Mrs. Deese was, as one of my classmates commented recently, a "sweetheart". She was kind, but I remember us not always treating her well. I think we reduced her to tears a couple of times.
We also returned to the old school classrooms. Radiators for heat and no air conditioning. We shared a folding wall with the eighth grade that was opened on special occasions, such as watching the coverage of John Glenn orbiting the earth, the first American to do so. TVs were not common in classrooms then.
We also shared a teacher. I'm not sure what Mrs. Deese went to the eighth grade to teach, but Sister Mary Grace, the eighth grade teacher and principal, taught us religion for one period each day.
Sister Grace recognized that we were entering into puberty and I remember more than a few lectures about how boys and girls were to act around each other. There certainly should be no dating yet; not a problem in seventh grade but that was to come next year. We started to hear about the metrics for when a kiss becomes a sin and especially when it becomes a mortal sin, although I believe euphemisms were involved.
It was also the year Ricky Hester explained the facts of life to me, or at least he explained what the word we now call the f-bomb meant. I didn't believe him. Why on earth would anyone do anything like that?
Basketball season arrived and most of the seventh grade were relegated to second string. Our coach was Mr. Bill Dufour, a sheriff's deputy during his day job. I don't remember us having a spectacular season, but most of us seventh graders had the chance to play from time to time. In addition to Ronnie Chambers and Johnny Augustine, the eight grade now had another tall center, Johnny Cheek. Cheek and Chambers would go on to play high school basketball at Catholic High.
By now, after three seasons, we were starting to recognize familiar faces on opposing teams, since we played the same Catholic schools season after season. There was Bruce France from St Dominic, an all boys school in east Memphis, Kevin Rando and Gary Baroni, from St. Paul's in south Memphis, Bill Hartz and Rob Uhlman from Holy Rosary, also in east Memphis. Before too long, many of us would be playing with or against each other when we entered high school.
There were two leagues in the Catholic School System. Our league consisted of Our Lady of Sorrows (north Memphis/Frayser), BSS (mid town Memphis), St. Dominic, Holy Rosary, St. Ann in Bartlett (suburb of Memphis), and St. Paul.
The other league had St. Louis (east Memphis), St. Michael's (not so east Memphis), St. Thomas (south Memphis), and one or two others I'm sure.
Back to school, Bert Bailey and I had now replaced the previous school organists. It would be a little too much to say they let us do what we wanted. All the stops were set and we were not to change them. Pedals were not to be used. There were two keyboards, but I don't recall whether we were allowed to use both. Sister Bernardo (remember her?) taught us the techniques that were different from those of the piano. For example, there was no "sustain" pedal to continue the sound of a key being played. Instead, you had to always hold one note down as you played the second note for a fluid performance. Otherwise, it became very choppy. There was also a pedal used to control the volume. This was the first pedal I learned to "floor".
We learned the St. Lawrence Mass (I think that was it's name) and the Missa Brevis (short Mass). Or at least we were supposed to learn the Missa Brevis. It had such a fast tempo that we both struggled with it. Sister Bernardo called for it at practice one day and was dismayed to find out that we hadn't learned it. I remember her coming into the choir platform (no way it could be called a loft), seating herself at the organ, and playing it herself, but not before muttering "Help!" under her breath. One of the girls gasped, mistaking it for a pejorative exclamation. She did make it clear that at least one of us had better get cracking.
We learned all the hymns for Benediction, a special service that took place from time to time. We learned to play Requiem masses but not the full funeral liturgy. With its one or two extra hymns, it was reserved for Miss Vuille (remember her?), the church organist.
Most of the Catholic boys continued to serve at Mass and other services (I don't recall there being an option, really). It should also be pointed out that we did a have few non-Catholics appear in our classes from time to time. Ricky Hester and Ricky Lewis were a couple of these.
We were assigned to serve at funerals which, I think, required one or two more servers than usual, as well as at Benediction and the Stations of the Cross. One of the new responsibilities, now that we were older, was that of thurifer
When we served funerals, we would accompany the priest in his car to the cemetery for the committal ceremony. These trips, oddly enough, could be entertaining, especially if the priest was Father Milton Guthrie who was a young priest at the time. He would be relatively subdued on the way to the cemetery, but the return trip would involve him regaling us with jokes and funny songs. The other two priests we served at the time were older and not as much fun.
Father Guthrie would later go one to be a leading clergy person in the Memphis civil rights movement.
In the spring, all the classes had their spelling bees in preparation for the school competition that would select one student to compete in the MidSouth Spelling Bee. That year, I was the last one standing before Mary Ann Scruggs (I may be wrong about her name), an eighth grader, sat me down. There's actually a sidebar here that I'll forgo having to do with whether she really won or not. Mrs. Deese spent a lot of time after school or at lunch with me going over spelling words. She had great hopes for me.
Spring also meant a return to baseball. I don't remember whether I sat out the previous year because of the accident that broke my nose or because I chose not to play. At any rate, Mr Keenan returned to coach us now that we were playing Junior ball. I had dreams of playing first base and even talked my parents into buying me a mitt.
