Early Discoveries in the Living Quarters by the Sainte-Jeanne d’Arc Church
Lowell of my youth was a fantasy land of Disneyland proportions, at least, for me as I first wandered with my parents through the attractive but modest, middle-class, suburban streets of Pawtucketville, where fairly successful Lowell wage earners and some captains of industry enjoyed the fruits of their labors. Here, one might also find successful, small shop owners, ma and pa business owners or the homes of a land developer and/or a building contractor. Even a up-and-coming lawyer might grace these premises with a young family of wife and several children.
Unknown to me at the time, however, was that this benign early start living among upwardly mobile families – socioeconomic issues interested me even as a kid – might not last long as the world puzzled over the sobering aspirations that Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini professed to expound upon.
Pawtucketville was my first ghetto home-ground. It housed quite a few, two and three-story residential houses complete with lawns and trees plus an occasional retail establishment such as the quaint, Franco-American variety store at the corner of Moody and White Streets, long before Moody Street became University Boulevard, which it carries today. Also, its alleys and by-ways emanated from the neighborhood of l’Eglise Sainte Jeanne d’Arc, the so-called Maid of Orleans.
Recall that Joan of Arc, AKA, Jeanne d’Arc, had played a major, historical role in ~1430 when the French King was being assailed by the British on French soil.
Also, I seem to recall that Moody St. had later adopted the name of Textile Avenue. But in the late 1950s when I attended the Lowell Technological Institute, LTI, AKA Lowell Tech, the locals still called this street Moody St.
Finally, the alleys and byways emanating in and from the neighborhood of the Sainte Jeanne d’Arc parish church were my daily vistas, which fashioned many of my first impressions. I, sometimes, wonder: Are we simply the products of our surroundings?
A closing quote by the Maid of Orleans before her death by fire
“Of the love or hatred God has for the English, I know nothing, but I do know that they will all be thrown out of France, except those who die there.“
