I am not an anti-Semite. But I did learn how to be one in school. Catholic school, that is, which I attended for first, second, and third grade, in that order.
I was reminded of this by a conversation with a cousin-in-law who had similar experiences. We exchanged our Catholic school stories at the recent Easter gathering. He was enjoying this exchange because his experience has been that people have not believed what he tells them about Catholic school, as it all seems so extreme. It is true that many Catholic school stories do sound unbelievable, or at least, they sound like jokes, and those of you who were either not Catholic school students or who went to some strange progressive Catholic school may just find these things too outlandish to believe.
Some of these stories even sounded like jokes when they first happened. I remember this: The first day of class, and Sister Maria Cantelopes (the names are slightly changed to protect … me) saunters in front of the room. She is holding a brand new pointer. In case you don’t know, a pointer is a round, tapered wooden stick about a meter long with a metal ring on the fatter end (for hanging it) and a rubber tip on the other, thinner end (for pointing). She holds the pointer up for all to see.
“See this?” she shouts. The room falls silent.
“This is my new pointer. I get a new pointer at the beginning of every new school year. Do you know why I get a new pointer at the beginning of every new school year?”
Silence. But you can smell the fear.
“Because at the end of the school year …” And whoosh, a second pointer, apparently hidden among the folds of her long black habit (a habit is a nun suit) comes flying up and is now held aloft in her other hand.
She’s standing there like Moses with the tablets.
“Because at the end of the school year THIS is what my pointer looks like.”
The pointer is taped at several points along its shaft. Apparently, this pointer has been broken multiple times and repaired with blue tape that looks kinda like duct tape.
Sister Maria Cantelopes turned at that moment towards student Derick Smith. “Derick!”
The boy jumps a little and starts twitching.
“Tell the new students what I do with the pointer.”
Derick mumbles something we can’t hear.
“ENUNCIATE!”
Derick jumps again. And says more clearly “It is for knuckle rapping, sister. If you’re bad.”
WHACK!
The old taped up pointer is wielded with great skill and slams down on Derick’s desk right between his hands, which he has already placed palm down on the desktop in a seemingly subconscious effort to supplicate himself to the sister. The pointer does not hit him, but it does break in half.
“Usually, I do this across the knuckles, not in between them. And sometimes your knuckles break the pointer. Then, I might get mad at you. Don’t make me mad at you.” Sister Maria Cantelopes already seems pretty mad, but we all stare at our desktops and subconsciously sit on our hands.
Now, I assumed at the time that Sister Maria Cantelopes was bluffing. “This is all a big joke,” I thought. I was not frightened of this nun as the other students were because I had about 20 nuns in my own family … two Black Franciscans and an entire flock of Charities. (Charities are the “flying” nuns, thus I use the term “flock.”) I had seen their dark humor at work from the inside. Sister Maria Cantelopes was pretty impressive, but I was not that impressed.
But then about two days later, I was proven quite wrong. Derick, who was left over from the previous year, did something wrong … I could not say what …. and WHACK! … He got it right across the knuckles. The pointer broke and everything. We all had to wait to resume the lesson that had been under way so that Sister Maria Cantelopes could tape up her stick. I noticed that she broke off the far end of the stick. Good move. If you broke off the near end it would not be as effective of a … tool … for subsequent whacks. Sister Maria Cantelopes was a real pro. Outstanding aim, too.
But I’ve digressed even farther than usual. Back to the point of this post…
The anti-Semite training was only a small part of the broad range of negative experiences, but it is was especially memorable because it was so damn insidious. When I was a kid, up through third grade, almost everyone I knew, and in particular, everyone on my block or nearby seemed to be Christian, about half Catholic and half “Protestant.” There was a Baptist church nearby but no one ever seemed to go there. We assumed that no one went there because it was haunted (this church is actually written up in some of those books that describe haunted houses and such). We never saw actual Baptists. But the main point here is that we never ever saw, or at least never talked about, any Jews. In first and second grade, the closest thing I had ever seen to a Jew was the Taoist woman who lived over our backyard fence, and that was not very close.
