And Sometimes In The Springtime and Sometimes In The Fall...

I wear my pink pajamas in the summer when it hot
and I wear my woolen undies in the winter when it's not
and sometimes in the springtime
and sometimes in the fall
I jump between the sheets with nothing on at all!

Glory glory hallelujah
Glory glory what's it to ya?
sometimes in the springtime and sometimes in the fall
I jump between the sheets with nothing on at all! Woo!

One redeeming grace of going to summer camp was that big yellow school bus, my only experience during my school days of transportation other than biking or shoe leather express.  And we sang.  Badly, off tune, oft rude lyrics made up on the spur of the moment (scatological humor was huge amongst grade school kids; still is as far as I know) that implied knowledge we really didn't possess.  We sang "Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog" - that was our most contemporary offering.  We sang "We All Live In A Yellow School Bus".  "Bingo".  "The Ants Go Marching One By One, Hurrah".  "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall".  "Little Bunny FuFu".  "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt", "Found A Peanut", "Do Your Ears Hang Low", "Titanic", "Rise and Shine", "There's A Hole In The Bucket", "Three Cheers for the Busdriver" (Three-ee cheers for the busdriver, the busdriver, the busdriver, three cheers for the busdriver the worst of them all.  He's calm, he's cool, he drives like a foo-ool...) and numerous others, which kept us entertained on the interminable ride through Fairfield, Trumbull, Easton and Monroe to our destination.  According to Mapquest, the distance as the car drives is around 16 miles, but we didn't drive as the car drives.  Up and down side streets, stopping every so often to pick up a camper, down Ruane Street, up the Post Road, up Sturges, up Burr Street, up by the Aspetuck Reservoir, through the back streets of Easton to Sport Hill Road, right onto Route 59 and then right into camp.  This route was so ingrained that by the time I finally got my driver's license and had an opportunity to solo, this was my chosen practice route.  Following in the tire tracks of that old yellow school bus.

Not my actual car but close; mine had cancer of the rocker panels, which I 'repaired', thus earning my Bessie the title of "The Bondo Beast".  She went on to a restorer when I sold her; her new owner stopped by a year later and took me for a ride in the newly restored, candy-apple red, now valuable vintage car.  I wanted to cry.  1969 Plymouth Sport Sattelite Convertible, 8-cylinder, 383 engine.  I miss her to this day.

I found out just now, by using Mapquest, that my high school experience might have been far different, if I had taken the bus instead of riding my bike or walking.  Because I discovered that my house is 1.44 miles from the high school.  For some reason (probably my frequent absences during 8th grade and missing all the guidance counselors from Ludlowe who came to speak) I was never on the school bus route list.  Maggie Hyde lived about 1/4 mile down Old Field Road and she rode the bus.  Life is indeed unfair.

Summertime and the Camping is Easy

"No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks!"

We didn't sing it like Alice Cooper did until after 1972, when the song debuted (yes, it's nearly 40 years; I looked it up) but from first grade through high school graduation, that last half-day of school was our birthday and Christmas morning and a new puppy all rolled up into one.  We weren't given summer reading lists or summer projects that I can remember - if we had been assigned work, it would have gone undone.  Because it was SUMMERTIME!

With both parents working full-time, I wasn't granted the freedom that my friends Debbie and Jennifer and Diane and Maggie enjoyed.  I had to endure summer camp.

While Debbie and Diane and Jennifer and Maggie got to roam unfettered, swimming in Debbie or Diane's pool, exploring the swamps for burned golf balls (more on that later), playing kickball or just hanging out playing Hearts or War or Crazy Eights, I was shipped off, year after poison ivy filled year, to Camp Teepee.

If you've never been to summer camp, you can't imagine the agony of having to do arts and crafts, swimming twice a day in two Olympic sized pools (morning was for lessons; afternoon was free swim), and tying up with creosote-soaked twine every branch or twig that didn't move.  Most of them didn't move.  You can't empathize with the horror of learning archery or firing bb guns at little paper targets.  You will never know the anguish and torment of organized games, sleep overs, s'mores, cooking hot dogs on sticks over a campfire, or listening to ghost stories as the rain pours down on the canvas roof of your tent.  The sheer misery of taking row boats out on the pond, or frog hunts, or snipe hunts.

