Going to Church in the Strawberry Patch

Trying to Grow Up In Spite of Myself

A Memoir by Tom Bessette

Copyright 2009 BessetteBooks

Chapter 3
Catholic School and Confusion 

The kitchen was dark and dreary; it had been raining forever, days since the sun shone.
Thursday night, one of all Thursday nights, and we were all lined up, oldest to youngest; me sitting on the chair stuffed into the gap between cabinet and metal sink.
My father showing his huge hand, my mother frowning seriously, all of us dreading what we knew was coming.
First Pete, not a word, never crying out, ten whacks and then sit down to dinner.
Next, Judy; cringing, snuffling, edging away, ten whacks, sobbing, sobbing, sitting down to dinner.
Sue, always the perfect daughter, wondering why, taking it like a perfect daughter, always obedient, accepting, not knowing why, her ten, wet eyes, sitting down to dinner.
Then Bob, ever rebellious, arguing, talking, wiggling and holding out his arms, hard to hit, his ten whacks, a bitter look back, and down to dinner.
Now me, frozen, why every week? What did we do?  What did I do?
No Daddy, No Daddy, Why? Why? Why?

Monday dawned gloomy and rainy. Kindergarten started today.  Even then I was depressed on gloomy days; it was no day for a shy 4¾ year old to start school. 

My friend Petie didn’t have to go and I wanted to stay home and play with him.  Why did I have to go and he didn’t?  We were going to swing on the Horsie swings in the park, like every day, and play in the sandbox and run through the Indian trail and all that, you know?  But mom and dad said I had to go.  I always gotta do stuff I don’t want.

Dad drove me to St. Joseph’s , coaxed me out of the car with difficulty, and walked me into the classroom with even more difficulty.  None of my friends were there but Mrs. Galvin, the teacher, looked nice enough. The Mother Superior was at the front of the room, looking pretty stern and mean, much like my father’s mother did, and boy she was pretty bad!  She was wearing a tuxedo with a hood and had a long stick that she was using to point to things in the wall. She was looking at the kids and yelling to be quiet and sit straight and stuff. I stood at the door, cried and peed my pants. Dad had to get to work and we didn’t have a change of clothes so I had to stay there with a wet crotch.  I wouldn’t stop crying after my father left, so as punishment Mother Superior said I had to sit in the rocker in the corner with the punishment dunce hat and wet pants while the rest of the kids started learning stuff.  After she left, Mrs. Galvin let me get out of the rocker and sit at my desk but I hunched over and didn’t participate and she let me alone.

At lunch time, my big brother Bob walked me home. The rain had stopped and the sun was coming out.  Bob was in sixth grade and knew the way.  It was about a half mile up Lancaster Street to George Street, up through the park to the Indian Trail and home.  My pants were dry by then so I didn’t tell my mom I had peed again and just quietly changed into my shorts and sneaks, had a baloney sandwich and went out to find Petie, who was playing in the park with a wet crotch, as usual. 

At supper, dad asked how school went and I said that I hated it and that the Mother Superior was mean and yelled all the time and why was she dressed in a tuxedo and was the hood because it was raining?  Usually when I said someone was mean, dad would get that cloudy look and get right up and go talk to whoever was responsible about delinquency and police and all, but this time he just said that Mother Superior was special because she married Jesus and could do whatever she wanted to.  She wasn’t wearing a tuxedo and it wasn’t a hood, both things were part of her habit.  I had heard about habits because my sister Sue said that dad had a smoking habit so I thought Mother Superior smoked too, but why did she have to wear the tuxedo to smoke when dad did it in his regular clothes.  I said as much but dad and Sue both laughed and said that her habit was the name for the type of clothes she wore and she had to wear them to show she was married to Jesus and it had nothing to do with smoking.  Nuns never did bad things like smoking and beer drinking and swearing because they had vowed to Jesus that they never would. They didn’t get married either or have babies and I said doesn’t Jesus want to have babies and they said he couldn’t, he was dead. Didn’t his being dead make Mother Superior a widow like Mrs. Archambeault?  Were all the nuns I saw all married to Jesus? They said yes. Then I thought: wait a minute, I thought it was a sin to marry more than one person, and they told me it was OK if it was Jesus and I was just more confused then than before and said so.  Mom got her cloudy look and said that it was our religion and I couldn’t question it because it was a sin to question anything that Jesus or the nuns and priests did or said.  I made up my mind right then that I would be a priest because it was clear they could do and say anything they wanted to anybody and get away with it and how cool was that.  Plus they got to talk funny in church. And wear bad habits.

