"Virtue Is Its Own Reward" -Cicero

A Quotable Quotes Column

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Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

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"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." -?

Dear Gentlereaders,

When I went a-googlin' and asked the algorithm to search the WWCK (worldwide web of contradictory knowledge) to find out who first said virtue is its own reward I discovered that we don't really know. 

The answer I got was:

Search Labs | AI Overview 

(With a cute little blue beaker emoji preceding it indicating there was scientific stuff going on here) and then...

"The idea that virtue is its own reward was widespread among ancient philosophers and poets. Some people who have said this include:" 

This was followed by links to Socrates, Seneca, and Blessed John Henry Newman,... 

And finally: "The Latin expression for the idea that virtue is its own reward is Ipsa sibi merces rerum pulcherrima Virtus." 

If you've always wanted to memorize this particular proverb in Latin and put it in your pocket in case it might come in handy when you're trying to impress people at social functions or when you're trying to pick up a dude/dudette/other at Starbucks, here ya go. 

For those gentlereaders not in the know, if you were to search the term what is search labs? you would discover that "Google Search Labs is a program that allows users to try out and then provide feedback on early-stage Google search experiences. The program's main purpose is to help Google experiment with new ideas and determine what works and what doesn't."

 

This is Googspeak for "We make most of our money by keeping track of everything you do while following you around online and using the information we collect to sell ads and the data necessary for ads to follow you all over the WWCK. Did you think we weren't going to use the data you so willingly provide to develop our version of an artificial intelligence so that we can make money before AI kills us all in our sleep?"

(Or some variation of same as exactly what answer you get depends on all sorts of things we mere mortals are not privy to.) 

{Wait-wait-wait. You opted in when they first offered to add this to your searches. I'm sure you can opt out now if it bothers you so much.}

It doesn't bother me. I adopted the Borg mission statement a long time ago (Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated?) but I did try to discover if it was actually possible to get rid of it, just for the hell of it, and failed. Never a 10-year-old around when you need one. 

{You know, there are ways to surf the WWCK completely anonymously and even access the DARK WEB where the drug dealers, arms dealers, and various and sundry perverts lurk.}

I'll betcha a bottleahpop (that's soda pop for some of you) that there's any number of nerds working for a given government (and other shady organizations) that can follow you down any given electronic rabbit hole. 

{You're paranoid.}

You're not, Dana?

Anyway, it's Cicero I was interested in and fortunately he was linked to further down the page. One of the many things I love about the WWCK is that if you keep on scrollin' and clickin' you can eventually get the answer you want. 

Sister Mary McGillicuddy taught me that Mx. Cicero...

(Ever wonder what Mx. is short for? Well, it isn't. According to our friend Search Labs "Mx. is a gender-neutral title used for people who don't identify as male or female, or who don't want their gender specified. It's pronounced like 'mix' or 'mux.' 

Personally, I prefer mix. "Mix Masters! How are you today?" No wait..."Mux Musk! How are you today?" I like 'em both. 

S'tr M.M. was the one who taught me that Mx. Cicero said that virtue is its own reward. I'm sure she was aware of the information I so helpfully supplied above and more, about the proverb I mean, the WWCK didn't exist yet. She was just keepin' it simple, this was grade school after all. 

Besides, she was primarily interested in teaching us fledgling Catholics about how and why we should go about being virtuous. She thought that virtue needs to, in fact should be, taught to the young, that it doesn't come pre-installed. Fortunately, many people nowadays know better and raise their kids without burdening them with stale, preconceived notions. 

The reason I'm interested in Cicero, regarded by history as a more or less virtuous man person, is because he was murdered by order of one General Mark Antony, one of his political enemies, who took him out when a chance to do so legally came along. 

Antony also had his head and hands nailed to a wall and Antony's lovely wife Fulvia is said to have pulled out his tongue and jabbed it with her hairpin to mock Mx. Cicero. The famous orator had been using his skills to attempt to thwart Mx. Antony and friends from converting Rome from a constitutional republic to an autocratic empire run by an emperor.

