Politics at Home - by Mom

Personal history question:

    Didn’t get m’s email. But I think her question for today was something like

“Did your family (growing up) have discussions about the news and politics of the day?”

Yes!

To clarify, there wasn’t so much discussion as there was avid discourse by my father to all of us children and our mother. He was a passionate anti-Communist, a believer in the necessity of the Cold War.  Dad belonged to Toastmasters and to a speakers’ bureau, which sent him like a missionary to various service clubs and other gatherings to preach about the Communist infiltration of American institutions.  I think now that many of his dinner table diatribes were “practice runs” for his speeches.

            If we listened respectfully (i.e., silently) all was well.  If we interrupted, the wrath came down on us.  To ask a question was to threaten his authority, and by extension, to reveal indoctrination by Communist influences, such as the Beatles.  So we just listened.

At the age of six, I organized the littler kids in the neighborhood to shelter from atomic bombs. We would hear or see an airplane go by overhead, and run for cover. The screaming was amazing as we ran around the yard pretending to look for a place to hide, finally ducking under lawn furniture. Someone started crying once, imaginations being so vivid at that age, and I got into a heap of trouble for frightening my little peers, a caustic irony given the fact that everywhere we turned in those days, gigantic adults were frightening us out of our wits.

Dad’s bedtime stories for me included tales of the crucifying of Chinese Catholic priests and nuns at the hands of the communists and little Chinese

Catholic children having chopsticks rammed through their ears if they failed to denounce Jesus. Naturally, this was going to happen in America, as soon as the Russians and Chinese got the bomb.  Catholics would be the first to go, and all due to the Commie pink-o sympathizers at Harvard and Hollywood, who were going to give them the plans for the bomb and open the garden gate for them to come get us.

            In 1959, when I was 8 years old, the communist Fidel Castro overthrew the Catholic Cuban dictator Batista.  To hear the ranting and fear from my parents and their friends, you would have thought the Russians had invaded Evansville, Indiana.  Obviously the next step would be the atomic bombing of our home. That same year, Nixon ran for President against Kennedy and lost. Nixon had been prominent in the congressional committee on Un-American Activities, that era when academics, politicians and artists were “exposed” as having been members of the International Communist Party or having sympathy with communists, or just knowing any.  Naturally this made Nixon a hero, and Kennedy a villain.  It must have been hard for my parents at some level, having divided loyalties between the anti-Communist conservative and a liberal Catholic.

            Around this time, Catholic people associated with the Batista regime were fleeing Cuba and seeking asylum in the US, as well as other Catholic countries in Europe and South America.  There was a program through our diocese whereby Catholic families in good standing could take in some of these refugees.  My parents applied to take in a teenaged boy about 4 years older than me.  We were all very excited, getting a room ready, preparing ourselves for a new brother.  Then we got the news that we were denied.  We were all very disappointed.  When questioned why this action was taken, the answer was “Politics.”  Whether it was because of Dad’s virulent speaking against Communism and Castro, or because of their very public support of Nixon over Kennedy, I don’t know.

           

   Once when I was in the7th or 8^th grade, he spoke at a high school assembly at Mater Dei High School, the Catholic high school on our side of town. The principal there was Sister Mary Esther. They became great friends, based, I believe, mainly on her high personal standards, which included being ferociously anti-Communist.  She was tall, willowy, with an elegant swaying walk, quick and light, despite her height.  It was she who recruited me to attend the Academy Immaculate Conception, where she was being transferred by her order to become the principal there, and where I would attend four years of High school, although only two of them with her as Principal.

Political fervor went way back in the families of both my parents, although it was not universal.  My father’s maternal grandmother, Marie Boudousquie Cabiro, was fiercely antagonistic toward Huey Long, governor and later assassinated Senator from Louisiana. She loathed him so much that she took an oath never to cross the Huey P. Long Bridge in New Orleans.  Her sons, my dad’s uncles, known for their pranks, once got her into a car on some pretense and distracted her about the destination and route, until they had her out in the middle of the bridge, when they revealed that she had broken her oath. Clearly, not everyone in the family cared so much about politics!

