
Le Joual
The French colloquial dialect used daily by our relatives was and is called “le joual“. It is an old and historically important flavor of spoken French going back to the days of Louis XIV in the mid-1650s. This colorful jargon made its way down to the textile mill areas of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island by the desperately poor and undereducated, working-class, folks, who had left the Montreal and Quebec city environs – often from surrounding peasant farmlands — for a chance at some economic betterment in New England’s burgeoning industrial cities.
A similar group of poor workers formerly scratching out a living in Canada’s Maritime Provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia had also established themselves in Worcester and Lawrence with similar hopes for a better life. Their argot and sentence formation plus customs and traditions were somewhat different from those of my direct line of relations, but they, too, formed a part of the curious French speakers in New England as perceived by the English-speaking majority.
End of Part #2