And
frankly, the remnants of this division
existed into my generation of children, born in the 1940s. Working fathers and mothers, barely able to afford much more than food on
the table, sacrificed money and time to
build private schools in the name of their religious affiliation, whether
Catholic or Protestant. These were
people who held their own faith sacred and mistrusted that of others.
We children were schooled daily in our religion at one of the thousands
of Catholic Schools that were common landmarks in the eastern cities of the
1950’s. Here in school also, one would never hear scurrilous comments
about other faiths, but it was somehow made quite apparent to us that Protestants
were “not like us.” and in fact we were better, since our religion had more
rules to follow and required attendance at church. I might add that the Vatican hysterically tried to regulate sex. How perfected could an adherent get, when he
opened his mind and yearnings to the penetrating stare of the Church? I have to wonder how many old Irish priests
got to giggling when they considered that in training young Catholics to think
themselves better than Protestants, they
were paying direct retribution to the damned Brits who lorded over the Old Sod
for centuries, starving the Irish into submission and decimating their
culture. And in my town, it was payback
to the generation of Teutonic Europeans who had arrived before the Irish and in
the 1940’s and 1950’s held positions of
power and importance in the city. It
often amounted to simple reverse snobbery.
I remember one particular
incident from my childhood that should serve to illustrate a subtle
prejudice. I call it, “Religion Matters,
Even In A Snow Storm.”
As I trudged up Sunset Avenue
carrying a canvas bag with “The Observer Dispatch” emblazoned on the side, I never realized I was marching along in
the tradition of those orphan boys 100
years before who eked out a living selling newspapers. I was not an orphan, but the Rev. Mrs. Gasek
... her husband the pastor of Utica’s Grace Episcopal Church ... may have thought so when I came to her door during
a blizzard on that wintry evening in
1955, to collect the bill for the week’s newspapers. The storm would turn out to be one of the
city’s worst of the decade. Over 5 feet
of snow fell in less than 24 hours.
Adults would worry and fret, but to me a heavy snow was simply an event that required I lift my
feet a little higher to get where I was going through the drifts. At eleven years of age, a big snow was just plain fun, especially
when it closed the schools. I thought of myself as a boy of the north, a
strapping Son of Utica, born in a blizzard so I was told. But to be honest, this storm was indeed
beginning to worry me as I aimed toward home.
There were no cars left on the roads, and it looked like folks had given
up the frozen battle and were now huddled
around their stoves and radiators. I was
totally alone, in the dark and in a
blizzard.
The Gaseks were the last customer on my newspaper route, and
they lived in a comfortable house on the
corner of Sunset Ave. and Newell Street, just three blocks from my home. As the wind rattled their window panes and
snow piled up on the front porch, climbing its way to the window bottoms, the pastor’s wife answered the ringing door bell and opened her
front door to behold young Dave,
swaddled in six layers of clothing (none matching) and probably missing one
glove, as was often the case in those days.
"Forty cents, please,"
squeaked out from my midget apparition while the snow swirled past me
and blasted against the poor woman,
poised before me and resembling a
windblown Donna Reed.
The Reverend was just
arriving home, having had a harrowing drive up Genesee Street from his church.
I politely refused the woman’s offer to step inside. After all, they were as Protestant as one (or
two) could be, he being the minister of a downtown church, she being the
hostess of no doubt over a thousand covered dish suppers. She insisted her husband take me home in his
car. He looked a bit rattled but
indicated he was game to head back out on the road. I declined that offer also, not wanting to be
dropped off in front of my home by a non-Catholic clergyman, even in the middle
of a howling storm of biblical proportions. Besides, how would I explain it to my parents?
I tried to withdraw from the porch, stepping
backward into the eye of the storm. Mrs.
Gasek refused to let go of my arm, her feet firmly planted on the threshold as
she stood shivering in the doorway. Today I chuckle as the vision of a couple standing in the gaping maw
of the storm comes to mind, she pleading with him not to go. I
could see the snow building up on her black woolen dress.
“You can’t leave,” she
shouted into the wind, though barely inches from my face. “You’ll be lost in the storm! We’ll find you in a snow bank tomorrow! Frozen!”
The Reverend Mr. Gasek,
perhaps hearing a whisper from the Holy Spirit, was suddenly inspired to ask
for my phone number. He called my mother
and asked her permission. She was
embarrassed, but assented, and I rode home in a wonderfully warm and commodious
black Buick. I was so comfortable when
we arrived in front of my house, it’s a
wonder I wasn’t ready to forsake the faith of my fathers and turn Protestant immediately.
The
only mention of the episode that evening was from my Dad. "That was very nice of the Gaseks,” he
said. “But the next time it snows so
hard, come right home."
Yeah,
sure, OK Dad.
I
suppose it's unnecessary to say the Gaseks were terrifically nice people. I
continued to bring the evening newspaper to their home until a year later when
we moved to another part of the city and I gave up the West Utica route for another closer to our new flat on Brinckerhoff Ave.
I’d
say one piece of Good News was that my generation of Catholics continued to
meet and mix with a wider variety of people than those we grew up with. Some were edifying, like the Reverend Gasek and
his family. Many of my fellow students
and I transitioned from Catholic schools
to public colleges and became acquainted with the liberal arts and a larger
world. Many married so-called non-Catholics and today all
of us probably count among our friends people from a variety of religions. And finally, from different races and
cultures.
I live
in a far more liberal world than my ancestors.
While I may be lighthearted in the re-telling of their stories, I don’t
belittle them and their beliefs or
traditions, having not lived in their time or faced their unique
problems. But I get annoyed when I see
people in recent generations close themselves off to anything different from
their own understanding. Worse are those
who take a nation’s history of disappointments, wed it to religious fervor and
harness the resulting violence, hatred and tears to a political and criminal
agenda.
The
Good News, as I understand it, is supposed to free us. Only mankind can enslave
us.
*
See John O’Grady’s “Catholic Charities in the United States,” Chapter 7, 1930,
Ransdell, New
York. Also available on-line at Google Books.
David Griffin copyright 2009
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