Other Photos from Mom's Camera

Photos, photos everywhere, it seems. Here are more memories to investigate from a land far, far away and a time long ago when dinosaurs still hobbled up and down Ludlam St. in Centralville, USA.

Life can seem like a sunny day at the beach when you are three years old and your Lowell world did not crisscross into the unpleasant events in Europe or the Pacific. But, we did have to crush and save metal metal for our war efforts.
Double B-Day celebration at our house in 1948.phto
About two months after the death of my grandfather, Paul Charbonneau, on Valentine’s Day 1948, my Mom planned a large birthday celebration for my brother Bob and sister Michelle in our tenement home at 179 Ludlam St. just where Ludlam St. meets Dana Ave in Centralville. This was a big event in those recovering, post-WWII days when that Democrat, Harry S. Truman, was President. But, times were still marked with economic hardships. Of course, politicians of all flavors were still talking about the good times to come, but only true believers actually believed them. At this event, relatives, neighbors and friends (adults and otherwise) were invited to celebrate and have a party. Can you identify all the folks around the table? Elsewhere in these pages, I will try to put names to these faces.

In the next photo, only the kids were captured for posterity. Quels sont les noms de ces personnages innocents du voisinage de notre enfance?

Les enfants seulement!
Denise and Paul (me) standing in Madame Roussel’s yard on Dana Street in 1961 marking the end of my Lowell Tech experience – a bittersweet time when I would be leaving my Lowell French-Canadian heritage and, also, my family members, especially my sister Denise, forever. She had been my psychological cure in dealing with the death of my school friend, Jacqueline Deschenes in 1946 when her mother had attempted suicide by carbon monoxide, CO, poisoning but had failed. That botched tragedy had also killed Jacqui’s brother, Francois, thus making the mother’s survival even more bizarre in a world loaded with senseless reality.

More Visual Memories from Long Ago

Mom’s step-brother, Raymond, in Lowell, I guess, in 1929 before the economic meltdown and failure of our financial system. Check out that architecture and, especially, the wooden stairs to the right leading, I imagine, to a second tenement porch. Appreciate also, Mom’s handwriting. She would have been about nineteen at the moment. Was Raymond waiting to get news from Wall Street regarding the stocks that his destitute parents recently bought? Maybe, the “good times” were just around the corner for Lowell’s mill rats and their many, many relatives?
Seated at the picnic table, we see Memere (Clermont) Charbonneau talking with a stout woman. Also, that could be Uncle Gerry (Gerard Charbonneau) peeking out from behind a tree in the forest. And, who are the three lovely young ladies in front of the camera?
Two grandmothers – Memere Bolduc to the left and Memere Charbonneau to the left of that fine gentleman –
visit our humble abode at the corner of White and Endicott Streets around 1940. The the garden in the background where Monsieur Poulain, our landlord, grew strawberries, which I, later, helped to pick. Who is that young lady standing next to Memere C? Could that be Memere C’s daughter, Marie? Photos always seem to leave us with more questions to answers! Mysteries were everywhere.
Alphonse Bilodeau et Mimi Jubenville en 1929. A remarquer: les vêtements de la période de ce couple plus la condition atroce de herbe du gazon! Quelle horreur!
La grande visite des tantes et des oncles du Québec dans les années 1929 jusqu’à 1935, je crois. D’après les histoires que racontait ma mère, ce n’etait pas une grande surprise de recevoir un coup de fil au téléphone disant: ” Ne quittez pas la scène. Nous sommes prés de Nashua et nous serons chez vous dans deux heures!”
Meilleur photo pour reconnaître les visages!
Pinky, Vic and Mom – 5-20-34 – during the most psychologically distressing days of the Great Depression. Because of the successful business that her Dad was running – Northeast Dairy – Mom and her chums were insulated from the grim reality of unemployment, evictions, suicides and a general malaise, which more-down-to-earth Lowellians endured. with some notable endurance.
Neighbors and their little girl enjoying those delicious days of Lowell’s long, sticky, humid summertime blues where only an icy, cold bottle of Moxie – that near-root-beer tonic with a distinctive flavor – could make you long for relaxing Hampton Beach days with a slight breeze and no street vendors plying their wares.
Mom’s friend, Pinky, on 6-20-34 standing beside Grandfather, Paul Charbonneau’s car garage and seemingly doing a war dance. Pinky was certainly a droll amusement park in my Mom’s life.
Success in the local economy was measured by raw material wealth, which 99% of other Americans did not own or hope to ever achieve. Pepere Charbonneau – see fifth car to the left for his photo – had reached notoriety or stardom in the local business world before the crash and burn days of capitalism’s staggering failures of 1929. Had I been paying attention after my birth in 1939, perhaps, my career choices might not have centered on attaining scientific and technical knowledge for making the daily lives of fellow human beings more meaningful , less despairing and, generally, better for everyone.
But the 1920s and 1930s were times of “dog eat dog” Americanism where, sometimes, cutting the throat of a competitor and sending him and his family to financial despair (shades of David Copperfield) represented the best flavor of American religious thoughts of that period. For a nuanced view of this battlefield mentality that made Lowell great in the 1900 to 1920 time-frame, the reader is invited to read the criticisms of the Reverend Kenngott, who apparently had been driven out of town by the industrialists of the textile world.
This photo of Pepere Paul Charbonneau certainly shows shades of that successful grand-dad, who would bring milk to us at 179 Ludlam St until his dying on Valentine Day, 1948. When visiting our kitchen, he would grab my cheek firmly between his thumb and forefinger and exclaim loudly: “OU-la-la”, which might have had deep Quebecois meaning to him!. Since he was very busy, I never insisted that he explain to me the philosophical context behind the obvious physical show of affection.
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