Grooming

Grooming

Over eight years, our St. Anselm’s ’55 class had a total of 5 future seminarians. They all ended up at St. Joe’s sooner or later. The first was Bob Murnane, who announced somewhere in the middle of eighth-grade that he was going to enter the seminary. This slightly enhanced his reputation with our crumbling old teacher, Sister Bernadette of Mary, but because he’d also defied her prohibition against signing up for Miss Prebble’s mixed-dance class, he was a suspect vocation at best.

Arnie Kunst would also enter the minor seminary the next year, but he’d suddenly moved to Sacramento after seventh grade, so we’d lost track of him. I remember feeling really bad that he’d left without saying goodbye.

I had no inclination to enter the seminary at that point. Although I was a pious youth, I was also mischievous, and often ended up on the sharp end of the nuns’ rulers. In the sixth grade, like Tom Sheehan, I led the class in demerits; in the seventh, I was one of the four “boys who steal” who had to stand for interrogation every time any classmate lost anything. (I hadn’t “stolen” Bobby Dal Bon’s books; I’d just hidden them in the cloakroom.) In the eighth grade, I talked Danny Taylor into tossing the wilted carrot he’d found in his lunch into the middle of the hemorrhoid pillow on Sister Bernadette of Mary’s chair. The scatological terror of the sight sent her over the edge, and she detained her usual twelve suspects after school and told them no one went home until someone confessed. Luckily I wasn’t one of them, but word had it that the situation got very intense, with concerned parents calling the school and frustrated students bewailing the loss of their weekend. Finally, at about 5 P.M., emerging-cleric Bob Murnane stood up and confessed to a sin he hadn't committed to redeem his suffering classmates from the nun’s wrath. We knew then that Bob had a true vocation.

Danny Taylor later went to prison for a crime no doubt precipitated by his lying to the nun that day. I was able to skate off as the innocent instigator. But no thoughts about priesthood or seminary.

Jim Pulskamp was in our class too, but he wasn’t making any sounds about going in the seminary. His older Bill had gone in and only lasted a year. He was in Jack O’Hare’s class (probably sat next to him, now that I think about it). His mother, our closest neighbor, wisely perceived that eighth grade was too early for a seminary decision. Jim would have to wait at least until after high school.

The other future seminarian in our class was Billy Allen, an eccentric red-head whose sometimes torrid religious outbursts no doubt contributed to our class jock, Johnny Bocabella, beating him up regularly. Billy eventually entered St. Joe’s in Poet year, where he was required to do some left-brain catch-up academically in order to balance his right-brain mysticism.

That leaves me, who entered in my junior year of high school. I can’t remember being groomed, other than Fr. Cornelius Burns becoming my mentor in Latin and English at Marin Catholic. This was in my sophomore year, his first exuberant year out of the seminary. In my Freshman year, I had had a life-changing crisis, when I suddenly was diagnosed with “Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura” and went from being a mischievous, pugnacious, wanna-be jock to a fat, steroid-bloated nerd forbidden from sports, fighting, or even casual accidents, lest I bleed to death. The only thing left was intellectual achievement. I started studying for the first time and became an honor roll wizard overnight. That’s when I met Corny Burns, who no doubt recognized a fellow physically-impaired Ignatius Loyola who needed a cause. He may well have groomed me without me being aware of it. All I know is that he inspired me as a teacher.

Somewhere in the spring of my sophomore year, I remember an announcement on the home-room speaker that the seminary test would be given that weekend at Sacred Heart High School. Anyone interested should contact Father Lacey. Frank Lacey was one of the cooler members of the Marin Catholic faculty, and I went home that night with some unconscious fireball percolating in my mind. Shortly after I went to sleep, I heard a voice. It said, “You outta take the test.” For me, that voice always meant Jesus, so this was evidently something important. I got up, walked into the living room where my folks were still reading, and said, “I’m going to take the test for the seminary this Saturday.”

That was it. No conscious grooming. Just that voice.

Weird, huh?