The Saga Continues -- grades 3 and 4

 

You know the saying about how the more things change the more they remain the same.

We were looking forward to moving to the "big school" but for some reason I don't recall, we stayed in the little building away from the main school for third grade.  (I don't know where the first and second grade went.)  Our teacher was Sister Mary Gonzaga.  She had a reputation as being particularly hard, so I entered the third grade with trepidation.  We were the only class in our building now so Sister Gonzaga taught everything.  We continued with phonics, reading, arithmetic, and, of course, religion.

I was terrified of Sister Gonzaga, although she only made me stay after school once, for talking in class.  Later I would read satire about nuns who lay in wait in doorways for a student to come flying
past and "lasso" him with her oversized rosary.  I thought of Sister Gonzaga when I read the story.
 
I believe we began to learn cursive writing in the third grade.  Many of my generation bemoan the lack of cursive instruction in schools today.  They are all female.  No male in his right mind thinks cursive is a great idea.  We lack the fine motor skills for cursive writing, especially at eight years of age.  I rarely received better than a C for my handwriting.  I don't know of any boys who did better.

This was the first year that we used pens instead of those big fat pencils.  I vaguely recall having forgotten the assignment to bring a pen to school one day until the very last minute.  My mother sent me with her Parker ball point.  Nerves had me clicking the pen in and out, in and out, so much that I broke the mechanism.  Not the best day.  Mom was thrilled.  By the time my younger siblings came Bic pens had as well. 

My love of reading continued.  I remember the first time my parents took me to the library with them to get my library card.  They always went to the library on Saturdays.  I checked out the limit on my first visit, all primer readers.  Before the afternoon was over, I had read all of them.  My parents encouraged me to set the bar a little higher next time.

This leads me to what every classroom seemed to have had in its "library":  biographies of the saints.  I read them compulsively.  I learned how Queen Elizabeth I tortured Roman Catholics to death by crushing them and how St. Lawrence was barbecued by the Romans on a large grill.  It's a miracle we didn't have nightmares or PTSD.  One saint that stands out in my mind was St. Aloysius of Gonzaga.  This is why.

One classmate who joined us for the third grade was Al Mulrooney.  Al was a little older than the rest of us.  He seemed to like Sister Gonzaga to the extent that, much later in our adult life, I had taken my young daughters to a theme park in Memphis  called Libertyland.  We were walking through the park when Al and I spotted each other.  "Jimmy!  You'll never guess who I've brought to the park.  Sister Gonzaga.  She's at the dolphin exhibit.  You've got to see her."  Of course, I had to go.  Sister Gonzaga was sitting with Al's mother watching the dolphins do their thing.  Sister Gonzaga had traded her traditional habit for a post-Vatican II habit but she still seemed the same age as when she had taught us in 1957.  She also struck me as a lot sweeter and less fearsome.  I finally realized (in my mind) why they had such a connection.  Al's full name was Edgar Aloysius Mulrooney.  Sister chose her religious name for St. Aloysius of Gonzaga.

Al has a wonderful story to tell about Sister in later years.  I'll reserve that for a later time unless he wants to share it here.

With the third grade, I was old enough to walk home from school.  Before then, car pooling parents would take us to school and pick us up.  There were two school buses that transported children who lived away from the school.  I lived six or seven blocks away and my parents decided it was time for me to transport myself.  A few of us walked together all or part of the way.

Mary Gayle Comer caught the bus on Broad Street.  Once when we walked together, she bought me a Three Musketeers candy bar at the neighborhood market.  When the boys  in class found out, they made fun of me.

Russell Caccamisi's father had a shop on Broad, so we would walk together sometimes.

Terry Ryan and his older brother Richard and younger sisters Peggy and Betty Ann lived a block further away than I did, so we walked together frequently.  Terry and I had two modes of friendship:  pals or fighting.  We were always getting into fights, then forgetting the next day why we had fought.  Sometimes I ran home to get away from him.  He was the first friend I made whose house I was permitted to visit.  As we became older, we found some ingenious ways of getting into trouble.