I wasn't that great a first baseman, but I could catch the ball when thrown to me (without it hitting my nose). I could field about half the grounders hit to me and I could chase down pop ups. I still couldn't hit. I think I managed a couple of hits and walks that year, but remained at the bottom of the batting order. My speed in running had improved as I'd grown and I'm sure basketball helped as well, so when I could get on base, I could usually steal the next base easily.
That was the summer my family took a three week vacation to the west in our Pontiac Catalina convertible. Muskogee (before Merle Haggard made it famous), New Mexico, Grand Canyon, Phoenix, Los Angeles (saw the Dodgers play), Anaheim (of course we had to visit Disneyland), then back across a northern route that took us past the continental divide, finally past interesting Arkansas towns (Toad Suck Hollow), and back to Memphis. I celebrated my thirteenth birthday on that trip and my sister her ninth.
It was time for our last year at Blessed Sacrament. I had always looked forward to the eighth grade because eighth graders always looked so grown up.
We had a new choir director whose name escapes me. She was different from Sister Bernardo. Sister Bernardo was young and, I thought, pretty. The new one was old and not. Sister Bernardo had a beautiful singing voice. The new one did not, in fact sounded like fingernails scratching on chalkboard. Bert and I managed to make it through the year, perhaps because we may have known more about music than she did. Let's just call her Sister Mary Old.
Religion classes still found us memorizing out of the Baltimore Catechism, but there was a renewed, almost fever pitched discourse on the perils of girls and boys together.
It is not a stretch to say Bert and I were best friends. We did so many things together beyond music. It was rumored that Bert was sweet on a girl named Joyce Marienchek or vice versa. It was rumored that I was sweet on her cousin, Linda Ferrer or vice versa. One day, Bert called to ask if I wanted to go to the movies. I said sure. He said Joyce and Linda would be along. I said "What?". I wanted to go, but wasn't sure how to broach the subject to my parents. As it turns out, I sweated for no good reason. They were fine with it. They asked the usual questions: "How are you getting there? How are you getting home? What time will you be home?". So, we went. I think we all enjoyed ourselves. I think the movie was Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. And that was my first date.
That was on Saturday. By Monday, somehow word had made its way to Sister Grace's ears. That was the lecture to end all lectures. At least three sets of ears were burning (Joyce was a year behind us). There was a lot of discussion between classes: "Who was she talking about? What happened?". I think we all feigned ignorance.
More importantly, basketball had returned. Our coach was once again Butch Fier. We had a pretty good team, although not the best by any stretch. We were aided by a seventh grader who could really rebound, Anthony Visconte (yes, there were many Italian families in our school). I was now scoring a good number of points each game. I remember Sean as guard, Al as the other forward, and I guess Anthony or Al played center, perhaps switching off. I think Bubba Marshall played some as well as Ricky Wade, Bert, Mike Lind, and perhaps others whom I don't recall.
In the middle of the season, Sister Old, who taught us science, had us perform an experiment. It was right out of our text, Learning about God's World. The experiment was to demonstrate piston action. The idea was to take a source of steam (tea kettle or chemistry flask), run a tube to a bicycle pump, and watch the steam push the handle up. Sounds simple, yes?
To set the scene, it was winter, I was wearing a long sleeve shirt with my red letter sweater over it. Chris Jaynes and I were to tend the chemistry flask as the Bunsen burner heated the water. Now the stand holding the flask looked unsteady to me, so I held the flask by its rubber stopper.
It's time for a little reality check here. No one, least of all me, least of all the teacher, realized that a bicycle pump doesn't work if it lets the air back in the tube.
Back to the experiment, the pressure in the flask built and built and built some more. Suddenly, the top popped off drenching my right arm in steam and boiling water. A little found its way to my face, as well. I said something like, "Christ that's hot!". I jerked my sweater sleeve and shirt sleeve up my arm and most of my skin came with it.
The next thing I knew, I was in the principal's office with Sister Grace applying some kind of first aid cream to my arm and calling my home. I told her to ask for my father, because my mother had just learned she was pregnant again with her fourth child and, as usual, was sick as the proverbial dog. I think Terry Ryan placed the call and, of course, my mother answered. Terry asked for my dad who came to get me and took me to the ER at Baptist Memorial Hospital. Dad got angry when he found out what had happened. The chemical engineer in him knew exactly why the experiment was doomed from the beginning. My arm was dressed and I received a pain shot.
That afternoon, Dad took me to my pediatrician, who took the dressing off, examined what little epidermis was left to my arm, and redressed the injury. In the middle, he took one look at me and thought I might want to lie down -- I had almost fainted. This would set a standard for the rest of my life: I could watch medical people give me shots. I could watch minor procedures. But when the dressings were removed or the stitches were removed, I would head down for the count.
After a couple of days, I returned to school. Sister Old apologized to me in private, but I don't think she ever realized what went wrong with the experiment.