So the nuns told us about the Jews. They told us that the Jews had killed our god. They told us that the Jews had been payed off to vote for the execution of Jesus Christ (god) instead of some other guy. They told us that when the apostles did something wrong, like denying Christ, it was because they were reverting to their Jewish nature. We were told how to recognize Jews, and that we should avoid them. Most interestingly, and most unbelievably, but I swear to you on a stack of …. whatever … that we were told this in first grade, we were told to never watch a Jewish ceremony because if we, as Baptized Catholics, ever saw a Jewish Ceremony we would turn into a skeleton on the spot. These nuns had anticipated the end of every Indiana Jones movie to be made decades later.
Now, here’s an interesting story. From my house, you could go down the block and turn right, and walk to the firehouse, and turn left, and you’d be on Federal street. If you moseyed on down to the end of Federal street, just past Billy Casper’s house (he lived on the right side of the road, and he had chickens and dogs) you’d get to the end of the street where there was a square fronted brick building with a fancy set of steps leading up to a big door, and over the door was a big star. We assumed that this was an old no longer used Marshals office. The Marshal, or the Sheriff, would have worked here keeping everyone in the town safe from bad guys, and so on and so forth. Here … to this set of steps on the front of this building … was where my friends and I would often go to play “Cowboys and Indians” (yes, this was some time ago) and whoever got to be the Marshall .. well, this was their office.
I imagine you’ve guessed by now that this was not the Marshall’s office at all. It was, in fact, the old Temple. This street … Federal street … and nearby Summit and Delaware Avenues were part of a Jewish Enclave. But during the 1950s a new neighborhood sprang up starting only one block away, and most of the Jews who lived in this neighborhood moved to newer, and nicer houses over there. The beginning of this new neighborhood was on the other side of this building, and indeed, there was a large temple built there, with the back, now offices and storage where the main temple once was, now faced the old street and the new front of the temple faced the newly built street with the nice houses. Even though the building was right there, entrance and egress, and the parking lot, were located in another neighborhood.
Over time, of course, I did figure out that some of my neighbors actually were Jewish. One of my favorite people in the neighborhood was Morris Marachni, who owned the hardware store. I learned that Morris was not only Jewish, but that he had escaped from a concentration camp. He was later sponsored for immigration to the US by Mr. Bryn. Mr. Bryn owned the clothing store next to Morris’ hardware store. Mr. Bryn was also Jewish. And so on and so forth. Lots of my neighbors were Jewish, but they never made much of that, and this was never noted in my house, and the nuns and priests did not seem to be very much a part of the neighborhood … they kept to themselves in the convent and parish house, next to the church and by the school they taught in. So they were not out there with us pointing out the Jews so we could avoid them.
In third grade, even though I was in Catholic school, I had a “lay” teacher (a non-nun, as it were), Mrs. Brennan. Mrs. Brennan noticed something about me: I could read as well as anyone, herself included. Oh, and the math we were learning … I could do it all in my head and did not need any instructions from her. Oh, and the science was totally nailed down. You see, in those days, there were not too many books for kids like there are now, so I read all my brother’s books, and he was in high school, and all his books were high school textbooks. And, I was just a smart kid.
So Mrs. Brennan suggested that I be tested, and I was, and they pulled me out of the Catholic school and sent me to a special class in a different school where everybody else was also really smart.
And half the kids in that class were Jewish. And that was the beginning of my long and productive, interesting and instructive, daring and never regretted engagement with my new Jewish community.
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I spent a couple of years in Catholic school. It wasn’t my favorite time. And, yes, the stories are pretty amazing.
The cathedral, the church, the temple, the synagogue, the masjid are participatory theatre, fully robed emo-porn, rich in taboos and rituals. err, reminds me of PZ’s blog actually.
