Held In Suspense For Fifty Years

I like big, fat books in the winter, books that will swallow me up for hours, books that I can read... on the couch by the fireplace, a polar fleece blanket over my knees and my dog sleeping on my feet.
 
- Laurie Hertzel

I'd like to see a show of hands.  How many of you remember what Confession Fridays are?  Hmm, I do not see anyone with her hand up.  Surely you recall my post from June 27, 2014, Personal Prophecies And Yellow Caps, in which I wrote that on the website I frequent, Notre Dame Nation, public confessions are posted as a means of "coming clean."  I then proceeded to make a confession, of which I was not proud, in that Friday blog post regarding the Personal Prophesy Game.  Alas, I have not made a Friday Confession here since, but you are about to read one.

I was reminded of Confession Fridays a few weeks ago when I read Laurie Hertzel's column in the Star Tribune.  Laurie is the Senior Books Editor for that paper, and I make a point of checking out her thoughts which appear most Sundays on the Books pages of the Variety section.  An excerpt from her January 22 column appears above.  She described how certain types of books lend themselves to particular seasons of the year.  For the cold Minnesota winters, she prefers "big, fat books," not the type that you'd bring to the beach in the summer or read while reclining on a hammock in the fall.  She proceeded to suggest five fat book titles: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy; Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel; Vanity Fair by William Thackeray; Rising Up And Rising Down by William T. Vollmann; and Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.  She admitted she hadn't read the Melville book in its entirety, but intended to do so.  It was her modest admission which triggered this post.

 

Before I continue I should point out that all three of my kids think I'm anywhere from slightly to more-than-moderately eccentric.  Momma Cuan's perception of my traits probably falls more toward the latter end of that spectrum.  I'm okay with all of that; if I weren't I would not be making this Friday Confession.  My guess is that nothing I write here will come as a surprise to any of them.

 

My story begins in the winter of 1962-63.  I was in Father Art Perry's sophomore English class at Assumption High School in Davenport.  As I've noted before in my August 25, 2012 post (Chrome Dome & The Cub Reporter), almost every priest at Assumption had a nickname, some more cleverly bestowed than others, some more derisive than others.  Father Perry's nickname was neither clever nor derisive; it was simply what many redheads are called, "Red."  Red Perry, among the most beloved faculty members at a school sorely lacking in that category, was one of my two favorites at Assumption. (The other was my junior religion teacher, Father Carlos Leveling, who was a "late vocation.")  Father Perry was the kind of teacher who inspired his students to do their best, sometimes for no other reason than the feeling that, like playing for an inspirational coach, you did't want to let him down.  Red was also my homeroom teacher, and our intramural basketball team -- the last organized hoops team of my illustrious career -- was, of course, Red's Raiders.  He was a Notre Dame grad, another plus.  Some guys said he played football for the Irish.  I don't know if that was true, but it didn't take much imagination to picture that squarely built priest with the thick neck as a fullback.

 

The English class was a mixture of grammar, vocabulary, composition and literature.  Sometime during the last week of school before Christmas vacation, Father Perry assigned Moby-Dick, much to the chagrin of my classmates and me.  The unabridged novel was mammoth, coming in at six hundred seventy-five pages.  With visions of our two week break being ruined, we tried our best to convince the priest to assign a more manageable tome, if indeed he felt compelled to assign anything at all.  No such luck.  As if he were doing us a favor, he pointed out to us that even though there would certainly be a test on Moby, it would not be given until the Thursday of our first week back in class in January.  If we all didn't love the guy so much, we would have hated him!

 

Moby-Dick is comprised of several dozen relatively short chapters, and I knew I needed to read a bunch of them every day while on vacation.  Once school restarted after New Years there would be loads of homework from my other teachers which would make last minute binge reading of Moby impossible.  Nevertheless, I let things slide at home, always coming up with a flimsy excuse for ignoring the book.  I told myself I needed a short mental health break before plunging into the assignment.  I was only kidding myself, because the thought of having to plow through the gargantuan classic was always hanging over my head -- not what you'd call a mental health break.  One unproductive day slipped into another, plus there were those pesky inconveniences called Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  I didn't fare any better during the week between Christmas and the resumption of class.  During the two week break I managed to read only a hundred pages or so.

