Loosing My Religion (Part Four)

If you're new here, this is a weekly column consisting of letters written to my grandchildren (who exist) and my great-grandchildren (who aren't here yet) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups and/or I'm dead.

[Blogaramians: Blogarama renders the links in my columns useless. Please click on View Original to solve this problem and access lotsa columns.]

- Glossary  

- Who The Hell Is This Guy?

Irregularly Appearing Imaginary Guest Stars 

Marie-Louise -- My beautiful muse  

Iggy -- My designated Sticky

Dana -- My designated gentlereader

"There is a kind of mysticism to writing." -Irvine Welsh


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies,

Next up: My Philadelphia period. I managed to get through my freshman and sophomore years in a public high school with minimal damage. In the summer of '69, less than a month before I was due to start my junior year, my dad died.

This was not as horrible as it sounds, at least for me. And no, I'm not a cold-blooded sociopath, nor was he some sort of wild-eyed psychopath. I cried a bit, of course, but...

See, he married late and had a bunch of kids. I was the fifth of seven. He was 58 when he died and I was 16. Frankly, he was more like a benignly indifferent grandfather to me than a dad at that point. I bear him no ill will; he was more dad like till I was nine or ten. He took me to several Pittsburgh (with an h) Pirate games during the half minute or so that I was a baseball fan (roughly from five to seven years of age).

My favorite thing about going to (now long gone) Forbes field was riding a streetcar to and from the game and eating frozen custard. Mine is not an athletic sensibility. I...

Marie-Louise spits out a Sacre bleu!
Dana launches a snort of derision.
Iggy giggles.

Fine then. I did one more year of high school in my rich Burb -- in a brand new school that was more like a college campus than a high school -- and then me, my mom, and my two younger brothers moved in with my older brother who lived in suburban/almost rural Philadelphia.

That's a very complicated story; what follows is the condensed version. 


Senior year. Not a rich Burb. Working 25 hours a week in a small supermarket (my big brother the butcher got me the job). Mont Clare Market was a short story, perhaps a novella, unto itself.

In the course of five years, I went from a rich and sophisticated eighth grade in a Catholic grade school to a rich, somewhat less sophisticated public high school to a middle class and decidedly unsophisticated senior year.

The good news was that my final year of high school was easy as I was a bit ahead of my fellow classmates. I'm not bragging, it was dumb luck. I confess that with the possible exception of eighth grade, I never worked hard in school.

[Well, I did work hard obtaining my sporadically accumulated 39 college credits, but that was by choice, not compulsion.]

There were vague discussions about college but none of the grups in my life lobbied for that path, some were almost hostile. Vague notions of communes or NYC were replaced by a desire to get my diploma, work full time in the small supermarket, and get my own place. And so I did.

[What happened to religion? asks Dana.]

Iggy has left for school. Marie-Louise sweeps out of my subconscious in a huff (she loves dramatic exits/entrances).


As far as religion goes...

[Finally!]

...my vague, ill-defined notions of God were replaced, at some point, by an interest in Eastern mysticism. It was a significant part of Boomer culture, various rock stars were involved, and the bookstores were full of ancient Eastern texts. LSD was credited with sometimes bestowing immediate, if temporary, enlightenment.

It was a RBFD in certain Boomer circles for a few minutes. The circles are much smaller nowadays. While I was, and remain, spiritually/mystically/whateverly minded, my efforts at "seeking enlightenment" were half-assed, at best.

As my teens became my twenties I slowly but steadily became what I now call a hippie with a job. I smoked too much weed but always had a job, a car, and my own apartment. Eastern religion/mysticism/etcetersicism became a sort of hobby. I never stopped reading about it but didn't pursue it with any real vigor.

I eventually tried LSD hoping for a shortcut to Nirvana but apparently never stumbled on the real deal as I only had one brief hallucination, one time. Uphoria, giggling, vibrant music and colors. It was rather like taking an intense, long-lasting version of weed, combined with speed, that suppressed your appetite rather than giving you the munchies.

[Preview: Now that weed is becoming legal there will soon be a letter about weed specifically, recreational drugs in general.]


In my early thirties, I met and married Nana. I all but gave up recreational pharmaceuticals. Nana came pre-equipped with a kid and kids and drugs don't mix. The next 30+ years were spent keeping Nana (a.k.a. Ronbo) alive as long as I could, avoiding career success, and then helping your mom and dad/grandmother and grandfather to launch a life.

As this is being written that project continues but at the moment they're doing most of the work and providing most of the financing. I'd be fu screwed without 'em as I'm struggling with some health problems and an inadequate retirement income at the moment.


The good news is that on the God/religion/enlightenment front I've made a bit of progress and I think I've finally got a clue or two. Poppa loves you.

To be continued...

Have an OK day. 
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P.S. Gentlereaders, for 25¢ a week, no, seriously, for 25¢ a week you can become a patron of this weekly column and help to prevent an old crank from running the streets at night in search of cheap thrills and ill-gotten gains.

