Grandma's Rolling Pin

 Grandma Mullen
Photo taken in 1969
by my cousin, Tom Sheley
with his then-new Minolta SRT-101

When I was a youngster in Iowa, back in the late 1950s and early '60s, my mother baked bread, biscuits, and cinnamon rolls every Monday. Mothers did things like that in those days and so did their mothers before them.

My mother's kitchen on a Monday was awash in a fog of flour and the flavorful aroma that bread dough takes on in the hot oven as it evolves into something that would soon be as glorious to the taste buds as it was to the sense of smell.

This, of course, was in a day when the best things were made from scratch, nothing was instant from the package, there were no microwave ovens, and "kneading dough" did not pertain to financial requirements.

In Mom's kitchen, loaves of fresh bread plopped out of the pan larger and tastier than any package of store bought Wonder Bread. Biscuits and rolls rose like flaky, golden-crusted monoliths swelling above and over the sides of the baking tins.

You didn't spread soft margarine on Mom's fresh biscuits. You slapped on a hard pad of creamery butter and watched it melt into the biscuit served hot from the oven. Back then, cholesterol was pretty much unheard of and by God we were better off for it.

I used to help with what I could on baking day. Mostly, I just liked hanging around the kitchen, taking in the delicious smells and watching the genius of a mother's uncanny artistry unfold.

What still amuses me when I recall those days is my mother repeating the same words, week after week: "I wish I could bake like Mama did."

Then she'd go on to tell me how her mother baked EVERY day and never used a recipe or a measuring cup. According to Mom, if you asked Grandma Mullen how she did it, she would reply, "I just put in a little bit of this and a little bit of that."

My mother invoked Grandma's memory, too, whenever she baked a pie. While rolling out an absolutely perfect and tasty pie crust, Mom would mutter, "I wish I could make a pie crust like Mama did."

Although Grandma lived until she was nearly 90 years old, I never had the pleasure of eating one of her home-cooked meals, nor did I ever get a taste of her breads and rolls. At least not that I remember. I'm sure that's something I'd never forget.

After Grandpa died, a couple of years before I was born, Grandma went to live with one of my mother's sisters and I don't think for all of those years afterward that she thought of that kitchen as her kitchen. I'm sure she cooked the evening meals for her and my Aunt Madonna, but it couldn't have been the same as preparing pots of savory Irish stew and loaves of bread for her large farm family or frying up a henhouse full of chickens for the relatives who often stopped by the farm for dinner on Sunday.

The Mullen Clan
My mom is Top Row, 2nd from right

When Grandma passed on to that great Irish kitchen in the sky, she left few belongings. She had been a simple woman all her life who loved God and family, the Catholic Church, and Notre Dame. The fanciest things about Grandma were the memories we had of her, and those remain priceless.

All my mother wanted was a glass rolling pin that she remembered Grandma using to roll out those perfectly flaky pie crusts when Mom was young. Somehow my cousin, Frank, had ended up with the rolling pin and when he heard Mom mention it, he graciously gave it to her.

Grandma's rolling pin looked like an ordinary rolling pin except it was made from thick glass, was hollow and had a threaded screw-on cap on one end. Mom tucked it away with her memories and when she died, that was the only thing I wanted.

I discovered from a little research that a glass rolling pin is to be filled with ice chips. The cold glass keeps the pie crust dough from sticking to the pin and this way you can roll out a flat crust. That's why Grandma's pie crusts were so wonderful.

Now the glass rolling pin is tucked away in a drawer in my kitchen. Unlike my mother, I will use it one day. I will roll out a perfect pie crust for my family.

Then I will say, "I can bake like Grandma did." And  in that moment, I hope we'll be better off for it.


Copyright 2006 Wendel Potter

Trusting God's Voice

Why We Sold Our Snow Shovels and Moved to Florida




My wife and sons and I have been Floridians for just over a year.  We've adapted to a routine and are making our way through life as most Americans do, as we did back in Nebraska for so many years.

We're just doing it in Central Florida now.

Along the way we've been asked why we made the move when we did.  Some think I'm retired.  No, I still work a day job. 

As to why we chose to move here, the best reason I can come up with is this: God told us to.

