Italians and Religion

There was a great scene at the end of Godfather I where the director cut back and forth between Michael Corleone standing up as Godfather for his sister's child in Baptism in the sanctuary of a Catholic Church, while the soldiers in his Mafia family systematically and ruthlessly executed his father's enemies. The scene was a kind of metaphor for the ambivalent relationship between Italians and their religion. Historically, Italians have always had a strong connection to Catholicism, after all, their CEO is headquartered in Rome. Even today, approximately 90% of the population of Italy identifies itself as Catholic, although of that number, only about 1/3 are actually practicing Catholics.

When I grew up, being Italian was synonymous with being Catholic. My parents were Catholic and sent me to Catholic grammar school. The chances of me turning to any other religion were about the same as Elton John going out for the Rugby team. Every Sunday, rain or shine, I was at the 9:00 o'clock Mass with the rest of my class. At Our Lady of Lourdes, there were pews set aside for the school children, and you had better be in your appointed place or face an inquisition on Monday morning. I notice in many Catholic parishes today that kids are permitted to go to any weekend Mass and simply drop an attendance card in a box to prove they were there. The Franciscans weren't nearly that trusting.


Unlike my devout mother, my father Tony came to God late in life. He worked hard at two jobs supporting the family, and Sunday morning was his day to sleep. I never asked him why he made me go to church but never went himself. I thought it was his way of saying: "It's too late for me...save yourself". Imagine my surprise when later in his life Tony Boots got religion. He not only started going to Mass regularly, but became an usher and a member of the parish Holy Name Society, a group of men whose main pastimes, as near as I could tell, were drinking beer and playing cards. As a betting man, Tony probably looked at going to church in his sunset years as the religious equivalent of putting two bucks on the long shot's nose to Show after betting twenty on the favorite to Win.

My church was pretty straight-laced, with a mixture of Italian and Slavic families, and the Irish and German families who looked down on them by virtue of having arrived in America few years earlier, in the great waves of immigrants that washed over America in the late 1800's and early 1900's. A short distance away, however, on Sackman Street, stood Our Lady of Loreto Church, built by and peopled with parishioners almost exclusively of Italian descent. Going to Mass there was never boring. Sunburned men who did backbreaking manual labor during the week sat there looking uncomfortable in their ill-fitting Sunday suits under the eyes of their tight-lipped, dark-eyed wives who knew that church was their province. As families entered the church, the Italian ladies, already seated with their families, stared them down lest they take a pew closer to the altar. The few who dared may have heard the word "Putana" in a muttered stage whisper.


Religion is supposed to be about charity and forgiveness, two qualities that old-time Italians were not so big on. Usually in Our Lady of Loreto, despite pastor Monsignor Baretta's request for a "silent" collection (paper money only) the passing of the basket was usually accompanied by the loud jingle of coins. These people worked hard for their money and parted with it reluctantly. If they were to deposit paper money, they needed the full attention of the congregation. On such rare occasions, the donor would stand up and loudly call out to the usher while conspicuously waving the bill in the air for all to see. When the usher reached them, they made a great fuss about dropping the money into the basket with a flourish.

As for forgiveness, Italians may forget, but they do not forgive. In Italy, especially around Sicily where vengeance has been raised to an art form, there are at least 50,000 vendettas playing out on any given day. Vendetta in Italian refers to a feud between families or clans that arises out of a slaying and is perpetuated by retaliatory acts of revenge; a blood feud. What does this have to do with religion and church you may wonder. Well the old-time Italians were not beneath praying for misfortune to befall a rival. They rarely prayed for someone's death, after all that would be un-Christian. Maybe just a case of excruciatingly painful boils, thank you Lord.


I am an Italian-American and I accept that with all it entails. As a people we are complex and certainly not perfect, but looking back on my childhood, growing up in my Italian family, I really wouldn't have it any other way.

