Anchors Aweigh . . .

On August 6, 1967, I left on the train for boot camp, rode to New York, and reported to the induction center at Whitehall Street (the very same Whitehall Street made famous by Arlo Guthrie in "Alice's Restaurant, originally released in that same year!).  After getting sworn in, a whole group of us brand new sailors boarded another train for Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Waukegon, IL.  The trip took all night, and the US taxpayers fronted each of us a sleeping berth on the train, the one, and so far only, time I have ever enjoyed such luxurious rail accommodations.

Didn't sleep a whole lot though.  Kept wondering throughout the country side if perhaps I hadn't made some sort of horrendous error in judgment (a suspicion confirmed less than 24 hours after enlisting, and then in some four years of consequences. . .)



The Quarterdeck Of The Navy!



 I found out this morning on Wikipedia that Great Lakes was known as "the Quarterdeck of the Navy."  The quarterdeck on a ship, if I remember correctly, is the area where one first comes on board.  How appropriate to designate Great Lakes with this honorific . . .

Great Lakes was also known by another, less honorable, but perhaps more accurate, honorific, one definitely much more appropriate for one such as I, and also one which I can't believe I never heard until this morning, in the same Wikipedia article-- it was also called "Great Mistakes . . ."

Uniforms were issued the second day, but in the next 8 weeks, I lost 25 pounds, so nothing fit by the time boot camp was over, when I would have only had three years and 44 weeks left until my enlistment was over, except that also during the first week, I had signed a two year extension so I could be guaranteed a slot at an extended electronics school (Fire Control Technician, for Polaris submarines!).  By week three, I had come to realize my mistake, and begun to appreciate that sometimes the consequences of our decisions were far out of proportion to the decisions themselves . . .

In boot camp, because of my previous affiliation with the Catholic Church, I was designated as the "Catholic Religious Petty Officer."  My nickname immediately became "Padre."  On Sunday mornings, it was my job to march all the Catholics to church.  Attendance was mandatory.  Seems we still had freedom to worship, we just didn't have freedom to not worship anymore.  And at church in boot camp, over the 8 weeks I was there, I ran into three other LaSalette alumni. 

I learned a lot in boot camp.  It was a lot like the seminary.  We all got up at the same time, ate at the same time, did everything together, and all answered to the same higher authority.  The major difference was the new vocabulary one used to describe everyday events and occurences . . . 

I re-learned how to tie some of the same knots I'd learned in boy scouts.  I learned the "general orders of a sentry."  I learned how to make a flotation device out of my pants.  And I learned how to march.  Marching was my favorite-- it didn't take a lot of thought.  After a while, I could do it in my sleep. 

Boot camp ended in October, 1967, and we all got two weeks leave, that we hadn't earned yet.  Which was fairly uneventful, until the night I asked my mom to pass the 'effin' butter.  Then I reported back to Great Lakes to begin Fire Control Technician A School.  Now I only had 5 years and 44 weeks until I would be a civilian again . . .

God rules . . .

 My earliest memories about God are  from kindergarten, which was in 1953, at Edgar C. Stiles public elementary school on Main Street in West Haven.  It was the year before I went to St. Lawrence.  Edgar C. Stiles was just under a half mile from my house.  Had to cross Elm Street, and the intersection at Wagner Place and Main Street.  But there was a traffic cop, named Mac, at Main, and no one ever got run over.  I used to walk to school, and walk home.  By myself.  At the age of five.  Truly, it was a different world then . . .

My teachers were Miss Skinner and Mrs. Jorgenson.  As part of the curriculum, we were taught the Lord's Prayer-- I know, I know.  Hard to imagine, isn't it? . . . but those were the good old days, before God got kicked out of public school.  In Matthew 6: 13, the King James Version reads: "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen."

And that was what they taught us.  Initially.  After we'd learned it, and had gotten used to saying it in unison each morning, I got a surprise.  One morning, Miss Skinner told me "Bruce, you're Catholic.  You don't say the 'for thine is the kingdom' part.  You stop after 'evil' and come back in at 'Amen,' ok?" 

"But I like that part!" I protested.  "But you're Catholic, and you don't say that part," she answered.  I think I remember asking "why not?"  But I don't remember if the answer ever went beyond "because you're a Catholic, not a protestant."

So, I'm five years old, and they're teaching me to talk to God- the King Of The Universe, but they're telling me that because of what I am, there's a specific way, specific words I have to use, other words I can't use  when I do it.  Might have been the first time I went to hell.

That was the year I learned the pledge of allegiance too.  And again, just when we had it down, they changed it.  This time, they stuck "under God" in the middle, right after "one nation."  Think I could remember that?  Took a week to get it in the right place consistently.

Right off the bat, I learned that God was very complicated.  "You have to say it this way.  You can't say it that way."  Why?  Because you're Catholic! Only the protestants say it that way, not the Catholics. So I wonder . . . does God not like Catholics?  Does He like protestants better? Is that why He won't let us finish the prayer that they get to pray?  And why didn't they just teach us the pledge the right way in the first place?  Was God angry that we'd left Him out?  And how did they know? 

Then I went to St. Lawrence, and as the years went by, God just got more and more baffling.  And the more I tried to find clarity the more confused I became.  Hence my aversion to going to hell on an ongoing basis. 

Why didn't God have the same rules for everyone?

Why, indeed . . .

You can't stop me . . .

Once I left seminary, I tried to keep an interest in being a Catholic, but my heart was increasingly not in it.  All the stuff about changing from Latin to English (or, "vernacular," as the priests liked to say) happened around the time I was a junior/senior in high school.  By the time I left, even St Lawrence was on board.  Given my background and training, I was immediately drafted to be a "commentator" at one of the Sunday masses.  I suspect it was more because no one else wanted to than because I exhibited any particular closeness to God or oratory skill.

Kind of like Jerry Eyestone, Bentley Bros. Circus ringmaster used to say when reporters asked him how he got to be a ringmaster . . . "well," he'd say, "on the day I got here, all the good jobs were taken . . ."

I wasn't exactly a favorite.  My habitual late nights on Saturday left me suffering from "Chronic Sunday Fatigue Syndrome."  After falling asleep several Sundays in a row during the sermon, I got me a good talking to, and about went to hell.  But there wasn't anyone else stepping up, so I kept my position until August.

