Hang Your Wraps in the Cloak Room! Growing up Catholic in the ‘Forties: An Elgin Memoir: Volume 0

By James M. O’Brien, PhD

In l940, the nation hovers on the brink of World War II, and a small and fearful six-year-old trembles on the brink of first grade at St. Marys School, Elgin. He will find himself plunged into a world of mystery, guided by white-robed nuns who speak a mysterious language and live in a separate world from ordinary people. He will become steeped in the liturgy and language of the Catholic Church as it presented itself at the time, and come to feel set apart from the non-Catholics and special, but not always in a good way.

Charging into adolescence cars and girls and algebra he joins the St. Edward High School Green Wave (if only as a manager,) develops attitudes and a kind of identity if only as a class clown,) sets his sights on Notre Dame University and thinks about the priesthood, but not yet. And he works at the Bordons Ice Cream Factory and the Elgin Daily Courier News and Barnetts Junior Miss store and Edwards Jewelers but none of these venues give him a clue as to his future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491795729

James M. O’Brien, PhD

James O’Brien graduated Notre Dame, served as a parish priest, high school teacher, editor and Director for Media in the Rockford, IL Diocese. Earning a Ph.D. from Northwestern in Communication Studies, he taught at the University of Miami and The College of New Rochelle, retiring as Professor Emeritus. Dr. O’Brien offers film courses through the University of Wisconsin PLATO program and has committed two previous memoirs.

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Copyright © 2016 James M. O'Brien, Ph. D.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-9565-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-9572-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016906764

iUniverse rev. date: 04/26/2016

CONTENTS

Dedication

Introduction

Part I St. Mary's School - 1940

First Grade

Home on the Farm.

Second Grade

Part II Wayne, Illinois. 1942-45

Third Grade

Fourth Grade

Boy's Camp

Part III Elgin, Illinois. 1945-48

Sixth Grade

Seventh Grade

Eighth Grade

Summer of '48: The First Great Divide.

Part IV St. Edward High School: 1948-1952

Freshman Year

Sophomore Year

Junior Year

Senior Year

Part V The Summer of '52

Appendix Ten Texas Tales

Author Biography

DEDICATION

To my classmates, living and passed, who gave me something to belong to, who have remained, despite our many differences, connected and caring over the span of seventy years or more

To the Sisters of the Adrian Dominicans who dedicated their lives to teaching us the basics and enriching our childhoods and our adolescences without getting any credit from our self-involved selves

To the parents and parent-figures who supported us as best they could in our struggle toward adulthood and maturity

To my patient wife, who has heard these stories many times, and even read them a few times

(Sing!) ...we'll have these moments to remember.

INTRODUCTION

Memory is a chancy thing at our age. I can almost hear my classmates saying, Wait. It didn't happen like that. And I've learned that they are often right. I can only respond that it's my memory and it's what I've go to go on.

As the book jacket says, I've committed a couple of Memoirs already -- of my seminary years (Volume I) and my priesting years (Volume II.) I decided to go back and consider where that choice of vocation might have come from, and how I got to be that way. (Hence: Volume 0!)

After eighty thousand words, I'm not sure I have answered my own question. Priests were officially important in the Catholic community, but they didn't have much direct involvement with the schools. The elaborately habited nuns have largely disappeared from the public eye. We came to know Catholic religious professionals as human and fallible, but still 'set apart' from the rest of us.

I'm coming to think that the important thing for us, for me in particular, was simply belonging to that ancient, vast, rule-ridden, guilt-haunted and liturgy-rich community. How does one come to belong? Well, this is how it happened for me, back in that distant day.

PART I

St. Mary's School - 1940

A solid, red brick building on Gifford Street, probably built in the prosperous nineteen-twenties, featured six classrooms, a library, some utility rooms and possibly the best grade school gymnasium in the city, complete with stage, kitchen, folding mechanical bleachers and an adjacent refreshments room. A playground running the length of the school separated the building from Fulton Street. St. Mary Church stood diagonally across the intersection of Fulton and Gifford.

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The author fronts St. Mary's, full of fake determination.

First Grade: A Whole New Language!

Hang your wraps in the cloakroom.

What? In all my six years of life, I had never heard such directions. My wraps? What was a cloakroom? Many further mysterious commands would follow.

The speaker, Sister Francesca, towered over her first grade class, her five foot stature bolstered by the elaborate superstructure of her headpiece. (Adrian Dominican Sisters were known among women religious as the high hats both for their tall headgear and an attitude of superiority.) Also impressive -- a wide black belt with a long, big-bead rosary looped through it. The rosary rattled against the desks when sister strode down the aisles.

