Jump Seat Jesus

The story is common enough; repeated down through the ages. A young boy is raised Catholic by a very devout German Catholic woman who embraced her faith and never questioned the teachings of the church. In her mind, what the church preached was sacrosanct and could never be questioned. Nuns and Priests were ‘blessed people’ and thus immune from earthly faults like the rest of us.

That was the environment so many of my generation were raised in. At a relatively young age, I broke free of that stifling dogma and stumbled my way through the minefield called organized religion.

A recent read from BWB (Better World Books) caught my attention for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was my own experiences with that early introduction to what would eventually become my take on faith. The back jacket pretty much sums up the theme of the book.

‘With his unique brand of erudition and wit, Christopher Hitchens addresses the most urgent issue of our time: the malignant force of religion in the world. In this eloquent argument with the faithful, he makes the ultimate case against dogma (and for a more secular approach to life) through a close and learned reading of the major theological texts. Hitchens tells the personal story of his own dangerous encounters with religion and describes his intellectual journey toward a secular view of life based on science and reason.’

This separation of church and life began for me a very long time ago but was brought back into focus again during the COVID-19 pandemic. I was piloting a Chevy Suburban cross country back to Minnesota. Since neither Sharon nor I are techno-files, the dashboard wide-screen menu offered us little more than confusion despite all our finger-tapping from one icon to the next.

With our combined ineptness, we only managed to find Country Music, Christian Music and religious radio stations as we trekked across the country. The most consistent of those radio signals was from EWTN (the Global Catholic Radio Network). We also kept coming across stations that were part of Covenant Catholic Radio Network because it had the strongest signal as we were passing through their area.

I’m not a practicing Catholic. The closest affiliation I can now claim is the fact that I’d already written the lyrics for a contemporary song about Christ entitled ‘Jump Seat Jesus.’ (an alternate title was: Shotgun Jesus’).  It was meant to be a song in a similar vein to ‘One of Us’ by Joan Osborne. While this didn’t entitle me to membership as a faithful Catholic radio listener, I did find solace in a strange kind of mental return to my youth and Catholic upbringing.

The station followed a pattern of call-ins with a psychologist dealing with listener’s questions about their emotional issues surrounding the Catholic faith. There were religious music sections and choir music. Another call-in segment dealt with questions about theology and Catholic practices and church teachings. These call-in sessions were broken up with hourly news reports from a Catholic perspective. It was a lot to feed my brain with thought.

I was raised a Catholic in the fifties and early sixties. Like many young people of my generation, it was the faith of our parents and grandparents. It was tradition and history and how we were expected to be raised. For all of its foibles and shortcomings, it was as good a religion as any around. Religion began for me and then gradually lost its luster in grade school.

St. Louis Grade School was a small French (Catholic) grade school located in downtown St. Paul. It was run by nuns who wore their iron will and strong philosophy of discipline as tightly as their starched white face wraps. Catholic teachings were an integral part of their curriculum. Reflecting back, I can now see their pattern of teaching that didn’t require a lot of thought but memorization instead. Group think was the norm and it fit most of the student’s just fine, me included.

Cretin High School was run by the Christian Brothers who could match the nuns with their focus on discipline and curriculum. Religious teaching wasn’t their strongest suite but it found a place in weekly classes. Those classes required us to think a little more about God and goodness and the Catholic faith and overall presented a more present-day approach to our faith.

During that time period, the Catholic Youth Center in downtown St. Paul was supposed to be a place for Catholic youth to congregate and mix with the opposite sex. Most of the sponsored dances were lame and overly controlled by either traveling nuns and priests or parental sponsors, all intent on making sure the boys and girls didn’t mix it up too much. Father Sweeney ran the place and focused on an old fashion approach to religion and youth.’ Listen and learn’ was his motto. Questions didn’t seem to be encouraged there.