We had to wear a uniform in school, even in Kindergarten, although they didn’t call our clothes a habit.  For boys, the uniform consisted of navy or dark blue pants, white button front shirt, maroon tie and black shoes.  The girls wore a maroon plaid pleated skirt, at least to the knee, dark blue or maroon knee socks, white buttoned shirt, a kind of scarf/tie sort of thing, also maroon and pretty much any kind of dress shoe.  Boys hair short, either brush cut (nowadays a Buzz cut) or slightly longer and parted on the side.  We all pretty much looked alike, and I have to say, in retrospect, that it was a good thing.  St. Joseph’s was a working class, poor parish so this made the job of dressing kids cheaper and easier on the parents.  This was in an age when daily showers and baths were unheard of and fresh change of clothes meant clean underwear.  I remember clearly that I had two sets of school pants, three shirts, one tie and one pair of school shoes.  Ripping a hole in your knee was a catastrophe; who had the money for another pair?  It was normal to see someone with patches on the knees of their pants; the nuns frowned on it but it was acceptable.

Holy knees were actually quite commonplace.  Our recess playground was the paved asphalt parking lot adjacent to the church.  There were no swings, grass, sports equipment, anything, so for play we invented intricate games of tag that required fast running and turning on a dime in slippery dress shoes.  I never could get the knack of running in slippery dress shoes; some kids were good at it.  Some boys even wore dress loafers, I tried them at my mother’s insistence, but I always ran out of them, now sliding in my socked feet. At least the laced shoes would stay on, but even with them I couldn’t run like I could in my Keds or PF Flyers. Everybody knew you could run and jump your best in PF Flyers, just like the TV said. Consequently, since I was in slippery shoes, I ran with caution, and was rarely, if ever, able to either catch or elude the boys that were better at running in slippery shoes. By the way, girls were required to play quietly and would often sit in groups chatting instead of playing.  The nuns did not think that girls should physically exert themselves to any degree.  Boys were boys however and we were allowed to run our energy off in the school yard, slipping in our dress shoes and ripping holes in our pants.

In time, I got used to Mrs. Galvin and liked her.  I learned what I could and couldn’t say to the nuns and was able to pretty much keep out of trouble.  The rest of kindergarten is a blur; I said and did what I had to, to get by. I was learning, at a young age, to elude authority.

Starting in first grade, we went full day.  St. Joseph’s was a French Catholic school so we learned in French in the morning and in English in the afternoon. 

Thoroughly interspersed with our French and English study, we got a good healthy dose of religion to keep us from burning in hell. This would include going next door to church on any pretext the nuns could think up, and also long, drawn out, interminable ‘Father’s Feasts.’  These did not involve food.  Rather, all the school children would assemble in neat lines (Stay in your place buster!) facing Father Robitaille, Father Leroux, Mother Superior and Father Robitaille’s old decrepit sister seated in front of us.  They sat and we stood for what seemed like hours, while the nuns would make speeches about how wonderful a pastor Father Robitaille was, how blessed by God he was, how blessed by God we were to have him, and how lucky we little children were to have such steadfast spiritual guidance. 

After about a half hour of this, we would all start to get a tad fidgety,  wavering in our stance, one foot sliding to the side to catch our balance, nudging the kid next to us.  Slowly, the sniggering would start; all of us looking at the decrepit sister whose stockings were loose and droopy.  After a few minutes, the nuns would start their policing of the rows, weapons at the ready, stony looks boring into our souls. Without fail, someone would faint.  They’d stand there wavering, trying to be good, and then their eyes would roll up and they’d fall to the floor, everyone exploding in laughter.  The best one was when Frank Nadeau fainted and fell headlong right into the decrepit sister’s lap, toppling her and her chair over backwards, her legs waving in the air, loose stockings shimmying down.  Mother Superior told him he had to get to confession quick before he died with this mortal sin on his soul, but we all told him he was our hero for breaking up the feast.

I have other vague memories of first and second grades, those memories revolving primarily around impatient and violent nuns.  All the nuns were armed with a selection of weapons with which they kept us in iron control.  One was the pointer I first saw in Mother Superior’s hand that first rainy day of Kindergarten.  It is true that it could be used to point to things on the wall and blackboard but we rarely saw them employed that way.  WE called them ‘whackers.’  We had a few pretty disadvantaged kids in our class who clearly needed strong discipline to make up for their poverty.  When these boys (always the boys) misbehaved in class, the nun in charge could really make those pointers whistle, screeching through the air and raising welts and dust from the backs of the miscreants. 

I think these nuns were really just normal sized women but to us they were huge and had strong arms and deadly aim. I always did my best to behave and follow the rules, if I knew them, because the few times I got whacked, it hurt like hell and more often that not knocked me to the floor squalling.  Ahh, piety! Further, there was the element of horror that was caused by our strong suspicion that these women were built differently than normal people underneath those flowing robes.  We would talk among ourselves, trying to picture hideous body parts kept safely out of sight, multiple sets of puss coated legs, or worse, no legs at all, replaced instead by some unimaginable satanic device for silent and deadly locomotion. We would describe to each other infected orifices containing ugly monsters oozing slime, and strange appendages used for obscene purposes in the shadowy confines of the convent.  These imaginings were enough to send a little boy shrieking in fear, worried at the prospect of being exposed to God knows what.

