First Grade Was Tough At Sacred Heart School

What's the earliest date in your life that comes to memory? Can you remember a significant moment from age two? How about three? Age four would probably be the easiest to recall incidents of significance. I could go back to 1949 when I was three but I'm going to focus on age six today. It was the beginning of an eight year career at Sacred Heart School. Age six to age fourteen is darned formative. Why I am alive or not in jail is beyond the scope of reasoning. I've been so remiss in recalling events from my Boone, Iowa days and writing about them that Catholic guilt has taken over my conscience. People, there is nothing worse than Catholic guilt. To this very day I feel badly about making fun of Teddy Ann Vickery----and I was in the 6th grade. When we boys, you know 'em already; Tim and Jim Ferry, Jude Rolfes, John Garvey, Mike Culver and Tim Mahoney plus moi hit a period of trouble making 'hell hath no fury like a nun scorned'. Hand drawn signs from the good Sisters would go up in the bathroom: "God Sees You". "He Knows What You Did". I'd think, "Why are they doing this to us"? "If God knows it all then why does He let us irritate the nuns so much"? "If God knows will mom and dad know when I get home"? Then we'd continue on being irresponsible AND SINFUL kids. That's one thing I always admired about the Ferry brothers. There were so many of them Tim and Jim could walk in their house and one of their parents would say: "Tim/Jim, come here"? Then Tim/Jim would say, "I'm Terry". Then dad would respond with, "Well, when you see Tim have him come and see me". Jude Rolfes told me that one day Tim and Jim put calcium chloride in the holy water font at the back of the church. It was just before Mass and people who dipped their fingers in the bowl saw water bubbling over and smoke rising from the font. Most people would say it was devilishly funny! The Ferry brothers are my heroes to this day.
I made my First Confession in 1952. Penance is one of those sacraments that's very important in our church and it involves something called an Examination of Conscience. It has to take place before Catholics enter the confessional. We have to recall all of our sins from the time we last entered the box. So, on the first one I was flying by the seat of my pants. When you happen to be a young kid the telling of sins was pretty much canned. "I was mean to my sister". "I watched Capt. Kangaroo when I was told not to". "I talked back to my mom." As me moved into 6th grade the standard became, "I had impure thoughts". Heck! I've been using that one for fifty-five years and still get away with it. We always hoped we'd get Fr. Ryan in the confessional. He'd been around since the turn of the century and had heard it all plus he might have been snoozing his way through the listening part of penance. It'd go like this: "Zzzzzzzzzzzzz, say three Our Father's and three Hail Mary's. Now go and sin no more". Nobody wanted Fr. Maacke. Egad! What if he recognized your voice and told your parents. If I did get Fr. Maacke I might hold a couple of sins over for the next time until I had Fr. Ryan.
My first teacher at Sacred Heart was a dandy. Her name was Sr. Mary Calasanctus. I entered the first grade in '52 and there she was; diminutive and nice with a calming voice. Did you ever see the TV show called The Smurfs? Sr. Calasanctus could have been a Smurf. She might have been four inches taller than I. I'm almost certain about this but I think she was one hundred and eighty years old when I took my seat in the first grade. I saw her about twenty years later. I'd never met a person who was two hundred years old. Anyway, we all liked her and everyone of us vied for her to give us an after school task to perform. Tim Mahoney was super smart and very likeable so he was always picked first. He'd get to stay after school and sharpen her pencils or clean the chalk board. Chalk board cleaning was a status job. I was so jealous. One day I screwed up my courage and asked Sister if there wasn't something I could do for the class. She thought long and hard and finally said, "you can be keeper of the sawdust". I was so excited I ran home to tell my mom and dad about being picked for something. I had no idea what the sawdust guy did but I was very, very happy and could hardly wait for the next day to get to school. I was a klunky kid when I was in first grade. I always thought I was smarter than I really was. As a kid I was bigger than most so I got away with pushing my weight around. Folks, when I was nine I weighed one hundred pounds. That's a lot of mashed potatoes and creamed corn. Sister Calasanctus was also an expert on everything. What she said went. One day she told us that God was a string bean. After school and at home I told this to my grandparents and parents. Of course, they laughed at me and I was embarrassed. But "Sister Said" carried the weight of God speaking. The folks had teacher conferences a week later and found out the real story. What she said, according to Ma was, "God is a Supreme Being". Evidently not only was I fat but my ears were full of wax.
Day two of my saw dust job lay before me. Sister took me aside and told me that if anyone vomited I was the official 'go to guy' who retrieved the sawdust and threw it on the goop. Then, when it had sufficiently dried, it was me who was fortunate enough to scoop it in the dust pan and carry it to the outside garbage bin. How could kid be so lucky? Every day I'd go around the room asking each kid how they felt and if they thought it was going to be puke day. I did such a good job that Sister let me do it in the second grade, too.
When I reached third grade and had Sister Baptiste for my teacher I wised up. She let me clean out her aquarium. I never realized fish and snails could poop so much.