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III. Now Education ... |
Public grade school was a nondescript experience, except for the butter churning memory. I seem to remember a constant scent of "pre-pubescence".
Then came St.Bart's (Catholic, naturally!) when we moved to northeast Philadelphia. Not a lot to remember here either except the seasonal string of religious "exercises" one became accustomed to:
The Stations of the Cross on Fridays during Lent, just before Easter. All the statues in Church covered on Good Friday, then the longish and ritual-filled blessing of the holy water, lighting of the Pascal candle, taking down the velvet covering the statues because Christ had risen, and the mystical smell of the incense-- all of that incense! I was an alter boy and really participated in all of these ceremonies-- holding the censor, that metal globular thing that held the incense, putting the round charcoal in the bottom, watching the priest spoon the yellowish incense onto the glowing charcoal, and all that exotic white "saintly" smoke coming out, filling the altar area-- and the Church itself-- with an unforgettable flavour of God!
The annual May-Day processions and the crowning of the statue of the Immaculate Conception in the school yard. How many times was I picked out to go to the florist and order the crown of flowers used in this childlike show of piety! And I can even remember at least once climbing that rickety ladder to place it on top of that cold, angelically smiling head.
And all those hymns that we sang so much that I even remember a couple today-- some even in Latin! People today do not know the pure delight of being able to pronounce and sing strange words in a "dead" language, all the while only guessing-- and eventually perhaps even knowing-- their meanings. Adeste fideles..., Ave Maria, grazia plena..., ...venite adoremus..., Oh,Mary,we crown Thee with blossoms today, Queen of the angels, Queen of the May..., and the innumerable Christmas songs that we sang in Church. Even today, I really REJOICE in these emotion filled Yuletide sounds ripe with otherworldly and pious contexts brought down to us here on Earth somehow!
All of the teachers were nuns from the Order of Saint Joseph, all looking, now in my mind's eye, like a flock of penguins, swishing around in their long black habits with the wide white "bib" in front. I found them pleasant, caring and full of knowledge, as well as imbued with a sense of "religious" strictness probably stemming from their strict lifestyle. The boys all wore shirts and ties, and the girls looked weird in their dark blue "uniforms". It is said that wearing some sort of school "uniform" helps maintain a sense of decorum or "belonging" to a nameless group of something. It is certainly different than seeing my students, girls and boys, come to class sometimes with t-shirts having "What the Fuck are U Luking at?", or "The homeboy can't get nun from me!"-- the spelling reflects their own vocabulary level! Of course, I always send them to the office where they are told to put it on backwards or to call their mom to bring in a "normal" one-- the first option is the usual selection!
I guess that I was an "average" student, probably difficult at times, but always an absolute "angel"! One time my angelic horns (some angels were also devils, do not forget!) showed through. I had a "cap gun" one of those western-style revolvers that loaded "caps" in a red spiral bunch (much like postage stamps sometimes come in a roll today, but the spiral was about 1/4 inch wide) having smallish darker colored dots about 1/8 inch in diameter filled with some sort of explosive mixture that would BANG when the gun was fired. At home I would cut open these dots and remove the black powder, collecting it in some receptacle. I once filled a cylindrical wooden lead container (like for "mechanical" lead pencils, the kind you put these unbelievably thin strips of "lead" into) with a lot of black powder and drew a skull and crossbones on the container. I carried it to school one day, for no apparent reason that I can recall now, and was playing with it one day in class when it EXPLODED! I thought the nun would die! I just sat there dumbfounded, not knowing what to do next. Of course everything in class stopped, the principal was called and I was questioned about the incident. I said that I had found this small thing on the way to school (much in the same way, I suppose, that my students "find" the razor blades, steak knives and even guns that I have confiscated from them!!), and that it just "went off". Since I was such a good monster, all I got was sympathy and a stern warning not to pick up and play with possibly dangerous things again. I imagine that is why these classical cap guns are no longer to be found in toy stores! Some OTHER crazy kid might get his eye blown out or something! I guess I was just lucky.
