Let's start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
I count three places as home. For more than 30 years, I have lived in the same neighborhood, Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C. Before that, I lived and went to college in New Orleans, the place where some of my ancestors got off the boat and near which many of my relatives still live. But my first home was on Grove Terrace in Leominster, Massachusetts. This is where I grew up with five brothers and sisters, myriad pets, an array of interesting neighbors, and two devoted if not quite perfect parents.
My father, who lived all 85 years of his life in Leominster, bought the little Cape Cod house on Grove Terrace soon after he finished law school in the early 1930s. It stood on what I believe is the highest spot in town, on top of a big hill, just off a tree-shaded avenue of old Victorians. The lot was spacious and backed by woods.
My Louisiana-born mother moved into the house after marrying my father in the mid-1940s. She was a WAC recruiting officer stationed in nearby Fitchburg when they met, a fairly daring role for a girl from Cajun Country. Daddy was 13 years her senior. She was a devout Catholic, he a nonpracticing Protestant. It was a most unlikely romance, but it worked.
Children appeared in rapid succession—Dick, followed by Jolley, and then by Candace, spaced about 18 months apart. I came onto the scene about three years later, and the little house on Grove Terrace was no longer big enough. My parents thought about moving but decided on an addition instead, which nearly doubled the size of the house. Good call; five years later, when my mother was 39 and father was 52, the twins, Jim and Valerie, arrived.
Many of the houses in our neighborhood were populated by older couples or widows; there were some children, but not a huge number. The Leominster of my childhood was a factory town—to be precise, a plastic manufacturing center that rightly claimed the title of Pioneer Plastic City. We made all of your Foster Grant sunglasses, as well as many of your plastic toys, flower pots, watering cans, and buttons. We were the birthplace of the plastic flamingo—no joke! It was a small, blue-collar city with a large population of Italian and Canadian-French immigrants. (I thought it a bit odd that both of my parents spoke only English.) And you would be hard put to find a more colorful cast of characters than my homies.
I am always telling Leominster stories. The purpose of this blog is to put some of them in writing. I am inspired to finally begin this journey by another Leominster blog called The Boy From Plastic City that my sister recently discovered, written by John Tata. I do not know John, but he has brought back many memories. Thanks, John, for getting me started. I don't know where this will lead, but I know there will be at least one person following me.
