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Growing Up in Lowell in the 1950s and 60s

May 1, 2025 by DickH Posted in Uncategorized Leave a Comment

The ragman on a Lowell street.

Growing Up in Lowell in the 1950s and ’60s

by Leo Racicot

The Lowell of my growing-up years was nothing like the Lowell of today. The city, being younger, was, of course, cleaner, safer and had a vitality long gone from its parks and downtown area.

Our father died young, but before he passed away, he left my sister and me with a treasure trove of memories. I am this old — one of my favorite times was sitting on the front stoop with my dad every Saturday morning, waiting to hear the clop clop on the Fletcher Street cobblestones of The Rag Man’s approach, a rickety, old guy on a rickety, old wagon being pulled by a rickety, old horse, calling out in a foghorn voice, “Rags! Rags! Rags for Sale!” People I’ve told this to inevitably gasp, saying, “Geez, Leo, you must be a hundred years old!” Well, not yet but — working on it.

Saturdays also always involved a trip to Cote’s Market on Salem Street (still there) where Papa would pick up a white container of the store’s renowned Rochette’s Beans and a package of hot dogs and brown bread to go with them. We’d then head home to a lunch of these, enjoying them but eager to finish up so dad and I could head to the living room to watch the Westerns and war movies so typical of Saturday afternoon TV fare in those days. I loved Roy Rogers and Dale Evans but more than them, loved being with my dad who was very handsome; I thought of him as my own personal movie star. Friday nights were “guys’ night” — Papa would pop up a gigantic brown bag of buttered popcorn, plunk it down between himself and me in the front seat of his green Plymouth and off we’d go to the Lowell Drive-in theater, to watch John Wayne, John Payne, Randolph Scott and their like fights Indians and each other, or storm Anzio Beach, or take to the skies — the fighter pilots were my favorite. I also looked forward to any sword-and-sandal movies and the next day would sit on the back porch playing “gladiator” for hours on end with my plastic Romans and Huns.

On Sundays, if we were lucky, Papa would take us out to Lakeview, a popular amusement park on the outskirts of the city. The park had a neat miniature train you could ride around tree-heavy tracks, also a giant Ferris wheel, a merry-go-round with murals depicting various stories from The Bible (David and Goliath, Saint George and the Dragon, Holofernes, Daniel and the Lion). Oh, and bumper cars! Those were the best although I never could summon the aggressive mindset needed to smash into other riders. I was always “the smash-ee”. I also loved a game where, for a couple of tickets, you got to pick a plastic duck floating by on a handmade stream, along with a bunch of other yellow ducks. On the bottom of the duck was a number corresponding to a prize on the wall behind. I loved when I won the tiny, little parasol or the Chinese finger traps — just try getting your fingers out of them! That was fun. I never saw anyone win the giant panda.

Any time of year, except on Sundays, you’d find the downtown bustling — every kind of shop or store could be found. The Bon Marche was a favorite place for your mother and Aunt Marie to bring Diane and me. They’d take us to see their friend, Mary Backus, who was a “buyer” for the store. That sounded very important to our young ears — a “buyer’. Mary dressed so sharply. There was about her always the faint fragrance of powder and perfume. Her orange hair looked like she’d washed it and decided not to comb it, like ladies in the paintings of SIgnac, Redon and Toulouse-Lautrec. She looked like a skinny Colette. Mary told the best stories, or so they seemed to our young ears.

I remember as if it was yesterday the day Papa took me down at Christmastime to see the City Hall lights and city manger. I remember precisely every detail of this outing, how he had me pose for photos in front of the manger, what he said, what he was wearing, the cold bite in the air. After, we walked to The Bon Marche to look around the toy department. As you get older, Memory becomes such a puzzling animal; I literally cannot tell you what I had for breakfast this morning, but I can resurrect, at will, that day in its lovely entirety.

I said above that the downtown wasn’t busy on Sundays. Not many of today’s generations know what ‘window shopping’ was. On Sundays, stores and bars were closed for business due to The Blue Laws so a way to pass the day was to go downtown simply to look in the windows and at all the interesting displays. This might sound dull now, but it was nice strolling from store-to-store, being with family, Sundays used to be regarded as a day of rest. Not anymore!

