A Stroll Down Merrimack Street
John Scudder

    I’ve now spent a month here in the mill city for over a month, and experienced a small amount of what the city has to offer.  When we were assigned this essay I scrambled for streets,  I thought of Kerouac’s birth street, downtown Lowell, Pawtucket street but these all felt uninspired.  Then I remembered the vibrant and interesting pathway that is the 5 or 6 blocks of Merrimack Street stretching from university crossing to Cabot street.  I’ve walked down that street numerous times getting to downtown Lowell and the many bizarre and interesting encounters I’d had there.  So I loaded up Google and did some research about the area.   

    This section of Merrimack street lies on the edge of the neighborhood known as the Acre.  The Acre started off as  a small acre sized plot of land set aside by the canal company.  The traditionally poor irish initially settled in this area as it was close to the mills and near the newly built Saint Patricks church.   After the great depression the government started building cheap housing to help house those whose lives had been uprooted by the financial panic, those are now the dilapidated wooden townhouses that pack the U crossing side of Merrimack street.  Since then the Acre has welcomed people from all over the world,  becoming one of the most diverse areas in the city, housing sizeable Latin, Asian, Irish, and Greek populations.  

    As you walk down this section of Merrimack street towards downtown you may not notice a large yellow house on your right.  This is the local House of Hope inc. a homeless shelter that caters to families.  As you continue down on your left you will find another charitable organization,  the Old Colony YMCA.  Focusing on helping young men who face disciplinary trouble and homelessness the Old Colony provides vocational and athletic programs to help reintegrate young men back into society.  A little past this is the old St. Jean Baptiste church.  Finished in 1896 the church served the large french immigrant population of Lowell up until it’s closing in 1993.  It now stands as rental space for new apartments, a

statue of Father Andre Marie Garin, an influential clergyman, still stands out in front of the abandoned building.  A little on down is a commercial center,  it houses a Salvadoran market, greek pizza kitchen, Vietnamese restaurant, Irish pub, and a thrift shop.  This commercial diversity represents  only a small body of different ethnicity's that make up the acre.  Next to the small commercial center stands a three story brick building with a large tower that is now the “Coalition for a Better Acre” . After looking in to the Franco American society I found that those interesting buildings used to be the St. Josephs school for boys.  The school opened was opened in 1907 by the Marist brotherhood in conjunction with the aforementioned Fr. Andre Marie Garin.  It taught small classes of high school boys a mixing of Quebec and New York curriculum, up until it closed in 2003. The school as well as the church played important roles in the Franco American community  acting as meeting places, and as hope for poor young men hoping to get out into the world and make money.   

    I started my walk up by U crossing.  I always listen to Superstition by Stevie Wonder when I’m out and about. Why walk when driving a tiger print el Camino is just a Spotify playlist away?  None the less to truly experience the street I had to step out of my weird comfort zone, the headphones went in my pockets and Mr. Wonder got a break from making things fly.  I passed a stern old women who stood in her front yard staring at a malnourished black chihuahua.  The only reason I note this is the soul crushingly bleak look she gave the dog. It was the look a young child gives an invading soldier, of awe and unbridled disdain.  This encounter unsettled me, it was surreal and I hoped it wouldn’t foreshadow the rest of my walk.  

The next stop on my magical mystery tour down Merrimack was the House of Hope homeless shelter.  I had never been to a homeless shelter before,  privileged me expected crazy old men wearing coats made out of soup labels, what I got was children and mothers playing on a well manicured lawn in yellow “ House of Hope” t shirts.  An upcoming event, marathon for hope was advertised around the premises,  I avoided photography because people don’t like when you candidly film children.  After my uplifting visit to the homeless shelter I came to St Joseph’s school for boy’s half of it was for lease. TMI properties signs popped up all over my walk through the acre,  on former landmarks and old businesses that were no longer profitable, recycling the cities history. 

The next stop was the church,  a large stone cathedral, it’s french origins clearly visible.  It took the two tower design of Notre Dame cathedral only far less large and ornate.  

A TMI banner hung over the Saint Jean Baptiste parish sign.  To the left was a 7 foot tall rusted green statue of Father Andre Marie Garin,  and a message about how helpful a gent he was in making Lowell a great sparkly place for everyone, moss and ivy grew across the placard and I could tell that in a few years he would be completely obscured. 

    I continued on down the road passing a park that was in the process of growing grass.  On my way to the commercial area I passed several interesting characters, two disheveled men doing circles on motorized scooters around a third who calmly sat smoking a joint.  

    I passed rows of dilapidated town houses,  some of the more rotting condemned buildings had open doors, with graffiti scrawled over the interior walls and boarded up windows.  Others more seemed to have an unholy stench wafted out from within with the sounds of breaking glass echoing from within.  Amidst the shambles of some houses others still were filled with life, the sound of a trumpet practice blared out a second story window, and people sat on porches calling out to familiar passersby.  In the alleys groups of men stood in circles laughing while their wives and mothers yelled down from the windows above, it was all very happy until they saw me snapping pictures and they gave me dirty looks so I stopped and loped off.  

    Finally I got to the commercial area,  I went to the salvadoran store, Hei Elvis records is an interesting place to say the least the front is a tiny package store with cigarettes and cigars behind the counter, a snack shelf and a freezer full of unfamiliar Hispanic sodas.   The back however was lined with foreign and local records, also known as FYSH gold. After culturally enriching myself with the headphones provided I went up to the counter got a bottle of “Jaritos” a Mexican orange soda that looks sort of like liquid that might collect at the bottom of the Large hadron collier.  I go up to the counter and ask for a pack of red’s, it is then I notice that the man at the counter doesn’t speak a bit of English.  For about 5 minutes before I say something along the lines of “please I can smoke red now” he understood this laughed and gave me my cancer sticks.  The soda tasted like someone had put skittles in a centrifuge and separated their essence into a drinkable carbonated liquid, I am now incapable of drinking regular old American orange soda. As I left the store I passed a man and what I can only guess was his significant other loudly arguing as they left Charlies pub.  The two alternated between coming to blows and locking lips as they stumbled away from me.   

    I feel this short walk through the acre is at least in part representative of the experience of the neighborhood and Lowell in general.  Sure there is the occasional ugly spec, but there is also a beautiful melting pot of cultures and people, built atop over a century of rich and vibrant history.