{Who hasn't heard of that tired old chestnut, what's your point? Wait, you're not going to start talking about the Donald, are you?}

Here we go, politics. Who said anything about politics? Donald the dick-tater is just campaign rhetoric. An awful lot of members of both the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe believe the worst about the other team thanks to the ability and willingness of the powers that be to hypnotize the masses for their own often nefarious ends. 

You still need an army or two and lots of bloodshed to make yourself a traditional dick-tater but that sort of thing does a number on the economy which (almost) nobody in this country wants. That's why we just elect a temporary King of America every four years. 

Of course, that's no longer easy. Our voting system's all screwed up, many people don't trust it. For some mysterious reason, we can't all just go to the polls on the same day and vote on paper (so it's easy to perform an audit if necessary) and know who the temporary king is by the next morning, like we used to.

{Sheesh, sorry I brought it up.}    

All I'm saying is that there's a dark side to the proverb in question that kids should be made aware of, but like drag queens, not till adolescence rears its ugly head. Let kids be kids for a minute, keep it simple, and build firm foundations first. 

[INSERT VIRTUE SIGNAL HERE] Once upon a time I had a charming, funny, and flamboyant friend who was a drag queen on the weekends. He was, and hopefully still is (hi, Sam, wherever you are) a lovely gentleperson — who I suspect would find drag queen story hours appalling.  

I'm not saying that you shouldn't strive to be virtuous in any given situation, but while taking the high road, doing the right thing, etc. can be its own reward, it may well be its only reward because...

{Balderdash! I know I'm gonna go to heaven.}

Because...

{Because you might wind up with your head and hands nailed to...}

Because there's a part two, a big BUT: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. These two truisms are stamped on opposite sides of the same coin.

For the record, I'm a firm believer in virtue. In fact, there's a tab on this/my website labeled The Golden Mean that provides a link to a short video created by the CrashCourse people titled Aristotle & Virtue Theory. Mx. Aristotle is the man person when it comes to virtue, at least in my semi-humble opinion.

Unfortunately, choosing to try and be a virtuous person may not necessarily end well, as Mx. Cicero learned the hard way. I speak of the here and now, of daily life on planet Earth, not of what may or not happen to you after you die. Whatever your feelings on that subject is your business though I have to note that belief in an afterlife, particularly the heaven v. hell version, provides a certain clarification. 

We must be aware that we may not get the pats on the back, recognition, or gratitude we think we're entitled to. Such is life. Pat yourself on the back for taking the high road and be proud of yourself, you may have just changed the world for the better, at least a little bit — but don't waste your time and energy pouting or feeling self-righteous when you don't get a prize.

More importantly, most importantly, tread lightly, carefully, and thoughtfully. Aristotle advises us to look for the golden mean, that is to say, avoid extremes.   

An (admittedly extreme) example: the well-meaning "neocons" reacted to the murder of innocents on 9/11 by delivering a well-deserved hammer blow to the Taliban who were harboring Bin Laden to let them know we weren't a nation of pacifists and that there was a price to be paid. To not respond at all (one extreme) would be to invite more terrorism. 

But they then took it upon themselves to remove and replace the corrupt governments of Afghanistan and Iraq with democratic republics, the other extreme. Military power is real, the power to radically alter ancient cultures with radically different worldviews than ours is not.   

All's well that ends well...but not everything ends well. 

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

  

  

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Part 4

Two Years of Sister Egg Noodle

Previous parts are not required to enjoy this part, not even partially...

But here are parts 1, 2. and 3. 

Not breakfast at my house, then or now. Image by Jo Justino from Pixabay

 

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

                     ABOUT                                              GLOSSARY 

Let's reintroduce corporal punishment in the schools - and use it on the teachers." -P.J. O'rourke

                                                                                            

Dear Gentlereaders, 

Her name was Sister Agnita, we called her Sister Egg Noodle and she was our teacher for two years in a row, both fifth and sixth grade.

Fortunately, unlike some of her colleagues at the time, S'tr. Agnita was relatively non-violent. I don't remember her using knuckle thumps, but this was a long time ago and my memory tends to swirl things together. Also, I'm blessed with not being obsessed with my past, mostly, and I deliberately try to stay present in the present. 