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Bowling for Memories

Before HDTVs, multiplex cinemas, and smart phones, there was bowling. In the 1950s, bowling was really coming on strong, although they peaked in the 1960s, with about 14,000 across the country. They even televised early bowling matches with pro-legends like Carmen Salvino and Dick Weber. Bowling was popular because it didn't require any special equipment, was relatively cheap, and something families could do together. It was also a popular activity for first dates. The rapid growth of television put a lot of neighborhood movie theaters out of business, and in their places sprang up bowling alleys. Our alley of choice was Lucky Strike Lanes on Atlantic Avenue and Crescent Street.

Lucky Strike was an older bowling alley that looked run down compared to the newer, modern alleys being built. It was so old that for a while they had lanes set aside for Duckpins, a form of bowling that uses smaller pins and a smaller ball. This was the game that Rip Van Winkle is reputed to have invented, and I wouldn't be surprised if Rip rolled a few games at Lucky Strike. When we first started bowling there, they still had pin boys who would climb up on a ledge behind the bowling pins and manually reset the pins after each frame. Most of them were not boys but hard drinking men who probably couldn't get any other work.

Lucky Strike had a snack stand and a bar that sold beer and soft drinks. I think beers were fifteen cents a glass, and every few frames someone would holler out "beer frame", and whoever had the worst score that frame was shamed into buying the next round. You would think that, understandably, after a few beery games like this, that scores would begin to decline. The lanes were so old though, that after tens of thousands of heavy balls rolling toward the pocket, there was an indentation worn into the wood such that any ball drunkenly flung down the alley would settle into this groove and voilà, a strike.

At some point we formed a team and even got a sponsor, a neighborhood Hoffman soda distributor. Our team shirts were a cream color with the sponsors name written in green letters on the back. (Yes, that's me at left at around age 16, before my back gave out.) We couldn't afford to buy our own custom-drilled balls so we had to use whatever house balls were on the racks. It was a bummer if you got there and somebody had already claimed your ball. Eventually I found a ladies' ball that fit me pretty well, and I could always be sure of finding it since it was a lovely lavender color. We rented shoes for fifteen cents; no extra charge for the fungus. We had a couple of good bowlers, but most of the teams in the league were comprised of older men who bowled us under the table.

When the nicer lanes appeared, sadly, Lucky Strike closed its doors. Guys wanted to take their girls to the gleaming chrome and neon palaces opening in Brooklyn like Maple Lanes on 60th Street and Gil Hodges Lanes in Mill Basin. Games were only a quarter back then, so for around five bucks you and your date were good to go for a night of entertainment including bowling and food. We would often go with groups of guys, and sometimes a few girls would join in. It allowed us to mingle with the opposite sex without the pressure of going on a "date".

My granddaughter likes to bowl, and the alleys today are great with kids. They have ramps to roll the balls down so they have enough speed to make it to the pins. They also use bumpers near the gutters so kids don't throw gutter balls. They are fabulous places with indirect lighting, full restaurants, automated, electronic scoring, and not a pin boy in sight.

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Meet Carmine and Millie

As a kid I realized things at home were tight, so I always tried to hustle a buck. For an eighth grader with no experience, jobs were hard to come by. I would shovel snow or run errands for people in the neighborhood for nickels and dimes. My Aunt Mary and Uncle Nick had a small dressmaking business on Jamaica Avenue in Brooklyn. Diagonally across the street on the corner of Miller Avenue stood a store that sold fruit, cold cuts, bread, beer and soda, and a few household necessities. I guess it would be called a deli today, but in the Fifties we just referred to it by the name of the owner, as in "Go to Carmine's and get me a container of milk."

Thanks to a recommendation from Aunt Mary, I started working at Carmine's after school and on weekends. Carmine was an older man who never wore anything but pizza-man undershirts and dirty khakis covered by an equally dirty apron. He had a perpetually sad, basset hound expression on his face, but the gentlest disposition of anyone I ever met. Carmine's wife had passed away in childbirth, and the child she delivered, Millie, helped her father run the store. I guess as Carmine got older, lugging heavy beer and soda cases up and down the stairs became too much for him. Also, he wanted to compete with another neighborhood store who began delivering groceries to homes in the area.