From the time I was six until I was 12, this is what I had to bravely withstand from 8:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m., five days a week, from late June until late August.  Instead of doing 'fun' stuff, I went to camp.

You may laugh but this is really how I viewed it.  I would have much preferred not attending camp, and let my feelings be known stridently every morning as I climbed aboard that big yellow school bus, bound for Monroe.

"I don't want to go to camp!"

"You are going to camp, and that's final!"

That was about the extent of the argument; I don't believe my mother ever lost an argument.  With anybody.  Over anything.

I did have a couple of best friends at camp, too.  Although most kids only attended for a two-week session, Marlys Spieler, like me, attended the entire summer and we commiserated constantly about all the things we'd rather be doing, and the people we'd rather be doing them with.  Robin Paradiso was another boon companion, but she was only forced to attend for the month of July.  The camp was segregated, first by grade, and then by sex, so we had the female counselors and the boys had the male counselors.  Of course, in these pre-politically correct days, the boys were the "braves" and the girls were the "squaws".  We each had our separate areas of camp as well; the braves would walk further up the path and take a left fork, whereas our campsites were closer to the main camp and to the right.  We actually only saw the boys at swim time, arrival and departure times and on the bus.  We were all given to understand that the boys' sites smelled, because they all peed on the trees, but this was an unsubstantiated rumor.

We lashed together branches with twine to make tables, seats and other handy camp devices.  We gathered rocks and made our own fire rings.  We applied poster paint liberally to everything we could; not even the toads were safe.  Each campsite had its own shelter but we also spruced things up a bit with as many lean-tos as the site would accommodate.  We had a cook-out every other week; we had a sleep-over every other week as well.

The day was well structured; we began by gathering immediately after the buses regurgitated us and recited the Pledge of Allegiance and saluted the flag.  Then, depending on the day and where you stood in the camp hierarchy (older kids got the better schedules), you would typically stow your lunch in a milk crate with the rest of your tribe, head off to your campsite to lash something, then sojourn to the craft hut to create a beautiful wallet, ashtray, pony-bead necklace or keychain from gimp (box stitch!  butterfly!  barrel!).  After snack, it was time for swimming lessons, then maybe archery or riflery (oh boy!  six year olds with arrows and bb guns!), and then back to the campsite for lunch.  Afternoon would see organized sports, boating, nature programs and 'free swim'.  And then back to the campsite to gather up all the cans of Off bug spray, wet towels and bathing suits, uneaten lunch particles, and then off to the buses. 

Day after day.  Week after week.  Year after year.  Camp Teepee, you still feature large in my nightmares.


 

On Death and Life and Phone Calls

Eighth grade is "B.M.O.C." (Big Man On Campus) time in a school that encompasses from Kindergarten to eighth grade.  The Head Honchos.  The Big Cheeses.  The Big Kahunas.  V.I.P.s.  Bigshots.  Badasses.  And of course, Sister Mary Robert's class - my class - ranked slightly above that "other" eighth grade class, as we had the baddest of the bad.  And me.  And Peggy and Maggie and Dorie.  Well, the boys were the baddest of the bad, at any rate.  Lording it over the younger classes, and having them do our heavy lifting, gave us all a sense of power which I'm sure contributed to our big heads and swelled egos.  But my world was about to come crashing down...

My father was a WWII veteran of the Philippines.  He was a man of few words and most of those words were not of the repeatable variety.  From my vantage point, he was pretty tough on the boys but never, ever laid a hand on me (that was Mom's job).  He had a hair-trigger temper, smoked Camel unfiltered, drank beer with some regularity (although I can't ever remember him drunk or even tipsy) and in his later years, seemed like an angry man.  He had high blood pressure but rarely, if ever, saw a doctor, and I think he had his first heart attack before age 50.  Around Thanksgiving of 1975, he had his second heart attack, this one much bigger than the first, and he had been in the hospital for about ten days when the phone call came.