My parents started piano lessons for me in the third grade.  These were not taught at school; they were private lessons with Miss Margaret Vuille (pronounced Vee - lee).  Miss Margaret was a spinster, the church organist, and eventually one of my mother's best friends.  My mother always sang in the choir.  My parents believed in the value of musical training for all of their children.  Three of us persisted with piano lessons until high school.  My sister Barbara eventually became a music teacher in schools, a private music teacher, and a church organist.  Along with my friend, Bert Bailey, I played the organ for the school choir in the seventh and eighth grades.  My brother, Richard, despite having a busy radiology practice, continues to play piano at his church for some services and his daughter is the chorus director for her alma mater in Huntsville, Alabama and a music graduate of Auburn University.  Such was Miss Vuille's influence.

Fourth grade and finally we made it to the big school.  Our teacher was Sister Mary Bernardo who also was the choir director.  She had a beautiful voice and, like Sister Gemma, was a relatively young nun (at least from my 9 year old eyes).  She is also the only teacher to give me a U (Unsatisfactory) in conduct.  When I received that report card, I waited until the rest of the class left and asked her about it.  I was shocked.  I didn't recall receiving many scoldings, but I must have.  She told me I finished my work so quickly that I spent a lot of time talking to my neighbors and distracting them from their work.  When I went home that day, I went to my father's office and presented the report card to him.  I was a wreck.  I knew he was going to kill me.  But he must have realized that I'd already punished myself enough and just told me to do better.

With the fourth grade we were prepared for Confirmation.  Most if not all of us were baptized as infants.  Confirmation was the sacrament where you professed on your own behalf to be part of the Church.  A bishop came to the church and it involved a laying on of the bishop's hands.  We dressed up in our white suits (boys) and white dresses (girls) again, just as we had for First Communion. 

I find myself recalling what the church was like then, in the years prior to the Second Vatican Council and its Aggiornamento  or "bringing up to date".  Everything was black or white, every sin was either venial or mortal, every decision was between heaven and hell.  I discovered a list of venial sins on the internet.  These are the lesser sins.  I also found a list of mortal sins.  Vatican II notwithstanding, the church remains, in many ways, unable to distinguish shades of gray.  Murder is a mortal sin.  You will go to hell.  Missing Mass on Sundays is also a mortal sin.  You will go to hell.  What's wrong with this picture?

The remarkable thing is it never occurred to most of us to raise such a question.  We were instructed to take the church's teaching as gospel (pun intended) and not to question its teachings or our teachers. 

My own daughters would probably be surprised that I was confirmed at such a young age.  Even the Catholic Church recognized that a nine year old was probably not prepared for such an adult decision.  Most of my younger brothers and sisters were confirmed in their teens as were my daughters in the Episcopal Church.

Bert and I would work more intensely with Sister Bernardo when we became the school choir organists in the seventh and eighth grades.

Next we get to look forward to Mrs. Martin and Sister Mary Carl, two polar opposites as teachers go.

Remembering Blessed Sacrament School, 1955 - 1963

This remembrance is written for at least two purposes.

First, as a few of my classmates prepare to celebrate the 55th anniversary of our graduation, I've encouraged them to come to our reunion with special recollections of our time together.  I have so many memories that I've decided to write them down and share them via email and Facebook for them.

Secondly, I've never shared much about my schooling with either of my daughters or my grandsons.  I hope this may become a part of a family lore, and may surprise them as their schooling was very different from mine.

Everything that follows should begin with, "The way I remember is...".

I entered elementary school sometime in September of 1953.  The school was Blessed Sacrament School.  It was attached and under the supervision of Blessed Sacrament Parish in Binghamton, a working class neighborhood, at the time, in Memphis, Tennessee.  My teacher was Sister Mary Gemma, a relatively young member of the Sisters of Mercy.  She wore an old fashioned habit like this. 

By coincidence, Sister Gemma passed away recently as one of my classmates noted in an email that circulated among us.

What was first grade like?  School began with 8:00 am Mass every day.  We had the three R's of course.  But we were taught a fourth R--Religion.  In Catholic schools at the time, religion classes were taught every day.