I know what a lot of you are thinking....."Potter must have wandered south of the Mason-Dixon line and found himself some religion!"

Truthfully, I've always had religion to some extent, but I never before had I felt that God actually spoke to me.  However in January of 2011, things began to happen in our lives and I feel they happened for a reason.  

I really think it was God talking to us.

Now, let me tell you a story.

Fifty years ago, my wife was separated from her little brother.  She was seven and he was five.  There's no point in rehashing the details.   
                                                                                                                                                                 
November of 1963 was the last she saw of her brother for more than 47 years.  She ended up in Nebraska.  

As a child, and even into her teen years, Karen's pleas to be reconnected with her brother went  unheeded.

After we were married in 1978, Karen was more determined than ever to locate the little boy left behind.  The years went by and the trail grew colder.

With the advent of the Internet, she Googled her heart out.  Her brother's name was not an uncommon one, which made it all the more difficult.

Nearly a half century later it was finally time for God to play his hand.  It was a Royal Flush.

In January of 2011, Karen made a connection that put her on the right path.  She was pretty certain she had located her brother.

Karen wrote him a letter.  A carefully written missive sinks in; a phone call can shock your world with too much abruptness.

A few days later, shortly after my wife's 55th birthday, our phone rang.  She answered it.  It was her brother.

He and Karen both knew in that moment that a nearly life long load had been lifted from their hearts.  It was the best birthday present she had ever received.

Karen's brother lived in Florida.  He had been there for years.  Of all places we somehow would have never guessed the Sunshine State.

Karen and our sons flew down to visit in May of 2011.  She and her brother bonded on sight.

*************** 

This was the way things looked at our Old Nebraska Home on Christmas, 2009.  It snowed all day on December 25th, the wind  blew with a cold, crackling stiffness, and I couldn't get the vehicles out of the driveway.

My wife and our sons opened our gifts while I gulped hot coffee and the furnace lumbered along, working overtime.  My mother-in-law and her husband were forced to remain in their house across town.  Our turkey was already thawed and ready to prepare for the oven, so I promised to buy another bird and we'd all have Christmas dinner together a week later, on New Year's, if the weather improved.

Now this isn't to say that this was the model for every Nebraska Christmas.  We enjoyed 50 degree temps in 2011, our last Christmas on the Plains.  There were several Christmases dotting a green landscape, that were even warmer.

Maybe it was age nagging at us, perhaps just a midlife discontentment.  Whatever it was, 2009 left a lasting impression on us.

Karen and I had always talked about retiring in a warmer climate.  But that was still years down the road, or so we thought. 

We had no idea where that road would take us.  In our discussions, Florida had never even popped up in our cross hairs.

But when she returned from her reunion with her brother and his family, we talked.  We knew where it was we'd retire when the time came.

Once in awhile, there's something that perches on your shoulder like a comfortable bird, pecking at your mind until you finally get the hint.

"Why wait?" I asked Karen one day.  "Let's put the house up for sale and see what happens."

The housing market in Grand Island, Nebraska was not particularly a boomer last summer, in 2012.  But there was no harm and little expense in sticking our toes in the water.

Karen was working at the time in a Christian-based book and gift shop.  She told me about a very popular item that customers swore by.  It was a statue of St. Joseph and it came with a prayer and instructions.  Realtors actually recommended buying it!

We followed the directions and buried the tiny likeness of the carpenter a foot in the ground just behind the house, and upside down.  Apparently, the good saint was supposed to attract a buyer for your house with a fair offer and when the deal was done, you were to dig up the statue, which you would supposedly find not upside down as you left it, but right side up.

Not many days later, after lots of lookers and no offers, we received a phone call from our realtor.

"I have a cash buyer.  That means a quick deal, no inspection.  They want an early close so they can begin renting it out."

It appeared that the Good Lord was working too fast.  Now it had turned frantic.  Everything needed to gel for us. 

My wife was in the background in the meantime, researching townhouses to rent in Florida, the best moving rates, and airline itineraries.  We planned to sell our vehicles rather than move them.

Well, if God wanted us in Florida, we thought, we guessed He must have the rest figured out.  We accepted the buyer's offer.  Our closing date was a mere two weeks away.