St. Thomas College offered a few mandatory religious classes but mainly during freshman year. Most of those classes were rout repeats of the same message we had hammered into our heads in high school. The saving grace for me during that period was the Neumann Center on the campus of the University of Minnesota. The Neumann Center was run by hip, savvy priests who were able to communicate with young people and earn their respect at the same time. They spoke plain English about God and being a good person verses just a faithful obedient Catholic. Their message resonated with me on a very visceral level.

By the time I’d returned from the Army and was back at St. Thomas, the Neumann Center had evolved into Hippie Central and attracted a large swath of hippies, artists, bohemians, and other radical youth. There was popular music and singing during each mass and social gatherings afterwards. It became a wonderful home away from home for me and Susan, my girlfriend at the time.  ‘Suzanne’ by Leonard Cohen was our favorite song. Perhaps we should have been singing a sad lament for the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland instead.

Now, as the cross-country miles piled on, many of those thoughts about the strict nuns and Christian Brothers and neighborhood priests swam though my brain. I thought back to my mother’s strict devotion to her faith and how it was never my approach to religion. I will admit those Catholic institutions gave me a good solid educational foundation for which I am very grateful. Yet even back then I felt some guilt because I could never grasp and accept their approach to Christ. I had too many questions and challenges to ever become an obedient servant of their God. In truth, I was becoming a cafeteria Catholic.

During my Lost Years (1961-1971), I explored Buddhism, Hinduism, Transcendental Meditation, yoga, and a lot of mind-calming exercises we now label ‘mindfulness.’ It was searching for solace and comfort and meaning in an ever-changing world. Gradually, I found what I was looking for.

Now, many of my generation seem to have gravitated back to the faith of their youth. They’ve become practicing Catholics once again and attend mass every weekend. I expect for many of them, there is a comfort and security as their thoughts shift to the possibility of ‘life after death.’

Mine is a more simplistic approach to faith and belief and God. The questions I ask myself are pretty straightforward. Did I live a good life? Was I a good person? Did I do right by others? For me, it’s not one specific religion or label or moniker. I’d much prefer to be called a good person rather than a Catholic, Christian, Agnostic, Buddhist or Jew. In the end, I don’t think it matters one bit. If God is what others claim him (or her) to be, then I think my approach still makes the grade.

God is still my Co-Pilot. Only he knows when this journey of ours will end and he’s not telling me. So, I guess I’ll just continue trekking along, trying to do what’s right and enjoying the scenery and serenity for as long as I can.

Picture Clues

It’s been one of those mysteries in my life that remained unspoken and never talked about. A vacuum in my memory bank that’s never been filled-in. Granted, I was too young to understand all of its ramifications but I still feel cheated even today.  Yet to be honest I’m not sure how I would have reacted if I had understood what it meant not to have a father in my life growing up.

There were no pictures or other mementos of him ‘ever’ in our house. It was as if he never existed in the first place. By the time I had finally matured and became curious about my lineage those memories of her distant past had become a fog clouding my mother’s mind. About the only thing I could be sure of was that I once had a father and he died at a (relatively) young age. End of story.

Or so I thought.

Curiosity raised its finicky head about the same time I posted a blog entitled ‘Something for Judy’ on my Facebook page. In perusing an old box of photographs of my brief encampment on Smith Avenue with my first play date named Judy, I came across some photos of my father and myself. Of course, I’d seen those photos before but back then my eyes were vacant and mind-closed. This time around I looked at those glimpses of my past with a much different minds-eye.

There are clues in those pictures…in the clothes, mannerisms, posture, location and a hundred other nuances that spoke volumes about the man that gave me life. By reading into them with the inquisitiveness of a writer and a curiosity of past traits passed down to me, there are answers (unconfirmed, of course) in what those pictures were saying.

So without being maudlin or clinically antiseptic, I began to study the clues some unknown photographer presented to me. There were stories in those images that said so much and yet revealed so little. I did my surgical inspection without the benefit of any oral history pasted down from my mother. And I was cognizant of her refusal to recognize that part of her past life. If there was any prejudice, hard feelings or hidden shame in their relationship it had slipped away with her last breath here on earth.

