End of Christmas Season Story (Jan. 6 Epiphany)

End of Christmas Season Story (Jan. 6 Epiphany)

We were in for some music practice the day or two after Christmas in 1968. After the practice, the head of the Music Department tells me he just got a call from the manager at the Northeast Diner across the intersection and wanted someone to play a few Christmas tunes for the customers. Sounded strange as my instrument was a Sousaphone. A couple music fellows help me with a music stand for my music and we get to the middle door of the diner and struggle to get the tuba instrument into the doors. Somebody saw an opening at the back of the diner with a big couch like seat against the window that served several tables in line with it.

We pulled out a table. I sat on the couch seat and someone put up the music stand and music in front of me and the then I let out some notes. Rather loud from a large instrument in a small space. Then some guy comes over yelling and wants to know what we were doing. I explained that we were from North Catholic and playing Christmas Carols. And I don't know if I ever say anything about the telephone call from the diner's manager requesting the music. I believe the shouting guy got me to my feet by pulling on the ring of my Sousaphone and I was on my feet and soon a was being pushed out the side door, me and my instrument out the door and into the sidewalk and or street. Apparently the shouting guy was the manager and he knew nothing about the North Catholic's Music department's little joke on me. 
Ha. Ha. 

Apparently, the Music Director had a reputation for big practical jokes. He a mile a music academic degrees, awards and credits going back to his days at Mastbaum technical High School, where I understood later he had the Rep of having more keys to the rooms in that school and teachers coming to him than the Janitor to get into their rooms etc. Something of a Hogan's Heros music student inmate running the Mastbaum public high school behind the scenes so to speak. Whatever. (how do you spell young Philly thug?)

The long and short of this after I was embarrassed to death by being thrown out of the Northeast Diner for trying to play Christmas Carols.

The two guys with me in the prank, one also played the Sousaphone and had begged for himself and not me to play the carols in the Northeast Diner. No go. I guess the Music Directer had me lined up as the mark in that scenario.

Anyway we return to the music room and the director says he got a message and had not talked to the diner manager directly etc. Plausible deniability? 

My colleague, the other Sousaphone player got permission to take a Sousaphone down the street and play Christmas tunes at the Elevated "El" station. This he did.

A week later, after Christmas vacation, Principal Corcoran came into the Music Room with a letter he had got from some concerned citizen about how my colleague with his Sousaphone and his playing carols at the train station was so in the spirit of North Catholic and the values that it taught to young men. Congratulations to your school etc.

Don't know about the politics of all this, but about a year later, my younger colleague got nominated and elected Class President for the next class after ours was about to graduate. A coincidence? 

Rum a Pum Pum - Bum. 

Harrowgate Tales - Excerpts

My latest on Kindle - Harrowgate Tales


Excerpts:


Parade in Kensington - Harrowgate Memorial Day Parade


...The biggest event annually in Harrowgate - Kensington was the Memorial Day Parade being that most parents of school aged children in the neighborhood and areas were veterans of WWII and Korea. Old males likely vets of WWI etc. I once marched in Memorial Day Parades in high school with the North(east) Catholic High marching band of which I played Sousaphone.

One performance I personally remember was in a parade that was in Port Richmond, we were bused to different locations that day in a P.T.C. chartered bus. There I saw two amazing things. An old man of about ninety, skinny and tall and wearing what looked like a Boy Scout Uniform with some medals and looking through thick as the bottom of a Coke bottle lenses of his eyeglasses. This old guy was an actual Veteran of the Spanish American War. Small world. There too, this is the late 60's, I saw my English teacher from freshman year who at that time was a seminarian studying to be a priest, teaching on a year long sabbatical of sorts, teaching in our high school for a year, after finishing four years of college in the seminary before continuing with an additional four years of seminary training after this year of teaching. It was after all a teaching religious order and his salary from the archdiocese doubt went to support the order. 

He was no longer in a black cassock but in a white tee shirt, shorts and sandals. She was also with what must have been his girlfriend. He saw me during a break from marching and said hello with no other explanation other than to say hello and ask how Junior year was going etc. I guess he left the seminary for one reason, reasons or another etc. ...


The Long Dark Corridor

...I guess that the religious order had decided to maintain the property until it could be evaluated whether to sell it - use it, convert it etc. I think that maybe about fifteen priests and seminarians used the grand estate as a second faculty house - to relieve overcrowding in the primary faculty house – and commuting by car back and forth to the high school. 

