Three boys on the Aiken Street/Joseph R. Ouellette Bridge. Photo copyright (c) 1978 by Kevin Harkins. Used with permission.

Carpets and Fish

By Paul Marion

For years I’ve admired a photograph made by a friend, a picture of three young guys with fishing poles on the Aiken Street Bridge or Joseph R. Ouellette Bridge, named for a fallen soldier, over the Merrimack River in Lowell. The guys are taking a break from fishing, summing up a July day in the valley. The image dates from 1978, and was a chance encounter, but knowing photographer Kevin Harkins, he knew where to find a visual key. The framed black-and-white print hangs near the TV in the living room in my home.

Today, three carpet installers arrived to lay a Fruitwood-colored Berber, one of the best weaves around, in our living room. My son started crawling last week, so Rosemary and I bought a new rug—wall-to-wall, with a rubbery pad, replacing the worn, rust-colored carpet ordered by her folks thirty years ago.

On the way out, two workers noticed the photo. They’d grown up with two guys in the shot. “This kid is huge today, if you saw him,” said one. What are the chances?

“Those guys lived behind Marie’s Variety in Centralville.” That makes sense since the green iron bridge links the Centralville neighborhood on the north bank to the remains of Little Canada in the downtown mill district.

In the photo, the teenagers do their best to look sure of themselves, one with a rag-mop hanging off a cocked head, casual as can be, another with arms back on the bridge railing and chest puffed. That stance reminds me of a pose I struck for a snapshot on the Coney Island boardwalk in 1964, complete with candy cigarette tipping out of my mouth. My family was in New York for the World’s Fair. I’d like to think I was as tough as the muskrats in the bridge photo.

I’ve forgotten the names mentioned by the rug men. What I remember is a place detail. They lived behind Marie’s Variety, across from the Centralville Social Club on Lakeview Avenue. Marie’s was one of the many small stores around the city where I bought baseball cards as a kid. Variety stores were the antecedent of today’s convenience stores. Mom and Pop operations. All over the neighborhoods. Hovey Square Variety, Polly’s Variety, Martin’s Variety.

Why does the place stick and the boys’ names slip? No trace of the names in my brain. And I’m back where I started, admiring the composition, three figures and the long range of field, looking downriver, the water low, the black-and-white brick wall of the mill to the right, smokestack beyond, and all the positive and negative fixed.

Photograph copyright (c) 1978 by Kevin Harkins. Reprinted with permission. 

Prose sketch (c) 1995, 2025 by Paul Marion