So who was this man that was a part of my life for less than two years then was gone forever? Who was this Arthur LaComb whose lineage could be traced back to Quebec, Canada but little else beyond that?

For one thing, he seemed to like to dress me as he dressed. Today he’d be called fashion-wise, nattily attired or very smooth. Back then perhaps even labeled a ladies’ man. That trait ended with him.

My grandmother (on his side) was in our lives for a brief period of time but she was certainly never a part of my life afterwards. My sister said she visited us once then disappeared after her son died.

From research on Ancestry.com, my wife discovered that my uncle (his brother) lived in Los Angeles until he died in the mid-70s. Obviously, uncle never bothered to ever get a hold of us when we were growing up.

My father was in the service (the Navy I believe). Story goes that he hurt his back and got discharged but I never got a clear answer what happened to him.

He was a smoker and liked to hang out in bars. My mother commented on his drinking only once or twice and left it at that. A cousin once said he was a pleasant drinker and funny when he got drunk…as opposed to a mean drunk, I suppose.

Turns out, I have a half-sister. I think her name was Beverly. I knew my father had been married once before. This came up when I saw a picture of a young girl with us way back when. Then my mother remarked once back in the eighties, “Oh yes, you have a half-sister who lives in a trailer park in Florida. She came to visit us once.’ I guess I was in the fourth or fifth grade at the time but I don’t remember her visit. We never heard from her again. My mother never explained why she also disappeared from our lives and I was too young to ask or care.

The story of my parents' breakup has been clouded by time and my mother’s selective memory. As the story goes it was a Catholic priest who declared that their marriage wasn’t valid because my father’s first marriage hadn’t been properly annulled in the eyes of the Catholic Church. The priest declared that therefore they couldn’t live together...in sin. My mother, being a devout Catholic, complied. She said there were no jobs for a short order cook after the war and thus my father had to move away. That was in 1945.

When I asked my mother if my father ever wrote or sent money to her over those years that he was gone, she said no. That, in my book, was desertion. She didn’t say it was. She just couldn’t argue it wasn’t.

The story of his death is also a vapid cloud that kept changing tones and colors as it was retold over the years. It seems in the winter of 1948 my father was traveling back from the west coast to be with us for Christmas when he stopped in Missoula, Montana.

He had a massive heart attack in his hotel room and died there. Hell of a way to die; alone and unknown. Supposedly his cash and other valuables were rifled from his room before the front desk was notified. My Mom said he had Christmas presents for us. My sister remembers getting a pretty doll. I’m told I got a gun and holster set. My father was buried in Missoula, Montana in a pauper’s grave. My sister took a train out to visit his gravesite once. I never have.

So for all intents and purposes, my sister and I lived with our mother as three separate individuals until I went into the service and my sister got married. It was just the three of us under one roof and managing our lives the best we could.

At a very early age my aunts made it clear to me that I was better off without my father around. Even at six years old I got the picture. They didn’t like him very much and they carried that animosity over to my sister and me. I could never figure out why we were stigmatized for the sins of our father.

Growing up, I was vaguely aware of other nuclear families that had a father and mother. But we had our home on Randolph Avenue and that was our abode; minus all the trappings of Ozzie and Harriett and the Cleavers. It never registered to me what a real family might be like.

I’m grateful for those old pictures of my dad and me. Not because they answer any questions. They certainly don’t. And my mother’s refusal to talk about that part of her past has left a huge hole in that part of my life. Despite that I can’t complain.

I’ve had a good life. I’m married to a wonderful woman, forty-five years and counting. I’ve got great kids and wonderful grandchildren. It’s been ‘all good.’ And for a very brief period of time back on Smith Avenue in old Saint Paul it looks like we were a family… a family just like everyone else.