I spent three years in Catholic school, featuring the ruler-wielding Sister Maureen Judge, who once threatened to hang me from the ceiling by my thumbs.
As far as “the Jews” go, I very early determined that if the Jews could secretly run the banking industry, Hollywood, and the Israeli and U.S. governments, then really they deserved to be in charge. Besides, have you been to Cecil’s Deli? Who wants to get on the wrong side of that kind of nosh?
Israel’s first kibbutz was started on a Sept. 11.
Causation, correlation, coincidence?
I went to two different RC grade schools. The first school was run by Dominican sisters. They were pretty cool–strict but humane. As far as I know none of them ever used corporal punishment.
The second school was run by Felicians, sort of a Polish offshoot of the Franciscans. One of them told us that, in order to keep any black girls out of the order, they had a rule that all of the sisters had to speak Polish. She said that there was only one black woman who learned Polish to join the order. Why she would is something I could never understand.
The Polish sisters would use anything that was at hand as weapon. I am sure they were ninjas at night.
There were about 20 catholic churches within walking distance of my home. They were segregated by ethnic group. There was one Lutheran Church–St. Martini’s–and one Methodist church. There was one family on our block that was Lutheran. The kids on the block were told that they would go to hell if they talked with the Lutherans. I talked with them all the time.
At the beginning of each school year my brothers and sister and I always got the same question. “What was your name before you changed it?” That was followed with “Oh, your mother is Polish.” When we said she wasn’t we could feel the icy chill that continued for the rest of the school year. Nice. Very christian.
I’ve had lots of Catholic friends over the years. So, by association, I know about the pointer-wielding nuns. I have a suspicion that these pointer-wielding nuns were really, really frustrated people, because, for whatever reason they ended up being nuns, many of them probably found what they were doing, unsatisfactory. It is not surprising, therefore, that a lot of them left their orders and re-entered secular life, they even got married! But I never heard of anything “antisemitic”. I did hear about a lot of ignorant things coming out of the mouths of these nuns, but, at least where I lived,there wasn’t any antisemitism,that I know of. Maybe that was because, Jews were something of a “force” in civic society where I lived(kind of separate, but not too, and they were vocal) In any case, and in some ways, it doesn’t surprise me.
Greg, it looks like they _thought_ they were teaching you to be anti-semitic but actually they were teaching you to be anti-Catholic. Maybe those evil nuns were Jews in disguise!
Uh, sorry to ask so bluntly, but how old are your childhood stories Greg? My wife used to work until recently as a teacher in a Catholic school in Poland run by the nuns (Resurrectionists) and if any of the teachers, be it a nun or a layperson, expressed such sadistic or antisemitic behavior as described above, (s)he would be out of the teaching position – immediately and permanently.
That said, my wife quit the job when the new mother superior appointed to run the school turned out to be incompetent. The problem to a large degree lies with the unofficial policy of zero accountability practised in the Catholic Church – if the management is broken, there’s effectively nobody to appeal to except the God himself, because the Catholic clergy believes that their internal affairs are their business alone and when somebody has been appointed to a post then this decision must not be challenged, period. (Unless he or she does something totally outrageous AND is caught AND it hits the fan in a really spectacular manner – only then it is time for damage control).
That’s why the best option in cases of such misconduct is to go to the secular authorities and demand the revocation of the school’s license unless it deals with the offending teacher promptly (in countries where the education is regulated to that degree, which I believe excludes the USA).
Hat Eater: Uh, sorry to ask so bluntly, but how old are your childhood stories Greg?
Never ask a blogger how old he is. Actually, if you read my stories on Quiche Moraine you can calculate my age almost exactly.
wrpd: We also had exactly one Lutheran church, and it was the only church at that time I had ever seen that was not an ancient building (The town I grew up in had been growing smaller for a couple of post-war decades, so there were not really new churches being built any places where I frequented.) I remember having the impression that the Lutherans, whoever they were, must be very modern.
But really, the “Church of Saint Martini” can’t be all bad..
