It was this past Sunday while watching some TiVo’d wrestling that I heard something that annoyed me. The week prior this wrestling organization held a pay-per-view at the Tsongas Arena in Lowell, MA. Lowell, as some of you may know, is the city of my birth and where I spent several of my formative years. Well, they were talking about their live event and how Boston was a great wrestling town. Boston? No, sir. Boston is 35 miles down the road. Just like Lebanon or Murfreesboro, TN are not Nashville, Lowell, MA is not Boston.
Don’t get me wrong, being a native of Massachusetts I love Boston and everything that is representative of the town. My town, however, is Lowell…home of the Industrial Revolution…home of my parents and grandparents. This is the place where my great-grandfather, a logger during the week, would come home to visit his kids on weekends that were lodged in a Franco-American orphanage. This is the town where my maternal great-great grandfather, blind, wrote French poetry.
Lowell also is the home of many famous Americans. Have you heard of Jack Kerouac? Olympia Dukakis? Ed McMahon? Bette Davis? I thought you may have.
This actually made me think of a story about another famous Lowellian, actor Michael Chiklis. The star of Fantastic Four and The Shield was being interviewed on the sports talk show Best Damn Sports Show Period. The guys were asking Michael what it was like being from Boston and its sports team having all this success. He promptly stopped the conversation to correct they interviewer that he was NOT from Boston but from Lowell. I was quite proud of him for that.
This, in my family anyway, always will bring me back to another Michael Chiklis story. Back when Pops was a kid in the 60s he, obviously, grew up in Lowell. The home next door to the LeBlanc family was none other than the Chiklis family. Now little Mikey Chiklis was about 6 years younger than Pops. That is about the age that little boys are really good and mean. I understand that Chiklis used to walk around the yard which, if memory serves me correctly, was separated by a chain-linked fence. Little Mikey was still in diapers at this time and would freely used the bathroom and continue parading around so a nickname was created. Poopie Pants Chiklis.
Why do I tell this story? 1) It is pretty darned funny. 2) I think it is cool that Pops lived next door to a Hollywood star. 3) To apologize. That’s right. A man of his caliber (and wealth) from my hometown that is willing to be sure that everyone knows where he is from is okay in my book. So, Mr. Chiklis, on behalf of the LeBlancs from Lowell, I am sorry that you were terrorized as a boy.
So now that I’ve told this story, does anyone else have an interesting story about their hometown?
Great story. Thanks for sharing.
Let’s see. As Finn, Newscoma and Squirrel Queen will attest to, there are several neat things about the Hooterville area. Several neat people have come from here, some you’d want to know, some you’d want to steer clear of.
Wow. I have so many stories. I guess my most recent one was sitting down to visit one of my good friends in town and hearing her tell a story about how she used to meet up with Elvis every day on her front steps in Memphis and they’d sing together waaaay before he’d made a name for himself. And when she moved to Hooterville, he didn’t forget her and came to see her a few times there too. A few people have admitted to seeing a shiny pink Caddy rolling through town.
[...] down the street from my grandmother’s house. This was the same house that Pops grew up in and made fun of Michael Chiklis. I even attended the same elementary school as my [...]