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.

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.

The World I Used to Know

A recent effort to organize a grade school class reunion reminded me just how much my world has changed over time. I attended a small Catholic grade school in downtown Saint Paul in the late Fifties. The school closed in the early Sixties. It had become a footnote in the history books and as my classmates passed on, I realized that all the vestiges of that era were disappearing.

My wife is from Wabasha, Minnesota. Born and raised on a farm, she remembers when going into town with her siblings and parents was a ‘big deal.’ Nothing much seemed to change on Main Street until around the mid-Sixties. Then gradually the old regime of town folk began to pass away and newcomers came in with new ideas for growing Wabasha out of its rigid agrarian past. Old Wabasha was also becoming a footnote in the history books.

Arianna Huffington, creator of the Huffington Post and numerous books, has an interesting take on the current social, economic changes taking place in America today. One of her more recent books is entitled ‘Third World America.’

Ms. Huffington sees the share of our economy devoted to making things of value shrinking while the share devoted to valuing made-up things (credit-swap derivatives, anyone?) is expanding. She calls it the financialization of our economy.  Another more caustic description would be the Enronization of our economy. Thomas Friedman captured a lot of this thinking in his book entitled: ‘Thank You for Being Late.’

Friedman sees this country and the world-at-large in a new age of acceleration. Triggered by three factors; the market, Mother Nature and Moore’s Law, he believes the world is rapidly changing and things are being done differently now. The market and Moore’s Law (rapid change of technology) along with climate change, population growth and biodiversity loss are all coupled together for this exponential growth in many things.

Software used to be the bottleneck. Now that is overtaking everything. It has become a com-pound multiplier of Moore’s Law. Welcome to our ever-changing world where nothing ever remains the same. The only constant is change and in our capitalistic society the illusion that newer is better.  

Not to be undone, there recently was an article written in Financial Advisor Magazine that warned about ‘The Coming Shock That Will Transform the U.S. economy.’ The basic gist of the article was that there is a new wave of transformative change sweeping over the U.S. economy. Think of it as ‘Future Shock,’ ‘Third Wave,’ and ‘Death of the American Dream’ all on steroids. This tele shock, or the rise in telecommunications, is the major impetus for these changes.

In this case, the author states that ‘among the big losers will be the American upper middle class, especially those with jobs connected to information technology and those who can work from home.’ The article then adds on a less than hopeful note that ‘The tele shock is likely to continue for a considerable period of time, perhaps longer than the China Shock.’ To add a little icing on that cake of despair, the article ends with: ‘It is conventional wisdom that “software is eating the world.”’

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think much of what the author says is true. My only complaint is his implied conclusion that this means the end of the world as we know it. I think a calmer approach is what is called for. One of the reasons I love my coffee and chat sessions, is because of the rich mix of topics that we cover.

One of the more interesting topics we discussed recently was whether or not the ‘American Dream’ was still alive and coupled with that was the question of ‘what it takes to become successful in today’s world?’ American capitalism has painted one version of success but now younger generations have created their own ideas of the same icon. It’s a world inhabited by Bitcoins, NFTs, Metaverse and other newfound forms of electronic currency.

Union Depot (photo courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society)

Past generations believed that with hard work, sacrifice and some luck, one could attain the American Dream. For most folks, that was translated into a nice home, a new car in the driveway and other material possessions.   Later generations like those of my kids and grandchildren came to believe that balance in one’s life was more important than thirty years at ABC Manufacturing and a gold watch in retirement.

So the, question in a question, was whether or not one could attain the American Dream in today’s world of high prices, limited resources, constant change, and a need for balance in one’s life.

While it wouldn’t be an easy road to stroll, I believe one could attain success in life if the influences of American capitalism are viewed with a jaundice eye and one focuses on what it was that made a person truly happy. And that definition could or would be different for everyone involved.

This whole idea of who seems very satisfied with their life in addition to reaching a notable symbol of wealth came edging back into my consciousness when I ordered two books from my favorite library out in cyber space, ‘Better World Books.’

I’ve been around long enough to personally know a few people who have (by American cultural standards) attained the American Dream. But you’d seldom guess it by looking at or talking to them. For example, I have another friend who came from modest means and yet has been a millionaire plus for well over 30 years. Now you’d never know it by looking at his lifestyle, the kind of cars he and his wife drive or their other material accoutrements. He takes great pride in the fact that he’s had ‘serious money’ for a very long time but never flaunted it or made it known to anyone except a few select people. He believes there is great strength in understatement. I couldn’t agree more.

