Don Growing Up 5

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart across the schoolboy’s brain.  The song and silence in the heart that in part are prophecies and in part wild and vain.
                                                                                                               --Longfellow

       School was my savior when I grew up in the early 1950s on a farm in northeastern Colorado. That’s where I learned what I wanted to do - write - and that’s where I found friends and sustenance - and basketball.

            We rode the bus to school every morning while we lived on the farm. The public school bus picked up about 10 or 12 of us parochial school kids until some old biddy protested about wasting taxpayers’ money. We could ride the bus, but it couldn’t go out of its way to pick us up. So we had to walk to and from Fritzler’s house on the corner a mile away.

            One of the things that we Catholic kids had to do was go to Mass every morning. Good little Catholic boys and girls would go to confession every month, and then we would celebrate the first Friday of the month by going to communion – with a clean soul. I was very apprehensive about going to confession because I couldn’t think of enough good (I mean bad) things to confess. I was no angel; I had a real smart mouth, but I thought talking back to my mother was an insufficient sin to placate a priest in charge of my soul. So I made up sins. I fought with my brothers three times, I lied twice, I got angry six times, and I talked back to my mother seven, no maybe 12 times. That seemed to do it. Father seemed pleased when he made me say 10 Our Fathers and 10 Hail Marys as my penance. So we fasted on the first Friday of the month, until one morning, neither I nor my mother remembered it was First Friday, and I ate breakfast. I took the bus to school and headed over to church when it came to me.

“Ohmigod,” I said to myself. “It’s first Friday, and I ate. “ (We were supposed to fast from midnight then). I really did not want to face the wrath of the good Sister (Religious were always referred to as “good” then), so I decided no one would know if I went to communion anyway. So I did. Lo and behold, the host stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I could not get it off. No matter the tongue lashing I gave it (you were not supposed to touch the host or to chew the Good Lord but let Him melt at his own speed), it stuck to the roof of my mouth like flypaper. I thought, “Good Lord. I have committed a mortal sin. I ate and now I went to communion, and I am paying the price. I shall  choke to death right here in church.”

Fortunately, the wafer melted, and I proceeded back to my seat as angelically as I could. I kept up a good front, even consuming my usual two bottles of chocolate milk and two glazed donuts in the cafeteria.  I decided to keep my mouth shut, and no one would be the wiser. But my conscience was going crazy. Hell was not that far away. So I told my father in heaven that I was sorry and that I would never not reveal a sin again. I think that worked. I relaxed. And now I hope the statute of limitations has passed. Mea culpa, mea culpa.

One of my great memories in grade school was when we decided to form our own Bowery Boys (East Side Kids from the movies) Club. We all loved the Bowery Boys, and I got to be Satch (Huntz Hall). Funny, thing the club broke up in a week, but I remained Satch all the way through high school. It seemed to fit.

Also when I was in about the sixth grade, my mom decided I should get some kind of reward for working on the farm. She let me have the cream money from milking the cows. This amounted to an exorbitant few dollars a week. I was beyond riches. I saved my money in a jar but couldn’t refrain from taking some to school. I flashed it around and offered to buy my buddies banana splits for 25 cents at Hector’s Drug Store. I was big man on campus for about two weeks until my mother found out how I was blowing my cash. End of the cream money.

Another significant period in my life arrived in the fifth grade. I was the first to learn my prayers in Latin in order to be an altar boy.

“Ad deum qui laetifict juventutem meam.”… “Quia tu es, Deus, fortitudo mea: quare me repulisti, et quare tristis incedo, dum affligit me inimicus?

Some things you never forget. Okay, okay, so I looked it up, but the first response I knew – even how to spell it. Anyway, I was very proud to be an altar boy, but I was also nervous about serving Mass. I didn’t like being in front of everyone, and I was scared I would make a mistake. You had to ring the bell properly at the right time. You had to carry the cruets of wine, and most of all you had to hold the little gold plate (paten)  under people’s chin in case the host dropped. To my horror one day, it did. I sneezed and jerked the patent, and the communicant lost the host on the floor. I didn’t know what to do. You could not throw a host away. The good Father saved me when he got down on the floor, and to my horror, popped the host into his mouth and swallowed it. (The host could not be disposed any other way.) I thought Old Lady Engraff was going to faint on the spot. Another crisis passed. (Of course, he later patiently explained to me that I had to be very careful when I held the paten.)

“Yes, father. I’m sorry, Father. Of course, Father.”

Angel that I was, my discomfort was shortlived, as I managed to recover enough to win the spelling bee at 9 a.m. I also got to watch Sister Nathaniel bust into the room and snatch John Hofschneider out of his seat, and whack him a good one on his bottom.

“We do not throw things at other children during recess,” intoned Sister Nathaniel. “Do we, children?”

“No Sister,” we chorused. “Of course, not, Sister,” we said, while we all laughed behind our hands at John who was a jerk.

The thoughts of youth are indeed long, long thoughts.

Don Lechman is a former reporter, critic and editor for The Daily Breeze. He teaches writing at Harbor College in Wilmington.