 

I started reading like a maniac once school resumed and I was back in "student mode," but as I predicted, there was so much homework from my other classes that there was no way I could finish Moby before the Thursday morning test.  Our in-class discussions covered roughly only the first half of the book.  When I sat down to take the dreaded test, I still had a little over a hundred pages to go.  I decided not to ask my classmates how the story ended because, crazy as this sounds, I wanted to reward myself for hours and hours of reading by arriving at the conclusion organically.

 

Somehow I was able to schlep my way through the exam with enough familiarity, based on what I did read, that I received a B+.  By now you are wondering where the eccentric behavior manifests itself.  Here is what happened on the next school day (Friday), when the graded papers were returned and Father Perry went over the exam.  I covered my ears whenever I realized that the class discussion was about to delve into those last hundred pages!  I discovered that if I lightly rubbed my fingers over my ear canals, I could block out sound at least to the point where the voices were unintelligible.  (Maybe the conversation would have proven to be unintelligible anyway, without my having to resort to those extraordinary measures.)  Naturally I was hoping I wouldn't be called on for those discourses, but I wisely lessened the odds of that happening by volunteering some sage comments about the first part of the book.  My ruse worked!

 

A dutiful student would have, at least, finished the book over that next weekend, but no.  I never picked up Moby again.  Maybe I wanted to get a jump on the next classic, The Last Of The Mohicans, assigned by Red.  It was another pretty fat book.

 

****

 

In the tradition of famed radio host Paul Harvey, here is The Rest Of The Story.

 

Four years ago I was rummaging around the closet in the den at the Quentin Estates, looking for an old book.  Instead of finding what I wanted, I discovered a copy of Moby-Dick.  I was immediately enveloped in shame, remembering that English assignment from dear old Red and how I received an undeserved B+ for bluffing my way through his test.  Not that it would make any difference now, fifty years later, but I felt the urge (the obligation?) to complete the mission.  I still did not know how the story ended, having managed to avoid all conversations, articles, references and movies about the great white whale.  At this point retired with time on my hands, I started from page 1 and did not pick up any other book or magazine until I had reached the surprising conclusion about three weeks later.

 

Thanks to Laurie Hertzel's column, I have now come clean with this post.  If I ever meet Father Red in that Big Library In The Sky, I'll have something to talk about with him besides Notre Dame football.

 

****

 

Since it is unlikely I will have another post about Father Perry or Father Leveling, I would like to add this postscript.  In the fall of 1965 when I was a freshman at Notre Dame, the two of them looked me up in Cavanaugh Hall on a Saturday morning.  They had traveled to ND from Davenport to attend a football game that afternoon.  I thought that was pretty cool of them, especially since I had left Assumption in 1964 for North Dakota.    

Driving Miss Linda

Last Friday the news of Egyptian actor Omar Sharif's death in Cairo saddened movie buffs around the world.  Sharif was an international star whose film career extended almost right up to his passing from a heart attack at age eighty-three.  His most famous role was that of the title character in the 1965 epic of the Russian Revolution, Doctor Zhivago (scanned April 1, 2012; B+), for which he won a Golden Globe Award.  But the movie I personally associate more with Sharif is 1962's Lawrence Of Arabia, for which he also won a Golden Globe and a nomination for an Academy Award.  I remember it well because is was the destination for my first real date.