I had a job I had been at for 23 years.  With a deep breath, I tendered my resignation.

So now we had a place to live come the end of July.  Yet it was only June and we had a lot of packing to do.  We needed to buy another month's time.

Back to the realtor.  "Would the buyer rent our own house to us for the month of July?"

He made a call.  Yes, he told us.  She'd be more than happy to do that.

Another problem solved.

Meanwhile, Karen was trying to procure airline tickets for us and our sons.  There was a flight from Grand Island to Dallas, connecting with another flight to Tampa.  Seats were going fast on both flights.

I contacted a trucking company in Grand Island.   For what I considered a reasonable rate, they would drop off a 28' trailer at our house.  We would load it from the front, mark off our used space, and erect a barrier to separate our belongings from the rest of the trailer.  Then the driver would return on a given date, pick up the trailer and head to Florida.

Once we had the dates secured, Karen returned to the airline travel issue.  There were exactly four seats left on the Nebraska to Texas flight and six remaining on the Dallas to Florida connection.  We grabbed them.

Everything, every detail then fell into place uniformly like a stack of dominoes.  And here we are.

In the course of our lives together, nothing had ever gone quite as smoothly for us as our move to Florida.  And now, when I see Karen and her brother together, I know the hand of God was upon us and it was unmistakeably His voice in our ears, giving us direction. 

I don't attribute everything that happens in life to coincidence or fate.  Some things you just know were in God's hands all the time.

Karen and her brother know that.

When I take a long, hard look at life, I have to marvel and say, "Thank you, God," and as the Irish say, "Saints be praised!"

And that statue of Joseph sits atop a book case in our living room, upright and smiling.

How blessed we are.


Copyright 2013 by Wendel Potter 

__________________

DON'T TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME

Baseball isn't baseball anymore

It's that time of year again. Major League Baseball is in full swing. As for me, I think I'll just bunt.

Each spring a bit of that baseball spirit tries its damnedest to move me, for old time's sake. But it doesn't provide much more than a nudge.

I'm residing now in Lakeland, Florida....Winter Home of the Detroit Tigers!  Yet I didn't make it out to a spring game.
 
Baseball just isn't what it used to be.   For me, "used to be" was back in the late 1950's into the early 60's.

My father was a huge baseball fan. He devoured the box scores when the morning edition of the Des Moines Register arrived with it's trademark orange-tinted sports section.
 
My brother, Donnie, followed Dad's lead. He ate and drank baseball. He collected baseball trading cards and he slept in his baseball cap. He still owns a baseball that was given to him by an Iowa neighbor and was signed by Babe Ruth.

Donnie joined Little League as soon as he was old enough, back in the days when contests were played in late morning or early afternoon and there weren't a lot of vicious parents around to threaten the ump or ruin the game for the kids.

As we grew older, Donnie moved on to Pony League, then played American Legion baseball and as a young adult was pitcher for the Town Team in Fullerton, Nebraska. I always felt he had the talent to stay the course and eventually head for the big leagues.

Whether or not he had the desire has been left unanswered. During a Town Team game, a hard line drive shattered his pitching hand and retired him from the lineup. He didn't play ball after that.

My brother worshiped the Chicago White Sox. Dad's team was the Milwaukee Braves. When the franchise headed to Atlanta, Dad's heart went with it.

Some of that fanaticism was bound to rub off on the rest of the family.

Mom even grew to enjoy baseball and she got in the habit of listening to the local radio sportscast in the morning and writing down the scores of the previous night's games so when Dad came to the kitchen table for his coffee he could cop a fast glance at the outcomes of the late games that didn't make the newspaper deadline.

After Dad passed away, Mom continued to watch the Braves' games.

I never had the ability or the zeal to play organized baseball. But I always took part in the neighborhood sandlot games and loved it.

I knew by heart the batting lineups for the Braves, the White Sox, and the Minnesota Twins. That was in the days when the Twins was a young upstart team that was heir to the old Washington Senators club and had a power hitter named Harmon Killebrew and Jim Kaat was their pitcher. I remember when Kaat had his front teeth knocked out by a line drive.

