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Remembering My Father, Robert T. Reilly

Remembering My Father, Robert T. Reilly

By Eoin Reilly

So my father wrote a lot. He also was from Lowell and ran track with Ed McMahon and Jack Kerouac. Oh…he also had a lot of kids and moved to where he could afford to raise them without crime being involved. And it’s the Lowell Folk Festival today. Normally, I am there having a great time with food and song, but today I am, for my sins, in Boston instead.

Hello to anyone out there reading this. I saw a Boston Globe article by Stephen O’Connor that referenced one of my dad’s books. I still get around fifty dollars a year from it, usually then given to one of the afore-mentioned siblings who is down and out. We pretty much all do that because one of us (or more) is always broke. The Disney film The Fighting Prince of Donegal was based on a book my dad wrote for what we now call “young adults” but which previously were referred to as “Shitheads.” I think he published somewhere around fifteen books. Many were non-fiction, perhaps also written for shitheads. Writing was his avocation. To make money, he was a showman. He did advertising in Nebraska, where his ad campaign for Old Home Bread brought forth C.W. McCall and a really bad movie with a great songwriter (Kris Kristofferson) in it. He also ran for congress as a Democrat in 1970, a voice against the war in Vietnam that nearly made me grow up in D.C., likely to have ended life at a young age with a dirty needle in my arm in some dank place somewhere between Akron and Algiers. He went to war in 1944, promptly getting captured and imprisoned so as to be bombed by allies, have an out-of-body experience after which he returned to his stricken barracks, and then to consume numerous Red Cross chocolate bars as yet another bomb run by us moved along his stalled train car as the Nazis retreated with their commitments further into Germany.

Then he came home. He married my mom and tried to get BC to accept his Jesuitical classwork from before he volunteered for a war worth fighting. They didn’t. He started having kids and worked his education elsewhere. Lots of jobs. A move west after his third kid and just short of his PhD. In philosophy, I think. More kids ensued in Omaha. Seven more, in fact. He started to write, perhaps to keep himself hopeful in what must have been very skint times. Funny, but he never wrote about Lowell. Gramma still lived there, other than her annual trips out to the colonies to see us. He still lost or found his “r’s” from time to time, but the steady in my childhood was the sound of Dad in the attic typing two-fingered on the Smith Corona he bought in 1947 and used until he couldn’t type anymore somewhere approaching or passing the new millennium. Lots of books, articles, letters (he wrote back to everyone who ever wrote him), and dribbles of poems and film scripts were my nighttime sonata. He listened to Harry Belafonte and played (very, very badly) the bongos or the spoons when the muse left him or when his fingers just got tired.

He would be appalled at this stream of consciousness submission, as he once told me that writers edit until they just get too tired. Books on Irish topics intermingled with stories about the tribes of the plains, with the odd bit somewhere in between also making its way to publication. He pretty much always wrote. As the second son, I was supposed to be a priest. The volunteer army was just starting back then, so I got recruiting calls from various branches of the armed forces as well as from the Jesuits (who taught me, somewhat) and the Columban Fathers, who enticed me with promise of little food, hot weather, and disease. Dad just kept writing, but he now had fewer mouths to feed and so took a monstrous cut in salary to leave advertising (which he hated) in order to return to Academia (which he loved, minus the meetings and protocols). He always spoke well, almost reverently, of Jack Kerouac. Two things stuck out from what he told us. Firstly, Kerouac was a patriot and had little time for the hippies and all of my other heroes. Secondly, he was a Catholic. These two things were somehow lost as soon as I read Kerouac rather than heard about how Dad gloried in his writings but sorrowed in his life experiences. An early memory of Kerouac is Dad’s telling me of how Kerouac was offered a scholarship by BC, which the owner of the Lowell Sun attended. When he went to Columbia instead, the owner of the Sun retaliated by firing Kerouac’s father, a printer at the Sun.

My dad was a bit of a stir-stick. He had no tolerance for many things. Some of these things he dealt with by acting the fool. For example, he never convinced us that the Chrysler zooming past us on the interstate actually looked in the rearview mirror to notice my father holding the garage door opener to his mouth as if to report erratic driving to the local enforcers. Other things were of more note. He left the Knights of Columbus in the late 1950s after they refused membership to one of his black friends who was a Catholic of the wrong color. He was part of the group in Omaha led by a boozing (recovered) Jesuit chaplain who saw too much blood in too many wars to maintain any belief that white equals right, engaging in protests at restaurants and factories before Selma and other southern sufferings made the news. He was very proud that I became an immigration lawyer. I know his parsimony was a reflection of his Depression era reality, but so was his belief that a government exists only to serve the commonwealth. Hoboes excepted. He had no truck with hoboes.