Another weapon was the wooden clapper, shaped somewhat like a clam shell.  The nun would hold this in her right hand, forefinger between the halves and use her middle finger and thumbs to snap the halves together to produce a sharp clapping sound.  We were trained to understand the claps.  One clap meant SILENCE, two claps meant FOLLOW ME, and three claps meant STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT NOW YOU LITTLE BASTARD OR I’LL BEAT THE FUCKING SHIT OUT OF YOU WITH MY WHACKER and so on.  Believe me, you learned to respond to the claps. 

We quickly stopped calling them clappers and started calling them clampers after we learned their more insidious function.  When a boy (again, always a boy) was seen to be slipping off to sleep in class, or when he was talking with his neighbor or, GOD FORBID, passing a note to a girl, the room would suddenly grow dead silent, the nun would float down the aisle and the clamper would descend on the offender’s ear like a vise. Using this implement, the nun would actually be able to bodily lift the kid out of his chair and propel him, arms flailing, slippery shoes skidding on linoleum, to Mother Superior’s office, where he would receive a spanking with her whacker that would keep him from sitting comfortably the rest of the day.  Not a word would be said, the nun/teacher would quickly return to the class, the tool reverting to its clapper function and the lesson would continue without further ado.  Occasionally, the cowed offender would be led via clamper back to class and deposited into his seat, gingerly, a demonic glare from Mother Superior reminding us of our unholy ways. We were young and small and intimidated by the absolute holiness of the sisters. Talking back or physically resisting was a mortal sin, and it was much easier to take the punishment than having to burn in hell for all eternity. They were all knowing, right and self consciously righteous; after all, they were married to the dead Jesus, who let them do anything they wanted in his name.  Our parents would never consider so much as questioning their judgment or actions. Who wanted to piss off Jesus? Or one of his wives?

I actually turned out to be a pretty good student.  I was shy and mousy, afraid to piss off Jesus, and consequently not as ready to rebel as some of the more underprivileged kids.  I wasn’t much for homework but the pace of learning was easy and I picked everything up kind of by osmosis, to the point where I started to be a favorite of the nuns and was used for tutoring the wayward students in my class.  I brought home marks in the low to mid nineties, made my mother happy, and kept safe from the rod and clamper, and so got by.  My memories of first and second grade are fleeting, violent, and there were very few specific instances beyond remembered violence that, in retrospect, left any impression.

I do have one memory of second grade that stands out.  I had walked the half mile home for lunch, it was a cold crisp day, I had walked the distance in 15 minutes and was hungry for my baloney sandwich. I walked in the door and found my mother sitting on the couch in the TV room crying.  “They killed him,” she said. “He’s dead.”  I looked at the black and white screen and saw newsmen with serious faces speaking in measured tones, holding out hope that it might not be as bad as thought, but warning us to be ready for the worst.  Confusion and consternation in Dallas; the assassination of a president, one so loved that the whole nation would descend into mourning.  I knew who Kennedy was, his name was drilled into our heads as a person almost as deserving of our adulation as the Pope, the first catholic to be elected president, and thus the savior of our country.  My mother enveloped me in one of her occasional hugs, red eyed, sniffling, as the news progressed.  I had no lunch, walked back to school; the nuns all knew.  We were given recess and went outside to play Topps and Leaners and run in slippery shoes.

Starting with third grade, things were different.  For one thing, we again had a lay teacher, first since kindergarten, named Mrs. Bova, and so were not quite as completely under the control of the nuns.  Mrs. Bova was tough, but she didn’t seem anywhere near as mean and vindictive as the nuns, and she definitely didn’t have the same violent tendencies.  No whacker or clamper anywhere in the class.  No rustling of habit, no rattling of rosaries, no silent glide before the pounce.  Mrs. Bova actually smiled now and again and an occasional whisper or resting of the eyes was tolerated.

Third grade is where the memories become more concrete, the passage of time more noted and cause and effect more understood.  Third grade is where the play in the schoolyard became more a definition of who we were.  Third grade is where the boys started noticing that girls could be cute, at least privately.  Third grade brought to us flirting, plots, evasion, embarrassment and delicious adventure.

There were three women in my life that year at school, all the smartest kids in the class.  Kathy Moreau was small, very smart, a brown eyed blonde, always dressed as neatly as anyone could be.  She just seemed cleaner than the average kid, socks stretched all the way up to her knees, hands clean and hardly sticky, no leftover breakfast on her face, no stains on her shirt, and giving off a fresh scent with no trace of mustiness or urine.  She was friendly, not flirty, more interested in discussing math than anything else.  I was one of two ‘smart’ boys, and so was acceptable to her, and we would often talk during recess and walk together at lunch, that is when no other guys were looking.  Most kids, especially the boys, and even more especially the poor boys, gave off a somewhat rancid stench, possibly from 8 or 9 days of peeing their pants between washings.  Their cuffs were soiled and frayed, their shoes scuffed, soles flapping, their hair was unkempt and their skin was blotchy. In retrospect, I think their parents were spending food and clothing money on a good Catholic education.  God Bless ‘em.

