For kids, one of the really neat advantages of moving to a new neighborhood is that you, as a child, suddenly find yourself totally submerged in a different and unknown world of discoveries both in the fauna and the flora of this exciting Terra Incognita. Suddenly, you become an explorer, a young scientist, discovering the lawns, gardens, bushes, fire hydrants and trees plus the alleys, roads and even the, sometimes, broken sidewalks of these new surroundings. It is an open invitation for research on the kid level.
New Friends and Neighbors to Meet and Greet
Of course, the most exciting aspect of this world of discovery quickly jumped out at me. It was the large number of boys and girls already living on the streets and in the family tenements in these new surroundings. Did they play the same games and know the same songs? And, did they repeat the same sayings that I already knew? Would I fit in?
The year 1945 was big in the minds of the adults, who had experienced major losses during the war, but, on a lesser scale, it was also big and important for the young children in my extended family like my cousins, Claire, Richard and Florence Ouellette and cousins Claire, Paul, Bob, Gloria and Pearl Charbonneau and three more, plus my brother Bob and me, of course. Our sister, Michelle, was not with us, yet.
The Ouellette cousins lived in the Little Canada portion of town in a first floor tenement on Austin Street, so we did not see them every day. And, although our Charbonneau cousins lived only one major street away from us on Lilley Avenue, we seldom saw them for reasons that were not clear to me.
Maybe, my aunt Mildreth and my mother did not see eye-to-eye on some issues? The rationale remained obscure, but it was so. This was a discovery, which I made early on in life regarding people. It is not always clear why people act the way they do. Sometimes, you feel that you know them, but suddenly they will surprise you. It’s never easy being young and naive.
Other Playmates
Dana Street, that familiar, cobble-stone, old New England mini-thoroughfare from the horse and buggy days housed three important families that later went down in local history as a bountiful source of ready companionship for the newly-arrived Bolduc clan.
The Valois family house sat at the corner of Dana and Ludlam. It sheltered Monsieur et Madame Valois plus their three girls: Celine, Angeline and Leonie. Many a shared story would develop over the years through these friendly neighbors.
Monsieur Valois, an erudite man, often wore farmer’s clothing while working in his vegetable garden. He had been raised in France and, later, had served in the French army in Africa. This unusual background made him a most interesting character in my internal system of values.
The Antefornario family – Joe and Emily, the parents, plus Joey, Carl(?) and Sassy – lived in the second-story tenement directly located above our $6.00 per week rented space on the first floor. They always used their Dana Street entryway so I usually thought of them as Dana Street folks, but their actual address was 179 Ludlam Street just like ours. Joe senior owned a car, which he parked in one of the three garages that sat adjacent to the main frame of our tenement building.
Outstanding was the Bergeron family with its small, two-story plus roomy attic, Victorian house located about half-way between Ludlam and Aiken Streets, and not far from the start of the granite mountain atop of which the famous Hildreth Street Cemetery sat.