St. Mary's class of l948, about twenty of us, had begun our orientation to Catholic schooling by lining up alongside the old red brick building on Gifford Street in Elgin, first graders at the end of the line. September, 1940. Silenced by the ringing of a brass wooden-handled school bell shaken by Sister Honora, the principal, we marched two by two into the building and up the two flights to the classroom hall to the beat of a drum set jammed into one corner of the first landing.

My mother and I had arrived early to record the proud moment on our Kodak Brownie Reflex camera. Sullen and fearful, I posed reluctantly before the glass front door of the school (a door we school kids never used) gripping my new red tin lunchbox with its thermos jar of milk, sandwich, apple and one tiny piece of candy.

I'd been in school before but nothing like this. I'd managed three weeks in kindergarten in the tiny village of Wayne. The Wayne school being a model of 'progressive education', when the administrators learned I could read and add, they promoted me to second grade reading and first grade arithmetic. The huge second-graders, resentful of my presence, treated me roughly and I returned from school each day terrified until my mother withdrew me to grow and mature a bit before facing first grade.

Back at St. Mary's, we marched in following the second graders and got assigned into the tiny desks firmly screwed to the floor. Slanted, lift-up lids revealed a compartment for books; fold-down wooden seats attached to the front of the desk behind and so on to the very back. A groove across the top held our pencils. A round hole at the top right waited in vain for the fitted glass ink-wells which we wouldn't see for another three years.

Over forty students -- first and second grades - crowded the classroom. Our teacher, Sister Francesca, seemed angry, even close to hysterics on many occasions. I feared her greatly. Many years later I learned that the sixteen-year-old nun now faced her first class. Desperate for staff, the Dominican superiors had taken a girl with one year of high school and one year of novitiate and thrown her to the wolves (us!) After all, who couldn't teach first grade? And second grade at the same time.

Always a shy kid, I hung back and watched my new classmates. A few vivid moments remain from that first day. Clem Healy rushing up to everybody and saying. Do you know how to spell people? I can spell 'people.' P - E - O -- P - L - E." And Gene and Joan Knaak, twins! The first twins I had ever seen. I didn't even have brothers and sisters and here were twins -- a phenomenon of nature like the Grand Canyon.

Sister Francesca picked up her trusty staff liner -- a kind of comb-like device which held five pieces of white chalk and could draw a music staff on the blackboard. Not music but alphabet followed. As precise as a machine, Sister's hand drew the letters and we were meant to follow, reproducing them on our large-space blue-lined notebook paper -- a task that I found myself unable to accomplish in any satisfactory way, from that day to this.

Reading went better. Sister called out ten of our names and, clutching our primers, we made our way in front of the desks to a circle of tiny red wooden chairs. And we met Spot, the dog. I could read, but had no practice reading aloud to others. I put my head down and mumbled the words as fast as I could manage, both showing off and hiding at the same time. I haven't changed that much in seventy years!

Thoughts on nuns.

I had only nuns for teachers through grade school and, with one exception, high school. Though they varied in size, age, tone, skill, strategies, they all seemed much the same, due to the head-to-toe stark black and white habit (their clothing, not their way of doing things.) We knew that they were special persons in the Church, not priests nor their equals, but more mysterious, a powerful quality for us kids. We didn't see nuns in the movies -- I think maybe the first leading role nun came in The Bells of St. Mary's, l945. But nuns have been played by Deborah Kerr, Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Julie Andrews (almost a nun), Whoopie Goldberg (pretending to be a nun), and Meryl Streep, to name a few. They have been presented as saints, monsters, romantically conflicted, comical and, all of them, fiercely determined.

When the Catholic reforms of the 'sixties permitted nuns to give up their distinctive habits, religious vocations declined precipitously. Of course, it's more complicated than that, but imagine trying to recruit for the military without uniforms. The garb expresses and contributes to esprit de corps, or the sense of a community purpose and belonging. There are still lots of young women with strong religious commitments, but where do they sign up?

Then recess!

The playground seethed with the suddenly released energies of a hundred kids, the older boys racing around, pushing each other, commandeering the swings and the teeter-totter; the girls pretty much staying in groups on the sidewalks and around the edges.

Some playground! A sloping hardscrabble surface bounded by the sidewalks and running the length of the school down the Fulton street hill, and a pretty good hill it was. One corner near the back entrance contained the swings, the chinning bar, the swinging rings and a teeter-totter. The space surrounded on two sides by a rail of two-inch steel pipe welded onto verticals at intervals. Going under the bars was forbidden, but it happened. Not even a dandelion survived on that battered surface.

Boys rushed for the swings. Basic idea: pump higher and higher till the swing passed the horizontal, then the seat would drop straight down two or three feet with a thrilling jerk. You could fall off. Same principle applied to the teeter-totter. You got the victim up to the highest point, then you jumped off the lowest point, dropping the victim down with a jolt. You could get hurt.