ON my mother’s side, it was quite a different story.  My grandfather Dominic Galeota was reputed to have been a Socialist at best, and a Communist at worst.  My Uncle Art Bisone, married to my Aunt Kathleen Galeota, told me that Dominic had been in Utah to work on the railroad, and that he had written for the Daily Worker.

I have never seen anything to verify either one of these statements, and Uncle Art was known for joking around.  However, my father was heard to say on more than one occasion that Dominic was a Communist.  They didn’t get along, but that’s not proof of anything.  It would be a fun area to research; once more important research is completed.

My mother had some friends who were active politically, and she read a lot of books and pamphlets brought to her by our friend and neighbor Mrs. Kautzman, but I really don’t know what they were about.  She may have participated in a few Republican social outings, but it wasn’t a driving force for her to be active.  She did read quite a bit, but her belief was that the wife should follow the political opinions of her husband.  Given my dad’s fiery commitment to his own opinion, I think it would not have been wise for her to do otherwise.

           

My Dad ran unsuccessfully for the Indiana legislature once, and I still have some of his campaign flyers. 

As a 12 year old, I wore a “Goldwater for President” campaign button to school, ensuring my Least Popular status in the 7^th grade.  This may also have contributed to the general downfall of my family at Corpus Christ Parish School, recounted in another chapter. Evansville Catholics were predominantly Democrats and liberals.  I was enthusiastic for no other reason than family loyalty, and I think my parents were naïve or fearless enough not to care about the consequences of being different.

As a teenager, I was encouraged to spend my summers working as an unpaid volunteer for the campaign of a Republican congressman, Roger Zion.  You can read the Wiki article about him at this address:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_H._Zion. 

At the time, I thought he was quite the hero, but to look at his picture now, I don’t remember anything about his politics.   I loved the campaign activities—attending county fairs in a little white boater hat passing out leaflets to crowd about the candidate and his stance on Social Security, among other things, none of which I understood or cared much about.  I liked the boys who rode the campaign van, danced with them in the dance tents at the fairs, and kissed most of them at least once.  I was such an activist!

            My one distinct issue-oriented encounter was at one of these fairs, when I handed a flyer about Social Security to a man in his 20s.  He kind of threw it back in my face and said, “Why would I bet interested in Social Security?” I have to laugh when I realize that he is at least 65 by now, and receiving that income that he didn’t care about when lawmakers were making big decisions about it.

Family Dinner - by Mom

Back by popular demand are the personal history writing assignments.  We so love to read about you guys and your lives!  

This week's Personal History task is to write about the following:

Describe a typical family dinner. Did you all eat together as a family? Who did the cooking? What were your favorite foods?

I'm really looking forward to reading these again!

      In the house where I grew up, the one in Evansville, Indiana, we had a breakfast nook in the kitchen, and a formal dining room in a breezeway.

Our kitchen was galley-style—long and straight. On one end was the breakfast nook --a true nook, built into a bump-out with windows on three sides. We had a table there, but I can’t remember if the seating was a built-in booth or separate chairs. I’ve been looking at some mid-century kitchen designs online to jog my memory, but I haven’t found the right picture yet. Perhaps I will try to draw it sometime.

     Until I was 12, the formal dining room was in the “breezeway,” or at least that’s what we called it. It was a long room that ran along one end of the house, front to back, between the single garage and the rest of the house. It was paneled in Knotty Pine and had big windows at each end, that could be fully opened, allowing for the breeze to blow through. In a house without central air conditioning, this was a beautiful thing, and for me, this was the most beautiful room in the house. (Ask me sometime what happened to that room, if I haven’t already told you about the drunk driver who knocked down half our house.)