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©2018 Mark Mehlmauer

Loosing My Religion (Part Three)

If you're new here, this is a weekly column consisting of letters written to my (eventual) grandchildren (who exist) and my great-grandchildren (who don't yet, aka the Stickies) to haunt them after they become grups and/or I'm dead.

[Blogaramians: Blogarama renders the links in my columns useless. Please click on View Original to solve this problem and access lotsa columns.]

                                                 - Glossary  

                                  - Who The Hell Is This Guy?

Irregularly Appearing Imaginary Guest Stars 

Marie-Louise -- My beautiful muse  

Iggy -- My designated Sticky

Dana -- My designated gentlereader

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
                                                                                 -Allen Saunders                                                                                                   

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies,

My eight years of Catholic education (which took place when nuns still had hair on their chests) was over. Next up: freshman in a public high school. Most vivid memory: culture shock(s).

No, I didn't have to wear a tie. Changing classes or going to the restroom didn't involve marching. Not once did a nun waltz part way into the boy's room demanding we keep the noise down.

[For the record, the nun in a boys restroom scenario would make a great scene in a movie. Picture a half dozen or so frightened/embarrassed little boys attempting to become one with a urinal to preserve what they could of their modesty/dignity.]

Big BUT

There was gym class twice a week. Showering buck naked with a bunch of dudes, at varying stages of physical development was bad enough. The pre and post shower Lord of the Flyish dramas in the locker room were worse. Running a cross-country course for the first time in my life -- four times during the first report card period, for a grade -- was worse yet.

Going from staying inside for recess to try and be the first one to finish the current Agatha Christie novel that our impromptu book club was reading -- to running Cross-Country -- was like a 300 pound 17-year-old momma's boy trying to make it through Marine boot camp.

And don't get me started on girls in mini-skirts! Why I remember...

[What, has any of this got to do with religion?]

It's a reflection of my charmingly eccentric personality. Not to mention it serves as the literary equivalent of color commentary in a sports-obsessed nation. Not to mention that the phrase not to mention (followed by a mention) makes no sense, Dana.

[Hoo-boy...]

Before moving on I must mention one other thing. Had I gone to a Catholic high school I would've had an entirely different life. Obtaining the best grades I was capable of would have been demanded; there would've much pressure to go to college.

The majority of my unionized public school teachers couldn't care less if I worked hard or not and whether or not I went to college was between me and my parents. In retrospect, I don't take this personally. Tomatoes v. Tomahtoes. I sorta/kinda wish I had opted for the tomahto track but then again, I suspect I've had a more interesting life than the average bear.

And of course, I was blessed with/there wouldn't have been Ronbo, Valencia Procrastinatia, and the Stickies.


Ninth grade was a transition year as far as me and organized religion are concerned. One doesn't just turn one's back on eight years of indoctrination, that began when I still believed in Santa, just like that. At least this one didn't.

I joined a Catholic-based youth organization for kids that also didn't go to a Catholic high school along with my new best friend, Glenn S., who was in the other eighth grade of the same Catholic grade school I had just left behind. It was a large school. Social rules dictated that one's social sphere revolved around the kids you spent the day trapped sitting in the same classroom with.

We had quickly become foxhole buddies to survive public high school and riding a  school bus to same. The bus was yet another Lord of the Flies situation, but not as bad as gym class. We were best buds for quite a while, but no longer. He got normal years before I did.


The group, that I can't remember the name of, mandated doing a lot of "volunteer" work in various officially approved charitable situations. The only vivid memory that comes to mind is trying to feed a 300-year-old woman at a nursing home who kept yelling at me for not doing it right.

I can't remember when I stopped showing up, for the youth group or Mass. At some point, my mom acquiesced (she was in charge of that sort of thing) but I've no memory of exactly when.

My ill-defined belief is some sort of God became even more ill-defined as I drifted through/survived high school. My goals were to get laid, graduate, get laid, and then do something, um, cool. "Hit the road," or join a commune, or move to New York City and become a writer, etc.

[For the record, while I liked to read I hadn't actually written anything, not even tried really. As to why I thought I needed to move to NYC, and/or how this would result in my becoming a writer... Well, let's just say it seemed like a good idea at the time.]

I wound up living and working in a grocery store in suburban, almost rural, Philadelphia. Poppa loves you. To be continued...

Have an OK day. 
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P.S. Gentlereaders, for 25¢ a week, no, seriously, for 25¢ a week you can become a patron of this weekly column and help to prevent an old crank from running the streets at night in search of cheap thrills and ill-gotten gains.

If there are some readers out there that think my shtuff is worth a buck (or three...) a month, color me honored, and grateful. PATREON is a company that makes it possible for fans to support all sorts of "creators" via PayPal and plastic. You can donate just once by "pledging" a monthly amount and then canceling after your first payment.

In fact, you can cancel at any time for any reason. Regardless, if you like what you just read, please share it. Buttons below...

Your friendly neighborhood crank is not crazy about social media (I am a crank after all) but if you must, you can like me/follow me on Facebook. I post weekly column announcements and items of interest there.