I rode my bike to work since it was too far to walk from my house. I used a big wagon to deliver the orders that Carmine would pack into brown bags. The amount of the order was written on the side of one of the bags, and Carmine would give me some singles and loose coins in case I had to make change. The area I delivered in was a cut above where I lived, and most people would throw me a quarter for the delivery. Once I pushed a loaded wagon up the steep hill that was Miller Avenue and delivered to an older woman living on one of the poshest streets in Brooklyn, Highland Avenue. She gave me what I thought was a dollar tip and I shoved it into my pocket. When I got back to the store, I pulled it out and it was a ten! I thought about going back to ask her if she made a mistake, but then I thought about where she lived and where I lived, and the ten stayed in my pocket.

When Millie got to know me, she would sit me down on the bench outside the store and just talk. She was a large, rather homely looking girl of maybe 25, and she seemed lonely. She would ask about my family and friends, what I liked to do, did I date girls, and who my favorite movie stars were. I didn't think much of it at the time, after all, chatting with Millie was a lot easier on a hot day than shlepping cases of beer and soda down to the cellar. Carmine rarely bothered us during these little chats. I sensed he knew Millie was lonely, and that somehow these talks with me eased things a bit. Carmine even softened up and let me work the cash register, something I could tell he was loath to do. It infringed on his status somehow as the store's owner and proprietor.

One thing I always wanted to do, but could never convince Carmine to give me the nod on, was to work the cold cut slicing machine. In the deli business the guy who slices the cold cuts is the top dog. Knowing how to adjust the slicer for different thicknesses of baloney, and to have those slices fall gently into your free hand while you pushed the slicer with the other is like a choreographed ballet. Carmine was a smart man and probably saw a trip to the emergency room in my future if I ever got anywhere near that machine. I would console myself with a trip to the basement where I would drink warm beer from the bottle. Carmine never let on that he missed the bottles, but I figure he just included them in my employee benefits package.

While at work I was free to eat and drink as much as I wanted. I probably ate the equivalent of my weekly salary, since I could really put it away when I was a skinny kid. Every Saturday that sweet old man would pay me in cash, and fill a bag with cold cuts and fruit for my mother. I'm sure those little extras helped us out a lot in the weeks when my father had a bad run at the race track. The Boy Scouts teach the concept of "giving back" to the community in recognition of those who may have helped us along in life. There were so many people in my life like Carmine who had faith in me or showed me a kindness...I have tried my best to pass it forward.

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My Career as a Choir Boy

When I was about 10 years old I was drafted into the boys choir at Our Lady of Lourdes school. Brother Justinian, the Franciscan Brother who was also Principal of the school, ran the choir like a Marine drill sergeant. He was a foreboding figure in his long dark robe and jet black hair, combed straight back from his forehead. When the ranks of the choir started thinning because of graduations, or young boys' voices changing from soprano to that quivering in-between boy-man squeal, Brother J would come into our classrooms hunting for fresh replacements.

He would have the class stand and sing some well-known tune while he prowled up and down the rows talent scouting. In my tough Brooklyn neighborhood, most of us wanted no part of joining a boy's choir, so logic would dictate that you sing off key to avoid being picked. Brother Justinian was so feared by us however that no boy dared to tank the audition. If anything, our competitive natures kicked in and we actually tried our damnedest to please Darth Vader. Having a good soprano voice and, if I must say so, a feel for singing and music I, along with a number of my classmates, was chosen.

We practiced every morning before school in the Principal's office where Darth kept a piano. One of the reasons our choir was so good is that we practiced so hard. The Mass and the hymns were sung in Latin in those days, so we learned to sing them to phonetic perfection even though we had no idea what the words meant. On Sundays, High Mass in our parish was at 11 am. That meant the full treatment including three priests saying the Mass (mostly Irish, not one Indian in the bunch), and the full boys' choir in the ornate choir loft in the rear of the cavernous church.

Up in the loft we stood on a wooden, bleacher-type structure so that when the faithful looked up, they could see row upon row of angelic faces radiating down on them. We each were issued a thick hymnal in case we forgot the words, and each week Brother Justinian, seated at the massive pipe organ, would sternly admonish us NOT to drop the hymnals during mass. It's funny when somebody tells you NOT to do something, how often the very opposite occurs. Of course some kids would try to knock the hymnals out of the hands of other kids just to see the look Brother J shot in the direction of the offender.