     We had two typical kinds of dinners—evening meals. More than half the time, Mom would have dinner ready a little before 5 pm, and the kids would eat in the kitchen, very casual style- plate, fork, cup- with a high chair for the little kid. She would set a full place setting at the head of the dining room table for Dad and he would eat in there alone when he got home.  He was almost always home by 5 or 5:30, so it wasn’t about timing.  He just liked the peace and quiet of dining alone.  I don’t know how they determined which evenings we would do it that way.  Maybe it was based on how tired she was, or how cranky we were, or if Dad had had a tough day.

     In those days, Dad called Mom from work at least once or twice a day. I think she was his stability and courage back then. I think she probably knew from those phone calls whether to have a family meal or just kids in the kitchen, dad at the table. One of the chores we regarded as a privilege was to set Daddy’s place at the table, just right, before he got there. There were rules: Never put the ice in the glass until he was seated, or the water wouldn’t be cold enough; If you looked at the evening paper funnies before he got home, fold the paper back up perfectly; Finish practicing piano before he got home, or forget about it; Nothing else on the dining room table,,, not homework or toys; Be quiet.

 But other evenings, we would set the table in the dining room for everyone and all eat together. The table had to be set just so, although we used everyday dishes and flatware—Melamine and stainless. Only for holidays did we get out mother’s china and silver. Even so, the forks, knives and spoons had to be in their correct places—forks on the left, knife and spoon on the right--the napkins under the forks, the glasses at the head of knife.

 It was a little nerve-wracking to eat all together, because someone would inevitably spill something, or drop a fork, or knock over a water glass, and the yelling would begin, usually ending in Eddie being sent away from the table without the rest of his dinner.  In my mind, it didn’t matter who spilled, it was Eddie that got in trouble. Several times he got sent outside, followed by epithetic references to various unmannerly animals.

My stomach is knotting up now, just writing about it. I know there was at least one time that I lost my temper at my dad over this, and I went and sat on the inside of the door where my little brother sat on the outside. I’m quite sure this would not have gone unpunished. Maybe I didn’t really do it; maybe I just wished that I had shown some loyalty rather than just fear. It was unfair and very unpleasant.

But the good part was the food.  Our mother was always a good cook.  She was also a bargain shopper.  We had a deep-freezer in the basement, the chest type, and she filled it with breads from the day-old store and beef chuck roasts that were on sale for 39 cents a pound, and I don’t know what else.  I know that there was a limit of 10 roasts per customer during that sale, but the manager told her she could come back again subsequent days for another 10.

In the summer, she would roast the beef over some charcoal briquettes on a small barbecue she constructed herself out of concrete blocks and the rack from the kitchen oven. These were so very excellent in flavor.

We very rarely ate chicken, often had tuna-based meals, rarely potatoes, often rice, very often pasta.  Mom didn’t bottle vegetables, but she did stock up on quantities of canned goods during sale times.  There was often corn—fresh as well as canned—and green beans.  She always grew tomatoes and peppers, but we ate them all up fresh in their season.

Another favorite meal was what she called sukiyake, a Japanese-influenced dish of beef strips, bell peppers, sliced celery and sliced onions in a soy sauce gravy, served over rice. Mom had gone to occupied Japan and Okinawa during her service in Guam, and loved Japanese foods and art.  It seems like we had that once a week. And we loved it.

There was also her famous tomato meat sauce, and while I thought for years that her manner of constructing it was eccentric—crushing the canned tomatoes with her hand directly into the pot—I recently discovered in a classic Italian cookbook that this is the traditional / classic way to do it. Of course we had this with spaghetti or other pasta, but we also loved to come home from school and, finding the sauce bubbling on the stove, make a quick “sauce sandwich” which was sauce on bread in a bowl. So yummy!  I don’t think we had meatballs very often.  Another classic dinner was beef chunks and rice.  I think this was one of Dad’s favorites, and sometimes she would make it just for him, and we would have something else.  There was often salad—iceberg lettuce and tomatoes with a simple homemade vinaigrette. I don’t remember that we ever had bottled dressing except for when there was company ( very rare) or a holiday.