Sleeping in church, especially during the sermon, has always been kind of frowned upon.  By pretty much everyone, because most everyone else there is trying to stay awake, and seeing someone else getting away with something you'd desparately like to be doing can be irritating. Especially to priests and nuns, and really "devout" Catholics.  But sleeping during the sermon while you were the commentator?  Especially when you were up there, inside the rail, so to speak?  In full view of everyone?  That brought out a certain redness in the cheek of the aforementioned "devout."

But it also got a laugh . . .

During the days between flunking out of SCSC and August 6, 1967, I was working at Union New Haven Trust Company, George Street Branch.  It was a bank, I was a teller.  It had been my summer job, between when I graduated and went off to Altamont.  It was a lot better than my previous summer job, which was working for the city of West Haven at Painter Park.  There I had eight hours each day to put two foul lines and batters boxes on the baseball field for the evening's game.  The bank was air conditioned . . .

Because I'd been there the previous summer, and once again, because the position was unfilled, I was the "acting" head teller.  I had somewhere between $100,000 and $110,000 that I was responsible for, every day.  Once I left $27,000 in a drawer over the weekend (I forgot it was in there, and never put it in the safe).  It was still there on Monday, and I never told anyone at the bank.  But I sure didn't sleep through the sermon that Sunday.

Around July, my mom asked me when I was going to register for fall classes.  "I'm not," I said.

"And just what do you think you're going to do?" she wanted to know.

"I'm going to join the Navy!"  I answered.

"Oh no you're not!" she insisted.

And full of the same kind of bravado that my brother must have felt over the nail-polish, I replied, "Oh yes I am!  I'm over 18.  I'm a man now!  And YOU CAN"T STOP ME!"

And she didn't. 

Southern Connecticut State College . . .

In January, 1967, I went back to college.  I enrolled in Southern Connecticut State College, which seems to have been the college that everyone who couldn't get into the college of their choice went to.  For me, it was the college of my choice.  Or, rather, the college of my mom's choice.  I personally would have chosen to disappear.   SCSC is now SCSU, and here's a photo of how it looks today . . .

It was a lot smaller in January, 1967 . . .

One of those buildings is the student center, which housed the cafeteria, wherein I spent a lot of time, as I didn't go to class a lot.  One morning,  I noticed a rather bizarre looking individual who came in and sat at a table across from me.  He had the longest hair I'd ever seen on a man, bell-bottom levis, a loud print dashiki style shirt, sandals, no books, and no food, and a slightly wild-eyed look about him.  On each table, there were salt and pepper shakers (see Fig 1)

 There was also a napkin holder (see Fig 2)

This wild-eyed individual proceded to remove one napkin from the holder and tear it as suggested in Fig3.  He also removed the tops from both the salt and pepper shakers, and dumped out a quantity of each onto the napkin fragments previously prepared (see Fig 3).

Then he inserted the napkin fragments with their quantity of condiment, each into the top of the opposite container . . . (see Fig 4)

Then he screwed the tops back on each shaker, tore off any protruding napkin chads and left the doctored condiment containers in their usual position by the napkin holder (Fig 5)

Then he got up, moved to a different table, and repeated the process.  Eleven more times, within about an hour.  He finished just as the lunch rush was descending on the cafeteria, stood up, looked around, smiled at me, winked, and left.

I don't know who he was, and I never noticed him again.  But since I'd already missed Botany and half of Baroque Music, and figured I was destined to fail both anyway, I remained where I was to see what would happen.  Some people were so intent on other things that they never even noticed.  They just seasoned their food, ate, and moved on. 

Some were greatly perplexed, bewildered at the salt that spewed pepper, and the pepper that spewed salt.  One guy shook out salt that came out pepper, shook out some more into his hand, then picked up the pepper shaker and shook out some salt into his hand, then seasoned his food and went on.

The funniest was the guy who tried both, got angry and then twice moved to other "doctored" tables, only to encounter the same phenomenon repeatedly.  All in all, it was for me, time well spent.

I learned more about intentional comedy in that lunch hour than I was ever going to learn about Botany or Baroque music.

For instance:

1. Intentional comedy takes preparation.  Wild-Eye was willing to put in the time to perpetrate an effective bit of business on an unsuspecting public.
2. Intentional comedy takes inspiration.  Without the idea behind it, nothing funny happens.
3. Intentional comedy requires an opportunity.  A good comedian waits for, seeks out, creates opportunities.
4. Intentional comedy is exaggerated.  He set up not one or two, but twelve tables! 
5. Intentional comedy requires confidence in one's inspiration and use of the available opportunity.  Wild-eye left without ever seeing the results of his shennagans (great word, huh?). 

I failed Botany, and Baroque Music.  And I flunked out of SCSC.  But what I learned about intentional comedy in that two hours in the cafeteria?

Priceless.

Alpha-Jazz . . .

When I think about LaSalette, the person I think about most often is a guy named Al Jasnocha.  Alfred L. Jasnocha, Jr.  He was the youngest of thirteen children and the only boy.  This is him in high school.

He's the shorter guy in the middle, in the plaid shirt.  He was a year ahead of me in Cheshire, and he left from Altamont about a month or so before I did. 

He was a superb athlete.  He played baseball and basketball and was outstanding at both.  I remember being sick in the infirmary in my freshman year, and he was in the next bed.  There was a basketball game that night, and Fr. Caffry told him early in the afternoon that if his temperature was normal at dinner time, he could play.  His temperature came out at exactly 98.6 . . . he did it with an ice cube and a flashlight, as Fr. Caffry was out of the room during the three minutes . . .  Al played, we won, and he was back in the infirmary after the game with a temp of 102.  There was a little girl, someone else's sister, who heard some people call him Al, and some call him Jazz.  She named him "Alpha-Jazz" and it kind of stuck, in my head at least. 

When he decided to leave from Altamont, it seems no one thought it was a good idea.  They tried to talk him into staying.  Asked him to take some time to think about it, to make sure it was the right decision.  But he left anyway, and the place was devastated.  He was the kind of guy that if you couldn't be him, you wanted to be like him, and if you couldn't be like him, you'd settle for being around him.  When I left, I'm not sure anyone even noticed.  But when he left, he left a huge hole in our lives where he used to be . . .

And he joined the marines.  And then, on May 15, 1968,  he got killed in Vietnam.

