With Pope Benedict the Sin Wrecka' visiting the good ol' USA, I'm reminded of when I went to DC to see the Pope on the Washington Mall in 1979. Our church got a bus, and all 11 of the town Catholics got on board and we rode to DC, singing Pope songs like "Rainy Day Pope #35", "It's Raining Popes" and, of course, "My Pope-rona." You know those songs. We got to the Mall and were so far back the only way we could see him without our iPhones being linked up to one of the 118 Jumbotrons was to stand on a trash can with a pair of binoulars. Also, ironically, the way I saw my first naked girl (and next, probably. Sigh.) I remember pissing in a paper cup behind a tree; there must've been a billion people.
But it's always bugged me my Dad wasn't there. My mother, my brother and I (I cannot recall if Sistatime!, who woulda been 2 at the time, was there or not) made the trip, but my Dad had to work. Looking back I don't know why he couldn't haven't gotten out of it; as a cop I'm sure it's just a matter of switching shifts or something. I have no idea. But it sucks that I went and he didn't, he was certainly the most serious Catholic I knew as a kid. My Dad dragged us around the state from church to church, trying to find one that wasn't so "modern." I can remember walking out of church twice: once when instead of the standard organ some hippy mofo pulled out an acoustic guitar and another time when in the middle of a song my Dad realized that as the song was being sung some ballerina was working her way up the aisle, performing some sort of dance/acrobatics. Sunday Dinner came early that day, my friends. Looking back, I'm surprised he didn't spend more time bemoaning the switch from Latin Mass to one spoken in English. I'm sure not a Sunday Mass passed after Vatican II without him shaking his head thinking "fucking pussies." When my parents dropped me off for college, my Dad drove me to the local church before we even saw my dorm room. "There it is. See that you get there on Sunday." I got a feeling if he had known that the priest was a young buck who wore jeans and smoked outside while saying goodbye to the churchgoers with words like "man" and "dude", I would never had set foot on that campus again. Coming from outside of Boston, I'm sure my Dad felt as if he had come from the Major Leagues of Catholicism, unlike the backwoods Single-A bush league Catholics he found himself in company with in Virginia. I mean, he actually sang out loud in church, for chrissakes; not the lips-barely-moving while pretending to be baffled re: "what page is this hymn on? what?" singing everyone else did, but actual singing. We went through a stretch wherein whenever we'd go to St. Benedict's in Richmond, we'd hit this restaurant called Duffy's which had biscuits that I loooooved. One such Sunday we were standing up to sing some hymn - me of course preparing to spend the next 3 minutes with my lips barely open acting as if there was sound coming out - and as we were standing up my father leaned slightly into me and out of the corner of his mouth like a ventriloquist said "SING for your biscuits, boy!" For one magical Sunday, I belted out the tunes like Aretha under a church tent made out of baked hams. Damn right I got my biscuits. And, of course, spent every Sunday for the next 7 years trying to not get stuck sitting next to Dad in church. If we went to Mass in town, we'd get home for Sunday dinner and he'd prattle on for 45 minutes about what was right or wrong about that morning's homily. Which was, on average, about 6 minutes. Our priest wanted to hurry up Mass to get home and watch the game; my Dad wanted to get home to talk about the Mass.
I'm glad I saw the Pope. Two years after that I saw President Reagan, so if nothing else in this life I can say I've seen a president and a Pope. Well, and Bruce. But if I could've switched places, if my Dad could've gone instead of me I'd have done it in a heartbeat. Being a Catholic meant a lot to him. He should've gone, and it bugs me he didn't.
Course, for all I know he skipped the trip cause the Pope wasn't old school Catholic enough for him. "Liberal hippy," I can see him shaking his head.
2 comments:
"Sing for your biscuits, boy!" Love it! Your father was a real stickler. My father would sing too (much to our embarrassment), but he didn't really push us beyond the move your lips and pretend you're singing stage. He also didn't object to the folk mass that blew up after Godspell.
Did you attend mass with your family through high school? That's when my brothers and I began to break away; first to attend different masses (we sought out masses given by a particular priest who never gave a homily, his landspeed record for a mass was 16 minutes) and later, after we got our driving licenses, we would just go to a bar and watch football (this was when the drinking age was 18).
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