Lowell Ma.

So it wasn't a particularly nice day on Monday. My friend Dave called me and asked if I would like to take a ride to Lowell Ma. Though Dave grew up here he lived in Lowell for twenty five years. I visited him and his wife, when he was married, frequently, back in the 80's. Now I knew how to get to their house but that's all I knew about Lowell but Dave knows the city very well. Now I am familiar with the some of the history of the city and the key roll it played in the American industrial revolution. Lowell was the first planned industrial city in the United States. There were and still are a system of canals throughout the city. It's not a small city with about 110,000 people. Most of the old mills, of which there are many, have been converted to condos and office space. There are very nice residential neighborhoods but we stayed mostly in the downtown area. I would not call it beautiful, but it is historic. Below is just a short video while we drove around downtown.       



We had lunch at a local landmark that's been around for over 100 years, The Worthen House. It was a hangout for musicians, politicians and writers particularly Jack Kerouac.

   

This was a mural on a building in the parking lot across from the Worthen. 

 

 This shot from the inside of the Worthen House. It's not a great shot.  I took a few but they were worse than this. I had to take two pictures sideways (the camera not me) of the outside of the Worthen House, so I could get almost all of the city hall clock tower in the shot. 

 

 

 

Another shot from the interior of the Worthen House. It's basically a bar where you choose from a small but interesting selection of food items. Dave raved about the burgers. Now I like burgers and we've been to several other places where he mentioned how good the burgers were. I wanted to say, "Dave. It's a friggin' cheese burger! How bad a cook do you have to be to screw up a burger!" But I said nothing.

Now the burger I had was fine. During prohibition they would stash the alcohol behind a "secret panel".

 

 

 

 

This is the Lowell city hall. Sometimes taking pictures from a moving car is not the ideal way to do it.   

 

 

 Two drive by shots of the library. Two bad I couldn't get a complete shot of the building. It was quite ornate. 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Another landmark we went past and stopped so I could get some shots of the house where Bette Davis was born. I had to, again, take two separate shots that I had to stitch together. Well the computer and the program do the stitching. I just click on an icon.

The picture of the plaque on the house had vines covering parts of the words but you can still read it.

 

 

 

 

 

And finally here's a sculpture in front of a fire station we drove by on the way to Lowell.

 

Alright this has taken quite a while to put together but it was fun.

I gotta go to sleep.

I'm outta here.