1945 - August Boys From Old and New Lowell

 - Don’t Date a Boy From Old Lowell if You Live in New Lowell

Speaking of Lowell, Pop, my daddy, liked to go to church in Lowell. There was a new Lowell and an old Lowell. Now I don’t know why, but if you lived in Old Lowell you didn’t date a guy from New Lowell and vice versa. My sister and I found that out the hard way.

We went to church one night with dad in Old Lowell. My sister, Faye, and I had been dating these two guys from Old Lowell; they had gone on that trip to celebrate the end of the war with us. Any way we had been dating them and we lived in New Lowell. We didn’t know they had girlfriends. You know how that is, men will be men, they will two time if they get a chance. Anyhow the one I was dating had a girlfriend that was a butcher; and honey she looked like a foot ball player if I ever saw one. She had big shoulders and had arms made to swing that heavy beef in the butcher shop. Whew!

Daddy always made us sit on the front row; but this night the front row was full and we got farther back. Here we were sitting in the church and these boys came in and said that two girls gave them a quarter a piece to deliver a message to me and my sister, Faye. They told them to tell us to come outside they wanted to talk to us. We told them that we came with dad and were not allowed to go outside of church until service was over. We thought those kids were just BSing us; and didn’t really pay them any mind. The boys went back outside.

After service we started on outside. Now Faye was skinny as a racer; I was still a four by four. We got outside, looked around and told one another guess they were just all air; because I don’t see nobody. About that time the butcher girl grabbed me from behind, wrapping one of those big old arms around my neck. I really thought she was going to choke me to death. But she just started to whap on me.

As I got whapped, Faye broke loose running. I didn’t know what had happened to her until I finally saw her down the street. When she saw me looking at her she yelled back to me, “Sis I’ll go home and tell mommy.”

I kept trying to break away but that girl really worked me over. Faye just kept running; and that girl just whipped me just as much as she wanted to. While she was whapping me, she laid the law down; I was never to see that man again. Let me tell you, she made a believer out of me. I didn’t ever see her man again! Yes sir, that butcher girl made a believer out of me. When I finally got to where Faye was, she said “I never did see where that other one was, but I knew I didn’t want any of what you were getting so I just ran!”

We were finally on our way back home. We were talking about what had happened and that mom would want us to finish the job that someone had started on us; because Mother always said don’t ever start a fight, but you better finish it, if someone starts one you finish. In other words get hit – hit back; but there was no way I was going to hit that butcher girl back and make her even madder, she might have finished the job. Anyway just as we start across the bridge there is a great big boom. Faye says, “Oh my God Sis, they are shooting at us now!” 


But what had happened was someone had lit a fire cracker and thrown it; but we thought it was a gun. Let me tell you we didn’t waste any time, we ran. We didn’t have far to go, we lived on Chad street. We just had to cross the bridge and turn right and we were right where we lived.

But we had worked up a sweat so I told Faye, “Sis, we can’t go in like this; we gotta cool off first or mom will want to know what has been going on and will make us go back and finish what those girls started.”

Pop was still lingering to talk to people at the church. We were allowed to walk on ahead without him. That was one of the times I sure wished we had waited for pop, instead of going on ahead. At any rate we cooled off before we went in so mom wouldn’t make us go back and finish the job, or more like have the job that was started on me finished! We never told Mom what had happened until we were grown and had kids of our own.