In retrospect I connect some dots (possibly in total error) and perhaps it was the gay section of the original faculty house that went into separate quarters at this white elephant mansion.

Oh this speculation breaks down into two categories: good gays, abstaining from gay sex religious and the bad gays - actually occasionally practicing their natural instincts -

There is not much to this story except for connecting dots and wondering. In the middle of that sophomore year, a young, dynamic, charismatic seminarian teacher died in a car crash coming back from some long distance weekend duties - deacon at some parish etc. I remember his picture in the newspaper and the official speculation that he had fallen asleep at the wheel of his car in this "single vehicle collision" - And then my biology teacher, I liked him, died during the summer break.

I suppose I would not be writing this today except that in the next school year, my junior year, a very prissy but not unlikable priest blurted out something in class. Father Tom, a history teacher, said something like a veiled admission regarding the sudden tragic death of Father Ed, the biology teacher. He said something like "wrapping oneself around a highway pillar was indeed a suspicious thing to happen" while talking to the class one day, I think his comments went over many students heads... 

Chapter Two - The Long Dark Corridor

...But I got the A+++.  Been there.  Done that.  Time to move on. Etc. 

I decided then and there. I would drop his course. So much of what he had fed this class so far was his own personal bullshit full of his ambitious plan to one day run the school system downtown which he in fact did one day. I have since read many things about cults and brainwashing and such and “E.” would have made a great Jim Jones in the secular world etc. IMHO. 

I also as I have written this blog for many years have to wonder how ambitious church lady types with penises, how they rise to the top of their professions being perhaps tops and not giving a shit about who gets ground into sausage along the way, especially children.

I also have  to wonder how “E.” built his great education system as the archdiocese, one by one, shut down their inner city schools and high schools.  That glory sometimes is a story, a press release, as the world and or institution dies from attrition.  

Will the last person in the Archdiocese Education Office at “222” kindly turn off the lights as they leave the building forever. 

I also have to wonder how many times how the elites of the Education Department rubbed elbows with the Elites of the hierarchy at board meetings or gatherings over cocktails and how polite church talk and education talk never got mixed with the very real talk of child abuse and criminal cover up emanating from the Cardinal’s penthouse office suite on the top floor above?...

Memories of North Catholic Philly - circa 1962 and 1933

I am reminded of older stories about North Catholic in Philly from my Dad who was a graduate in 1934. There were many changes to the buildings between the time I arrived there in 1966 or my brother in ’62.

It is remarkable that North no longer exists and St Joan of Arc Church just closed in June.

The one thing the newer North had was the building annex that was built in the early sixties. Cannot nail down a date of its dedication but I remember being there on a Sunday afternoon and standing in the lobby with my father waiting to go into the auditorium to take a seat.

The door opened into the Principal’s waiting room outside his office and there in scarlet was Archbishop Krol standing there talking with Mayor James H. J. Tate.  The door closed and we went to get a seat.

The new building had a great expanse of a new cafeteria on the ground floor. The first, second and third floors above did not sit level with the floors of the older original school building dated to the late 1920s. So connecting stairways between the two buildings was a series of half flights and landings.

There were built in lockers in along the floors in the new building.  There was an overflow of lockers for students in the older building as you would walk by a passageway past the restroom and a room filled with janitors that were actively collecting trash from the daily four periods of lunch in the new cafeteria.

Am not certain but I think there was a furnace in that room with the janitors and they burned the trash but I am not totally certain.

The overflow locker room in the basement of the older building had been the cafeteria in the original school according to my father.  I think he brown bagged it in the Depression but managed to scrape together a nickel for a bowl of navy bean soup and a buttered roll which was his favorite and served on one particular day a week as the daily special.

His main memory was that of being in his homeroom and even in the hot last days of summer in September or the hot days in late May or early June, the windows of the room would remain closed because of the smell and all the flies that were generated by the horse stables across the street at Harbison’s Dairy for the delivery of milk via milk wagons in the 30s.

He related the story of his older cousin, my godfather, having broken down in front of the school in his junker Model T Ford and then spending all day taking the engine apart before being able to get the car going in late afternoon. And that as the car departed, there were a few odd bolts and gaskets in the street and the Model T was still road worthy. Don’t make cars like that anymore.

