Month: January 2017

….Our Catholic diocese had some really weird rules. Of course the Priests and Nuns had our unbridled attention for fear was their calling card and eternal damnation our incentive.  If I even thought some bad thought I was sure to go straight to hell – or worse!  I used to think that my soul after confession was as white and as fresh as newly fallen snow but for every venial sin committed a small black spot appeared.  After a while many black spots. Weekends were especially bad for black spots. Don’t even think about committing a mortal sin – like eating meat on Friday.  Heavens no. That was akin to rolling around in a coal bin. All black! The only way out was to go to confession again and spew out all of the sins of the past week: admonishment, atonement then absolution. Yes! Penance? The requisite number of Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s and Glory be to the Father’s, the Son’s and the Holy Ghost and all of the saints were attuned to your particular sinful list but faster than you could say Alleluia your soul was as white and as pure as snow again.  Whew! At least that is what I thought at that young impressionable age.

I am reminded of one really weird and unexplainable moment that occurred to me while waiting to go into the confessional to confess my indiscretions and sinful works and sinful deeds and equally sinful thoughts.  It was a Saturday afternoon, springtime, around 4pm, the scheduled time for confession at our church.  Given that the church was right across the road from our house that day or time of day for confession didn’t really cause me an inconvenience.  Run across to the church, do my thing, say the requisite number of Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s and Glory Be’s, and voila, the slated soul was clean, snowy white again, all black spots disappearing into the sinful ether.  Then run back home to catch the latest Tarzan edition on TV or tales from the really dark continent awaiting a supper of hot dogs, or better still, Kraft Dinner – with ketchup!

I am sitting there in the cavernous church, non plussed, wondering what I’ll be confessing. There was that list of sins of course both venial and mortal to contemplate. The church, being really well organized from thousands of years of practice and not wanting to waste anybody’s time, the Priest’s or mine, held the list and that list was all encompassing.  It must have been quite interesting and comical fun coming up with the list of venial and mortal sins.  I would have loved to have been part of that Working Group or Ecumenical Council for certain. Yes, a sinful checklist of remembrance was the way to go. Did I do this?  Check! How about that? Check. Masturbation? What is that? More on that later! Uncheck? Murder? Nope, uncheck, unless thinking about murdering my oldest sister was a sin? Uncheck that. On and on it went. Meantime, while I was sitting there waiting to go in to meet my fate head on, I suddenly came down with a horrific case of the hiccups: bad, violent, non-relenting.  Each hiccup shook my entire being.

Ever try to mask or hide a hiccup in a confined environment like a church, or worse yet, the claustrophobic confines of a confessional? It is not pretty. Your cheeks bulge out; eyeballs and pupils expand outwardly in a Feldman like manner; the stomach contracts then expands in rapid succession; and, like an uncontrollable fart, a growling sound begins its emanational rise from the lower bowels of the human body bypassing the stomach then running up the oesophagus in its belch like fashion, or in the Catholic vernacular, like a resurrection. The gut, it hurts. The whole sensation repeats itself over and over and over again until those hiccups run its course. With each attempt to mask the hiccup the sensation becomes worse and deeply magnified. 

Embarrassed, I sat out in the pews near the back of the church daring not to even think about going in to that dark, dank and tiny expanse that they called the confessional.  The interior of those tiny cells, abreast of and on either side of the priest’s chamber, have a unique odour about them. Here, some 50 years later, as I am writing this, I can still sense that smell.  A toxic mix of incense and sweat interspersed with a whiff of stale tobacco and alcohol for all of the Priests smoked and drank.  Once inside and kneeling there was no escape for the Priest knew you were there given the little panic-type-like button that activated a beep for the Priest’s sake and a tiny red light outside of the cell once your knees pressed into the red foam of the kneeling pad.  All the Priest had to do then was to slide the small grated, face level sliding door to the left or to the right as need be and you were trapped.   Trapped, trapped by the Priest’s undivided attention until absolution. I am sure that every Catholic knows and remembers the sound of that small sliding door opening and closing.  

I couldn’t even think of how I would handle that situation.

“Bless me father – hic -up – for I have hic-up – sinned. It has been hic-up – one – hic-up-ed week since my last hic-up-ed confession.” Good thing that I didn’t stutter for heaven’s and the priest’s sake!…..

.

 

…Sweet innocent Sister Theresa. We all loved her. Beatific: possessing an angelic soft hewn face with saintly features. She was young and she was beautiful. And a nun at that! Thinking back, what a waste but at that time she made a lasting religious impression on our impressionable minds. In today’s world she would have been our elementary school “Ying.”  And with all things “Ying” there had to be a “Yang” and in this case our elementary school “Yang” turned out to be Sister Mary Bernice…”Yang.”  Burly, tough as nails, she wore polished black, ankle height sea boots with that black habit of hers.   Her gait was that of a sailor who was not yet accustomed to the stability of dry land.  She possessed a jaunt or a saunter not unlike Charlie Chaplin all the while twirling a baton, or strap, that we would become very familiar with soon enough.  She was so intimidating that even the parish priests took notice. Her face was non descriptive really as it was framed by that white veil of nunnery.  I think her hair was black, slightly graying at the temples. I know this because her temples seemed to bulge out whenever she was laying out the wrath of our heavenly father across the palms of our earthly hands.