I hung back against the walls of the school, afraid to get hurt, afraid to get involved, knowing no one. At the bell, we lined up and marched back into school. A lonesome stranger, I felt miserable and only barely managed not to cry. Lunch was no better, although my mother had made my favorite sandwich -- brown sugar and butter. I managed to choke it down.

The afternoon dragged and dragged. When finally after prayers, we were set free, I fled downstairs and jumped in the back seat of our grey '39 Plymouth coupe.

How was school? my mother ventured brightly. The question of the ages! Has any kid come up with a good answer? No way to explain.

Ok. I muttered and clammed up. Sensing my mood, my mother stopped at Burns Drug Store at the beginning of the long drive back to the farm and bought me a comic book, my very first, and the day was transformed. I can still remember images from that comic book -- crudely drawn gangsters jammed into a turreted armored car, invulnerable and deadly, spraying bullets from a machine gun and terrifying the populace. I loved the idea of being both dangerous and invulnerable. But, uh, oh, here comes Superman.

Checking Out the Scene.

After the first week, I began to look around a bit, particularly at the huge, mature second graders who occupied the three rows near the side blackboard. I spotted Sally Ann Grove, with her head of blazing orange-red hair and fell for her immediately. By the way, Catholic grade school girls, for the most part, seemed to have three names, - Ruth Ann Griffin, Ann Kathryn Kempik, Mary Lou Humbracht, Mary Ann Stickling. But what about Marlene Kelly and Nancy Bonnike? Did they feel deprived? Less Catholic? I never asked.

I was always good in school. Wait. I mean, I always did well in school. 'Good' might be stretching it a bit. After I got over being frightened, I sat quietly, reading all my books, the reading primer twice because of the stories. The arithmetic book stories didn't grab me that much -- not much plot! This quiet period also served to get me off on the right footing with the hard-pressed nun struggling with her double class load.

That footing didn't last. I got bored with sitting in a hurry. Ritalin had not yet been invented. I'd pull out my pencil box - pronounced 'pensibox' -- and sort through the tools of childhood education: pencils, of course, yellow #2 Faber-Castell pencils, with their Latin motto: homo fit faber -- man, the maker. Ruler, crayons -- the nuns always said 'Crayolas' -- a brand plug. A compass with its dangerous and destructive point; a protractor -- what on earth for? -- and maybe a little stenciling template.

The pensibox became an important status symbol for us -- the bigger the better. The more drawers; the more possibilities. Same for the Crayolas: the eight-stick box -- only for babies (which we were), the sixteen -- for serious coloring. And I seem to remember a fantastic box with sixty-four colors - puce, magenta, burnt sienna, burnt umber, cerice - give me a break. I loved Crayolas, not for their colors but because I could imagine them as space ships in the style of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.

Given that gum (and candy) remained firmly forbidden, I discovered that pencils were good to chew on. I did this unconsciously, first gnawing on the eraser -- not very good -- then the tough but tasty metal eraser holder, and finally the pencil itself, chewing up the wood and, of course, spitting out the dangerous 'lead' which we really knew was graphite. Whether this habit revealed some sort of nutritional deficit or a psychological one, I do not to this day know. Anyway, I went through a lot of pencils.

How to pass the time.

Sorting through one's pensibox provided only a brief respite from boredom. So I began to explore, interact, react, act out, anything that involved action. The desk, although age-appropriate, was huge for me and I had a lot of squirming room. And, when I raised the lid of the desk, I felt that I was now invisible from the front, a presumption that proved erroneous, time after time. James O'Brien! Stop that. Put down the desk lid. Sit up straight. No talking. Turn around. Et cetera. Finally, Sister Francesca had had enough.

James O'Brien. Pack your books and get out in the hall.

A crushing banishment. Deeply humiliated, I scrabbled together my books and papers, already a total mess, crept into the hall, and sank down against the wall outside the classroom door. What a tiny, pitiful sight I must have been. I don't remember crying, but I probably did. After a near-eternity -- about ten minutes - Sister came to the door and said quietly, You may return to your desk now. I crept back in, feeling the eyes of my classmates following my clumsy movements. I would never do this again.

The second banishment was not so bad. After a momentary embarrassment, I realized that, hey, I was out of class and free, sort of. I stacked up my books and began to look around the hall. A canvas fire hose folded into its dispensing rack, with the heavy brass nozzle hanging down...what if I pulled on the nozzle? Hmm. No, I better not. There's the front staircase, which we never used. Where did those stairs lead to? One cautious step led to another. I ventured down a flight, always fearful that Sister would come out in my absence, but it never happened.