So I first read Dharma Bums and went on to too-few other books by Kerouac. Dad said he and Ed McMahon were the “Irish Boys” Kerouac referred to in either The Town and the City or Maggie Cassidy; I don’t remember which. He died in Omaha after completing his set task of burying my mother, who preceded him by six weeks. He left a family that cherishes the written word the way it should be cherished. Two of my siblings have also published books, and others of us have added the odd chapter here and there to some topic of interest. He also, according to the owner (circa 2000-ish) of the Owl Diner, still has gum left under the table there. He wrote, sang, and laughed his way about raising us the way men usually do. His love for my mom was monumental and shows me which way to turn from time to time. I like to think that my trips up to Lowell are things that he still sees and that the hotdogs I eat at Elliot’s differ only in price from the ones he ate there in the 1930s.

Thanks for reading this. Dad makes me grin in his memory.

Remembering 1968 (by Leo Racicot)

Remembering 1968

By Leo Racicot

Even now, almost sixty years later, when I hear the year 1968 mentioned, my mind instantly goes to April and June of that awful year. In April, the great Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., was gunned down by an assassin, James Earl Ray, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, only a day after delivering his rousing. now historic I Have Been to the Mountaintop speech in that city. A terrible day for America; echoes of the murder of President John F. Kennedy a mere five years before hit Americans and the world hard. Watching King’s widow, Coretta, her grief-stricken face shrouded in black, her young children by her side, marching behind her slain husband’s coffin, brought back the still raw vision of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s ravaged face as she walked the same sad route in 1963. Violence erupted across the country. The sight of seeing black protesters hosed down like dogs in the street by militia has never left me. Is it any wonder I am loathe to take myself back to those years.

In June, following a stirring victory acceptance speech at California’s Ambassador Hotel, presidential frontrunner, Robert Kennedy, left the stage to cheers and was gunned down in the kitchen area by extremist, Sirhan Sirhan. New York Giant’s defensive tackle, Roosevelt “Rosey” Grier restrained the killer, saving countless other lives. Someone placed a rosary in Kennedy’s hands as he lay in his own blood on the floor of the hotel. It was an instant flashback to his brother’s murder in 1963. America was expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting, with hate, with rage, with change, and seemed on the verge of implosion.

I remember that summer as being among the hottest. The decision was made to bring Kennedy’s body by train across America from Los Angeles to D.C., stopping along the way to let mourners pause and pray and weep. It was the slowest train ride ever witnessed. Millions came out to say  “goodbye”. I remember we had a tiny black-and-white portable tv in the kitchen. Anthony Kalil was visiting and my sister was there. We brought a kitchen chair out onto the porch, placed the tv on top, and the three of us watched in absolute silence. It was I remember a summer of heat and abject terror. Protesters against the war in Vietnam and America’s involvement in “the unwinnable conflagration” took to the streets in record numbers across the nation.

It was a dangerous, menacing time, and here in Lowell, I remember having to walk by an encampment of Hell’s Angels off School Street across from Pevey Street. I was on my way to meet my friends, Scott Jackson and Jimmy Sullivan. When the three of us came out of their house, the Angels were blasting Eric Burdon and the Animals’ Sky Pilot so loudly, the ground underneath our feet was shaking and we decided to go around the long way. To this day, scratch my head in amazement that such a rowdy group of thugs were playing one of the era’s most demonstrative anti-Vietnam protest songs. Later, I was told they were readying themselves to act as security for a protest rally on South Common.

The airwaves, too, were filled with the anti-war anthems of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton. Between the loss of its beloved Bobby Kennedy and the Vietnam War, America and Americans were shattered, perhaps more so when Richard Nixon won White House in the Fall election.

Just as The Beatles had helped heal a grieving world in the aftermath of President Kennedy’s assassination by appearing suddenly on the world stage, taking music and culture by the horns, so they did the same when RFK was killed. In September, on The David Frost Show, they debuted what then became the longest running song ever recorded, Hey Jude. In  a landmark performance. As the Fab Four began the song, they were joined on stage by dozens of members from the audience and crew, who joined them in the lyric, Nah Nah nah, nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah Hey, Jude! Television and the music industry had never presented a production like it.