Today, the only Major League names I recognize are the ones who have come under suspicion of taking steroids. Or those who just signed a multi-million dollar contract.

That's another thing, or maybe the biggest thing, that turns me away from baseball these days. The money. Not even so much the money, actually, as the greed that displaces the game itself.

In 1959, Warren Spahn was making something like $9,000 a year to pitch for Milwaukee. My dad was making more than that managing a fertilizer supply company in Emmetsburg, Iowa.

People like Spahn and Mantle and Drysdale and Aaron were every bit the household names that A-rod or Cabrera or Greinke is today. And they were known the country over without the benefit of cable TV or sports bars with satellite dishes that grab the signals from ESPN and ESPN2-222.

Those old guys just didn't make the deals that this generation's ball players are putting the ink to.  But oh, how those fellas loved the game. They took what was offered and they played their hearts out.

For me, today's MLB has no grit, none of the glory of yesteryear. If you want to talk real baseball, you have to look up guys like Alan Brown, a friend of our family back in Nebraska. We call him Brownie and he used to play on the Oakland A's farm team with guys like Reggie Jackson and Gene Tennace.

Then there was a bartender over in Fullerton. His name was Bags Umstead and he played a lot of ball in his younger years and could instantly tick off just about any name and statistic relevant to baseball. Sporting a few drinks under his belt, he would show up on Sunday evenings for a Town Team game, just to offer his support.

Bags has been gone a long time now but if you hang around the home team dugout at Fullerton's baseball diamond on a breezy spring evening, you just might hear his normally quiet voice break into a rather inebriated bark: "C'mon, you guys! Look alive in there!"

Those were the days when love of the game was woven into the American fabric. That was when the voices of baseball were Dizzy Dean and PeeWee Reese and the still reliable Vin Scully. That's when it was a game.

It's just not like that anymore. Baseball is still referred to as America's Past time. But for true baseball fans, the emphasis is on that word "past".


Copyright by Wendel Potter

---

A Mother's Song

 by Wendel Potter

I'm 60 years old and down through the years I've been particularly close to two mothers.  One was my own mother.  The other is my wife, the mother of my children.

I've observed them both in action in the role of motherhood.  Their maternal styles differed as much as a lullaby and a dirge.

My wife was born to be a mother.  She is that first and foremost.

Motherhood is not a state.  It is an art form.  My wife is a damn fine artist.

When I look at my two sons I see their mother.  They share a triune soul. 

She lives for them.  Wherever they go in life, they carry her spirit and it is reflected in whatever they do.  

When I am proud of my sons, I am proud of their mother as well.

While "I love yous" are encouraged and often heard around our house, the love my wife has for our sons is evident even when unspoken.

Unspoken was generally the case where my mother's love for her children was concerned.  She was the product of a hardscrabble Irish-American farm culture.  Even soft-spoken displays of affection were not customary in her family.

It's no stunning admission when I say that I don't recall my mother ever telling me, "I love you." 

I'm sure she must have said it at some point when I was very young.  And I'm sure I told her the same, as children do.

I know there were times when she was pleased by my actions.  For instance,  when I was a small boy and we lived in Iowa, I would hike down the railroad tracks and stop along the way to pick cattails from a swamp.

I would return home with those cattails (really nothing more than butt-ugly weeds) and present them to my mother as though they were roses. She would always put them in a purple glass vase and set the horrible arrangement on the dining room table.

She was pleased that her little boy had picked for her what he saw as a bouquet of flowers.  She was proud enough to display the damn things for the whole family to see at dinner.

That was how she loved.

She cheered her children on in her heart and we were in her prayers, but she had a difficult time putting praise and encouragement into words that we would have cherished hearing.  She sang us a love song without music, with no lyrics.

That was Mom's style.  It was the only way she knew how to sing the song.

My sons are more fortunate than they might realize.  While they honor their mom on Mother's Day, she celebrates every day of the year as Sons' Day.

She can't help being a mother.  It's who and what she is. 

Her love song has words and music, melody and phrasing, and she sings it with perfect pitch. Our sons will always hear her tune.




**Copyright 2013 Wendel Potter**

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Resurrected Memories

 

 

Random Thoughts on Easter

by Wendel Potter

There is a weird irony about Easter.

