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.

Where the Penguins Went to Roost

Before Sharon’s health issues prevented me from venturing out on my bicycle this spring, I had a ritual dearly loved and enjoyed. My Springtime bike rides into St. Paul and Minneapolis were classic-at least in my mind. They would begin innocently enough; unplanned, scheduled or routed. Just another Saturday morning jaunt to discover or rediscover parts of the Twin Cities I hadn’t been to for a long time. It was a return (abet, just passing through) to those parts of the city that had affected my life so many years ago.

First stop on my journey of discovery always began at the Dunn Brothers coffee shop in the Longfellow neighborhood of South Minneapolis. The earlier in the morning the better. The perfect time for insomniacs, running and biking fanatics and one oldster reclaiming his past.

After a less than nutritional breakfast and some reflection, it was time to begin my journey of discovery. It might be down Lake Street to downtown Minneapolis. It might be down the River Boulevard to the University of Minnesota or south to Minnehaha Park. Today, it was a quick decision to head east toward the rising sun and my old haunts in Saint Paul.

F. Scott. Fitzgerald used to live in a row house with the plaque out front before fame and alcohol cut short his writing career.

There’s a story here and a poem too (Under Cathedral Dome) but Alice wouldn’t approve and besides that was another era long since past. It’s probably best left unspoken now…unless it shows up in some future novel.

Then it was a drop down off of Ramsey hill to what was once the edge of downtown Saint Paul.

This would have been the first of several marginal rental properties we lived in before my mother built our home in Highland Park. Not surprisingly, the entire neighborhood has turned over several times now or morphed into empty lots. The playground in the background is now United Children’s Hospital.

My mother’s first and only grasp at entrepreneurship came right after she got married. It was a small café they called ‘Frenchy’s Eats’ named after my father who was French-Canadian. The venture failed miserably because, according to my mother, the help stole from her and my father drank away the profits.

At the other end of the block from ‘Frenchy’s Eats’ is the bar where legend has it my father drank almost every night. It was a half a block and a total lack of responsibility away from my mother’s dreams and aspirations. I’ve written a play entitled’ Frenchy’s Eats’ which explores that period in my mother’s life, my own life later on, and the ensuing repercussions that flowed downstream.

The only memory I have of this rundown six-plex is a phone call my mother received one evening. She started crying… then my sister started crying…so naturally, I started crying. I was six years old at the time.

Years later, I found out that the phone call was from a grandmother (on my father’s side) informing my mother that my father had just died in some old flea-bitten hotel in Missoula, Montana. My mother told us he was on his way back to Minnesota from the west coast… after an absence of four years from our lives?

We were always warned not to talk to or go by the DPs. They were displaced persons mostly from Eastern Europe who were resettling in Minnesota after the war. I learned much later the building was a way-station for these refugees because they had to be quarantined for a certain period of time. The units are all condos now.

The Little Sisters of the Poor have been doing God’s work since 1855. They were feeding and housing the poor long before I was born. They’re still doing it today.

Wilder Nursery was one of the few day-care operations for indigent folks back when. For my mother it was a God-send. There was this older black woman who was a playground supervisor. She liked me. Kids can always tell when an adult likes them. She called me ‘butterball’ probably because I wasn’t the thinnest kid on the block. It was my first taste of affection from another human being and made me feel warm all over.

On our sporadic outings from Wilder Nursery, we would go down to Irving Park. Back then, it was old and tired and a sad reminder of its glory days back in the twenties. I led my gang of four- year-olds from the nursery. We would run around and scream at the other kids and pretend we were cowboys. I had a vivid imagination even back then.

I’ve often said I’m grateful that my mother gave me life and raised us in this house instead of an apartment. There are a lot of memories there. Mostly good ones and I never once felt different from the other kids on the block because I had a house to live in like they did.

The nuns were housed in this large building across the street from the little French church downtown. My sister and I had to walk by the nun’s residence each morning coming up from the streetcar line. We were always worried we’d meet up with the nuns on their way to school. Dressed in black and white, strict, stern, never-smiling, a walk with them for any distance was pure torture. But by eighth grade, as only a group of smart-ass boys would agree, that was where the penguins went to roost each night.