Within days, Hey Jude was everywhere. I have a wistful, very dear memory of being in Anthony Kalil’s basement. His cousin, Vanessa, was strumming her guitar, giving a group of us a solo mini-concert. She began with the mournful 500 Miles and her sad, brown eyes, her sad strumming made it even more mournful. She then segued into Hey, Jude, bidding us chime in on the chorus. I still see her there atop the stool, in that basement. Time has stood still on that visual. Vanessa, like so many others of our time, died young of a heroin overdose.

A summer day, a Saturday. Our mother wasn’t awake and up at the usual time. The right side of her body was slouched in the bed and the same side of her face was drooping, her lip twisted in an odd angle. I called an ambulance and it brought her to Lowell General Hospital. She’d had a stroke. Aunt Marie and Nana took the reins of Diane’s and my care. In those times, children weren’t allowed to visit patients in hospitals so, every night after she got out of work, Marie would take us to wait under our mother’s hospital room window. She’d go up and help Ma to the window where we’d wave and blow kisses. I still can see my mother in that window. Now, personal fear and sorrow were added to the ones in the news.

Marie had the great idea that she’d renovate our home. She thought if Ma came home to a wholly new apartment, it would help in the healing process. She recruited Diane and me to help. We accompanied her to carpet shops, paint and wallpaper stores, furniture stores and the three of us set out to transform the first floor of 5 Willie Street. After three weeks of physical therapy, our mother came back to herself and returned home. Boy, Marie couldn’t have been more wrong. Our mother had been eager to return home to familiar surroundings: her treasures, her treasured photographs. The shock of coming home to a strange place upset her and she cried and cried. She was never the same person after that scary summer. In the years ahead, she suffered one stroke after another. In fact, it seemed that every time she rallied once more from one, she’d have another. She died at the age of 84 from a cerebral hemorrhage on Thanksgiving Eve of that year.

In September of that year, I met Joe Markiewicz. We were freshmen starting out at Lowell High School. I was sitting in History Class, A period, with teacher Frank Finnerty. I was facing to the left talking with David McKean when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to find this kid next to me, smiling. He said, “Aren’t you in my Phys. Ed. class, C period? I said, “I don’t know” and resumed chatting with David. At the next C period, I was toweling off after gym when, once again, there came a tap on my shoulder. It was the same kid from History Class. He said, “See!”.  Thus began what has become a 57 years long friendship. So, 1968’s always been The Year I Met Joe, one of the few good things that terrible year brought me.

In December, NASA’s Apollo 8 crew headed for the moon. One of the astronauts, William Anders, was looking out the window of their space capsule when he spied the Earth coming up over the horizon and asked his colleague to hand him his camera. The shot he captured came to be known as Earthrise, the first ever view the world would have of what the Earth looked like from this perspective. The serene and green image of our Planet belied the chaos and confusion of what was happening on it. It gave hope to a hopeless world and ended the year on a high note.

Joe and other members of the Lowell High Math Club, 1968

Antiwar protestors in downtown Lowell, 1968

Hell’s Angels in Lowell, 1968

Fatally wouned RFK comforted by busboy Juan Romero Ambassador Hotel

Coretta Scott King & children in funeral procession of Martin Luther Kings Jr.

500 miles from my home

“Earthrise” by William Anders

The Night I Met The Kinks in Lowell

Lowell’s Commodore Ballroom (current site of Gallagher Train Station’s parking garage)

The Night I Met the Kinks in Lowell

By Charlie Gargiulo

One of the greatest memories of my life took place one Saturday night in May 1970 at the Commodore Ballroom, our personal live sixties music shrine, and Lowell’s spiritual counterpart to Liverpool’s old Cavern Club, after serving as our parent’s generation’s local version of the Cotton Club.

I guess back in their time it was a suave, elegant place where dates would get dressed up to the nines and dance to live performances of their big-band era musical heroes, but during the late sixties it morphed into a great big grungy working class city hangout on Saturday nights where guys and gals came, indistinguishable by hair length, and dressed in who gives a shit clothes, supposedly to dance, but really to just mob and jostle with others standing on the non-seated open dance floor in front of a crappy old stage where our sixties rock band gods came to cast their musical blessings upon us as we mystically, but raucously, looked up at them staring down upon us, as if from Valhalla, just mere feet away from us mere mortals.

