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Loughary Lines |
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Bagan Stories
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Growing Up On Jefferson Street, set 2 “Fasting For Credit” and “Making The Most Of Mass”
Dear Jack, I am struck by all the traumas that children undergo and are usually ignored by the adult world. Your story of life on the streets of Eugene brought to mind how I too, had plotted out a safe route home from St. Mary's. My route avoided all empty lots, creepy houses, barking dogs and long snake-holding grasses. I am also struck by how separate our lives really were. Never having been in the same school together, my own longer indoctrination into the darker sides of religious faith and parents who both were away from home most of the day. I still hate coming home to an empty house . The coldness of the rooms always reminds me of loss . Fasting For Credit
Ours was a semi-Catholic household. Not the kind of family that entertained the parish priest for Sunday dinner, nor one that joined in the weekly recitation of the rosary while kneeling on stone cold hardwood floors, but certainly one in which three quarters of us attended Sunday Mass, ate no meat on Fridays and gave up treats during Lent. In fact, we were from that most dreaded of Catholic families- a “mixed-marriage”. Our mother hailed from generations of Roman Catholic Irish stock that seemingly married only within the Church. A litany of Irish names filled our heritage alongside several generations of hard drinking Irish men and long suffering Gaelic women. The men all had reputations of being jolly fellows who tilled the soil, sired large families, told funny jokes and loved the taste of good Irish whiskey on their tongues. And when that wasn’t available, a quick trip to the local pub could satiate their longings. The Bagan women were large, round women whose photographs reflected solemn faces with worry-lined eyes. A glance at the family tree suggests that both the Bagan and Keenan women were either married with batches of children, or single and lost to the annuls of time. There is little recorded history of these women opting for the life as the religious Brides of Christ. As luck would have it, our Mother married a man of Irish descent as well. However, Red Loughary sprang from Scotch-Irish roots where Presbyterianism was the faith that bolstered their blood lines. Slim consumption of alcohol in this group of red-headed ancestors and even less merry making than that which ran in the Bagan/Keenan genes. These Presbyterian folk were from hard working, independent thinking, no nonsense Northern Ireland people and saw the world quite differently than their southern Irish countrymen.Both of these future parents of ours were red-haired and fair, liked to dance, play cards and laugh together. After having been friends in their youth, they met again several years after high school and married. In 1927, when both were 24 years old, the marriage ceremony took place with them firmly seated in straight hard-backed chairs in the parlor of the priest’s house. Of course, marrying a Catholic and a non-believer was not allowed to occur within the sacred walls of the church. In fact, special dispensations had to be acquired from the local bishop before the wedding could ever be blessed in the ladder- backed chairs of the local rectory. By the time that you and I were around nine and six, respectively, the family had settled into a fairly regular Sunday morning routine of celebrating our Catholic heritage. Because going to Sunday Mass was an unquestioned obligation, and the Mass meant participating in “communion”, and receiving Communion meant no consumption of food or drink after Midnight, our Sunday mornings were a matter of sleeping as late as possible before dressing and hurrying off to Mass. Mom, you and I left the house in charge of Dad who was usually immersed in the Sunday Register Guard with a cup of coffee and a burning Camel cigarette in his hand. Mother never had learned to drive, so, to quote her, we used “shanks mare” to get there. It was expected that children over the age of six were to be full participants in the sacrament of Communion. Cramping stomachs, dry mouth and dizziness were simply to be offered UP as reparation for our sinful lives. It was a church rule that was accepted and held to. We always sat on the left side of the center aisle, about half way between the sanctuary and the front of the church. Over time the faces that surrounded us became familiar ones, although no words were ever exchanged among us. At that time “passing the peace” or any other form of formal recognition at Mass was missing. Our attention was ordained to be fully placed on the priest who would appear vested in colorful church garments at the front of the altar, always facing away from the congregation. In those days the language of the Mass was Latin, except for the long sermons which were often used to remind the congregation of their obligation to give financial support to whatever the priest, or bishop, deemed necessary. The Latin was followed by the laity in their Sunday Missals, which contained pages of Latin with English translations which guided the reader through the process. Midway through the Mass, bells were rung by the altar boy which signaled the ritual of the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ was about to take place. At this moment, being the acme of the ritual, the congregation rose and walked to the altar rail to receive the wafer host onto their tongues. The priest being the only one present deemed holy enough to actually touch the bread, all the congregants were usually tense in anticipation of it’s being dropped onto the floor. When that occurred, a rare event, the robed priest was required to prostrate himself on the floor and beg for eternal forgiveness. Mea culpa, mea culpa mea maximum culpa.We tried to avoid the ten o’clock Mass because it was always a High Mass, which meant that it was sung in Latin and lasted twice as long as Low Mass. Clearly, priests had spent