I had had a dream the night before, a dream of falling and falling with no landing.  It was pretty scary, and I remember waking up with a feeling of dread that Saturday morning.  I answered the phone when it rang; it was a voice I didn't recognize, a voice that needed to speak to my mother.  I handed over the phone and went and sat on top of the dryer in the kitchen...and heard my mother's reaction to the news that my father had suffered a second heart attack.  A fatal heart attack.  December 6th, 1975 was the day my world changed forever.

The rituals and routines surrounding death and decisions made are a part of the adult world, to which I was not privy and of which I wanted no part anyway.  I didn't cry very much as it all seemed so unreal, and when I felt like crying, I sang "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in my head so as to distract myself.  We all sat during the wake, shell-shocked and each in our own worlds.  The funeral the next morning was more of the same, but my entire class attended and I thought "I wonder if they're all glad it's not their father who died?"  There was a long, black limousine that took us to the funeral, and from the funeral to the cemetery; I recall waving out the window to my classmates as we drove by them.  Nobody waved back.

My aunts and uncles surrounded my mother and the rest of us; I don't think we ever had so many casseroles in the house before or since.  But there comes the day when the mantle of life has to be taken up again, and my mother did so quickly and efficiently.  As shockingly sudden as my father's death had been, so too was the new order established in the household.  I discovered that my mother's attention was not necessarily focused in my direction and I was ready, willing and able to take full advantage of that fact.

The first time I skipped school, I hid out behind my Aunt Kay's garage, amidst the garbage cans, watching the driveway so I could tell when my mother had left for work and then hightailed it back into the house for a bowl of Capt'n Crunch with Crunchberries and a day of watching cartoons, drawing and reading to my heart's content.  As my mother didn't drive - she had never learned, it was always Dad who drove her everywhere - I knew I was safe until she arrived home at 5:15.

I alternated days on and days off school; this was back before absences of one day needed to be phoned in or accounted for in any way.  I was skipping one or two days a week, never in a row.  My school work didn't suffer; I was generally bored in school and didn't find it at all challenging or engaging but I had a knowledge base from constant reading that served me well.  This went on for about six weeks - until the phone call.

My mother loved her bowling leagues; for as long as I can remember, she would be picked up on a Tuesday or Wednesday night and bowl, sans Dad.  This was her own special thing, and she enjoyed it immensely, proudly displaying her "200" patch and "High Score" pins.  She bowled at Nutmeg Lanes, Westport Lanes, Tunxis Bowl - wherever her league took her.  She had resumed her league play by early January, Wednesday nights from 7 until 9:30 or so.  She never missed a bowling night if she could help it.

So I had the house to myself that Wednesday night when the phone rang at 7:30. 

"Hello, Mary.  This is Sister Mary Robert.  I wanted to discuss your absences with your mother."

My heart sank like the proverbial stone.  Caught!  Terror!  Panic!

"I'm sorry Sister.  She's not home right now.  She's bowling."

"Well, please let her know I called."

"Yes, Sister."

For days and weeks, I was filled with apprehension every time the phone rang.  I would scramble to answer it, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.  But Sister had put the fear of God back into my little guilt-ridden soul; I didn't have a single additional absence for the remainder of the school year.

Looking back, I am still unsure if this had been a plan to scare me straight devised between these two very strong, very savvy women, or if indeed I just got lucky.  I never asked my mother nor Sister; it will forever remain a mystery.