Lucille Koblenz wasn’t as smart or pretty but she was interesting because she had a deadly crush on me, for some reason, and that put me almost in the same league as Tony Soames, who was a lady-killer if there ever was one.  Lucille had this thin, light brown hair, white, shiny, almost translucent skin, and you could see her blood veins underneath, which to an 8 year old was really cool.  She would follow me around and never seemed to mind my cruel treatment of her when I would embarrassingly send her away. 

Now, Nancy Lazare was something else again.  She had beautiful, deep smoky eyes, sweet long brown hair, and smooth skin with the faintest fur on her arms; any flaws she had were to die for.  After all these years I still have the image of her face burned in my brain. Billy Bluteau and I vied for her affections all fall; neither of us ever completely won, as she would play us off each other with a level of skill I haven’t seen since.  Billy was considered to be the second most handsome boy in class after Tony Soames, and was sought after by all the girls that were doing any seeking at all.  Tony was pretty much off limits because he and Jenny Richardson were an item and inseparable, and Jenny was big and completely capable of catching out any of the girls who strayed too close and convincing them to flirt elsewhere.

The best location to flirt was in what was called the ‘cloak room,’ which was a long, narrow closet adjacent to every classroom. It had wainscoted walls and coat hooks and shelves where wet raincoats and muddy overshoes were kept.  It was easy to arrange to have to visit the cloak room on one pretext or another and it was a game to see if you could get in there at the same time as the object of your affections.

There was one late fall afternoon between lessons and we were being allowed a short in-class recess.  Nancy had received permission to get something from her jacket and, shortly, Mrs. Bova sent me to get something from the supply cabinet there.  I walked on air to the door, Billy looking at me malevolently.  Nancy was there and we presently got to flirting.  The conversation got around to who could stare the longest and a bet was made.  We stood there, facing each other, staring intently, neither blinking, when she suddenly started moving her face closer to mine.  Almost immediately, our noses were touching, breath commingling, those deep eyes boring into me.  I felt giddy and tingly, my knees started shaking and all I could see were those eyes, those eyes, those unbelievable eyes, boring into me with delicious heat.

Our noses touched, we didn’t kiss; the moment lasted forever until Mrs. Bova opened the door to see what we were doing.  I think I stared at Nancy’s afterimage for at least 5 minutes after she was sent back into the classroom, Mrs. Bova trying in vain to get my attention, worried that I was in a trance or badly shocked; both were true, of course.  As punishment I had to stay alone in the cloak room, amongst raincoats and muddy boots, where I employed my time profitably going through everyone’s coat pockets, learning some surprising things in the process.  Nancy waited for me after class and I was able to carry her books home after school, walking hand in hand for months afterwards.

Other than flirting, baseball cards were THE big thing in grade school.  Back then, there weren’t new manufactured marketing fads every couple of months as there are now so the baseball card craze lasted for about 5 years in all.  Every guy I knew collected cards in two ways.  You collected your keeper set that you kept in a shoebox and rarely handled and then you maintained a larger collection of less important cards for Topps and Leaners.  Third and fourth graders played Topps and bigger and tougher kids played Leaners.  Either game required a paved asphalt school yard and a cement or brick building at one edge of it, which is, conveniently, all we had at school.  The players would situate themselves about 7 feet from the wall, kneeling or crouched low, a gallery of onlookers elbowing each other for room.

Topps, the baby game, was played between 2 and up to 5 players.  The first player was determined by counting Eany, Meany, Miney, Moe. Catch A Nigger By The Toe. If He Hollers, Let Him Go, Eany, Meany, Miney, Moe.  Clearly, our school was all one color.  My daughter and her friends have properly substituted ‘Tiger’ and the rhyme is still in use.  This count was done by the players gathered in a circle with their right feet shoved together.  The biggest or toughest kid would do the counting, stabbing at successive feet with a rigid finger, counting one foot per syllable.  The oldest kids would stab especially hard because it was always great sport to make a smaller kid cry if possible.  You didn’t want to be picked first because the first player flipped a treasured baseball card towards the wall.  The second player would then do the same, attempting to land his card on top of the first player’s card.  If he was successful, he gathered up both cards and then player three would toss his card and so on; the process was repeated until the bell rang or someone lost all their cards, yelled “cheater,” and stomped away, which would usually bring a nun over with her whacker and clamper and that would end the game for that period.

Leaners were what you played when you were a bigger kid, more coordinated and tougher. Two players at a time, each would lean some agreed number of cards against a handy wall, back up about 6 feet, kneel or squat down and then flip your cards towards the cards leaning against the wall.  Each had a predetermined number of shots, usually about half the total number of cards leaned against the wall, and the player who knocked down the most cards won the pot, so to speak.  In our schoolyard, there were usually 5 or 6 games of Leaners going on simultaneously, each with a gallery of interested onlookers, screaming insults and taunts at whoever was the younger player.  Generally, the games were divided up into relative grade/age groups.  The 8th graders would rarely play with 5th graders, and it was the rare 3rd or 4th grader who was allowed to play Leaners at all, although a few of the toughest, most intimidating youngsters were cautiously allowed to move up the ranks.

