I come from a family with wide traditions of worship. Snake handling pentacostals, speaking in tongues; atheists; baptists, etc. My father never had much use for religion, but did convert to Catholicism to marry his third wife, who came from a VERY Catholic family...that was long after this tale though. My mother had me baptized in the Episcopal church when I was a baby and she drug me from time to time to services, which I hated. I was fascinated as a kid by all of this stuff....the Fire and Brimstone rantings of the 'Brothers' at my grandparents' church, to the reasoned 'talks' we'd get at the Episcopal church. I never understood what any of them were talking about though...and I certainly didn't believe that anything I did in life was going to get me thrust into a sulfurous pit of fire for all eternity.
Between my second and third grade year, my parents decided to move from Ypsi, Michigan to Charleston, SC. Other than my father preferring the south and hating cold weather, I don't why those particular locations were chosen. It was decided that my sister would stay with an Aunt in Chicago for the summer, I would stay with my paternal grandparents in Gary, IN. After moving down and establishing themselves over the summer, my dad would come retrieve us at the end of the summer.
My parents had a lot or problems over the years, break ups, divorces, remarriage, abuse, you name it. I was too young to know how much, if any of this was going on at the time or contributing to this move.
At the end of summer, Dad showed up and collected us and we were on our way through the Smokies in the good old red Maverick. It was then that I discovered I suffere from motion sickness which only seems to affect me in cars driving through mountains. 235 gallons of water and 8 packages of Dramamine later we pulled into our new digs at the Pine Country trailer park in Charleston, SC.
We had arrived about a week before school started and for some reason, which was never make clear to me, both myself and my sister were enrolled in a Catholic school. This made no sense because a) as I stated above, we werent' Catholic and b) where would my parents get the money for Catholic school, and shouldn't that kind of money be spent on a house or car since there were perfectly fine public schools? This these questions I never received an answer.
A week later I was trussed up in black shoes, dark green pants, white shirt, dark green tie, and rucksack. The uniform. We assembled outside on the playground and directed inside to our classrooms. Turns out that my classroom was a free standing out-building that had been a garage. My teacher was a young nun named Sister Rene.
I came to love Sister Rene very much. She wore the full penguin suit which limited the amount of her that I actually saw, however she had a pretty round face and a set of amazing blue eyes. She was a soft spoken, intelligent women who strove to see that her students did well. She was patient, for instance, she could never get me to take our Bible stories studies seriously (which they really want you to do in Catholic school). Tales of Christians eaten by lions, and Lazarus and all that struck me pretty much like Greek and Roman myth did later. They weren't real. She tried hard to make me see them as real.
Most other aspects of the school were the same as all of the other shools I'd been to, except one. Friday Mass.
The period I'm talking about was around 1964. All students were required to attend Friday Mass. Those who could take communion sat down front, those not ready for communion (catechism not finished, etc.), and finally I sat up in the back and simply observed the whole floor show.
I remember a lot of candlelight, then a lot of talking and singing in Latin (which I didn't understand). Then some crankin' organ music and all these guys dressed like Miles Davis or Parliament Funkadelic handing out communion. Then at the end, there was like a parade out of the church with these guys swinging these incense pots and such.
The snake handlers had nothing on these guys!
Between my second and third grade year, my parents decided to move from Ypsi, Michigan to Charleston, SC. Other than my father preferring the south and hating cold weather, I don't why those particular locations were chosen. It was decided that my sister would stay with an Aunt in Chicago for the summer, I would stay with my paternal grandparents in Gary, IN. After moving down and establishing themselves over the summer, my dad would come retrieve us at the end of the summer.
My parents had a lot or problems over the years, break ups, divorces, remarriage, abuse, you name it. I was too young to know how much, if any of this was going on at the time or contributing to this move.
At the end of summer, Dad showed up and collected us and we were on our way through the Smokies in the good old red Maverick. It was then that I discovered I suffere from motion sickness which only seems to affect me in cars driving through mountains. 235 gallons of water and 8 packages of Dramamine later we pulled into our new digs at the Pine Country trailer park in Charleston, SC.
We had arrived about a week before school started and for some reason, which was never make clear to me, both myself and my sister were enrolled in a Catholic school. This made no sense because a) as I stated above, we werent' Catholic and b) where would my parents get the money for Catholic school, and shouldn't that kind of money be spent on a house or car since there were perfectly fine public schools? This these questions I never received an answer.
A week later I was trussed up in black shoes, dark green pants, white shirt, dark green tie, and rucksack. The uniform. We assembled outside on the playground and directed inside to our classrooms. Turns out that my classroom was a free standing out-building that had been a garage. My teacher was a young nun named Sister Rene.
I came to love Sister Rene very much. She wore the full penguin suit which limited the amount of her that I actually saw, however she had a pretty round face and a set of amazing blue eyes. She was a soft spoken, intelligent women who strove to see that her students did well. She was patient, for instance, she could never get me to take our Bible stories studies seriously (which they really want you to do in Catholic school). Tales of Christians eaten by lions, and Lazarus and all that struck me pretty much like Greek and Roman myth did later. They weren't real. She tried hard to make me see them as real.
Most other aspects of the school were the same as all of the other shools I'd been to, except one. Friday Mass.
The period I'm talking about was around 1964. All students were required to attend Friday Mass. Those who could take communion sat down front, those not ready for communion (catechism not finished, etc.), and finally I sat up in the back and simply observed the whole floor show.
I remember a lot of candlelight, then a lot of talking and singing in Latin (which I didn't understand). Then some crankin' organ music and all these guys dressed like Miles Davis or Parliament Funkadelic handing out communion. Then at the end, there was like a parade out of the church with these guys swinging these incense pots and such.
The snake handlers had nothing on these guys!
Comments