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Deer Crick Diaries
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 This is St. Joseph's Church in Delphi, Indiana, center of Catholic worship in Delphi since 1859. Michael Johnson was an altar boy there until he was 17. |
independent point of view about his world, Michael comes up against a very well-established institution in the Delphi community |
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By MICHAEL JOHNSON
for TheColumnists.com
WE
ARE a lapsed family, let's face it, leaving the cross behind
except for the occasional funeral or baptism.
I
can't even swear that my mother was all that devout. She rammed
us through the system while we were too small to comprehend,
but she did marry a Protestant, and she had some bad habits
herself. I remember dressing for 10 o'clock Sunday mass and being
worried that she would not get out of bed.
"I've done enough for the Lord this week," she would
say.
What was a sensitive young lad to think? I had been told that
missing Sunday mass was a mortal sin, which of course meant the
fires of hell for eternity if you died before going to confession.
(They had a great scam, didn't they? Who could prove they were
lying?) It was all terribly upsetting.
I WENT ON to "serve mass" until I escaped from Delphi
in 1956. For 10 years I had been dressing up in a black gown
with a white lace pullover and mouthing meaningless Latin gibberish,
some of which I still remember. I had swung the incense burner,
genuflected, rung the little brass bells, and served cruets of
wine and water, which old Father Kienley downed in a gulp.
It's hard to believe, but we suffered some degree of persecution as local Catholics. Some of the white trash used to chase me home shouting "cat-licker!" It was scary at my age (11 or 12). And of course we were fed lies by the priests and nuns about the Protestant churches as places we were discouraged from entering--and, if we did have to attend a funeral or a wedding in a Protestant church, we were told to sit throughout the ceremony so as to demonstrate that we were not participating. I used to walk past the Methodist church with indefinable forebodings. Was I stupid or is this just an example of mind-control at work? The Scientologists have got nothing on the Catholics. We were totally brainwashed.
Then
there was religious education. Since we had a real, live heathen
(my father) right there living among us, I was told at the age
of about 11 that my pre-Confirmation project would be to convert
him to Catholicism. He gamely sat still for several ridiculous
sessions in the evenings, probably dreaming about something else
while I droned on about Catholicism being the only true church,
the only universal church. That every other church was a sham
and a fraud, especially the Methodist church. I remember telling
him he must stop calling some person he disliked a "fool,"
because the church had warned us that using that word put the
user "in danger of the fires of hell." How he ever
kept a straight face through all this, I don't know. Of course
I never made a dent, but I guess I got time off in Purgatory
for trying.
I was an altar boy till the age of 17. I think we were all completely
uncritical of this trumped-up church ritual, accepting it as
natural. I never even considered doing what other altar boys
have confessed to later in life, writing in their memoirs about
such things as things as guzzling church wine or stealing from
the collection basket. We were total creatures of the system.
For
me, though, it was not to last long. When I arrived in New Mexico
by train in 1956 to start my college education, I met my first
Catholics from another culture--the Hispanics. They took religion
very lightly. What a shock. Within a few weeks I had given it
all up--a lifetime of mindless devotion--when a New Mexico priest
gave me a hard time for bothering him. I had asked his permission
to miss a Sunday mass so I could go on a weekend camping trip.
I expected a priestly thanks and a pat on the head, but instead
was treated as a bit of a jerk for taking mass so seriously.
So I skipped the next Sunday, too, and the next.
When lightning didn't strike, I decided not to go back. Within
a couple of months, 17 years of brainwashing had evaporated.
I figure I have gained 4,264 hours, or 11 months, so far, by
cutting out Sunday mass. Add on what I have saved by not going
to the gym, and I'm seriously ahead of the game.
Church dogma seemed boring and painful, but no more than everything else I was experiencing at that age. A few things I do remember fondly: the St. Christopher legend and medal, a Jesus statue called "Prince of Peace", and the painting of Jesus at 10 teaching the elders about life. The really morbid and bloody, gory torture stuff (nails in the hands and feet, a hat made of thorns, whippings by big hairy guys in loincloths) never moved me. The stations of the cross, the crucifixion itself. They were plaster castings. They didn't seem real.
The
Church in Delphi was always short of money. Old Father Kienley
put the cat among the pigeons when he started publishing in the
Church bulletin the sums of money donated by each parishioner.
He was trying to shame us into coughing up the 10 percent of
the family income that we were supposed to be contributing.
Lois Young's mother was always at the top of the charts, something
like $10 a week. Her husband Steve--a bit of a rake, by Delphi
standards--owned a plumbing fixtures factory in Flora. He also
owned Delphi's only Cadillac, which he used to drive to 10 o'clock
Sunday mass, park near the door with the engine running while
he put in an appearance. He would always stand at the back of
the church and slip out after Benediction, which I believe is
the earliest point at which you can depart and still get credit
upstairs for attendance. We all looked at Steve in awe: handsome,
rich, powerful (wow .. a plumbing factory in Flora ...) and dangerous.
We would never have dreamt of speaking to him.
Delphi was split along religious lines. We used to hear of Ku Klux Klan marches (anti-black and anti-Catholic), but that was before our time. Indiana had a very active Klan in the 1920s. Fortunately Delphi had no blacks, no Jewish population, no foreigners. Just pure red-neck Americans. In fact I had no idea what Jews were all about, beyond a vague sense that they were dishonest and to be avoided.
My first encounter with a Jewish fellow was my roommate at Highlands "University" in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where I spent a very misguided freshman college year. He was Sidney Dashevsky from Brooklyn, a bright but erratic ex-juvenile delinquent who couldn't get into any other school in the country. (It was that kind of institution.) When he introduced himself, I asked him what kind of name that was. "Oh, it's a typical Irish name." To which I stupidly replied: "Oh really? How interesting." He answered, "No, not really," too much on his guard to add "You fucking idiot."
Poor Sidney had never been beyond the East River, and was beginning to wonder whether Highlands University might turn out to be worse than reform school. He was an A student, though, and soon moved in with a guy who was more interested in studying than getting drunk, which was my main interest at the time. But not before he showed me his .38 pistol, complete with a full box of ammunition. He liked to fire it out the window to impress the boys in the dorm. I didn't know what to think but was glad he moved on.
And speaking of Judaism, much later I started noticing that my father's name, "Myron," is a typical Jewish name. Could we be... Naw. Forget it.
© 2001 by Michael Johnson. The photo is from the St. Joseph's church website.
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 Michael Johnson |
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