A Catholic Education

It’s meant more as an inquiry than an indictment. A back-in-time exploration of the cornucopia of rites and rituals that helped shape my thinking as a radical thinker. ‘Cafeteria Catholic’ is just one of many monikers that fit that belief.

My sister and I were reminiscing recently about our Catholic school experiences with the nuns and priests/Christian brothers who taught us. Grade school and high school were both outward educational extensions of the times. They reflected the cultural, social, sexual standards of our parents and grandparents’ generation.

My mother was a devote Catholic so we had little choice in the matter of our education. Beginning in the early fifties, my sister and I attended St. Louis Grade School in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota. The old gray relic has long since been torn down but the memories linger in black and white. Attending school there meant a half-hour ride to and from downtown for eight years. First by streetcar with their woven mesh seats and no heat (anyone remember those?) then by city bus.

The school had been started back in the mid-to-late 1800s to educate the poor, indigent children of the primarily French immigrant families coming to St. Paul. By the time, we were attending a lot of the students came from ‘the projects;’ the low-income housing located behind the Capitol.

The nuns were strict and mean and very old school. Unlike some of my unruly classmates I never got smacked across the head or hit with a ruler. Although once in second grade I got busted after sneaking peeks at my Daniel Boone comic book hidden in my desk drawer. The imposing rotund nun made me stand in front of the entire class and throw it into the wastepaper basket. That hurt!

I’ve always assumed my mother got a discount from the nuns because she certainly couldn’t have afforded full tuition on her meager restaurant salary. I’ll give the nuns that. They did have compassion for a single parent with two urchins under tow. There was the free lunch at noon and at times donated clothing that could be picked over after class. Those nuns were tough but classy. It was the Catholic way.

Cretin High School was an all-boys military school (Junior ROTC) and Our Lady of Peace (OLP) an all-girls Catholic school. I’m sure for my mother their most important attribute was their Catholic pedigree. She truly believed that nuns and priests were of the ‘saintly’ order and could do no wrong.

Cretin High School cost four hundred dollars a year paid for out of my paper route plus odd jobs during the summer. Cretin was an ROTC school run by strict Christian Brothers with their no-nonsense approach to life and education. At our fiftieth anniversary we alumni compared jobs and lives; subtly of course. Seems like that educational approach worked pretty well for my comrades and I in our careers as well as in life.

Graduation on May 31^st, 1961 was the launch of my ‘lost years’ although I didn’t know it at the time. It was the beginning of ten years wandering through the wilderness of a young life spiked with bouts of education and life-altering experiences. Back in the sixth grade my belief in Catholicism had been badly wounded by the Baltimore Catechism. Now all those simmering doubts and questions grew in intensity as I experienced real life on yet another level.

For some reason this photo of the quadrangle on the campus of the College of St. Thomas says it all. It’s the winter of 1961 and I’m freezing my ass off cutting across campus. What I remember most of that period were the blustery winter winds sweeping across campus and right through my light jacket. My most poignant college memories don’t cluster around classes or the cafeteria or my girlfriend at the time. It wasn’t the work after school or the hard studying just to keep my grades afloat. Instead, it was the bone-rattling cold that nipped at my fingertips and bit into my ear lobes. Funny how some school memories can do that; lose the true essence of the collegiate experience amid the discomfort of a bitterly cold winter’s day.

But St. Thomas never was a smooth fluid experience for me. Instead, it morphed into two separate life journeys distracted with interruptions from the University of Minnesota and the U.S. Army. By then Catholicism wasn’t even on my radar any more.

The Presidio of San Francisco opened up a whole new world for me. It released possibilities and dreams after my educational collapse at the U of M. The Army proven to be a macho world where I explored life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness all the while trailing other lost souls as I stumbled forth. For two years it carried me around the country and across the border. Then it dumped me back into the welcoming arms of Saint Thomas after an early release.

Thanks to the G.I. Bill there was less stress to find work and more time to write for the school yearbook. I had a nest in my basement at home where I could sequester myself and focus on learning to learn. I got two things from that experience; a college education and one of my first novels called ‘Love in the A Shau.’

Denmark made me a stranger in a strange land. There were new attitudes toward life and love and self. Religion continued to be this strange ritualistic practice performed by my mother but rejected by my colleagues and me.

After Europe, this ex-pat came home and found a dump to live in and a Sunday sanctuary full of song and fellowship. The Newman Center for Catholic Studies had gone hippie and folk-like with its mass, its litany and communal singing. It was a haven of peace and friendship and sharing. It hinted of something wonderful but we never labeled it Catholic…just community.

