RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Bullies

BULLIES

By Gregory F. DeLaurier

I was born and raised in a small tough working-class city up in Northern New York. Wrote a novel about the place.

Growing up there, you had two choices—be bullied or be a bully. For the first few years of my life, say from kindergarten to third or fourth grade, really up to middle school, I was bullied. Mercilessly. Physically…punches, shoves, trips, but really even worse, verbally…faggot, queer, girly fat boy (note a theme?). I was indeed fat (for a while), and quiet, and bad at sports, and smart, and so naturally a target.

By fourth grade, I had gotten tired of it all, and I knew what I would have to do: I WOULD BECOME A BULLY. I would no longer be the gazelle, I would be the lion.

I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about doing this, having little experience, so I looked around to see what kids seemed to get bullied as much as, if not more than, me. And I found him. He was in the third grade. A Jew (not necessarily anti-Semitic, just made him different and that was enough). Wore thick black rimmed glasses. Stuttered. PERFECT.

So…one day walking home from school, I spied him in front of me. Now was my chance. I pushed him from behind and he fell to the ground. He’d been carrying a piece of blue construction paper with scraps of other pieces of paper awkwardly glued to it. The kind of ‘art’ we all made in primary school. I grabbed it from him, tore it up, and threw the scraps at him.

He got up, crying, holding these pieces of paper, and said, That was f-f-for my Mommy.

Oh no. Why did I do that? To this day, some sixty years later, I can still feel the shame and revulsion I felt then for what I had done. It was for his Mommy! Davey Crockett would not do this, Hopalong Cassidy would not do this, the Lone Ranger would not do this, Lash LaRue would not do this, Zorro would not do this. But I had.

I tried to say I was sorry, said maybe we could glue it back together or something. But he just pushed me away. Leave me alone…

He walked home, crying, carrying the remnants of his gift for his Mommy. I walked home a ways behind him, tears of shame and regret welling up inside me. I walked in the house, and just let go, crying and wailing. My Mom, home on an odd day off from her job at Woolworths, ran to me from the kitchen.

What’s the matter?

I…I…I pushed a kid down, tore up his picture he made for his Mommy.

Why did you do that?

I don’t know, I don’t know…

She hugged and held me.

That’s OK, baby, that’s OK. You made a mistake, you did a bad thing. But you are a good, kind boy. You know what you have to do.

I knew and dreaded what she was going to say, so I preempted her…

I have to go to his house and apologize.

            Yes, you do.

My mom grabbed a wash cloth, wiped my face, sat me down at the kitchen table and gave me a glass of milk and a brownie. When I finished, she said,

Are you ready?

I nodded yes, got up, put on my coat, headed to the door.

I’m proud of you.

That helped…a little.

I knew where he lived, just a couple blocks away, in a strange collection of shot gun apartments all connected. There were seven such places and unless you lived at one end or the other you had neighbors’ walls on both sides.

My aunt, my father’s sibling, he the youngest of thirteen, she the oldest, lived in the apartment on the left end as you faced the building. As a very young child, she was one of the many relatives who baby-sat me while my parents both worked to, barely, pay the bills.

She was kind and gentle, but had this way of grabbing my cheek between her fingers. A sign of affection I suppose, but it hurt. Maybe it was a French-Canadian thing as she still spoke in broken English, interspersed with long phrases in the French of her homeland.

She lived with her husband, a giant of a man who was mentally challenged and had worked as a garbage man. They both were illiterate, but together made a life for themselves and were happy.

Hilda and Victor. They must have been in their late seventies at the time, which meant they had been born and came to adulthood in the 19^th century. And here I write as the second quarter of the 21st century begins. Time and space, often an illusion.

My most vivid memory of Hilda is her sitting me down at her kitchen table while she baked cookies. But first she had to put wood in the stove, light it and get it going.

This kid lived in the third apartment from the right. I remember there was a menorah in the window, lit or not I do not recall. I knocked. A short, pretty, dark-haired woman wearing a flowery house dress opened the door.

I know who you are and what you did. What do you want?

I stared down at my feet, nervous and embarrassed.

I…I came to apologize for what I did. It was real mean, and I’m really really sorry.

She folded her arms and stared down at me.

Why did you do it?

            I don’t know, I don’t know, I wish I hadn’t…

            OK, you apologized.

