Holy Ghost Picnic

Patrick,  here is your next question:

Talk about a time in your youth when your family was all together and you had a really good time.

Laurie

Holy Ghost Picnic

I’ve had a hard time with this one, Laurie. My parents were loving but not demonstrative. Family memories are bland; in the most vivid, I am alone. Be patient, I’ll get a happy family memory. First, some context is required.

Ground Rules

My mother was an old-world Catholic; my father an atheist, who promised to raise his children in the Church, and to make an Easter Duty (go to Mass once a year. Guess when.)

So

Dale Owens and Mary Rose got married on June 1, 1932, in Woodland, 40 miles northwest of Sacramento. Every parish with a large Portuguese community has a Holy Ghost picnic no later than Whitsunday, the seventh Sunday after Easter. Pop loved these picnics; Mom insisted they celebrate their wedding anniversary on the nearest Sunday to June 1. They compromised on whatever date Holy Rosary parish had their picnic.

The Concert

After Mass, while the church ladies prepared to serve sopash (a chunk of pot roast in a savory broth with a piece of French bread floating on top), a toothless old lady who had been a fado singer in her youth, and two guitarists, gave a concert out behind the tool shed. The singer had rewritten the lyrics of many of these songs of lament, to be raunchy and funny. Even though Pop couldn’t understand a word she sang, he got the general idea by the singers body-language and the audience reaction, especially when it became a sing-along at the chorus. This song fest made the dreary hour Pop had just spent among the sanctimonious Papist worth the trip to Woodland. He liked the free food too.

The crowd quickly disbanded as soon as the smell of sopash drifted into the concert venue because the priest would soon saunter by – taking names for extra penance.

My Happy Family Memory, Finally

My parent’s laughter on the forty-mile ride home when Pop tried to tell Mom what he had witnessed, and she kept shushing him when he bordered on talking dirty.

 

Patrick