This was the game where you could really win a lot of cards; you could also lose all your cards.  The older the kids you played against were than you, the more likely you were to lose big.  It was very common for a younger kid to be totally cleaned out in an attempt to play with the upperclassmen.  I was wary enough to not try to suck up to the older kids, most had no idea I existed, which worked out for the best, at least in terms of keeping my cards to myself.

In the fall of the year, the three big chestnut trees would start dropping their nuts onto the playground between the school and the church.  The nuts themselves were encased in green pods, each bigger than a golf ball and about as hard.  These pods sported strong, sharp spines radiating out from the skin, turning them into powerful weapons.  An unsuspecting student wandering across the asphalt would suddenly collapse to the ground, a trickle of blood seeping from the scalp, felled by a falling chestnut pod.  Some pods burst on impact, and collecting chestnuts was a hobby nearly as important as winning at baseball cards.  Many pods remained intact after the fall and these were hoarded, mostly by the big kids, and were used in pitched battles, usually after school when the nuns were in prayer.  These battles often produced fairly serious casualties: scratches, lumps on the head, and punctures from especially tough spines.  The battles always involved running, throwing, tripping, falling, anger, intimidation, bullying, damage and at least two major crying spells by the vanquished; all good, clean American schoolyard fun. The nuns prayed on, atoning for our soulless behavior.

Some nuns attempted to lead us on a better path, trying out new ways of recreation within the limited scenario of no facilities or equipment.  One nun in 4th grade invented what she called ‘a pleasure,’ which meant that instead of running in slippery shoes or playing Leaners, we would play an organized game together, as a class. She somehow acquired a used Time Bomb toy.  It was a plastic ball with a cylinder on top that could be wound or cranked.  When wound, it would tick, and a group of students arranged in a circle would hand it around the circle in turn, and the one caught holding it when it went off was a loser and had to step away from the game.  We kept at it until the last one was left, and that person got to step out onto the fire escape later and clap the chalk erasers, considered to be a special honor by the nuns.  So, you’d win the game by outlasting the rest of the class, and as a reward you got to inhale chalk dust and cough and sneeze to your heart’s content.

In 4th grade, we had the ‘pleasure’ nun in the English afternoon and Sr. Therese in the French morning.  I’m not sure that Sr. Therese could speak either English or French as none of us understood much of what she said.  We all thought that hair grew on the inside of her mouth to match the hair that we could see growing on the outside, thus her garbled speech. Because her commands were never clear, she had no control over the class, and even mousy good boys like me gave her a hard time.  Ben Lavigne was the biggest, toughest kid in the class, bigger than most 8th graders and feared by them, but wasn’t mean to the smaller kids; he saved his entire rancor for the nuns.  Ben would ask, “What are you saying,” and would say, “Learn to talk you witch,” and Sr. Therese, who always understood him, would immediately head his way, whacker raised on high, clamper in reserve.  Ben would then jump up and start running around the classroom, scooting up the aisles, cutting between desks, upsetting books and papers, hooting and whistling; Sr. Therese in hot pursuit, yelling gibberish.  As they got winded, there would be a standoff, Ben well protected by a desk with a student in it, preferable one of the quiet girls, Sr. Therese, panting, facing him.  Then, the Coup De Grâce; she would yell, “I DON”T FEEL TO PLAY,” and he would answer, “Well I do!”  She would scream, the mêlée would start again and they would run around, on and on until Mother Superior burst into the room. Between them they would corner Ben, Mother Superior and her unerring clamper clasping his ear, Sr. Therese whaling his back and butt with her whacker, her sweat flying off her in sheets, and together they would drag him from the room to the office for a serious punishment.  Sr. Therese would reappear in a few minutes and would sit at her wooden desk, face in her hands, hunched down, mumbling and thumbing her rosary, panting.  I swear, it was all planned because they went through the entire exercise at least 3 times a week and it was difficult to pick out differences from episode to episode.  We agreed that the only words Sr. Therese knew in English were, “I DON”T FEEL TO PLAY!”

The pleasure nun knew English just fine and we actually learned in her class.  A pioneer in Catholic education, she hit upon the idea of having smarter students tutor the dumber ones (her terms!).  By that time, Tom Ballargeon and I were best friends, lived near each other on Central Avenue and were the top two boys in the class academically with high ninety averages in all subjects.  If we had had gym class, he would have excelled in that too; he was an athlete like his father, who had actually played pro ball in the minor leagues as a young man.  Most days, after the Time Bomb pleasure and choking on erasers, she would set the rest of the class to studying and gather Tom & Me and pair us with Mike McNalley and Doug Gillebrand for some tutoring in the back of the room.  This was scary stuff.  Mike and Doug were poor kids, disadvantaged, and lived on the worst streets in town; both had nasty reputations as savage fighters.  They would sit and seethe as we tried, under sister’s guidance, to shovel some knowledge into their resisting brains.  We just knew what they planned to do to us after school.  We would be no better than shredded underwear after they got through with us.