A lot of us were not above mischief when things got slow out in the neighborhood streets, but when we put on our white shirts and blue ties and filed up the stairs into that choir loft every Sunday, something happened to us. As much as we didn't want to be there, when those first organ chords were struck, we sang for all we were worth. I can't explain it other than to say that most of us were into sports and had very competitive natures. If you were good enough, Brother J would pick you to solo on beautiful hymns like the Ave Maria, and that was the boys' choir equivalent of hitting one over the fence.

I'm very grateful for people like Brother Justinian who were in my young life to teach me that sometimes we are thrust into situations we would not have chosen voluntarily, but once you are tapped on the shoulder, you suck it up and give it your best shot. That mindset has helped me through some tight places.

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You Threw Out What???

Every boy who grew up in the Fifties has a story about how his mother threw out all his baseball cards and how, if he had them today, he could buy that house in the Hamptons. In the days before the i-Pod and the X-box we had our own, much simpler amusements, and one of them was collecting and trading baseball cards. Some of them would be truly valuable today, for example, the Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle Rookie card goes for around $162,000, The market for baseball cards has weakened along with the economy, unless you come across some of the true oldies that were originally included in cigarette packs. The Holy Grail of baseball cards is a 1909 Honus Wagner of the Pittsburgh Pirates that sold recently for $2.8 million!

To us they were just pictures of our favorite players, and we collected them because we loved baseball. The cards were included in bubble gum packs...I think you got five cards in every pack. The cards retained that bubble gum smell for months until too much handling by grubby little hands finally wore it off. Topps was the big manufacturer in those days, although there were other companies like Bowman who distributed them too. The trick was to get the really popular players like Mantle, Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson. Typically you had to go through a lot of no-names like Smokey Burgess and Virgil Trucks before finding a Hank Aaron or Bob Feller. Star players could be traded or used in side bets when flipping cards.

We didn't just collect baseball cards, we flipped them. The rules for card flipping were simple; from a standing position, the first player takes a card, holds it along his side and then, with a flip of the wrist, lets it drop to the floor. It lands, with the player's picture facing up (heads) or the player's stats facing up (tails). The second flipper then tries to match the card. If they match (both heads or both tails), player #2 wins the cards, if they did not match, the cards goes to player #1. We would sometimes flip 100 cards at a time, so Player #1 might flip 40 heads and 60 tails, and Player #2 had to flip the same number of heads and tails to win all 200 cards. Flipping cards was a real skill. A good card flipper, with a smooth motion, could flip 100 consecutive heads and no tails. I'm proud to count this skill among my life's accomplishments.

Here is another game that requires a subtle touch. Anywhere from two to five contestants can play at a time. In this game, the object is to get your card closer to the wall than any of your opponents. Players decide how many cards will be used per round and then mark a line a reasonable distance from the wall (something like 10 feet). Standing behind the line, the first player tosses his cards (one at a time), towards the wall. The next player then goes and tosses his cards, then the next player, etc. Ideally, you might get a card so close that it is actually leaning up against the wall. Of course, if your opponent is good and goes after you, he can knock it down and potentially land even closer. The player whose card is closest to the wall wins all cards tossed during that round.

After a while, being Brooklyn kids, we started making side bets. We might flip just 25 cards to save time, but if the winner won the game, he'd pick up not just the 50 cards flipped, but collect a side bet of say 100 more cards. Sometimes the side bets would be for a prized player, say a Yogi Berra or Duke Snyder. As much fun as we had with this pastime, it would probably be frowned on today. The moralists would complain that it encouraged gambling; some would whine that losing a flipping contest could hurt a child's self-esteem; and finally the germ-o-phobes would be hovering over their kids with the hand sanitizer. Today's parents are first-class killjoys.

