It was snowing when I showed up for class in the second grade at St. Stephen’s School in Pittsburgh’s inner-city back in 1949. I was wearing leggings. It was a snow suit, not the skin-tight leggings girls and women wear these days. It was an old-fashioned no-nonsense snow suit. Very practical in bad weather.
It covered your entire legs down to your ankles and it had a bib and two straps that went over your shoulders and were tied in the back. My leggings were dark blue. They made good sense to wear on a cold, wintry day. It’s important to keep those straps in mind as you read this.
I was seven at the time. As soon as I walked into the classroom, on the first floor of the pale-orange brick building, some girls started making fun of me and teasing me for wearing those leggings. I loved getting the attention of girls, even then, but not this way
They got the best of me. Finally, I had it with them, and hollered out, “My old lady made me wear them!”
Sister Macrina was as far away from me as should possibly be, in the far corner of the classroom from its entry doorway. In a split second, she was in my face. I think that Sister Macrina was the original “Flying Nun.”
Sister Macrina, I must explain, was one of the few nuns of the Sisters of Charity order, that did not have Mary as one of her names when she became a nun. She took her name from Macrina, a nun in the early days of the Christian church who is revered as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches. My memory of Sister Macrina that day is hardly reverent. Then again, I was no saint.
I must tell you that I have never referred to my mother as “my old lady” since that fateful morning at St. Stephen’s. Sometimes we learn lessons the hard way.
There was nothing saintly, either, about Sister Macrina that winter morning. She seized me by the straps on my snow suit, or leggings, and escorted me hurriedly into the robery or cloak room. That’s where we stored our coats and jackets during the day. Those names – robery or cloak room -- never made sense to me. None of my classmates ever showed up wearing a robe or a cloak.
In any case, I was too familiar with the cloak room. It was also used as a “time-out” room. If you were acting up, the nun in charge of the classroom would have you spend time in the cloak room.
Whenever my grandchildren are sitting in the “time out” chair in the hallway of their home, I am reminded of my days in the robery.
I missed a lot of schooling while spending time in the cloakroom. It was solitary confinement, for sure. The nuns kept candy bars in a small closet in there to reward students at the end of the month. There were always a few candy bars missing from the box by the end of the month when they were passed out to worthy and well-behaved students. I knew I was never going to get any candy bars that way.
There was a frosted glass window in each robery or cloak room. Let me assure you that it’s tough to entertain the class or make them laugh when you are working through a stained-glass window to get their attention.
That’s all I ever wanted to do – entertain the class – get their attention somehow. I was never really bad; just mischievous. One of the nuns told me that in later years.
“You weren’t bad, Jimmy, just mischievous,” Sister Mary Pius told me one day when we bumped into each other in downtown Pittsburgh when I was a college student at Pitt. I never laid a hand on a nun in anger, and that was not true of some of my classmates.
The nuns were not as restricted in their replies as I was. I can recall having a switch taken to my backside, and a ruler with a metal edge striking the back of my hands. I am fortunate to be able to still hit the right keys when I type these columns.
In any case, let’s get back to the scene or sequence when Sister Macrina ushered me into the robery or cloak room that winter’s day in 1949.
Sister Macrina took me into that cloak room, held the straps away from my body, and used them to hang me on a clothes hook? And stood back and admired her handiwork.
I tilted and my head was lying on my right shoulder. She left me to squirm for quite a while, as I recall.
Imagine the trouble a teacher would get into today if she did something like that. It was just routine punishment in our school days. We didn’t know any attorneys. The only attorney in town was often drunk and staggering on the main street. He was no Clarence Darrow or Atticus Finch.
My cousin Everett Burns, who was an altar boy, came into the cloak room while I was hanging from a clothes hook. Out of habit, he mistook me for one of the Stations of the Cross, and genuflected as he passed me.
I always add that sequence to my story-telling because it gets a laugh. It’s pure fiction. I made up that part of the tale. Remember, anything for a laugh.
In truth, I remember my school days at St. Stephen’s fondly. I learned a lot there, except for how to tell time quickly. I still pause before I tell someone what time it is.
They graded you for a lot of behavior items on your report card, in addition to the usual subjects, English, art, history and religion. I did well in art and religion. My wife Kathie is still impressed with how well I do on religion topics when we’re playing Jeopardy. I always got an N.S. – not satisfactory – for “is reverent at prayer and church.”
The church, which we had to attend as a class on Wednesday, as well as with our families on Sunday. I did a lot of whispering during Mass.
I mentioned that most of my teachers had Mary in their names. Mary was the name of Jesus’ mother and also the name of my mother and my sister, Mary Carole O’Brien.
Here’s the lineup of my teachers from first to eighth grade at St. Stephen’s: Sister Mary Thomas, Sister Macrina, Mrs. Kyle (a lay teacher), Sister Mary Patrick, Sister Mary Lucy – also known as “Liver Lip Lucy” because of her tightly-sealed lips – Sister Mary Pius, Sister Ann Patricia and Sister Mary Leo. Our principal, whom I got to know quite well, was Sister Mary Barbara.
Sister Mary Patrick liked me and she always brought me copies of “Arizona Highways” magazine because she knew I was fascinated by American Indians, who were often pictured in that magazine. I could devote an entire column to my experiences with Sister Mary Lucy and I may someday. Just warning you now.
When I was in her class, my mother thought school ran a half hour later than it really did. I was in detention in her class almost every day. I didn’t mind. You could get an early start on your homework. Most of my friends were there. That was a rough group. Out of 24 boys in the class, five would spend time in jail during their illustrious careers. I am proud to say I wasn’t one of them.
In seventh grade, I got traded and was sent across the hall to be with Sister Ann Patricia. They said the nun who had me originally was not experienced enough to deal with the loveable likes of me. Sister Ann Patricia was the most demanding nun I ever had, but we became life-long friends. She didn’t hit me; she just embarrassed me with her berating or critical comments about me in front of the class. She also taught me a lot about good grammar.
Sister Ann Patricia was from West Homestead, across the Monongahela River from Pittsburgh, and her father and brother both worked at Mesta Machine Company in West Homestead, along with my dad and his two brothers and, eventually, my brother Dan, who became the company treasurer. He was a Hazelwood success story.
I kept in touch with Sister Ann Patricia when she was the principal at St. Luke’s in Carnegie, and visited her when she was in a retirement home in Greensburg. I could tell her anything, and often did. “I love you,” she once said in the best of ways. “But don’t tell anyone I said that.”
Sister Mary Leo, my eighth grade teacher, once told my mother, “Someday your son is going to end up in Sing Sing.”
That’s a prison in upstate New York, in Ossining, New York. When I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1964, my mother sent an invitation for the ceremonies to Sister Mary Leo, along with an accompanying note. “See, he didn’t end up in Sing Sing after all,” wrote Mary Minnie O’Brien.
My friend, Pittsburgh’s iconic sports commentator Myron Cope, cautioned my mother not to say that, not yet. “I think your kid still has a shot at it,” said Cope.
So far, so good.
For more information about Jim O’Brien and purchasing his books, visit, www.jimobriensportsauthor.com or email him at jimmyo64@gmail.com
Photos by Jim O’Brien