Across the River

By Margaret S. Langford
(Related by marriage to the Daneaults, Leblancs and Fourniers in Suncook)


My husband Steve told me many stories about his growing up French in Suncook New Hampshire. His French-speaking mother, Madelaine Daneault, married English-speaking Lorin Langford. All the kids grew up speaking French. As for Lorin, he used to say he spoke "turnpike French." Leaning out the window of his tollbooth, he’d yell to the Canadians heading towards New Hampshire beeches "vire là-bas." {turn over there}.

All the kids went to the Suncook bilingual parochial school—one half of the day in French— one half in English. After school they worked and played in French. On Saturdays all the grown-ups went shopping in Manchester just a few miles away. Stores with French-speaking clerks got their business. In Suncook they could live their lives all in French if they chose. What fate awaited their bilingual children as they went from their welcoming parish school to the English-only high school across the river? Here’s what happened to a few boys. And here’s how these resilient adolescents reacted. From what I heard tell, most of the boys in the poem were quite successful when they grew up. Steve himself went on to do many interesting things. While earning his BA degree in English under the GI bill, he enrolled in an advanced course in Medieval French Literature. Later on he earned a Master’s in Occupational Education while teaching at the Manchester Skills Center. After retiring, he ran his own printing business,
The Blue Inkwell. In Québec, the Québécois thought he came from somewhere out in the country—possibly La Beauce . He kept on speaking French until the day he died.

On the first day
in the Anglo school,
on the first day
the principal called
the new boys in.
"None of that French stuff"
he said.
"We speak English here."
The boys came
from Saint-Jean Baptiste
the bilingual parish school
across the river.
Though well-prepared
(the sisters saw to that)
they learned
their aspirations
were too high
trade schools and
manual work
their true vocation.
Silently they heard the
words but didn’t listen.

Nearby they lived
tout en français.
The afternoon
would take them
safely back
to that other world.
School was, after all,
just school.
Home, family, work—
all that mattered—waited
back there in French.
They lived their true lives
a few blocks—
many worlds—away
across the river.

MSL 8/14/13