In the winter, she made her vegetable beef soup, starting with a chuck roast (of course) in the pressure cooker. I have tried for many years to achieve that aroma and the flavor of that soup, coming up with some near misses but never perfection. She gave us the recipe, but I think it must have been some of her biome in it that made it so heavenly and impossible to reproduce. This soup was almost always accompanied by her homemade noodles, another bit of perfection unachievable by regular human beings.

Chicken Cacciatore with dumplings—in a red sauce with peppers, and the puffy dumplings cooked on top of the sauce. Impossibly delicious1 WE had broad flat bowls, that I think are called soup plates, for this dish, because there would be a drumstick or a wing in the sauce and you needed room to maneuver the meat and the bone without losing all the heat from the sauce. This was always eaten in the kitchen.

On Saturdays, dad was a lot more relaxed, and he liked to “make lunch.” This consisted of driving to a small grocery store not far from home where there was a deli department that carried homemade German deli meats: headcheese (ugh, don’t ask.  Look it up and see for yourself. Okay, never mind. Here it is. )

     www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/ark_product_detail/southern_louisiana_hogs_head_cheese

It is not exaggerating to say that this would be the food of Melissa’s nightmares. It’s everything about ham that you hate, mixed together and suspended in vinegar-flavored gelatin. A quote from the website above says,

“Sadly, a taste for the product has not been cultivated in younger generations and consequently Hog’s Head Cheese could very easily disappear from the realm of gastronomic knowledge.”

Disappearance of Hogshead Cheese would be  very good, I think. Nothing sad about it.  This is totally a peasant food, using all the otherwise-unusable bits, for which we should show respect, but, oh, my…. Daddy thought it was pretty funny that we didn’t like it.

(I always thought it was a German thing, but when I Googled it, I discovered that it is also a Southern Louisiana thing, which would account for it being such a favorite of my Dad.) Not to let Headcheese predominate, I just thought you would like to know an oddity.

This same Deli also had fantastic sandwich meats—Garlic bologny, pickle- and –pimiento loaf, regular bologna, also hommade,  and wieners as fat as a little kid’s wrist with skins as thick as …. skin… that had to be boiled thoroughly before eating. You had to pierce the skin in several places before or while they cooked, not sure why.

Along with these things, Dad would get the crustiest French-style bread he could find, always instructing us that it wasn’t “real” French bread, just a very poor imitation. He would also buy the “good” mustard, brown, with seeds, And he would make sandwiches with us all gathered around the kitchen table. These were very happy times, in marked contrast to the sit-down meals in the dining room. 

     I think there were a number of dinners of eggs, and of bologna sandwiches. Vienna sausages sometimes. Spam and eggs. Fish on Fridays—Red Snapper for the parents, fish sticks for the kids. Otherwise meatless, probably eggs. Tuna casserole.

 To the best of my recollection, there was no take-out while I lived at home. Ice cream was only for birthdays. Cookies were only for Christmas. Gnocchi for holidays. And always something exotic, seafood-ish and new-to-us for New Years—caviar, octopus smoked oysters, shrimp.
     One thing for sure, when I was young, there was always a meal together at the end of the day—not always with dad, but with mom and the kids. She was always there, it was always a meal, seated, with a prayer to begin.

“Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Old-Fashioned Remedies - by Mom

Ever get stitches? What happened?

Were you ever hospitalized as a kid?

What were some of the “old-fashioned” remedies for sickness that you remember your parents using?

Well, I have told you about breaking the window with my arm and the many stitches and re-stitching that had to be done.  I believe those were my only stitches until Melissa was born and I needed a little sewing up.

I never broke any bones, or had my tonsils out or other disasters of childhood. Of course, I never had a bike either, so that eliminated one source of catastrophe.

