Be True To Your School
Geez, my old grammar school, Blessed Sacrament in Holyoke, is closing after 103 years. Back in the day when I went to B.S., enrollment between the old and new schools was probably around 900 kids. Now it’s 112.
All eleven kids in my family went to B.S. Check this photo out. Seven of us on the first day of school. The photo appeared on the front page of the Transcript-Telegram. I look like a dork with a Wiffle-ball haircut and Pat Boone white bucks.
Back then, all the teachers, and the principal, were nuns. We might have been the last generation to have an all-nun faculty. Some of the best kids I ever knew went to B.S. with me: Ace Cavanaugh, Wimple McKenna, Oscar O’Neill, Big Oakie O’Connor, Terry Collins, Kevin Hart, Joey Hynds, David Champoux, Larry Reddin, Moose Matroni, Tommy Hennessy, Kevin Conlin, Java Jules Rothus, and Pete Shewchuk.
I remember the first time I asked a nun if I could go to the bathroom. The nuns called it the “lavatory.” That scared the hell outta me. I thought I was gonna run into Frankenstein.
A few years later I ran into another episode. This was in the old school, which had warped floors that sloped downhill. This jackass kid who sat next to me couldn’t make it to the lavatory, so the moron took a leak under his desk and it rolled right under mine. Then he raised his hand and told the nun, “Darby O’Brien took a whiz under his desk.” Are you kidding me? Next thing I know, I’m sitting in the principal’s office and the nun tells my father he should take me to a urologist.
Not long after that, I became a legend. I lifted a cigar from my Uncle Dan O’Connell, brought it to school with a couple of stick matches, and lit it. We had those old wooden desks with inkwell holes, so when the nun walked in, I dropped the cigar down the inkwell hole in Java Jules’ desk. Smokin’ up a storm.
Word spread through both schools that I lit up a cigar and smoked it in fourth-grade religion class. Yeah, I was a kid who was good at mischief, not good at grades.
You know, the nuns really put the fear of God in you. As a Catholic, you couldn’t eat meat on Fridays. I remember my father gave me an army mess kit, and one summer morning we went fishing around 4 a.m. at Ashley Reservoir. It was a Friday, and I cooked up some tasty bacon and eggs. After eating, my cousin realized he had broken a strict Catholic rule. He panicked, jumped into the water up to his neck, and started screaming that we were all going to get hit by a bolt of lightning and go straight to hell. That’s how it was with the nuns.
After that, I made it a point to only eat meat on Fridays. My kids and a lot of their friends went to B.S., too. And most of ‘em turned out alright. Those were the days, my friend. Keep your dukes up.
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