©2018 Mark Mehlmauer

Loosing My Religion (Part Two)

If you're new here, this is a weekly column consisting of letters written to my grandchildren (who exist) and my great-grandchildren (who aren't here yet) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups and/or I'm dead.

[Blogaramians: Blogarama renders the links in my columns useless. Please click on View Original to solve this problem and access lotsa columns.]

- Glossary  

- Who The Hell Is This Guy?

Irregularly Appearing Imaginary Guest Stars

Marie-Louise -- My beautiful muse  

Iggy -- My designated Sticky

Dana -- My designated gentlereader

"My religions is very simple. My religion is kindness." -Dalai Lama

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies,

OK, where was I... Oh, yeah, transitioning from an old-school, blue-collar, relatively grubby inner-city neighborhood (currently suffering from gentrification) to the Burbs. Eighth and final year of a Catholic education. Rich (relatively speaking) peers, cutting grass.

FYI, old-school is a relative term. Old-school to me is ancient history to you. I'm referencing the end of the Black & White Ages when everything was morphing into the current era.

I'm rather lucky, I think, and so are you by extension, to have incarnated at that point. I clearly remember a  different America. An America (yes, of course I know it was flawed, get over yourself utopians) that had reached its highest crest so far before descending into our current trough. I wonder if I'll live long enough to experience another crest?

Anyways...


For a variety of reasons -- the primary one being many of my new, more prosperous friends had older sibs in college where the late sixties was shifting into high gear -- I was suddenly a step or two closer to what I had read about in The Saturday Evening Post but hadn't really affected my life all that much yet.

[Well... while still living on the Sou' Side a Pittsburgh (with an h) I did sport a pair of sunglasses that looked like the granny glasses John Lennon sometimes wore. I bought 'em at Nevin's Five & Ten for 89 cents; broke 'em in short order.]

However, mine/ours was a relatively small and sheltered revolution. The only thing I had to rebel against was church and school, which in my mind/life at the time was the same thing.

I was against the "establishment" (whatever that was) and viewed anyone over thirty with suspicion, as any right-thinking callowyute should. But I lead a relatively conventional life. I knew of no one that did drugs until my junior year in high school, even alcohol. Making a baby before getting married was still a disgrace and often resulted in being forced to get married.


I wasn't an atheist, I wasn't even an agnostic. I believed in some sort of ill-defined God. My revolution was about not wanting to wear a tie every day, which was actually about not liking to go to school.

My revolution was about having had it up to here with seemingly endless Rules & Regs, saints, sins, and ceremonies. Interestingly, many of those saints and some of those sins have since been repealed.

I didn't figure out till much later that want I wanted was a personal relationship with God. What the Catholic church offered was a command and control sort of religion with all sorts of intermediaries between God and me.

Our/my vaguely defined sense of us v. them got us Masses in English. This victory proved that it was only a matter of time till we'd fix everything. I speak here of not only the church but also the "establishment" (whatever that was).

Ironically, the only time I remember feeling close to God when I was a kid was when, at a traditional mass or ceremony, my consciousness would float away on a cloud fueled by a pipe organ, Latin chanting, candles, and the light of elaborate, stained glass windows.

I didn't have to worry about this on Sunday's, but if this happened while attending Mass or one of the interminable special ceremonies with my class, it often resulted in a smack on the back of the head, much to the amusement of my peers, by a vigilant nun who assumed I was up to no good.

"Folk Masses" in well-lit rooms and executed in English with acoustic guitars were cool in concept but rather dreary in reality.


And then, two things happened that turned out to be major league milestones. Of course, I had no idea that they were till some years later. Wouldn't it be cool if we were aware of all the crap that turned out to be hugely important crap at the time it was happening, and not in retrospect?

Think about it, we...

[Cough, cough.]

Thanks, Dana, point taken. Thing number one was the fact that my parents could not afford to send me to the Catholic high school that all my new sophisticated friends were going to (well, the guys, it wasn't coed).

Thing number two was the resulting culture shock from attending a public school for the first time in my life. I thought it would be cool to get away from the Catholic education system (no ties...) and sow some wild oats.

I was mostly wrong. Poppa loves you.

To be continued...

Have an OK day. 
Scroll down to share or comment

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P.S. Gentlereaders, for 25¢ a week, no, seriously, for 25¢ a week you can become a patron of this weekly column and help to prevent an old crank from running the streets at night in search of cheap thrills and ill-gotten gains.

If there are some readers out there that think my shtuff is worth a buck (or three...) a month, color me honored, and grateful. PATREON is a company that makes it possible for fans to support all sorts of "creators" via PayPal and plastic. You can donate just once by "pledging" a monthly amount and then canceling after your first payment.

In fact, you can cancel at any time for any reason. Regardless, if you like what you just read, please share it. Buttons below...

Your friendly neighborhood crank is not crazy about social media (I am a crank after all) but if you must, you can like me/follow me on Facebook. I post weekly column announcements and items of interest there.

©2018 Mark Mehlmauer