Small world strikes again. I know that neighborhood quite well — my daughter and her family live in the house right next door to the firehouse.
BTW, St. James school has been closed for several years, and now the diocese is merging the church with a couple others. Catholicism is not doing well in the greater Capital District.
However, things are looking up in the neighborhood — there’s even a weekly farmers market in the church parking lot.
Hmm, interesting. I went to a catholic school for a couple of years (3rd-5th grade), and my experience was much more sedate. First, it probably helped that my parents were not Catholic (they were Lutheran, but there was no Lutheran school available). There was also only one singular nun in the school, and she was the music teacher.
Of course, we heard about the corporal punishment of ages past, but apparently it had been outlawed by the time I got into school, or something to that effect. I do remember that the adults I spoke to remembered it quite fondly, though.
I also don’t remember anything anti-semetic being taught at the school. I don’t know whether this is a function of the particular church/school/area, or of the time in which I went (this would have been in the late 1980’s).
Chezjake: The church parking lot was the home of the “Saint James Fair” (see this post, search for “cher”!). That fire house is an amazing piece of architecture. On the National Register and everything. Oh, and I went down to Federal Street yesterday on Google Maps and see they have torn out the marble porch of the old Temple.
My home base was 21 Stanwix Street, next to the big red apartment building. (We later moved to 220 Hackett, right into the “new” neighborhood … which is when I discovered the other side of the temple!) My mother grew up on Beekman Terrace, and my father grew up in the South End, but there was a family farm in Selkirk just by the rail road tracks near Route 9-something (9w?).
I had a very different experience with nuns in Canadian catholic school in the 1980s. I always found the nuns to be the sensible ones. (The bats**t crazy ones were the celibate lay people.) In grade 11, you take a world religions class where you learn about Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, etc. The first day the nun teacher told us the catholic church believes there is truth and salvation in all the world’s great religions. Each religion, when it was taught, I seem to remember was taught without disparagement or “this is where they off the rails”.
That’s not to say there isn’t a great deal of antisemitism in the (Canadian) clergy. Quebec’s modern history seems to tightly braid three historical threads: nationalism, Catholicism, and antisemitism. Some of the great Catholic clergy leaders of Quebec’s nationalism seem to have written an awful lot of anti-Jewish screeds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Groulx#Antisemitism
And then there is this winner:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Gruner
Gruner used to have this weird Our Lady of Fatima rant tv show on local TV (I think he broadcast out of the Niagra area). He had a free magazine called the Fatima Crusader that I used to subscribe to because I loved the hilarious incongruity of preaching about the Virgin Mary and criticizing the US government for not building more nuclear submarines. He would kindly send along a catalog of various tracts you could buy and there was always a healthy helping of “jews control the world” type tracts. Geez.
I think he was eventually convicted of Canadian human rights abuses for his anti-homosexual broadcasts.
Yes, awesome firehouse. Yes, Route 9W.
I’ve been following your musical history over at Quiche Moraine. Haven’t commented yet, but enjoying it. Sort of waiting to find out if you and Carl ever got to that den of alternative lifestyles that was the 8th Step Coffeehouse (in the basement of 1st Presbyterian Church back in those days), where I was the manager from 1972-75. Or maybe even to the famous Fox Hollow Folk Festival out in Petersburg. (I’m primarily a folkie when it comes to music.)
Sister Cathleen (Our Lady of Perpetual Help) used a ruler.
I can vouch for this kind of anti-Semetic teaching in Catholic schools in the mid-1970s. I never went to actual Catholic school, but was dragged to CCD (have no idea what that stands for) once a week for, well, way too long. The lay teachers there were all anti-Semites, and weren’t ready for the little odd girl to challenge their views. You see, I had Jewish friends and neighbors who I liked very much, and wasn’t about to put up with such nonsense. They never hit me, but suffice to say that I started cutting those classes (mainly by hiding out in the bathrooms) and never bought into Christianity as a result of the tremendously mixed messages. Guess what? I am now an observant Jew. Way to go, Catholic Church.