She shut the door. It would have been a nice story if she had invited me in, praised my courage. If I had talked to her son and we had become best friends. But none of that happened. He and I never became friends, never hung out. Actions have consequences. I do know he moved to Israel later in life, and I hope he found peace in that troubled land.

As for me, I was never a bully again. Of course, I have been mean and petty, unkind and cutting, thoughtless and hurtful. In other words…human. But I have tried to be otherwise. I have never again attacked or belittled or dismissed someone who is weak and vulnerable. I remain atoning for what I did so many years ago.

After I retired from my career as a bully, I was left vulnerable. After all, bully or be bullied right? Not necessarily, as I came upon a strategy: find the toughest guy around and become his friend.

His name was Pee-Wee (of course it was). Nobody but nobody messed with him. He was big and strong, from the wrong side of the tracks, with a perpetual scowl on his face. There would be fights after school, this would be high school, and anyone stupid enough to fight Pee-Wee soon found himself ‘asleep’ on the ground.

But, I noticed, he never bullied anybody. Never took his anger or frustration or whatever out on someone weaker. I liked that, I liked him. I respected him. We became friends.

To be honest, this wasn’t some clever scheme on my part, it just happened. I remember I simply talked to him, not down to him. I made him laugh, I listened to the words he did not often say. He was smart, thoughtful, clever. Traits he kept well-hidden. An unlikely friendship, to be sure.

A side benefit to this friendship was that nobody dared bully me. If they did, they would have to answer to Pee-Wee, and nobody wanted that. At times, I would have to grant special dispensation to someone who had mistakenly hit me or hassled me somehow.

Please, please call Pee-Wee off. I’m sorry I messed with you.

So be kind. You never know, it may pay off.

The Knockout Punch

The Knockout Punch

By Jerry Bisantz

I got hit with a bomb. It happened at the supermarket yesterday. As I rolled my cart with the single wobbly wheel up and down the aisle, my eyes fell upon one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.

To me, it felt like a major transition in my life.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am 71 years of age, recently retired, happily married to a wonderful woman, and we have two great children, all grown up, successful and living out of town. I consider myself to be a reasonably handsome man, keep myself in very good shape hiking, working out, you know… the usual.

Sadly, sex, passion, and lustful intimacy has been pretty much on the back burner for a long time. And then I saw her. Smooth brown skin, the color of coffee with two creams, please. Round, expressive hazel eyes that held mine. Briefly, for a moment, but that moment was all I needed.

Realizing that the worst thing that could happen to a guy like me would to be considered a “creepy old man,” staring at a woman the age of my daughter, I quickly averted my eyes, muttering “excuse me” as I slowly pushed my cart past her. Perhaps she knew that I was chastened by her presence. I am not sure. But she took a brief moment to gently touch my arm and say, “no problem.” I was rewarded with a furtive moment to look into her eyes once more.

Then, she walked away. Out of my life.

The transition I spoke about? The knowledge that it’s gone. And has been gone for quite a long time. My salad days of acting on an intuition, pursuing a lovely woman, perhaps even being pursued by a lovely woman… done. Finito.

And it stings. It stings because we all remember what we once were. I can harken back to those crazy days of yore when I was free and feeling it. Hell, I was “John Travolta” strutting down the street, swinging those paint cans, so cocky I am eating two slices of pizza to that disco beat.

Now, the best I can hope for is a stolen moment. A moment locked in time. And it only reminds me of who I am.

And makes me long for who I once was.

Chinese, If You Please

Chinese, If You Please

By Leo Racicot

Chinese food never struck my uneducated palate as being exotic because from as far back as I can remember, the family liked to feast downtown at Chin Lee’s restaurant. (Unfortunately, these were unenlightened times and the place was referred to as “The Chink’s” by everyone in Lowell. To this day, I’ll hear fellow bus passengers saying, “Remember when The Chink’s was here in this stretch?” “This stretch” was the block between Bridge and John Streets. Lowell’s two five-and-dimes (Woolworth’s and Kresge’s) were in that block, as was the Union National Bank and next to that, Fanny Farmer’s Candy Shop. If I found Chin Lee exotic in any way, it was due to the fact that, in order to get to it, you had to ascend a flight of stairs; it was located on the second floor above the bank. I’d never seen a restaurant on an upper floor. There was something nicely secretive about it. Ironically, for a kid who turned his nose up at steak and a baked potato at home, I loved Chinese food — put a heaping plate of Chow Mein, with its mountain of crunchy noodles underneath in front of me and I was in my glory. I guess I regarded it as ‘fun food’. Years later, when I lived in Cambridge, and downtown Boston was a subway ride away, you could find me dining at a place in Chinatown called Buddha’s Delight, which was also on a second floor of an old Beach Street building and I know that one of the reasons I liked it is that its second-floor aerie reminded me of Chin Lee’s.

