THe LuLac Edition #269, July 21rst, 2007

PHOTO INDEX: THE BLOG EDITOR PRECARIOUSLY PERCHED ON THE OLD FIRE ESCAPE HE USED TO CLIMB EVERY DAY AT THE SCHOOL, A LONG SHOT OF THE NOW DEFUNCT ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST GRADE SCHOOL IN PITTSTON AND THE BLOG EDITOR STANDING IN FRONT OF THE DOOR HE BROKE IN 1968.

OLD SCHOOL!!

This week the Diocese of Scranton announced that parents who have refused to pay their back due tuition bills in protest for parochial school closures will be turned over to a collection agency.

What better time than to share a story I wrote last month on the fire sale at my old grade school.

OLD TIMER AT THE OLD SCHOOL

Grade School Memories

The small article in the newspaper told me that a tag sale was going on at my old grade school. Closed down by decree of the Bishop, St. John the Baptist School as I knew it was gasping its last breath. I decided to go and take one last look and maybe perhaps pick up a piece of a memory of my time there. Or better yet, take a look at some old photos from my era there, the 1960s. At the end of 2006, I searched for a group graduation photo that featured my very first girlfriend. I made her a character in my third book, (a novel still under construction) to see if she was as beautiful as my mind built her up. She wasn’t, she turned out to be a seventh grade kid! And I was no prize myself, being a nerdy eighth grade kid.
I tried to get in touch with my friend David the night before but he wasn’t answering his phone. Turned out to be an electrical problem from a thunderstorm. By chance, my friend Paul called (not blog contributor Pauler but a kid I went to grade school with) offering me a ticket to a Yankee game at PNC Field. I had plans that night but offered him a ride with me to the old school to check out the memories. “I don’t want anything from that place” he replied. On January 2nd, 1968, Paul and I made history at the school by breaking a plate glass door. Here’s how that happened. In the minus 5 degree weather (yeah, we had recess in the type of weather that they cancel classes for today) Paul blocked the door. Inside the balmy 80 degree weather, I pushed with my knee to get out. The 80 degree heat met the minus 5 degree cold and with the power of my left leg, the door and its glass shattered into a million pieces. An investigation ensued shortly followed thereafter by an inquisition. Ultimately, Father Super provided the voice of reason, telling our hysterical parents and vengeful nuns that there was insurance and the door would be replaced. I thought about this 39 years later and after conjuring up this memory for Paul, even though he still declined my invite, he did ask if I could pick him up something. “See if you could get me a ruler, preferably one with blood still on it from how the nuns used to hit us” he said.
The Sisters of Sts. Cyril and Methodius used the rulers as tools of discipline and almost always drew a little blood. Just by chance, Mrs. LuLac was coming back from her gym and she volunteered to go with me. For years I had regaled her with stories of my grade school days, now she could fill in all of the blanks.
Once there, I found the place pretty much picked clean. I went into what was the convent’s kitchen and tried to look for something from the 60s. There was only one scrapbook that detailed the deaths of Father Bednarchick, (1961), Father Krupar (1964) and Father Juritza (1965). In a span of three years as a young boy, I had attended the transferal of bodies and funerals of three priests. Other than that, there were no tangible photo memories to tie me to the place. A volunteer (who had been a student there in the late 80s) told me that people my age kept requesting rulers. The ones he had went quickly. He looked perplexed when he said it, I laughed inside. I then took Mrs. LuLac to my first grade classroom where the diminutive nun I had railed against her fate screaming every time that it rained and saw the alleyway leading to William Street filled with cascading dirt and mud saying “Dirty, dirty Pittston, what did I do to deserve to be in dirty, dirty Pittston!” It was in this very same classroom that this nun in the fall of 1960 said, “Now go home and tell your mommies and daddies to vote for Kennedy for President because he’s a Catholic like you and not Nixon because he’s one of those Protestants! I took her to my second grade classroom where a nun routinely told us, “Under this habit, under all of this, I’m a beautiful woman!” I showed her the door Paul and I broke and the fire escapes we walked up and down every day, come rain, sleet, snow, ice and heat. As she looked up the three stories, Mrs. LuLac said, “Today, they’d call that child abuse”. As we left, I told her of Father Super’s ambitious plan to make the little Slovak school built by immigrants without formal education a true center for Catholic education. He added a gym, (The SAC, Slovak Athletic Center) a Library, a Kindergarten and a Computer Lab that replaced Pittston Electric, Roman Taxi and a Barbershop. We both agreed he was a visionary in terms of Catholic education. Ruefully, Mrs. LuLac noted, “Too bad this current Bishop doesn’t have a sense of that in him!” I couldn’t argue with her there. We left the building not knowing its future. Ironic, because it was this building that shaped my life. For now, I have the memories of those times and those people and an old eraser I took from one of the classrooms. As Mrs. LuLac gazed up at the fire escapes, she said, “Everyday you had to climb those?” I nodded yes. Looking up and shaking her head, she concluded, “No wonder why you’re so twisted!”