This information is from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial website:

Alfred L Jasnocha Jr

PFC - E2 - Marine Corps - Regular

Length of service 0 years

His tour began on Mar 18, 1968

Casualty was on May 15, 1968

In Quang Tri, South Vietnam

Hostile, Ground Casualty

Artillery, Rocket or Mortar

Body was recovered

Panel 60E - Line 24

In 1984, when I was thirty-six, I was in Washington DC for my brother's graduation from Catholic University.  I went to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, and I found Panel 60E, Line 24.  I saw Jazz's name etched into the marble wall. 

I was struck by the knowledge that, compared to him, I had already lived two lifetimes.  Now I'm pushing four.

Sometimes, I wonder what might have been . . .

Here is a link to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial .  And here's a photo from that website . . .

There are 58,272 names listed on this wall, as of 2011.  Approximately 1200 are still listed as missing in action.  At least 25,000 of those killed were, like Jazz, 20 years old, or younger.  The worst month of the war for casualties was May, 1968 when 2,415 were killed.  Jazz was one of them.

 

Sometimes, I wonder what might have been . . .

Off to College . . .

After a summer of dating my cousin Kathy's friend Lisa from Stone's Business College, a life of celibacy was starting to look like maybe not the best idea, but without any other plans in play, summer ended, and off I went to Seminary College.  The college was in Altamont, New York.  I don't have a lot of memories, or pictures of Altamont, because I didn't stay there all that long . . .

This was the building in Altamont.  It's a little west of Albany, and they have winter there.  Much moreso than we ever had in Connecticut.  I went there in September, 1966.  It was a two year college, and then, if they stayed, students went to Novitiate for a year in Bloomfield, CT before continuing on the path to ordination.  From grade school to ordination took 13 years.  Needless to say, I didn't get that far (not as a Catholic, anyway).  I didn't finish the first semester. 

Much as I wanted to understand God, confused as I was about what He may have wanted from me, from the time I got to Altamont until the day I left, the sensation that I didn't really belong there grew until it became overwhelming.    I think it was in early December that I went to see our "Prefect of Discipline" for my first, and turns out, only, semi-annual "visit."

He said, "how's it going?" and I answered, "fine."

He said, "what do you mean by fine?" and I answered, "I'm going home."

He said, "when?" and I answered, "this afternoon."

And he said, "good."

I didn't have an answer.  I didn't need one.  That afternoon, someone drove me to the Greyhound station in Albany, and that night I was home.  It took a long time before I wondered why he never tried to persuade me to stay, or even asked me why I was leaving. 

I think that maybe his sensation that I didn't really belong there was even more overwhelming than mine . . .

Happy Birthday . . .

Today my mom would have been 88 years old.  Happy birthday, mom . . .

This was her only wedding photo.  It was a story I only heard once, but somehow all her wedding photos were ruined by the photographer, and this was a redo after the wedding was long since over.  She died 28 years ago, in 1984, when she was 60. 

I don't remember her ever looking like this, but when I remember her, this is how I see her . . .

Class of 1966 . . .

This is the cover of the 1966 LaSalette Seminary High School Year Book.  Where most schools had an actual book, we mostly had a magazine . . . although our class, the Class of 1966 did have enough hard bound copies printed so that we each got one, all fourteen of us.  Somewhere over the last 46 years, I lost mine.  But I still have the magazine copy I used for autographs . . .

"Our Day."  The little things on the cross are a hammer on the right, and a pincers on the left.  LaSalette is based on an appearance of Mary, mother of Jesus, to two shepherd children on a mountain outside of Grenoble, France, near the village of LaSalette.  It is said that she wore the hammer and pincers on her dress, next to the crucifix. 

The hammer represents sin.  When we sin, we are, in effect, driving the nails into Jesus' hands.  When we repent, we are using the pincers (representing repentance) to remove the nails.

I learned this from Fr James P. O'Reilly my freshman year in "History of LaSalette."  Always one to push an analogy to its limits, my proclivity for hell-consigning behavior was even then such that my life looked to me about to become a never ending cycle of push the nails in, pull them out, push them in, pull them out . . .

There was so much that I failed to understand . . . and my ability to phrase the questions in a manner that wouldn't be dismissed as disrespectful or downright rude was far from fully developed.  For instance, when the Catholic church decided that it was no longer a sin to eat meat on Friday, I wanted to know if it was retroactive-- did the people who had gone to hell for that now get out?

This is a picture of the nuns at LaSalette my senior year . . . and three of the priests.  Fr. McPartland was

the Director- in charge of all the students.  I remember him as being really tough.  He grew up in Brooklyn.  Along with a first name of Aloysius (pronounced Al-o-wish-us!), his middle name was Matthias, and his confirmation name was Casmir.  Yeah, he was tough.  Imagine your mom shouting that name out from the fire-escape in Brooklyn!  We called him "Twish," but never to his face . . .

The other two priests I didn't know.  I think they got their pictures in the yearbook just because they were there that day.  And then, there's our nuns.  They were from Spain, and they didn't speak English.  Don't they look happy?  They were the only really happy looking nuns that I'd ever seen.  All the others seemed somber and morose by comparison, as if atonement for the sins of the world lay personlly on their shoulders.  Our nuns at LaSalette didn't seem to feel that responsibility.   Or if they did, they didn't let it affect their day-to-day demeanor.  One of the nuns died during my senior year.  The funeral was in our chapel, and when it was over, all of us went to the cemetary for the burial.  There was the hearse, and one limo, I think.  And then two or three cars, and bringing up the rear, two giant yellow and black school buses.  Six of the seniors were pall-bearers.  Ed O'Brien almost fell into the hole.

And then, there's me.  Bottom left.  Sharp, huh?  Not the Valedictorian (Norman Butler, or maybe George Brennan).  Not the Salutatorian (George Brennan, or maybe Norman Butler).  Third in the class.  Which always sounded more impressive than I knew it actually was . . .

There were only 14 of us that graduated.  From LaSalette, I mean.  I imagine a large number of the 48 originals did graduate from other places, but one always has a tendency to see the universe in terms of oneself . . .

The picture in the upper right corner is me and Doug Rousseau and Ed O'Brien doing some kind of theatrical production.  I seem to remember that it had something to do with us being prisoners of war.  But given that it was the three of us in it, it must have been hilariously funny.  I mean, they were both hilariously funny, and I did end up being Bruce the Clown . . .

