Reminiscences
presented by Jim Reising at the 15th reunion
It’s been an interesting and most unusual five years since our tenth reunion. We are currently in the midst of quite a phenomenon – a nationwide boom for fifties nostalgia! Can you believe it? Fifteen years isn’t THAT long a time, is it? I still feel the way I did then and I’m sure most of you do as well. I suspect it all began with a Broadway play entitled “Grease” which glorified those years. Then along came “American Graffiti” which pretty much told it like it was. This last TV season we’ve had “Happy Days”, and I understand there are several more series in the works for this fall as well. And there’s a film called “The Lords of Flatbush”. Chicago had last summer two FM radio stations playing fifties music all day long. One has since switched to Soul music (which may be indicative of a trend) but the other is still 24 hours a day nostalgia. My take on all this is that people have tired of hearing the news of late and are looking back at the years naiveté was the norm and not something to be laughed at.
For the next few moments, then, tonight I’d like to verbally take you back to the days we spent growing up. You remember how it was: we had all the gas we could afford to buy at 25 cents a gallon. Girls’ skirts were well below the knee, and short shorts were considered sinful. Women’s lib was unheard of except in our class – we knew the ladies were smarter! In those days black power referred to oil, and a crew cut was not only a member of a singing group but a way of like for 95 per cent of the guys.
Those were the days when everyone went to mass on Sunday – and quite a few on weekdays as well. Parishes were building new churches and schools instead of desperately trying to fill the existing structures. No one had heard of the pill or vasectomy, and divorce was still a scandal. Nuns wore habits and could be readily identified, you heard mass in Latin and knelt to receive communion. You went to confession at least fairly regularly, and did NOT eat meat on Friday.
You listened to Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Buddy Holley, and wondered about anybody that moved like that new guy Presley did.
Our first association with St. Patrick Central High School was in the spring of 1955. We were about to graduate from eighth grade and thought we were hot stuff. Out in the larger world, Dr. Jonas Salk had come up with a vaccine for the dreaded polio virus, the U. S. was regularly detonating atomic bombs at test sites and launched the first atomic submarine, and the Soviet Union made matters worse by exploding their first hydrogen bomb. City governments nationwide were planning fallout shelters figuring it was only a matter of time before someone let something loose.
We first me our future classmates at the St. Pat’s high school building on Hickory street where we gathered to take placement examinations. We came from all points of the county – Momence, Manteno, Herscher, and even from Clifton in Iroquois county. There were a lot of unfamiliar faces that day.
Come September, half of us went to the basement of St. Pat’s Primary building and the other half to the upstairs at St. Rose. Since I was at St. Rose, I remember it pretty well. We spent the initial weeks feeling out our teachers for any possible weakness. Many of us were not used to the degree of freedom we now possessed and would tend to abuse any privilege and take advantage of an instructor whose eyes left us for more than five seconds.
We met some new adults, too: Father Demmer, who could out glower even my dad, Father Grigaitis who was Lithuanian and difficult to understand, and Sister Edgar, whom we quickly found out was nicknamed Smee by the upperclassmen. We also found out she was slightly deaf, a definite advantage to us. Do you remember the beat up classrooms, and how much worse they were when we left? I’m surprised they didn’t just burn the building once we had gone. And how about the classes and study halls in the gym?
I remember Big Louie, as we soon named the Reverend Louis Bruno Demmer, and how mad he’d get when we “opened our yaps”. His favorite quotation was “Speech is silver; silence is golden”, and he must’ve had stock in a chalk factory the way he set us to writing that slogan on the boards. Depending on a variety of factors you were either “moldy meatballs” or “lousy lovers”, and he reveled in the expressions on our faces when someone spoke out of turn and he’d shut them off with a “Who pulled YOUR chain?”
Our main trouble with Father Grigaitis was his accent. Latin was tough enough, but trying to learn it with a Lithuanian accent was really something else! Do any of you remember that wind up car we had over there? And the expression on Father Grigaitis’ face the first time he saw it in action? Or Sister Edgar’s? Remember Grigaitis’ black book where he kept marks for unrulyness? After you got the third mark you were sent to eighth period at the other school. It seemed Butch Vaupel was there as our permanent representative. I remember Bill Gohring and I building model railroad cars under cover of books during General Science and study hall. I suspect the lack of proper supervision at St. Rose laid the cornerstone for our future conduct at St. Pat’s. And with the absence of upperclassmen we were cut off from reality over there. It was not the way you expected to begin perhaps the most memorable time of your life.
