(Note: With another school year about to begin, I thought it would be fun to insert an excerpt from ‘Depot Street Memories…The Lawler Stories’ about the most important building in town for little Catholic boys and girls in the 1950s. Perhaps no other chapter elicited so many reader responses and recollections. If you have some of your own…please feel free to add a comment at the end. It will not show up the minute you post it…but will as soon as one of the site editors takes a glance and give it the okay. We’d love to hear ‘your’ school memories and stories!)
Where to begin? What stories to tell? Where to end?
Everything, and I do mean everything, centered around that little Catholic grade school. It was located on the south end of Lawler, north of Highway 24 and Mt. Carmel Catholic Church, and next door to the convent on the east, which housed the Presentation Sisters from Dubuque. North of the school and convent was an adjoining block-long playground, surrounded by a wire fence and with swing sets on the east side of the lot.
My formal education was to have started with kindergarten in the public school system at age five. But that plan was thwarted by the fact that we did not have enough students to justify the class. So my first real schooling began with Sister Mary Helen at the Catholic school on the hill. Due to low enrollment, classes were combined with first and second graders, third and fourth graders, and so on sharing classrooms. When the nuns worked with one grade, the other was to study in silence awaiting their turn for the instructor.
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The school was not a place to be bashful when nature called. Not only were students in need of a bathroom required to raise a hand to indicate to Sister that it was time to go, but additionally had to indicate with one finger or two fingers what needed to be done once they got there. I assume that this system was set up to estimate how long the process would take, but it seemed rather degrading at the time. I am guessing that this hand-raising requirement was the reason one of my shy first grade classmates did not raise her hand in time to prevent a stream from trickling down her desk, in between the rails that held those old time desks in line. Everyone behind her in the row got dampened shoes, and Sheila (not her real name) acquired the nickname Piddle Paddle. Sometimes life really isn’t fair.
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Every nun I ever knew hated to be called S’tir. As in, “S’tir! S’tir! S’tir! I know the answer to that question! Please call on me.”
Invariably the response from the front of the room was, “It is Sister! It is not S’tir. Do you hear me? Sister. Sister. Sister. It is not S’tir.”
And then we remembered for about five minutes until another question was asked. Then we’d swing our hands in the air yelling, “S’tir. S’tir. S’tir. I know the answer!”
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Anyone of my friends who went to Mt. Carmel can tell you every nun they had as teacher throughout their eight-year stint in the school, plus any idiosyncrasy they may have displayed. For example, our third-fourth grade teacher was Sister Mary Elise, who had the reputation of being a strict disciplinarian. We called her Sister Mary Attention-Rise-Pass thanks to her method of releasing us from custody for lunch, recess, or at the end of the day.
When she said, “Attention,” we were to sit sideways and with good posture, facing the aisle. Then came, “Rise,” which meant standing at full attention and facing the front of the room. Finally, at “Pass,” we were allowed to leave the room quietly in single file, without talking. I’m not sure how many of classmates eventually joined the armed forces in later years, but those that did had a leg up on other recruits thanks to the grade school commands from Sister Mary Elise.
If Sister Mary Attention-Rise-Pass pulled you aside when others were told to keep moving, it was going to be either really good or really bad. I was prepared for accolades one morning when she tapped me on the shoulder and instructed me to wait for a moment as we headed out to recess. I had never been a troublemaker, so anxiously awaited an ‘atta boy’ when those other poor losers were out of sight.
Instead, I endured one of the most confusing conversations, more accurately monologues, of my young life. We left the main hallway as she led me into the cloak room adjacent to our classroom that overlooked the playground. She began to fiddle with the rosary around her waist with one hand as she held a missalette (sort of a Catholic Bible-Lite) in the other.
“William,” she began (which was never a good sign since at the time I was known only as Bill or Billy), “I’m sorry to make you miss recess. But don’t feel too bad. You have a double-recess today since you’ve learned your multiplication tables. You can go out as soon as were finished.”
I’m here to tell you that the next fifteen minutes seemed more like fifteen years as I looked up at the black-clad nun with the large plastic habit. She was frowning down at me and talking in circles. Sister kept alluding to the importance of guarding our tongues and not disappointing God or our Guardian Angels by what we said. Then she interspersed these comments with a reminder that it’s too bad that I have to miss recess but, after all, I would be out there soon since I knew my tables.
All I could think now was, “Thank the Lord that I know that 3 x 7 = 21 and 5 x 7 = 35. Otherwise ‘William’ would be suffering through a morning with no recess!”
Finally and mercifully, the bell rang. The first recess was over. Those lazy lout classmates of mine who had not paid attention during math class were heading back in. And I was finally soon to be heading out.
Sister Mary Elise seemed a bit embarrassed about the fact that she had used up the entire first recess lecturing me about my language. I finally screwed up the courage to ask her what had been on my mind the entire time, “Sister, excuse me. But I have no idea what you have been talking about? What did I say and when did I say it?”
“Patty Scally told me that she heard you say, ‘Jeepers Creepers,’ William. That is almost the same as taking the name of Jesus Christ in vain. We cannot tolerate that type of language in a Catholic school.”
As I trudged out for the final fifteen of my hard-earned thirty-minute recess, all I could think was, ‘Jeepers Creepers!’ If I get my hands on Patty Scally, I’m gonna’ wring her neck.”