Easter Sunday is one of the most devoutly observed high holy days in the history of organized religion. It is a solemn celebration of the glorious return from the dead of Jesus, who has been proclaimed as the one, true King of the Jews.
 
And how do Christians honor the greatest Jew of all time? We serve ham. 

We lay out an elaborate feast and if Jesus was to join us, he couldn't eat the meat.
 
I like Easter. When I was very small, Easter meant getting up early and searching for my Easter basket that had been filled with chocolate eggs and jelly beans and then skillfully hidden by my parents, under the pretense that the Easter Bunny had stopped by.

When I became old enough to go to church and began hearing the true Easter story, I just figured that the reason Jesus got up and out of the tomb early in the morning was so he could go hunting for his Easter basket.

Easter was always more than just a religious observance, though. It fired the starting gun for the spring/summer fashion season.

When I was growing up, everyone trotted out their best "Sunday go to meeting" finery on Easter. The church service, admit it or not, was nearly as much a festival of big fancy hats and a parade of new bright dresses as it was a worship session.

That was the women. Where men were concerned, Easter meant it was time to put away the dingy charcoal gray suit and sport a new blazer and lighter colored slacks.

Then, when the early 1970s rolled around, leisure suits made their grand entrance, along with spiffy white dress shoes. "White bucks" they called them in the 1950s when Pat Boone made them his trademark all year round. Mercifully, their rebirth re-died after a few years, along with the leisure suit.  And there has been no resurrection since.

But the crown jewel in the Easter basket is the Resurrection story. While the colored eggs, a mythical bunny (I'm pretty sure I saw him sneaking out of my neighbor's house last night....he wasn't home, but she was), marshmallow chicks and white bucks have figured heavily into the holiday over the years, the biblical account of a man rising from the dead 2,000 years ago remains the bottom line for celebrating Easter Sunday.

I've been pondering the Resurrection of Jesus. If you read the New Testament's four gospels closely, you'll notice they each tell an Easter Sunday story all a bit differently, one from the other. 

The conflicts are slight:Who saw Jesus first? How many women went to the tomb? What time of morning was it? How many angels appeared at the tomb? What exactly did the women go to the tomb for? Were the women wearing their new spring hats?

Some historians say that the Gospel of Mark originally had no resurrection story, abruptly ending after the crucifixion, and that the final chapters were added by a different writer.

The apostle Thomas got the worst rap. We've all come to know him traditionally as Doubting Thomas, because he insisted he would not believe in the risen Lord until he had seen him and touched his wounds.

But no one else appeared to believe, either, until they themselves had seen Jesus. None of them really seemed to think he was coming back. As a matter of fact, in one gospel, Jesus chides all eleven, not just Thomas, for their lack of belief.

Of course, Thomas was disdained for other reasons. He was the only apostle to wear white bucks and a leisure tunic before Passover.

Now what if there had been no Resurrection story in any of the gospels? I'm not suggesting that there was no Resurrection, just wondering how we would react if Jesus had not bothered to appear in risen splendor to anyone?

Would any of his followers have still concluded that he had risen? Would we today just naturally assume that Jesus had come out of the tomb and ascended into heaven, even though no one could lay claim to having seen him?

He said during his life that he would rise again on the third day. For a true believer, shouldn't that have been enough? He said, "Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe."

The Easter story is one of the greatest stories ever told. But how great would our faith be if that story had not been told? If we still believed, it would be great indeed.

Just food for thought. Now pass the ham.


Copyright 2013 by Wendel Potter

______________

 

 

UP IN SMOKE

Houston, we've got a problem...and a pope

by Wendel Potter
reporting live from the Vatican
March 13, 2013


The voting process to elect a pope to lead the Roman Catholic Church turned to tragedy this morning for the sequestered conclave of cardinals who had just completed a third round of balloting.

It is a tradition of the church that, after the ballots have been counted, they are burned in a stove. When the faithful watching the chimney in St. Peter's square see dark smoke rise through the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel, they know that a pope has not yet been selected. White smoke means that a new pope has been elected and a formal announcement is imminent.