I spent 1st through 12th grade in Catholic school in the midwest. No antisemitism to speak of, hardly and nuns around either. There was one, Sister Rose-Sharon, a literal and figurative giant of a person. Unlike the real, certified teachers, she wasn’t afraid of physical contact–she actually shoved people.
The anti-Jewish teachings of the Christian religion date back to the gospels, and it seems to have been political. The church in those days had to attract gentiles as Jews were not joining the cult. Blaming the Jews (as opposed to the Romans) for the death of Jesus made Xtianity more attractive to the others. It also helps in keeping the solidarity of the religion(them vs us).
Someone should try a poll in the bible belt:
Jesus was a. Jewish
b. Gentile
c. Other
I bet a surprisingly large number would not mark a.
But we did kill Jesus. Oh, not for the reason the Christians keep claiming we did. It was very simple you see: Nice Jewish boys are supposed to become doctors or lawyers. He became a carpenter. A carpenter! Can you imagine that? What his mother must have felt like! To not be able to talk about “My son, the lawyer” or “my son, the doctor.” Maybe “my son, the rabbi” or “my son, the professor” would be ok, but “my son, the carpenter” – obviously that’s not ok. So we killed him.
I went to Catholic school for about 8 years during the 80’s. Never witnessed any anti-Semitism or knuckle-rapping from the faculty, fortunately. However, my 5th grade homeroom teacher, Sister Louise, routinely would wish horrible painful deaths on us all if she got mad at us (and she often did). The one I remember most is “I hope the school catches on fire and you all burn to death then go straight to Hell”.
Attended public school. Never heard anything derogatory about any religions but we had a couple of teachers with rulers, pointers and such.
My 4th grade ‘blue hair’ had a ruler and used it often enough but she went quietly insane the year I had her. She got jumpier and jumpier and at one point, a projector fell off it’s cart and broke. She left and never returned.
In 7th grade,we had a history teacher that could hold an iron cross for many seconds. I watched him work out one afternoon. It was amazing. He rarely had to use his pointer.
In 9th grade we had a quiet little guy for math. He used to get his fingers caught in the shade cords while explaining beginning algebra. We didn’t take his attempts at discipline very seriously until one day he came up behind a notorious troublemaker and ‘tapped’ him on the back of the head. The kid’s glasses flew off and hit the floor several feet away. It was only then we believed the rumors about his boxing career.
Ah, good times…
Interesting (and scary) story & comments. I went to a convent for piano instruction. As a little Jewish girl it was quite mysterious, but the only rapping I got was a forceful tapping on the wrist with Sister Therese telling me to “relax!” A friend of mine spent one year in Catholic school, looking sadly over at the kids in the yard of the Protestant school next door, really regretting that they were going to hell. When she told her parents, they moved her to a public school.
chezjake: Not Karl (his real name) but yes, me. I often attended events there, and I helped often with the turkey dinner on thanksgiving, etc. etc. I knew the Wilkies (went to school with Kay), my sibs and I overlapped in various social and other circles with Arlo and Pete, and so on and so forth.
You should know: My sisters were founding members of both Refer and Equinox. Oh, and do you remember/know John Wolcott? And thus, do you know the Pinksterfest? I was the other guy working with John every year on that subversive event. John and I did that pretty much single handed for several years in a row. His brainchild, but I provided hard work and some political cover (my father was reasonably close to Corning, thus reducing the likelihood of the police getting sent in with teargas to drive the Pinxter Lovers from Washington Park!)
For a few years, BTW, I lived on the fifth floor over GJ’s. I also lived over Home Cooking Diner on Lark for a year.
Mike: She got jumpier and jumpier and at one point, a projector fell off it’s cart and broke. She left and never returned.
… and we are to believe that you had nothing to do with this, I suppose.
For the first time I am finding out the source of the cookie crumbs, candy stains and drool on my high school books! I had Greg’s nuns 10 years before him and I can assure you they were much meaner in the olden days.