Thanks to my ability as a flipper, I amassed a baseball card collection comprising a couple of thousand cards that were carefully stored in cigar boxes or shoe boxes. I had the cards separated into those only good enough for flipping, and those I truly prized, and would never trade or flip. I'm not sure when it happened, but one day they were all gone. It might have been when our old house on Somers Street was sold and my mother was looking to get rid of stuff. At the time it didn't seem like a big deal. I was older and the cards seemed like baggage from my childhood. Who knew that years later they could have funded my old age better than Social Security.

Note: Card game descriptions from Streetgames.com

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The Propagation of the Faith

Today at Mass we heard from a priest who was soliciting funds for the Propagation of the Faith. Just so you know something about them, here is a statement from their website: "Through the offering of Catholics worldwide, the Propagation of the Faith provides ongoing support for the pastoral and evangelizing programs of the Catholic Church in Africa, Asia, the islands of the Pacific and remote regions of Latin America. This includes aid for the education and support of seminarians, religious novices and lay catechists; for the work of religious communities in education, health care and social services; for communication and transportation needs and for disaster and emergency relief when necessary." As often happens to me in church, my mind wandered back to the days when we were kids, and our Catholic school sponsored a collection every Lenten season for this organization.

Catholic parishes in the United States were visited annually by missionary priests from exotic places to make an appeal for funds. Having never traveled further in the world than Long Island, I was interested in what these men of God had to say about the strange lands where they labored for the Church. They always talked about how far a dollar could be stretched in these remote and backward countries, and how even our small contributions made a difference. Our family would probably be considered poor by today's standards, but I remember feeling guilty that I would be heading home for one of Mom's fabulous Sunday Italian dinners while little Pedro in Guatemala had nothing to eat. (The church doled out guilt like a Jewish mother and easily roped us impressionable kids into the fundraising drive.)

We would be given a flat cardboard box in class that had to be folded together to form our very own collection box. It had a slot on top where our spare change (as if we had any) could be dropped in for Pedro's breakfast. My wife tells me that this was called a "Mite Box", and after looking it up, I found she was right, as usual. A "mite" is defined as a very small contribution, and was meant for children to fill with small change, thus teaching them the principle of giving to the poor. Mite Box giving promotes the spirit of contributing based on the intent to help others and not on the monetary amount. Still, when multiplied by the number of children participating, a significant amount of money was collected every year for worthy causes. Our contributions came out of our small allowances or from returning bottles for the few cents deposit. We would also hit up our parents or any unsuspecting relatives who were foolish enough to stop by during Lent.

My wife also remembers that if kids collected more than two dollars, they were entitled to a prize. I can't imagine the prizes were much considering the cost had to come out of the two bucks it took to earn one. She says she remembers receiving a tiny plaster bust of Jesus as a prize, and how much she loved it. As improbable as it might sound, raising two dollars during the 1950's was not that easy. Some kids would go from door to door in the neighborhood, but considering how many kids tried this, you can appreciate how many doorbells never got answered. I used to take loose change from my father's pockets, all the while wondering if my thefts would be forgiven considering the money was going to a good cause. Unknowingly, Tony Boots was one of the neighborhood's steadiest contributors to the Propagation of the Faith.

Pauline-Marie Jaricot founded the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in 1822 in Lyon, France. Born in 1799 to a wealthy family, Pauline at 18 years old was young, rich and beautiful. She was said to have a quick temper and an even quicker tongue – but a great deal of love in her heart. While growing up, Pauline was well aware of the deprivation and trouble in France and other countries around the world. She wanted to raise money for the 'missions' in far off places, so every Friday she went down to the factories to collect money from the workers and servants. From her early teenage years to her death in 1862, Pauline cared for the needs of some of the poorest people in the world. She herself died penniless, still trying to repay the huge debts she incurred while trying to help others.

The Catholic Church is not a perfect institution, but they have done much good, especially among the world's forgotten poor. It's true that there may be ulterior motives involved in their work like the spread of Catholicism and the recruiting of priests and lay catechists, but that doesn't make Pedro's breakfast taste less good. Feeling the old guilt return, I coughed up a few extra bucks for the second collection this morning.