{Mostly?}

Well, there was this woman I had a very intense relationship with for about three years, prior to meeting my late wife, who used my testicles for a trapeze for the last of those three years. It's a very long story. Suffice it to say I don't forgive and forget easily. 

I bore her an intense grudge for a long time but it's (mostly) gone, I rarely think about her anymore, and when I do it's primarily about the fact I can't believe I put up with her poop for so long before closing down the circus and leaving town. I had a chance to go to Austin so I literally did leave town, took a geographic cure as they say, where I met my late wife and present daughter, the source of the Stickies.

She "just kinda' wasted my precious time"...and energy, and money, and...

{Hey, Sparky, you wanna little cheese with that whine?}

Point taken, Dana, after all she did say she was sorry. She actually said it was her, not me, like they do on TV? Unfortunately, it took her three years to figure out she was "incapable of commitment." I think she "just lost that lovin' feeling" but was too cowardly to say so...

{Ahem.}

Which has absolutely nothing to do with Sister Egg Noodle so I'm "movin' on down the road." 

{Are there any more song lyrics you'd like to bore our gentlereaders with? Perhaps you could explain exactly what a knuckle thump is.} 

Sure, but first...

Sister Egg Noodles' preferred method of corporal punishment was the tried-and-true wooden ruler palm smack. I always assumed that nuns learned this method when they were taught how to teach since it was so widely used, but now I'm not sure. 

According to my research department, there was no standard protocol for training nuns to be teachers "back in the day." Some had degrees, some were teaching and going to college at the same time, and some were taught how to teach by the order they belonged to. Perhaps it was just tradition. 

I can personally attest to its effectiveness. It hurt like hell (see what I did there...) but did no permanent physical damage. It was a definite deterrent to unacceptable behavior and could serve as a team-building exercise for the entire class when a group punishment was administered. 

{Group punishment?}

If you were sentenced to individual punishment you might get two or even three smacks depending on the severity of the crime. Although group smackings usually consisted of only one smack each, they included a diabolical psychological component, desk location. 

Unless your teaching nun used a random pattern for group smacking (unlikely if my personal experience was the norm) the further you and your assigned desk were located from where the pattern began, the longer you had to wait for your comeuppance and the more SMACKs! you had to see and hear before one of God's corporeal Army of Angels reached your desk. 

{What triggered a group punishment?}

Usually, believe it or not, talking when Sister had to leave the room, and we had been ordered not to talk while she was gone. As you can easily imagine, the longer she was gone the better the chance whispering would escalate to talking then loud talking then paper airplanes and spitballs. S'tr would suddenly appear as if out of nowhere (doors were usually left open so that she or one of the other corrections officers might hear what we got up to) and demand to know WHO WAS TALKING?!?

One learned early on not to raise one's hand as this was just a trick; it didn't necessarily spare one from a smack. After all, why would she believe that any given infidel, since we were all sinners and barbarians in need of civilizing, was telling the truth? At least that's my theory. 

One of the employees of my research department was dispatched to a home for retired nuns to ask relevant questions but never returned. The administration of the facility claims to not know what we're talking about. We then hired a private investigator to look into the matter but when he/she/they vanished without a trace we moved on.

There was a bright side to this phenomenon... 

(My late wife liked to say there was always a bright side if you looked hard enough. I generally bit my tongue before smiling and nodding; I didn't manage to stay more or less happily married for 21 years by deceiving myself into thinking I was in charge.)

It promoted class solidarity since there was no guaranteed upside to confessing your guilt so it was best to avoid eye contact and stare straight ahead while maintaining a stoic silence. It reinforced the fact it was us against them, or rather her, and the potential future nuns and priests in the class quickly learned that failure to be a team player might result in shunning, possibly worse if you were a boy. 

But we've come a long way, baby. The nuns with hair on their chests are gone and nowadays H. sapiens who self-identify as females are encouraged to scuffle in the dirt while H. sapiens who self-identify as (usually toxic) males are discouraged from doing so. Fortunately, we now know that regardless of the "sex assigned at birth" we're all the same and free to choose our identities from a broad spectrum of possibilities. 