Gregs aunt: http://www.nunbetter.org CLICK AT YOUR OWN RISK IF YOUR ARE CATHOLIC, PTSD MAY BE INVOKED!
Greg,
That projector episode was over 40 years ago but as I remember it, we were watching a thanksgiving movie – pilgrims, turkeys and natives (stupidly in retrospect) helping out. This was NOT the first time this film had been shown and we were talking or otherwise goofing around and our ‘almost over the edge’ teacher got up from her desk behind the projector and came toward the front to wrap her ruler and caught her shawl or something on part of the old reel to reel projector pulling it down. It was the last straw for her I guess because she left and really never came back. We were stunned and alone in the room for quite a while before some admin came in and put us to work reading. The rest of the year was spent doing SRA workbooks.
I may share a little guilt with my classmates over this but she was close enough to the edge that a stiff breeze was all that was needed really. Weird memories.
I had Greg’s nuns 10 years before him and I can assure you they were much meaner in the olden days.
Well, that, and you stayed at St. James for five more years and then went to Christian Brother’s Academy where they beat you up if you earned an A- on anything.
Oh, wow — really a small world.
I knew the Wilkies well — still see Kay every once in a while. And was reminded of them just last week when Bill Spence posted pics from Fox Hollow 1070 & 1971 — Wilkies and young Kay included — They’re in the first three pics here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?page=1&aid=72064&id=723283450 I was also involved in the whole Clearwater thing with the Wilkies, Pete, Arlo and many others.
And I was wondering whether John Wolcott would come up when you mentioned working on Albany archeology. Yes, of course I knew him — the 8th Step was probably his second home. He knew more of the architectural history of Albany than anyone. He was also one of the founders of Save the Pinebush. BTW, John eventually got a full time job that was right up his alley — in charge of all deeds and maps in the county clerk’s office.
I worked on many of the early Refer Thanksgiving dinners, and also referred quite a few folks to Refer and/or Equinox when they wandered into the 8th Step in need of help.
I lived in several places, starting in a second floor apartment at the corner of State and Willet (before the house got rehabbed for the yuppie market) and an apartment above Lemme’s Market on Lark. Then I got married and moved uptown to a two family house on Myrtle near South Main — now living in an old farmhouse up in Halfmoon, Saratoga County since 1977.
BTW, the 8th Step lives on but hasn’t been a coffeehouse for years. It’s now a presenting organization based out of Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady.
I went to Catholic school during the transition from “spare the rod, spoil the child,” to “spare the rod!” I suppose I was lucky in that regard as by that time you really had to earn physical punishment. Nevertheless, I can remember several occasions where I saw kids beaten with rulers. I was a pretty good student and not much of a trouble maker, so my only real run in with physical punishment beyond holding bibles/encyclopedias in outstretched arms for extended periods of time came when I failed my first (and only ever) test. I can still remember that day. I came from a Montessori school that didn’t put much emphasis on spelling or grammar (or anything outside of math really), and I had never faced a situation in which studying might help. That morning, as was my habit on testing days, I quickly went over a list of words we were to know how to spell. We had recently gone over the whole “i before e except after c” rule, and looking at the list it seemed that all of the words were of this particular spelling construct. I figured it would be just another weak ass test to smash and bring home to mom. Well, I’m not sure how I did it, but I reversed all of my ‘i’ and ‘e’ in the words, and the next day I was rudely surprised by a big fat ‘F.’ I felt terrible; like I had let the world down, and all over a stupid mistake that I made over and over again. In my mind it was extremely embarrassing, but completely understandable and easily corrected. As I beat myself up mentally over the ‘F’ I sort of zoned out, and the next thing I know my teacher is telling me how disappointed she was in me, and she actually sent me to the office to see our principle – Sister Nancy. I couldn’t believe it. I had never failed a test before, and I had a reputation for being a good student. Boom! Just like that I was sent to face my maker. Sister Nancy actually did not beat me, but she had the paddle (like a frat paddle) on her desk during our little chat, and made it clear that if she saw me again I wouldn’t be so lucky. As it turned out, she was wrong because the laws changed … guess I got lucky.
