Category: A Very Short Story

…I sat there in the pew for what seemed to me like an eternity. As the time marched on my hiccups seemed to get worse. I prayed and I prayed that they would stop but no heavenly dispensation came my way that day.  I held my breath for what seemed to be minutes but no luck.  I looked up into the bright afternoon sun but again no reprieve. Finally I sensed that I was the only young soul left sitting in the pews of the church, still hiccup-ing.  Just then the Priest came out from his Priest-Cave, looked around in the late afternoon sunlit church, with its long shadows and soft beams of spiritual light accentuated with particles of floating, flickering dust and spotted me.  It was Father Docherty. He was a fatherly Father of our church, nice but somewhat of a lush.  Chubby, but not fat, more cherubic like features, weathered and somewhat rustic with a fractured nose and pronounced limp from his athletic days of playing ice hockey for the “Holy Rollers.”

His robes hung over him in disarray. He was a slob, or should I say heavenly slovenly.  He always drooled so it was wise to give him a wide berth to avoid the spittle for, as mentioned previously, second hand spittle was a fate worse than death or penance for someone as young as me! He had a high squeaky voice which did not adequately or accurately personify his physical features.

How did I know he was a lush?  Several of my friends were alter boys – assistants to the Priest while celebrating Mass. And father Doherty always celebrated the 10:15 Mass. That was the time that the semi-high mass at our church was celebrated.  And one dictum that every young lad or lass in the parish knew was never ever go to the 10:15 Mass.  It lasted an eternity.  And being a semi-high mass meant more wine at the Offertory segment of the celebration.  It was the alter boys job to carry the small carafes of water and wine from a side table hidden from view from the parishioners up to the alter area such that the Priest could mix the water with the wine.  Only in his case there was no water only wine, and lots of it, in two carafes: one being white to resemble water the other being red to symbolise the blood of Christ. By the end of the Mass, Father Docherty’s limp became more pronounced as he began to slur his words. This was not really a problem because no one in the church was paying attention by this point in time anyway and even if they were they couldn’t understand Latin.

“Morrison” he commanded “What’s the problem”

I thought that I think it is obvious Father.

“I have the hiccups, Father, really hiccup-ing bad so I cannot say my hic-up-ed confession with these hiccups.”

“Come here”

I obeyed and when I got within an arms throw of his massive arms he put his left arm around me, chuckled somewhat and told me not to worry about the hiccups, as he led me to the confessional. Perhaps he was impatient for this session to end so that he could run back to his own quarters and watch Tarzan.

And at that exact moment in time, without a doubt and with no exaggeration on my part, when he slung his left arm across my shoulder, those hiccups ceased immediately.

Is this a saintly, canonization, beatification worthy moment?  Probably not in the overall Catholic scheme of things but for me it was an experience that I never forgot.  It was right up there with my Uncle Rupert’s guardian angel apparition on that dark and stormy night or my Dad’s miraculous recovery from cross eye-ed-ness after visiting St Anne De Beaupre’s shrine outside of Quebec City with his mother.  Truth or fantasy?  Don’t really know for I was an impressionable and innocent soul back in those days.  Cynicism had not yet manifested itself or wrestled away or destroyed my enthusiasm for life nor my innocence or naivety as yet.

Only happy thoughts!….

Note: this thread started 02 Jan 

….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!…..

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…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.