In the winter of 1962-63 I was a fifteen year old sophomore at Assumption High in Davenport, Iowa.  Although I had been the so-called "boyfriend" of several girls in grade school and the first year and a half at Assumption --  mostly girls I barely knew, artificial connections manufactured by female classmates with too much time on their hands -- I had never really gone on a date.  By "date" I mean picking a girl up, taking her somewhere (not just hanging out), and then bringing her back to her house.  Once I became fifteen, I thought it was about time, maybe even long overdue.  The two biggest obstacles to executing my plan were building the courage to ask someone out, and dealing with the fact that I was under sixteen and therefore without a driver's license.  Since I figured there was a better-than-even chance I might not ever build up the courage to overcome the first obstacle until I was, say, seventeen, I decided not to worry about the car issue.  By the time I'd be seventeen, I'd have my own wheels!

 

Surprisingly, the first hurdle was overcome with relative ease.  As I've written before (in my August 25, 2012 post), Assumption was not co-ed, so the only high school girls I knew very well were my former classmates from Our Lady Of Lourdes Grade School in Bettendorf, Iowa.  I chose Linda Roemer as the "target" because she met my three criteria: pretty (call me "shallow" if you must), talkative (to complement my reticence) and a Lourdes alum.  In a weak moment, she said yes.  It's a good thing she said yes because my universe of potential candidates was countable on one hand, and I may not have ever continued the quest beyond a rejection from Linda.

 

Now it was time for figuring out transportation.  I did not know any Assumption upperclassmen (read: drivers) well enough to propose a double date, so I had to ask the one person I knew would oblige: The Marquis.

 

As I correctly predicted, Pook had way more questions about my upcoming date than did The Marquis.  How do you know Linda?  What is she like?  How did you go about asking her?  Where does she live?  What are you going to do?  Do you know her parents?  Etc.  The Marquis, on the other hand, had only one very practical question.  Do you want to sit in the back seat with Linda, or would you prefer that you both sit in the front with me?  Better to figure this out now instead of experiencing an awkward hesitation later.

 

I only remember my dad owning one kind of car, a station wagon for hauling National cash registers.  Nothing impresses a girl more than pulling up in a big ol' station wagon with a couple of clunky registers in the far back.  In any event, it was my feeling that it would seem more like a date if Linda and I sat in the back (i.e., between the front seat and the registers) than crammed in the front with the old man.

 

Time for an aside:  The Marquis gave me some advice which I deemed to be good and therefore attempted to follow.  He said, if you want to ask a girl out, do so several days, maybe even a week, before the planned outing.  If you wait until the last minute, you give the impression that she was not the first girl you had in mind for that evening, not to mention that the longer you wait the greater the chance that she will have made other plans.  The main downside for me was that, for the entire week leading up to the big Saturday night with Linda, it was hard for me to concentrate on anything else, like classes and studying.  The Nerves Meter was in the red zone throughout.

 

The Roemers lived in Bettendorf, as did my family.  My dad pulled in their driveway, and I went to the door to get Linda and to meet her parents for the first time.  I stepped into the living room and, although both of her folks were friendly, they were sizing me up with a list of questions that would have made Pook's list look like an abridged Readers' Digest version.  (In case you are wondering, no, they did not ask me to present a personal financial statement!)  At some point during the multi-minute inquisition, Linda sneaked out and went to the station wagon.  If you are guessing that she sat in the front seat with The Marquis, you would be correct.  So much for that part of my plans!

 

The seating arrangement actually turned out to be fine because my dad, with his Irish wit, could keep just about any conversation rolling.  We needed it to keep rolling because we were headed for Illinois.  "Why Illinois?" you might ask.  Well because the movie I chose for the date was the one everybody was buzzing about, Lawrence Of Arabia, and the only Quad Cities venue where that film was playing was the Rocket Theater in Rock Island, Illinois.  For those of you who are not Geography Bee participants, the Quad Cities are comprised of Davenport and Bettendorf, separated from Moline, Illinois and Rock Island by the Mississippi River.