We finally occupied the new building in January. It was a glass saucer plopped into the midst of a prairie no the north edge of Kankakee. After the looseness of St. Rose, it was an assault on the senses to have so many people around all the time. Everywhere you looked there was someone in black. Things were tightened up considerably. We were even told which way we could walk around the circle, and woe betide the one who violated that ruling. No matter if you were late, you had to go all the way back around. We got to know better some who had been only names to us before: Fathers Hoffman, Beatty, Durkee, Gallagher, and Shaw, Brother LaMarre, Dick Clancy, Mick Lyle, Ed Benoche, and that gruesome twosome, Messrs Meissen and Grzelak. There were Sisters Leorita, Ursula, Teresa, Alice Carline, Mary Magdalen, Marylin, Antonella Marie, St. Eugene, Celine, St. Tarcisius, Francis Therese, and dear Mother St. Thomas. And let’s not forget Sherwood!
It was quite a novelty to have hot lunches, even if we did tire of all that rice pretty quickly, and on the whole it was great to have a spanking new facility in which to go to school, even if the bleachers were a far cry from the padded kneelers of St. Patrick Church for first Friday masses.
Things began shaping up by the spring, and new friendships solidified and grew in number. One of the big memories of that year was a mammoth open house at Sue Mulvihill’s place – I doubt her mom ever quite got over it! We got used to having our senses assaulted every time we passed under the dome, and had a bookie joint of our very own where odds were posted on how many times Father Grigaitis would circle the gym as he said his daily office – and your bet would be covered cheerfully. A group from the class went to Chicago to appear on Jim Lounsberry’s Bandstand Matinee, and I can vividly remember Don Gallois telling a flummoxed Lounsberry that he didn’t like Brylcreem…while on the air! We went to Lake Shafer over in Indiana for a spring trip and had a ball. I remember Denny Hubert getting stuffed into a wastebasket – a little one, not a big one, and also the day he decided to beat the rush hour traffic by going out the second floor window. And I recall the tests, and the ingenious “little helpers” we devised for use during them, and the places we hid them – like on the calendar in front of the whole class in plain view. One of our groups wasn’t so lucky, and Father Grigaitis caught them at it and flunked the entire class. But for the most part we survived the year successfully.
We stayed together during the summer months that year, many of us, and when we returned to school there were more new faces waiting: Ed Bonczyk and Frank Chiodo, Father Burns and Brother Smith, Miss Delores Carroll, and Sisters Ann Claire and Mary Victor.
We were surprised to find we had a twirling corps that year, with our class contributing five of the six: Fred Weber as Drum Major, and troops Linda Betourne, Nancy Neal, Mary Allain, and Sue Mulvihill. Those of us who could beg, borrow, or steal a car or a ride would occasionally go out to lunch at the Steak and Shake or to the new McDonalds in Bradley. By the end of the year, most of us had been taught to pilot a car by the fearless Father Demmer. This was shortly before Illinois had speed limits, and occasionally when the end of the period was near he would tell us to step on it and we would. I get the chills when I think of running ninety on old 54. We discovered that coaches could be quite emotional when frustrated as we watched Ed Bonczyk rip out his hair and pound on the floor after a tough decision. And remember, this was long before we saw it on Wide World of Sports or Monday Night Football.
The ladies were forced to wear uniforms that looked like they came from the prison at Dwight, but after school they cut loose: into full skirts and a simple sweater over a simple blouse, bobby socks of course, and penny loafers. The hair was worn bubble cut or in pony tails, usually with a scarf covering it. The gentlemen wore button down shirts (vertical stripes being very popular) and belt-back chinos with very narrow belts. Penny loafers or buckle tops were the shoes, with the daring going for white bucks. Sweat socks were worn all day every day, and to all occasions with all apparel. The hair was closely cropped into either a crew cut of flat top, with the hoody types going for the D.A. Big colors for the year were charcoal grey and pink. Speaking of colors, remember brown and yellow on Thursdays? And my folks had just had the house painted brown and yellow!
Sock hops were everywhere and almost every weekend or so it seemed. We went to the CYO right after school and hung around, but only after stopping in at Ryan’s Drug Store to heckle Nancy LaFrance a bit. After a game or on weekends, the Sahara was the only place to be. For casual cruising, however, either or both Steak and Shakes would do nicely. Remember the dances in the gym at lunch time – all the girls dancing with other girls and the boys wishing they had the guts to go down there and join in the fun. Remember trying to study with a pop rally only minutes away, and the band, off key as all high school bands must be, busily tuning up in the gym? How about that cute little cat that used to walk around outside the biology lab until someone needed a project and the cat ended up mounted on a board? And the cow’s head that seemed to take forever to boil? And the time we almost blew the chemistry lab up? And that damn blue curtain? How about the day Butch Vaupel couldn’t pronounce wasp – it kept coming out waps, and I can’t recall ever seeing Father Demmer madder or Butch more rattled.
