My Dad Got Me to a Nunnery Read online

  was undoubtedly a charitable offering that he was entitled to. Mr. Chouinard later led a

  superb and widely popular band specializing in Franco-American and Québec music, which

  they dubbed “C’est Si Bon” [“It’s so good”]. Ray and I have become friends as members of a

  francophone social club.

  When Dad was unable to pay the rent at Hines Alley, we moved on to a wonderfully

  capacious flat on Main Street as Florence wistfully recalls. It was close to downtown, and the

  environs seemed a good fit. Sure, there were cockroaches and rats, but there was plenty of

  room for them to roam about our space. On one occasion, Bobby stepped on a slow traveling

  rat. Tenants covered rat holes with the metal covers from peanut butter jars. Talk about a

  teasingly tempting cuisine with an inviting tang! Sufficient to accommodate our family of

  ten, this threadbare though spacious six-bedroom second floor apartment was situated above a

  sleazy barroom, where we actually enjoyed listening to the piercing music and squalid

  ribaldry it offered adults on Friday and Saturday evenings.

  The second floor of this unadorned tenement was ours, replete with a sizeable back

  yard porch and attached woodshed. A small woodshed provided space for the winter’s fuel.

  A hatchet, not an axe, was the sole tool we had for cutting up the wood to arrest the cold of

  winter in our non-insulated home. The porch, better known to most as a piazza, served as

  home to a dozen chickens we acquired around Easter. By late summer, they were set for

  slaughter at the hands of brother Junior who decapitated them; the rest of us deplumed them.

  No doubt, our raising and harvesting these chickens must have violated some city ordinance for sure. It seemed an okay thing to do at the time, and we needed the food. Their droppings

  kept the rats satisfied, too.

  Inside the house, one’s eyes could readily notice the kitchen’s yellow painted walls

  with many glossy coats of paint for the trim work, the last one being fire engine red. Corners

  where the ceilings met the walls’ crevices contained blackish holes and shadowed entrances

  for our ubiquitous co-habitants— the rats and cockroaches. The roaches had a greater variety

  of settings: in the icebox [the kind that would hold a large cube of ice that melts down to a

  catch-bin at the base], in the cupboards, under the sink, under the loose linoleum—pretty

  much everywhere. We would come home after dark, pull the string below the ceiling light,

  and presto: scores of shiny-backed brown vermin went for cover as we had our rolled-up

  newspapers ready for the serial kill.

  My little sister Flora “fondly” recalls how our Main Street experience taught her to

  abhor canned evaporated milk, particularly when consumed directly from its can. You see,

  she had a proclivity about sneaking sips of this milk that, it was well known, was reserved for

  Dad’s coffee for pouring directly from the can’s triangle-shaped pierced openings. On a shelf

  in our wooden icebox, lurked one can serving as host to a pitiable cockroach that eventually

  drowned in an effort to imbibe in this nasty nectar. Picture it: Flora, in turn, involuntarily and

  shockingly rescuing this little brown critter on the surface of her tongue. There remains no

  circumstance to this day for which Flora would renew her taste for evaporated milk.

  Our cherished upstairs six-bedroom home did have the basics: kitchen, bedrooms,

  toilet and sink—no bath tub, and no hot water anywhere. We had enough beds, combined with donated old canvassed army cots, to accommodate up to six of us at a given

  time. Those left out—usually my twin sisters and me—we had to improvise, absent a bed.

  For a better fitting if not restful sleep, we placed three kitchen chairs together, which would

  serve as a sort of single bed. Just add one blanket and a well-worn rag-filled pillow. The

  distribution of our sleeping quarters varied: three boys to a double bed, elder brother Lionel

  by himself in his own room, parents in another, girls fending for themselves somehow. There

  was always brother Junior trying new creative things for comfort and attention, like adapting

  as a makeshift bed a deep cardboard laundry barrel that was given to us from a nearby textile

  mill.

  Though we were short of beds we acquired assorted other pieces of aged furniture.

  The spacious kitchen sported a cast iron wood stove, which was essential for cooking and

  served to keep the apartment above 40 degrees Fahrenheit during winter; thanks to the small

  supply of wood we kept in the woodshed by the porch. Mary Ann recalls that each of us

  would wake up in shifts during the night to feed that precious stove. There was an old

  wobbly wooden table that could seat six at a time. Its scarred surface was always concealed

  with an oilcloth whose plastic coating made for easier cleaning. On the table was the family’s

  brown plastic AM radio. It was our gate to the outside world—of interest mostly to our

  parents. We had no television. A television with a black and white screen would come much

  later—about the time Mom died. Around the table, there were enough mix and match chairs

  provided by charities to go around. Mary Ann wondered why we had no bureaus. Answer:

  none were donated. Perhaps small change may have bought us other cheap appurtenances

  through local schlockmeisters who surely were as plentiful as apartment rodents. Our clothes acquired from assorted charities were amassed in cardboard boxes.

