Revisit to Lowell NHP in Lowell Mass.

Day before yesterday, Bette and I headed on down to Lowell Mass, so I could revisit the Lowell NHP and see what success I might have locating the missing stamps from here.  Cooper and I had visited previously a couple of weeks before, but we didn't take the trolley nor canal boat rides, which meant we were missing 10 stamps.

I wound up having one of the luckier stamp days so far. 

When I first went to the downtown vc to plan my trip to get the stamps, they had a big sign, "Due to track construction, trolleys are not running today."  CRAP. As I was lamenting that this was a revist, I drove 60 miles, blah blah, the young Rangerette brightened up and said, no worries sir, I have the two stamps right here, and she did!  SCORE.

Well, says I, what about the trolley stamps?  (There are supposed to be 4 of those)  How can I get them if the trollies aren't running?  Again, serendipity- Another senior Rangerette heard me, came over and said she would go fetch them and I could meet up with her at the Boott Cotton Mill-  No worries said I-  So I went upstairs and watched the movie, which I hadn't done before (very pro-union)  and then drove over to the Boott. 

Not only did I get all four of the trolley stamps, which was rare, since one of them is a winter only trolley, (enclosed I guess,) but I also managed to find another Boott stamp that was in a drawer, albeit with broken date rings, but I found it! 

Then I watched the Boott Museum movie, also very pro union btw, and then went back to the Lower Locks, which opened up at 1130, and got that stamp, and then went downtown a bit and got lunch at a Dunkin Doughnuts, a very nice chicken salad croissant, then back to the main vc, and over to the Moody Feeder Street location which opened up at 130, and got that elusive stamp.  So I had a 9/10 day, which was really 10/10 since one of the stamps had been permanently lost.  SCORE!  I also enjoyed revisiting the Boott Museum and taking a closer look, and also seeing both of the movies. 

Lowell is a tough, tough town.  It has largely been save, in my opinion, by huge influx of Federal Dollars- and is very typical of New England towns that have been through the wringer.  It is very ethnic, as people are being driven out of Boston and surrounding towns by high prices, and very much poor lower class working kind of folks. Lots of street people, lots of beggars, lots of "disabled" lots of empty buildings, slums, tenements, and so forth.  Not very pretty, for sure.  It once had over 100,000 people but was very much rich man, poor man.  The Mills basically went belly up in the late 30's when the Southern Cotton Mills, with their non union labor and cheap operating costs made operating Mills in New England unprofitable. 

They stand as empty monuments pretty much to a way of the past-  those that are still standing anyway.  Pretty sad.