My Dad was able to keep progress all day on his cousin because in those days, your homeroom was where you sat all day. The teachers actually changed classes and not the students.  The same basic education for everybody since the homeroom was arranged alphabetically in the “M”s in his case and this particular class had most of the Micks “Mc”s in it.

With a last name in alphabetical going M-c-S, he was seated last seat of the last row and next to the window.

Which leads to the story of the last class of the day, and the guy ahead of him in the seat in front of him.  That guy had the cardboard lid of an ice cream cup consumed at lunch. 

Apparently the round disks were objects to throw like a mini Frisbees and quite the fashion to aim such flying lids at cars from the height of the local Elevated station down the street for commuting students.

Well anyway, the story goes something like the guy with the ice cream lid had sent it into flight in a classroom where the next teacher had not arrived yet for class. The lid hit the next teacher just as that teacher turned the corner of the door and hit him squarely in the face.

Teacher said “Who threw that?”. No answer.

The teacher then conducted class, and then as it was the last class of the day the teacher after class went to every desk and holding the cardboard disk and asking each student seat by seat, aisle by aisle, asked every student if he threw the disk. As they denied the act of throwing it, they were allowed to leave.

Last aisle and the guy in front of my Dad looks the priest in the eye and denied throwing the ice cream lid. The guy left. At that and because my Dad was last man on the totem pole and his shock of the bold faced lie of the guy in front of him, my Dad said that he burst into laughter in comic relief of the irony of the situation.  

The priest did not ask him if he threw it. He instead got a week’s detention.

That was North Catholic. 

. 

Chapter Two - The Long Dark Corridor – The Sounds of Silence - “222”

Chapter Two - The Long Dark Corridor – “222”

The thought comes to you sometimes. That things do and do not matter.

I had the occasion with the abundance of information floating around the Internet to see the stories of two former high school teachers’ end run of career and retirements.

The first teacher had been a been a very well groomed and interesting Spanish teacher who I had been in freshman and sophomore classes with. Through a childhood grade school friend or some similar connection, the retirement of “S.” had been shown in a two minute You Tube clip. The teacher had survived all the way to the age of sixty-five just as the last class of an inner city high school was deemed obsolete by the Archdiocese.

"S." had given up Spanish classes, and had become the disciplinarian, no doubt for job security, at that Catholic High School. The You Tube saw him making the rounds and being surprised by a group of former students cheering and applauding him as he entered the school auditorium.

Of course, there were arguments that a school that had graduated many successful men, it was an all boys school, had an alumni base willing to subsidize the losses listed on the books of keeping a great institution going for another year or two.  That the successful white alumni loved their Alma Mater and did not care that the student body was not now one hundred percent, or even fifty percent, white as in olden days. That the Archdiocese’s game plan looked to a future model of new Catholic High Schools to be built in the rich white suburbs.

In any case, there was talk of a Jesuit high school to purchase the property but in the end the Public School System forked over the cash to start one of those so-called “Charter” High School things using the bones of existing buildings as the base of a new education operation in the inner city.

Getting back to "S.", he had studied Spanish in Mexico in his junior year in college. So besides the grammar of that language was a bag full of stories of his experiences relating and interrelating to that foreign culture.  In retrospect, it is strange how Americans can be so ignorant of a culture right next door and over the next border.

The friend from childhood that had told me or wrote to me or maybe just posted the You Tube on Facebook had been passing along some info. Much appreciated. And another grade school chum had sought me out to become part of that social network after another childhood friend had died. The dead classmate had in fact lived just two doors down from me back then. 

That the social network thing can keep old acquaintances alive in indirect contact and act in a manner that word of mouth, neighborhoods or hardcopy local newspapers had acted as in the recent past before the coming of this in some way mysterious new global culture thing.

The story about a Spanish teacher, though perhaps long winded was an intro to the another part of my story here and my reaction of sorts to an English teacher in high school.

I had related the story of Father Ed in The Long Dark Corridor. I had touched upon some matters perhaps delicate and now long gone of the sexual orientation of some of the priests that taught in that high school. But I cannot let go of things sometimes. 

I also read recently of a retirement of an English teacher that went on to much higher things in the front office education bureaucracy of the archdiocese in the chancery downtown, sharing space with the hierarchy in that strange little office building, prefab, and hastily risen close to forty years ago.