{Why are you laughing? Also, that's two semicolons and a sentence with three ones in it so far, are you striving for a more upscale column than usual? And you still haven't explained what a knuckle thump is.} 

The knuckle thump is simply... well, start by making a fist. Next, extend your index finger straight out. Curl the index finger back towards the fist and the knuckle will pop out. Finally, lock your curled index finger in place by bracing it against your thumb and your knuckle is now ready for thumping. 

When addressing a miscreant face to face, strike the upper chest firmly and repeatedly using the knuckle to punctuate your words. Example: How (simultaneous-strike) many times (S-S) do I have to explain (S-S) to you that...etc. 

Caution! Be careful to confine your strikes to the upper chest while carefully monitoring the miscreant who may engage in unexpected contortions trying to get away from you. I once personally witnessed a nun who shall remain nameless (I don't want to be disappeared) accidentally striking a girl in the mouth and drawing blood. 

The other strike zone is the back of the head. This is normally to be used when your quarry isn't aware that you have snuck up behind them. It's perfect for correcting misbehavior like falling asleep during Mass and scaring the hell (see what I did there...) out of your other charges. 

Sister Egg Noodle's nickname was a double dis. It was a play on the sound of her name as well as the fact she was short and plump. I can't remember which of my classmates came up with it but I'm reasonably sure it was either Nick the Greek or Loopy De Loop. 

On the first day of sixth grade I/we were shocked (despite being hardened veterans, i.e. sixth graders) to discover that an unprecedented phenomenon had taken place, we were to have the same nun/teacher for two years in a row. S'tr announced that she was no more pleased with the arrangement than we were. 

I was surprised because I/we had no special animus towards this woman, she wasn't a dark force of nature to be feared like Sister John Edward of fourth-grade fame. She was just another typical nun/teacher/corrections officer who had to be dealt with. 

I wondered if she took our various and sundry crimes and casual contempt for our jailers personally? It wasn't till seventh grade, when I encountered Sister Mary McGillicuddy, a.k.a. S'tr Mary Clifford, that I discovered that nuns could be cool, and nice. Sister Egg Noodle wasn't mean, but she wasn't particularly nice either. 

Having finally more or less grown up I now wonder what went on in her head, what her life was/had been like. What kind of childhood did she have? Did she regard her vocation as a huge mistake but felt it was too late to do anything about it? Could she possibly not regard us as highly as we regarded ourselves? 

Before wrapping this up I must mention what I think was her most interesting characteristic, praying to the founder of her order Mother Seton/certified saint/Sisters of Charity, to ask her to help our basketball team beat the team of whatever other Catholic grade school team we were playing that week. As I believe I mentioned in my last letter, basketball was a RBFD at the time. 

Every classroom at St. Johns had a small picture of Mother Seton mounted above the chalkboard at the front of the room. On Fridays, S'tr Egg Noodle would take a few minutes to offer up a prayer to Mother Seaton to help us win that week. She would walk back and forth at the front of the class, head bowed, hands clasped in prayer, and reel off an extemporaneous prayer requesting help from above. 

Loving young, gentle Roman Catholic trainees that we were, some of us, not me of course, delighted in spreading the rumor that Sister Agnita prayed to a picture to help out our basketball team. 

In fact, we had already been taught that despite the persistent story, that persists, that Catholics pray to statues, is bogus. Catholics pray to the person the statue represents, who is assumed to be in heaven, for help, guidance, etc. I've known/know a lot of Roman Catholics and I've never encountered anyone who wasn't aware of the difference. 

Big BUT, various and sundry sorts of Christians (as well as no shortage of non-Christians) have enjoyed messing with each other for literally thousands of years. Organized religion doesn't necessarily bring out the best in people, but the decline of Christianity in Western Civilization doesn't seem to have improved our situation. But I digress. 

{Get outta here, no way!}

Truth be told, she didn't actually make much reference to the picture; she had to pray while simultaneously keeping an eye on certain members of her collection of barbarians (mostly toxic males in those days) who resisted her efforts to civilize them at every turn.

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

    

  

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Part 3

Parts 1 and 2 are not required to enjoy this part, not even partially. 

Not breakfast at my house, then or now. Image by Jo Justino from Pixabay

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

                     ABOUT                                              GLOSSARY 

"I've yet to read a memoir of anyone I know at all well that came anywhere near the truth." -Gore Vidal

 

.