In the eighth grade there was talk of a new Catholic high school for boys being built not TOO far from home. The only other "regional" boys' high school was Northeast Catholic, a bus and subway ride away, the one my father graduated from-- at the time, it was only a bus ride away from his Port Richmond home.
So, while the new one was being built, we were shipped to Saint Ann's Annex, right in the Port Richmond section. "Annex" because NE Catholic was overflowing and there was no space for the kids who lived farther away! Again we had the St.Joe's nuns. An old, dilapidated building, with even older nuns! It was fun exploring all of the basement rooms, the backstage area, etc.
I made some new friends, mostly from around Saint Ann's. We would take walks along the railroad tracks, walking balanced on the tracks-- I still like to do this! We wandered along small creeks-- in sight of that giant milk bottle water-tower on top of Abbott's Dairies, not far from school-- that an enormous sewer emptied-out into, fairly smelly stuff. It was along this narrow waterway that I first observed these longish, floppy yellowish things having a harder circular end, sort of like a rubber band attached to a "bag", floating or just sitting on the bottom of the creek. I asked my companion several times what they were, but he would never tell me for some reason. I guess Andy was ashamed or something that he knew what a condom was, and he just could not tell his as-yet-"unhatched" friend about it. I did not "hatch" for another ten years or so!!
Many years later, when talking to a classmate about Saint Ann's, the conversation came to one of the teachers, Sister Rose Marie. I liked her, but I thought she had a nervous tick or something because she always was fingering the chest area of her habit (that penguin-like costume they wear). I was now enlightened-- she was hard of hearing, and had to constantly adjust her hearing aid, the adjustments were probably located in a "battery pack" or something she kept hidden under her habit! Everybody else KNEW what she was doing, everyone BUT me!
I have since come to realize that I appear to view the people with whom I come into contact somewhat differently than others might. I seem to observe only the "qualities", something ABSTRACTed from the ESSENCE of the person, perhaps the voice, the general face/body shape, the habits, the demeanor, the roughness/easy-goingness, how tall/short, some facial/verbal expressions and such. The DETAILS escape me-- hair/eye colour, hands or what they have ON them, what they wear (except for the "penguins"!), feet/shoes, all of these "accessories", to me NOT part of the CONCEPT of "person". This holds true, for the most part, even today. The old man I worked with every day running the carousel on the boardwalk in North Wildwood had a glass eye, and I would have never noticed it had someone not mentioned the detail to me!! To me PEOPLE are "people", perhaps in a philosophical, subjective, abstract sense, along the lines of what I call the CONCEPT. Concepts are, at least to me, easier to learn than what I call TIDBITS, those nasty little details that they always seem to test you on in school! I try to pass a myriad of these "concepts" to my students-- once they can recognize the concept, then they can identify and process information concerning the "details" more readily and naturally, and even perhaps remember them for more than five minutes!
Father Judge High School for Boys in northeast Philadelphia was completed when I reached my sophomore year. Now the trip was shorter, only one bus to take (the "88") and the school was state-of-the-art-- new EVERYTHING. Nice chapel, with stained glass windows, where I continued my altarboy duties. Science labs that smelled "new". They continued building during the 3 years I spent there-- a gym, cafeteria, etc. The school was adjacent to Pennypack Park, a neat large and rambling forest/park area including Pennypack Creek, a couple of small waterfalls and great trails. I often walked to school/home along the Creek, finding my first garter snakes, three-lined salamanders, crayfish, toads, green frogs, a lizard or two, turtles, and all kinds of birds and trees/plants-- I think I discovered my first Sassafras here, with the glove/palm-shaped leaves smelling of, well, sassafras! I could identify all of the trees and many plants. Much of the water/amphibious life accompanied me home to my aquaria and terraria. I NEVER went to gym class-- I had asked the teacher whether I could explore the excavations they had in back to look for minerals (some garnet crystals, those neat faceted opaque blood-red gems, which I later learned were connected with January, my birth month) or whatever, and often spent the double-period simply wandering around in the park, sitting by the creek or listening for the snakes as they moved through the grass. That is the only way I have EVER found a snake-- listening for it! Of course you SLOWLY turn over rocks near the creek or in damp places to find the salamanders, and you have to get your feet wet a little to turn the rocks over in slower moving water to look for crawfish (a second spelling for the same miniature "lobster") and whatever else might jump out.