I did get a call from my "girlfriend", Linda Ferrer. We didn't speak; she just asked my parents how I was and when I would be back in school. It was sweet.
When I returned to basketball after missing one game, I had a foam pad protecting my injured arm, which was still very sore. We were about to play St. Ann's Bartlett, the absolute worst team in the league. Because we were to play St. Paul's the following week, Coach instructed me to keep my scoring down in hopes that the St. Paul's coach would take it as a sign that I was hampered in my play.
At the St. Ann's game, we were terrible. We couldn't score and somehow they could and only two points separated us at half time. I took it upon myself to remove my pad and try to score more. Eventually I scored 19 points, the most I ever scored in a game in all my playing days. We won the game. What a hero. (Coincidentally, Linda played girls basketball, the old kind where there was an offense and a defense, each with its side of the court. She made a point of letting me know that she had scored 20 points in a game. So there, hero.)
Now, Coach had gone out of town for that game. One of the fathers stepped in to coach. If memory serves, it was Mr. Visconte. At our next practice, Coach was back. He was sitting on the stage while we warmed up with the score book in his lap. He called me to him and dressed me down for scoring the way I did. I tried to explain, but I think he partially blamed me for what happened next.
St. Paul, in addition to the players we knew from all the years playing them, had a seventh grader playing for them, Steve Leech. Steve would go on to letter in four sports at Catholic High. He was a super athlete. He was a forward so whether we were playing zone or man to man defense, I ended up guarding him and he was assigned to guard me. This was the game where I learned the expression "he faked my jock off."
(Steve went on to be recruited by Memphis State University's football program. He never achieved much success playing quarterback for them. I'm not sure I ever knew why. Perhaps injuries.)
I think we ended up third in the league which meant two of us would be selected to play in the inter league all star game. Anthony and I were chosen. High point of my "career". Our league won by the way.
There was one day when I proved myself most adept at church stuff. I was assigned to serve at a funeral, but Miss Vuille was unavailable to play for the choir. There was one song (Dies Irae -- Day of Wrath) that Bert hadn't learned yet. When the time came for that song, I left the sanctuary, scuttled along the side of the church, came in the back and played the piece before returning for the conclusion of the funeral. I was the perfect off spring of the perfect church lady. My mother is church lady to this day, at age 91.
I did win the school's spelling bee. Phyllis Bernard had replaced Mary Gayle Comer as competitor in chief. At the MidSouth spelling bee, I correctly spelled one word, but failed to spell "fuchsia" correctly. Never had heard the word. Have rarely used it since.
Most of the eighth grade boys took an achievement test at Christian Brothers High School to qualify for a scholarship. I remember sitting with Sean Gillespie in the auditorium with all of the eighth grade boys from across Memphis before the test . I was nervous and was rocking back and forth in the seat. He asked, "What are you doing?"
"I'm just nervous," I replied.
"Why are you nervous?" he pursued.
"Because I can win a scholarship. I just don't want to screw up."
As Jack McCormick pointed out recently, our little school (twenty-six in our graduation picture, half girls, half boys) won two scholarships. I won a full one year scholarship and Jack won a partial. (For my children's information, that one year scholarship covered tuition of $285, a far cry from the thousands I spent each year on their education.)
Although I missed our graduation ceremony due to my cousin getting married in New Orleans, I was in the graduation picture.
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| Front row from left: Mary Ann Lenti, Patty Murphy, Trudy Turpin, Patricia Nowak, Beth Gillum, Ann Reeve, Carolyn Pesce, Linda Ferrer, Anne Maier, Kathy Bosi, Doris Dino(?), Phyllis Bernard, and Judy McCarver. Back row: Chris Jaynes, Tico Capote, Walter "Bubba" Marshall, Al Mulrooney, Philip McCarthy, Jimmy Sterle, Jimmy Coleman, Terry Ryan, Michael Casper, Bert Bailey, Jack McCormick, Ricky Wade, Sean Gillespie. |
All that's left to tell is my first Senior baseball season. Our coach was Mr. Warner or Werner. He was the first coach to pay attention to my batting problems. He suggested I try an unorthodox batting position. He had me practically facing the pitcher. Only when the pitch came in did I step forward to swing. I think he wanted me to learn to watch the ball all the way to the plate.
It worked. I started collecting hits.
Because Jimmy Sterle seemed to be able to get on base frequently either by hit or walk and I could bunt pretty well, Coach's strategy was to let Jimmy lead off and I would be second in the line up. When Jimmy would get on base, I would bunt him (sacrificially) to second. Whoever was third in the line up hopefully could drive him home. I continued to play first base. Others on the team were Bubba Marshall (third base), Sean (shortstop), and Frank Ragghianti (pitcher). Frank was a year older and already in high school but could still play for our senior team.
I'm sure there are other memories that will come up this weekend, when we celebrate our 55th year reunion since graduating from elementary school.
God speed to all traveling to our reunion.
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