  Centered on the wall, above the kitchen table was the obligatory crucifix—an immense

  one, perhaps three feet high. Given our destitution, the source of this commandingly grand

  crucifix remains mystifying. I suppose the Church must have given this to Mom and Dad for

  adding eight Catholics to its parish. An all-white Jesus icon was nailed to this wooden cross,

  painted in glossy black—maybe twelve coats of black. Tucked behind the crucifix was a

  frond of the dried remains of hand-braided palm, saved from a previous Palm Sunday Mass,

  the Sunday before Easter.

  Adorning an empty room adjacent to the kitchen was our favorite piece of furniture—

  a large old wooden rocking chair that comfortably sat two of us at a time. Always facing the

  kitchen, this hefty chair was the most unifying magnetic tool we had to demonstrate our

  unflagging yearning to bond with each other day in, day out throughout the summer break

  from our respective orphanages at Scarborough and Lewiston. We probably took one-hour

  shifts per pair of us on that chair. That chair was made for rocking, talking, happy kids like

  us, plain and simple. What more could a poor kid want?

  Turnover among the third floor tenants at the Main Street apartment was constant. As

  a result, we didn’t get to know them. The first floor tenants, however, were more permanent.

  These were the Scotts—an odd name indeed within a community that must have been at least

  two-thirds francophone. This was a family without a mom and a very kind father. Unlike my

  racist father, none of us made any distinction among our neighbors based on national origin. We knew nothing of ethnic or language differences! I knew, though, that the Scott family

  included an untamed bully for a son. I avoided their son Harry like the nuns’ celery-laden

  chop suey. Flora’s experience with Harry was far worse, as he had allegedly forced her to

  fellate him, lest she risk drowning at the hands of this twerp�
��s disquieting buddies.

  The Scotts had a German Shepherd dog that was regularly tied on their back porch,

  which we had to cross to ascend to our floor. This is where my little twin sisters routinely

  rescued me. I was frightened of dogs, any dog—but a German Shepherd? Yikes! They made

  it a point to pet this dog whenever I was nearby. This transparent display of their shameless

  affection for that dog never convinced me of his probable decency. I relentlessly insisted that

  they always securely hold him until I passed by.

  Besides the dog and their impish son Harry that I disliked, the Scotts owned a

  television set we deeply envied them for. They frequently permitted us to come down and

  view it with their family. I don’t recall any good TV shows back then, seeing a snowy black

  and white picture and hearing the scratchy accompanying sound was almost enough to sustain

  our interest for quite a while. The novelty of this invention was everything. Improved

  television reception and programs would come much later. They also had a thing called a

  telephone. Who would one call? What was it for? This was, at best, a curiosity we did not

  understand during the early fifties.

  When the slumlord raised the rent at Main Street, it was time to move on to the next

  flat, or so that was how Dad would have it. The most satisfying consequence to come of our

  transitions to different Lewiston apartments was that we manually transported everything from one neighborhood to another as a fun family project. We knew teamwork conceptually long

  before we knew it connotatively. To cart our furniture about the city, we used a red

  metalwagon that brother Junior received from the Salvation Army. For our efforts, Dad

  treated the whole family to a “feed” at Steckino’s, a real Italian family restaurant downtown.

  Even though this privileged event happened no more frequently than once a year (the

  approximate frequency of our moves), we always wondered how Dad could possibly have

  afforded it—even if it were a spaghetti meal. Maybe our upper lower class aunts and uncles

  really shelled out a bit for those occasional delights. Maybe there was a charitable overture

  from someone there that we knew nothing about. I can’t be sure. Dad loved charity—an

  understatement, indeed.

  The rent on Main Street goes up. Easy solution: move again. This time it was off to

  another part of Petit Canada among the revolting flats of Oxford Street. This one had

  A Sampling of our Oxford St. Tenaments

  one pull-chain toilet with no tub, no sink, except for the

  one in the kitchen. Again, no hot water. It was also

  here that Dad managed to purchase a Roper gas stove.

  That was a luxury we had never known before.

  Our stay at 142 ½ Oxford Street was short-lived. Next, we were off to the more

  revolting filth of the Lincoln Street environment. Accommodations were about the same as

  any of our other apartments. Although we continued to share company with the hordes of rats

  and roaches consuming our living space, there was a silver lining about that Lincoln Street locale: during the summer, we had easy access to the swimming pool at the city park that we

  so frequented. The city also sported two larger public swimming pools as well as playground

  equipment a short walk from Lincoln Street. Some of us befriended other kids at the park.

  On Saturday evenings of summer, a band played in the city park’s gazebo. Admission was

  free, of course, and Mom and Dad were happy to lead us there for an evening of

  entertainment.

  Our final borrowed space was at Maple Street, perpendicular to Knox Street, reputed

  to be the most destitute neighborhood of them all. Oddly enough, our Maple Street apartment

  was the most presentable of them all. We enjoyed hot water, a bath tub, and apartment

  heating. Sure, we continued to have cockroaches and bedbugs, but no rats. Dad purchased a

  refrigerator as well as a living room set. My suspicion is that he paid a buck a month for each

  on the installment plan. Oh, yes, there was a television, too. A few kicks from time to time

  and, hark— there was a snowy image on the screen for, count them, up to three television

  stations. Our unpresumptuous abode at Maple Street was to last us as long as we were an

  organized family unit and as long as Mom was alive.