Susan was there with me to share that skeletal existence, career explorations, the Triangle Bar and the poetry-readings. She was just another road warrior searching for her future as I was searching for mine. We were like two literary hobos riding the rails of life’s jumbled journey but steeled by our dogged determination to succeed. She was like an elixir for my mind on Saturday nights and for my soul on Sunday mornings.

Back then, I was still wading through the flotsam of those early religious years. The Newman Center showed me another side of Christianity. It was love and compassion and caring. It was exploring one’s mind as well as one’s soul. It was questioning and challenging and accepting. It was finding comfort in who we were and the strength to believe we could be more. Then it was all gone. I moved on. Susan moved on. Life carried us both away.

Now years later, I’m trying to fashion stories out of those mixed religious experiences. I have wrapped myself in a coat of many colors and tried to decipher the coded messages from the real ones. What truth, if any, was to be found in the Baltimore Catechism? Were there really mess-ages in all those rambling, repetitive boring eulogies on Sunday morning? Is there a commonality among religions despite repeated claims that each is the only one? I wander through this religious wilderness seeking the truth that, in fact, lies only within me. So, I let my mind dance across the keyboard and stories come to life.

‘Love in the A Shau’ is a trip back in time when a young man was struggling to stay afloat in an Ivy-league world he never knew existed, the tantalizing taste of first love and class differences he let define him.

‘Cafeteria Catholic’ is a play which examines the relationship of an agnostic who finds himself attracted to a devote Catholic. It’s a paradox I find intriguing enough to write a play about it.

‘Frenchy’s Eats’ is a play which examines the dysfunctional and yet poetic relationship between

a man and a woman, an intrusive Catholic church, and a father the author never knew. It’s a complicated play in its rag-tag juxtaposition of elements and explanations that danced between my parents, their divorce and the mysterious Canadian legacy that still lurks far back in my own ancestry.

Because of my Catholic education, I learned the intrinsic value of working hard, helping others, being fair and trying to be a good man. Despite my Catholic education I learned the value of self.

Truth be told, I’m a Christian before I’m a Catholic. But I could just as easily be a Buddhist, a Muslim, or a Jew. I’m not a religious person but I believe in religion; whatever flavor people may choose. It’s not a bad combination; a double-edged sword to combat the challenges of life while accepting responsibility for what comes our way.

Perhaps way back then, those wise women, dressed in their penguin attire, did teach me something about religion after all. It’s been a long journey. In retrospect, one could say, I’ve circled back now to where it all started.

Human Serengeti

It was the Rotary International Meeting held in Asia that year. Since Sharon was Rotary Governor for her district, she was invited to attend. I came along as her spouse. It was our first trip to the Far East and what a memorable trip it was.

Singapore, with its skyscrapers, teeming masses on every street, and modern amenities, proved to be the perfect first step in a broad sweep over the South China Sea. Back then, when the sense of adventure was still strong and body willing, Sharon and I were venturing near and far from crowded food markets to high-end shopping centers to cultural attractions found nowhere else in the world.

I found it interesting that around that time, President Obama decided to use Singapore as his meeting place with the dictator from North Korea. Singapore is a fascinating country in that it chose, a long time ago, to follows its own path into the Twenty-First century.

Some of its strict laws have been criticized by Westerners as barbaric and cruel by our standards. But their adherence to conformity hasn’t diminished their success in the marketplace; regionally or worldwide. I found Singapore to be at once, modern and ancient, congested and clean. It felt extremely safe for a large metropolitan area.

After Singapore, we traveled to Bali. Unfortunately, I couldn’t escape the music of ‘South Pacific’ playing in my head the whole time we were there. Author Michener with his best-seller ‘Tales of the South Pacific’ didn’t help bring clarity to what I was experiencing.

On one hand, Bali is no different than a hundred thousand other island scattered throughout the Pacific basin. It’s people, culture, weather, infrastructure, amenities may vary from shoreline to shoreline but the atmosphere is still the same. It’s an island in the South Pacific with all the attributes those images can conjure up.

My one memorable experience on the island happened at the exclusive resort we stayed at. At that time, I was deep into producing cable television programs for several clients. I thought footage of exotic places like Bali would add credence and credibility to my programs.