“E.” was no doubt a very ambitious teacher. He no doubt was filled with many innovative ideas to modernize education in my high school and beyond to other schools in the archdiocese. Considering that I knew him in his salad days. I did not like him from day one. His loud high pitched boisterous way of talking and acting out the role of teacher as if on a stage and in a large auditorium without a sound system, in retrospect, speaks to me of a self-taught orator or one that did not adjust from the larger stage as in a college debating club to that of a classroom with about forty students.

In a way I did not seek to be put into his showcase “honors” English class.  And from day one, he made it clear that this was a showcase program and the whole world, meaning the Principal’s office and the archdiocese was looking to see how this pilot program would produce great students and great writing from the inner city turds that populated this high school's hallways.

They did segregate all us white male students according to the entrance test to the high school that we took in eighth grade into perhaps A, B, C tiers. With tiers overlapping.  And as I think back I was at the bottom of “A” or more likely the top of “B”. That people you sat next to in homeroom, you never saw again during the day except maybe at lunchtime. You were grouped according to your academic scores. Small bubbles within bubbles in an education system, wheels within wheels.

I had done very well in freshman year in terms of test scores in the English course. One of the strange things was that in this new elite English class in sophomore year, I saw no familiar faces except one. And as I think back, my freshman English class was something of hodge podge of kids of various levels of achievement. 

The teacher had been a Reverend Mister, a seminarian in his fifth year in seminary study who had just accomplished a four year degree and was being farmed out into the field for teaching experience in a religious order famed for its education status as a teaching order of priests and brothers.

On a side note, at the end of my junior year in high school, I was in the school band, marching on Memorial Day.  We stopped for a quick break and pit stop somewhere along the way.  That Reverend Mister came up to me in civilian clothes, tee shirt, shorts, and sneakers to say hi.  I could not but help notice that he was with a young lady.  He had not been in the school in my junior year.  He briefly explained that he was no longer in the seminary and wanted to know how I was doing etc. No doubt his hetero ways made him decide on a change in career etc. Never saw or heard of him again btw.

And speaking of the teacher base in a religious teaching facility, a high school run by the archdiocese, the religious still outnumbered the male lay teachers back then. The lay teachers for the most part were under 26 years of age. It was the age of Vietnam and the draft and they gave deferments to teachers. When they turned 27, most of them departed. Bolted in fact!

Two projects of that freshman English class stand out in my mind. One was the reading of the English translation of The Iliad by Homer and the almost chapter by chapter, blow by blow, bloody naked carcass by bloody naked carcass description of the carnage of war of that piece of ancient literature in more like a history lesson than an English class.

Second was a study of Mythology by Edith Hamilton. There had been a twenty question test on the names of all the gods and goddesses and lower categories of Mt. Olympus family members. I got a 100 on the test, being the only one in class to do so. Many had got a 95 but for some reason, I had memorized the secondary name of the moon goddess and I cannot remember now what that name was but no doubt I did well in that freshman class to be sent on to the honors English class in sophomore year.

Now here is where a lot of conflict happened for me. One, I did not know of any honors class in freshman year. Nor had anybody asked if I wanted to join such a club as it termed out to be.

In retrospect, I think that maybe my freshman year in high school and the different path that led me to sophomore honors English was my freshman schedule that I know was different that most of the others who ended up in sophomore honors English. I think that my Spanish class with “S.” had had me end up in a last minute put together freshman class with the reverend mister, a miscellaneous overthrow class to put people whose other courses such as language or math put them in schedule conflicts elsewhere. 

As such I was out of a social loop, and came into a sophomore class many of whom were already acquainted with each other in English in freshman year with schedules arraigned around French and German classes. I only knew one guy from freshman English in that sophomore class and he ironically was someone who had my exact duplicate schedule that first year. He was also someone out sick a great deal of the time, so I never really got to know him very well.

This is where another unpleasant memory pops into mind. Eighth grade and the elitist nun, with her nose raised in the air because she had been assigned to some poor Irish parish in the inner city, she went into such a stink when I submitted my desired optional courses on a piece of paper submitted to the high school. “Spanish”! It’s a mongrel language! You won’t be able to get into a decent college with Spanish on your high school record! You need French or German to get into college etc.