I was conscripted into service as an altar boy right after fourth grade. My slot was the 11:30 mass every Sunday. So, for years I’d get up at 4:30 to do my paper route and then waste a good part of the morning until I took the bus downtown for mass. I argued for an early morning slot but the priest liked the schedule just as it was. It pleased my mother to see me serve God every Sunday but it sure screwed up my Sundays for other things.

St. Louis grade school was run with an iron fist by the French nuns. The entire school consisted of four large rooms, two per floor. There were two grades per room. The bathrooms and cafeteria were in the basement. Some of the nuns were nice but never overly friendly. Some (in retrospect) were psychotic and dangerous to small children and helpless animals. But that was a different era.

It was in first grade that the dear old nuns informed my mother that the French spelling of my name was Denis, not Dennis. I’ve been Denis ever since. I learned at an early age that one doesn’t challenge French nuns.  Shortly after I graduated, they tore down the school and put up a parking lot.

Cretin High School was a true turning point in my life. I was lost and scared and absolutely clueless. But somehow, I made it through four years and got a good education. After that, there was no turning back. While I was done trudging up the hill and avoiding the penguins, I was still on my quest for a lifetime of learning. My kids have already thanked me. My grandkids can thank me in the future.

When I was a Younger Man

On the surface, it might seem conceited of me writing yet another article about myself. Perhaps it’ll be mistaken as some self-absorbed treatise on the wonderment of youth and the trials (slash) tribulations of growing up in the 50’s in the Midwest. Like some opening act or shadowy prelude to my oft-mentioned ‘Lost Years’ during the Sixties. In reality, it’s a sobering realization that the complexity of youth is often realigned as age and maturity gain some foothold on one’s memory.

My Mother appears in these two pictures; the first on her wedding day and the second with some skittish grade-schooler in her own backyard. Yet her presence can be felt in every picture…one vision then, another now.

I can’t say the pictures unleash a floodgate of fond memories drowning my consciousness with warmth. But nor do they harken back to a darker period in my life. Instead, the photos tell a simple story. It was what it was. That would be defined as growing up in a single parent household and raised by an emotionally-vacant woman who was just trying to survive under some very tough circumstances. And she did it with little to no support from other family members. Boyed by her Catholic faith and the resiliency of her rural upbringing this woman made the best of numerous life-changing events in her life.

My mother came from an agrarian culture, much like the woman I would eventually marry. Beneath that façade of modesty was one tough, hard-working and determined woman. With little more than her own mental smarts and street-learned determination my mother made her way through a hard-scrabble, ever-changing world…with two kids under tow and no husband at her side.

I look back at these pictures of myself now and see them quite differently than I have in the past.

I used to see a scared kid unsure of himself with no father or father figure to guide him along. Now, I see a kid heavily influenced by the work ethic and penny-wise attitudes of his mother. She started working at age five by cleaning out the chicken coop. I started working in seventh grade with my first paper route. We both always had/have side hustles going on.

I used to see a teenager desperate to find love and affection and someone to be close to. Now I see an ordinary kid just like every other kid I knew who was searching for love…only I didn’t know it at the time.

I used to see kid so proud of his ROTC training and the Lieutenants bars pinned on his shoulders even if it was only in high school. Now, I see a kid who got the message early on that education was everything and he was determined to pass that on to his own children and grandchildren.

I used to see a young man in his hippie beads trying to express himself with a mother who never quite understood why. Now, I see that same young man in his hippie beads and understand what she was smiling about.  I think I’d be smiling right there alongside her now.

Age and maturity have finally brought clarity to the reality of those pictures now. It’s too late to tell her now but if I could…..I’d tell my mother:

I’ve never said it before, Mom, but you did good. With very little help and lacking any formal education you managed to pull off what a lot of other married women and single mothers weren’t able to do.

You built your home with your own hands; making sure your kids got a good Catholic education. You even managed to finally find the joy of love later on in life. And near and dear to your heart, you were loved by your grandchildren who still treasure their memories of you long after you left for that Novena in the Sky.

I’m sorry I wasn’t able to see the whole picture when I was growing up there alongside you. It was cloudy and vapid back then…and it’s taken a long time for me to put that puzzle together. I should have told you how very proud I was to have you as my mother. I’ve never said that to you before.

But I’m saying it now.