On Catholic School, Education and "Leisure"

I can't deny that I received a good education at St. Thomas' School but I can't help wonder if it was the same for all of my classmates.  Long before the nation recognized dyslexia or ADD or any sort of learning disability, St. T's recognized 'slow learners' in their own way - namely, by public humiliation and ridicule.  If you were called upon in class and didn't know the correct answer, there were repercussions, rather severe ones, and the harshest of them all were bestowed by the "Brides of Christ", although certain lay teachers weren't far behind.  It wasn't unusual to be punished by banishment to the cloakroom for an hour or so; this was one of more lenient methods.  It was de rigueur to be called to the head of the class, told to extend your hand, and have said hand smacked by a metal-edged ruler or yard-long pointer.  In the heat of the moment, the pointer might be employed on a miscreant's back or rump or even, in several memorable instances, about the head and shoulders.  Our public school counterparts, so far as I know, were spared the corporal punishment but the adults in Catholic schools generally had the support and blessings of the parents.  If you caught hell in the classroom, you caught double-hell at home, no questions asked, no excuses accepted.

I was informed in second grade that "girls aren't good at math".  I had been, up until then, pretty good in math.  Until that point.

But there were advantages to Catholic school...

We had "Catholic Only" holidays.  Yes, the word "holiday" springs from "Holy Day" and we had "Holy Days of Obligation" sprinkled liberally throughout the school calendar.  We had the Ascension in the spring, All Saints Day (very conveniently, the day after Halloween) in November, the Immaculate Conception in December (and oh!  to have a recording of these chaste nuns trying to explain THAT concept to us!) and several others.  To rub it in, we would take informal field trips to the public schools, where our friends were sure to see us walking by their classroom windows, waving merrily until we were chased off the grounds, generally by the janitor or a free teacher, but on several memorable occasions, by the principal.  Of course, our publicly educated friends returned the favor on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  To us, there were few sights funnier than a nun flying out the classroom door in the hopes of catching a heathen kid (for all public school children were heathen) by the ear and dragging them in to set an example of them.  It never happened; St. T's was surrounded by swamps and we were all well-versed in jumping over Ash Creek to escape, but it always livened up a classroom to be left unattended for a period of time.

Sister Jean Marie and the 5th grade class...Diana Romano, bottom row right, was covering a bandage on her knee.  From bottom left:  Laura Cherney, Rebecca (forget her last name but she lived on Cummings Ave.), Lisa Johnson, Alain Kelly, Ellen Bolger, Loretta Johnson, Diana Romano.  Middle row from left:  Sister Jean Marie Lynch, Pat Sullivan, John Levasseur, Peggy Rawley, Maureen Mulcahy, Maggie Hyde, Mary Trupp, Mary Fox, Ann ("Cookie") Felner, Paul Skalkos, Brad Melius, Sean Neary.  Top Row:  Jim Pleszko, Gary Corbett, Pat Boland, John Higginbotham, Mike Philbin, Bill O'Brien, John Curran, Seamus ("Jamie") Walsh, Frank Sullivan, Tom Wargo, Scott Fabry, Mike Morrissey.

Third and fourth grades were taught by Mrs. Rossignol and Mrs. Bannon respectively; Mrs. Rossignol was young and fresh and pretty and fun but Mrs. Bannon was a grizzled veteran (she had a beard, by God!) of many classes and was accorded the respect she demanded.   By this time, the class caste was well established; there were the 'popular' kids, the 'smart' kids, and the rest.  The law of the jungle ruled both the classroom and the playground and none of us were fully released from our cliques until high school.  The outcasts were picked on mercilessly; the popular kids were fawned over, and the smart kids...well, that was dependent on whether you were willing to let the popular kids copy off your paper.  There was some degree of fluidity amongst the boys; if the boy in question was able to pull off a particularly breathtaking prank, such as the M-80 in the toilet of the boy's bathroom, he was granted 'popular' status for a period of time, but such was not the case amongst the girls. 


When we arrived in Sister Jean Marie's fifth grade classroom, our reputation was set in stone.  We were, without a doubt, the "worst class that ever passed through these doors" and we were "all bound for the hot place without a hope of heaven".  We were unruly; we were a bunch of monkeys; we were wasting our teacher's time.  In an attempt to soothe the savage beasts, Sister Norberta was called out of retirement to teach us music; that lasted three months.  She taught us "Santa Lucia", renamed by the boys "Santa Screw-chia"; Sister Norberta's hearing was failing and I don't think she ever caught on.  She taught us "Above The Plain".  She taught us "Adore Te Devote".  I can still sing every verse and refrain, but cannot hear "Santa Lucia" without recalling our alternate lyrics.