Like her gait she also yelled like a sailor: a real Chief Boatswain’s Mate or Buffer in the naval vernacular. Her wrath came down unexpectantly and unrepentantly with the sure fired will of an archangel but no St Michaela here!  She had two main weapons in her arsenal to keep us all in line. Her hands, left or right, it didn’t matter, came across one’s face totally and entirely out of the heavenly blue like some religious and corporal stealth attack. Just like that: whack, whack, and more whack, followed by the incessant burning of the cheeks and ringing in the ears. Not tinnitus mind you for that would come later but a toned deaf ringing with each whack of those unflappable calloused palms or the knarly backs of her hands. And with years of experience under her black habit she learned to cup her hands ever so slightly and in such a way that with each open palmed whacked imprint her fingers would somehow claw their way across ones face in such a manner that they seemed to draw one’s cheek and face upward toward heaven, as if in a corporal raptured state of mind waiting for and begging for heavenly intervention.  To be fair to her she was an equal opportunity inquisitor. The girls got it too. And their faces? Wow. Pink and as pink as pure virginity could be but stained with the tracks of their tears: welling up and falling down and across those pearly, innocent, pretty cheeks.  

Us lads, we chuckled…

…September 1957. It was now time for school. Grade one. I was a smart young lad back then for I skipped Kindergarten. What kind of name is that anyway, Kindergarten? Jimmy-mum and I would go together, walk to school, and keep each other company all the way and on the way. It was about a mile and a half to walk, normally taking a shortcut through a huge hydro-field. I can still remember that walk. Stay on the left side of the road, face traffic, look both ways, cut across the street, quickly, then walk through the long grass of the hydro field. That field’s long and soft early autumn grass seemed to undulate magically in the light breeze, like an ocean’s swell of late summer’s willowing grass. Each long and tenuous swell appearing to a young fellow like me as some sort of an enormous barrier or sea swell that had to be climbed or sailed across. Down hill and dale we would go, through valley and trough; then up to the next crest, and to the next, and to the next, finally portaging across some wild and raging river until alas, back to the reality of the school yard where I would be confined to for the next seven years.

Catholic grade school: grades 1 through 8. No junior high or whatever they feel inclined to call these things these days. To us kids it made no difference.  And to an imaginative lad school was school. And it sucked. And the Catholic Schools really, really sucked because in addition to all of the scholarly stuff we also had to contend with the wrath of God disguised in long flowing black robes and habits. Sister this and sister that.  Father this and father that.  Adapt quickly and quietly and quickly and quietly we did for it soon became apparent that it was us against them. For that reason alone our time in the Catholic School system was the very best of times as well as the very worst of times.  At its worse? A residential school for white Anglo – Saxon boys and girls. At its best? It was a great deal of fun and a whole lot of laughs for it was us against them for the next seven years. Seven years, as I skipped a grade for being the smart ass that I was back in those days.  Then again the Catholic Separate School System had a mandate and a mission to spit out as many good catholic boys and girls on society as fast as was heavenly possible.

They had lay teachers there as well. Some were great, others not so much.  Ms McFayden, grade seven, a closet chain smoker.   Mr Bowner: a superb, artistically inclined grade six teacher. There was Ms Tupper, grade three; Ms Kellerer, grades four and five; Ms Raddigan, grade eight, Radiator in our vernacular. Sister Theresa, grade one. Grade two – I can’t remember…

…Jimmy-mum, as he was later known to us, was my very first really best friend forever. I met Jim when I was 5 years old. We are still friends to this day. It was late February 1956. And he was 6. Wow, 6. I couldn’t wait to be 6. He was a shy guy for he hid outside the front of our house on a terraced part of the front yard’s landscape. My mom told me she thought she saw him but he ducked around the side of the house when she looked out the front door. I hurriedly dressed myself as best I could and out I went into the dull grey February afternoon to seek what I could find. Sure enough, there he was, at the side of the house dressed warmly in the frigidness of a late winter’s day.

Want to be friends? I touted.

“Okay” he said

“Okay”, I repeated

My name is John

I am Jim. Want to see my dad’s 56 Ford?

Huh? 

We became fast friends, out and about exploring our small world as best as we could. The Catholic Church, which was located across the road from our house, had an enormous parking lot. It was, in essence, our future ball hockey forum in the fall and winter months while growing enthusiastically in our ripe imaginations as Yankee Stadium in the summer. Our small street with its post war houses, empty muddy lots, small ornamental elm or maple trees on every front lawn and in exactly the same spot became our playground. Unbeknownst to us at the time these post war years were really the genesis of suburban social engineering with a tree on every lot.  Oh and those tarred, graveled, blacktop roads. Hated them for in the heat of the summer the tar and the small stones would melt in a gooey charcoal grey fusion mass and stick to the bottom of our “Keds.”  “Keds:” my first real pair of running shoes. Black and white “Keds!” I took that moniker to heart and felt that while I wore those treads I had to be running all of the time. They were running shoes after all.

