I liked Sister Richard. Unfortunately, my most lasting picture of her is not
flattering. It’s a pitifully comic picture, that of a distraught woman grappling with
some big, struggling boy, trying to paddle his bottom. Poor Sister. She was so
dedicated to teaching that when her efforts were frustrated by uncooperative pupils
she sometimes blew up. Rotten kids, all of us, in varying degrees!
I believe it was in this year of religious inspiration that I asked my mother for
a missal - a book containing the complete prayers said by the priest at each Mass
throughout the year, both in English and Latin! It had more than 1,400 pages, but its
very thin paper kept it to manageable size. And I used it! But reading the English
translation of what the priest was saying was more like a game than a spiritual
exercise. There was at least this advantage: When I began studying Latin in school
the next year, I already had a comfortable familiarity with the language.
Saints Peter and Paul’s School went only to the sixth grade for boys while the
girls went into the seventh grade in Ursuline Academy. The boys were expected to
start at LaSalle Institute, a boys’ junior and senior high school run by the Christian
Brothers. My friends Junior Doerner, Bobby Kienhofer, Ed Neus and others would
be going there. Ernie Kieffer, by now a close Fayette Street buddy, was going to
enroll in the public school, claiming it had better athletic teams and it was a shorter
walk from home. He persuaded me to go there, too, and since it was free, while
LaSalle charged tuition (even more than the 75 cents a month at SS Peter and Paul’s),
I didn’t have to beg my mother to let me go with Ernie to sign up. Thus began my
beloved years at Allegany.
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