          I was never hospitalized, but I did go through a period of very bad headaches when I was 11 or 12. I was pretty sure it was a brain tumor, thanks to a Reader’s Digest article. I had Mono in 7^th grade, and then pneumonia just before 9^th grade.  I got lab tests and x-rays for the headaches, and a work-up for the Mono, but I was treated for everything in the clinic and at home.

          I had a lot of nosebleeds as a kid, and my mom could get pretty freaked out about that, but she would call my Uncle Sam on the phone. Once he even came over to the apartment late at night to check it out, but it was just a regular little-kid nosebleed.

          Back then, we got chicken pox, measles, mumps, scarlet fever (whatever that is). Chicken pox the remedy was baths. Measles and mumps were treated with aspirin (yes! Before Reyes syndrome was known) and a darkened room. Since the only room with heavy, room-darkening drapes was our parents’ bedroom, we would get to stay in there during the day.

          One thing for sure, when we were sick, it was mom who took care of us.  My dad only had to hear someone vomiting to trigger his own nausea and vomiting.

          We didn’t own a TV for several years, but there was this repair place that rented TVs for $1 / day, and when we were really sick with a major disease, or when my dad got surgery, we would get to have a TV for a week, a very old-fashioned remedy, indeed!

         

          Other remedies:

          Baking soda and water paste on bee stings or wasp stings

          A liquid called Campho-phenique for chiggers and mosquito bites

          Vicks on your throat for a cold or sore throat

          A hot match-tip on a tick to make him back out

          clear nail-polish on a tick to kill him without leaving his claws in you

          Calamine lotion for poison ivy and heat rash

          I can see as I look over this list that many of the common things were flora and fauna – And things you kids did not grow up with in St. George—chiggers, poison ivy.

My mom was pretty advanced, read a lot and had smart friends, so she didn’t do anything superstitious or weird. She had a sister (Mary) who was an RN and both her brothers were doctors who lived at home while they were students, so she absorbed a lot of smart things from that.

          We were a sturdy lot and enjoyed good health, for the most part.

Addendum

 Small scrapes and cuts were treated with one of these antiseptics:

Tincture of merthiolate or mercurochrome.

 They were two different things, applied with a dropper. The glass dropper was not a bulb / suction medicine dropper but rather a solid glass tube with a solid glass sphere on the tip, which would collect a small amount of liquid from the bottle which could then be applied to the wound.  It was used as an antiseptic, and painted a red badge of courage on your knee or the palms of your hands scraped in a fall. As I recall, Merthiolate stung but mercurochrome did not. It was thought that the stinging medicine worked better, but that may have been a fiction based on a temporary household depletion of the non-stinging potion.

School Days - by Dad

 Dear Melissa,

Ok, I led a sheltered childhood compared to Mom’s story about being persecuted in a catholic school. It will be boring by comparison, but here goes.

I started kindergarten and first through 6^th grade at he Heber North School. In Heber, everyone went to public school. I didn’t know there was any other kind. I don’t remember my kindergarten teacher, but my first grade teacher was Mrs. Walton, who was the nicest teacher ever. She let me bring World Book encyclopedia from home and read it in class. She thought I was the smartest little boy she had ever known. I’m sure there were other smart little boys, but she let me think I was the smartest. I think we still took little naps after drinking a carton of milk on a nap mat sometime in the mid morning. I can’t remember if that was first grade or kindergarten. I also remember I was the slowest eater in school. The teacher that was assigned to monitor the lunch room would start nagging me to eat faster as soon as I got my tray, because I was always the last one done. Interestingly, as a teen and adult I became a very fast eater which has always driven your mom crazy.

Recess was a really big thing throughout elementary school. I remember many different fads, things like playing marbles (having the prettiest marble, one with a defective flower in the middle, or a “steelie” was a big deal) , hop skotch (you had to have a really good taw), spinning tops, ice sliding during the winter, building snow forts, ball and jacks (mainly for girls) and avoiding the killer icicles were some of the main activities. Later we got some outdoor swings and “tricky bars” which were quite challenging. Jumping out of the swing at the peak of its ark was popular with the tough guys. I was never that tough.