 

Most guys, when they are selecting an activity for their first date with a girl, will choose something which will enable them to get to know each other better.  For example, going bowling, to a sporting event or out to dinner would afford opportunities for talking and asking each other questions.  Most would avoid movies altogether, because they obviously do not lend themselves to chit chat.  Not me.  Instead of doing the smart thing, I chose not only to go to a movie, but to go to one with a running time exceeding three and a half hours!  Other than a mumble here and there, Linda and I sat in silence for over three and a half hours (two hundred twenty-seven minutes, to be exact).  Well, at least it lessens the prospects of saying something stupid!

 

When the closing credits were rolling, I asked Linda, "Do you think this is a double feature?"  I had been working on that joke for the past two hundred twenty-seven minutes.

 

I'm not sure if she thought that was funny, because her reply was, "His eyes were so blue!"  She was referring not to Sharif, who had a supporting role, but to lead actor Peter O'Toole, whose eyes were, indeed, a deep, almost mesmerizing blue.

 

We had roughly twenty minutes until The Marquis was scheduled to chauffeur us back home to Iowa, so we ducked into a diner next to the Rocket for ice cream.  This was, after all, the early sixties, and finishing up a date with ice cream, just like you would a meal, was in fashion.  It was the best part of our date, the only time we had to talk alone.  Throughout the brief treat, Linda must have commented on O'Toole's blue eyes three or four more times.  She was in love, but not with me.  When The Marquis showed up he asked us, "How did you two like the movie?"

 

I preempted Linda by immediately replying, "It was a little too long, but you wouldn't believe Peter O'Toole's blue eyes!"

Chrome Dome & The Cub Reporter

You might remember from my March 30 post (Hoop Dreams At St. Joe's) that I moved from Illinois to Iowa in January, 1961, in the middle of my eighth grade. My school in Illinois, St. Joe's, had two rooms of eighth graders, about twenty boys and twenty girls in each room. My new school in Iowa, Our Lady Of Lourdes, also had two rooms of eighth graders, but the guys were in one room and the girls were in the other. Just my luck! Things did not improve on the social front when I started my high school career at Assumption High in Davenport. Assumption was neither co-ed nor all-guys; it was "co-institutional," a term which was foreign to me. That meant that both boys and girls attended the school, but the sexes were physically separated within the building. Woe was the male student who was caught by the nuns in the girls' wing! The upshot of all this was that from January 1961 until September 1963, I did not have a girl in any of my classes. I decided to do something about that.

At Assumption there were only a couple of courses which, due to the small enrollment therein, were offered on a co-ed basis. Those classes were held in a room off the hallway which ran between the boys and girls wings. One such class was journalism. You would think that the guys would be elbowing each other out of the way to register for journalism, if for no other reason than having the pleasure of being in the company of the fairer sex. In reality, such was not the case. For one thing, journalism was offered only to juniors, and those who applied for admission into the class needed to have achieved at least a B in freshman and sophomore English. The second reason was that the teacher, Father Wiebler, was one tough hombre, maybe the toughest teacher in the school. But I took a chance, applied and was admitted. I had no delusions of grandeur to become the next Grantland Rice or Edward R. Murrow. (I would have written "Woodward" or "Bernstein," but of course no one knew who they were until the 1972 Watergate break-in.) Journalism was simply going to be a step up in my moribund social life, a means to an end.

Almost every priest at Assumption had a nickname conferred upon him by the students. Wiebler's was "Wilma." I don't know the genesis of that nickname, but I do know we never had the guts to call him that to his face. Wilma was pretty much a celebrity, at least in the state of Iowa. Assumption did not have a yearbook. Instead, the student newspaper, The Knight Beacon, was published eight times throughout the school year, and the eight issues were kept in a faux leather binder - - red one year, white the next - - which the students could buy in the fall. When completed, the eight issues of The Knight Beacon were deemed to be "a book of the year." Not a yearbook, mind you. A book of the year. That was not a misnomer mistake you'd make in front of Wilma.  The Knight Beacon was his baby, and rare was the year when Assumption did not win some award for having one of the best student newspapers in the state, if not the entire Midwest. This made Wilma a legend in his own time. It also resulted in his standards for excellence remaining in place. The pressure on the newspaper staff was palpable. No student wanted to be responsible for a poor showing by The Knight Beacon.