Religion - vs - Kennedy . . .

This is Father Tom McKinnon.  He was our Religion teacher, in my sophomore year at LaSalette. 

On November 22, 1963, about half way through his class, someone came to the door and whispered something to him.  He nodded, closed the door and resumed the lesson.  At the end of class, after the bell rang, he told us that the President had been shot at 12:30 pm , and no one knew yet how serious it was . . .

Turned out he died at 1:00 pm.  A guy named Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the assassination at 1:55 pm, and Lyndon Johnson was sworn in later that evening.

Then, on November 24, a guy named Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald.  On live TV!  The first person ever killed live on the news . . . Jack Ruby died in prison on March 1, 1967.

Momentous times.  This is John Fitzgerald Kennedy, thirty-fifth president of the United States of America, the first, and so far, only Catholic to ever hold that office.

At the time, we were pretty upset that Fr. McKinnon made us wait until class was over to tell us this incredibly astonishing and history making news.  He didn't want to lose valuable class time when he could be teaching us about God to what was essentially current events.  I remember thinking that there must be something wrong with me because I didn't see it his way.  President Kennedy was  important!  Remember, that this was way before anyone knew or was talking about anything else Kennedy did in the White House besides be president.  To us, in 1963, he was more than just the president, he was a saint.  He was a hero. He was Catholic!  And it was Camelot, for crying out loud!

And then, that November afternoon, " . . . we just looked around and he was gone."

Next thing you know, we're in Viet Nam, and the 6:00 o'clock news is counting the bodies for us every night. 

Seems like everything changed that day.  Just like it did on September 11, 2001.

Sophomore year . . .

This is my class in my sophomore year at LaSalette.  There were 48 of us when we started.  Now we were down to eighteen.  And three of these were added.  So we went from 48 to 15 in one year.  There was a lot of attrition . . . so I wondered, does God change His mind?  Or do people just think they hear Him?

Front row, left to right: Bernie Bordeau, Dennis Stagon, Bill Ostrowski, Roger Michaud, Victor Zielinski, Norman Butler, Gary Solnik and Cary Grant (really!)
Back row, left to right: George Brennan, Robert Harrington, Bruce the Clown, Joseph Smialowski, Doug Rousseau, Joe Sweeney, Ed O'Brien, Richard Franko, Roger Lessard and Gregory Barnes.

The names in italics left before graduation in 1966, but three more were added.  We graduated with a class of 14 (I finished third).   And my understanding is that out of that group, only Norman Butler and Victor Zielinski were subsequently ordained . . . 

Oh, and me.  But not as a priest.  I'm a Southern Baptist minister.  Some people know me as "Rev. Bruce the Clown."

High School- LaSalette Seminary, Cheshire, CT

Why seminary?  What was I thinking?  I thought that I was supposed to be a priest.  Now, there is a whole school of theological thought that's convinced that God (yes, that God- the Master of the Universe, the one on the Throne in Heaven) actually calls individuals into his service.  That's why it's called a "vocation."  It comes from a Latin word, no doubt, meaning something like "called by God."  And I thought that He had called me.  It was so easy to believe that, when all your teachers were nuns.  Even thinking about being a priest opened one up to so much positive reinforcement! 

This was LaSalette Minor Seminary in Cheshire, Connecticut.  This building was only a year old in 1962 when I went there.  The closest part in the picture is the priests' residence, with the chapel on the right.  The next wing sticking out to the right is the nuns' residence (there they are again!) at the far right, and the kitchen on the left.  Between the chapel and the kitchen was the priests' dining hall., and north of the kitchen was the students' dining hall.  For some reason, the dining halls were called "refectories."

There was a laundry chute in the hallway running from the chapel toward the refectory.  The standing joke was that it was where the nuns kept their dirty habits . . . Our nuns at LaSalette were Spanish speaking, no English.  On the rare occasions that we saw them, they seemed happy; laughing, smiling, content with a cloistered life.  Would that they could have cooked!

To the left of the student refectory was our dormitory (great big room where people sleep).  There were bathrooms and showers at both ends.  The bathrooms were called "chats."  That's pronounced "shats," like the beginning of the French word "chateau," which was sort of a castle, and a castle has a throne-room, and the "chats" was where the thrones were . . . it's a reach, I know.  It was even then.

The wing sticking out to the left in the back was the gym.  Basketball, movies, theatrical productions, such as they were.  Basketball was an important part of LaSalette.  This was the varsity team my freshman year . . .

The priest is Father James Lowery.  He was the coach (duh!).  On his right, far left, front to back, Michael Verengia, Michael Donahue, Donald Delery.  Next, Michael Callahan, Gary Jackson, Phil House and Robert Oblon.  On Coach's left, I don't remember the names of the two guys in the back, but 23 was John Miller, next to him is Gary Mooney, and in front, Steve Rogowski.  In my sophomore year, LaSalette won the Class C Small Schools State Championship!  This is that team:

When I went to LaSalette, I sort of had this idea that everyone would be pious, holy, praying all the time.  Silly me.  The people I went to high school with were just like the people I went to grade school with.  Some of them were actually pretty decent, some of them were just ok.  A few of them should have been in jail.  (I wonder sometimes, what I looked like to them . . .)  But whether it was fun, which it often was, or miserable, which it also often was, underlying it all was the knowledge that there was something that I just didn't quite get, that if I could just get that something, I'd be ok.  But I didn't. 

Given what I'd learned about hell, and the ease with which a Catholic could end up there, you'd think I would've run the other way.  But I didn't.   I ran right at it. I thought that if I just learned enough about being a Catholc, I could stop going to hell.  I figured that maybe if I got totally immersed in my religion, I could figure out how to be close to God, how to want to do the things I was being taught God wanted me to do.  So I went to Seminary. 

I was 14.  What did I know?

Graduation . . .