I almost welcomed the third banishment. I discovered the library, empty and containing fascinating objects and a vast collection of books. At some later point, the principal found me there, ascertained that I was being punished, and returned me to the classroom, saying to Sister Francesca, I found your pupil in the library. It was Sister's turn to be embarrassed, and I was never again put out in the hall.

Well, not on my own.

Getting the Word.

Who made me?

God made you.

Why did God make you?

To know, love and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with him in the next.

Page one of The Baltimore Catechism, indelibly imprinted in my memory and that of every Catholic kid of my generation. We must have chanted it in groups a hundred times, and answered the questions individually, one after another.

'Religion' -- the subject, not the practice - demanded our most serious attention. Showing off, goofing around, talking, wiggling, not paying attention, all these took on the character of sin -- the heaviest word in the Catholic vocabulary.

Our task -- memorizing the answers to the hundreds of questions in the Baltimore Catechism, a brilliant reduction and simplification of our two-thousand year-old faith. And we labored at this task in a state of high seriousness.

We learned who we were -- Catholics, Roman Catholics, to be precise. We learned about the 'others' -- a vast anonymous group called non-Catholics, including Protestants, Jews, Atheists, Buddhists, Moslems and others who did not possess the True Faith. We were told that many of these non-Catholics might be good people; that they couldn't be blamed for not having the True Faith, but there it was, they didn't have it.

Our first grade instruction began with mechanics: how to make The Sign of the Cross. Sister mimed the gesture facing us in the front of the room -- pre-trained to work in reverse so that our hands moved in the right direction. Forehead, belly, left shoulder, right shoulder, then our hands together in the praying position.

In the name of the Father (forehead), and of the Son (belly), and of the Holy (left shoulder) Ghost (right shoulder.) All prayers, classes, religious exercises and (later) free throws began thus. Typically, as soon as the boys learned the move, we began showing off how fast we could execute the ritual. Sister reproved us at once.

You act like you're waving at flies! We laughed on cue. It's nothing to laugh at, Sister shot back. The Sign of the Cross represents Our Lord hanging on the Cross, suffering for our sins. No room for laughs there. We hung our heads a little, feeling something that we would learn to call guilt. It became a familiar feeling.

Memorizing Prayers

We learned that 'praying' meant 'saying prayers.' To say prayers, you have to learn them first, memorizing them word for word and reciting them back. The Our Father, or as the Protestants called it, the Lord's Prayer, and the Hail Mary at the top of the list. The words of the Hail Mary came more easily to us, though the phrase the fruit of thy womb didn't sound like kid-speak.

With the Our Father, I'm sure we produced all the variations which kids use to try and make sense of the Elizabethan English. Hallowed be they name became Harold be thy name. In New York, I'm sure half the kids said ...lead us not into Penn Station, though why the Lord would do that remained a mystery.

And, speaking of which, the word 'mystery' itself became a magical term, a convenient 'out' when the good sisters confronted questions they couldn't answer.

It's a mystery, they announced portentously, and we knew we had nowhere to go from there.

Best part of our early religious instruction -- class visits to St. Mary's Church, kitty-corner across Gifford and Fulton streets. We trooped over in two lines, girls on the left, boys on the right. Sister swung open the huge front doors, watched us make the sign of the cross dipping into the holy water fonts as we had been taught. Then we passed down the long central aisle and made a genuflection before we entered the pew. Genuflection - a big word and an unfamiliar movement involving some coordination and concentration, qualities not always available to six-year-old boys hurrying to get to the next thing. Tipping happened, even falling, followed by laughs, followed by reproof. Then we clambered into the front pews, stumbling over the fixed wooden kneelers, the boys packing in tight, bumping, elbowing, pushing, till Sister Francesca, pulling us by the sleeves, spread us in a more reasonable fashion.

The vast empty church seemed totally different from the crowded Sunday Mass scene - towering, echoing, awesome -- back when the word had meaning. We had never been so close to the high altar with its huge crucifix. The statues of the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph on the left and right seemed friendlier and more approachable. And before each statue -- racks of votive candles flickering in their translucent red holders - continuing the prayers of the faithful.

Stations of the Cross

I remember most intensely our Friday visits during Lent, when we made the Stations of the Cross, the long, repetitive, emotionally powerful dramatization of the passion and death of Jesus. The cross bearer, flanked by two vested and candle-carrying acolytes, came down the side aisle and paused in front of the first Station: Pilate Condemns Jesus to die. The priest intoned the first text: Consider how Jesus Christ, after being scourged and crowned with thorns, was unjustly condemned by Pilate to die on the cross...

The text, written by Saint Alphonsus Ligouri in the early eighteenth century, vividly communicated a heavy load of pain, cruelty, shaming, injustice and finally death to