The North school was a red sandstone brick building 3 stories high with a basement which house the coal furnace and the boiler which I never saw. There were radiators in the classrooms, which sometimes got so hot we would have to open the windows even in the winter. Attached to the 3 story building was an “annex” which housed the two first grade classrooms and one second grade classroom and the lunch room. You had to walk down a big ramp from the big building to get to the lunch room and annex and we would line up on that ramp for school lunch, which pretty much everyone ate school lunch. I remember the cost being a dollar a week initially and later 1.25 a week. The old school had ancient wood floors which the custodian polished every week and swept every day. The newer annex had linoleum over cement. Even when I went to school there were grooves worn in the wood floors from so many little feet passing over them every day. No elevators, just big wide wooden stairs going up to the second and third floor. The higher the floors got the 5^th and 6^th grade, the lower grades got the first and second floor. You could actually open the windows and potentially hang out of them. Of course, we never did because it was forbidden. On the third floor you could see the “killer icicles” if the janitor hadn’t made it all the way around the building with a long pole he used to knock them down every winter morning. They would create a little mound around the outside of the building just under the edge of the 3 foot eaves.

I would walk to school most days as it was 3 blocks from home. I think my mother walked with me some days when I was in the first grade. Bullies were always a risk for little kids like me and I was always worried about some bigger tougher kids chasing me down and beating on me. I don’t think anything serious ever happened, except maybe Barry Reynolds threw a rock at me that hit right above the right eye. I still have the scar, I think I was about 9. The only other bully incident I remember was Steven Walker in 7^th grade language arts class smashed an orange in my loose leaf which made a terrible mess of all my assignments and papers. He was not my friend, but I guess I have to forgive him now. 7^th graders are the most awkward people in the world, thinking that playing practical jokes on each other and on the teacher is cool. I caught it from the Science teacher, Mr Craig, by raising my hand in class and telling him his fly was down (it was). He called us “little bounders”, and I was one of them.

I learned to play the harmonica, the recorder, and a little metal flute in elementary. I envy mom, who learned the mandolin when she was in school. I became pretty competent at the harmonica, though. Mr Pace, my 6th grade teacher, was a master harmonica player. In 7^th grade I learned the clarinet which we bought from a guy in Salt Lake my granddad knew who sold clarinets. The coolest thing was, and I think the reason my dad bought the clarinet from him, he had an antique steam engine car in the back of his shop.

I went to school with most of the same kids all through elementary, junior high, and high school, with a few kids coming and going. I could still name ¾ of the kids I went to first and second grade with. There were only two elementary schools in Heber, the North and Central school. A few times a year we would have dances with the other school, and it opened up opportunities to look at all the cute girls from the Central school. Of course, you would never talk to them unless you somehow knew them from before, but once in a while you would get to dance with them in a square dance, or learning ballroom dancing.

Well, I was a pretty good speller too, like mom. I was usually one of the last 3 up in the spelling bee, but I don’t remember it being as dramatic as mom. My favorite subjects were math and reading and science and music. I also really liked the german we got to learn a little of in the 5^th and 6^th grade. My dad had a college German text and had taken it in college and was able to teach me a little. He was more interested, though, in the Saturday Evening Post German spoof cartoons. Anyway, learning was fun in elementary school and I liked everything.

Love, Dad

School Days (Part 1) - by Mom

 

Personal History Assignment:  School Days

Describe your elementary school. Name? Public? Private?

In what city or town did you attend grade school?

Who was your favorite grade school teacher? Why?

Was there a teacher that you didn’t like? Why?

What did you usually wear to school?

How did you get to school? How far was it?

What subjects did you like and which ones didn’t you like?

Who were your best friends? Tell what you can about them. Do you know where they are today? If so, do you keep in touch?

Did your siblings attend the same school? How many grades above or below them were you?

