A Root Beer for the Road

There is something about camp that just seems to carry a magical presence to it. It is this experience which so many people remember with such fondness to make it a standout event in their childhood.  For almost everyone who is fortunate enough to experience a stay at camp, be it through the YMCA, the Boy or Girl Scouts, or through a church group,  it represents a combination of fun, excitement, adventure, and frankly that slender line of maturity that helps you grow up as you come to learn more about who you really are.

It can easily be said that most kids look forward to going to summer camp, but in the summers of 1953 to 1957, I doubt none more than me.  Every summer while at Maryville all of us kids attended a summer camp in Eagle River, Wisconsin; I think the camp was donated to Catholic Charities by some good soul. The camp was nestled in Northern Wisconsin and had all the charm and magic you could possibly hope a camp would have. 

Life at Maryville was nothing, if it wasn’t slow, monotonous, and methodical.  There were stretches of time that if it had not been for the occasional visitations by my mother, individual days would have been impossible to pick apart. With a life so steeped in regimentation and boredom, the prospect of anything, much less a week at camp, was enough to consume my thoughts entirely.

Sometime prior to summer we learned which week our hall (Isabelle Hall) would be attending camp and the excitement would begin.  When we finally learned when we would be heading up to Wisconsin, I am pretty sure that a comet could have struck Maryville and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.  From that moment, every free minute of my life would be consumed with planning, contemplating, and counting down the days until we left. I couldn’t wait till that week came.  It’s funny thinking back on it now, we only stayed at camp for one week but it felt like a month of endless fun. 

The night before we were scheduled to leave, there was pure excitement among all of us. We went to bed early that night due to our early departure the following morning, but I could have cared less, going to bed brought me that much closer to heading to camp.  The night passed quickly, and with our wake up call, I readied myself rapidly.  Some of the kids were tired and groggy but not me, I was ready and rearing to go.

We made our way downstairs to find the exceptionally large motor coach waiting for us.  We all piled on, I don’t remember even saying hi to the bus driver, I had waited for this moment for so long that it all became a blur in my excitement.  We took our seats; we were each given a bag with our breakfast in it.  Sister Madelyn gave us final instructions and a dose of her charm with a few threats about what was going to happen to kids who did not behave themselves.  With that I heard the engine start and I knew we were leaving for camp. 

The ride was exceptionally long; it took eight hours to drive from Maryville to Camp St. George in Eagle River, Wisconsin.  Many of the kids slept for the whole ride but not me, I was too excited.  Four hours into our ride, the bus stopped at some sleepy town in Wisconsin.  We all piled out in front of the A&W Root Beer stand. As we departed the bus, each child was handed a nickel and told we could buy a frosty mug of A&W root beer. For a group of institutionalized, deprived, and generally forlorn kids, this represented one of the best simple pleasures of our young lives. I can only imagine the look on the A&W employees’ faces as our bus pulled up packed with thirsty little kids soon to be armed with nickels. It was fabulous; I hold the memory of that root beer fondly with me to this day.

After our great A&W adventure, we piled back on the bus for the final leg of our great journey; excitement built with every passing mile. I remember as we were getting close I recognized many of the familiar landmarks; I could feel my excitement building.  It took another four hours of driving, and we arrived, as we always did, just before dinner time.  As the bus driver took that final right turn and I could see the dust picking up and Camp St. George in front of me - I knew we had arrived and I was going to have a week of pure fun and magic.  

Is Grass Always Greener On The Other Side?

