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Growing Up On Jefferson Street, set 3

“Learning To Chew My Nails“ and “Stuttering Your Way To Heaven”

Dear Kid On The Aisle,

Okay! So I can see our minds were drifting away from the action on the altar and centering on quick escapes, designing revised liturgy and fun in the sun. I have to remind myself that all of the stories of growing up Catholic took place long before the Second Vatican Council when English became the language of the Mass. Such things as parish councils, nuns and priests out of their clerical garb and steaks on Friday were not even dim light bulbs in Good Catholic minds.

And speaking of minds, the following tale is my final story of how an institution like the church set out to shape and mold the minds of children into good little Catholics who would later become loyal supporters of the man from Rome.

Learning To Chew My Nails
by
Marilyn Loughary Kok

Twenty small boys in long dark pants, starched white shirts and correctly knotted ties walked slowly down the center aisle with twenty little girls clad in pure white dresses and mini bride-like veils. Somewhere toward the rear of the line I followed along, hands folded in prayer position, eyes straight ahead, sure that I was going to commit some kind of error (perhaps even a SIN), that could result in a rap on the head from Sister, and horror of horrors, being pulled out of line to stand in shame beside her. This was the day that the first graders (yes, all 40 of us in one classroom) were to make our First Holy Communion, and perfection was the order of the day.

I simply didn’t fit into the category of Catholic perfection. Coming from parents of a “mixed marriage” (that is, one was a PROTESTANT), asking too many questions, and perhaps even worse, entering first grade with the ability to read must have caused some grim faced bespectacled nun to be challenged from my first day in the classroom.

First Communion preparations had involved “learning to pray”. That is, memorizing a list of acceptable prayers, none of which made much sense to my innocent mind. What the heck did words like “womb”, “hallowed” and “trespasses” mean anyway? Eventually all the students were able to earn gold stars for our unerring repetition of the Our Father, Hail Mary and the Glory Be.

But, like good little ducklings, we nodded our heads and concluded that we really were full of blackness, and further more, we were so misguided we needed to confess our wrongdoings on a weekly basis, in case we happened to die that week with one guilty mark on our souls. (Luckily that cookie I had sneaked out of the jar when Mom wasn’t looking, would only result in a temporary stay in Purgatory where the fires were warm but one could rest easy because eventually, only God knew how long, we would be sent on our way up the golden stairs.) It was understood that THE MEN IN BLACK were able to communicate directly with THE FATHER, who lived in HEAVEN, which was located somewhere UP THERE. Some kind of bargaining evidently occurred where THE FATHER forgave us our SINS and erased our slates.

It was after several months of this indoctrination that I began to bite my nails. Although, think as I might, I simply couldn’t come up with any sins, and thus began to manufacture them. It was difficult to keep an on-going record of misbehaviors, so I would settle on things like got mad at mother- 3 times, ate the last cookie- 2 times, took the biggest piece of cake-one time. While I was busily making up wrong doings, I was avoiding mentioning of really big items, like the uncle who kept putting his hands up my nightie. I was sure that somehow I was at fault for his behavior, but didn’t have any words available to discuss it.

Before long I was feeding daily on my nails for all sorts of perceived infractions of church law. I became convinced that most of my life was one big black mark. A misspelled word would cause my fingers to search out my teeth. A forgotten catechism answer, not keeping my hands in folded chest position at night and whispering in line were all precursors of nail destruction.

The day had finally arrived when all forty of us would become full-fledged Children of God. At ages six and seven we were expected to be prepared to understand the dogma of the church and ready to pay the price for any infractions. We all lined up along the altar rail, stuck out our tongues (a previously taboo behavior) and waited for the host to arrive. We had been forewarned of the restriction of chewing the wafer, and were directed to just let it melt. “You wouldn’t want to bite Jesus would you?”

Of course, the Catholic church was not the only faith to do their damnedest to put the fear of God in little hearts, but they had so ritualized their worship, and had adorned the church walls of THE HOUSE OF GOD with the frightening Stations of the Cross and macabre paintings of various martyrs, and enthroned in center stage the ever-present CROSS OF THE CRUCIFITION, that it was like one gigantic visit to a Halloween House of Horrors to a six year old. I guess the formula was to hit ‘em hard at a young age and they’d be scared for life.