Younger generations want more balance in their lives. They don’t want to become slaves to their jobs. While that is admirable and commendable, it also makes it much harder to gain financial freedom and choice without some sacrifice. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

Just as ‘success’ is a personal goal and achievement, so too is financial freedom. I’m old enough and, and perhaps, foolish enough to believe that one can have balance and yet attain some degree of financial achievement if other ‘truths’ of the marketplace are understood and accepted.

No job is secure. You’re on your own. At times it feels like the world is conspiring against you. Don’t get caught up in all the hype ‘of anything.’ Cover your costs. Cover your ass. Let the buyer beware. Be kind to others. Work more than expected. Do more than expected. Have goals and know where you want to go and where you want to end up.

These include working past a normal 9 to 5 work day, networking, making financial sacrifices when ‘needs’ takes precedent over ‘wants.’ Any review of ‘Success Magazine’ or other self-improvement web sites can give you a long list of steps to take to become successful in your personal life and financially independent. Homogenized though they may be, it all comes down to working hard, being sensibly thrifty and making smart decisions. My wife has said on several occasions: “It wasn’t our regular jobs that got us to where we are today!”

Old St. Paul River Bank (photo credit: Minnesota Historical Society)

At the turn of the century, a series of magazine articles about an orphan boy raised on the wrong side of the tracks who found success in hard work and determination. Maybe after all these years, Horatio Alger was really on to something after all?

Minnesota History - So Who Cares?

One of the joys of my altered lifestyle during the pandemic was rediscovering our local library, especially the magazine section. I found myself on a number of occasions lost in the stacks, perusing, reviewing and discovering new and old magazines. One in particular caught my eye.

As a lifelong resident of the state of Minnesota, I hadn’t given my residency here any real thought other than the fact that I still hate the winters, relish spring and fall and now have readjusted to the warmer than usual summer months. The magazine that caught my eye was ‘Minnesota History’, produced and published by the Minnesota Historical Society.

The magazine provides a fascinating glimpse back at many different aspects of Minnesota History down through the ages. My own historical timeline begins in 1943; a period in Minnesota when the state had just come out of the Great Depression and was now fully immersed in the Second World War.

My parents were products of those historical benchmarks and the agrarian lifestyle that preceded them. The events that took place in my parent’s marriage and afterwards shaped the kind of persons my sister and me ultimately became. It was that historical wallpaper around our lives that caught and held my attention last summer.

I found articles on the Summit Hill area where I was born. Smith Avenue, where we lived in a hovel for a short period of time. Then Irving Park, where we lived in a six-plex apartment building while our mother was building her own house in Highland Park.

For eight years my sister and I took a streetcar then a bus into Saint Paul and the little French school on the hill above downtown. With those daily sojourns, we saw and felt ‘Old Saint Paul’ going through another one of its average every half-century of cultural, social, and architectural evolutions.

Old St. Paul was morphing into a mid-century of population growth, expanding neighborhoods and suburbs, transportation changes and new attitudes towards everything from religion to music to means of communication.

By perusing, scanning, and reading various articles in the magazine, I was able to learn more about relevant events, incidents and benchmarks that marked my time in the city. In the sixties, when I had moved physically and mentally out of town, there were other articles that discussed events in the twin cities or the state that had impacted my life one way or another.

Now in my senior years, I live in two different worlds and I’m comfortable in both. One is a progressive state; adventurous and sometimes a bit outrageous, but always leaning forward. For half a year I wear my Southern California flip-flops as comfortably as any other sun seeker.

The Midwest is more staid and conservative than California in a common sense kind of way. For me it’s two different life styles and two points of view. Yet there’s a common thread running between the two with openness for all and acceptance of different points of view. Both states offer a realistic view of the world and not a closed-minded myopic wish for what used to be. They don’t dwell on a world that, in fact, never really existed except in television sitcoms and wishful thinking. Instead they focus on what could be and not what once was.

I’m born and bred Minnesotan with a strong streak of California to taint my mind. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Both states have become home in more ways than one. They’re like a cradle upon which my imagination gives birth to creative, frivolous, silly and sometimes enlightened ideas, concepts and storylines. It’s the flip side of that routine called your average lifestyle. If ever there were a balance in my life, it would be called the Minnesota-California connection.

There’s a quote I love that goes something like this: “At some point in the journey, you realize it’s time to head back home. It doesn’t matter where you are in the journey, the Gods begin calling and you must return home.” I think there is something about that mysterious force called ‘home’ that calls to all of us. I feel it every spring when the itch to return to my roots begins to claw at my insides.

Overall, Minnesota History Magazine helped me paint a picture of my home state, golden glow and warts included. It’s a state that really defines ‘where I came from.’ Over the years, Minnesota has collected its fair share of great moments and embarrassing stumbles. But in the end, it is the embodiment of the Midwest and everything that that cliché entails.

It’s a nice place to grow up in and a greater place to have come from.