When Aunt Marie got her driver’s license and bought her Rambler, she liked to head the family out-of-town to area Chinese restaurants. Some of these were Cathay Garden on Route 110. Cathay’s sign was made in the shape of a pagoda and was considered “the fancy Chinese restaurant”. They served the best Peking Ravioli I ever had. I’ve been searching high-and-low all these years to find that exact flavor of ravioli Cathay made but never have. Other Chinese restaurants we’d hit were The Hong Kong (on Chelmsford Street), Tewksbury’s Jade East and The Lo Kai in Dracut. Jade East and Lo Kai are still in operation.  What I liked most about Chinese cuisine was the hodge-podge of colors and tastes its many dishes offered. I did realize most of what I was eating wasn’t considered authentic Chinese, that is to say, the kind of food cooked and served in China. It wasn’t until my Cambridge Library friend, Chi-Shiang, introduced me to “real” Chinese food in the early 2000s that I was bowled over with the freshness and limitless variety of authentic Chinese meals. He took me to explore the many Chinese eateries Harvard Square had at that time. Chi-Shiang so savored whatever he was eating that he’d make loud smacking sounds with his mouth. At first, I found this annoying but as time went on, I found myself smacking right along with him. Chi-Shiang, disenchanted with library work and then teaching and American ways, went back to his native Taiwan and decided, at a late age in life, to study medicine, and succeeded. Thanks to the wonders of email, this fine, gentle, learned man and I are still in touch, and I am so thankful that our paths crossed. He made me brave, egging me on to try foods I would never have thought to put in my mouth. One time, when confronted with snake meat, and not recognizing it, I said, “What’s this??”  Chi-Shiang snapped, rather militarily, I might add, “Leo. Just eat it!”  It was surprisingly good.

Of course, I, and all of us fans of Boston’s WGBH, were able to watch, if not eat, real Chinese food being prepared by Channel 2’s Joyce Chen who had her own show, Joyce Chen Cooks, which Joe and I never missed, along with shows like The French Chef with Julia Child and Making Things Grow with Thalassa Cruso (whom my mother insisted was a man). Joyce was a real character, and would interject advice as she cooked saying things like, “If you have a date coming over, omit scallion” or “If you have party, make more…”  She also a lot in her culinary haste would pick up a burning hot pan without thinking and found a dozen creative ways to express the word, “Ouch”. Joe and I couldn’t understand why these faux pas weren’t edited out but remember — this was live television. Julia’s shows in which she’d fumble the ball, so to speak, are now legendary. Who hasn’t heard of the episode where she dropped a potato pancake on the floor, lustily scooped it up, tossed it straight back into the pan saying, “And if you drop something, pick it up. If you’re alone in the kitchen, who’s going to see?”  I look back so fondly on these pioneers of educational television. Without them, so many Americans would never have known how to roast a Peking duck or re-pot a tired hydrangea.

Little Hong Kong in Boston’s Chinatown became a favorite place. It was the best little restaurant in Chinatown, a hole-in-the-ground; if you blinked, you’d miss it. If you didn’t know it was there (it was well-hidden below street level0, you were out of luck because the food was out-of-this-world. Surprising things happened there whenever I went in.  One time, a couple (an older woman and her boy toy) tried to pick me up, insisting I looked like the young Marc Chagall. This ploy at seduction didn’t work because all I wanted on that cold winter night was my Egg Foo Young (no gravy) and nothing more.  Another time, I walked in just as a little girl was being serenaded by her family and surrounding waiters with Happy Birthday so I joined in the serenading. As they and I were the only people there, they invited me to their table where I was given a plate and chopsticks and encouraged to dig in. A third time, I was eating when a coterie of gals bubbled in. Among them was an old pal from my O’Leary Library days, Maggie Calhoun. There’d been bad blood between us since last we were together but hot tea, Chinese pastries and shared laughter healed that and we parted friends again.