Life at Maryville was often boring, monotonous and lonely.  With no power to change this or any other aspect of my life, I acquiesced and accepted it. With the slow and tepid flow of time at Maryville, any change to the routine was something to take notice of. Anything out of the norm stuck out to me, but most of these happenings passed just as quietly as they had come.  There were, however, moments both grand and tragic that became so engrained in my memory that to think of them to this day is to relive them. I excelled at sports from a very young age. Sports allowed me an outlet for my energy and a chance to feel good about myself, which being an orphan by the choice of my Mother was a sensation always in short supply. I was captain of my volley ball team and the ping pong champion of all Maryville (I play to this day).  While I relished the positive events of my life, I lamented the mountain of events filled with betrayal, sadness, and fear. At Maryville, my problems often began, or finished, with the nuns.  Once, I was in trouble with Sister Madelyn for a reason I honestly can’t remember.  She accused me of doing something and I told her I had not, to which she exclaimed, “I don’t believe you.”  Finding strength well beyond my age, I put my hands on my hips and stated that I didn’t care if she didn’t believe me because, “God believes me.”  This woman who had been so consumed with bitter riotousness just the moment before could suddenly utter nothing more than “Mon Dieu”. While memories from sports, or my run-ins with the nuns have surly stuck with me, two events at Maryville which occurred roughly at the same time had a profound effect on me.  A group of joy riding Maryville high school students, and independently, my sister Pat coming so close to death that truly no one believed she would make it, intersected in a way no one could have ever seen coming.

The joy ride the high school students took was only dramatic because it had tragic consequences.  I don’t remember all the details but a group of upper class high school students got in a car and decided to go for a ride.  In and of its self it doesn’t sound so bad however; on that ride they were involved in a horrendous car accident.  One of the students was killed and another was paralyzed and became wheelchair bound.  The others who were more fortunate were also injured, but eventually recovered.

The boy who had died in the car accident was waked at Maryville. Before this, I don’t remember there ever being a wake at Maryville.  I don’t even remember kids getting very sick or dying.  There were approximately 800 kids at Maryville and we were all allowed to attend the wake.  My feelings were so mixed.  On one level, I was extremely curious about the wake, but I also felt very frightened.  My Father had died a few years earlier and, as a result, death was very frightening to me; it robbed me of people I loved.   I attended the wake, but it turned out not to be nearly as scary or traumatic as when I saw my Father that way.

 Around that same time, my sister Pat fell very ill. A lack of adult supervision, and the limited healthcare available to us, meant that illnesses, although rare, could easily be ignored for far longer than they should have been, greatly exacerbating the severity of afflictions. What started as a stomach ache was allowed to develop into a full-fledged appendicitis.  By the time the decision was made to take her to the hospital, her appendix burst. To this day, a burst appendix is a grave situation, but in the 1950’s, it was for all intents and purposes, a death sentence.  She was given the last rights of the Catholic Church, which were administered only when it was firmly believed that death was imminent.   With the last rights read, and being such a sad and dramatic event, the nuns allowed me and my sisters to leave Maryville.  We were driven to the hospital and taken into my sister’s room. I was brought from Maryville to say goodbye to her.

 As miraculous events go, one happened that day. In a desperate attempt to save my sister’s life, they pumped a deluge of antibiotics into her.  In the short window of life that they had left, the antibiotics began to take hold. Slowly but surely, we began to realize that my sister Pat just might make it. As time passed, Pat continued to recover.  She soon left the hospital and returned to Maryville. In the chaos of everything that had happened, I really had not paid a dramatic amount of attention to the students in the car accident. One day, shortly after she came back, I saw her in the yard and I asked her about the accident. With a profound look on her face, she began to lay out that since some of the students in the accident were her friends, she likely would have been in the car with them. It surprised me when she said if she had not been in the hospital, she likely would have gone with them in the car.  I just looked at her in disbelief and felt relieved and perplexed; the appendicitis that nearly killed her likely saved her life.  For one of the first times I could remember, I was anxious to get back to my boring, monotonous and lonely life.   

Pillow War

Sundays at Maryville had its own cadence. Parents could visit every other Sunday, but on the alternate Sundays, when there was no visitation, it was usually slow and boring. Girls who had brothers could visit on that Sunday but since I only had sisters those Sundays were pretty uneventful for me.  Those days would always start the same, with all of the children both big and small filing in for Sunday Mass…and then…there wasn’t much else to do but kill time for the rest of the day.  We were not allowed to work at our jobs because they thought it was sinful to work on the Sabbath.  We were not allowed to play any organized sports; so basically we just hung out and waited our Sundays out.  There was one Sunday, however, I was sick and my day turned out to be not so devoid of activity.

