'Ora's Boy' remembers: new book chronicles growing up French Catholic in Laconia in 1940s & 50s

LACONIA — In 1950, 10 year old Lucien "Sonny" Virgin got a part-time job delivering The Evening Citizen to homes scattered along N. Main Street. His route was five miles long, from his own house just off Busy Corner to a spot a little short of the State School and back.

After paying the newspaper office for the the papers, he cleared $5 a week. But he had debts. He owed Paquette Sporting Goods $21 for the bicycle that made, in good weather, his job easier. And he owed his mother $21 because he borrowed from her to buy the route from another boy.

When all was said and done his net income was $3 a week.

When Sonny informed his mother he was out of toothpaste she told him that since he was now working, he would be buying his own toothpaste and soap. From that day forward, his mother Ora provided the roof over his head and food on the kitchen table. For everything else, including clothes, he was on his own.

When he was in high school, his mother cut off the heat to his small room near the attic, a sign that, as was the case with his two older sisters, Lorraine and Claudie, she didn't have any use for formal education past the eighth grade. Once her children had graduated from St. Joseph's School, where they were largely taught in French, they were expected to get a job at one of the local factories and pay rent to their parents. No rent, no heat.

James Novak of Blufton, South Carolina has written a book about Sonny's childhood — about growing up in Laconia in the 1940s and 50s. And about what it was like, particularly, for Sonny to be a product of the French Canadian Catholic community that formed a vital piece of the city's character.

Novak is in a unique position to tell Sonny's story because, well, because he is Sonny — or was Sonny. With the help of attorney Paul Normandin, he changed his name when he joined the Air Force at age 18 and never looked back.

Or at least he didn't take a hard look back until he sat down, in his 70s to write "Ora's Boy".

Novak clearly sees Sonny's story as inspirational — strong-willed boy beats the odds and overcomes a dysfunctional childhood to spend 23 highly productive years in the Air Force, where he retired with a Masters degree and the rank of captain, and another 15 working in highly responsible management positions for defense contractors Lockheed and Aerojet. And it its.

But it also a compelling story of the damage adults do to children. Often because they don't see young minds as being perfectly capable of reasoning. And of remembering.

But does Novak remember. Especially every detail of the adults who played significant roles in his childhood. The ones who treated him square, who showed some interest and cared. And those who didn't.

Chief among that later group, of course, was Ora, the woman who showed almost no maternal instincts toward him and whose love and stamp of approval he vainly sought.

Ora divorced Sonny's father right after he was born. He met the man once, very briefly when he was six years old. Step-father number one was a reliable factory worker who helped the family earn a middle-class living but his relationship with Ora was filled with vicious physical fights, usually started by her. She divorced him after she took up with a man from Franklin who was eight years her junior.

Sonny was largely ignored by Ben Novak, father number three, in the eight years they lived under the same roof but, when the time came, he preferred the man's surname to that of his real father.

Some local readers of "Ora's Boy" may well be offended by Novak's memories of the French Catholic community he was born in to. "Misery was handed down from generation to generation," is a way he sums up their lives, noting the 6-day work weeks, drinking and gossip — "the principal form of entertainment" —that filled time.

Sacred Heart Church played the lead role. And that was a place where Ora's family was not held in high regard. She had married outside the church and then divorced not once, but twice and young Sonny recalls the scorn that was heaped upon her as a result.

Though Novak's book certainly has a dark side, the only real hint of Peyton Place-like scandal, certainly by today's standards, is the revelation that Ora claimed to her amazed children to have paid $1,000 for a "special dispensation" that allowed her to marry her third husband in the church. For perspective, Ora could have purchased a brand new Chevy Bel Aire "hardtop" for $1,741 cash in 1950.

Sonny got his first taste of life on the other side of town because of that newspaper route. And the "rich" people who lived along N. Main were, to his eyes and ears "not the self-righteous petty bigots I was accustomed to in my part of town". Customers like Dr. Robinson Smith, who was the state veterinarian, and Dr. Nathan Brody, a primary care physician, were nice to him and he appreciated it.