We all got used to the situation after a while, even all started to look forward to it because, after all, it was a break from Sister’s lectures and how bad could that be?   The program petered out after their mothers complained about them being singled out, and long afterwards, Tom & I had an ‘In’ with the tough guys, who respected us. I ran into Doug a few years ago, he looked exactly as I remembered, was unemployed, hanging around the streets just like he used to. Some things never change.

Most nuns just droned on through the day, having us read from our textbooks, sometimes reciting, often writing repetitively on the blackboard.  It was a given that if you didn’t know the answer you’d be called to the front of the room to be humiliated, the nun telling you to ‘THINK’ and making you stay there until you came up with the answer or collapsed in shame.  Mostly though, I remember sitting as if in a trance throughout the long sessions, thinking only of 3 o’clock and freedom, nothing at all breaking into my brain that was new.  Class was tiring, dull, deadening, nothing.

Whenever there was an excuse to have a “Holy Day,” the nuns and the priests leapt at the opportunity.  By rights, we good Catholic children were supposed to attend one of the three early daily masses before school, but of course none of us did.  My parents would occasionally mention it but never followed through, so I was alright. I actually did go a few times in 3rd or 4th grade but the church was sparsely populated with old women in shawls; it was downright creepy in that big, echo-y, shadowy place.  So, to get us back for skipping morning mass, we would be herded (two lines, in step, no shoving) over next door to the cavernous church for our needed exposure to dead Jesus.  It was critical that you be absolutely quiet because God would get really pissed off and start throwing thunderbolts in the church if you so much as whispered.  Giggling was pretty much a guarantee of eternal fire.  Unfortunately, there is something about knowing that you shouldn’t giggle that forces you to hold your breath to stifle explosions of unplanned hilarity when you are small like that.  They’d march us up the center aisle to the front pews, 1st through 8th grades, probably 175 kids in all, stifling giggles, stage whispers, whackers whistling and whapping and clampers clamping, all in an ecstasy of worship.

Fathers Robitaille and Leroux would be up at the front on the raised altar, looking away towards the little box where they kept Jesus’ body, rarely looking at us.  When they did turn around to face us, like for the Sermon, Father Robitaille would look stern and serious.  He would slowly, maybe even painfully, climb up into the pulpit, which seemed to me better suited as a tree house than a sermon place, and then scowl as he turned pages and rustled his gowns. This was usually a 5 minute process, which gave us ample opportunity to lose focus and start giggling and whispering and kicking each other again, inviting baleful looks from the nuns.  Father Leroux would stay on the altar, sitting in one of the ornate chairs with high backs and scrollwork, hands folded, pious, thoughtful, and occasionally sleeping.

The nuns would always start by sitting together in the front pews, an unbroken fence of black hoods and ticking rosaries.  Shortly into Father Robitaille’s climb to the pulpit however, one or more would rise up with insulted faces and start stalking the aisle, daring us to continue whispering or whatever horrible thing we were doing.  Invariably, as soon as a nun’s back was turned, the giggles would explode out, snapping her head around to see a few red faces, pretending to sneeze or cough. The more disadvantaged kids might sneeze the word ‘Bullshit’, and then look incredulous when a nun stared at them. Geez sister I gotta sneeze, OK? This would go on to the point where no one in the church noticed that the priest had started his sermon and was haranguing the audience about hell and burning and disobeying God.  Nuns in the front row would nod in agreement, stern of face, kids would hunch down after ‘sneezing’ to avoid discovery and the few neighborhood worshipers would pray for our Goddamned, delinquent souls.

St. Joseph’s was a big cathedral style church, extremely high ceilings, wide aisles, rock hard pews, kneelers that bit into bony knees.  On the slanted backs of the pews were metal contraptions meant to snap onto and hold the brim of a fedora type hat and I was growing up in a time when many men, wanting to appear classier than they might really have been, still wore hats to church.  These had a very tough spring action and it was legitimate fun to pull out the springing clamp and let it snap back.  In the hollowness of the church, it would make a snap like a rifle crack and every adult head in church would whiz around to see where it came from.  We kids worked hard at making them snap at opportune times, such as in the middle of a sermon or at the holiest time of blessing the communion host, right after the chimes were rung.  RIIINNNGGG-SNAP!  That got their attention.  Other times we would lose all caution and the snapping would build to a constant staccato rhythm, reverberating throughout the church, making any kind of religious rapture impossible.

On high holy days we would have to sit through the Stations of the Cross.  The priests and deacons would lead the solemn pious procession down the center aisle, altar boys trudging behind, Father Robitaille holding the big pole with the gold carving on it, vestments fluttering in the dust at his feet.  Father Leroux, herding his precious altar boys, floating behind. The actual stations were these small plaques depicting scenes from Christ’s crucifixion affixed to the lower walls on either side of the main cavern of the church.  Usually a set of three of the group would then break off and work their way up and down the aisle, stopping to face the stations in turn for an interminable period of prayer.  My friend Bob DePuis was an altar boy, and I knew most of the rest of them. 