So, with video camera in hand, I was strolling the shoreline, taking in the sights. Folks walking on the beach, sea birds fighting for space in the surf, kids playing in the sand, and ‘topless women’ lying on couches taking in the sun. I stopped my panning of the scene, looked out of the viewfinder into the eyes of several men about the leap out of their chairs for taping their half-naked girlfriends or wives.

A quick retreat was the only answer and, thank heavens, no one came after me. I had foolishly forgotten that a large percentage of tourists at the resort were French and German. Both groups espoused and embraced naturalism (nudism) as a natural way of relaxing on the beach. My bad, I could have been assaulted just for the sake of some great footage of birds, beaches, and breasts.

Then it was on to Hong Kong. Before the Chinese government cracked down on dissidents and systematically began to remove all vestiges of hundreds of years of British rule, Hong Kong was a wide open, cosmopolitan cornucopia of ethnic brands, sights and sounds. It was just as old Hollywood movies had portrayed it. The ancient Hong Kong all wrapped up into bright colors, banners, and costumes.

From the towering heights above the city, to the oceanfront board walk, to the ferries funneling folks back and forth between shorelines, Hong Kong was every cliché that’s been attached to it. It was at once, large, teeming with people but still offered quiet, (semi-secluded) corners from which to watch the world of people swirl by.

Yet, of all the sights and sounds of Asia, it was the quiet solitude of an ancient battlefield that held the most poignant memories for me. It was the realization of a fantasy I’d harbored since reading several novels back in high school. Two books by one of my favorite English authors, Alistair MacLean, began this life-long interest with World War Two; especially the early stages of Japanese conquest of the Far East.

Alistair MacLean’s first novel was entitled ‘H.M.S. Ulysses.’ It was based on the infamous Murmansk run. A dangerous convoy trip from America and England to send supplies to Russia. One of the most lethal convoys was the Murmansk Run across the North Atlantic and from Iceland to the Russian ports of Murmansk, Archangel, and Kola Inlet. It involved more hazards than in any other kind of naval duty. And, prior to the spring of 1943, when an effective Allied antisubmarine offensive got underway, ships and men making the so-called “Murmansk Run” had only a one in three chance of returning alive.

The icy waters of the North Atlantic and hunter-killer U-boats meant certain death to any crewman unlucky enough to have his ship torpedoed during the trip. Hence the great song by Woody Guthrie ‘The Rubin James.’

The second novel which tied directly to the fall of Singapore was entitled: ‘South by Java Head.’  Winston Churchill had called Singapore the “Gibraltar of the East.” An impregnable fortress at the heart of the British empire in the Far East.

Using the battlefield guide, I was able to retrace some of the more famous battle scenes and locations during the fall of Singapore. It was a surrealistic mental imagination-fueled return to the sights and sounds of those famous battles.

When the island fortress fell to Japanese forces on February 15^th 1941, it marked the beginning of the end for the British Empire’s extended colonies. The ‘jewel in the crown of the British Empire’, India, gained independence in 1947. Other British holdings followed: Burma in 1948, Malaya in 1957 and Singapore soon after. And it all began with the fall of Singapore.

I’ve already written a 30-page treatment for my own novel about the fall of Singapore. It’s entitled: ‘Siloso’, named after the last British fortress on the Island to fall to the invading Japanese soldiers. Right now, it patiently waits behind other treatments for plays, screenplays and novels each shuffling around in my brain, trying to grab my full attention and a place at the head of my ‘to do’ list. I’d like to believe that sometime soon I’ll be able to return to Singapore and begin retelling another exciting chapter in the history of that famous country.

Ode to a Broken-Down Palace

What goes around, comes around or so they say. For me, it was an invitation to join a poetry reading at a local bookstore in downtown Saint Paul. Subtext Books was hosting a poetry reading by Greg Watson and Patrick Cabello Hansel, two well-known and respected poets in the Twin Cities and regionally. I was asked to join as a third member.

It seemed a fitting ‘coming home’ after more than eighteen years of wandering the vernacular jungle. Beginning in a rundown hovel in the mid-70s, the exploration of the written word in its many forms had begun as a second life/side gig/closet passion and held me fast for so many years. Poetry and songwriting had become my moniker; that hovel, my writers’ nest.

Everyone wants someplace to call home. For me, it began in a house on Randolph Avenue where the trials and tribulations of youth were hidden in the stale air still lingering there. Then, after living in Europe after college, I was looking for a place to crash while I waited for my life to take some semblance of order.