Top row: Elizabeth Joyce, Gail Dunford, Laura Sagnella, Sharon Lewis, Linda Seaman, Kathy Davis, Linda Kirakoff, Cheryl Anderson, Anne Marie Roy, Mary Taylor, Donna Siclari, Donna Granata

2nd row: Eddie Donovan, Bruce the Clown, Walter Sirski, Joseph Houley, George McQueeney, Robert Simeone, Wayne Bishop, George Cassidy, Greg Mitchell, Tommy Halligan, Benny DiLeto

3rd Row: Roland Robichaud, John Harrington, Kathleen Gallagher, Monique Roy, Marion Elliot, Rita Burns, Juliet Cubanski, Johanna Bohan, Robert Darcy, James Carmody

Bottom Row: Marianne Walters, Carol Sorbo, Linda Mancini, Katherine Hannon, Fr. John Heller, Joyce Cavalarro, Anthony D'Amato, Janice Smaga, Judith Lipke

Not bad, from memory, fifty years later . . . now, where did I leave my car keys . . .?

Penultimate Nun Story . . .

This is me, lying (laying?) on the beach in Daytona on spring break, 1961.  Mom decided that we should go on a trip for spring break because she didn't want us to ever think we were poor.  Mom, and I and David, and mom's friend Eileen drove to Florida and back.  It took us four days to get there and four days to get back.  We spent two days there, one in Daytona Beach, and one near wherever the Citrus Tower was (is?).

Mom and Eileen took turns driving, and since my brother Ken had a different week off than David and I did, we dropped him and Mary off in Washington, D. C. for the weekend and we went on to Florida.  Up until that trip, Mom had never driven anything but an automatic, and Eileen's car was a standard.  Which led to lots of exciting moments when she tried to brake with her left foot . . .

This was before Disney, before there was a Space Coast, before I-95 was even completed.  There were lots of Parrot Jungle and Aligator Farm sorts of places, and we drove on the beach in Daytona.  And we rode on an air-boat.  I remember it being so loud that we couldn't hear each other talking.  So of course, I availed myself of the opportunity to scream aloud every cuss-word I could think of, and blissfully escape the consequences that would have ensued, had anyone been able to hear me.  And there were other anachronistic types of things that since have vanished from the landscape, at least, if not from the public consciousness.

Somewhere in Georgia, or maybe North or South Carolina (maybe even Virginia- I don't remember for sure), after spending absolutely hours in the car and being on the brink of starvation, mom pulled off the road in some tiny little town into a bright and well-lit restaurant parking lot.  (The knowledge was slowly beginning to dawn on me that one could take all one's meals in restaurants, and never eat at home.  What a concept!)  It looked like a great place, to my rapidly developing cosmopolitan senses, but I was taken aback when we got to the door, where hanging dead center was a sign that read:

I was astonished.  Here was objective reality, that heretofore in my life had been only subjective.  This was wrong.  Extremely wrong.  God-damnable wrong.  Wrong with every fiber of my being wrong.   My mom taught me that it was wrong.  My recently departed dad had taught me it was wrong. My teachers, the nuns in St Lawrence School (which that year had admitted it's first ever black student), taught me that it was wrong, and if they taught it was wrong, then you knew under pain of Mortal Sin that God-On-His-Throne-In-Heaven thought it was wrong as well.  So I did the only thing a good, principled, Catholic boy could do in a situation like that.

I refused to go in.

And then I learned about principles of convenience.  It was the only restaurant in miles.  The parking lot was well lit (two women traveling with young children and all).  We did, after all, have to eat.  Yes, it was wrong, and we'd never do this at home (we'd never even seen this at home), but we're not at home, are we, and yes, God thinks this is horribly wrong, but God thinks disobedience is wrong as well.  And no, you can't wait in the car . . .

So I went in.  I could go to hell later for eating there, or I could go to hell now for being disobedient.  I chose later.  As we entered the restaurant, I looked around, and for the first time in my life, I noticed that there were no black people in the room.  It had never occurred to me before to notice that.  It had never even occurred to me to notice that there were no black children in my school until there was one.  Her name was LaMonica.  It never occurred to me that she must have been as courageous as Rosa Parks to be the first and only black child in a previously all white school, even if it was in Connecticut.  Even if it was Catholic . . .

What I did notice, to my everlasting and ongoing horror, were the four nuns at the table next to us.  Surely NUNS would have known better!  Surely NUNS would have stood on God and principle and NOT eaten in a "White Only" restaurant.  Surely holy women, right next to God women, SHOULD have known better.  But there they were.  And when they were done eating, Eileen picked up their check, as if somehow, she would get some eternal points by paying for their food, despite our collective wrongness for even being there in the first place . . .

(And in all fairness to mom, I don't think it ever occurred to her that we'd encounter a sign like that.  And being a grownup, dedicated to preserving the life of her highly principled, if incredibly naive, son, I'm sure that there was far more that she took into consideration than I did from my single-issue perspective . . . like the Magi, we didn't stop there on the way back.)

But you know what's really wrong?  That sign.  That's not a photograph of a sign on a restaurant door, somewhere south of Washington, D. C. from Spring Break in 1961.  I wish it was.  That's a copy of a photograph of a sign available this morning on "Amazon.com" for $24.95.

"The more things change, the more they stay the same" (Quark, last words, last show, Deep Space Nine).

Christmas, 1960 . . .

There were six people in my house growing up.  Mom, Dad, my two brothers, me and Mary.  That's Mary on the right, just above me.  My Dad's not in the picture anymore, because I think he just died.  I think this was taken on December 18, 1960.  My brother David isn't in the picture either.

I think that's because he took it.  He figured out really early that if he was taking the pictures, he didn't have to be in them.  Sometimes he shows up in family pictures, but usually it's a picture of him taking a picture of someone else . . . for instance, this is a picture that Dave took of my cousin Danny at my niece's wedding.



And this is the picture that Danny took of Dave . . .

If it wasn't for Dave, we wouldn't have a lot of pictures.  And since film went away, and he went digital, we have even more. 

Family Photo, circa 1973 . . .

This is from sometime between 1973 and 1975.  I know because that's my VW Beetle in the back.  I bought it in 1973 when I started the Associate Degree Nursing program at University of Bridgeport.  That's Shush on the left.  If this is 1973, then he's 80. This is the only picture I have of him.  There are others, but they're in the family archives, and my access is limited . . . 

That's my mom next to him.  She would have been 49.  Then my brother Ken, and my brother Dave, 27, and 24. Then my nephew, KHW2, then my sister-in-law, Rita, then me, age 25.  Great hair, huh?  It looks remarkably like that even today, just not as brown . . .

That looks like a cigarette in my hand, so it must have been early in Nursing school- before they showed us the cancerous lung.  I wasn't always the brightest candle in the menorah . . .

