Editor's Note: This is, hopefully, the first in a long series of articles, recording the everyday history of the parishes in our cluster: St. Joseph, Immaculate Conception, and Holy Family.
When we were in the first grade the nuns took most of the boys to the church and showed us how to serve Mass. The Latin was mean but we had cards and books by the altar to read from. When I did finally memorize the prayers I had no idea what they meant.
In 1938 the Catholic church had a different Mass for every occasion and we got into a few two hour celebrations on Sunday mornings and some evenings. When a bishop or someone special showed up, the church would have masses at two and sometimes all three altars at one time. This ate up a lot of altar boys and the parish needed quite a few on hand, just to staff these altars at any given time.
I guess most of the boys in our class were altar boys. The country kids were exempt from serving most of the time so the town kids really caught it. When it came time to make out the serving schedule the nuns did it. They would make a list for all summer before they left in the spring. The summer list was all town boys if I remember. I think the lists were handed out to us at school and we took it home and mother hung it under the calendar so her boys were sure to never miss serving. I think this taught me a lot about being on time.
| Robert Yarmer with his brother Richard. |
I remember during the summer, Lucian Phoenix, John Franklin Doll and a few others missed quite a few of their turns. This occurred most at the early mass (6 a.m.) on Sunday morning. The Yarmer boys were only a block away so we would get a call at two minutes to six saying servers were needed and would we come right over. Mother always got us out of bed and sent us to serve mass, and we griped the whole way. I never forgave those kids who wouldn't show up on the days they were supposed to, but there wasn't a lot I could do about it. We lived too close and mother was too good.
When Richard and I were in the seventh grade, Phoenix, Doll and a few others got to teasing us in class. One of them would walk down the isle and hit Richard or me on the shoulder and then go back to their seat. We put up with this for a few days until Richard was in a bad mood. John Franklin Doll walked by Richard's desk and hit him on the shoulder, John then walked to the cloak room to make the circuit and get back to his desk. Well I sat in front of Richard and I heard him get up and follow John, then a little noise came out of the cloak room, and Richard walked back to his desk by the opening he followed John in, and in a few minutes John walked out the other end of the long cloak room holding his hand over his eye. He didn't expect anyone to follow him and when he found out someone was behind him it was too late. All done out of sight in the cloak room. No one ever hit us again and it was weeks before anyone would even walk by our desks.
I do remember the good points too. When someone died we would get to leave class to serve the funeral. I really enjoyed going to the cemetery, the open hole, the outdoors, the body in this metal box to wonder about and the crying people who I didn't know from Adam. Sometimes we would serve a wedding. Most of the men were in the service and they wore their uniforms. We had a thing where after the service was over and the bride and groom walked out of the church, the altar boys would dash out the south sacristy door and run around to the front door and hold a sash across the doorway and the groom would have to give each of us a dime before we would let him out. Most of the time his pockets were empty and one of his friends would give us the money.
Our nuns were of the Order of the Precious Blood and wore all the correct habits etc. The first two years the teacher we had was Sister Mary Alice. She taught all of us how to put a sweater on with the front coming out in the right place. She would have all of us stand at our desks and with our sweaters held in front of us and she would say "Tummy to Tummy and Upside Down." It worked and I still remember how to get into a sweater with out having to twist it a half turn after I get my head through the hole.
Recess was a hassle, if they would just leave me alone I was alright, but we had to be organized with games etc. Just like a tour on a ship I guess, everyone will have fun today. They played baseball of course and I refused to bat. To come to some kind of compromise we settled on someone batting for me and I running to the bases. I still hated it. One game I remember I really liked and I forget the name. We formed into two lines across the playground from each other with arms locked together. The opposite line would call a name and that person would run across the playground and try to break through the opposite line by crashing through a set of locked arms. For some reason I was good at this because I could pick a weak set of locked arms and break through. If anyone broke through they got to select a student to go back to his line with him, if they couldn't break through the arms that person had to stay with the line he charged. Thinking back the recess was so short that I don't believe more then five or so kids ever joined the opposite team before it was over.
When it was cold or stormy out we had recess in the classroom. This was never a success, just more classes like the ones we were supposed to be taking a break from.
One thing I do remember about recess was the gunfire. During the war the Cheyenne Bottoms was a bombing range for the Air Force. They had targets there also and when the fighters or bombers would shoot at them with the 50 cal. or 20mm guns we could hear the firing very clear, in town. Later, when I was much older I shot fish at the Bottoms (bow and arrow) and found lots of empty as well as unfired 50 cal. machine gun shells.
Once we had a surprise gathering in the auditorium and two soldiers from the Great Bend air base were to entertain us with piano music. One of the men was the piano player and the other was the M.C. I'm sure they were going around playing at the schools for money, this would be around 1944. The piano player was good, he played all the hit tunes of the time as well as standards. As the program was coming to the end, the M.C. asked if anyone had a request. One of the 8th grade girls asked if he could play any boogie woogie. The player laughed and started on ten minutes of music that was just wonderful to listen to, the whole school loved it, or, almost the whole school. After we were back in our class rooms the nuns told us that kind of music was bad for us and we shouldn't have enjoyed it and we were never to listen to it again.
If you or a member of your family can share a story or a photo, please send it to Father Klein. He can scan the photos and return them. You can type, handwrite, or record your memories. He'll do the rest.