And on those hot humid days of July and August our Moms and Dads would sit on their front door stoops surveying their domains yakking away at the neighbors while monitoring our whereabouts. Not blatantly obviously you see but ever so discreetly. If it was really, really hot and humid they could be found sitting in the cool dark and damp cellars sucking back on an India Pale Ale and drawing on a Buckingham or a Camel, non filter. A real man’s cigarette. Moms too. This generation got through the war not just on their stomachs but by leaning on their nicotine sticks.  In those days, everyone smoked.

I loved it best when my mom and dad sat on their front door stoops. Us kids would run around playfully then sit with them listening to their neighborhood gossip, or in my dad’s case, some good ole war stories. Not bad tales of combat but the fun reminiscences of bygone days, the war effort and the antics of his war buddies. If I was really good my Dad would let me have a draught of his cold, amber IPA.  I was too young to smoke but I so loved the sweet smell of nicotine in the air that I usually sat downwind and took in the fumes.  How I loved those days…

Note this post follows a thread that begins 02 Jan 17.

…One day, and I’m not too sure what day actually, I found myself riding in the back of a large truck.  It was huge and dark and noisy and full of furniture. I was with an older cousin I think. This was so cool. Jerking and bouncing round the chairs, cushions and tables in the back of that truck as we plundered along the pock marked, pot holed roads of the west end of the city.  I do believe it was February, a Saturday, 1956, a mild winter – part of the other hottest year on record.  Where were we going?  Not really sure at the time but I do believe that my parents hit their Shangri-La: a house in the burbs. We were moving out and away from the downtown core with all of its excitement, excrement and hot, humid, heavy smelly summer air to the fresh, healthy and quiet wide open spaces of suburbia.  Houses galore! All looking about the same. Design features of a post Second World War housing boom: two story houses with a large dormer in the back only accentuated on the street by those narrow and long, single story, brick built bungalows.  Street upon street, row upon boring row, with the requisite single maple or elm tree in the front yard. Wow! We had arrived.

What a house that was.  A two story big red brick monster, as all houses are big to a 5 year old.  It sat on a fairly large suburban lot. The front yard had the requisite decorative tree in place with a back yard that was really huge.  I had to curtail my excitement though because under all of the dirty, brown-grey melting snow of February was grass. And grass grew and I could not pretend to believe that while my dad watched his ball games Saturday afternoons in the late spring and summer months that my mom would be content to be out cutting the grass.  That little bit of suburbia, an urban Rockwellian scene of nostalgia, of Dad watching sports on TV with mom out in the yard working with the suburban plow, would not continue forever for I was getting bigger.  I was getting stronger and sooner or later it would be me out pushing that World War I era push mower.  And like those ugly, scary, out-worldly war machines our push mower cut grass about as well as those first tanks careened and mowed across no-mans land.

The backyard was fantastic.  Great for a kid.  It had two distinct areas. The upper yard, close to the backdoor, came equipped with a state of the art sandbox complete with fine coarse sand, four wooden sides with triangular corner seats for heavens sake. Seats!  It was bordered on one side by the paved single wide driveway and a very large and separate two car garage.  In 1956 this was unheard of for a working class home.  Why was this important? A paved driveway? Snow of course! And snow had to be shoveled.  I couldn’t depend on my mom forever here. Sooner or later I would be obliged to take up the shovel and well, shovel.

The other side of the yard was fenced to separate our abode from that of the neighbour.  The double car garage was so wide that the upper part of the backyard was about 20 yards narrower than the lower portion with less grass to cut.  The lower part of the yard, the back forty, dipped down about 3 feet and was separated from the upper yard by a tiered terrace. The back forty had large garden beds laid out in a square pattern with raspberry bush accents around the perimeter.  But all I could think about then was the potential for a backyard rink for when snow melts during a winter thaw water runs down the path of least resistance and pools, in this case, from the upper reaches of our yard to the lower back forty.  And when the water freezes as it invariably would we had a ready made skating rink.  Dad would never have to leave his TV and construct a backyard rink for us kids.  I was so excited and so was he!

My sister had other issues. Not my oldest teeter-totter sister, but my second oldest sister, the penultimate one.   In the winter time she saw the snow covered upper portion of the backyard as her blank and open canvass…a blank canvass in urban snow-house design.  She really wanted the whole of the back forty to lay out a “planned city” of urban snow but I had to put my galoshes down and stop her in her tracks.  As a compromise I agreed to help her in her lay out of her snow walls, her snow rooms and the snow halls of her snow designs, but only in the upper portion of the yard.  The lower back forty of the yard was my territory..

We always did this at night. I don’t know why but at night, when it was really, really cold and frosty out; so cold that each breath took your breath away, the snow glistens like it was imbedded with a thousand specks of diamonds, especially under a clear, moonlit, star embedded sky. And if we were really lucky, the green hues of the dark winter’s northern sky shimmered and danced and wove a pattern that was frighteningly beautiful and soothingly fresh; paradoxically frigid yet illuminated by such a warm glow. And oh so quiet. For two little kids we felt sure that we were all alone in the whole wide world. This was pure magic. To a 5 year old kid life was indeed magical and good…