NOTES TO MY GRANDCHILDREN: I Was A Good Boy

Aunt Laurie’s Question: To what in your life can you attribute being a “good person”?

Thank you, Laurie, for thinking of me as a good person. I would say it’s because of my parents and the Church—except for Sister Rosalia.

Good Parents, Old School

I was born in the middle of the Depression. Everyone’s energies went towards survival, not innovative parenting skills. I learned honesty and a good work ethic by example. And Mom taught me something else, by example, too.

One hot summer day, Pop was watering a hedge near the converted chicken house we lived in when I was little. Your great-grandmother, Dear Me, was living in it then. Pop wore his usual garden clothes: baggy shorts straining the waist button, and work boots. That’s it. No shirt, no socks, and probably no skivvies.

Dear Me started shouting at him in Portuguese. I made out the word camisa, so it was about putting on a shirt. His hairy torso and beer belly were unattractive.

Pop turned the hose on Dear Me, dousing her through an open window. She kept screaming, and he soaked her through different windows as she moved around the cottage. Pop hated Dear Me. She considered him a low-class peasant and tried to break up his marriage to Mom. If she succeeded, this picture wouldn’t have been taken on June 1, 1932.

Mom came out of the house and yelled one word, “Stop!” and then stared from one to the other. Pop turned off the water and put down the hose. “Go have a beer, Dale,” Mom said. He went.

Dear Me was wailing and praying, until Mom said, “Close your windows, Mother.”

Mom saw that I had been watching the show and said, “Do you have homework, Paddy?” The excitement was over until the next time.

Mom really wasn’t a peacemaker, but I learned from her how to stay out of fights. It was that quiet stare she gave to Pop and Dear Me. Big guys didn’t know how to handle someone smaller who stood quietly looking at them when they were threatening to rip your head off. They didn’t know I was struggling not to poop my pants. Fortunately, almost everybody liked me, and there was always someone around to shout, “Why don’t you pick on somebody your size?” Bullies hate that; it makes them look weak.

And there were always bullies to deal with, especially at Holy Angeles, where the Italians lorded it over the Portuguese. Maybe my being half-Irish helped, but at crunch time, before fists started flying, I’d do my stare thing.

Even as an adult living in New York, where the streets were tough and some clubs I worked in tougher, I’ve never had to face anything worse than a shoving match.

Mark said his friends in school thought I was a cop, because of that quiet stare.

The Church

I loved the Church. The mysteries, the cathedral’s vaulting ceiling and stained-glass windows, the rituals and robes. As an altar boy, I got to wear a red cassock—Mom had to turn up the hem because I kept tripping over it—and a white tunic with lace around the bottom.

It was great assisting the priest on Sunday mornings. And I loved the pageantry of High Mass, where I led the procession waving the incense burner back and forth, the priest behind me wearing full vestments. It was like being a drum major in a marching band.

Best of all, the Mass was spoken and sung in Latin, which I pretended were chants to cast magic spells. It was very disappointing to learn Latin was just another foreign language.

Still, I loved everything about the Church—except the Dwarf.

Sister Rosalia

She was my second-grade teacher. The Dwarf was shorter than me because of the hump on her back, which Mom said was a birth defect. About a foot of her spine was all knotted up. If you could untangle it, she’d be average height.

And boy, was she ugly, with a face scrunched up like a white prune, and old-lady whiskers all around her chin, so stiff they’d draw blood if you let her get too close.

Every Catholic schoolboy has a ‘mean nun’ story. Slapping their knuckles with a ruler, boxing their ears so they heard ringing sounds all day. The nuns said it was meant to give children an idea of how much pain Jesus suffered on the cross. Yeah, right.

My punishments were not about pain; the Dwarf wanted to humiliate me. She had a white cord hanging down her side, and she’d sneak up behind me in class and bang the knotted end down on my desk. It scared me so much I’d mess myself. Then she’d make me stand in the corner, dripping and smelling bad, until class ended.

The bullies laughed, and the girls giggled as I ran to the boy’s room to clean up. It took so long that I’d be late getting back to the classroom and get an ordinary punishment, like cleaning the blackboard or the erasers. This happened three times, I think. I was sure glad to go to public school for the third grade.

The Dwarf picked on me because she said I looked up girl’s dresses. Even if this were true, I didn’t see anything, so it shouldn’t have counted.

On My Own

Mom’s influence ended when I left home, and I became a Lapsed Catholic. That means I didn’t go to Mass anymore. But I still wanted the good feeling the Church gave me. So, I refined the Catholic doctrine, the rules and regulations, the suffering of all the martyrs and saints, into one sentence, The Golden Rule: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’

Still too many words. I’ve simplified it further to: ‘Keep Good Thoughts.’

I hope I’ve lived this principle enough that you can focus on the good parts of me, and ignore the other stuff.

Poppa / Patrick / Whatever

22 September 2023