French was my most personal course, not that we spoke it much at home. My mother’s French dated from high school, embellished by songs and plays. Naturally it was graceful and Parisian. Joual, the patois of my father’s québécois, she dismissed as coarse, rude and unworthy of her home. Of course, my father rubbed it in whenever he could.
Most of my classmates were nervous when they had to display their knowledge. I knew these Irish and Italian kids could pronounce nous avons or les animaux because they did when I practiced them, which they often asked me to. They did fine until it counted, then they’d mess up, it looked like on purpose. Some of them were against learning, especially anything different, as if the process was somehow unmanly. I discovered which of my classmates weren’t afraid to be known as “brains.” The other camp knew, too. Lines were being drawn.
Until now I haven’t said much about religion at La Salle. It was pervasive but in a quite different way. During my first year I had quit the altar boy corps, uncomfortable around the younger kids and tired of the priests treating me like I was ten years old. So I was no longer immersed in church life, though it goes without saying I still attended Mass Sundays. Religion at La Salle was more about accumulating knowledge and, it was hoped, understanding the various aspects of our Faith, plus of course, character formation.
We learned why the Church was “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic” and about the Pope’s infallibility. I was impressed to learn what a hell-raiser young St. Augustine was, and about the “Dumb Ox” Aquinas who had a knack with tough problems such as does God exist and how could the world be created out of nothing. We studied our Faith’s opponents – Atheists, Pantheists, Materialists and Rationalists, also the Jewish religion and Mohammedanism. We were trained in the unfortunately-named art of “Apologetics,” arguments to use against those people if we ever got the chance. Amazing, how the commandments, the sacraments and liturgy all fit together. The Brothers took this perfect whole to a level that made your head spin, adding explanations far beyond our old, childish ideas. Everything explainable, everything explained. Our most dangerous enemy, of course, was Communism. We rejoiced as the Hungarians rose up against the tyrant, but our hopes were dashed as tanks rolled into Budapest. We had seen the face of evil and it was not pretty.
We dwelt on Christian morality, rules for living your life. For every situation there was an answer and a rule that applied, and thanks to the sacraments, help when you needed it. The trick was finding the rule that applied, then applying it, again and again. Thus morality becomes second nature, you were forming a “right conscience” and becoming a better person. One, two, three – A, B, C. Trouble is, it wasn’t all that simple. Compared with faith and reason, morality was a whole different ballgame.
My reading tastes expanded greatly, thanks to Brother Robert whom I had really grown to like. He cared about books and appreciated the few of us who did, giving us an outside reading list after pledging us to secrecy. “Keep this to yourselves, gentlemen. I believe your immortal souls are up to the challenge but around here I am in the minority.” Some were already part of our underground library – Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies – Others were on the Index of Forbidden Books, by nobody you’d ever heard of. Brother Robert had guts. Not that Holden Caulfield was such a great person, but it was thrilling to see in black and white things I thought about a lot and my friends must have also.
Though pure at the core, certain tentative and furtive areas existed around the edges of the school. Big Sal’s Academy Variety was a hole in the wall a few blocks from the school that sold candy, soda, cigarettes, newspapers, magazines, and not just any magazines but on the wall below sports and fishing, movie magazines. Photoplay, Modern Screen and so on. Ava Gardner and Janet Leigh in low-cut gowns or bathing suits, leaning forward and showing a lot of what I learned was called cleavage. The black and white pictures inside were always better than the covers. It bothered me that Big Sal put these magazines near the floor, making a film fan such as myself struggle just to flip through them. Though maybe he wanted to see who cared enough about such things to make himself look ridiculous. YOU READ IT YOU BUY IT, the sign said, but nobody paid any attention. There were also certain comics like Wonder Woman, featuring female heroes or women in distress and not much else. Big Sal’s was an occasion of sin, and no less so if you told yourself you were going in for a Coke or a candy bar, because God knew why you went in and He knew why you stayed.
One stormy Sunday our pickup game fell apart, so Omer and I decided to hit a movie. I wanted to see, Fire Down Below, or more precisely Rita Hayworth in Fire Down Below, which I had researched at Big Sal’s. I’d never gone as far as to see on the big screen what was so intriguing in small doses of black and white, but when I told Omer there was this great action picture at the Majestic, for want of a better idea, he agreed.
It was everything I’d hoped and more. From time to time I glanced at Omer who sat transfixed but with this frown on his face. As we walked to the bus, he was quiet. Finally he said, “I don’t think we should have seen that.” I knew what he meant because I had a hard-on the whole two hours. At confession the next Saturday, to my own sin I had to add one that made me feel guilty and ashamed. I had led a friend into an occasion of sin. For all I knew, I had set him on the slippery slope to damnation. This was the first time my weakness hurt someone else, and I felt as sorry as I had about anything, ever. I vowed never again to invite anybody else along on my cloudy and uncertain course.
MY JUNIOR YEAR BEGAN ROUTINELY ENOUGH, but a thousand miles away the Governor of Arkansas tried to block Negro students from Little Rock high school and it took President Eisenhower sending federal troops to get them in. The pictures in the Journal and on TV floored me. People full of hate, screaming at little kids, spitting on them, throwing rocks. Kids my age running a gauntlet up the steps and into the school. I went looking for Terry Grimes.
“This surprises you?” he said. “Just shows you don’t know what’s going on.”
“I admit, I had to check where Arkansas is.”
“No, no, I’m talking right here. Scratch the surface in Providence R - I and you get Arkansas. Maybe even worse, ’cause white people here hide it better. Keep you off balance, you never know where you stand.”
“C’mon,” I replied, “nothing like that would ever happen here.”
“Like I told you, you don’t have a clue,” he said with a thin smile.
I didn’t accept that, but it was on my mind when I sat down to write that fateful column. Midway through freshman year I had joined the Maroon and White, wrote a bunch of news stories and had some photos published. This year I asked Norm McDermott, now Editor-In-Chief, and got the go-ahead to write an occasional column. In this one I asked what would it be like if instead of being at La Salle, we were students at that Arkansas high school? How would we have acted? As Catholics, clearly we couldn’t be in the racist camp, but what if we just stood around and did nothing? I wound it up this way (I’ve kept a copy all these years).
If we had been there, how would we have acted? Hopefully as La Salle men we would have stood tall and supported these brave kids. But on our calm campus far from that troubled scene, do you or I really know what we would have done? Easy to say we’d do the right thing, but how can we be sure?
Well in fact, there is a clue, a test we take right here every day. How do we treat those among us whose skin is a different color? Or our classmates who don’t drive the finest car, or any car at all? Or who don’t live in that great a neighborhood? Do we go out of our way to be friends with them? Or are we afraid of what “the others” might say? Do we go our own way, stick to our own crowd and say nothing? Give it some thought. I know I am.
Although students put the Maroon and White together, the Brothers had the final say on what went into it. A few days after Norm submitted my column to our faculty advisor, I got a note summoning me to a meeting in the Vice-Principal’s office. I had a hunch why. Brother Adalbert was sitting