Sixth grade was Miss Dugas.  Miss Dugas was a single woman whose lunch always consisted of tuna fish and a banana.  It was in Miss Dugas' class I learned about Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns; I can vividly recall driving through Southport by the Yacht Club, and excitedly informing my father about Roman architecture, which columns were which, and searching in vain for flying buttresses.  There weren't many flying buttresses in Fairfield County, we discovered.

Ionic Columns!

Corinthian Columns!

Doric Columns!

Seventh grade - at a time when our public school friends had "graduated" to Junior High School at Tomlinson - the girls were accorded the great honor of no longer having to wear the jumper uniform.  We were now allowed to wear skirts instead.  But if the nuns suspected that our skirt was not regulation, we were made to kneel on the cold hard marble to demonstrate that it did or didn't.  And if it didn't, we could be sent home until our mothers corrected the issue.  With hormones starting to rage, and odd hairs and bumps showing up in strange places, the girls were sequestered away for a series of movies - "health" class!  And the boys had their equally strange sojourn, learning about how they must treat all girls as sisters.  It's a wonder to me that Catholics ever reproduced after these classes.  It was about this time that the boys would be excused for bathroom breaks, and squirm out the bathroom window for their cigarette breaks.  The nuns didn't dare venture into the boy's room; I can only guess what they thought was going on at the time.  But 7th grade brought us our favorite teacher as well.

Mrs. Dorothy Gogol was a wise-cracking, no-nonsense, experienced teacher who knew how to go with the flow.  It was she who christened us the "Sweathogs", after the incorrigible group of students featured in "Welcome Back Kotter".  If you wised off to Mrs. Gogol, you only did it once.  Or twice, if she laughed the first time.  She was one of two teachers who possessed a healthy sense of humor, and somehow was able to maintain some semblance of order while still teaching better than perhaps any other teacher I've ever had.  In Mrs. Gogol's classroom, we learned about Science by doing experiments and using microscopes, instead of just reading about it.  Or should I say "microscope"; we didn't have the equipment of the public schools and had to make do.  It was from Mrs. Gogol we learned about Darwin and the theory of evolution; I'm still not sure if those particular lessons were condoned by the priests but nothing held Mrs. Gogol back.  Perhaps they were known, as it was at this time that Father Raymond Petrucci came in to teach us religion.  Most of the priests we interacted with were either feared (for good reason as it turns out) or respected without question, but Father Petrucci was the only one who was actually loved.  Generally even-tempered, we were still successful at getting a rise out of him on occasion - at one point he was so livid he threw a globe at one of the boys - but for the most part, it was Father P. who tried his best to make saints out of the class of sinners.  And if you were on the softball team, which he coached, he'd take the team to Dairy Queen for ice cream to celebrate a win.  None of us ever got fat, suffice it to say, and his wallet remained largely unscathed.