Country Squire . . .

These are Ford Country Squire station wagons, produced by Ford Motor Company from 1951-1991.

Grampa Shush used to buy these, and only these.  He was sold on the Country Squire.  Out of everything out there on the market, the Country Squire was the only car ideally suited to his purpose, which, above all else, was fishing.

1960

1962

We used to joke that if it rained late in the day, Grampa would get home late from work, because he'd stop to fish in the puddles on the way home.  He kept a 5 hp Mercury outboard motor, a gas can, life vests, two tackle boxes, a paddle, a creel, and three fully assembled, rigged, ready to use fishing poles in his Country Squire at all times.  Just in case.

You couldn't get in the backseat from the driver's side because the fishing poles blocked the door.  The reel ends were in the bottom left side in the farthest back corner as they could go, and the poles extended beside the back seat, across the window in the rear door over the driver's seat with the far end tucked in right next to the sun visor.  Always three poles- one for salt water, one for fresh, and one for the kid (me, or one of my brothers) who got lucky enough to come along.  

Sometimes, my dad would go.  That was always good for a laugh.  Grampa was serious.  Fishing took intense concentration- the slightest dip in the rod tip, the smallest jiggle at the bait, and Shush was poised and ready with the net.  He caught fish on purpose.

My dad, on the other hand, caught fish by accident.  No sooner did he put a hook in the water and he was asleep in the front of the boat.  Sometimes Shush would rock the boat violently, just to wake him up. 

It really annoyed him that dad didn't take it as seriously as he did.  Guess he figured dad had been raised better than that, and we should be too . . .

Sometimes he'd go to Lake Quanapog and rent a rowboat.  Sometimes he'd go to the end of 1st Avenue and rent a rowboat there.  Once he retired, he had his own boat, kept at the City Point Yacht Club, under the Kimberly Avenue Bridge.  And he'd go fishing two or three nights a week after work, lots of Saturdays, and on vacations.  And lots of times, he'd take one of us along, occasionally two, but never all three of us.  He was a man who knew his limitations.

Once he took me and my big brother to Sheepshead Bay in New Jersey and we went deep-sea fishing.  We all caught a bunch of blue-fish, and grampa won the biggest fish pool.  When we got home we cleaned 'em and mom cut them in half and put them in the freezer.  Otherwise, they didn't fit.

I think about him whenever I see a boat, or a fishing pole.

Or a station wagon . . .

Hanford . . .

"Hanford" was my brother's middle name.  It was my grandfather's middle name as well.  Stanley Hanford Warner.  He started out in life as a janitor at Strous/Adler Corporation (makers of "Smoothie" undergarments) in New Haven, Connecticut.  When he retired, he was a "custodial engineer."  He had carved his initials on all his tools- "S. H."  I used to (still do) tell people that his nickname was "Shush . . ."

He was the first person I ever new who wore trifocals.  That's bifocals, with the bifocal part of the lens repeated at the top, so you can look up, as well as down, to see close up.  He said he got them because he got tired of leaning so far back to be able to see through the bifocal lens that he'd fall off the ladder . . .

Shush was in the last generation of people listed in a book called "The Descendents of Andrew Warner," which my brother Ken found when we were still quite young.  Shush had a great uncle named Hanford Warner.  Hanford Warner, in a life that now seems terribly politically incorrect, once sold an act to P.T. Barnum (yes, that P. T. Barnum!) called "The Wild Men from Borneo."

Here's a picture of Uncle Hanford, and the Wild men:

Or, maybe that's Lyman, Hanford's dad, or Henry, Hanford's son.  Apparently, Lyman owned Waino and Plutanor, who were actually the Davis brothers, Hiram and Barney, having purchased them from their mother, and left them to Hanford, who left them to Henry. (I'm not aware of any other family members, past or present, that ever owned anyone else . . .)

And here's a link to the Wild Men from Borneo on Wikipedia.  When we were little, Shush had Plutanor's raincoat hanging in his garage, so my brother used to tell me, though I personally never saw it.  All of which sort of puts me six, or maybe seven, degrees from P. T. Barnum . . . which is way cooler than owning people.

P.S.  I never called him "Shush" to his face . . . I always called him "grampa."

This is my big brother . . .

Kenneth Hanford Patrick Warner.  And me.  I'm on the right.  I'm the one that's still alive.  In fact, I'm now the oldest living Warner, a status I intend to keep for just as long as is humanly possible. 

My family always had a giant party after a funeral.  Everyone who came to the funeral was invited to the party, and they all almost always came.  And brought food.  Incredible food.  After my dad's funeral, his friends the Testones brought homemade spaghetti- and this was way before there were noodle machines! Square noodles, sliced with a knife!  Amazing.  We never went hungry after a funeral.

I remember walking out to the kitchen (to get some more food- no sense wasting a good feed).  It was after we sang all the Irish songs, but before anybody wondered why we only ever met for big, reunion style parties when someone died.  I stopped short in the hallway because I overheard my mom's cousin Billy talking to Ken.  "You're the man in the family now," I heard him say.  "You've got to take care of your brothers . . ."

And I panicked.  Why not just hand him a badge and a gun?  I knew he already believed this was his new status, and now he had confirmation.  But you know what?  Over the years, him thinking that he had to take care of me and my little brother worked out way better for us than if he'd had some other idea about what we were for.  No matter what it was, no matter how much it cost, he was always there to help if I thought I needed it.  He didn't even have to agree.  If I thought I needed it, that was good enough for him.  He never, ever said "no" to me. Not even when I ran away to join the circus.

I miss him.

Fingerprints . . .

Somebody wrote with red nail polish all over the bathroom wall.  Mom tried in vain to coax/coerce a confession from the three usual suspects, once she had us all rounded up.  "Not I!" we cried almost in unison, each time the "who did this?" question was raised . . .

"Alright then," she said, "we'll just have to wait until your father gets home . . ."

Innocent, for once, the wait for me was carefree.  I finished my homework, watched Mickey Mouse (Annette, not Brittany) on Channel 8 and waited for dinner.  Dad came home, we ate, and over dessert, he asked "so, what went on today?"

"Somebody wrote with red nail polish all over the bathroom wall," mom said, "but nobody will own up to it . . ."  And dad replied, "well, after we're done here, we'll have to get out the fingerprint kit.  We'll check the bottle, and the brush handle, and it won't take long at all to find out who the culprit is."

