It has been a long couple of months. I think I have been home for only one weekend in that time. Traveling, staying in hotels, visiting with friends, and not being in your own bed can wear on a person. At the time I was writing this blog, I was back in my hometown area outside Chicago. This is not a pleasure trip. I’m here for the memorial for my older brother, who passed away in August. He had been ill for a long time, and his passing was not a surprise, but it was still difficult. I’m on this trip by myself. After all the services and the get together with the family, I am now sitting by myself in a hotel room with a beautiful view out my window of the skyline of Chicago.
What better time to get caught up on my blog? Today, I plan to talk about my trip to my boyhood home and my feelings as a result.
It was great to see family, even under challenging circumstances. It has been years since I visited with my brother’s children. There were a lot of questions regarding growing up when I was young. According to my nephew, my brother didn’t like talking about stuff like that. We had a great visit. He has two sons. One had just started college, and the other was about ready to go to high school. They also had a lot of questions. I think it took their mind off the loss of their dad and grandfather.
Since I’m here and have a day to kill, I checked out some of my old haunts. Since it was Sunday, I headed to the church of my youth and went to mass. While it is the same on the outside, the inside has had a significant facelift. The original interior was designed to look like a smaller St. Peters Basilica. It had a large domed covering over the altar and statues everywhere. Now, the altar has been moved out to where the pews were, and the pews reconfigured to give it an in-the-round feel.
I just read in the church bulletin that a new sound system was being installed to replace the decades-old analog system. I know the system is old because I remember when they installed it in my youth. It’s a good idea because trying to hear the service was like being inside a giant steel barrel. Acoustics were terrible.
It also stirred some memories of my days attending the catholic school attached to the church. I was expecting to hear the clicking of the frog clicker that our nuns used to guide us through whatever ceremony or event we were participating in at church. We would practice for weeks with the nuns, clicking when we were supposed to stand up, sit down, kneel, or move out of the pews and get in line. While I was attending mass, someone moved in the ancient pews in the church, making a clicking sound. Like Palov’s dog, I instinctively jumped to my feet and was at attention. The problem was it was during the sermon. I got a strange look from the pastor.
When I was young, the pastor of our church was a grumpy old Monsignor who had been running the church since it was built in the early 1930s. If I had made a distraction during church in his day, I might have been condemned to burn in hell for eternity. It was not a surprise because his sermons were usually a litany of reasons why we would be going to burn in hell for eternity, along with our friends and parents. After all, they should have stopped us from doing the sinful deed we did. Many times, it was about the local YMCA. If we were invited to go swimming at the “Y” by a non-Catholic friend, it was an attempt by the devil to turn us into protestants. I don’t think the man ever smiled.
He also policed us during our school events. We had a class called “Fort Nightly.” Eighth graders came to the school basement on Monday nights and learned ballroom dancing. The boys had to wear suits and the girls lovely, modest dresses. At the order of our monsignor, we had to wear white gloves to avoid skin-to-skin contact amongst the couples. We were also warned about having a boy/girl get together at our homes and what it could lead to. Trust me, the girls were safe because most grade school boys were deathly afraid of them.
I wandered around our old downtown and was amazed at how it has been upgraded into a destination site. Many old businesses have been replaced with tony restaurants, high-end bars, and shopping locations. One place that hadn’t changed was the Fanny May Candy store. For those not from the mid-west, Fanny May is a candy company that sold chocolates by the pound. The company had struggled at one time but has survived. The store was the go-to location for me and my siblings for our mom’s birthday, Christmas, and Mother’s Day gifts. It helped us score points with her since she loved the stuff. So did we all. I stop by whenever I’m in town and stock up on my favorites.
It’s my final day in Chicagoland, and I am in my hotel room watching my beloved Bears play the Vikings. My sons have a pool to determine at which point during the game I throw the TV out the fifth-floor window when the Bears do something stupid. I suggested picking an early time, it is the Bears.
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