I had in fact took the course because my order sister had taken Spanish and I was hoping for some home tutoring regarding that course on language. 

Anyway, day one of sophomore honors English and the speech about us being the crème de la crème, the pilot program that was going to breakout of all expectations. There was also going to be a college style course load of a book a week to be read, analyzed and tested on and of course only the best writing possible was to be sought for as a targeted goal.  Under no circumstance was anyone ever going to get the coveted A+++ on any assigned essay etc.

Well, the fawning of the troops over this new messiah like teacher started from day one. And the many of them who talked so highly of “E.” outside of class.  Many in his regular English classes had more than enough to say about the crazy sophomore English teacher who no doubt gave the same or similar workloads to them.

I in retrospect have read some points of people not happy with “E.”, in recent years on the Internet, in this academic rule in later years in the Archdiocese head office, and these points seem to confirm to me that unless you joined his cult of adoration of his ideas and his vision regarding education, your careers in education were on shaky ground. Enough said about that because what I have seen on the Internet no doubt only represents a small margin view of the abilities and or accomplishments of this person.

I do remember in Senior Year, many of his prized Sophomore English honor students were in charge of putting together the Senior Yearbook that there were something like thirteen picture of “E.” from still adoring students from his personal and or English honors cult.

I am not a joiner. Perhaps I am loner. Just a few weeks into “E’s” sophomore class we had to write an essay on “The Sounds of Silence” and we were supposed to be creative because there were no guidelines besides the title of the essay.

Well, I can remember getting into this essay for some reason. I got very abstract and perhaps even spiritual. I can only remember the inspiration of a quiet moment in an early morning hour one summer’s day that I happened to be up just before dawn and how beautiful and magical the silence and lack of the presence of any automobiles or trucks in an otherwise very crowded and busy street intersection near where I lived, before the days of the nearby Interstate that became the present main artery of all that north south city traffic.

“E” hands out the essays with marks on them to most.  He holds back a few of the essays and begins to read them and praise them and criticize them as he went along. He then handed them back one by one to the authors. He continued to read. Then one begins to see the marks on the papers A+++ and one realizes that he does hand out A+++ marks and I was so filled with an internal glee that I had made the cut. I was going to get a A+++ and he was going to read it out loud in class. Such an honor.

My paper seemed to be on the bottom of his pile. Was he saving the best for last? I would never know.

The bell rang. Class was over. He handed my paper to me without comment and it did in fact have the A+++ rating but nobody in the class would hear my words aloud from the performing orator on the stage of the class.  My heart sank in total disappointment. Did he leave the best for last? Did time run out unnoticed to him? Or did he time it all by eyeing the clock. I can be so paranoid sometimes. 

But I got the A+++.  Been there.  Done that.  Time to move on. Etc.

I decided then and there. I would drop his course. So much of what he had fed this class so far was his own personal bullshit full of his ambitious plan to one day run the school system downtown which he in fact did one day. I have since read many things about cults and brainwashing and such and “E.” would have made a great Jim Jones in the secular world etc. IMHO.

I also as I have written this blog for many years have to wonder how ambitious church lady types with penises, how they rise to the top of their professions being perhaps tops and not giving a shit about who gets ground into sausage along the way, especially children.

I also have  to wonder how “E.” built his great education system as the archdiocese, one by one, shut down their inner city schools and high schools.  That glory sometimes is a story, a press release, as the world and or institution dies from attrition. 

Will the last person in the Archdiocese Education Office at “222” kindly turn off the lights as they leave the building forever.

I also have to wonder how many times how the elites of the Education Department rubbed elbows with the Elites of the hierarchy at board meetings or gatherings over cocktails and how polite church talk and education talk never got mixed with the very real talk of child abuse and criminal cover up emanating from the Cardinal’s penthouse office suite on the top floor above?

So it goes.


.

The Long Dark Corridor

(excerpts from a journal...)

...in this day and age of maximum sexual exposure and sexual exploitation - the church sticks its nose in and says it has authority to tell you how to live and who to have sex with and how to have that sex…

...anyway, years later I am thinking of the mysterious death of my high school biology teacher, a priest who managed to wrap his car around a highway support pillar - in a "single vehicle collision".