Dear Gentlereaders,

Inna summer ah '61, we moved across the semi-mighty Monongahela, from da Bluff to da Sou'side ah Pittsburgh.

 

{My Pittsburghese is a little rusty but I think you just said that in 1961 you and yours moved from the Pittsburgh neighborhood called the Bluff to the city's South Side, yes? 

You emboldened the h at the end of Pittsburgh because Sister Mary McGillicuddy taught you that Pittsburgh, PA, was the only Pittsburg in America that came with an h appended to its name, and for some reason, you feel compelled to point that out. Right?}

Absabalutely, (a word, for the record, that isn't Pittsburghese). When I was a kid it was just the Sou'side. However, my research department claims that people append/appended the term Flats or Slopes to the words South Side. We lived in two different houses in the "Flats" but I don't remember anyone calling it that. It was just Sou'side

But I'm talking about 60 years ago, so perhaps it's a Millennial/Zoomer thing? After all, I understand that the Shot-and-a-Beer bars that lined Carson Street back then to serve our blue-collar parents and the Boomers who followed them into the mills have been replaced by much more upscale establishments that cater to white-collar sorts, as hard as that is for me to believe.

Of course, I'm also led to believe that there aren't thriving Catholic churches and/or schools here, there, and even over there, and lots of buildings housing some sort of beachhead for every Eastern European country's citizens who have emigrated to America and are anxious to become Citizens of the Republic, and for which it stands, while still maintaining and celebrating the cultures of their native lands.

For example, the Polish Falcon Hall on the other side of the alley that runs behind what was our second Sou'side domicile (now a parking lot) where they had frequent, boisterous Polka parties.    

I don't remember questioning why we had moved, or being asked my opinion on the matter, but I do remember being mildly traumatized. I was, and remain, a shy kid, but I'm fairly adept at hiding it nowadays. I suspect that being eight years old, the fifth of seven kids, and the fact it was a much different world than the one we live in now is the reason I was not consulted.

It was assumed I'd just deal with any problems (what are nowadays called issues) and get over it.

My new grade school was called Saint John the Evangelist, on 13th Street, across the street from the 12th Street playground, which was across the street¢ going the other way, from Ralphie's mom's house where I attended Cub Scout meetings. More importantly, it was next door to my favorite store to buy 5¢ snow cones. 

It was part of a compound that included a nunnery, a church, a rectory, and a (very old) church hall for playing bingo and basketball...all shoehorned into a space less than a small city block in size. 

As best I can tell from Google Street View, the school and the nunnery buildings are still there, but the school is no longer a school and the nunnery ain't a nunnery. The rectory, the church, and the church hall have been replaced by parking lots.

Why do they call 'em nuns?

'Cause they don't get none.  

First and second grade had been completed in my previous school, Epiphany. That building is also still there but is no longer a school. The church next door is still there as well and is still a (beautiful) church, with roots reaching back to 1902.

{I'm noticing a pattern here.}

Indeed. In fact, my third and final Catholic grade school is now a privately owned facility, caught up in a dispute with the Diocese of Pittsburgh, that offers daycare, preschool, and "educational services." It's located in Allison Park, a Pittsburgh suburb. At least it's still a school, sort of. But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Third grade: Miss Wright. A nice woman who seemed ancient from the perspective of an eight-year-old. For some reason, my most vivid memory of that school year was the time we built robots out of scavenged milk cartons. In the future, we would not only have flying cars we'd have robots to do all the hard work, like on the Jetsons. 

Our first Sou'side house was a four-by-four. One of four narrow, four-story tall brick row homes that were butt up against each other making them look like a smaller version of a tenement, one of those buildings that big cities had in the olden days, where immigrants lived who worked in meat packing plants — in conditions that would shock Charles Dickens — that Sister Mary McGillicuddy taught me about a few years later.

Fortunately, it wasn’t full of cold-water flats, rats, and rotting walls where the average apartment overflowed with enormous extended families who wondered in what part of town one could find the streets paved with gold. 

It was just four working-class families living their lives except for the...never mind. The most important thing was that I was no longer "walked" to school and back by one of my older siblings and I free-ranged over a much larger terrain.