I attended four Elementary Schools, beginning with Kindergarten in Buffalo NY.  I think I already mentioned being walked to school by one of my dad’s Explorer Scouts when my mother broke her leg ice-skating on Lake Erie. I just did a little Mapquest to see if my memory served correctly.  The boy who took me was Chuck Alaimo and he attended Canisius High School, which was right next to my kindergarten. I don’t really know the name of the school I attended; perhaps is was Canisius as well. I liked K just fine but I loved saying “ Chuck Alaimo” over and over again, like a little song, and holding his hand along the way.  I was proud that he was a Boy Scout, although I’m sure at 5 years old I had no idea what that meant.

          We moved to Evansville Indiana when I was six and I attended Holy Spirit Parish School for first grade. I have described Sister Jean Ann and my First Communion, basically the highlights of that year.

          Another memorable moment of first grade was a deeply cloudy day.  The sky was so dark, it looked like night. We were not allowed to go out to recess, but the most amazing thing happened: Sister Jean Ann brought in large balls of gray clay, one for each of us. WE could do anything we wanted with our clay. It was smooth, smelled dusky and earthy, and was the same color as that slate-gray sky outdoors. Because of the darkness of the day, the classroom lights were on and made a strange contrast with the outside. At some point, Sister Jean Ann left the room for a moment, and one of the boys said, ”Watch this.”  He picked up his ball of clay, raised it over his head, and threw it out the open window. A gasp went up from 20-some 6 year olds, and the room went very quiet.  He sat there with no clay on his desk, the emptiest desk you ever saw, with his hands clasped in the place where the clay had been. I don’t recall anything that happened afterwards, except being filled with wonder.

          “How did he have the idea to do that? And how was he so brave to do what he thought of?” It took my breath away with admiration and a little horror, as one of the more knowing children whispered that he was in trouble. As for me, his action opened the world of possibility.  As I tell it now, it reminds me of the Fall in Eden, introducing the notion of acting outside the boundaries, the dark attraction of rebellion and disobedience.

          We moved again, to another part of town and another parish – Corpus Christi Catholic School and Church, Father James O’Connor pastor, where  I attended 2^nd through 7^th grade.  I was a bit of a misfit, a bookworm, no TV at home, Republican parents in a Democrat parish.  You name the stream, our family swam up it when everyone else swam down.  Evansville had a huge German-immigrant population, especially our side of town. My classmates names were Schnabel, Raben, Helfrich, Hilldenbrand. Although there were also King, Smith, Petrie, and Musgrave, “Soniat” was entirely foreign there.

          In the middle of 7^th Grade, my parents had a huge falling out with the priest and nuns. It’s a long story, but it was a defining moment for my family, and for me.

It started with a clerical error on the part of the parish clerk – a volunteer—who was not fully literate. It escalated to having me and my brother Ed being punished for months on the basis of that error.

          Catholic parishes collect funds from the parishoners by envelopes, similar to LDS tithing envelopes, except that each member is given a box of envelopes at the beginning of the year, with the dates on them for each Sunday and an identifying serial number, such as the Soniats’ number is 420. Thus, a clerk, opening envelope 420, would go to the ledger, find line 420, and enter the amount written on the check.   My mother, who paid all the bills, started including our tuition payment with her Sunday donation, instead of following the established pattern of the children bringing in the tuition to school.  But the clerk didn’t read,or perhaps he didin’t read English, although he apparently did numbers.  So he put down the tuition amount as “petty cash.” 

          So the nuns and the priest thought my family was not paying their fair share, although technically, the parish was not supposed to deny any child who wanted to attend the school, whether they paid or not.  For a long time, maybe even a couple years, my folks had no idea they were being considered deadbeats, despite their comparative prosperity. They paid every month, and as far as they knew, we were in good standing.

          Then some funny things happened. I was told I would not be  allowed to have recess with the other kids outside, but I was to practice the organ during that time, and play for daily Mass.  That was fine with me; I hated running around, jumping rope, playing TV tag and other stupid games, and I loved being in the church, playing the organ.

