From
the time I was young...From
the time I was young...For a kid who didn't think he was getting much from going to church, quite a bit stuck nonetheless. The following are vignettes from my early formation in Detroit, MI, where I was born.
Planning for and attending our Good Shepherd Parish International Festival this year takes me back 25 years or so to the annual "Fun Fair" we held at St. Gerard Parish in northwest Detroit every June, right at the time school let out. My father worked on the staff, so I saw a lot of behind-the-scenes. This event had more of a real midway feeling to it, with some pretty good rides of the Tilt-a-Whirl and Scrambler variety (and of course a Moon Bounce, which was a relatively new ride in those days). It was set up in the back of the church parking lot, right on the asphalt. One year we had a narrow-gauge railroad running around the site, which left a set of tie-imprints I'd notice for years afterwards. I don't know where they came up with the budget for such a show--maybe the liability insurance wasn't so bad on the equipment then. This was a 3-day affair, with the final raffle drawings on the closing night. The raffle intrigued me one year because they were giving away a 19" color television set. That's what I wanted in my room more than anything else, so I took a hard-saved $2.00 and bought a whole three tickets to throw into the drum. My parents thought it so noble that an 11-year-old would actually give that much money to the Parish, but I simply wanted to win! The last day of that Fun Fair just seemed like the greatest excitement I could know, especially since I was in the raffle. They had a dunk tank that year, and made a special point to find some of most feared teachers from St. Gerard School (Gr 1-8) to put on the seat. Since I was in public school, this didn't really get my attention. I was just waiting for the prizes to be drawn. Dark settled and all the lights were turned on around the Fair, and people gathered at the raffle drum as they drew the tickets. I was in there! They went through the various prizes, to finish with a new automobile (no good when you can't drive), but I walked away a loser. The next day the crews came by and tore down the attractions, leaving the parking lot saddeningly bare. I didn't have my television set, but I had a memory to share with you here.
When I wrote about the St. Gerard's Festival in Detroit from when I was growing up, I said I was in public school, rather than the Parish's Catholic school. But with the kind of volunteer worker my father was, I saw plenty of the school just the same. You see, this was where one of the most memorable parts of my youth took place, the experience of the Family Mass. As I understand, a combination of Vatican II and the youth movement of the 1960's brought about many of these "experimental" forms of celebration. Ours was considered so revolutionary (because of the guitars, mostly) that we had to hold it in the school gym, rather than the main worship space. When I think of my father's involvement, it was best classified within the "music and liturgy" section. In addition to playing guitar, he wrote the weekly handout himself and ran it off in the school office on the spirit duplicator. On Saturdays, I would tag along to the school when he did the copying and any other setup work that was needed for that week's service. We kids had a lot of fun tearing up and down the empty halls and playing hide-and-seek, while my father went looking for a 16mm projector, or whatever else the audiovisuals would require. In the gym itself, there was a storage room full of folding tables and chairs that we had to roll out every week and set around the altar, usually placed, it seemed, under one of those cranked-up basketball goals. We'd have little climbing expeditions in that storeroom, where you could get to a dizzying height above the floor on the chairs and look out over the roof from the windows. Then, it was great fun to push each other around on the carts themselves, once the chairs were unloaded.
I really don't know how much of the content of the Family Mass sunk into me at that time. I could have been like the kids you see today at Mass, all restless and wanting to go. But I know some of it stayed, and I'm glad I was there now. The best part was the music. We had a hand-bound songbook, also spirit-duplicated, that had the words to tunes like "Allelu", "I am the Resurrection", "Put your Hand in the Hand", "They will Know we are Christians" and of course, "This Little Light of Mine". I can even recall a complete verse from one song we sang a lot. It was called "Today":
Today
While the blossoms still cling to the vine,
I'll taste your strawberries,
I'll drink your sweet wine,
A million tomorrows...will all...pass away,
E're I forget All the joy that is mine,
Today
Yes, there are many things in my life today that come from my "summer of love" experience. My father acquired two old school desks from St. Gerard's School, one of which I now use as a stand for my Sony Trinitron. The space underneath the top for books turns out to hold a VCR very nicely. It's a treasured artifact. I also made first Communion at that service. This was an interesting practice, our Eucharist--on the way in, each family would take a number of hosts equal to their attendance and place it into the Gifts basket, so there would be few or none left over. But of everything that I got from being part of that fellowship, it was the simple experience of belonging and being loved that mattered most. I see the kids in the Y.A.C.H.T. Club today and feel such joy on this account: at our parties, when they're out playing with each other and with us, I know they must be enjoying something akin to what I myself knew.
A Father's Day tribute