The journalism class was taught with one goal in mind, viz., that the juniors would learn how to help the seniors (the previous year's journalism students) put out The Knight Beacon in the highly professional and accomplished manner that had become an Assumption tradition. Almost all of the articles appearing in the paper would be written by seniors, but on a rare occasion Wilma might bestow upon a junior the honor of submitting a story for publication. I was the recipient of such an honor, but it almost cost me my teeth.

In October, my assignment was to do an article on how the freshmen ("freddies") were getting along at AHS, now that they'd been high schoolers for a month. I needed an angle or a hook for the story - - I did not just want to interview a dozen random freddies - - so I found out the names of some Latin I students and gave them a call. At the time I was taking Latin III from Father Mulligan, aka "Chrome Dome," a thirty-something Irish tough guy who looked and talked like a longshoreman. He was not big on pleasantries, and assumed that because we were third year students our mastery of Latin was at hand. I knew Chrome Dome taught a couple of periods of Latin I in addition to his Latin III duties. Since the point of my assigned newspaper article was focusing on how freshmen were adjusting to high school life, their ability to fare well in Latin, a language they probably hadn't studied before in grade school, seemed like a good take-off point.

I conducted my interviews by phone. After intoducing myself, I should have begun the conversation with a general softball question. Instead, for many of the phone interviews, I started off the conversation with something like this: "So, how are you and Father Mulligan getting along?" What I meant to ask was "How are you getting along with your Latin studies?" but unfortunately my phrasing left a little to be desired. As luck would have it, word got back to Chrome Dome the next morning that The Knight Beacon was going to run an expose on unloved teachers, and that I was the reporter! Chrome Dome was waiting for me when I showed up for his class that afternoon.

He stuck his head in the door and called me out into the hallway. At that point I had no idea why he wanted me outside the classroom. He grabbed a large chunk of my upper shirt with his clenched fist, brought it up to my chin, and slammed my shoulder blades into the metal locker behind me. The veins were popping through his neck as he got right in my face. "I hear you've been trying to stir things up against me with the freshmen!" It wasn't until then that I realized how my phone conversations from the night before could have been interpreted. My mind was racing, weighing whether I should plead ignorance, innocence or stupidity. The thought of insanity never crossed my mind, but in retrospect that might have been a good choice. Amazingly, I also quickly pondered if I would be able to block a punch, in case he decided to throw one. I would not have been his first human punching bag.

I stammered a few unintelligible sentences and then thankfully heard a shout from a familiar voice. It was the voice of Father Charles Mann, the principal of the school and, coincidentally, the teacher I had for Latin I and II my freshman and sophomore years. Surely my guardian angel must have prompted him to walk down the hallway at that precise moment. Father Mann, who of course was nicknamed "Charlemagne" (get it?), may have kept Chrome Dome from killing me right outside the classroom. The crisis subsided long enough for both Chrome Dome and I to tell our sides of the story. I apologized to Chrome Dome and went back in to the classroom. After a few minutes, Charlemagne went on his way and Chrome Dome, still seething but not to the boiling point he had been moments earlier, returned to the classroom and conducted class without so much as a sideways glance in my direction. Yes, he had calmed down a little, but I was persona non grata. For the rest of that semester, things in Latin III returned to normal. It must have killed Chrome Dome to give me the "A" that I deserved.

My journalism career ended before it started, kind of like the glory days of my basketball exploits at St. Joe's. Wilma had a senior write the story about the freshmen, and I was assigned a less glamorous task which has escaped my memory. Less than three months later, my family moved from Iowa to Minot, North Dakota. My new high school, Bishop Ryan, did not offer journalism, so I was never put in the position of having to lie about my newspaper experience.