"The Long Dark Corridor" is the title of a short story I have been carrying around in my head for years. There was this third floor corridor of my high school that ran almost half a city block long and ran toward an industrial exit door with chicken wire glass in the top half.

The door opened onto an elevated concrete foot bridge that connected the high school with the faculty house of the religious teaching order of priests, brothers and seminarians that taught at our all boys facility.

I remember the bridge of concrete about five feet wide, twenty feet up in the air - being built around the time I was five. We lived on the next block. In fact, my father could remember our Philadelphia row house being built during his high school days at the same school in the 1930's.

Well, I started this story - title and the theme have been going through my brain for at least two decades...

I think that I have always had an innate intuition - something unformed, unspoken, unrecognizable. I probably subconsciously knew how to avoid contact with the gay clique within the religious teaching order.

My older brother who is now openly gay, I think had an encounter with them some years before - still remember the stress of my father and the meetings with the principal and the whispers and then the silence - the silence. My brother rarely shared anything with anybody all this life and especially that event – a topic for non-discussion.

We sophomores had the first biology class of the day. Lab was locked.  Father Ed had the key. We would wait in the hallway for Father Ed to appear through the door over the bridge from the faculty house. He was bigger than life in both girth and his charisma and knowledge of biology. I enjoyed the class even though I have no great love of the subject matter...

All my life I never liked the roman catholic practice of confession - going into a dark box and talking to a priest about my sins - I have my faults but most I think are attributable to the natural world side of my human nature.

During Easter Week each year, high school was a week long retreat for the students. Lectures, discussion groups, mass and confessions. I never went to confession in these high school days - optional - go to a dozen different classrooms - pick your favorite priest, kneel in a bright classroom next to a seated priest - where was the traditional black box?

I have often wondered in recent years if many students mentioned their sexual nature or related matters in confession in this retreat setting. I have also wondered if somehow the heterosexual priests were competing with the gay priests to recruit new young men with vocations to the priesthood with similar sexual persuasions and natures. And of course looking back - this heterosexual/homosexual divide was not visible then in the late 1960's. Society had layer upon layer of subtlety, priority, mask -

Anyway, just before my sophomore year, and biology, the religious teaching order had gotten a legacy of a large estate in the Chestnut Hill section of Philly, half a city away from my high school. We as a family drove past it one Sunday during our weekly Sunday ride - couldn't see much beyond the massive cast iron fence and gates - lots of fog that day - I guess that the religious order had decided to maintain the property until it could be evaluated whether to sell it - use it, convert it etc. I think that maybe about fifteen priests and seminarians used the grand estate as a second faculty house - to relieve overcrowding in the primary faculty house – and commuting by car back and forth to the high school.

In retrospect I connect some dots (possibly in total error) and perhaps it was the gay section of the original faculty house that went into separate quarters at this white elephant mansion.

Oh this speculation breaks down into two categories: good gays, abstaining from gay sex religious and the bad gays - actually occasionally practicing their natural instincts -

There is not much to this story except for connecting dots and wondering. In the middle of that sophomore year, a young, dynamic, charismatic seminarian teacher died in a car crash coming back from some long distance weekend duties - deacon at some parish etc. I remember his picture in the newspaper and the official speculation that he had fallen asleep at the wheel of his car in this "single vehicle collision" - And then my biology teacher, I liked him, died during the summer break.

I suppose I would not be writing this today except that in the next school year, my junior year, a very prissy but not unlikable priest blurted out something in class. Father Tom, a history teacher, said something like a veiled admission regarding the sudden tragic death of Father Ed, the biology teacher. He said something like "wrapping oneself around a highway pillar was indeed a suspicious thing to happen" while talking to the class one day, I think his comments went over many students heads...

Father Ed, the biology teacher, had been head of the Chestnut Hill faculty house - the history teacher had now succeeded him to that post of responsibility. The history teacher was burdened with balancing budgets, replacing automobiles lost, expenses of running a white elephant much in need of repairs, out of date mansion. I think Father Tom was pissed because of all the added multitasking duties dumped on him. I also think there was a tone of hurt that day, more than sorrow, that Father Ed was no longer with us.

...but that long dark corridor of my high school as I looked down it many times both empty and full of students had many stories to tell...

Perhaps this story or it bits and pieces will never be written either as fiction or as the truth if the truth in this case could ever truly be resurrected...

...Let the dead rest in peace.

-