Now, keep in mind I was a good kid/book work nerd. The things that happened to the more rambunctious kids never ceased to amaze me. The ruler beatings were rather constant until the laws changed, and they continued for a while thereafter regardless. Holding books (Bibles in particular) with outstretched arms, or “wall sits” became the fill in punishment instead of a warning after physical punishment was banned.
I think that the real damage of attending Catholic school was not in the beatings that some people took … after all, I lived in a rather poor neighborhood where getting one’s ass beaten was the norm whether it came from a nun or a parent. The really egregious punishments came in the form of mental abuse. One of the few times I found myself at odds with my teachers was in religion class one morning when I stumbled upon the story of Lot and his daughters. I asked my teacher that day – Sister Mary – if the fact that God did nothing about his having “laid with” his daughters meant that people were excused for their actions while piss drunk (I didn’t use those words). She told me that Lot’s daughters were the sinners and that they were later dutifully punished by God. I argued that the situation seemed unfair, and that Lot should share some of the blame to which Sister Mary replied that if I questioned the judgment of my perfect creator that I was risking eternal damnation. I conceded the point, and learned a valuable lesson: disagree and burn in hell, acquiesce and accept without question and receive eternal bliss.
In any case, the result was a net positive. That day, and my argument over the morality of Lot’s incestuous relationship with his daughters (BOTH OF THEM!) changed my view on Catholicism and religion as a whole. I realized that these nuns were literally following a 2000 year old book full of ancient traditions and antiquated morality to the detriment of their own personal value. I started thinking critically about ALL of the biblical stories I had read, and the eventual result was that I went from a curious kid looking for a way to justify belief in a higher power to a skeptical kid seeking any evidence that religion was more than a institution of thought control. It turns out that teaching me about the Bible only made me doubt the religion I was waffling toward … Oh the irony!
I was also a charter (but young) member of save the pinebush. What was the archaeologists name that worked on the tavern out there, and hung around with JR quite a bit… can’t remember. Anyway, he was involved with that as well. … Don something with an R. Riker or something.
I actually did the archaeology survey for Crossgates.
If you lived above Slimes, I mean Lemmes, then I could see down into your window from my apartment across the street.
OK, Karl lived on Myrtle near South Main, and for a while I lived with my sister in the Tudor style on Mercer and Main (just off Main, maybe 32 Mercer?)
Ah, Halfmoon, nice. One of my father’s organizations, possibly the VFW, sometimes had the clambake at halfmoon.
The 8th step is not a coffee house????? It’s in Schenectady? Where’s Schenectady? (only kidding)
Well, it’s a big world but Albany is a small town…
Referred to as: ‘the 9w’; only traffic light in town.
Grew up in Coxsackie, went to the city (Albany) to go shopping.
Coxaskie. Did you know Ed? Can’t think of his last name. Beard, wrote the history of Greene County?
Oh, his initials are ERK. I know this because my first wife, WJL, me, GTL and Ed, ERK were known as “Wiggle, Gittle and Erk” when we worked as a team doing archaeology (archaeologists write their initials on everything).
Kosachek (sp?)
Sounds vaguely familiar, haven’t been back in 30 years.
That would be Don Rittner — haven’t seen Don himself in years, but I’m fairly good friends with one of his ex-wives and their son. Don is now the Schenectady County Historian and is also quite the Mac computer guru. Please note the familiar names in the next to last paragraph of his (probably self-authored) Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Rittner
And looky what I just found:
http://www.savethepinebush.org/News/AugSept01/Wolcott.html
The clam steam place was down on the Mohawk near the twin bridges (I’m up at the northeast end of town, just up the hill from Mechanicville.), but the owners are now trying to get the clam steam park rezoned so they can build condos on it. Blech!