Religion class involved a text called the Baltimore Catechism.  A catechism is not unique to the Catholic Church.  Other denominations have their own.  Our early years involved a stripped down version.  A catechism is a series of questions and answers that involve what you believe as Catholics.

For example, "Who made you?"  "God made me."

Every day, our religion assignment was to memorize a number of these questions and answers.  I do not remember what the stripped down version for first graders of "Thou shalt not commit adultery" was.  Something about impure thoughts (whatever those were).

I could memorize easily, so I could fire these answers back.  I was so proud.

One day, Sister Gemma called me to the front of the room.  Russell Caccamisi stood there with her.  "Russell tells me you two were talking in church this morning.  Were you?"

I actually didn't remember but better to confess.  "Yes, sister."

"Then I want both of you to write from 1 to 200."  Writing numbers was our standard punishment.

I didn't know what 200 was.  We'd never learned anything past 100.  So I wrote to 102 on a guess and handed it in.  She explained I had to do it again.

Sister Gemma started an after school program called "Expression."  It would be too much to call it a drama class; she just taught us that, when reading aloud and in public, you needed to do more than drone on.  I don't remember which other members of my class attended Expression.  I do remember that my mother got it into her head that Sister and the class would love to hear me sing "Over the Rainbow."  I cringe in recollection of the event.

The first and second grades were taught in a small building catty corner from the rest of the school and the church.  The school cafeteria was also located in that building.  The second grade teacher was Mrs. Lowery, an older lay lady.

When the second grade was taught religion, Sister Gemma took over that class and Mrs. Lowery came to the first grade to teach Phonics.  Phonics was a way of learning reading and spelling by learning the sounds the letters make.  We learned about long vowels and short vowels, silent e's, consonants.  I believe that's what made me a really good speller.  The phrase we learned was "sound it out." 

Spelling bees were a big part of my elementary education.  In the first grade, there was one girl, a blond, who usually beat me.  Her name was Linda Pounders.  She was so smart that, when we started the second grade, we learned that she had been promoted to the third grade.  I was jealous and relieved.  Now, I could win all the spelling bees.

Except there was a new girl, another blond, Terry Reedy.  She was smart, too.  She could beat me, too.  Fortunately, she moved away after a few years and I had relatively smooth sailing after that. 

Back to the first grade.  Sister Gemma identified a few of us who seemed pretty good at arithmetic.  I remember a few of us, as well as first graders from other Memphis schools, attended a special mathematics day at Christian Brothers College, also in Memphis.  I really don't remember much about the day other than it involved some new learning techniques.  We used bottle caps.  More about Christian Brothers later.

In those early years, I remember recess after lunch each day.  It usually involved Mrs. Lowery leading us in songs that involved physical motions to accompany the words.  "Here we go loop de lu, here we go loop de la."  Oh, and the hokey pokey.  I think there was the hokey pokey.

One day Sister Gemma, during religion class, told us how the Catholic Church didn't allow Catholics to marry non-Catholics.  I went home and asked my mom if that meant she and my dad weren't married.  (Dad was raised Lutheran and never converted.) 

I never attended kindergarten.  So, unlike subsequent generations, I did not know how to write or read when I entered school.  However, I did take to school.  I succeeded at pretty much everything except penmanship and art.  I still can't draw a decent stick figure.

Then came second grade.  I really liked Mrs. Lowery as a teacher, we were still in the small building across the street, and we still had Sister Gemma for religion class.  I remember the big event that year was making our first confession and first communion.  Of course, we had to have the first before we could do the latter to make sure our souls were clear of any trace of sin.  Of course, one might ask how sinful a seven year old can be.

Are we not precious?

Both of these teachers were major factors in giving me a love of reading.  I also have two parents who were life long readers.  Next time, we'll discuss the third grade and Sister Gonzaga (sometimes referred to as Sister Godzilla) and the fourth grade and Sister Bernardo, one of my absolute favorites.

But, this is enough to chew on for now.