The teachers also changed-- instead of Catholic nuns we had a bunch of mostly Christian Brothers of some Order or other, with a couple of "lay" (non-religious) teachers mixed in, NONE of whose names I would have remembered were it not for a "poem" I wrote then (I never threw anything out, always filed it somewhere for some unknown impulsive reason!!). This one has a slip stapled to it with a now rusty staple, on which is typed: "Date Written" (I was 14 at the time!), "Original Copy", "Date Varafied"(sic!-- they did not have word processors then!), "Stamp" followed by "SHIPPER'S LOAD AND COUNT" (I told you I used it for EVERYTHING!), and "Signature of Author", with all of the spaces properly entered with the corresponding data!! I was, and still am, much too organized!:
My Teachers
First of all there's Mr. Fiegal,
Who incidentally resembles a beagle.
He is slim and his ears are long and funny,
He often looks like an Easter bunny.
To me he looks like all the rest.
To me he looks like he needs a rest!
Secondly there's Father Ernst.
To pass his tests we know we wonst.
You know that everybody can't be sane,
Well he ain't. That's why we wait for June to wane.
To get out of his class
Even though we won't all pass.
Next to the last is Father McManus,
The only thing he don't do is bite us,
He'll curse, he'll swear
We know he ain't there
Because, o'well
He has only one brain cell.
Last but not least is Mr. McClusky,
He's not thin but he is very husky.
Once we called him "Big Dan"
You should have seen how we ran!
His sense of humor is of fine stock,
We think his head's made of rock!
I must have been a bitch in science class. Once Father McManus (and he DID swear like the kids I have in class do!) was telling us about the speed of sound, and how it ALWAYS travels at the same velocity. My little calculating gray cells started clicking, and I asked, "What if it was a very foggy day. The fog contains minute water droplets. The sound would then be traveling through air, BUT ALSO through water-- Father, would it still travel at x feet/sec?" He told me to shut up!
Father Ernst was of VERY Germanic stock-- had a noticeable accent, sort of like Henry Kissinger!-- and always bragged about how he had worked as a lumber jack, and how he once tore a telephone book in half. That is all I needed! The next day I brought the Philadelphia telephone directory to class; it must have been at least two inches thick-- "Father, I brought you a telephone book to show us your prowess", I said. Of course, all the guys thought I was crazy and that Kissinger would get up and smack me silly (probably my same feelings!)! He smiled, came over and took the directory, went back to his desk, and I remember quite clearly, he appeared to adjust his jock strap, took the book in his hands, rolled it slightly so that the pages were not all straight up and down, then he tore it in half!! We were totally AWESTRUCK! After looking around at our dazed expressions, he then took each half and tore each of these in half!!!! Jesus, he really showed us brats a thing or two. Needless to say, he never had any problems with any of his students! I still have one of the quarters of that phone book somewhere (need I say!).
This was ONE OF my most "poetic", introspective periods of life, as I recall. Another poem written at the age of 17:
NATURE
Of all Nature's wonders, which is best,
Her plants. Her minerals, animals and the rest?
In books and field I have seen their kind
And still no answer do I find.
The plants, some green, some red, some pale;
How does this live, it looks so frail?
From fern to rose, from pine to pear,
They raise their leaves as if in prayer.
The rocks, the minerals and their kind
In the book of strata have defined
The stages that our planet Earth
Has undergone long since her birth.
The animals, varied as they be
Will always greatly interest me;
A frog, a dog, a fish, a shell;
What design does their Being tell?
If God would let out all the sand
And begin again, He'd lift His Hand
And say, "All Nature from this day,
As you were, I Will you stay".
Before graduation, I had been accepted to two universities, the University of Pennsylvania and Villanova University. One was secular, the other Catholic, run by the Augustinians, the Order that never seemed to see eye to eye with the Jesuits!
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The story continues... Sunday, 14 January 1996 -- the LEAST happy birthday I EVER HAD! |
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