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Worshiping at the Altar of Technology

I was chatting with the manager of our local diner. He was frustrated trying to peck out a text message to one of his waitresses to see if she could come in to help out. "I would call her..." he said, "...but they never return phone calls, a text message is all they respond to." And so the world continues to change at an ever increasing pace. I used to pride myself on keeping up with technology, but I have given up. It's not so much that I can't learn the newer stuff, it's just that I don't see the point. Why should I have to laboriously type in a message in "text-speak" on a keypad the size of a pack of gum when I can just push one button and call you? If you're not available to answer I can leave a voice message and you can call me back. Why would you respond to a text message where you have to push tiny keys to answer me when you can just push a button and say "hello."

It's almost as if we've become so enamored with the technology that we forget it's supposed to make things easier for us. When I talk to you on the phone, I can ask or answer any follow up questions or clarify the communication as needed. With texting we need to send messages back and forth to do this, and it seems like a much less convenient and efficient way of effectively communicating. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against progress if it makes my life easier, I just resist technology for its own sake when there is no apparent benefit. Technology producers count on this blind fascination people have with gadgets. They are willing to spend thousands for Gizmo II whether or not it is really any better than Gizmo I. They actually show up with lawn chairs to wait in line at midnight so they can be the first to own Gizmo II when the doors open in the morning. Disturbing, no?

Let's back up a few decades. When telephones only came in clunky, ugly land lines with a rotary dial, they may not have looked cool but there was a major advance in communications. Technology made it possible to speak with someone without dragging your butt over to his house and ringing the bell. I'll take one of those. Moving ahead, the cell phone makes its appearance, and I can rest easier knowing if my car breaks down, I or my loved ones can call for help. Sign me up. Now it starts getting iffy. For example, do I need to download music to my cell phone or get stock market alerts sent to me? Who am I...Warren Buffet? Do I need Internet access, Mapquest or GPS software on my cell phone? At some point we cross the line from practical to marginal useful to just plain silly.

Here's another example. When television was introduced it was a sensation. Generations of people used to listening to the radio could now see their favorite performers right in their living rooms. The television was so revered that it was encased in fancy wooden cabinets and given a place of honor in the family home. Then came color TV, portable TVs for every room, plasma and HDTV, all advancing the technology of the basic concept of television, yet still with some noticeable improvement in making life better for viewers. Then we crossed the line. It is now possible to download movies to your cell phone. Why? Do you whip up some popcorn and gather the gang around your cell phone for family movie night? Who the hell wants to watch a full-length movie on a 3-inch screen. Big step backwards, yet it can cost you big bucks for the privilege.

Another beef I have with technology is that it tends to isolate people. Back in the day when I had to ring your doorbell to talk to you, I got to see you in person. I can read things in face-to-face communications that I can't see in phone calls or text messages. Not as convenient, but maybe more friendly. I also think kids are too prone to sit in their rooms with the laptop, cell phone and video games instead of getting outside and actually spending time building friendships and social skills. Child psychologists have full waiting rooms because kids can't relate to or interact with other kids. It's what we used to call "playing." We need human contact to learn about others and how to get along with them. Too many kids rely on electronic contacts and miss out on this very important facet of growing up.


Finally, being a full-time worrier, I'm concerned that the technology we develop to download our music or thaw out our frozen pizza with be used by some fanatic to detonate bombs. I know, I know, paranoia isn't healthy, but who ever thought a bunch of fumbling terrorists could manage to bring down the two greatest monuments to technology ever built by modern man.

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School Days

My how Grammar School has changed. They don't even call it Grammar School anymore because they stopped teaching grammar years ago, but you already know that if you've spoken to a teenager lately. Today's "Elementary" Schools are places where beleaguered teachers try to get through the day without being sued for raising their voices to little Jeremy or Madison. (I hate the fakey names they give kids today. On a recent trip to Maine, the hotel's teen bellhop was named Schuyler. That would have guaranteed him a daily beating in my old schoolyard.) But I digress. The classroom in the 1950s, not just in Parochial schools but public schools as well, was a place of serious learning. The teacher ruled, kids toed the line, and parents knew their place.