We really began to get it together in our junior year. There were always the cliques, of course, but as many of us got more sophisticated we moved around a lot more. Some of us now had our own cars – either our own or that of a nervous parent. Remember Gary Kilgos’ turquoise Ford – Mike Adame’s upside down bathtub Mercury – Martina’s Yellow Cab (and the knife she used for intimidation or protection as the need arose) – Chick Jackson’s Model A – my red convertible – Skip Gohring’s green Ford with overdrive – Edie Bratton’s Chevy. And do you remember the scarves, rings, and dice we used to hang from the mirrors? We were really mobile now and went to the away games with a carload, or more privately to the waterman park boat docks to check out the submarine races. We could run away faster now, too. Remember getting Meissen’s house two years running with eggs and tomatoes? And stringing toilet paper through trees? And putting picnic tables on top of fieldhouses?
We got stuck with nicknames this year also, some which could make the hearer do a double take and scratch their head: Looper, Voop, Cathouse, TP, Eagle, O’B, Duals, Rope, Rock, Betty Crocker, Moose, Morse, Monk, Bullet, Dago, Squirrel, Dixie, Dukey, Duck, Dwarf, Wild Willie, Sabu, Elwyn, Sleepy, Louie, Fritz, Knobby, Mort, Terrible Tom, Beaky, Jumbie, Tiny, Potsy, El But, BJ, Swee Pea, Khaki, Elmo, Witch, Chick, and Ubangi! What a group!
We gained and lost some faculty that year: Miss Krillic; Sisters Malachy, Gilberta, Ann Carol, Sarah Maureen, and Mary Kenneth; and Fathers Kinney, Shipmen, and Hopkins.
Peg Tobin came to the cafeteria, and suddenly there was a race to see who’d get the choicest pies. Remember when Russ Kirchman and Ron Balthazar showed up the first day of school in Bermuda shorts? Shock Theater Parties and Marvin? They guys that made the Letterman’s Club surely remember those initiations. How about the time Father Beatty caught Susie Mulvihill dangling from one of the beams in a classroom – he just stood there shaking his head. And Sister Ann Carol telling Butch Vaupel day after day that he’d be a bum for the rest of his life?
Then there was the living Rosary, during Lent as I recall, or perhaps May. For the benefit of any non-catholics who may read this, or those who just don’t remember, in the Living Rosary each student represented a prayer, or bead, of the Rosary – except for Edie Bratton and I, who were the spaces between the Glory Be and the next mystery.
Remember Tropicana, the prom we gave the senior class? And the party that followed? Ah, yes, we were indeed slated for either greatness or notoriety!
That summer, there were swimming parties, water skiing, cookouts, and get togethers of all kinds. We were even more often at the CYO or nearby…
Our senior year was the culmination of all that had gone before. Surely what occurred at the close of this final year had it’s roots in that first strange and separated semester in the St. Pat Primary basement and the second floor of St. Rose. We met more new people as seniors: Sisters Mary Elaine, Sarah Marie, and Virgil Marie, and Fathers Dempsey, Toolan, Maguire, Noonan, and Hoare. Remember Father Noonan’s frequent trips to his off ice for his “medicine”? Whatever he had, we made it worse. Remember Chiodo’s admonishment to “Pull up those belts another notch!”, and Bonczyk’s “You other guys get down here and play defense!”
You know, our instructors were simply trying to make ladies and gentlemen out of us. I’m sure that by the time the last day of school came around they thought they had failed miserably. In fact, they may have wondered just what they were turning loose on an unsuspecting world. Many of us did, in fact, settle down a little in our senior year – at least during the year.
Remember those awful dancing lessons in the gym during P.E.? And the day Big Louie said to one of us: “You, sir, are a master of the obvious!”. You know, in retrospect, it seems that Father Demmer knew from the outset that we were a lost cause and instead of trying to reform us simply threw up his hands and put up with us.
By now, many of the girls and a good number of the boys were going steady. Remember class rings worn around necks on an angora string, or that same angora wrapped around the ring to make it fit the ladylike finger of the girl? Remember padiddles? The juke box in Sandy Schriner’ basement? The day Mort, on snow skis, played a guitar right on into the river?
Have you ever wished you could go back there, knowing what you know now?
Our career at St. Pat was capped with a singularly singular event: the traditional senior class picnic. At least it was traditional until we did it. To my knowledge there has not been a senior picnic at St. Pat (or McNamara, if you must…) since we left. Shoot, everybody knew you had booze at a senior picnic. That was what it was all about, wasn’t it? Weeeellll, yeah, but maybe not on the scale we did it…
I can remember spending two weeks getting ready for the big event, but the first action was the night before when we loaded up, with Jumbie Jim going into the 528 club and procuring the next day’s liquid refreshment, loading it into the cavernous trunk of my Olds, and then “borrowing” a washtub from someone’s porch. Jim said it was his aunts house, but I had my doubts. Still, he did know there was a washtub on that porch and we did return it the next evening. I can remember thinking that if my folks had to get into the trunk of that car for any reason I was gonna have a hell of a time trying to explain why it looked like Kenny Hart’s warehouse. And all the way out to the State Park the next day with the springs bottoming out on every little bump (and 113 North had plenty of those) half expecting to get picked up by John Law and put away for the foreseeable future.