Finding that sad old relic of better times on University Avenue marked the beginning of yet another world I was about to enter. I joined a cauldron of cast-offs and bottom feeders which accurately reflected where my head was at and where I was going…in no particular order. Disheveled, messy, chaotic and rudderless yet always angling for a better direction.

The Twin Cities has a long history of nesting enclaves of immigrant families and other bottom feeders who haven’t yet assimilated into modern day society. This apartment building was just such a place. It was Swedes Hollow, the Bohemian Flats, Little Italy and the West Side Flats all wrapped up in a half-dozen, squalid, cut-up apartments. As time progressed, that area around the University of Minnesota, especially around Dinky Town and the West Bank, became my own microscopic version of Greenwich Village.

And as the song lyrics go ‘most of my changes were there.’

It’s become part of my lexicon now. Not because of some foolish notion that it represented my ‘glory days’ or the ‘best years of my life.’ And hopefully not because it might sound like the musings of an old man. It was, instead, a moment in time long since gone but still captured in a few faded photographs and dusty vinyl jackets which help poke probing fingers of inquiry into that slowly fading memory bank cached inside my head. For those places and people and events all helped define who and what I have become…and strive to be.

From 1967 through 1970, the Palace became my safe abode where I could spill out my thoughts and ideas on paper without the threat of criticism. That relic of better times came to represent, among other things, all those individuals I knew and loved and lost touch with over the years. It was the silly and foolish things I did and thought. It was all those wild aspirations and stumbles I took in the right direction. It was accidents that didn’t happen and a few that did. It was all those seemingly innocuous events that changed my life and laid the groundwork for a lifetime of story-telling in one form or another.

So, while some oldsters may lament their sometimes checkered past or lost years, I choose to embrace them as a reflective exercise. While some may scowl at rekindling the past by saying ‘it’s best not to look back’ and ‘let the past be,’ it is for me very personal.  It was a time of my ‘lost years.’

The building had been chopped-up, divided and then subdivided into probably illegal apartments for whoever could afford the cheap rent. There was a group of graduate students from Pakistan below me and odd assortments of humanity in the other units who seemed to come and go with the seasons. The overall mantra of the place seemed to be “Say Hi,” don’t ask questions and ignore what’s going on unless you think the place might burn down. I thought of my place as bohemian chic. Visitors might have had a different impression. Shortly after I moved out, they tore the building down and put up a parking lot (seriously).

After a couple of months working/writing at the Public Health Department, I ventured down Como Avenue to the studios of KTCA. They weren’t hiring at the time but they were glad to use my volunteer services in the evenings. I learned the craft of television from the ground up. It became my first real job where I never felt like I was working.

As significant as that old television building was in my life, even more prominent was a bar on the West Bank. That den of ear-busting music, sweet-smelling haze and questionable characters figured prominently in one of my first novels entitled “Love in the A Shau.” On the surface the Triangle Bar was a rundown three-two joint with intoxicating music, cheap beer and loud crowds that came to see, be seen or just smoke a joint in the corner. Beneath the surface it was my baptism into another life.

During its heyday, the Triangle Bar became the flash point for a burgeoning music scene centered on the West Bank. Since they didn’t card, the bar attracted a lot of U of M students. I’m guessing the term ‘jail bait’ was first coined there.

But beneath that surface melting pot of hippies, junkies, college drop-outs, undercover cops and other assorted flotsam from civilization came a wonderful collection of lost souls and seekers. Every night brought another stimulating conversation with some colorful character who usually gave a false last name, lied about their background but presented fascinating suppositions on life and love and war and college and our future in general. It was a true college education outside of the classroom.

They’re all gone now. Removed like push pins off a bulletin board of icons long since dis-appeared. My apartment on the avenue, the Triangle Bar, the old Public Health Department building on campus, crumbling Dinky Town, Newman Center with its folk music, the Grandview Theater and its foreign films and a dozen other sad-eyed structures all razed by a bulldozer called time.

So, I guess I’ve come full circle now. Re-reading poems that were written more than fifty years ago. It's still a sometimes conflicting confluence of attitude and interest, circumstance and focus, goals and objectives. Back to crafting thoughts, ideas, emotions and moods out of jumbled words tied together with a string of imagination. The focus is on song lyrics, really poetry in disguise, that I’m trying to capture once again.

Interestingly enough, the grandkids came down for this poetry reading, listening to Papa reminiscing and recollecting when I was just a little older than them. One generation sharing with the next. Isn’t life strange that way?

And wonderful.