Love from your good, but not too good, younger sister, Marilyn

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Dear Marilyn,

I’m picking up on your theme of language and the Catholic Church and Education as it appears in your last letter. In both St. Mary’s Church and School there was an effective form of social control based in some significant part on language, some of it non-verbal. As you noted, the Nuns’ Clicking “Wedding” rings, the standing, kneeling, genuflecting and siting all according the to the “code of the click” kept us in line. In addition there was the theological language of the church which to which children were introduced early on. Well, introduced is not a good choice of words, but the terms certainly were run by us. I wonder how many ever understood the meaning of Ordinary, Proper, Epiphany, Pentecost, to select just a few terms from My Sunday Missal. The symbolism of the priests’ vestments and their colors was also part of the mystery of communication which held the laity clearly in a subservient status, and must have confused many children. (As a fellow Catholic friend once noted, “If your are going to do religion, this is the most colorful show in town.”)

Stuttering Your Way to Heaven
by
Jack Loughary

Mixing the magic rituals of the Catholic religion with elementary school instruction is not what I would call supportive to language development, especially to a severe stutter of which class I was a member in grade one. I literally had difficult saying my name when in a stressful situation, which was most of the time at St. Mary’s and continued to stutter my way through all of grade school and into junior high school.

You will recall we lived in two Patterson Street houses and during the first year in the second Patterson Street house I was in the third grade. It’s a memorable year for me because first of all I transferred from St. Mary’s Catholic Grade School to Francis Willard, a public elementary school. The severe stuttering had persisted during grades one and two and after a summer or two at the University of Oregon Speech Clinic, a therapist suggest that a “change in school environment” might be curative. I suspect he thought that the regimented manner in which the nuns operated St. Mary’s might be one underlying causal factor of my stuttering. That might have been true, but probably not the primary cause. I simply began school when I was still five with a history of developmental inadequacies, a concept probably unknown to the sheltered nuns. I summarized this years later by noting that my synapses had not synapsed according to the normative tables.

Even though I learned to read and figure with the best of them, I was a dismal failure on the play ground, and worse yet, I knew it. The feature of St. Mary’s that stands out in my memory is lining up each recess in the play shed for “team selection”. We went through this procedure regardless of the sport involved and the outcome for me was inevitable. I was the smallest, youngest boy in my grade, and to say I was physically immature would win the prize for understatement. From my perspective it was a brutal daily experience in rejection. I knew I would be the last chosen, I always was, and whatever game the nuns forced us to play far exceeded my expected frustrations. This went on for two years, and while I doubt that the speech therapy was worth much, I have always felt a sense of gratitude to the therapist for getting me out of St Mary’s and away from the nuns and eventually emancipation from the Church and religion for that matter.

Mother went along with the recommendation, and I suspect that intuitively Dad thought it a good plan, hoping that anything would be an improvement. The transfer was made and I began grade three at Francis Willard in the fall of 1937. That winter, I came down with ethmoiditis, an ethmoid sinus gland infection. The treatment entailed three trips a week to Dr. Diet’s office where the nurse stuffed cotton up my nose and then applied heat via a lamp for a couple hours. Dr. Diet was an EET (Eye, Ear and Throat) man, and we became close friends, or so I perceived. He even sent me a Christmas card which I still posses. I was out school for two months, followed by a two week case of measles. I doubt that I could have finished grade three at Francis Willard on schedule, were it not for St. Mary’s being probably a year ahead of the public schools regarding reading and arithmetic instruction. It gave the other kids in grade three time to catch up with me.

In spite of the bumbling start, Francis Willard seemed something of a miracle; well as least a wonderful change of environment. Gone were the black hooded, flour faced, shapeless, overly serious and seemingly humorless women, the unremitting clicking of rings, the daily marches to and from school to church and back and most of all the penitentiary model of physical education. Even in grade three at Francis Willard there appeared to be a recognition of individual student differences, and clearly some participation in how one could participate in class room activities. Years later, when I became part of the teaching profession, I would wonder how the nuns could be so effective at teaching reading and arithmetic skills, and so blind in other aspects of child development.

I can’t help noting for the record that I was into my thirties before I was able to make the cognitive jump and severed all identification with the Catholic Church. I had all my kids baptized, attempted to have us attend Sunday mass regularly and go to Confession. Things began to disintegrate when I faced up to the fact that I was behaving as if I believed in magic, and I didn’t. Confession was the first to go, then communion and finally Sunday mass. Practically speaking, keeping the kids quiet during mass was a real challenge and out of courtesy to others, one of us would usually finish mass tending to a fidgety kid or two in the vestibule of the church. Among Christian brands, only the Mormons may have a comparable form of behavioral control and that may be because they were smart enough to add entertainment to their system.

By the way regarding the Venial Mortal mystery you mentioned, I recall attempting to work out a formula for calculating the number of Venial Sins it would take to make one Mortal Sin, assuming they were on similar psychometric scales. (nV=M), I suppose is one way to put the question. Anyway, the problem was far beyond grade 4 arithmetic.

Love, your stuttering brother Jack

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