Well, it finally arrived, the year of my ordination to the Roman Catholic priesthood, 1966. I had taken my final lifetime vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in 1964. I had been ordained a deacon in 1965, the step just below priesthood. I even thought about being a permanent deacon, since that was going to be an option in the Roman Catholic Church. People convinced me to be ordained a priest, since I had spent all this time, nine years, preparing for this priesthood ordination. I spent my Christmas of 1965 as a deacon at a small Belgium French speaking Church. I had to make a retreat before I was ordained, so we went to a German Benedictine monastery, where they sang the Divine Office every day, every hour, instead of reciting it. I really felt like a medieval monk there. Meanwhile, my parents, with my uncle Tom, Aunt Elizabeth, and my cousin Tom, had all flown over to Brussels to see me get ordained. In fact, my brother Johnny from Germany was there also. We all went to see the Sound of Music in Brussels on Easter Sunday. I loved the opening scene that reminded me of my last two summers in the Austrian alps. Four of us were ordained in Brussels on April, 11, 1966, Easter Monday, I gave out my first blessings, and then had a Mass the next day with John Dowd as the server. This was the first of my many first Masses. We then flew to Ireland with my relatives and me, but not by brother Johnny, who went back to Germany. These were the glory days. I was a celebrity star, a newly ordained priest. I had the power to say Mass and hear Confessions. We met many of my Irish relatives in Carrickmacross. That Sunday, I said another first Mass at the Corduff chapel, where my father’s family, including my grandparents, was buried in the Church cemetery. It was 1966, the fiftieth anniversary of the Irish rebellion of 1916. My father got to meet all his living local combatants from the old IRA days back then. All the old recriminations were gone. He had a great time, drinking, smoking, and telling stories. Then I went back to Louvain to finish my classes to get a master’s degree in theology. We were ordained before we finished the classes, which I thought was strange. Then when I finished my classes, I flew back to Carteret, NJ, from Luxembourg to New York. There I had another First Mass in Carteret with a large reception. The Servite pastor of St. Joseph’s was surprised that I could not sing better. Anyway, I had a summer assignment in Chicago, at St. Domitilla’s, Hillside, IL, where the priest who got me to be a Servite was the pastor. I taught a religious class at St. Philips HS in the morning and was in the parish during the afternoon and evening. I led daily Mass, had confessions on Saturday, and presided and preached at a Sunday Mass, and helped during Communion at the other Masses. I also stayed a month at another Servite parish, St. Dominic, an old Italian parish that took care of the Cabrini-Green projects. My job at both parishes was to take a census to see if there were any Catholics. Thus, I walked around with my priestly collar in the Chicago western suburbs and the Cabrini-Green projects, knocking on doors. Some of the Servite priests in Chicago thought that I was wasting my time, since I had enough education. Can you ever get too much education?
Studying Theology at the University of Louvain, Belgium, in the mid-1960s
I spent the next four years of my life in Louvain, Belgium, studying theology during the mid-1960s, 1962-1966. I was the only American Servite student, until John Dowd came in my third year. However, there were plenty of diocesan American seminarians at the American College in Louvain, where we had some classes. I had to personally enroll in the University, since it cost $100.00 a year. We had to walk to our classes at a couple of different locations in Louvain, a medieval university, as we wore our Servite habits, like in Rome. We had our regular prayer life without the noon prayers. Thursday was a day off from classes, as we played sports. I either played basketball, rugby, or soccer as a goalie. My biggest problem was learning French, since I went to a special class for that my first year. Our American Servite superior, who had gone to college at Seton Hall, left after two years and was replaced by another American Servite priest. I liked the idea that we had no papers to do, just an oral exam at the end of the year for each class subject. A few of the Americans were from Rhode Island and Louisiana, who grew up speaking French. They took notes and translated them into English and had the professors read them. Then they copied them to hand out to us. It was a great system. Even some of the professors conducted the exams in English. However, you had to know a lot of information. All the classes were lectures in a big hall of about 100 students. All the teachers used the French La Sainte Bible, The Jerusalem Bible, so that we always brought it to class. The New Testament classes used the Greek edition of Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, with a Latin translation. The most famous incident was in the fall of 1963, when Professor Louis Janssens published an article about the contraceptive pill, so that a reporter from Time magazine came to our class to ask us questions about it. We took road trips to see various Catholic architectural churches. We even had a small English-speaking seminar on John Robinson’s Honest to God, with our patrology teacher, Albert Van Roey. I had an interesting fellow Servite student, Clodovis Boff, who became a famous Brazilian Liberation theologian. A Scots’ classmate, Danny McQuian, and myself spent two summers at the Servite house in Innsbruck and Bavaria, studying German. We all spent two weeks at a house at Ostend along the North Sea, eating fresh French baguets every morning. My theology studies took place at Louvain, while the Second Vatican Council was taking place in Rome each autumn from 1962-1965. Some of my teachers were the periti or specialists at Vatican II, as they explained some of the things that were going on at the Vatican Council. Cardinal Suenens of Belgium was one of the leading men at this council. He used many of the ideas from our teachers. Although one was quick to remark that Cardinal Suenens loved collegiality for the bishops, but not in his own diocese. Thus, you might say that we were the first of the Vatican II theologians, since it was taking place as we were learning about the back stories of how things came to be. These were not radical scholars, but those who wanted to return to the roots of the church in the early first centuries. My brother Johnny was stationed in Ramstein AFB in Germany and made a couple of trips to see me. We had a good time, catching up with each other. It was a touch of home for me. The four years seemed to go so fast. Have you ever studied at a foreign university?
The great trip to Rome in 1962
Out of the blue, there was a change in plans. One day, my superior at Lake Bluff came up to me in August of 1962. He wanted to know what I thought about going to Rome to study. I told him, I was excited to start classes in September at Lake Bluff. Then I asked, “Why Rome?” He responded that the American Servites wanted to send me to Rome to study theology at the international Italian Servite theology school, the Marianum. I asked was it just me? No, he said that Dave Gallegos and Bob Vogel were going with me. I told him that I did not speak any Italian. He said that it would be easy, since it was a lot like Latin. I assumed that we would fly over to Rome. No, we were going on an Italian cruise ship that was going back to Italy that had been going back and forth between New York City and the Caribbean all summer. This meant that I would not get my master’s degree in history, which I had just started. My parents were excited for me, since I would spend a week or two at home before I left. In the fall of 1962, the great Second Vatican Council was beginning in Rome. I asked Dave, who was from New Mexico, and Bob, who was from Chicago, to stay at my house before we left on our trip to Rome. They could then see the Servite parish in Carteret, NJ. We also could do some site seeing in New York City. I think we went to the UN building. Everyone in Carteret was excited for me. Then, it was “bon voyage!” again. This was my third cruise ship trip across the Atlantic in three years. However, this ship did not have the class system that the Holland-American and Cunard lines had. We also met some interesting people on this cruise ship. The fourth member at our dining table was a young lady going to Europe to get married. We also met the Lutheran Observer to the Second Vatican Council, George Lindbeck, and his family. We stopped in Lisbon, Portugal, where he had a very fast quick trip to Fatima. In Palma de Mallorca, they had over 100 straight days without rain, but it rained the day we were there. Finally, in Tangier, Morocco, we watched belly-dancers and ate some local food. Each time, we just made it back to the boat on time. Finally, we arrived in Naples, Italy, where the Servite Father Gus Kulbus met us. He took us to a wonderful Naples restaurant and a cruise out to the Isle of Capri. After all that travel, I got sick on this ferry to the island. Then I got the news that I was not going to study in Rome. Instead, I was being sent to the Servite house in Louvain, Belgium, where I would study at the University there. I met some more American Servites in Rome. Mike Doyle was a year ahead of me. Father Dan Brown took me sight-seeing in Rome. The Italian General of the Servites brought me to see Pope John XXIII ordain bishops at St. Peter’s. Then I was off to Florence where I met two Italian Servite seminarians, Carlo and Guido, who were going to study with me in Louvain. They did not speak English and I did not speak Italian. They were surprised that I did not speak French. We had a wonderful train trip from Florence to Brussels, with a stop in France to see one of their relatives. I was so happy to see Paul Cullen, who was a year ahead of me in Benburb, who meet me at the train station in Louvain. This would be my home for the next four years, the longest that I had been at any Servite house. There was about 15 Servite theology students there, Italians, Canadians, Brazilians, British, and me. There were two American priests there, one from New Jersey, and the other from Chicago. My great trip landed me in Belgium, after about three weeks of travel. Have you ever taken a trip to Rome?
My year at Loyola University in Chicago in 1961-1962
After our two-year experience abroad in Northern Ireland, it was back to the Chicago northern suburb of Lake Bluff, IL, and the Servite Stonebridge Priory, to study theology. However, before we did that, we had to spend a year at Loyola University in Chicago at their Lake Shore campus to get a bachelor’s degree. The Servites had two high schools in Chicago, St. Philips, and Hillside. However, in 1958, they opened two new high schools in Anaheim, California, and Perth, Australia, both called Servite High and Servite College. They needed priest teachers for these high schools. Ironically enough, the two Chicago high schools are now closed, while the two schools started in 1958 are still open. During our summers while studying theology, we would then be able to take classes towards a master’s degree. It all seemed logical, except that Lake Bluff and Loyola’s Lakeshore campus were not that close. We took one large school bus to get there. One or two of my classmates volunteered as drivers. Also, we had an outdoor swimming pool at Lake Bluff that was great after coming from the hot summer classes at the Loyola’s downtown campus in our black suits. I took a couple of political science classes, but then decided that studying history with a master’s degree was a better idea. Thus, I ended up with a double major in philosophy and history when we graduated in 1962. I enjoyed a couple of great teachers of European and American history. I was surprised that my classmates seemed more interested in school, compared to some of the other regular students. I got mostly A’s and B’s, depending on how much I liked the class. Also, we were gone all day, so that we missed the midday prayers and no one seemed upset. We had a dollar a day for lunch, so I found someplace that had a hamburger and milk shake for 90 cents. Some guys would skip lunch and save up for a big meal. However, it was bitterly cold in the winter with the wind whipping off Lake Michigan and Sheridan Road on the Loyola Lake Shore campus. I used the library to study, so that once I found one of my teachers sleeping in the library. In June of 1962, I graduated at the Arie Crown Theater on Lake Michigan. That day, I walked the streets of Chicago. I had no big celebration, since nobody was there for me. I looked into people’s faces, as I thought how lucky I was. I was an Irish-American Catholic seminarian where the mayor of the city of Chicago was the same, Richard Daley, and the President of the USA, John Kennedy, was also an Irish-American Catholic. I was in the right place. I was the privileged one. If I wanted to quit, I had a college degree and could probably teach in a Catholic High School in Chicago. However, I wanted to finish up these next four years of theology and get my master’s degree in history. I took two graduate courses that summer of 1962 on the Civil War and England in the nineteenth century. Then in the fall, I was going to start my theology courses. All that I had done so far was leading up to this. My year at the Loyola campus was over. We were going to go to Wisconsin as a group to go on a two-week vacation. Everything was working out according to plan. I guess I was surprised how well it went during that year of commuting to classes by bus and train, instead of just walking down the hall to a classroom in the same building. What do you remember about your college days and graduation?
The early 1960s in Northern Ireland, 1959-1961
I got my first passport at age 20. My Irish parents were delighted that I was going to Ireland. They would try and come to visit me the next summer, since neither of them had been to Ireland since they left Ireland in the 1920s. My father told me to never mention his name, because of his 1920s IRA connections. One of the British customs agents noticed that I had an Irish name and was headed to Northern Ireland. He wanted to know why I did not stay in the USA to study philosophy. He told me that I should not cause any trouble while I was in Ireland. We had a day’s layover in London, where we did some quick sightseeing. We headed to Northern Ireland at Benburb Priory, on the border between County Armagh and County Tyrone on the Blackwater River, in the province of Ulster, that was part of the United Kingdom, not Ireland. Our superiors there were both American and Irish Servites. I was delighted that I would get to see my uncles, aunts, and cousins that I had never seen in my life. I expected it to be rainy, but it was a wonderful sunny Irish day when we arrived in Belfast. It was the same routine as in Milwaukee, except we had more classes with the same prayer life. We also played Gaelic football and Irish hurling in the afternoons, instead of baseball and basketball. However, my classmate Gene Mellican wanted to play outdoor basketball. Thus, in 1960 and 1961, we, the Servite seminarians at Benburb, went to Belfast to win the Irish National Basketball Championships. We beat an American military unit from Londonderry, and then some Americans from Trinity College in Dublin, each year. Thus, I was on the Irish National Basketball Champions of 1960 and 1961. Visting Sunday was once a month, the same as at Milwaukee. However, I never had any visitors there in Chicago, but in Ireland, I was one of the few Americans to get visitors. My cousin Patsy Finnegan, with my uncle Martin, my father’s brother, and my aunts Lizzie and Annie, my mother’s sisters, came by car to visit me from Carrickmacross, Monaghan, from across the border in Ireland. We also got to visit Dublin once a year by bus. In the summer time, we spent a couple of weeks in Donegal, where the eastern shore line of the Atlantic Ocean beaches was beautiful, but no one went swimming because the water was so cold. I thought of New Jersey on the other side of the Atlantic where I had often gone to the Jersey shore. We studied scholastic philosophy, especially Thomas Aquinas. I loved our library and spent a lot of time reading philosophy journals about Aquinas and the Greek philosopher Aristotle. My parents came to Ireland in the summer of 1960, so I got to go to Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, and meet all my uncles, aunts, and cousins. My mother was a little upset that her sisters were not as well off as my father’s brothers. Anyway, I discovered my Irish roots. I gradually realized that I was an Irish-American, because of my parents. Everyone was excited that an American Irish Catholic, John Kennedy, won the presidential election in the fall of 1962. We also went to various Irish Catholic shrines. The time went by fast, as we took a Cunard cruise ship back to the USA. We stayed up all night as we sailed into New York harbor to see that great Statue of Liberty that I had seen so many times as a kid on the Staten Island Ferry. Have you ever been to the place where your mother and father grew up?
The late 1950s at Mount St. Philip in Granville, Wisconsin
Thus, I spent my late teenage years, 1957-1959, at the American Servite Novitiate, Mount St. Philip, in Granville, Wisconsin, deciding whether I had a vocation to be a Catholic priest. I learned about the spiritual life, that I never knew existed. I started to read the Bible. I found out how complex a person Jesus Christ was. I realized that the Old Testament was twice the size of the New Testament. I also learned about the Servants of Mary, or the Servites, that were founded by a group of wealthy merchants in Florence, Italy, in the thirteenth century Middle Ages. I began to appreciate the lives of various Catholic saints and their writings, like St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila. I was interested in the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, and his twentieth century life story conversion in Seven Storey Mountain. I got to know the other guys in my class as well as the class ahead of me and behind me. We played baseball and basketball for our afternoon recreation activities. One of my classmates was an Illinois All-State Basketball player. Thus, we won all our basketball games at our indoor gym, as we even beat the freshman team from Marquette. We had a very regular schedule. Perhaps, some might call it rigid. However, I really liked it. I learned to pray and meditate every day before our daily Mass. We also prayed the Latin Divine Office three times a day. I thought that the classes were easy. After every meal, when someone read to us as we ate in the refectory as they called it, we had to walk to the gate on the main road and back, as this was our recreation time to talk among ourselves. The evening recreation time was spent making Servite rosaries. We had no radio or TV, so that we were not able to follow the news of the day, whatever that was. A couple of guys got clippings from newspapers about sports items. Otherwise, it was all about us and God. Where did we fit in our service to the church? It all seemed so easy and wonderful. It was a great personal experience for me. I read, studied, prayed, meditated, and enjoyed this simple life style, with everything the same every day. I liked the people around me, my classmates. However, a couple of them left, by simply saying that this lifestyle was not for them. However, I thought that this was going to be a cakewalk. After two years, I took the simple temporary vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Then in an ironic twist of fate, that was too good to be true, just after we took these simple vows, our first assignment was to take a Holland-American cruise ship from New York City to Southampton, England, to eventually study philosophy in Northern Ireland. Our class of twelve new Servites was being sent to Benburb Priory, to study with the Irish Servites, who had just finished their Novitiate at Benburb also. Thus, we were sent home to take a boat across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to England, and then to Holyhead, Wales, by train, and by boat to Belfast, Northern Ireland, across the Irish Sea. In Belfast, there were a couple of vans with Irish Servites to take us to Benburb. Have you ever spent time to think about what you wanted to do with your life?
My college decision of 1957
For many seniors today, the big question of their senior year of high school is where do I go to college. In 1957, it was no different. Where would I go to college? I looked at Holy Cross and Dayton, applied, and got accepted, because they had good basketball teams, but then I got a scholarship to Villanova, since all three were Catholic colleges. The nuns at St. Mary’s HS wanted us to stay away from the secular Ivy League Schools, like Princeton. There was always the military, since everyone over 18 had to serve in the military unless they got married or went to college. My brother Johnny had joined the Air Force when he graduated from St. Mary’s in 1956. Finally, I had to decide what I wanted to do with my life. I thought about being an engineer, or even a politician lawyer, but I wanted to make a difference in this world. The age of innocence as a teenager was over. I would have to decide about my future. I would no longer be a 1950s teenager with Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, James Dean, and Fats Domino as my heroes. I wondered if I would make a good priest. I went to see the priest from my grade school years. Sure enough, he was still there, and even answered the door. The whole process seemed so easy. I did not have to take any exams, tests, or fill out forms. They would accept me, if I was willing to give it a try. I asked him about the various kinds of priests: diocesan, religious, and the various religious orders. He had a simple explanation. I had been taught by Servite Sisters in grade school and the parish was run by Servite priests. He said that was a sign that God wanted me to be a Servite. That made it easy for me. I went home, and told my mother and father. My mother was all excited. My father was a little more skeptical. He told me, “If I was going to be a priest, be a good one, and don’t be a bad one.” I had not thought about that. However, I decided not to tell anyone at school, but I had to see the nun who got me the scholarship to Villanova to tell her to give it to someone else. She seemed pleased that I was going to be a priest. I got a job that summer working in the office at GATX, where my father worked. Everything seemed so easy. I would have two years to decide if that is what I wanted to do at the Servite Novitiate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That seemed fair. In fact, one of my classmates would be someone I went to grade school with, who went to their minor seminary in Hillside, IL. I was going to leave the Big Apple area for an apple orchard in midwestern Wisconsin. In August of 1957, I took the long train ride from Newark, NJ, out to Chicago. There I met fifteen other guys, where we traveled to Milwaukee from Chicago by train. Everyone was friendly. I guess that I had expected them to be stern. I was surprised about how easy I fit in. They were mostly from Chicago, but there was some from St. Louis, Detroit, Wheeling, WV, Belen, NM, and Quincy, IL. About three or four had been in the military service, while others had been to the minor seminary, so that it was a mixed bag. Do you remember your choice of a career or college when you were leaving high school?
My teenage high school years in the mid 1950s
I traveled every day from Carteret, NJ, to St. Mary’s High School in Perth Amboy, NJ, on the public bus service, the old number 62 bus, after I graduated from St. Joe’s grade school in 1953. Strangely enough, my old grade school is still going today that first started in 1932, but my High School has closed since 1979, after it had operated since 1923. I failed to make the freshman basketball team at St. Mary’s HS, because I could not make a lay-up. Instead, I became the manager of the team and the official scorekeeper for all the games. However, I played with a Carteret Park District basketball team for St. Elias Orthodox Church. However, I was successful enough for cross country and made it to the New Jersey state track meet in the mile, as a senior. However, I quit after the third lap since I was so far behind. I never ran again competitively. At St. Mary’s HS, I met a lot of new people, especially, the upper-class cross-country guys, since there was no freshman or JV teams. I was pretty good at math, so I let anybody copy my homework. I got introduced to the works of Shakespeare in my English class. One nun, Sister Joakim, wanted me to join the forensic league. I did, where I learned about public speaking and debating, since she also taught me now to correctly pronounce “th” at the end of words. My first speech was about the unanimous “Brown versus Board of Education” Supreme Court decision of 1954, that integrated all public schools in the country. That seemed odd to me, since all New Jersey schools seemed to be integrated. As a junior and senior, I was on the two-man debate team. As a senior, Ralph Giles and I won the New Jersey State Debate Championships. I could have gone to the national championships, but the state track meet was on the same day. I picked the state track meet and lost. I was also on the school newspaper as a reporter, especially about sports, so that as a senior, I was named the editor-in-chief of the St. Mary’s The Lion’s Roar. Our school newspaper staff got to go to Villanova, where the entertainment was a young Dick Clark from Philadelphia. I tried out for the school musical play, but they told me that I would be better as an usher. I took four years of Latin and two years of German, and my last class in math was Trig. I really began to love history as I did more research for my debate topics on farm subsidies and federal aid to education. I had to know both sides of every issue, since we had to debate on both the positive and the negative sides. That was a good lesson to learn. As a senior, I ran for Student Council President, but finished second, and became the Director of Social Activities. I even went to a couple of rock n’ roll concerts in New York City. What do you remember about your teenage high school years?
My early teenage middle school years in the early 1950s
I turned eleven in 1950 and twenty-one in 1960, during my happy go lucky teenage years. In the last years of grade school, we were all afraid that the Korean War would mean that we would have to go to war after our high school graduation, since we still had the draft from World War II. We had a classroom mock election in 1952. You guessed it, everyone liked Ike in our class. I do not remember if Stevenson got any votes or not. I tried to play basketball, but it was not like playing outside my house on Railroad Avenue with a basket attached to a telephone pole on a slanted hilly street. However, I played baseball with my friends, but once I reached 14, I was on my own. I remember playing the summer after eighth grade graduation, where I was the last one drafted in the Carteret Park League. I did not play much, and when I did, I struck out a lot. However, I had only one hit, but it was a home run. I always wanted to be a major league utility player, because I knew that I was not good enough to play a position, since I struck out so often. I considered it a success when I walked. Then, when I realized that Joe Nuxhall had made the majors when he was 15 in 1944, I knew that I would never be a professional baseball player. However, I made up my own fantasy MLB league with real baseball players. I listened to the Giants radio announcer Frankie Frisch, so when he went to manage the Chicago Cubs in the late 1940s, they would be my team for life. In the summers, I would hang out with Paul Sweda, when we were in grade school. I even went on vacation with his family one summer, since he was an only child also. He loved the Cardinals because of Stan Musial, and I loved the Cubs. Whenever either team was in New York, we would often take the bus into the New York Port Authority and go to the baseball games in Dodger’s Ebbets Field or the Giants’ old Polo Grounds, since there were three MLB teams in New York until I graduated from HS in 1957. However, Paul went to Carteret High and I went to St. Mary’s for High School and we gradually drifted apart. As I left St. Joe’s grade school, the pastor asked me if I ever considered going to be a Servite priest. I said that I thought about it, but I was going to wait until I finished HS. Did you enjoy your grade school experience?
My childhood memories of the 1940’s
I was a grade-schooler in the late 1940s in Carteret, New Jersey. The great World War II was just beginning when I was born in New York City, the greatest city in the world. The people there will remind you about it also. I was two and half years old at a funeral wake, when I heard, “The Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor! We were at war!” My early childhood was spent worrying about this war and my mother bringing me to buy meat with ration stamps. I think my first movie was Bambi. My mother and I moved in a big moving truck from New York City to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, so that my father could build war ships there, as we lived in an upstairs apartment. The great FDR died, Adolf Hitler died, the atomic bomb exploded on two Japanese cities, and WWII ended, all within a couple of months, when I six years old in 1945. My parents bought a house in Carteret, New Jersey, that was next to my father’s work as a welder at the factory of GATX, where he worked for over twenty years. We were the new middle class Irish immigrant family of the late 1940’s, as home owners, although we did not own a car. However, our daily routine was gathering around the radio in the living room to listen to shows and sports events on the radio. We always listened to the John Gambling morning show on WOR and the evening news with Walter Winchell on our small kitchen radio on top of the refrigerator. I even had a small radio for my own bedroom to listen to “The Shadow Knows” and all those other mystery shows. I could only imagine what those people were like on the radio. However, my mother had a few miscarriages. I remember my Aunt Kate, her sister from the Bronx, coming to take care of me. My mother and father did not want me to grow up as an only child. Thus, I got two foster brothers, John and Jerry Mingin, for the rest of my life. I started school when I was 5 as a kindergartener at Washington Grade School on Roosevelt Ave. When all the other kids were crying, I loved school and climbing the Monkey Bars. We went to Sacred Heart Church every Sunday, which was a Slovak parish, with the Mass in Latin and the sermon in Slovak. I did not understand either, but I loved it anyway. However, we went to St. Joseph’s school and church, that was farther away, when my brother Johnny was caught by a truant officer skipping school. Then Jerry, my younger brother, got Polio. Thus, my older brother Johnny and I were quarantined to the house for a month. My father felt sorry for us, so that he bought us one of those new-fangled Black and White TVs for our living room to replace the radio, when I was nine years old in 1948. Johnny and I were the shoe-shine boys on weekend evenings outside the many saloons on Roosevelt Avenue. I also had a Friday afternoon newspaper delivery service of the weekly Carteret Press that cost 8 cents. Everybody gave me a dime, and said “keep the change.” I remember watching TV in the store windows before we got one of our own at home. In those post-WWII days, everyone was happy because the war was over. We rode out bikes to St. Joseph’s grammar school that was about a mile from our house. We played on the street in front of our house on Railroad Avenue with the Sam Chodosh Oil and Coal Company at the bottom of our dead-end sloped street. Across from our house was a railroad track with railroad trains in the morning and evening. What do you remember about growing up as a grade school kid?
Gene Finnegan Remembers Living Eighty Wonderful Years 