It was a gorgeous day, the kind we get now only when you’re stuck inside. We set up shop in a grove of trees on the northeast side of the park about 10:30 in the morning as I recall, immediately icing down the beer. There was hard stuff for those who didn’t care for beer, but mostly there was beer. Jumbie and Louie had a drink-down going as I recall it, and it ended tied at a case apiece. There was a regular flow of traffic around the car since not everyone had the connections we did, and we were happy to be of service. It was a good thing I left the spare tire home that day, because we needed every square inch of that monster trunk. I dimly recall a softball game that ended when we lost the school’s two softballs into Rock Creek Canyon – so we went back to the beer. After a bit, we went down to the falls and waded but that was hot and tiring, so it was back to G. Heileman’s finest. We’d been at it for some time now, and the casualties were beginning to appear – tsk, tsk, tsk, imagine going to sleep in the midst of such activity. Then again, how many boilermakers could an eighteen year old handle? The ladies were a bit on the tiddly side as well, and I remember something about a fight to see who would use the nearest outhouse. The guys lost, I think. It seems to me around that time we saw some faculty drive by in a car, but things were pretty hazy by then and I don’t recall that too well. Along about three o’clock, things were getting pretty quiet except of the occasional shriek from the bushes north of us, and we had run dry, so we decided to go for a swim in a quarry I knew in Momence. Jim, Wayne, and myself did that, after a pause to wash the side of the car from when I couldn’t stop quite fast enough for Wayne. Later that evening I dropped by the CYO to see if everyone had made it back OK, and they had but no one really felt like doing anything else so we called it a day. But of course, there was more to the senior picnic than that: namely, the next day at school.
When I got there, I noticed a lot of activity in the halls. At one point one of the nuns came up and asked me if I had been drinking at the picnic. I responded: “Well, sure, Sister, a little…”
“How many?” asked Sister.
“Three”, said I. She seemed satisfied and perhaps it was best I hadn’t said “three quarts”. I remember hearing about one of the guys who worked in a gas station at the time when a nun called the station for him, and quick thinker that he was, replied “He’s out on the grease rack using his catholic education!” There was an immediate click on the line.
Anyway, the sisters finally got their checklists complete, and soon we heard Father Hoffman’s voice, sounding a bit unusual say over the loudspeaker system: “ Attention! Attention! All senior boys report to the library, and all senior girls report to the cafeteria. Immediately!”
Now, I don’t know what went on the cafeteria, but I expect it was pretty much the same as what went on upstairs in the library. And it wasn’t sex education. Father Hoffman came into view, looking even worse that he had the morning after Frank Dumas let all his rabbits out of their cages at Goodrich. After had informed us we were a complete disgrace to the school, the priests, the nuns, our families, the city, the county, the state, the USA, and indeed the entire Christian world, he said that we were without a doubt the very worst class ever to go through the school, and ended his performance by asking “All I want to know is where you got it!” Now, wait a minute. We had three years before we could get it legally. Did he think we were crazy enough to blow our source? No one said a word. He then informed us that anyone who had been drinking would not be allowed to attend the honors assembly that afternoon. As soon as he was out the door, we began making plans for an unexpected free afternoon, since the weather was still glorious. We later found out there were five seniors at that assembly. As a sidelight, I remember being told about Mother St. Thomas asking one of the girls if I had been drinking. The girl told her; “Oh, no, Mother. He was too busy selling to drink!” Dear Mother St. Thomas gave me some strange looks the last two days of school.
After the excitement of the picnic, our last days were very quiet ones, and graduation was pretty much cut and dried. There was an unspoken truce for our last hours in the saucer. Many of us stuck together through that summer, but with the approach of fall split to various schools and went our different ways. And that’s how I remember high school.
Now, there is something I think very important to be learned from this little talk. Most of us are parents now, and by the time we get together again we’ll have our kids in high school – if we can afford it and we’re still in the area, at McNamara, name or not. Of course, it’s not the same out there now. In addition to the name change they’ve got a stiff demerit system, and as I understand it pretty tight discipline. But let’s remember, you and I, when our kids pull some crazy stunt, or do something to embarrass us, or bring home a not from the Dean’s office, let us remember what WE were like at their stage of life. And let’s remember something else: we did turn out pretty well after all, and they probably will as well. Be gentle with them, gentle friends.