While taking the Sacrament this morning I was brought up short by the realization that until I was 16 years of age I never gave the person or mission of Jesus Christ a single serious thought.
As a child I had a cheap plastic crucifix hanging over my bed but I only ever thought of it as a sort of good luck charm; I took it off the wall and with me into the basement whenever the tornado siren went off in our Southeast Minneapolis neighborhood.
My mother was Catholic and my father an accommodating agnostic; he drove us to Mass at St Lawrence over by Dinkytown on Sunday mornings, staying out in the car reading a Mickey Spillane paperback until we were done genuflecting.
Sundays in the Midwest back then were supposed to be peaceful and restful; the big department stores and other large retail concerns were closed -- I still remember an ad for a furniture store on WCCO Radio in which the announcer piously ended his spiel by intoning "Closed on Sundays -- we prefer to see you in church."
But the movie theaters and public beaches were wide open on the Sabbath.
We went to the movies on Sunday for only two personalities. John Wayne and Jerry Lewis.
My dad was besotted with Wayne, and never missed any of his films -- dragging me along with effective bribes of greasy buttered popcorn, kegs of Coke, and all the Nonpareils and Jordan Almonds I could hold (which was a lot). This despite my mother's admonitions to him that I would develop tremendous stomach aches and all my teeth would rot overnight and fall out.
There was very little I wouldn't do to catch the latest Jerry Lewis flick, short of murder. My dad loathed Jerry Lewis, and my mom absolutely refused to go to any of his movies -- she preferred to stay home and do up the dinner dishes by herself. But I wheedled and begged and bargained with such determination that my dad would give in at last rather than listen to any more of my mosquito-like whining. He would fortify himself prior to the ordeal with several quick snorts of Old Grand-Dad, and then nap sullenly through Lewis's cinema shenanigans while I laughed myself sick.
Lake Johanna was ten minutes away by car, and when the molten days of midsummer left us all breathless in our sweltering, un-airconditioned house after Mass on Sunday, mom would pack up some baloney sandwiches, Old Dutch potato chips, and a large ungainly thermos of cherry Kool-Aid, and we would dash off to the lake. The beach was rather stingy, when it came to sand; but the water was full of aggressive little perch and sunnies that liked to inquisitively nip at your skin -- a true ghoul, I always imagined I was being ripped to pieces by sharks somewhere in the vastness of the South Pacific. We would not return home until the sun began to set and my skin was so puckered I could use it for a washboard.
But most Sundays, after Mass, we simply stayed at home. After a huge dinner and the consequent shouting match between my mother and my sisters on who was going to wash the dishes, we all migrated to the living room -- Mom would read Good Housekeeping; Dad would park in front of the TV to watch an unending parade of grainy black and white movies that featured either Fred MacMurry or Randolph Scott; my sisters messed around with their Barbie dolls; and I mooned over the rich and vibrant hues of the Sunday funnies, as provided by the Pioneer Press. My parents took both the Minneapolis Tribune and the Minneapolis Star during the week, but their comics section was somewhat lacking on Sundays; so we got the cartoon-profligate Pioneer Press on Sunday. The continuing adventures of Prince Valiant, Dick Tracy, Snuffy Smith, Li'l Abner, and Alley Oop, among others, offered me a fascinating and violent smorgasbord of fantasy characters and plot lines that inspired me to draw reams of stick figures flying advanced jet machines or fighting horrible purple blob monsters with as many claws, fangs, and horns crammed onto their bodies as I could manage.
Looking back, it now occurs to me that even during the stifling and inhibited Fifties, when I was a boy, there was a strain of manic insanity available to Americans in the form of Jerry Lewis and the Sunday funnies, not to mention Mad Magazine and television reruns of the Three Stooges. I instinctively gravitated towards anything rude and slightly schizophrenic. Thank goodness most of that kind of stuff was considered too trivial to analyze and then prohibit, so I didn't have to sneak around to enjoy it as if it were pornography or underage drinking.
Nothing of a religious nature was ever discussed or even hinted at during those Sundays long ago. We didn't even have a Bible in the house.
My mother had some ingrained sense that untrammeled playtime with the neighborhood kids should be discouraged on Sundays, so I always had to ask if I could scamper outside to mess around with my friends Randy and Wayne. During the winter, which I suspect my mother hated, she would brusquely tell me to stay home and stop bothering other people, when I asked her.
But in the summer, during those long humid days when it seemed like the sun would never set and she would never be able to confine her beloved children to their beds, she became more liberal and allowed me to be unyoked.
"Go play outside, run through the sprinklers -- just stay out of Mrs. Henderson's rhododendrons!" she'd say wearily, sinking onto the couch with the latest copy of Reader's Digest.
She didn't have to tell me twice -- I was out the door before you could say Dagmar.
Randy, Wayne, and I had a carefully guarded hoard of small balloons -- just the right kind to make water bombs. We kept these weapons of mass sogginess stashed in Wayne's garage, on a shelf behind the WD-40 and Miracle-Gro. Our object all sublime was to prepare a dozen of 'em at a time to lob at my sisters, or any other loathsome girls unwise enough to wander within our sites. Then go hide among Mrs. Henderson's rhododendrons until our victims stopped looking for us. Those bushes sure were full of ants . . .
By the time I returned home I'd be crawling with little brown Formicidae, which required an immediate tongue lashing from my mother -- and then a quick dunk in the bathtub.
Sunday night leftovers were never warmed up; if you couldn't eat it cold that was just too darn bad. The kitchen was closed to the general public at 5 p.m.
Until I turned eight I slept with my sisters in the same bedroom, and Sunday night, as with any other night, mom would have us all kneel down together to say our prayers -- but it hardly gave me any spiritual insight to repeat them night after night:
"Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take."
Even to a kid as dumb as a rock, and I was igneous from the get-go, there seemed something sinister, maybe even downright menacing, about these four lines.
Never mind this soul business: What's all this about dying? Who said anything about kicking the bucket? I feel great -- don't even want to get into bed . . . full of vim and vigor! Farthest thing from my mind, croaking is.
But mom insisted we chant this by our bedside every night. And no explanation about what it meant. Just do it.
I never heard about the possibility of a resurrection until I was 16 -- but I sure heard about dying every night, until I stopped saying that grim little ditty at age 9.
And so that's how my heathen childhood Sunday would come to a close -- on a note of uncertainty and anxiety.
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