          In sixth or seventh grade, I won the spelling bee for my class, then beat the seventh grade best speller. But when it came time for the city Spelling Bee, they sent the kid who won the eighth grade class bee. That was weird, but then they started keeping my name off the Honor Roll, even though I had the best or second-best grades in my class. Still, my mom let it slide. I know she called the school once, but whatever their answer was, she accepted it.

          Then when I was in seventh grade, Eddie started 1^st grade. To tell you this part, I have to describe the building.  Corpus Christi was a new parish, with a new building. It was modern in style, with a lofty broad roof, that  covered not only the church but the school, too, all  integrated under the one roof.

          The school cafeteria was on the entry level, the church and classrooms were up a broad open staircase—glass and stainless steel and shiny hard stone composite floors. Very noisy. The cafeteria, which also served as the parish social hall, related architecturally to the church much more than to the school area. Because of the acoustics of all the hard material, all the sound from the cafeteria carried  right into the church. As you may know, Catholics believe that the consecrated host IS the Body of Christ.  Between Masses, a consecrated host is kept on the altar in a locked box called the tabernacle. A red candle is kept burning in the sanctuary to indicate to worshipers that the Host is in there. People would come throughout the day to worship—say a rosary, walk the Stations of the Cross during Lent, etc. To maintain the sacred ambiance of the church,

there was NO TALKING in the cafeteria. 240-250 children all together at lunch. NO TALKING ALLOWED. Silent lunch. For reverence. Perfectly reasonable in context, but pretty monastic expectations for a bunch of little kids.

          Needless to say, little first graders had a pretty hard time with this.  They all talked. But only Eddie Soniat was punishedfor talking. He was made to sit in a corner and eat alone “for the rest of the year,” as he tearfully told me. He begged me not to tell the parents, but after a few weeks, I was just mad.  I tried to sit with him but that wasn’t permitted either.  So I finally told my mom.  She called the school , and I don’t know exactly what was said, but immediately, the world caved in.

          My dad came home from work, we all went to the school.  We kids stayed in the car, I think, while there was a big meeting with the priest, the nuns, and I think that clerk was called in. (I remember that the clerk’s wife had died that year or the year before, because his son was in my class, and the teacher made him stand at his seat while she announced to the class that Michael Petrie’s mother had died, and we should all pray for her, etc. I thought afterward that maybe MR. Petrie made those mistakes over mother’s donations because he was so sad.)

          Anyway, there was much heat and much noise in our home for several days, while we did not attend school.  My parents had a meeting with the Bishop, which would basically be comparable to the LDS Area Representative. He told my parents they had to send us to Corpus Christi and no other Catholic school.  When Dad said he would just send us to public school, the Bishop countered that he might excommunicate my parents.

 At that point, the Bishop had only heard the pastor’s side of things.  I know my parents asked him to just take a look at the books, to see the consistent “donations” in the amount of tuition that had been labeled “Petty cash.” Hours later, the Bishop called and told my parents they could enroll us in another Parish school, if the priest there would have us.  He must have seen the error in the accounting, and known that the relationship between family and parish was irreparable.

Father Vollmer, the Hungarian pastor of Resurrection Parish, was afraid we were trouble-makers, and wanted to meet us before deciding to accept us.  We sat crying in the car—public school, excommunication, burning in hell --- worried about everything from spelling bees to eternal damnation, as our parents worked to persuade the priest.

Father Vollmer was leery, but in the end, said he would agree to a trial period. So I finished 7^th and 8^th grade at Resurrection, with no more drama, and the rest of the kids all attended there throughout elementary, until they moved to Alabama.

          I was very happy about the upcoming spelling bee, figuring I had it nailed, as the best speller in 8^th grade, but Resurrection held its Spelling Bee according to the rules of the sponsoring newspaper, which gave all kids an equal chance on stage. I misspelled “receive” in an early round, and I still never type it without double-checking the ei-ie part.

          Stay tuned for Part Two.