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| 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.
"I've yet to read a memoir of anyone I know at all well that came anywhere near the truth." -Gore Vidal
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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lined Carson Street back then to serve our blue-collar parents and the Boomers who followed them into the mills have been replaced by much more upscale establishments that cater to white-collar sorts, as hard as that is for me to believe.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.
Colonel Cranky
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