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Notes this week are all by Pete Rivard, writer of all four songs featured on Episode 7.
The Adirondack Suite
Paul and Ruth
Ticonderoga
Ste. Anne's Reel
There are actually four songs to this suite, the fourth being C'mon Lizzie, that concern themselves with my dad's people, the French-Canadians who migrated south from the northern banks of the St. Lawrence River near Montreal in the mid 1800's, when there was no more arable land to be had. These ancestors of mine gladly took the low-wage jobs in the textile and paper mills and shoe factories of New England, vacant due to the toll of the Civil War.
Paul and Ruth is about my paternal grandparents, Jean-Louis Paul Rivard and Ruth Martel, who met in Ticonderoga, NY when he migrated from Massachusetts to New York for better paying work. He was yanked from school after 5th grade, as soon as he was competent at reading, writing and doing basic math, and put to work at the age of 11 in the shoe factories of Haverhill, MA.
Their eldest, Ken, my dad, served in the South Pacific during WW2 as a Navy signalman. He claims he never understood how he got through the war, after being repeatedly strafed by Japanese fighter pilots, standing outside his ship's bridge waving a pair of bright yellow and red signal flags. Having seen photos of him from the day, it's clear he was too skinny for even the best of the Emperor's marksmen to have anything to aim at.
His younger brother Bob served during the Korean War, in the Army, stationed in the Aleutian Islands. They sent the tough guys there from northern climes who knew how to handle the cold. I saw them off to war and back on the same train for the sake of brevity. In songwriting you fudge the facts to get at the truth.
Lyrics:
From north of the St. Lawrence and east of old Montreal
Some folk pushed on south when nothing remained of their all
From the Massachusetts mills to an Adirondack town
Following the work, one took a job and settled down
Though christened Jean-Louis, the locals knew him as Paul
Ruth Martel had her eye on Paul from the start
There's no one left around to tell what began their affair of the heart
When Paul came calling Ruth received him on the porch
He'd fire up a stogie; the match flared like a torch
Since those days those two were never apart
She sports a pillbox. He's in his Ben Hogan cap
They're screaming at the trotters at Saratoga track
Just a break from routine, never ending chores
In the time before the train took their boys away to war
And cheers rolled and beer flowed when the train brought both their boys back
From north of the St. Lawrence and east of old Montreal
Some folk pushed on south when nothing remained of their all
Generations later in an Adirondack town
Descendants of Ruth are still there to be found
And the grandkids of Jean-Louis remember him as Paul
Next song: Ticonderoga