iv - Gains and Losses
Backtracking again: When I moved to Fayette Street in 1933, I acquired three
new pals: Jimmy Murray, a classmate who lived next door, and Sonny (Arthur, Jr.)
Young and his brother Billy who lived in the next block. Jimmy had heart trouble so
his physical activities were severely limited. His mother invited the Youngs and me
to play cards with Jimmy. Our sessions, always embellished with refreshments, were
very pleasant. Jimmy always won. We suspected it was because he spent his daily
enforced rest periods mastering the games, working out odds, etc. I already knew,
from being in the same class at school with him, that he was a mathematical whiz.
Sonny and Billy and I did some things by ourselves, too. Like going to a
secluded (we thought) part of nearby Wills Creek to skinny dip. We called it
“B.A.B." (Bare-ass Beach). One day the bushes on the bank parted and there stood
MR. YOUNG, my friends’ father! All he said was, “Get home!" That was our last
swim at B.A.B. I never did learn how we were found out.
That same summer I stayed at a hotel for the first time. Foxie took me with
him on his business visit to Parkersburg, West Virginia, where we stayed overnight at
the Chancellor Hotel. I sent a hotel postcard to Mother on which was printed Rooms
with shower bath, two persons, $3.50 to $4.00.
In December 1933, Saint Peter and Paul’s inaugurated a weekly evening
service, a so-called “perpetual novena" for the supplication of Saint Anthony of
Padua. This type of Catholic devotional service was highly popular in that era. Father
Leander, a young, wiry, joke-telling, slightly wacky priest was given the task of
recruiting and training a boys’ choir which would lead the singing of the hymns, some
of which had been specially written for the new service. Billy Young and I were his
first and, if I remember correctly, his only recruits. Our opening hymn was always
“Si quaeris miracula" - "If miracles you seek..." and for the climactical Benediction
of the Blessed Sacrament we led the people in “Tantum Ergo" and “O Salutaris
Hostia," although the congregation needed no supporting choir for those songs of
ancient Catholic tradition.
Father Leander’s boys’ choir continued into 1934 for a while, by which time
I found it boring. I begged off: I can’t sing that high any more - my voice is
changing. Feeling my Adam’s apple, Father Leander questioned my claim, but I
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