There's an apocryphal story that claims that on my way home from school on the first day of third grade, I got turned around and had just started to panic when my big brother Eddie appeared out of nowhere (having been dispatched by Mum to discreetly monitor my journey) and saved the day that is pure bonkercockie...and I took steps to make sure it never happened again.

In fact, if my parents had any idea just how extensively I traveled in this new, much larger country and some of the things I got up to, they would've been surprised — and pleased. I wasn't killed, had many adventures, and learned many lessons they don't teach in school (or on "playdates").

Fourth grade was a major turning point in my life. This was the school year that I had to contend with a sociopathic nun. Sister John Edward, I realize in retrospect, was some sort of sadist who had found a socially acceptable way to indulge her pathology.

Given that I never encountered any pedophile priests or had even heard of one, and I would've heard (more on that in a minute) at some point in my eight years of traditional Catholic school education, permit me to point out a life lesson taught to me by my late wife, who lived with illness (and no shortage of other problems) from day one.

It could've been worse.

If not for the fact I plan to be cremated and scattered in someone's compost heap, with just a pinch of me set aside to be rolled in a joint and passed around by anyone left who found me more likable than not, I would request that the words above be the epigraph inscribed on my tombstone.

Perhaps if one of my progeny can afford it they will provide a tombstone for me anyway in the same cemetery where my Mum is buried. Here doesn't lie Mark Mehlmauer.

Where was I?

{Fourth grade.}

Oh yeah. S'tr John Edward (they all hated being called S'tr instead of Sister, "Yes S'tr, sorry S'tr.") seemed to live for administering multiple and creative forms of corporal punishment and snarling at her charges for any and all behavior that if not immediately corrected would prevent them from one day joining her in heaven.

It was also the first year I can remember dealing with peer pressure which brings me back to pedophile priests...

{Well sure, obviously.}

Almost. Big BUT, first, lest ye think the fourth grade was all bad, I almost got to see President Kennedy being driven down Carson Street in October 1962.

JFK came to town to stump for some of his fellow Democrats who were running in the mid-term elections including Elmer Holland, the Sou'sides congressmanperson at the time. The fact that President Kennedy was the first Catholic president was a very big deal we were told.

Since Carson Street, Sou'sides Main Street, was about a 30-second walk from St. John's the whole school was dispatched to stand on the sidewalk to cheer as he went by. This was almost as cool as getting out of jail class to watch a movie in the church hall, even if was just a boring, educational documentary,

Think of Andy Dufresne and Red Redding drinking a beer on the roof of Shawshank Prison. (That's an intelligent, well-crafted movie for grownups from the distant past (1994) when Hollywood was capable of such a thing kids, Believe It or Not!, and even though most of it took place in a prison it wasn't filmed in GloomyVison like most movies nowadays.)

But the sidewalk was overflowing with adults and I couldn't see anything but their legs and bums. I don’t know if Sister John Edward actually saw him either but I’d bet no. She was much more likely to have been screaming at one of her charges, or administering a back of the head knuckle thump to save their souls when he passed by. She was a one-man one-person inquisition and the meanest nun I ever knew.

I don’t think it likely she saw him as she probably would've screamed at him to sit up straight, tone down all that hand-waving and goofy grinning, and pay attention. After all, he was the first Catholic president, and as we had been regularly reminded, he represented us all. No pressure. Miss Monroe is on the phone, Mr. President.

He probably wouldn’t have been able to hear her over the crowd noise and when he didn’t comply with her orders she would've rushed his limo and tugged on his tie to get his attention (an effective method that I can personally attest to) and give him a back of the head knuckle thump.

Watching her being wrestled to the ground by Secret Service agents would have pleased anyone and everyone who had survived/was hoping to survive her Neo-Middle Ages style pedagogy. Also, it might’ve increased sales.

When we weren’t selling something to raise money for our school, we were selling something or collecting money for worthy causes, like saving the Pagan Babies. “Hey, ain’t St. Johns da school wit da nun dat attacked da president? Didja see it?