On that glorious Saturday night in May 1970 I met my rock band idols the Kinks, who I considered the greatest HUMAN band on the planet (the Beatles being unreachable GODS). Not only did I see my legends in the flesh, I got to the Commodore early so that I could get in first when they opened the doors and rush to claim my ground in the front, where you could get close enough to literally stand in front and rest your arms on the lip of the stage while watching them perform.

More amazingly, after hanging around inside after the concert basking in the exaltation of the experience while watching most of the crowd leave, I even got to take a leak a few urinals away from the Kinks lead singer and songwriter Ray Davies, who with only the exception of John Lennon, was my own personal musical and cultural pied piper.

But I digress. First let me tell you a little bit about why seeing Ray Davies and the Kinks meant so much to me.

You see, I was an only child whose old man took off when I was 11 and after my mom and I moved from Dracut to Lowell’s Little Canada in 1963, I spent the next two years living out a nightmare, fighting for my life without a dad or older brother, spending many nights alone while my mom had to work in a shitty bar room under the table in order to supplement the unlivable income being on welfare doled out to us. Even worse than all of that, I spent the next two years in a dystopian nightmare watching the new community I grew to love, and the friends who became like family to me, ripped away one at a time, tossed away to far off unreachable places from the slow, cruel destruction of Little Canada. Until finally they got to my apartment and forced me, my mom, my Aunt Rose and my other close neighbors out of the home we loved and scattered us like dry leaves from an ominous wind, separating many of them from my life permanently.

I would never be the same. I was so consumed with anger at the faceless forces that did this to us that it physically hurt. I wanted so badly to find out who did this and to make them pay for what they did and that led to a vicious cycle because at the same time I hated myself as I struggled with feelings of inadequacy for being too stupid to know what to do and from shame thinking me and my family were considered too worthless to be treated with dignity and respect. Bouncing from raging alienation to sinking depression and hopelessness that I bordered precariously close to self-destruction. I’m convinced to this day that if it wasn’t for the Beatles and the musical revolution of the sixties, I might never have recovered from my emotional spiral.

I don’t need to rehash how powerful the impact the Beatles had upon the youth of my generation since that phenomenon has been so numerously and eloquently documented that another account of it might make you want to puke. However, in my case I believe its impact even went to another level. The early Beatles energy and life force gave me an indescribable joy that lifted my spirits from life-support and John Lennon in particular, also exuded a cocky, fuck you, extremely attractive and endearing attitude that felt like it came from a place I recognized but couldn’t name. He felt like the cool older brother that I never had who allowed me to tag along with his other cool older friends Paul, George and Ringo who all took me under their wing. I felt safe around them. I felt good around them. I felt like I meant something around them.

In addition to the happiness I felt horsing around with them singing and sharing irreverent fun as a group, my big brother John also had a more intimate, caring older brother side who could comfort me with the wisdom I needed through difficult times by sharing advice and understanding  through his songs like “Help,””I’m a Loser,”  “Girl,” “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away,” and “I’m So Tired” while also inspiring me to bigger things with songs like “All You Need Is Love,” “Rain,” “Revolution” and “Nowhere Man.”

As I grew older with them I came to recognize that the other awakening they had on me was finally being able to put a finger on the angst, inner rage and lousy self-esteem brewing within me. The Beatles and many of the British Invasion bands brought more than great music to American working class kids, they also brought their own proud class-consciousness from England that had been effectively squashed, demonized and forbidden from being acknowledged in America through the right-wing power structure’s use of the Red Scare after World War II to destroy unions and vigilantly suppress any demands by the poor and marginalized for social and economic justice.

After being first educated by my working class heroes from Liverpool, I earned my graduate degree in class consciousness through music from Ray Davies and the Kinks. Most Americans old enough remember the Kinks through their legendary power chord anthem, “You Really Got Me” and similar hits like “All Day and All of the Night, “Till the End of the End” and by even using power chords for their slow tune hit, “Tired of Waiting For You.” I loved those songs too, but what really made the Kinks stand out to me was how brilliantly and courageously Ray Davies wrote about working class anger and his satirical power of exposing the cruelty, vanity and injustice of elitist snobbery and systemic class inequities.

Ironically, after being one of the most popular of the original British Invasion musical groups to hop the shore after the Beatles, the Kinks quickly faded from the American musical scene from 1966 to 1969 after they were banned from playing in the States because Ray Davies apparently slugged an American Musical Union official because he was pissed at how British acts were treated with contempt and disrespect by jealous American musicians over British acts dominating the scene. As a result, they fell out of view during those years and most Americans never heard their most prolific work in the late 60’s. While in England during that time, the Kinks rivalled any group other than the Beatles and Stones, yet their greatest music very rarely found any American ears. Despite this disappearing act from American airwaves, music historians still rave about the albums they produced between 1966-69, “Face to Face,” “Something Else,” “Village Green Preservation Society,” and “Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire.”