Summers were spent riding bicycles with my friend, Anthony, or playing street hockey till sunset outside his Cross Street home with his younger brother, Mark, and other kids from the neighborhood. When we weren’t doing that, we’d go inside and hang around with his mom and dad and two, older brothers, John and Frank, munching on the arabic foods and treats their kitchen table was always laden with, staying late to watch The Carol Burnett Show together. Those were the days when neighbors were neighborly; everybody on a street knew everybody else, and a kind word or a mile were only a doorway away. But The Lord help you if a neighbor saw you doing something you shouldn’t — your parents would know about it the very next day, or the neighbor themself would finger-wag you on the spot!

Our mother was a good cook. But after our father died, it wasn’t always possible for her to make us kids the three meals a day she’d made when Papa was here so she took Diane and me to eat out a lot. Some of my favorite places to go: Dutch Tea Room, The B.C., The Epicure (I’ll never forget the sign above its inside door: “Through these portals pass some of the most beautiful women in the world”. We also frequented The Olympia on Market Street there was a place on Central Street that made the best friend chicken ever. We called it “The Chicken Place”. I had the same feeling about Marie’s Fish House on Dummer. Best battered fish ever. Yum. Yum. Oh, and George’s Pizza. That was Diane’s and my favorite. On special occasions, our Aunt Marie and Nana would treat us to The Chin Lee Restaurant (which everybody called The Chink’s — I know. I know. So politically incorrect but that’s what everybody called it. It was located above the old Union Bank building. You had to climb a lot of stairs to enter it which only increased the excitement about having Chinese food. My friend, Joe’s sister, Ann Marie, was good friends with the owner’s daughter, Mary Chin and Mary’s boyfriend, Ishi, from Japan. I found that and them so exotic. Who would think I’d ever meet someone from Japan.

In addition to doing the local eating scene, our mother generously saw to it my sister and I got out of the city as often as we could to see other sites. Lowell back then had a thriving bus service into Boston. One trip that sticks in my brain: we went to Downtown Boston to see the movie, How the West Was Won at The Paramount Theater. A new method of movie projection, Cinerama, had been invented. What a thrill sitting in the dark of the movie palace without mother and aunts, Yvonne and Marguerite, surrounded by the wrap-around screen. Cinerama put us all in right in the middle of the movie’s action, or so it felt like. Before the movie, I remember we had spaghetti and meatballs at a place in The Theater District. This was the time when The Boston Strangler was all over the news. On the bus home, through the dark Boston streets, I think everybody on the bus was thinking the same thing as I was: What if The Strangler was out there somewhere, waiting to pounce?!! The bus had a definite air of dread about it.

In her forties, Aunt Marie took it upon herself to learn how to drive and bought a Rambler just so she could take us on family excursions. Many’s the Sunday we drove to Bishop’s for Arabic food or The Cedar Crest for Italian, both in Lawrence, or to Hampton Beach for the day. There, walking the boardwalk in the light of early morning (Marie had us up and on the road early so she could get a prime parking spot) to Dunfey’s for breakfast is still a lasting echo. In my palate’s memory, I can still taste the buttery toast, the freshly squeezed orange juice (with pulp!), the garden strawberries. After, we’d browse the shops (no Blue Laws in New Hampshire), the glassmaker’s place (“Lovely to look at. Delightful to hold. But if you should break it, to you it is sold.”) and the taffy shoppe where we got a kick out of watching the taffy being made in the window right before our very eyes. Following some sun on the blanket, Marie and I would walk the shoreline, all the way to The State Beach, exploring the tidal pools along the way, collecting sand dollars and starfish. I still have a box of them in the attic.