I don’t remember kids being sick very often at Maryville.  First of all we all had to be inoculated.  Second, we were isolated.  This prevented us from getting many of the illnesses children usually get.  I do remember a little boy died at Maryville. When I asked what happened to him, I was told he had a high fever which killed him. For years after that whenever someone had a fever, I thought quite fearfully, that they were going to die.  One Sunday, after Mass, I came back to Isabelle Hall to change my clothes.  I had been feeling ill, but as I began to change, I found myself so sick, I could hardly stand up.  I was having a hard time unbuttoning my dress so Sister Madelyn came over and helped me; I felt an unusual kindness from her at that moment.   She felt my head and said “You better go the infirmary.”

I walked to the infirmary and was greeted by a nun.  I do not remember her name.  I think she was a nurse.  Her habit was all white like nurses as opposed to black and white, which all the other nuns wore.  She put me to bed in the infirmary and told me she would keep an eye on me.  I slept the entire day and when I awoke it was dark out and my fever had broken.  I told the nun I was feeling fine and so she sent me back to my hall. 

When I got back to the hall, I felt well rested and full of energy; I needed some release.   It was Sunday night and most of the girls were watching television but I craved something else.  I walked into the bedroom area, where there were 36 beds and 36 lockers, as well as Sister Madelyn’s cell.  When I went in there I noticed a girl at her locker.  I asked her if she wanted to have a pillow fight and she said, “Yeah!”  So we picked up two pillows and started our fight.  We had tons of fun and it was taking care of my excess energy.  We were hitting each other, laughing, screaming having such a good time when an older girl walked in and saw what we were doing.  When Sister Madelyn came back into the hall that night the older girl snitched on us.  Sister Madelyn asked to see me; she told me she was very upset with me and she followed with, “To think I felt sorry for you this morning.”  I looked at her and told her I didn’t care what she thought of me because, “My mother is going to take me out of here.”  With that, she said, “Mon Dieu!”  On one level, I was just relieved that another crisis with sister Madelyn had been avoided, but in another way, it felt strangely good to be able to use the power that I would not be under her control forever to my advantage. I was able to get away with being a kid.  

A Woman’s Best Friend

Put simply, I hated my Mom’s dog.  Around the time my sisters and I were sent to Maryville, my Mother got a dog, a purebred collie with papers…the dog had papers. We had papers too, we were a ward of the Catholic Church, but that dog was apparently canine royalty or something, which made my sisters and me the peasants. We were given away and she kept the dog.  I guess the ironic part is that dogs often play a big part in a child’s life; they are a friend, a companion, a confidant, and a protector. In my world, however, our dog was none of those things, he was my competitor.  At Maryville we could go home every other month, except in the summer, for a weekend… we could leave on Friday and had to return Sunday.  On Friday after school we would pack a bag for the weekend and anxiously wait to be picked up. Often my Mother did not show up to pick us up till very late on Friday clipping our already short time at home. I always yearned to go home, but I never seemed to find what I was looking for once I was there.

One weekend we came home only to learn my Mother had bought the dog, I guess she was lonely and the dog provided her with warmth and companionship…I felt the irony of her being lonely at that moment, but it would be years until I could come to grips with just how infuriating and truly insane the whole situation was. It amused her that the dog was jealous of us kids….he was used to getting all the attention, and he was not happy to share her with us. When I wanted to get close to my Mom the dog would growl and the growling made my Mom laugh, she thought it was all so cute, it still makes me sick to my stomach when I think about it.  After a while, I came to understand that in life, if I wanted love and affection from my Mother, I would have to get in line behind her boyfriends and now her dog.

I never fully accepted, until I was much older, the idea that my Mother wanted little or nothing to do with me and my sisters. She had married young and always felt marriage and children had cheated her of her youth. She was born beautiful and charming and rather than appreciating those assets, they were a curse to her… they deformed her. 