I was very fortunate in that I was so enamored by their last song “Well Respected Man,” which hit the charts before they disappeared on American radio, that I went out of my way to find out what they were releasing in England and turned to the late, great Harvey Bisson of Harvey’s Bookland, who now sold new records, as well as old used ones and books, at his new downtown store on Central Street after being displaced from Little Canada, so he could do a special order for me to acquire each new Kinks single and album as they came out.

It was during this period that I got the full class consciousness education from Ray Davies songs. How’s this for starters from the “Well Respected Man” song I mentioned:

“And he plays at stocks and shares
And he goes to the regatta
And he adores the girl next door
‘Cause he’s dying to get at her
But his mother knows the best about
The matrimonial stakes

‘Cause he’s oh, so good
And he’s oh, so fine
And he’s oh, so healthy
In his body and his mind
He’s a well respected man about town
Doing the best things so conservatively.”

It only grew better and stronger from there. So many songs about ordinary working class folks struggling to make it through every day with a clear eye on the inherent unfairness of the system but with a healthy irreverence and desire to strive for a fairer world.

Thanks to help from Harvey, I got to hear songs like “Dead End Street:”

“On a cold and frosty morning,
Wipe my eyes and stop me yawning.
And my feet are nearly frozen,
Boil the tea and put some toast on.

What are we living for?
Two-roomed apartment on the second floor.
No chance to emigrate,
I’m deep in debt and now it’s much too late.

We both want to work so hard,
We can’t get the chance,
(dead end!)
People live on dead end street.
(dead end!)
People are dying on dead end street.
(dead end!)
Gonna die on dead end street.”

And other classic songs like “Shangri-La:”

“And all the houses in the street have got a name
‘Cause all the houses in the street, they look the same
Same chimney puff, same little cars, same window panes
The neighbors call to tell you things that you should know
They say their lines, they drink their tea, and then they go
And they tell your business in another Shangri-La
The gas bills, and the water rates the payments on the car
Too scared to think about how insecure you are
Life ain’t so happy in your little Shangri-La!”

Through the inspiration of the Beatles and Kinks I learned to play the guitar with the dream of playing in my own band. However, after a devastating compound fracture of my left wrist, I was lucky that I had the complete recovery of my arm and hand. That is, except  for one thing. I have never been able to play a barre chord on a guitar because when I try to hold down the six strings with my index finger, I can’t adequately move the other fingers to hold down the other notes so that ended any hope of being a rock guitarist. And besides that, I sing like shit.

BUT, I could play guitar well enough to write songs and that is what I did. I became a songwriter who wrote both the music and lyrics to my songs. The dream I never realized was being able to link with a band seeking to do original material because the duties of life got in the way, or as John Lennon better put it, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.”

Anyways, I digressed way too much, so let me get you back to the beginning of my story about seeing the Kinks at the Commodore. The concert was mind-blowing, Ray Davies was in fine form with a straw hat singing his heart out and being charming and witty with his banter, crazy brother Dave Davies, who had legendary fisticuffs and battles with his brother Ray over the years, that made the Oasis Gallagher brothers tempestuous relationship appear like choir boys in comparison, was a mad lead guitarist whose hand looked like a blur as he stared rakishly at the audience, drummer Mick Avory, who once nearly decapitated Dave’s ear in an on-stage fight when he hit him with a cymbal, was a dynamo and new bass player John Dalton did his best Bill Wyman, “what am I doing with a crazy rock band look” while playing quietly and earnestly. It was the greatest performance I had ever seen live. And I saw them many, many more times in the years to come.

But the moment I will never forget and always regret came next. After most people cleared out, I decided to go to the restroom before I left. At that point the Commodore’s men’s room was a disaster with piss-soaked floors from urinals inadequate to contain the gallons of beer-drenched urine badly aimed all night by hundreds of young guys who were in too much of a rush to clean up so they could get back out to see the bands.

That’s when Ray Davies pulled up to his urinal, leaving the polite empty one between us. It was just the two of us. I admit, I was more than just star-struck, it was more like coming face to face with a guru, an artist who seemed to have all the answers I was looking for but couldn’t quite find on my own. And to meet him HERE!