I love how delicate and non-invasive Asian pastries are, nothing like the sickly-sweet confections found in American bakeries and restaurants. Of course, the danger with this is that, as in the old Lay’s Potato Chips commercials, “Bet you can’t eat just one!” The myth we grew up hearing: “Eat Chinese food and an hour later, you’re hungry again” didn’t apply to that serendipitous gathering.

As the gut ages, some foods that I used to have no problem with fight their way back. I have to avoid my beloved Crab Rangoon, for example; I know my tired intestines will have a tough time digesting them.  And whenever Joe and I eat at the corner Asian place, happily forgetting the high MSG content in the dishes we’ve ordered, we’re fine until the salt-heavy seasoning enters our bodies. That’s when our very animated chats slow to a near-halt from the MSG coma we find ourselves in. I call this “taking a trip to La-La Land” followed by the need to go home and take an immediate nap.

________________

Chin Lee’s on Merrimack Street

Buddha’s Delight

A young Marc Chagall

Cathay Garden

Chinese food buffet

Chi Shiang

Lo Kai in Dracut, interior view

Peking Ravioli

Seen & Heard: Vol. 4 

Welcome to this week’s edition of Seen and Heard, in which I catalog the most interesting things I’ve seen, heard and read over the previous seven days:

YouTube: Mark Carney’s Speech at World Economic Forum – On Tuesday, January 20, 2026, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Carney, an economist who previously led both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, owes his election as Prime Minister to Donald Trump. For months preceding the April 2025 Canadian election, the country’s Conservative Party held large leads in most polls due mostly to “voter fatigue” with the Liberal Party that had long held power. However, Trump’s threats to make Canada the 51st American state created a surge in nationalism among Canadians that blunted this desire for change, and Carney won an unexpected victory. US/Canadian relations have further deteriorated due to Trump’s erratic tariff policies. In last week’s speech, Carney forcefully identified a “rupture” in the world order that has prevailed since World War II that relied on US leadership for global stability. Carney called for the world’s “middle powers” to assert their collective power through an “alliance of the middle” saying, “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.” He called for “variable coalitions” that exclude the US to protect these other countries from American coercion. I found Carney’s speech to be refreshing. Too many people in this country assume that the world should be ruled by a handful of “great powers” like the US, China, and Russia, with other nations just imperial possessions lacking in autonomy. Anyone who studies history knows that is not how the world works, certainly not in the long term. The video of Carney’s speech is available here. 

Podcast: “Impolitic with John Heilemann” – Heilemann, a political analyst for NBC news, chief political columnist for Puck, and the host of this podcast, interviewed author and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman about his new book, Football, which was published last week. I’ve been a fan of Klosterman since reading his 2023 book, The Nineties, which synthesized the importance of that seemingly forgettable decade to modern world events. My existing fandom plus hearing this interview make me anxious to read this new book. Unquestionably, football is a cultural juggernaut with 92 of the top 100 television broadcasts of 2024 featuring that game. (The other eight were Games 6 and 7 of the World Series, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, the Kentucky Derby, the Presidential Inauguration, the State of the Union speech, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, and the Academy Awards.) Despite its current dominance, Klosterman asserts that football will eventually go the way of boxing and horse racing. They still exist but are very much niche notwithstanding their former cultural dominance. Among the reasons he cites for football’s ultimate demise are the unwillingness of many parents to allow their children to play football in light of the long term health risks, especially from CTE. But Klosterman cited other things. He explained that football got its start in the 19th century because in the post Civil War era, “society” feared the men would become “less manly” without the opportunity to engage in mortal combat. Football served as a stand in for that and, in many ways, continues to do so. He also observed that society is likely to turn on today’s “toxic masculinity” that is often embodied in football. (Although Klosterman mentioned neither, the “performative toughness” embraced by the current regime in Washington and the erasure of mention of domestic violence allegations against two Patriots players made his observation resonate with me.) Finally, Klosterman cited advertising as a long term risk to the NFL. This seems counterintuitive given the stratospheric TV ratings, but his point is that the dominant force in one era often ignores challenges to its dominance due to current financial benefits. He illustrated that by recalling how dismissive newspaper editors were of the internet in its early days, proclaiming, “there will always be newspapers.” As much as I enjoy football, I suspect its dominance of the TV ratings has more to do with there being no competition of that scale. With so many attention-demanding options, people’s viewing choices are disbursed. Over time, those same forces will cause the erosion of football viewership which is an existential threat to the NFL. This new book is about much more than the demise of football. Klosterman almost sounded regretful when talking about that part since it will dominate the headlines and cause polarization among potential readers. The book seems much more a cultural history of football than anything else, which also makes it worth reading. 