  Lewiston was a marvelous city for us poor folk. We watched the horse and buggy

  delivering fruit as it clogged along the cobblestones of nearby Lisbon Street. We had no

  toys, no commercially prepared entertainment for the most part. The streets, the outdoors

  were ours. Free!

  Our settings for creating fun were varied. We used railroad tracks for fun walks and

  runs, parking lots for hide and seek, cops and robbers, and tag. There were stores for free broken candies or cookie samples, dumps to recycle old newspapers for small change, other

  people’s hallways for more games, streets for discovery and exploration, and alleyways for

  hiding. We played with the marbles that we “earned” from neighbors. We also amused

  ourselves with paper straws that doubled as peashooters. For indoor relaxation, we had a

  family phonograph that played vinyl records at 78 revolutions per minute—the standard speed

  of its day. We might have had a half-dozen records to choose from. Sidewalk discoveries

  bought us penny candies like malted milk balls, wax-shaped bottles with colored sugar water

  in them, candy cigarettes, and other tasteless delights. These experiences, as Florence tells it,

  “made me appreciate what I have now versus then.”

  Lewiston was home to some schooling for each of us at one time or another. The four

  girls attended St. Mary’s school before being sent to L’Hospice Marcotte. St. Mary’s was a

  French language parish as was its school. The Sisters of Mercy were the girls’ introduction to

  a more benign experience of the nuns, though the school was hardly noted for its fun and

  hilarity. When Mary Ann was retained in eighth grade at the Marcotte Home, she returned to

  St. Mary’s for a repeat performance of grade eight. Lionel had the good fortune of acquiring

  most of his education in the Lewiston schools. Junior tried to fit in to the Lewiston school

  environment but found that his eyesight caused him more taunting than he could endure. That

  prompted Dad to seek charity for him at the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Massachusetts.

  Bobby and I attended Jordan Junior High School after we aged out of St. Louis Home.

  All of the Lewiston apartments had certain universal features that we as a Franco

  American Catholic family would maintain. Like most other Franco apartments I visited, our environs were proudly well maintained for cleanliness—each of us taking turns. We routinely

  washed the kitchen floor. That was the one floor that was always covered with a nine-by

  twelve foot linoleum with a rust-colored underside. New linoleum like that, regardless of its

  illustrative color design would fetch less than $ 4.00. Problem was that it wore out very

  quickly with our family’s traffic beating on it. The ruddy shade beneath the well-worn design,

  as if it discolored from ferric oxides, was no longer limited to the underside. Its tattered

  auburn surface, too, would remain that way until Dad could afford to buy another low-cost

  one just like it. Nevertheless, we washed it and washed it repeatedly, and when there was a

  chance to apply some cheap wax over it, th
at was a demonstration of elegance. Actually, the

  elegance would elude most observers, since we applied newspapers atop the entire kitchen

  floor once the wax dried, hoping to lengthen the life of this display of splendid and shiny

  spotlessness. That is what other people in the neighborhood did, too. It came with our

  culture.

  An oddity that many Franco-American kitchens sported, besides an obligatory

  crucifix, was a stoup affixed adjacent to a doorway jamb. The stoup looked a bit like a wall

  holder of wooden matchsticks, except that its base held holy water, blessed by a priest, instead

  of matchsticks. This apparatus permitted the more pious among us Catholics to dip the two

  forefingers (two—no more, no less) in this mini-font to perform the holy sign of the cross vis

  à-vis the forehead, heart, left shoulder, and right shoulder. This spiritual gesture was one way

  of maintaining an unbroken connection to our church as well as to beckon Jesus Christ to

  bless each person entering the domicile. Except among the elderly, this blessed dispenser has likely gone the way of the Edsel.

  Other objects graced our Franco-Catholic homes. There were a few plastic or ceramic

  knickknacks that must have come our way over the years—nothing aesthetic to

  Jesus Mary Joseph

  be sure, but it was our blue

  collar view of decent art.

  Add to that the occasional

  religious icons—statues and

  pictures of Jesus, Mary, and

  Joseph. Jesus, when not

  crucified, was shown with halo in brown or reddish tones with an impression of his Valentine

  like heart with thorns and sunrays about it. Pictures of the Virgin Mary—hands spread open

  and away from her hips—was always wearing white and blue. She was portrayed as valiantly

  stepping on a serpent, which we knew to be the devil morphed as a snake. Her likeness was

  more likely to be portrayed as a hollow statue rather than as a portrait. The reason is that there

  needed to be some plastic flowers inserted in an aperture

  below her back. Flowers growing out of her fanny may seem disrespectful, but that kind of

  icon remains for many Catholics and nuns an especially favorite representation of their