Before I forget to mention it, I did see the roof of the Limo that carried Soviet dick-tater Nikita Kruschev around town when he visited the Burgh in 1959. My fellow Bluff dwellers and I were lined up along the edge of the Boulevard of the Allies, which on our block overlooked the highway that runs parallel to the semi-mighty Monongahela at the base of Da'Bluff.

There was talk about how easy it would be to roll boulders or explosives down the slope and take him out, but having neither explosives nor boulders at hand it was a moot point.

As to the aforementioned peer pressure and pedophile priests, fourth grade was the first time I can remember being aware of peer pressure although I didn't hear it called that till I got to high school.

The boys that were in my class from the fourth to the seventh grade at St. Johns (after which we moved to the 'burbs) were what nowadays would be called my homies... if such a word existed at the time...and if we were black...and if we had banded together to survive life in our 'hood — none of which applied.

We were all just the offspring of white, working class, two (heterosexual) parent households who all lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same school. As previously hinted at, there were other Catholic grade schools on the Sou'side whose pupils lived in more or less the same area as we did and who belonged to the same demographic cohort...

However,

Exactly which school you attended made a hooge difference as to who you ran, "loafed," and hung out with. Although there was limited cross-pollination, your social life revolved around the boys from your school and your class, and intense rivalries existed between schools.

You were expected to not only comply with your school's absurd and uncool dress code (I wasn't kidding about wearing a tie) you were expected to comply with your tribe's dress code as best you could given that this was a working-class neighborhood and your family's personal finances often resulted in compromises.

P.F. Flyers and Keds were out (although both "retro" brands are now considered cool in certain circles) and Converse was in (I never actually owned a pair). We wore polished dress shoes to school that we bought from Thom McAns.

Peer pressure extended to other areas of life as well. For example, basketball was a RBFD within and between schools at the time and although I hated playing it, I played it, because it was the official sport of not only my tribe but multiple other tribes located in the Sou'side jungle. I wasn't very good but I was a master of remaining as invisible as possible on the court.

Other non-athletes out there will immediately understand what I'm talking about.

However, when I was in the seventh grade, and we played against the eighth grade in front of the whole school in the annual fight to the death grudge match, I actually managed to score a couple of baskets (the fact that all the girls in the school were there was a powerful motivator) and we triumphed over a disgraced bunch of eight grade losers.

I'll wager that if St. Johns still existed they would still be talking about it. I wonder if there's a dusty, commemorative plaque hanging in that empty building somewheres...

{Somewhere, not somewheres. What's any of this got to do with pedophile priests?}

Sorry, I occasionally lapse into my native dialect. Anyways, me and my buddies (Honky for homies) talked about nearly everything, bonded together by not only having to survive nuns like St'r John Edward but also by unraveling the mysteries of sex.

Older Boomers than us were just starting to toss out tots with the Jacuzzi water. This was the tail end of an era in which all things having to do with sex were viewed in a radically different way than nowadays. Yes, Virginia, there really was a sexual revolution and although things changed amazingly quickly, it didn't happen overnight, and I don't think most Americans had any idea that it would ultimately go too far (at least in this writer's semi-humble opinion).

{I still don't understand...}

This is my long-winded way of saying we talked about sex, a lot, but our thirst for knowledge was hobbled by limited information, the Catholic church being committed anti-revolutionaries, and a culture in which modesty was still considered a feature, not a bug.

Not to mention that many of us were too embarrassed by the subject to discuss it with our parents, like me for example, and preferred to obtain our knowledge the old-fashioned way, on the streets and in the playgrounds.

Secrets were hard to keep from your buddies in an environment crowded with other little Boomers living in a fairly stable culture that was just starting down the path of major fragmentation that we're dealing with today.

If any of us were being abused, and we all had a friend or two at other Catholic grade schools, it would have likely been widely known. It would also likely have been dealt with by the big brothers/dads of the parish.

I'm not saying it didn't happen to other kids living in other neighborhoods, everyone knows it did, and I'm sure it still happens. When all is said and done priests are merely men. All men are dogs (trust me) and there are always plenty of bad dogs! loose in the world.

I took it for granted at the time, but I now realize I was lucky and had a pretty good childhood all things considered. It certainly coulda been worse anyways.

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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