Our day began by walking to school, yes walking. There were no school buses, no SUVs or vans double parked at the school entrance so that Precious wouldn't get exerted...we walked. The streets were safer then and young children routinely walked them alone. Every school kid knew the cop on the corner. Now they ride around in patrol cars and have little contact with people in the neighborhood. When we got to school we lined up in size order and marched into class. We were dressed neatly in Catholic school uniforms or the civilian equivalent. You couldn't see our underwear hanging out of our pants, girls wore modest clothes and no makeup, and nobody carried Ipods or Game Boys to school...just your books, pencil case and lunch bag.

First thing each day we recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, a practice sadly discontinued today in many schools. Every child had an assigned seat that never changed. The curriculum was pretty basic (English, math, history, geography, religion) but the material was challenging. On special days of the week we had art and music. We also learned in civics how government worked and we had classes in deportment where we were taught common courtesy...things like how to address adults, saying please and thank you, holding doors open for girls, and giving seats to the elderly on buses or trains. It sounds so corny and un-hip, but again, if you've observed the decline in manners in our society, maybe a few classes in deportment would be a good idea.

We got homework assignments that we copied into composition notebooks that never changed. They were black and businesslike, no fancy spiral binding, no colored subject separators and no cartoon characters on the cover. These were notebooks meant for serious work; ruled lines on the pages were the only concession to luxury. In Our Lady of Lourdes the Franciscan Brothers and Sisters of Saint Joseph made us write "JMJ" at the top of every page to remind us that Jesus, Mary and Joseph were our role models in life. We used the Palmer Method of handwriting where the script slanted from lower left to upper right. This was a natural way to write if you were right-handed; for lefties it was torture. Those poor souls had to contort their writing hand into a claw to approximate the approved slant. There was no acceptable alternative way to write, and until they learned it, kids paid the price...usually a knuckle rap on the noggin.

We were called on to read passages aloud or work out math problems on the blackboard. Sometimes as an aid in learning grammar, we diagrammed sentences into their component parts of speech. We memorized vocabulary words and were tested on them. In the lower grades we chanted the "times tables" as a way of learning multiplication, and damned if it didn't work. We wrote book reports regularly and could locate the major countries of the world on a map before they started renaming them every six months. Discipline was never a problem. Teachers in public and private schools were empowered to administer small attitude adjustments when called for, and to no one's surprise, classroom behavior was rarely a problem. Tough State Regents exams were administered periodically using special test booklets. At the end of each test there was a pre-printed declaration that the test taker had not cheated. Underneath it, we were required to write: "I do so declare" and then sign our names in blood.

School wasn't all business. Every Monday afternoon in the church auditorium we saw B movies like Frances the Talking Mule, and episodes of adventure serials like Gene Autry and the Thunder Riders. Students paid 21 cents a week which covered the cost of these movies and amazingly the salaries of our music and art teachers. One can only imagine how little these women were paid. At lunch recess boys played Spaldeen-based ball games like Triangle, a slap-ball variation of baseball. The Franciscan Brothers who taught us hitched up their long black robes and joined in. Later in the classroom they might be whacking the palm of your hand with a wooden ruler, but at recess they were your teammates. Girls jumped rope (yes the nuns played too) or their own ladylike ball games.

Modern educators scoff at the teaching methods used in the 1950s, but I challenge them to compare the caliber of Elementary School student being turned out today with the Grammar School product of the 1950s. I'm not just talking about academic subjects mastered, but other measures of development as well such as character, respect for authority, and plain old courtesy. My money's on the Fifties kids.

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Apples and Oranges

In Spaldeen Dreams I've tried to capture the flavor of growing up in Brooklyn during the 1950s. I can easily recall my life on Somers Street, the things we did, the people we knew, and the dreams we had. What I've found hard though is to put these memories into words that will give the reader a chance to know what that time and place were really like. The difficulty arises because of all that has happened in the world in those intervening years. I can relate things as I remember them, but the context of life then is so vastly changed from life as we know it now that anyone reading these recollections is understandably at a disadvantage. I can go on about how the ballpoint pen revolutionized writing for those who only knew fountain pens, but younger readers might wonder: What's a fountain pen?