Still, there was a wall.

Grades at Laconia High School, Sonny remembers, were "assigned based on your parents standing in the community." As perhaps were spots on the basketball team, where "Cooz" failed to earn a spot on the varsity despite the ball handling prowess that earned him a new nickname as a teenager. (Celtics' Hall of Famer Bob Cousy was the king of Boston Garden in the early '50s.)

When he entered LHS, freshman were expected to double-up on lockers and the son of a local police officer volunteered to befriend him in that regard, until the boy's father interfered. "Cooz, I want to be your friend but my dad won't let me share a locker with you," is what he remembers as the explanation.

An overachieving student at St. Joseph, Sonny drifted through a "Rebel Without A Cause" phase during his years at LHS. Though he graduated with his class in 1957, he recalls, he "learned more from people hitchhiking that I ever did in school."

All of this is not to say there aren't many bright memories described in "Ora's Boy".

On the people front, young Sonny's life was favorably influenced by a number of adults, including Busy Corner Store owner Ben Doucet, as well as Francis Piche, Fritzy Baer at Gunstock and Soc Bobotas at LHS. And by Avid Baroody, owner, with her husband, of the Howard Johnson's restaurant at The Weirs where Sonny worked over the summer after high school.

The book is also full of fond descriptions of summer days at the beach at Opechee Park with his sisters and a bag of soggy sandwiches and a mayo jar full of warm Kool-Aid; of soapbox racing down Belvidere Street in Lakeport and Fairview Street up by the hospital; of the annual June invasion of motorcycles; of the Elks Carnival on South Main Street, featuring each year a daredevil high-wire trapeze act; of skipping school to watch the 1951 World Series at Tardif Park with 50-60 men; of pretending to dive for coins thrown by passengers on the M/S Mount Washington; and of listening to the big bands play at Jim Irwin's Winnipesaukee Gardens from a walkway constructed behind the bandstand that only locals knew about.

And there's plenty of humor. With nothing funnier than Novak's description of the scene when his 39-year-old mother tried to portray to her new Franklin in-laws-to-be that her children — ages 13, 12 and 9 — were her siblings. Because she didn't want them to know how old she was.

Readers old enough to have shared a part of Laconia's past with Sonny will smile at references to Fournier's Candy Store, Morin's Supermarket, the Clear Weave women's store, O'Shea's Department Store, Freddie's Cafe, Ferland's Fur Shop, Oscar's Worm Ranch, Scott & Williams (Scott's), Laconia Malleable Iron, Truchon's, the Nut Shoppe, Knotty Pines and many other places no longer a part of the landscape.

But younger readers and relative newcomers are treated, too — to a history lesson that is an archeological dig.

Perhaps surprisingly, though this book is about division by class and ethnicity, it isn't really about the effects of grinding poverty. Except for a stint after the birth of her fourth child, when she didn't work, Ora had money. In fact, Sonny recalls, she was quite industrious and adept at making and spending money. She owned large homes on Winter and Church Streets at separate times, rented out rooms and garage spaces, cleaned curtains and worked at the Laconia Shoe Company. Saturday nights at the Rod & Gun Club were a must for her. As were Sunday evening fried clam dinners at the Red Shanty Drive-In.

On the bottom line, "Ora's Boy" is about indifference. About birthday's going unobserved. About graduation ceremonies not attended. About children considered to be a burden, a cross to bear.

And Ora, long dead now, can be heard from these pages, warning us that one day one of those children might sit down at a computer and start typing.

(ORA'S BOY by James Novak. 337 pp. Available in hard ($31.99) and soft cover ($14.95) editions at Amazon.com. Digital copies are available for Nook and Kindle. Books will soon be stocked at Annies Book Stop in Laconia - 528-4445. More information at www.jamesjnovak.com.)