I went to The Morrill School, on the edge of Adams Street, across from Saint Patrick’s School, for kindergarten and first grade. Miss Stanley was our teacher. She was so tall, but I supposed to five year olds, every adult is tall. In first grade, we had Mrs. Hare. Imprinted on my brain is the day she wrote the name PETER COTTONTAIL in big, bright, chalk colors across the blackboard. I amazed her, and myself, when I blurted out what the letters said. No one else in the class knew. At recess, a kid named Peter Noel walked up to me, shouted, “Show off!” and punched me in the nose. Ouch! When I told my parents what had happened, my father decided then and there that a Catholic education was needed for me. I can still hear him so clearly, and my mother disagreeing about the change. Ma had gone to public schools and was certain I needed the upbringing The Morrill would deliver. Papa, who’d gone to parochial schools, insisted I be placed at Saint Patrick’s, across the street from North Common. As with all arguments between men and women in those days, dad won out and I was enrolled in Grade 2 for September. The sight of nuns terrified me. I didn’t know what they were — you couldn’t see much of them, mummified as they were, in layer upon layer of black cloth, their faces mostly obliterated by tight, white winples. But the school became my saving grace; I loved to learn and to study, and was good at it, a miraculous rescue for this otherwise very shy boy who said very little, other than when raising an eager hand in class. “Sister! Sister!” I remember all my teachers and all of my classmates from those days. Most of all, I remember the beautiful May altars we students made, and May processions every year in honor of the Blessed Mother. A statue of her becircled in flowers of every color and kind, rose gold streamers adorning her was so stirring. Looking back, it was probably the gaudiest monstrosity but for me, it was the loveliest sight I had ever seen. To this day, whenever I see that shade of rose gold, I’m transported back to the halcyon days at Saint Patrick’s, just as Proust’s madeleine returned him to his youth in Combray.

Another big event of the school year was the gathering of all Diocesan area students at Notre Dame Academy in the late spring, early summer for the annual picnic. Talk about a blast. We kids talked about and looked forward to it all year long.

I made school pals. Late afternoons were spent with David Bowles at his Bowers Street home, having hilarious times playing board games, Monopoly and Life, or exploring The Ledge, a rocky, leafy area just to the left of The Lafayette Club on North Common with David and his beautiful, spirited setter, Freckles. Or tramping the Honeywell ruins off Canal Street where now The Lowell Canal Tour Boats are moored, with George Bradford. I loved hanging around the Peavey Street/School Street gas tank area with Jimmy Sullivan and Scott Jackson from our Troop 13 Falming Arrow Patrol — two redheads straight out of Norman Rockwell and the movie, A Christmas Story. I’d walk Joe Markiewicz after school to his Centralville home on Fulton Street, sometimes stopping in at Blue Dot Candy on Bridge Street, the shoppe his parents owned and operated. I’d inhale the aroma inside, of chocolates and homemade potato chips, delight in the sound of customers drifting in, smacking their lips as they surveyed the corn cakes and Old-Fashioneds, the seemingly endless varieties of penny candies.

In sixth grade, I joined the boys’ choir led by our beloved choirmaster, Charles McGrail. We sang from the choir loft on holy days, sometimes at funerals. The thrill of our voices accompanied by Mr. McGrail’s playing at the magnificent organ was not to be described. I loved especially getting dressed in our whiter-than-white, hooded monk-like choir robes in the sacristy then filing solemnly out to the side of the church, back in again down the main aisle for our participation in midnight mass. That image has stayed with me for all my seventy-one years and still gives me goosebumps.

Speaking of holidays, if we weren’t being picked up to have holiday meals at Aunt Marie’s and Nana’s house, Diane and I would walk with our mother across the driveway separating our house from the house next door to our father’s French-Canadian siblings and our cousins for feasts of turkey with pork stuffing, homemade tourtieres (meat pies) and a great, festive Buche de Noel. My Uncle Albert, dad’s brother, was a Marist (Brother Paul Felix). His job at The Bronx School he worked at consisted of corralling hyper high school boys. The second I walked into Aunt Yvonne’s house and he spotted me, he’d lift me up off the floor by my ears. My mother would scold, “Albert! Don’t do that!”. But albert would only laugh like Fezziwig, saying he was just so happy to see me. Hmmmm. Just behind my aunt’s and uncle’s house were horse stables; our father was a skilled horseman, loved horses and kept a couple in the stables, He’d served in the horse cavalry in India in World War II where horses became his passion. These stables were long ago turned into car garages. The stately carriage house behind ours still stands but, like all of us, is showing its age.

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Here are more photos from Leo: