Brothers Get Religion
As memory serves, the following took place in the summer of 1969. I had just finished 8th grade, and my older brother Tom would be a sophomore at Del Norte High in the fall. My younger brothers Ted and Terry would be starting at Zuni Elementary, having been recently freed from the stalag of Our Lady of the Immaculate Contraption school, thanks to my rebellion and escape the year before.
Theoretically, Sunday mornings in the summer should have been for sleeping late. But if you were a young member of a Catholic tribe, it meant prying your ass out of bed, getting dressed, and somehow making it to mass.
One by one, the four of us would emerge from our respective caves in various stages of disheveled dress. The swamp cooler was already in overdrive. Even at 10:30 in the morning, it was already hot. Mom and Dad would be sitting in the living room, cigarettes ablaze, with coffee and tea in hand respectively. Martin had been up with the sun and had already read most of the Sunday paper.
After saying adios and promising to stay awake and pay attention to whoever said mass, we exited. Once outside, we piled into the blue and white VW bus and headed off. Church was literally a five-minute drive from the house.
Keeping with our set routine, we pulled up in front of the church. Then either Ted or Terry went inside and returned momentarily with four copies of the Sunday bulletin. Afterwards, it was a quick drive to a Denny’s on San Mateo Boulevard a few minutes from the church.
Some 50 years later, this particular Denny’s is still there. So much for the longevity of fine dining restaurants. But Denny’s is like the cockroach of restaurants on Animal Planet. It would survive a nuclear blast and the human race being wiped off the face of the earth. No wait, that’s Waffle House.
Regardless, once inside and installed in a sticky Naugahyde booth, it was time for mass quantities of strong but shitty coffee, and mountains of eggs, bacon, and pancakes. But before the food was delivered by a cranky hungover waitress, there was work to be done. The contents of the bulletin had to be memorized. This was because Mom and Dad would quiz us on what happened during mass after we got home. But there was a catch. We couldn’t just spew out the contents verbatim. That would be like the police interviewing multiple suspects at a crime scene who all gave exactly the same story—because they were all involved in the crime. No, rote memorization would never do.
Instead, the various readings of the mass first had to be assigned. I got the epistle or gospel depending on the day. Tom got the sermon. Ted and Terry were assigned the other readings. Then, while hoovering breakfast, we got down to the business of creating a Cliff’s Notes version of the day’s mass, hitting the high points over and over. But there was one more angle to our charade. We planned to argue about any point one of us made. That would cement our alibi of actually having been sitting in the pew, listening to the holy droning, and being subjected to some truly god-awful guitar playing and singing.
By the time the plates were cleared, we were ready. After paying the bill, we would be home in less than ten minutes, decamping in the living room on the sofa or on the shag carpeting. Then the inevitable interrogation would begin, usually led by Mom. It went something like this.
Q: Who did you see?
A: This one was easy. We were still half asleep and didn’t see X or Y, much less notice anyone. If one of us got stuck, the others would disagree and an argument would ensue. Dad would shush us.
Q: Who said mass?
A: Easy, it was listed at the bottom of the back page.
Q: What was the gospel?
A: I gave a fractured summary. Ted immediately disagreed. Tom disagreed with him. More mayhem would break out with Martin barking after 15 seconds.
Q: What did Fr. ___ say during the sermon?
A: Tom’s turn. In the blink of an eye, Terry and I disagreed with everything he said. Another short argument would ensue. Martin would tell us to shut up at this point.
Mom would end up asking about the music or something else. One of us would offer an answer. The others would already be staring vacantly at whatever was on TV. Then at least one of us would go back to bed and sleep until lunch time, when we would all eat again as if we hadn’t been fed for a week.
The Sunday holy Denny’s charade only lasted that summer. After that it became impossible to convince Tom and me to go to church. We had had it with the bending and scraping, and the pedophile priests. As memory serves (that phrase again), Ted and Terry only went to church for a short time after. At that point, the parents gave up and just looked after their own souls, which was probably the wisest course of action.
Many years later at a family gathering when all six of us kids were on our own, we asked Mom if she remembered those Sundays. She did. Then we fessed up about going to Our Lady of Denny’s instead of mass.
“Did you know?” we asked.
She smiled and said, “Of course I knew. You all reeked of bacon and grease.”
But at least we got religion. And that’s all that counts.
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