And then, I heard my older brother say, calmly and confidently, the absolutely dumbest words I'd ever heard him utter in my whole entire life.  Words, however, that before the evening was over, would turn out to be only the second dumbest I'd ever hear him say.

"You may find my fingerprints on it," he began, " but that's just circumstantial evidence.  It doesn't mean a thing . . ."

"Is that so?" said dad.  In for a penny, in for a pound, he answered without hesitation, "yeah! That's so!"

After dinner, mom and dad and my brother went upstairs to the bathroom and closed the door.  I tiptoed up and listened outside the door.  And I'll say this for him, he was persistent.  It took almost half an hour to wear him down.  And then I heard him say something even dumber than what he'd said earlier.

When dad finally penetrated his defenses, he didn't cave meekly, but defiantly-- with a sneer in his voice, I heard him proclaim,  "Alright, I did do it!  So What?"

I think of it as "the Slap Heard Round New England!"  Before the echo died down, I was back downstairs sitting on the couch with my nose in a book, acting for all the world like I'd never been anywhere else.  Mom and dad came down, and dad said "you can go to bed now," and I said "Yessir! and off I went.

I had a big brother for over 60 years, from the day I was born until he died in October, 2009.  In all that time, he pretty much didn't say a lot of dumb stuff.  But for sure, he NEVER said anything dumber than what he said about the fingerprints . . .

This is my dad . . .

This is my dad.  He was born August 28, 1921, near as I can figure.  I don't have the family archives close at hand.  He died on December 18, 1960, the day we put up the Christmas tree.  This is his High School graduation picture.  Hillhouse High School, Class of 1938, New Haven, Connecticut.  He was diabetic, from the time he was twelve.

And very poorly controlled.  And very poorly disciplined.  He used to base his insulin dose on what he thought he might eat or drink over the next few hours.  He ate what he wanted when he wanted, whether he was supposed to or not.  Mom told me once that his approach was based on the life expectancy of diabetics at the time he was diagnosed in 1933, which was ten years.  When he turned 22, he decided that everyday after that was a bonus. 

I remember one Saturday that mom baked a cake, a round, vanilla, two layer cake, chocolate frosting.  Then she went to the store.  Dad went into the kitchen, saw the cake on the table and decided to have some.  So he cut it in half, just off center.  Then he cut a cake wide slice off the larger half, pushed the two pieces back together and frosted over the break, leaving a football shape.
When she came home, she was laughing so hard that she couldn't be mad at him.  So she said.

He was an ice-skater, and a baseball player, and an upholsterer.  He worked at the New Haven Casket Company, finishing the plush interior of burial boxes that would only be seen and appreciated once in passing, and never by the user.  When the Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus burned down in Hartford on July 6, 1944, he worked overtime, finishing child-sized caskets.  The first time I saw a circus in a tent, I was in it.

And he had a finger-print kit.



 

Nun Story #4

Same grade, same teacher (7th grade was a banner year!).  Spike O'Toole* was Biff's 7th grade counterpart.  They were in the same grade at one point, but then Spike repeated one more time and ended up a year behind Biff.  Once out of Biff's shadow, he really came into his own . . .

Spike brought a box of lucifer matches back from lunch one day.  You know, the wooden matches that you strike on the side of the box?  He was roaming through the school yard with the matches,  holding the box out in front of his chest, and in one motion striking the match in an upward arc and launching the igniting match toward the nearest group of unsuspecting girls.  A bunch of us who didn't go home for lunch were following him, at a safe distance, marveling at his complete lack of social graces like we never would have to his face, and laughing as the girls screamed and scattered.

Of course, he got busted.  Why wouldn't he?

By Mother Superior.  She marched him off to the office and the rest of us went back to aimlessly wandering in the schoolyard until the bell rang and we could go back inside for afternoon class.  I never made it.  Just as I was about to enter the class room, I got yanked out of line by another nun who told me my presence was required in Mother Superior's office.  Immediately.

See, Biff was a loner.  He just didn't care.  He did whatever he felt like doing, whenever he felt like doing it, consequences be hanged.  Or Biff be hanged, it didn't matter to him.  But Spike was a wannabe.  He was only a loner until he got caught.  Spike was never going to hang alone.  Turns out that under the intense interrogation that followed the Lucifer Match incident, Spike tried to strike a plea bargain by offering up an accomplice.  Under extreme duress, he told Mother Superior that I gave him the matches!!!!

And she believed HIM!!!!

I was toast.  Nothing I said made any difference.  The illogic of his accusation could not prevail (he went home for lunch, I remained at school- where did I get the matches?)- no one was even asking questions, let alone seeking answers.  I got adamant.  When the day ended and I still wouldn't confess, I was invited to stay after school until my father could come and get me.  Still I held my ground.  Until my dad arrived.

 And he believed HER!!!!

 Mother Superior had filled him in on the phone, and I never had a chance.  My word, against the word of God's representative at St Lawrence.  He made me apologize, and I did, but in such a way that I never actually admitted any guilt (years later, I really appreciated the twisted artistry in Bill Clinton's insistence on the absolutely exact meaning of words . . .). 

 It never occurred to my dad that Mother Superior might not have fully investigated the entire incident, or that she might have leapt to the conclusion that I had indeed supplied the matches.  She was a nun, after all.  She couldn't lie, and therefore, it had to be me.  All the way home, he kept telling me how disappointed he was in me.  (I hadn't fooled him with my verbal artistry.)  How a scout (I was a boy scout) was trustworthy.  How God was even more disappointed in me than he was.  How much the truth meant to him and to God and how much it should mean to me . . .

 So I lied. 

 I told him I did it.  And he felt better. 

 I cried, and he forgave me and sent me to bed.  He told me that we'd talk about my punishment in the morning, but we never did.  I sure wasn’t going to bring it up, and my father never mentioned it again.

 A few months later, he died (December 18, 1960).  I knew he had diabetes, and he was blind from it, but when he went into the hospital, it never occurred to me that he wouldn’t be coming home again. 

 For a long time afterward, I took comfort in knowing that at least he hadn’t died thinking I was a liar . . .

*Spike is a made up name too.  I'm not worried about him being out there still 'cause I heard a few years after high school that he was found dead under "mysterious" circumstances.  But I didn't out Biff, and I didn't out Mother Superior, so I figured I wouldn't out Spike either.

