More August 1961 Stuff – 10-5-13

Reflections

The feeling is one of being edgy with excitement. Only once in a lifetime does one get the opportunity to first leave those familiar surroundings of home – those everyday experiences like walking through crumbling leaves accumulated on the sidewalks in autumn, gathering fresh chestnuts in their spongy green envelops in October, visiting the Gothic-style main library on Merrimack Street near City Hall, walking with friends through farmers’ fields in Dracut on weekends on the cold, damp days of early spring when our shoes and toes slowly became wet, being a grounds keeper at Lowell General Hospital during a summer of real world experience in the main hospital garage adjacent to the morgue and the incinerator, getting a week’s supply of groceries for Mom at Pinard’s Market on Hildreth Street, and not crushing that loaf of Wonder Bread so that Dad will not be angry at me for my lack of proper attention to details. Events like these are not easy to put aside.

These are but a few occurrences and memories to be left behind like last season’s woolen, winter coat that I have outgrown. When, if ever, did I truly outgrow such familiar, daily, reassuring and mundane duties and responsibilities that now, I might even choose a secret pathway, an escape, an opening in the streets and dark alleys of my hometown to begin another piece of life?

Is there possibly more to being alive in the Good Old USA today than being a clerk at the A&P, owning a neighborhood variety store or being another mill rat in those foreboding, red-brick, three and four story, looming prisons that dot the city with an ever-present song and tone of eternal despair?

“Arbeit macht frei” – “Work makes you free.”

Maybe, the National Socialists, whom we, Americans, learned to fear and despise during the last war, were partially right in proposing that long, repetitious hours, days, weeks, and even years of numbing, hard labor can be the answer to many social ills in our world? The thought is not fulfilling, to say the least.

Certainly, Stalin in the Soviet Union held onto similar attitudes. Today, his henchmen apply the same rules. But, this is America, the Land of Milk and Honey, where everyone can aspire to be – or soon become – a respected, valuable citizen, even, possibly the next President of the United States!

XXX, But, sometimes, it seems that there is a major disconnect between the patriotic and encouraging words of hope, personal wealth and resounding sounds of freedom and liberty that we often hear in public broadcasts and in the newsreels at local movie houses, and the distressing human scenes of routine, day-to-day, near-illiteracy and poverty felt by those inmates buried alive like human rubble in densely packed, decaying, tenement apartments, which are easily discovered by archeologists and interested visitors, on streets carrying such names as: Cabot, Race, Austin, Aiken, Moody, Lilley Avenue, Ennell, West Sixth, Lakeview and, of course, Ludlam Street, site of my home in Centralville for nearly 16 years. Maybe, I expect more with lesser tones of quiet desperation – a borrowed phrase – in the voices of fellow beings?

XXX, –

Uncle Gerry, Aunt Florence’s successful, and self-employed milkman husband, once laughingly compared the economic benefits offered to hard-working American mill rats with those made available to dismayed, tired peasants now slaving away in Soviet state industries. His disrespectful and sarcastic comments shocked me. How could he make such an un-American statement? Somehow, his attitudes clashed with my fervent belief that we, Americans, are all living in the Best of all Possible Worlds (a borrowed expression), and that I might be able to personally reach that wonderful condition if I played my cards right. But, what is the best way to play the hand that is dealt?

Along this line, I recall an adaptation of a popular hit song, which I butchered into a political statement. The new words, loaded with an anti-Communist flavor, ran like this:

“Wake the town and kill the people. The Russkis will have their holiday.”

It was poor sportsmanship on my part to make fun of this other economic approach to human happiness, but I felt vindicated inside knowing that the US of A with its capitalism and Senator McCarthy was right and that the stupid Russians with their form of slave labor were wrong.

Strange, very strange that

Still, it is strange that familiar,

and the

When Henry David Thoreau decided to spend two years writing down his impressions and observations while living in a cabin, which he constructed in the woods outside of Concord, Massachusetts, he actually separated himself physically from his fellow townspeople by a mere two miles of wooded pathways. Several times per week, he would wander into the village to teach at the Lyceum, do a few chores for his benefactor, Reverend Emerson, work at his family’s pencil factory, and banter with friends and neighbors in town. This quiet Rebel of Concord represented the highly vaunted, American individual that the Transcendentalists so admired. Henry chose to live in the world, but not be part of the world. Such independence can readily irk the well being of fellow beings, who have successfully, or not so successfully, compromised their total existence. Certainly, I still hold onto the peace of owning a piece of America, and being well of, and maybe wealthy, too? For me though, personal success is more dependent on what you nurture in your mind and carry in your guts (intestinal fortitude) than in the quality of your slick, gabardine suit and fancy means of transportation. Maybe, this naive thinking can only lead to long-term disappointments later on in life? There are no guarantees as the existentialists keep underlying in many a dismal text.

Parting Thoughts

Several years ago when George, Roger and I biked off to the Dracut woods and farmers’ fields past Dracut Center, I had spotted a brand new house, an all-brick  ranch-style home sitting on a tailored, grass-covered piece of former farmland. This spacious house had everything that a young, successful couple might wish to own as they climbed the local ladders of success toward a middle-class lifestyle. Such a fine, new house would not be found in my usual haunts in Centreville or Pawtucketville. A house like this one showed class, much in contrast to the gray, shabby, clapboard, multifamily tenements unique with their peeling paint from years ago.

A house like this would be very special, indeed, so in my innocent and sincere fashion, I had promised that, one day, I would buy her such a dreamy place for her to enjoy with Michelle and Denise in the coming years. Again, I was assuming that my brother Bob would nicely manage to achieve his own degree of financial success and, therefore, he was not included in my huge family fantasy.

Did I think it unlikely that I might be thinking along these lines? No, not really since there existed for decades in my family circle the unspoken, Franco-Canadian tradition that the oldest son in a family left empty-handed by the death of the father would naturally and willingly take on the responsibilities of feeding and clothing the half-orphans, his younger sisters and brothers. This stern new set of duties might impose severe limitations on the career choices of the oldest son. But, to be fair, the oldest daughter still living at home at the time of the father’s demise might also be expected to postpone or even cancel any plans for starting a career or a family life of her own.

Peasant traditions going back centuries to the founding of Quebec City in 1607 (approximately) strengthen the resolve of these hard-working individuals, who regularly endured extremely harsh living conditions in maintaining body and soul together.

Daily, provincial life was harsh and unforgiving, so harsh and unforgiving traditional values such as those I described above were needed simply to  survive, to make it one more day. But, when do such strong, religious and ethnic  traditions become counter-productive? When and how can this cycle across generations be put aside since it can lead to stagnation where everyone is desperately impoverished?

These are tough questions, but in my young mind, maybe, I can strive to attain success in research or teaching to reach a financial stability, which might permit me to save – this is too strong a word – my family unit from further dismay. Colleagues at the Lowell Technological Institute – later called U-Mass – had, as far as I could determine, their own cherished goals for reaching success but, as for my goals, I kept these to myself since no one else among those fine graduating, future researchers ever seemed to express a gnawing, visceral concern about also providing shelter for their siblings or for their aging parents.

But, I had a promise to keep, one made to my mother and to Denise, six years ago. How the hell will I ever achieve these results soon? A career in research science requires years of intense studies and experimental efforts. If I leave now for Penn State, it could be ten years or more before I can keep my promise! How can mom, Michelle and Denise manage in Lowell for all that time?

[ENDE]