Weekends at home were often boring and non-eventful …I did like watching TV all night and getting to eat whenever and whatever I wanted, but little else was satisfying.  As you may guess, I did not play with the dog.  Most parents feel bad when their children are sad and in pain but my Mother did not let such feelings burden her.  Often on Sundays when my sisters and I were returning to Maryville, I would sit in the car and silently cry; tears would stream down my face but my Mother never acknowledged the pain and sadness I felt, but when the dog whimpered, she comforted him.   

  

Sister Elenita

There is a feeling of sheer terror, without virtue or reason, which comes over when you believe you are in danger of being mauled by a weasel.  I can still remember days when I was the first to arrive at the lab, cracking the large wooden door open just enough to peer in and gauge my chances of survival. 

I was about 10 and a half when I landed my job in the high school biology laboratory. I remember there were lots of large, almost floor to ceiling windows in the room so every day seemed bright and sunny; but in addition, the job was fun.  I learned a lot about animals, fossils, plants and just about everything that had to do with biology.  What I think really made this job nice, was how I felt so welcomed every day by Sister Elenita, the high school biology teacher. Without a doubt she was the nicest nun I had ever met.  She exuded warmth, kindness, and acceptance like I had never seen or experienced before.

Sister Elenita kept a weasel in a cage in the lab… not a bunny, not a hamster, not a guinea pig, a large weasel.  It terrified me.  I once saw it eat a mouse… an image that stuck in my head. So in my 10 year old mind, it was not a giant leap for me to think that it could somehow get out of it cage at night and be waiting for what unfortunate soul came sauntering into the classroom first in the morning.  I’ll be honest; I did not want to go out that way. So before I entered the room I would always check to see if the weasel was in its cage. I would slowly crack open the door and look and always felt relieved it was still caged in.  Only then would life go on as normal.

Life at Maryville had a strange flow to it.  Mundane boredom, hardship, and loneliness were sporadically interrupted by church and school run events. Every year there was an indoor fair at Maryville.  On display were crafts and other creations done by the high school students.  As a result, the higher ups at Maryville decided only high school students would attend the fair. It would have been educational and a lot of fun for the younger children, but that never seemed to be of paramount importance at Maryville.  One day while working in the biology lab, Sister Elenita approached me and said she understood two of my older sisters were going to put on a big display at the fair and she asked if I would like to attend and see my sisters’ event.  I told her I would love to.  She said she would check and try and get permission for me to attend the fair.  I was ecstatic.

She received permission for me to attend. That night I left Isabelle Hall and walked over to the gym where the fair was being held.  I walked in, I felt so grown up and very special.  But as usual this happiness was not to last.  Within seconds of my arrival, Sister Madelyn, my home room nun, came up to me and asked, “What are you doing here?”  I told her I had received permission to attend so that I could see my sisters’ event. Looking disgustedly at me, she told me to leave immediately and go back to my hall.  I was crushed; Sister Madelyn had a talent for that.

The next morning, feeling absolutely robbed, I went back to work at the biology lab and saw Sister Elenita sitting behind her desk.  She said “Come here Genevieve... I heard what happened last night and I am very sorry.”  She followed with “I have a surprise for you.”  With that she pulled out a foot long pencil (yes an exceptionally oversized righting utensil) and handed it to me. She said, “I hope this makes you feel better.”  There are certain moments in your life when you just absolutely need someone to tell you that things will be ok.  Sister Elenita was there for me when I needed her.  In the end, it had nothing to do with the gigantic pencil or the fact that I knew the weasel was firmly secured (which was still a relief). What really made me feel better was her sensitivity and kindness.  I think of her often.  

 

   

     

Goodbye To Tonsils

I don’t remember being sick very often in the five years I was at Maryville.  It was likely because we were so isolated and not exposed to everything like kids in the city. In addition to the isolation, all the children had to be inoculated against a bevy of childhood diseases and illnesses, further lowering our chances of getting sick. When I arrived at Maryville the one ailment I did often have was a sore throat. Today when kids have sore throats, they are given antibiotics but, when I was a kid, it was customary to have your tonsils removed.  So because of my sore throats, it was decided I would have my tonsils taken out.