Our eighth and final year together at St. Thomas was a challenge for our principal.  We were still the largest class and our destructive collective herd mentality was apparently unparalleled throughout school history.  And I mean ANY school, anywhere on earth. The drastic measure was taken to separate us into two classes; Sister Ignatia Marie, being a sheltered woman and perilously close to retirement age, would take the less challenging class (aka the "good kids") and Sister Mary Robert, the principal, would take the troublemakers.  She threw in a few 'good kids' to serve as an example (has that EVER worked?) and she totally skewed the grading curve by including a selection of 'smart' girls.  Our classroom was the school library, as it was right next door to her office so she could monitor the affairs of the school while she taught us.  She was a brave, brave woman and very smart; it was extremely rare to pull on over on Sister Mary Robert.  Which made the effort all the more worthwhile.  Sister Mary Robert was the only nun lacking a rude nickname; you really didn't mess with her, at least where she could see you.  She stood 4'8" from sensible shoes to the top of her wimple so she was in no way physically imposing, but like Napoleon, she had a presence and authority.  One of her favorite methods of assuring a boy's full attention was to grab his necktie and pull his face right down to hers.  This lead to the majority of boys in my class to wear clip-ons, in the hopes of 'getting' her.  It may have happened once or twice, but certainly not three times.  Her academic instruction method was unusual; at one point she decided we need to learn Latin, and armed with workbooks dug out from some dusty storeroom, we learned Latin.  Sister took great joy in having us read aloud while she graded papers or saw to some other administrative task and the only time I saw her look up at a reader was the memorable occasion of "The Great Gaffe of John Higginbotham 1975".  Poor John was reading about Africa during Social Studies and was cruising along quite well until that fateful word.  The younger classes swore, during recess, that they could hear our class laughing from all the way down the hall, and upstairs to the 1921 part of the building where the third and fourth grade classrooms were located.


The word was "underfed".  As in, under fed.  But poor John read it as "un-derf-ed".

School Days, School Days...

Kindergarten was to be my only public school experience until I got to high school, and my memories of kindergarten are still fresh enough to be recalled.  Old Field School was within walking distance; Mom would walk me across the street in front of our house and send me on my way, milk money clutched in a handkerchief.  There was only one session of kindergarten at the time, I believe, and that was the morning session.  It may have only been three or four hours, but it sure seemed like an eternity to a little mind.  We painted (always wearing smocks) and we played and we were read to and we napped and we snacked and were sent on our way around noon time.  As Mom and Dad were both working full time, my afternoons were supervised by Margaret Rawson, who lived across the street from us in a rambling, dilapidated four-story house which looked perpetually haunted.  Her kitchen was in the basement, and the support beams were entire tree trunks, which I would peel whenever she wasn't looking.  There was a tremendous wood-and-coal-fired cook stove in the corner, a deep double tub porcelain sink, a wringer washer and a round oak table with lion's paws clutching balls for feet, tipped in brass.  The room always smelled strongly of cigarette smoke, as Margaret's brother Joe and niece Catherine were both chain smokers; they would light their next cigarette with the butt on the one they had just finished.  I would play outside, or color at the table, or play the occasional game of "Go Fish" with Margaret until Mom or Dad came over to pick me up.

Mary and Paul at the Beardsley Zoo, Fall 1968

I don't recall any family vacations; my mother always referred to my father as a "Stick in the Mud" but since 'family vacations' were really not universal at this time, we had to settle for "Sunday Drives".  The great thing about the Sunday Drives were not knowing where you would wind up.  Sunday mornings were devoted to church, of course, and Sunday dinner was served around 2:00 p.m.  But after dinner and dishes, we got in the old Buick station wagon and off we went for a drive 'in the country', which was basically Monroe, Easton or Newtown.  Sometimes Dad bagged the 'country' part of the drive and we headed into the 'big city' of Bridgeport - Seaside Park featured large, as did Beardsley Park and the zoo.  Sometimes Mom and I would travel to Long Island and the grandparents homestead in Huntington and these were special occasions; Dad would drop us off at the Port Jefferson ferry pier in Bridgeport, and we'd climb aboard the "Martha's Vineyard" ferry (that was the name, not the destination) for the trip across the Long Island Sound.  Grandpa Denton's car always smelled of Borkum-Riff pipe tobacco but the house smelled of butter and coffee and good things baking.  Grandpa Denton's second wife was from Sweden and Grandma Denton was a baker of all things delicious.  They kept White Rock soda (fruit punch!  lemon-lime!  grape!  black cherry!) in their basement fridge, and a stock of toys in the closet of the spare bedroom.  And coloring books and crayons and (gasp!) plain white pads of drawing paper,  a luxury unheard of in my experience.  We would settle in, watch a slide-show of their latest travels (during which I would fall asleep as it was pretty boring to me) and then enjoy visits from cousins and neighbors with funny Swedish names like "Astrid" or "Asa".

