My Mother’s Stories are short excerpts written by Denis Ledoux as told to him by his own mother. These stories of Franco-American life were published as a memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, in late 2013.
The Story of Why My Parents Came Down
While my parents were immigrants to the US, they had not really come to be immigrants. My father’s health had been affected by the tiny, deadly filaments called asbestos dust in his hometown…
High School Memories – 1930s
As I was finishing my sophomore year in June of 1937, Robert was graduating from Holy Family School. As when I graduated, my parents did nothing special to mark the occasion…
Aunt Emilia
Ma Tante Emilia and Mon Oncle Louis both worked and, since they had no children to spend their earnings on, they had more disposable income than my parents. They would drive up from New Auburn in a little Ford…
We Move to a New Home
My parents must have had little hope of ever putting aside enough money for a down payment to buy a house of their own. We were still in the three-bedroom apartment on Shawmut Street when…