One day I was put in a van along with another little boy and we were driven to St Francis Hospital in Evanston to have our tonsils removed.  After arriving at the hospital I was put in a room, given a gown and told to undress and to put the gown on.  I looked at the gown and didn’t see any bottom, just a top – so I stood there until the nurse came back.  I looked at her and said “I usually put my bottoms on first;” she snickered and said “Oh honey there is no bottom.”  With that she put her hands on the bottom of my dress and lifted my dress and undershirt off of me and I was standing there nude in front of a total stranger and I felt completely humiliated.  I was extremely angry she had done that without any warning or without my consent.  Shortly after that the nurse returned and told me the little boy who had arrived with me was being sent back to Maryville because he had developed a fever – I prayed that I too would develop a fever, but no such luck.

Soon a gurney arrived and I was transferred on to it.  I was taken down a long corridor to the operating room. While being pushed down the hall I asked “Is my Mother here?”  The nurse replied, “No, she is not here.” With that I was pushed into the operating room and standing there were many strangers and I was very frightened.  A Doctor approached me and told me I was going to be put to sleep.  With that a glove of some type was put over my nose and mouth and I panicked.  I tried to get the glove off my face, I was frantic, and I didn’t know what was happening.  A number of people came over tried to restrain me and as I was being held down I could hear the ether coming into my nose and mouth.  I don’t remember anything else. 

When I woke up I was back in my hospital room, my throat was very sore and my Mother was standing next to me. I looked at her, I was happy to see her, but I felt she was just a little late. I needed her earlier; she could have helped me undress and maybe reassured me that everything was going to be all right but she was not there when I needed her…sort of how things always went with her. 

Waiting…

In some…well most aspects, Maryville had more in common with a state prison than a boarding school.  All mail going out or coming in was read and censored before being mailed or received.  Parental visits were only allowed every other Sunday between 12:00 to 4:00 or 1:00 to 4:00… I don’t exactly remember which time slot it was.  If parents came out on a different Sunday from the one which they had been allotted, the children were not allowed to see their parents.  Maryville could get away with this because most of us were wards of the Catholic Church; our parental rights had been surrendered. I remember the Sunday I learned I was no longer under my Mother’s responsibility, but a ward of the Catholic Church...  My Mother was visiting and she was complaining about Maryville and I said to her “why don’t you take us out of here”, and she said “I can’t” and I said “why can’t you … you are my Mother” and she said “I have surrendered my rights to you” and I said “you are no longer my Mother, why did you do that”?! And she said “yes I am still your Mother but I cannot take you out of Maryville without their permission”.  I asked her again “why did you do that?” and she said “because I can no longer afford to pay to keep you at Maryville, it is too expensive”. I just looked at her - I was so angry and devastated and also very frightened. My status in this world had been decided by a billing matter.

So, every other Sunday parents were allowed to visit.  It’s not that they did, they were allowed to.  Who was going to show up on any particular Sunday was anyone’s guess.  The kids were informed their parents had arrived through a public address system which was piped into every hall room.  Every other Sunday two girls would volunteer to sit near the PA system and listen for the announcement of whose parents had arrived – one would listen for the names and the other was the runner.  I always volunteered to be one of the two. In some ways it was boring and monotonous to sit there for hours listening, hoping and praying I would hear my Mother had arrived.  Being close to that speaker and being the first to hear anything gave me a sense of control that I so badly craved.  Sometimes she visited, but often, she didn’t.  Sometimes, she would arrive so late we could only visit for a few minutes. The nuns lived their life by a schedule, and they were not about to make an exception for anyone in the outside world.  If you had 3 minutes left in your visitation window, you received 3 minutes… that was it.   This whole process was torture – needing and loving someone so much as I did my Mother and yet having no control to get or give the love I needed and deserved…and in my 5 years at Maryville I ended up enduring this Sunday ritual roughly 162 times.