The words robery, leggings, switches and Stations of the Cross are not often found in the same story these days. And that’s robery, not robbery. Some explanation may be necessary here.
The robery was a long, narrow, often dark room to the right of the doorway as you entered the classrooms at St. Stephen’s Catholic Grade School in the Hazelwood section of our city. There were coat hooks lining both sides of the robery.
Once upon a time there were robes hung on those hooks, later coats. Remember pea coats? The word robery isn’t even to be found in any modern dictionaries.
There were 24 such classrooms in the three-story yellow brick building half-way up the hill on Elizabeth Street, at the corner of Gertrude Street. 23 of them were on the first three floors and one was off by itself in the basement, just across the hall from the huge, blackened iron furnace that filled most of the cave-like room and heated the building.
The building was abandoned more than 25 years ago. There is no St. Stephen’s Catholic Grade School. The convent was leveled later on. The priest house has no priest in it. The memories remain.
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It was a cold winter morning and Mike the Janitor was busy, shoveling coal into the fiery pit. He would feed the flames throughout the day. His face was already red and covered with soot and sweat. The nuns who taught us would point to the furnace and give us nightmares by telling us that it was what hell was like. That left a vivid impression on all of us. Too hot to handle.
My mother made sure I was dressed warmly. I was wearing dark blue leggings. They were heavy covers for your legs, from top to bottom they had crossing straps on your torso. Get the picture?
When I removed my coat upon entering the classroom, several girls greeted me with a laugh and some snickers, when they saw my blue leggings
To which I responded by saying, much too loud I suppose in retrospect, “My Old Lady made me wear them!”
Sister Macrina, my second-grade teacher, stood in the far corner of the classroom, next to the fish tank and the white statue of the Blessed Mother, as far from me as possible. Somehow, she heard what I had said. She was upon me in maybe two seconds.
Sister Macrina was the first Flying Nun I knew personally, too personally. She seized me by the straps across my back and yanked me into the robery. Her eyeglasses glistened from the overhead light, funny what you remember.
She hoisted me up and put those straps over a hook. She pulled a switch – a long thin branch – from a basket in the corner and took a few well-aimed swats at my backside. That’s when I really appreciated the extra padding the leggings provided. Sister Macrina left me dangling from that hook the rest of the morning.
I spent way too much time in the robery the rest of my grade school days. I must have been in there -- sort of a solitary confinement – when we were taught how to tell time. I am still slow on the draw when anyone asks me what time it is.
The nuns used to store candy bars in a cabinet in the back of the robery. They used them as rewards for the best-behaved students and often wondered why the supply seemed a bit short.
My cousin, Everett Burns, came by me when I was dangling there and I swear he genuflected, mistaking me for one of the Stations of the Cross. One of the depictions of the events leading up to the Crucifixion.
I must confess I made up that last part. It was too good a line to leave unused. My role as a grade school student was to amuse the other students. It was not an easy task to do so through the frosted glass window that filled most of the upper half of the door of the robery. But I managed.
Some of life’s lessons come harder than others. I will say that, after that morning, I never ever referred to my mother as My Old Lady again.
Previously published in the Waterdam Farms Newsletter