Looking at those times from the vantage point of life in 2010 is almost like taking a ride on that great Disney attraction, the "Carousel of Progress". We all smiled at how quaint life in America was at the turn of the 20th Century, but for those in their twenties and thirties now, that's how life in 1950 must look to them. Not only technology has made great leaps forward since the Fifties, but the way people think has changed. Women, Catholics, Jews, African Americans, and most other minorities, including first-generation immigrants, were definitely years away from earning the rights that were routinely accorded to white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. We were all just struggling to fit in, sacrificing one generation for the benefit of the next. Most of us dreamed surprisingly small.

HBO ran a wonderful biographical piece on the great heavyweight boxer Joe Louis. Joe Louis Barrow was born on May 13, 1914. His father, "Mun Barrow," was a cotton picker from Alabama and his family fought with poverty for most of his childhood. His family moved to Detroit in 1924, at which point Joe first became involved in boxing. Ten years after his arrival in Detroit, Louis won the Golden Gloves as a light heavyweight. Following this win, Louis turned professional and won twelve contests within the first year. Most boxing promoters wanted no part of black boxers after Jack Johnson, a former black champion, angered white fans with his in-your-face lifestyle. I mention Joe Louis because of the jubilant reaction African Americans had to his rise to greatness. Joe gave them a reason to be proud; never in their small dreams could they imagine a black man having such an impact on America.

In Fifties America most of us looked for small victories. A high school diploma was considered worth something, and usually enough to get you a decent job. Very few people bought showroom-new cars; that didn't come until much later in life. People were content with reliable transportation that would make it to Long Island and back on weekend outings. I don't remember going out to dinner in a real restaurant until my late teens. We would sometimes eat out, but at strictly local places like the Chinese Restaurant on Pitkin Avenue that my Dad sensitively referred to as "The Chinks". We wore our clothes until they didn't fit, and then passed them on to younger cousins. Even the poorest families maintained small savings accounts, usually a "Christmas Club" run by the local banks where you faithfully deposited two dollars a week so you would have money to buy presents when the holidays rolled around.

It's hard to imagine such a lifestyle today. A high school diploma from most public schools is worth squat; everybody goes to college in 2010, whether they have the brains or not. I see people of modest means driving $50,000 cars and living in $500,000 homes. Saving money for a rainy day is a dying habit, especially after the financial meltdown that swallowed billions in investments. Despite the so-called hard economic times we are in now, all the restaurants I go to are pretty full, not just on weekends but during the week as well. I see folks shopping for new clothes, not because they need them, but maybe they're feeling a little low and a new blouse or tie gives them a lift. Buying using credit cards, a practice that was unknown in the Fifties, is commonplace. People live way beyond their means, max out every card anyone will send them, and then just blithely declare bankruptcy.

I'm afraid that unless I can invent a time machine, I'll never be able to adequately convey what life in Brooklyn was like for us sixty years ago. How can I make you understand what the introduction of television meant to us when you can now remotely call your cable box from your cell phone and program it to record a show you want to watch later? Could you ever appreciate the excitement we felt when Jiffy Pop hit the shelves and we would watch mesmerized as that big aluminum ball filled with delicious hot popcorn that you ate right out of the container? And can you, with your laptop computer and I-pod, relate to Fifties boys and girls at home helping cartoon character Winky-Dink out of a jam by drawing whatever Winky needed (rope, ladder, bridge, etc.) on the TV screen? (This was done with the aid of a Winky-Dink Kit which was sold by mail for fifty cents.) Our frames of reference are just so different.

No friends, my childhood was Spaldeens and yours was Sega Genesis. Given the choice, as primitive as it might seem to you, I'll take mine every time.

CLICK ON DATES AT TOP RIGHT TO SEE OTHER “SPALDEEN DREAMS” POSTS. ALSO, READ MY OTHER BLOG: BRAINDROPS

LOOKING FOR A WORTHY CHARITY? TRY THESE FOLKS: Children's Craniofacial Association