Mary at Aunt Madeline's house in upstate New York. Note the length of the pants; these were supposed to be long pants but I guess Grandma hadn't seen me in a while and I had a growth spurt.  But they were from Bermuda and I loved them regardless of the fact they didn't fit.  Can you make out my PF Flyers?  They made me run faster and jump higher.

Grandpa's sisters lived together in another part of Long Island, and Aunts Madeline, Marie and Anna were booming, boisterous and larger than life.  Aunt Madeline married well and had a summer home in the Adironack mountains, complete with a full-size gymnasium, a babbling brook running by the side of the house, a huge screen porch and acres of property.  Dad never joined us on these trips, as I recall, but cousins sometimes did and we had a field day exploring, teasing the cows from the dairy farm across the street, hunting for crayfish and playing hide-and-seek.

First grade at St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic School; my first bout of separation anxiety, as my best friend Debbie was in the other class.  The one with the nice, young, pretty nun named "Sister Laura".  I had the "Old Crow" nun, whom I believe was Sister Mary Something.  Almost ALL of the nuns were Sister Mary Something or Sister Something Mary:  Sister Mary Robert, Sister Jean Marie, Sister Ignatia Marie.  Nuns in real life were nothing like nuns as portrayed in "The Sound of Music" or "The Flying Nun" or "The Singing Nun".  Nuns in real life, with few exceptions, were mean.  Most nuns didn't like children very much, if at all.  Children were full of the devil, and had to be exorcised by all and any means, including physical means, if necessary.  And most of the nuns were misandristic;  they were boy-hating fiends who were free with the corporal punishment as it applied to boys.  Granted, the boys could be unruly and unmanageable but I don't ever recall a girl being hit with a ruler or a pointer; the boys were hit on a daily basis.  And threatened with eternal damnation.  The visions of hell these warped women conveyed to us were terrifyingly real, seared into our burgeoning brains with an efficacy well-honed and oft used.  Repent, lest ye suffer the fires of Hades.... 


By second grade, Debbie had moved back to Old Field School but I was stuck at St. T's like a fly in amber.  With an early January birthday, I was the oldest kid in the class and was therefore taller and bigger than most of my classmates.  And due largely to being oldest, I made up 25% of the 'smart kids'.  The ones the teachers always called on for the answers, no matter where we sat in the room.  The other 'smart kids' also had January birthdays:  Peggy Rawley on 1/9 and Maggie Hyde on 1/17 and Mary Power, too.  I don't think this is coincidental; if you have an extra year of reading, Sesame Street and experience under your school uniform, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that you will get the positive reinforcement of usually have the correct answer.  And therefore you strive to maintain that 'smart kid' moniker.

Mrs. McMahon was the sole teacher of second grade; in the larger world, enrollment in the parochial schools was declining faster than January temperatures, and our class of 24 was soon swelled in ranks as St. Anthony's Catholic School (largely Polish) and St. Pius Catholic School closed their doors.  Until this time, St. T's was a neighborhood school and everybody walked to school; those who lived very far out were driven by their parents but those kids were few and far between.  But now we had buses for our new recruits, and our class size was around 36 for a while.  By and large, society in the early 1970s was not as mobile as it is today and although we had a few new faces who didn't last long, and old faces whose parents let them change schools (there were cases of pedophile priests), we had a core class of 32 and though it seemed like it was mostly boys, by my count it was 18 boys to 14 girls. With surnames of "Sullivan", "Neary", "Morrisey", "Boland", "O'Brien", "O'Neil", "Walsh", "Philbin" and a couple of Italian names (Romano, Francoletti) thrown in for good measure.  We were a class with a unique dynamic; more on the "Class of 1976 Sweathogs" tomorrow.

And So It Begins...