Our job, as kid onlookers, was to try to make the altar boys laugh.  Some were easy, some were resistant, but if the prayer stop was long enough, we would win out.  You’d start by staring at the target altar boy, who in turn was doing his best to ignore you and keep his eyes front.  You would continue to stare, unblinking, slowly changing your expression from pious to stern to silly to downright loony, knowing all along that the altar boy was watching you out of the corner of his eye, trying his Goddamnedest not to laugh.  If the priest was chanting loudly enough, which was often the case with father Robitaille because his hearing was going, you could risk low humming and burbling sounds.  After a few minutes, the altar boy’s mouth would begin to twitch, their eyes to water and soon after they would explode in a spray of spittle and sneezing. Father Robitaille would finally notice, would stop his prayer, look sternly at the altar boy, stare at him for a painful time, then finish the prayer and move on.  With planning and guile, we could position ourselves through the church so as to be able to repeat the performance at every station, and would hear later how the altar boys got a chewing out for being so disrespectful to their savior, almighty God and his Son, Jesus Christ, and oh, yeah the Holy Spirit, whoever he was.

Another aspect of the Stations of the Cross was to bet amongst ourselves on whom, if anyone, of the altar boys would faint during the stations.  No one was immune, even in the winter, because the heat would be screaming and it would be warm as hell in the church, bringing out the sweat on the altar boys faces.  We’d make our bets and watch intently; soon one would start to blink and then waver.  If father Robitaille noticed he would nudge them and they would recover, but more often he would be chanting away oblivious to everyone and the wavering would increase until the victim’s eyes would roll up into his head and he would collapse to the floor.  It was most fun when he was the one carrying the holy pole, or whatever it was; it made a great clatter when it fell and dropping it was a Mortal Sin, or so we thought. 

For those who don’t know, there were three types of Sin in the Catholic Church.  First was Original sin which was committed way back at the beginning by Adam and Eve when they ate an apple they weren’t supposed to.  The actual reason why it took me so long to try apples was because of the fear of Original Sin; what kid could understand what made an apple so hellacious?  The second type of sin was Venial Sin, which was sort of like a misdemeanor in the legal system, bad, but not deserving of the worst punishments.  If you had a bunch of them spotting your soul, you wouldn’t go to hell but would have to clean them off in Purgatory before they’d let you into heaven.  The absolute worst sin was the Mortal Sin. If you died with one of these blackening your soul, you were going straight to hell and that was that, no arguments, no time off for good behavior.  It was reserved for really evil things like eating meat on Fridays and dropping the holy poles and fainting on Father Robitaille’s sister and chewing your communion wafer and so on.  If only murder and debauchery were so bad.  If you ever committed a Mortal sin, and it was difficult to get through a whole week without doing at least five or six, you had to run, not walk, to the nearest confessional to ask the priest to forgive you, because God was so pissed off.  We lived in terror of Mortal Sin, had nightmares about it, but we weren’t above trying to get altar boys to commit them by making them laugh and drop the holy pole.

We kids had a very practical view of mass and other church-related ceremonies: the shorter the better was pretty much it.  We soon figured out that father Leroux could get through a Low mass (don’t ask!) in less than a half hour whereas father Robitaille couldn’t pull one off in less than 45 minutes.  My father knew this too, and on Sundays when we couldn’t have mass in a Monsterino patch we would make a special effort to go to Father Leroux’s mass on Holy Days of Obligation, which meant you better go or else you know what! 

Most Sundays, though, we had to go to the High mass, which was the one where the choir sang.  I always resented the High mass because even though the songs were pretty much OK, they didn’t REPLACE anything else in the mass and just added to the torment.  My parents were in the choir when I was in grade school and sang on Sundays.  I often got to go up to the choir loft to watch mass up there, probably because I couldn’t be trusted not to forget and wander out to the schoolyard if no one was watching me closely.  The stairs to the loft were steep and winding and mysterious, and I was the envy of my class because I had been up there and lived to tell about it.  If I was unruly enough, I even got to sit up on the huge organ and feel the vibration of the music which made me have to pee.  It was OK for the choir members to talk when they weren’t singing and some really loud conversations, in whispers, would often ensue.  These whispers would flow down to the congregation below and people would look up, frowning, and make cool hand gestures that I could see, but were missed by the choir because they weren’t paying any attention to anything else but their conversations and the cue to start singing again.

During sermons, the priest in the pulpit didn’t seem so intimidating, he was way down there and I was way up here.  Before the microphones were installed, it was impossible to hear him from so far away, which was perfect because I was tired of hearing about fire and burning and damnation and money all the time.

Then the basket would be passed.