Well, it’s a big world but Albany is a small town…
Yes, but a big enough small town to have a lot of good cultural stuff going on. One of the reasons I like it is that, even today, you can leave the middle of the city and get out into real “country” in about 20 minutes — in multiple directions.
I vaguely remember Lou Ismay. Don would write his own Wikipedia entry … very funny….
More than once I’ve been in the in between space between Jack and JR. Great to see JR being honored as such.
The twin bridges … actually, four bridges, as (it is said) the roadway and the fraework are semi=independant. The idea was this: IF a nuke goes off nearby, we can still move the army back and forth across the Mohawk. Moving the army back and forth across the Mohawk has been an important issue ever since …. The French and Indian War, I guess……
Anyway, if a nuke goes off, it could not possibly take all four structures down. Which allows us to continue to get to the clambake picnic grounds.
Individual personalities aside of course, some nuns could be cruel (like any teacher),but most weren’t. We had all Ursulines from grade one to eight. I imagine we were hellish and one thing the nuns demanded was a disciplined classroom. The contrast was obvious when we had a substitute lay teacher. Suddenly we weren’t afraid and chattered like little monkeys. The trouble-makers had their names recorded. The discipline returned when the nun returned. Line-up, put out your hands, get whacked with a wooden paddle. In 2nd grade I remember a girl turning around to talk to a friend behind her getting smacked across the face with a textbook. No one ever spoke “out of turn” for the rest of the year.
By high school, in the early sixties, certain priests and lay teachers would resort to physical violence. We no longer took the nuns too seriously. Knocking around took place rather openly in the classroom and in the halls…and once for me when I got slugged in the jaw by Father E.in his vice-principal’s office.
No one ever reported such incidents. Your parents had to pay a tuition (Ohio), and most likely they would back the teaching staff. Mainly though, it would shame the family to be tossed from or pulled out of a catholic school in that era.
Comparing notes decades later with a friend who went through the Chicago cath system in the same era, we agreed that it wasn’t the physical violence that had lasting effects, but the psycho, anti-sexual guilt-tripping certainly did.
More on topic, I don’t recall any specific anti-semetic incidents in school.
One odd bit: We had a nun who refused to teach the Civil War in 7th grade history. She said as northerners we didn’t understand the causes and that the textbooks lied!
My kids have been in a Catholic school for five years, and its not like this at all now. Most of the teachers are not nuns. In fact, the nuns on faculty have declined from a half-dozen to two in that time, and both of them are retiring after this year.
No antisemitism in school as far as I can tell. There are Jews, Hindus, and Muslims attending. But this town is a special case -all the minorities go to private school, and the public school is almost 100% white, and probably 90% Baptist.
all the minorities go to private school, and the public school is almost 100% white, and probably 90% Baptist.
That is a little unusual.
Of course, the stories John and I were exchanging at Easter date back to the 1960s, primarily.
My mother still has nightmares about her Catholic school days, some 70 years ago.
My mom went to a Catholic elementary school in the ’50s. She didn’t have a uniform, but had a strict dress code, including no patent leather shoes because they might act as a mirror for boys to see up her dress. Boys and girls sat on opposite sides of the classroom, and it was hard for my mom to adjust to a normal high school where boys would sit right next to her. She hasn’t told me any stories of corporal punishment though. I’ll have to remember to ask her about that.
When I was a teenager, I dated some boys from a local Catholic high school. Surprisingly, that school had very thorough sex ed. They were taught about all kinds of birth control. The teacher told them that condoms are very effective, but it’s just a sin to use them. I think that last part was sort of a disclaimer.
I think that last part was sort of a disclaimer.
Yea, like an EULA. Nobody ever really reads them.
Mother drove school bus for many years. When she got an assignment for the Catholic school she asked the teacher/nun if she had a seating assignment (it was sometimes a good idea for troublemakers not to sit together).
What she got was girls on one side, boys on the other.