many years perfecting the vocalization of sung Latin. There were several choices of musical renditions available. The more ego-filled the priest, the more elaborate and lengthy the version of Kyries, et cum spiritu tuos and glories that were presented. Mass ended with the exit of the priest into the mysterious cave of the sacristy. With the closing of the sacristy door there was a massive exit of the hungry congregants. We were released to search for food, fun and the Sunday comics. Usually we would find Dad waiting in the car and reading the Sunday paper. Exiting the church, we would race across the street, happy to not be walking home. We’d climb in, you on your proscribed side of the back seat and I on mine. Thoughts of French toast floated through my mind and I hoped that it would be our breakfast fare of the day. Love, Marilyn, the younger one <><><><>><>><>>>> Dear Marilyn, Your second letter brought back visions of the Sunday Mass ritual, some different from those you report, which is what we both predicted. Before adding my own impressions, I would comment on the drinking habits of the Bagans, our mothers’s clan. Irish whiskey then as now was not easy to come by. Perhaps in Minnesota where most of the clan settled in the1850s, but certainly not at Clyde McCoy’s tavern in Stanfield, Oregon, where John Bagan and Sarah Keenan brought their brood of four around 1910. I would make odds that Old John Bagan was a beer drinker of the first water. It is true that Red Loughary was Scotch Irish, and near as I could discover his ancestors immigrated from Ireland in the early 1700s, prior to the Revolutionary War. We know that William Ernest’s (Red) great grandfather was one Hiram Smallwood Loughary, one of 4 brothers who came west on the Oregon Trail from Illinois via Iowa. His wife was Martha Fuqua who came west from Missouri with her family her family via “The Trail.”
Making The Most of Mass As I recall, except for a possible Christmas and Easter mass, Red never set foot in any Eugene church. I share your memory of his parking our1934 Plymouth 4 door sedan on Charnelton Street south of St Mary’s and reading the Sunday Register Guard. The three us would remain seated half way between the communion rail and church entrance, as you say, until the mass was over, symbolized by the priest and alter boys disappeared into what some referred to as the Robe Room. (If current tales are valid more than a disappearing act might have taken place there.) Later, when I was not dependent upon Dad for transportation, I learned, as many boys did, that you didn’t have to stay through the actual end of ritual for the mass to count as meeting your holy obligation. As I recall the actual rule, as soon as communion is over and the priest completes his chore of licking the last drop of what has miraculously changed back from blood to a taste of early morning wine and drying the goblet and returning it to the sanctuary, the mass is officially over. Only a few prayers remained to seal it up. It took guts and planning to do it, but if one sat near the back and at an outside aisle end of a pew, it was not difficult to move swiftly to into the Ilse, perform a 180 degree reverse on the left foot, genuflect, and be on your way to the door and outside. Tennis shoes were better for this maneuver than hard leather soles. This could reduce escape time by as much as three or four minutes. Three final memories. You may recall Father Leipzig who served as Pastor and senior priest at St. Mary’s. He of the “...overly long sermons which were often used to remind the parishioners of their obligations to give financial support to whatever, the priest, or bishop deemed necessary.” Do you recall the Sunday Donation Envelopes? Each set was numbered and decorated with multi-color Christian images, small but sturdy enough to hold folded bills and coins. Each family picked up a pack of envelopes in January and committed in writing to a specific weekly donation figure. I always wondered if the priests or their civilian underlings kept books, comparing the contents of each numbered envelop with the committed amount record on the debit side of their books? I thought they would have. They were not dummies. I also recall that each child was issued a child’s donation envelop employing the same scheme. What an effective social conditioning model. Father Leipzig, as you probably recall, was eventually promoted to Bishop of Eastern Oregon, stationed in Baker, now Baker City, Oregon. Leipzig apparently fancied himself as somewhat of a qualified historian (and in the category you noted as being “entertained by parishioners–well healed, I would add-- for Sunday dinner”. Oregon history was his beat, and at least on two Sundays each year he treated the assembled parishioners to trite history lectures disguised as a sermons. Cheap shot, I always thought, and when I visited the dry and desolate Baker City years later I thought the promotion probably served him right. The social life there probably was rough and ready, compared to town and gown Eugene, and I doubt the German priest would have been comfortable with the change. But, who knows: those Germans can be adaptable. You began your letter with “fasting for communion,” and noted that ten o’clock mass was High. If one planned on going to communion, you hit an earlier mass. There was an added twist to be considered. Masses ran on the hour from 6 or seven to 11 in those days. One problem with earlier masses is that more people took communion at the earlier masses as a way of coping with the fasting issue you noted. Thus, the 9 o’clock mass was the shortest of them all. It was still a short low mass made even shorter by fewer hungry people queuing up in the communion line. Catholic was a thinking person’s religion in those days. Love, brother jack |
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© 2014 Theresa Ripley All rights reserved |
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Rain or shine, Sunday mornings always began with twelve hours of fasting, hints of headaches, and the smell of morning coffee and cigarettes in the air. 