OK, this is my blog.  This is the blog of an ordinary, dyed in the wool, red-blooded Yankee babe, Connecticut born and bred, and the ordinary happenings of life.  A bit of background:  I was born one year and two weeks after John F. Kennedy was inaugurated President of these United States.  My parents hadn't even selected a girl's name for the impending birth, as the prior five births had all produced children of the male persuasion.  I was to be Andrew; damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.  In what I'm sure was unintended irony ("Mary, Mary, quite Contrary"), I was christened "Mary Anna Alva", thus honoring both matriarchs and step-matriarch of the Denton and Trupp families. It was such a big deal it made page six of the Bridgeport Post:

Unfortunately, the writer obviously tried to rhyme "Cup" with "Trupp"...as we all had to hammer home to teachers, friends, and the world at large:  "It's pronounced TROOP!!"

Anybody unacquainted with the Trupp family could tell our Catholic heritage in an instant, upon hearing my brother's names:  Jon, Mark, Peter, Matthew, Paul.  Mom never could stomach the name "Luke", but I'm sure if she had six more sons, the rest of the apostles would also have been so honored.  Well, maybe not Thaddeus or Judas...

We were not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination; clothes were handed down from brother-to-brother and by the time they got to Paul, were well worn, patched and mismatched.  Dinner was survival of the fittest; Mom would slice link sausage into her spaghetti sauce and if you weren't careful, brother's forks would stray onto your plate to snag the delectable morsels.  Dad had a large organic garden which took up a good portion of the yard.  Corn, tomatoes, peas, beans, cucumbers, lettuce, cabbage and occasionally potatoes were planted and consumed each year. I can recall Mom canning many, many jars of tomatoes for storage in the jelly cupboard in the basement.  Dad supplemented our protein needs by fishing and clamming - but he was a bit of a snob when it came to the fish.  We never ate bluefish ("too oily") or mackerel ("garbage fish, fit for nothing but the lobster traps"), but we had plenty of filet of sole, expertly fileted by his own hand, and woe to you if complained about the stray bone or two.  I remember my Godfather dropping off burlap bags of lobsters, a dozen or so at a time.  I never cared for lobster much; guess it was the screaming noise they made when they were dropped into the pot of boiling water.  You can say it was just the sound of the steam being released from the carapace, and lobsters have no vocal cords - to me, they screamed.

Since the majority of our friends, neighbors and classmates at St. Thomas Aquinas School were of relatively the same socio-economic status as we, I wasn't even aware of the distinction between "rich" and "us" until high school.  Basically, we all played in the swamps and wore hand-me-downs and ate the same stuff.  By the time I started kindergarten at Old Field School (with Mrs. Fuse, pronounced "Fuse-AY") in 1968, my oldest brother was off to college at the University of Connecticut, studying horticulture.  My father's company, Alcoa, had just moved down south for cheaper labor (or so I gleaned from the conversations upon which I eavesdropped) and my mother returned to the workforce, first at Barker's, a department store in Westport, and then as a secretary for the Town of Fairfield's Planning and Zoning Department.  Dad finally found a job in building maintenance at the YMCA; I can remember how scary the boiler room was when I would walk from school to the "Y" to meet him on Wednesday afternoons, when we all three did the grocery shopping at Pantry Pride.  But it was cool to follow him around if I arrived early, and dip my feet in the pool when he wasn't watching.

With both parents working full-time, I was the quintessential latch-key kid.  As much as it may boggle the mind of current schoolkids, we very rarely had homework and thus, the afternoon was largely our own.  With an hour or two before we needed to be home for dinner and whatever evening rituals our parents subscribed to, we invariably got together a game of kickball, or swamp exploration, or snowball fights if the weather was cooperative.  On weekends, we were kicked out of the house (fortunately this usually didn't happen until after Saturday morning cartoons) with a reminder to "be home before dark".  All the parents pretty much knew where we were going and who we were with, and afternoon phone calls - "What's for dinner?"  "Liver."  "Can I eat over Debbie's?" were expected.  We didn't have 'play-dates'; we had freedom.  And sleepovers.  And ghost stories.  And older brothers who probably kept an eye on us, but wouldn't have admitted it under torture.  The sixties and seventies were a great time to be a kid.