I think we both pretended to wash our hands by running the water over our fingers on the way out. He nodded politely and I did the same and mumbled something like “great show” and felt like an idiot. Then finally as we walked out of the men’s room and down the dance floor as he walked to his backstage room, and I to the exit, I got up my courage and told him how much I appreciated his songs and asked him if he had any new music coming out. He was friendly as hell and stopped to talk with me and told me they had a new album coming out in which he writes a lot about how artists get ripped off by the music industry. It turned out to be their classic album, “Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround.”

We talked for about 10 minutes and as we said goodbye he asked, “Do you know of any clubs that might be open now where me and the boys can go?” I mistakenly thought he meant a night club when I later realized it was his British way of asking for a place to eat. Since I didn’t want to send them to some dive like the Laconia I said I was sorry but I didn’t think anything was still open. I still kick myself for my mistake because I could’ve directed him to the Owl Diner and, shit, even offered them my place to come if they wanted a bite to eat. And I honestly believe that Ray was such a cool, down to earth guy he might have taken me up on the offer after our pleasant conversation.

It’s one of those moments I wish I could have back to do over, but I also know that just that moment we had was precious to me because I got to know the man I admired and didn’t come away disappointed.

And to top it all off, a year after that experience Ray put out another album with the Kinks called “Muswell Hillbillies,” which contained the first song I ever heard written by somebody who was a victim of urban renewal. The title song spoke about his family’s experience with urban renewal in the Muswell Hills section of London. It made me feel even more connected and grateful to the man I almost got to take home for dinner.

Quality Milk from Healthy Cows

Quality Milk from Healthy Cows – (PIP #77)

By Louise Peloquin

     Third and last in a series on milk and milkmen, this article highlights Lowell’s concern about food quality, hygiene and livestock well-being.

The Hood’s ad, published three days after the news story below, was strategically timed. (1) 

L’Étoile – December 9, 1924

“PITILESS PUBLICITY” 

FOR LOCAL MILKMEN

Every three months the Bureau of Hygiene will publish the exact content of the milk sold by each of the city’s milkmen as an incentive to offering a higher-quality product.

     From now on, milkmen will no longer be able to satisfy customers simply by meeting Bureau of Hygiene requirements and State laws concerning milk quality.

     At the beginning of the new year, the Bureau of Hygiene will publish, every three months, the exact content of the milk sold by each milkman in the city. The Bureau took this decision yesterday.

     Dr. Francis R. Mahoney stated: “This will put every milkman in the city on guard. This will increase competitiveness and will increase the quality of the milk sold here.”

     Indeed, the new way of doing things means that the public, rather than the milk inspector, will be the judge. Customers will read the published figures and will do business with the milkman who offers the best milk.

     These regulations will make the dairy farmers react insomuch as the milkmen will do business only with the farmers who carry the best milk. They will also have to be careful about maintaining their reputation among the milkmen.

     Inspector Melvin Master will check the milk daily and will publish the results in a booklet to be published quarterly. It is not a matter of restricting the enforcement of the regulations regarding milkmen. The new system simply aims at creating competitiveness among the milkmen in order to offer Lowell better milk.

     Mr. Master presented the new State rule to the Bureau of Hygiene yesterday. It is a question of defining and describing the labelling for “quality-A milk.” Special permits will be granted to milkmen selling special quality milk. The milk must not be over 48 hours old. It must be pasteurised by heating for more than 30 minutes at a temperature between 140 and 145 degrees Fahrenheit, then cooled and kept at a temperature of at least 50 degrees or less until its delivery. The milkmen granted these permits will be required to prove that their milk comes from healthy cows kept in hygienic stables. The udders are to be clean and handled by clean dry hands or by sanitary machines if these are used. The milk must be removed from the stable immediately and cooled to a temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

     The Bureau of Hygiene approved the invoices for a monthly amount of $2,571.98.

     After the first eleven months of 1924, an inspection of the finances showed that the department will need an additional $5,000 to finish the year. The largest part of that required sum will go to the Hospital for Tuberculosis Patients. Agent Francis J. O’Hare informed the commission that Dr. Forster H. Smith sent letters to both the mayor and the Bureau of Hygiene. It was decided to wait for the mayor’s response to the need for additional funds. (2) 

****

1. PIP #76, posted on July 29, 2025:   https://richardhowe.com/2025/07/29/hoods-milk/
2. Translation by Louise Peloquin.