I don’t think I ever witnessed a sermon that missed asking the congregation for money. The church bosses would claim that a 10% tithe was proper but would take whatever they could get, and heap on the guilt at every opportunity.  Every sermon was at least ended with a flourish of solicitation.  Your monetary donation was your heartfelt gift to God and true believers would support their church through thick and thin.  It was such a business that there were special envelopes printed up which were mailed to all the families in the parish.  The envelopes were pre-printed with your name and had checkboxes where you could indicate the generosity of your gift, the minimum amount was usually just a bit more than you could afford and the maximum listed an amount that only the richest priests could afford.  These came every month, dated for the appropriate Sunday, and in fact there were at least two for every week, the regular collection which went for general expenses and the sizeable church contribution to the diocese and then the special collection, like for fuel, or missionaries or what not.  My father would get his cloudy look and grumble that giving the minimum each week would bankrupt wealthier souls than we.

The finer men of the parish community would vie for the sacred honor of passing the baskets on their long handles at collection times.  They were given (or, actually, probably had to buy) special mustard or maroon colored suit jackets, and at the proper time would solemnly rise and glide to the rear of the church where they would gather their baskets and set off to lighten our pockets.  It was a quiet time, an extended moment of silence, perfect to ponder our relationship with the almighty.  Everyone would pay special attention to everyone else to see who was giving and who wasn’t.  When the basket was shoved under your nose, you could look at the envelopes inside and speculate which were thick with cash and which were less adoring.  If the giver had checked an amount checkbox on the outside, you knew just how much food money they had given to the church this week. Visitors who had no envelopes would toss in currency, and those who tossed in only coins were viewed as cheapskates, and gave the rest of us a self righteous feeling of superiority.

The priests were experts at money.  They organized all these strange adult organizations like the Mother’s Club, Ladies of Saint Anne, and others, whose primary responsibility was to raise cash for the church, usually disguised as helping children or those less fortunate.  There were bake sales, bazaars, casino nights, all manner of community activities revolving around the Almighty and his dollars.

We kids mostly looked forward to the annual Church Bazaar.  It was usually held in June right near the end of the school year so we were all in the mood for celebration.  The Mother’s Club, Ladies of Saint Anne and various other volunteers and hangers on would gear up to make this year the biggest and best bazaar we’ve ever had.  From the bowels of the church would appear wooden booths which would be assembled and placed around the perimeter and throughout the schoolyard.  Women would go into high gear baking cakes, pies and cookies. Calls for donations would go out to all local businesses in the name of the father; liquor stores were especially sought after as our parishioners would solemnly take lots of chances for a bottle of blessed hooch.  Volunteers would staff the booths and all comers came to take a chance and win a prize.  The rattle and clatter of prize wheels would be near deafening, and I still dream I hear the chanting and the rattle and din of voices.

Cohoes was full of churches of every type, especially Catholic churches.   Each church held a bazaar, so it was possible to go to more than one, but for some reason, we maintained loyalty only to our own. The bazaar went on for three days, usually Friday through Sunday.  The first years I went, I was happy with the booths where you could throw a dart and win a cake, or the one where you could toss ping pong balls at small fish bowls with real fish in them and maybe win one.  I won a number of fish over the years and I am certain that not one lived two days beyond the close of the bazaar.

The bazaar was crowded with small gangs of unsupervised kids looking for entertainment of an adventurous sort. All year on the school grounds we were kept in check and reigned in tightly; there was something about bazaar weekend that made us need to really let loose and challenge our straight upbringing.  The last few days of school, the freedom of summer looming, time to party.

Since we had very limited funds, most of my time at the bazaar was spent wandering the carnival atmosphere, finding and teaming up with friends to sneak under booths, religiously attempting to steal whatever we could get our hands on; we weren’t particular.  We would search for ways to slip into the school, hoping to wander unsupervised through the dark and lifeless halls, spooky and echoing. Around the corners in dark alleys were the inevitable Leaners games, and further in were groups of older kids bringing paper bags to their mouths and then tripping out of the alley, wavering and vomiting.  We looked up to, and were afraid of these bigger kids, and so thought we’d have to do whatever they were doing when we got older, although it didn’t look like too much fun.

Watching the older kids and adults, we became fascinated with the gambling booths; not the common ones where you gambled to win a prize but the real ones where you gambled money.  My favorite was the Pokerino booth.  Ten players would line up and put down their dollar.  The dealer would deal out the hands in turn as if dealing a 5 card poker hand.  No draws, no betting, no single winner.  There was a chart posted at the back of the booth listing the payback for certain hands.  If you got a pair, you got your dollar back, two pair, a dollar fifty, all the way up to the royal flush which paid an astounding twenty bucks cash.  Twenty dollars was a sum to fog the imagination, and the kids my age would crowd around the Pokerino booth, lusting to play, wishing that we had a dollar in case somehow somebody let us play.  I never saw anyone win the top prize but once I saw a guy get a full house which got him a cool ten-spot.  It is true that he had been playing for hours and had sent well over $100 into the church coffers, but after all he did win that $10!

By Sunday, the bazaar goers were getting frantic; only a few hours left and so much gambling yet to do.  Sunday evening we approached a fever pitch, sneaking under every booth we could, watching Pokerino in hopes of seeing that royal flush, stealing the cookies and cakes that weren’t being watched closely enough, and generally running around in a frenzy of excitement, trying to get as much of the rapture as we could.