Nun Story #3

Seventh grade was in the new part of the building.  The classroom door had one big, square window in it.  Being that Mother Superior was the Mother SUPERIOR, often she was called away for meetings, consultations, whatever, and she'd have to leave the room.

But she always left someone in charge.  Someone whose job it was to maintain order in her absence.  The requirements were simple.  "Write down the names of anyone who talks while I'm gone . . ."  She'd pick someone to be "monitor," usually one of the girls, issue her instructions and she'd leave.

But she always left the door open at a forty-five degree angle. 

And everybody always talked.

When she came back, she'd ask for the list of people who talked, read out their names, and mete out punishment.  Write twenty-five times, "I will not talk when Mother Superior is out of the classroom."

Then she'd ask, "is there anybody whose name should be on this list that isn't?" 

If you confessed, you got the same punishment as the people that the monitor caught.  Then the miracle would happen.  She had another list.  She'd open it up and look at it, and ask, "Are you sure there's no one else whose name should be on the list?"

When no one responded, she'd say things like "Bruce.  Didn't you hand a note to George at 1:29?"  and of course, I had.  And when I confessed, then George would be in trouble too.  There'd always be two or three that failed to confess when they had the chance and got busted by the uncanny accuracy of that second list.  Then we'd have to write fifty copies of "I will not talk when Mother Superior is out of the room."

We were convinced that it was God, acting through her, to put us on the straight and narrow. 

So I stopped talking when she was out of the room.  I ignored everyone who tried to talk to me, because I was a terrible liar. And I was already so familiar with hell that I didn't need to go there any more often than was absolutely necessary.  And besides, even if the monitor didn't catch me, she always knew . . .

Until one day, when I had something incredibly important to tell George about.  Important enough to risk the wrath of God.  I looked up from my book to whisper to him, and straight past him, I saw Mother Superior!  Except she wasn't in the room, she was out in the hall.  I was seeing her reflection in the big, square window!  She had her pen out, and was writing down names!

To this day, I don't know that she saw me see her in the window.  But when I failed to confess for the magic list, for once she didn't press the issue.  And I'm not saying I never talked again while she was out of the room, but I never got caught again by anyone but the monitor . . .

Nun Story #2

In 7th grade, my teacher was the Mother Superior.  The first time I ever heard George Carlin mention "Sister Mary Discipline and her steel ruler," this is who I thought of.  Here's why . . .

We were in a joint class session with the eighth grade for music or art or something.  "Biff McMuscle"* was sitting in the far corner of the room in the front seat in his row.  Biff was in eighth grade, for the second or third time.  He was the only one who shaved . . .

I was two rows away, so I had a really good view of what ensued.  He did something that really irritated Mother Superior and she confronted him about it. This was promising.  Nobody ever confronted Biff.

"Hold out your hand!" she commanded.  And hold out his hand he did.  Flat out on the desk, palm up.  She raised up her yardstick (it wasn't a steel ruler, but it was one of the heavy duty yard sticks- two inches wide and 1/4 inch thick) and brought the flat side of it down smack in the center of his palm!

But she hit him so hard that his palm either inadvertently closed on the yard stick, or he saw it coming and took advantage of the opportunity.  Either way, now Biff has one end of the yard stick, and she has the other.  They play tug of war for  a second, and then suddenly, she's standing there before him unarmed!   She grabs for the yardstick, and he moves it quickly out of reach!  This happens three of four times, and I can't believe what I'm seeing.  He's laughing, and she's turning red, until he finally realizes how untenable is his position in this engagement, and he lets her grab the yard stick back and he lets it go.

Now, I'm sitting there with the world's best view of what's about to happen.  And I'm so ready for the wrath of God to ensue that I can already smell the brimstone and feel the electricity in the air! And then . . . and then, she says to Biff, " and don't you EVER do that again!" and she turns and WALKS AWAY!!!!!

She's pretending that she won!  And I'm the only one, besides Biff, who saw what really happened.  And I'm so disappointed I can hardly process what I've seen.  Here I thought Biff would have been struck dead by lightning, the floor would crack open and he would plummet into the depths of the Inferno, and it's all he can do to keep a straight face.

I was ready to see someone actually depart for hell (not that I wished it, even on Biff, but you just didn't disrespect the Mother Superior . . .) and nothing happened. 

He didn't even have to stay after school.

(This might have been the exact moment when I began to have the first glimmer of doubt about things I'd been taught to hold true for as long as I could remember.)

*"Biff McMuscle" is a fictitious name, if you were wondering.  I changed it, just in case he's still out there somewhere, and on the off chance that he ever actually did learn to read . . .

Nun Story #1

The nuns at St Lawrence were from the same order of  nuns that tried to send mom to hell when she was little, but somehow, when she grew up, she forgot about that.

In sixth grade, my teacher was Sister Mary LaSalette (all the nuns had the same first and middle names, "Sister," and "Mary," and different last names, which mostly were another first name.  Like Sister Mary Rose, or Sister Mary Walter.  Until about third grade, I thought they all had wheels instead of feet.

Sister LaSalette had the coolest last name.  LaSalette was a village outside Grenoble, France where, according to the Catholic Church, Jesus' mom, Mary, appeared to two children and told them to "submit,"  or she would be "forced to let fall the arm of her son."  Sister LaSalette was named after the village, or the event, or Our Lady of . . .

Count Your Blessings!

She was special in our family.  She taught my mom in sixth grade, and my mom's two older sisters, Rita and Margaret (they weren't nuns, just aunts, although there was a Sister Mary Margaret . . .), and my two brothers, and me.  Everybody loved Sister LaSalette. 

She encouraged the artist in me.  Under her guidance, I entered a city-wide art contest at Thanksgiving.  I painted a water color of a cornucopia, with the words "Count Your Blessings" at the top.  I won third prize, and my painting was exhibited  in the window of Nicotra's Department Store on Campbell Avenue for a week.

 Hey! Look at me!

Sister LaSalette was also the only nun that ever hit me.  At the time, I thought I deserved it.  I still do.  But nowadays, she'd a probably been arrested . . .

I never told mom, but she found out anyway.  Then she hit me too, and I knew I was going to hell. 

Just as sure as if I'd tapdanced for the Jewish Community Center.