Magazine article – “Won’t Back Down: The stubborn songs of Zach Bryan” by Kelefa Sanneh in the New Yorker – Although I enjoy country music when I hear it, I don’t hear it very often so Zach Bryan was not on my radar until he burst into Lowell history and culture by purchasing the former Saint Jean Baptiste Church on upper Merrimack Street to help create the long-planned Jack Kerouac Center. Bryan has frequently cited Kerouac as a primary literary influence on his song writing. One of his biggest hits, “Burn, Burn, Burn” channels a famous passage from On the Road in which Kerouac wrote, “The only people for me are the mad ones… the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles.” This New Yorker piece reviews Bryan’s newest album, “With Heaven on Top” which is described as “a shaggy record composed of twenty-four songs (and one poem” about chasing peace of mind around the world.” I haven’t listened to any of the songs yet, but I will. For now, it’s nice to see an artist who has invested in Lowell get the broader national exposure that comes with a review like this one. 

Movie: Sinners (2025) – One of the reasons I began this “Seen & Heard” column is to incentivize me to watch more movies and read more books. I’ve long been interested in both, but I’ve slid into our attention economy’s “doom scrolling” trap with more and more of my time. This focus shift paid off this weekend when I watched Sinners on Amazon Prime. Directed by Ryan Coogler, whose previous films include Creed and Black Panther, Sinners gained much attention last week when it set the record for the most Academy Award nominations ever with 16. Upon watching it, my reaction was, “Wow, what a great movie.” In its review last summer, the New York Times described it as “genre-defying, mind bending fantasia” set in the Jim Crow south. That’s particularly accurate since the movie includes vampires which is to me about as strong a put-off as you can have for a movie. But that’s where “genre-defying” comes in, because I saw it as a historical drama depicting the oppression of Black people in the American South – the movie is set in Mississippi in 1932 – and the way those people responded to that oppression. Music plays a huge role in the movie, mostly the Blues, but then the vampires emerge singing Irish folk songs which, as someone of Irish descent, was baffling to me. However, like a piece of Surrealist art, this had unexpected juxtapositions, suggesting (to me, at least) that stronger powers in society stay strong by pitting oppressed people against each other. Perhaps I’m just projecting my view of modern society onto this film.  

Book: Disney Adults: Exploring (And Falling in Love With) a Magical Subculture by A.J. Wolfe – This 2025 book by the founder of the popular The Disney Food Blog, looks at the growing cohort of adults whose children have grown or who are childless who repeatedly return to Disneyworld for vacations. Wolfe is among that group and the book offers an uncritical explanation in the face of what she rightly identifies as unfair and unjust societal criticism of so-called Disney Adults. Wolfe explains that affection for Disneyworld is a hobby but that plenty of other people have expensive hobbies and aren’t derided for it. She used the example of a guy who has season tickets to an NFL team. When you add all the costs and time, season NFL tickets would exceed that of twice-annual trips to Orlando. Why do Disney Adults get so much negative attention? The author suggests the perception at least is that women and LGPTQ people dominate Disney fans so there’s misogyny involved. She is also sympathetic to the challenges that corporate America faces in operating within a deeply divided country. She uses Disney’s uneven response to Florida’s 2022 “Don’t Say Gay” bill as an examplbe. Portrayed by proponents as empowering parents to control information about sexual orientation and gender identity received by their children in school, the LGBTQ community saw the law as a targeted attack on them rather than a measure for parental rights. Disney’s initial response was to say nothing about the bill which infuriated its LGBTQ employees and fans. In response to their protests, Corporate Disney spoke out against the bill which in turn incurred the wrath of the Florida political establishment and those Disney fans who supported the act. Wolfe also identifies another peril facing Disney leaders. Much of the affection people have for the place, she argues, is rooted in fun experiences in the past. People return to again experience the enjoyment they once felt. But when Disney changes something, as it inevitably must, people react negatively to change. She gives Disney high marks for listening to feedback and sometimes even responding to it. Overall, I’m pleased that I read this book. Many people I know are big fans of Disney and vacation there often. It’s not something I want to do, but as A.J. Wolfe wrote, it’s a hobby and, when it comes to hobbies, my attitude is “to each their own.”