Today, as the ballots burned, no smoke of any color was seen. Italian fire marshals later determined that an obstruction in the flue prevented the smoke from venting, resulting in carbon monoxide poisoning that left 114 of the conclave's 115 cardinals dead.

Only one cardinal survived the mass tragedy, which means that he will be named Pope by default. I caught up with him at the emergency center of Gemelli hospital where he was treated and released.

His name is Cardinal Guido Sarducci, known better to American television audiences as Father Guido Sarducci, the priest who regularly appeared in the 1970's on the NBC-TV hit series, "Saturday Night Live".

Cardinal Sarducci looked pale and shaken as he stood in the hospital's rear parking lot, leaning against an ambulance and smoking his trademark cigarette.

"Cardinal Sarducci, can you tell me what happened on this tragic morning in the Vatican?"

"Well, we had been sequestered since yesterday, shut off from the outside world. They even installed electronic jamming devices in the floor so nobody could call out on their cell phones and leak any information to the media.

"It was driving me crazy. I mean, I have been the Vatican's gossip columnist for a number of years and calling in a hot story is part of my life. The other cardinals had their own issues as well. Some of them needed to call their bookies, others their lawyers. For whatever reason, I don't know.

"We decided enough is enough, let's get the show on the road and get us a pope before lunch."

"So you cast your third round of ballots first thing this morning," I said.

"First we celebrated the Mass. "

"Then you got on with the voting."

"No. Then we had coffee and doughnuts."

"Then you voted."

"We kicked a few names around, then narrowed it down to three candidates."

"How did you decide who were the best candidates for the papacy?"

"We do it this way." Cardinal Sarducci pointed a dancing finger back and forth. 'Mother-Mary-told me-to-pick-the-very-best-one'."

"That's a rather unorthodox method. So you narrow it down to three cardinals who hope to become the next pope."

"Popefuls, we like to call them. Yes, then we cast our ballots and the contestant with the 2/3 majority of the votes wins the beanie and the big ring."

"So this morning you voted. Then the ballots were put into the stove and burned. Then what happened that led to this awful event leaving 114 cardinals dead?"

"While the ballots were burning in the stove, I began to feel a little light-headed, so I asked if I could step outside for some air. Nobody answered, so I figured it was okay. I went outdoors, got some air, had a cigarette. It was only when I returned that I noticed something might be wrong."

"What did you find when you returned to the conclave?"

"All of my colleagues were stretched out on the floor, face down. I felt terrible. I immediately thought I was late for worship service.

"Eventually, I realized that the cardinals were dead."

"So you called the police or the paramedics or what did you do?"

"I called no one. Remember, we were forbidden to use our cell phones. Anyway, I began feeling sick again, so I went back outside and alerted one of the Swiss guardsmen by throwing up on his shoes."

"And he called for help?"

"Later on. He's not allowed to move until after the changing of the guard."

"I understand that the authorities think the stove's flue was obstructed."

"Yes. It seems a large white dove with a golden halo had built a nest over the smoke stack."

"With the other cardinals dead, this means that you will become the next pope. How do you feel about that?"

"I like the Popemobile. I can't wait to get it out on the road and see what she'll do."

"What name will you choose. Will you be John Paul III?"

"No. No more John Paul. I'm going with Pope George Ringo."

"My condolences on the loss of your colleagues and best of luck in your papacy."

"Bless you."

There we have it. A new pope. Pope George Ringo I. And the Holy Father told me his first order of business is to return to "Saturday Night Live" where he will ceremoniously rip up a picture of Sinead O'Connor.

---

Copyright Wendel Potter

Unfair...unbalanced...inaccurate

Rit Dye and the Wearin' of the Green

______________

 

Our youngest son was born on March 17, 1987.  Our baby has grown up. I don't know where the time has gone.

I remember it was raining that morning when we checked into the hospital at seven o'clock. It poured most of the day. But by 4:30 that afternoon it was raining God's good graces. We had a baby boy.

Our intention was to name him Zachary James. When we laid eyes on him, however, he just didn't look like a Zachary at all.

Since it was St. Patrick's Day, we changed course and went for the Irish. Ryan was a name my wife was fond of, and I recalled that my Grandpa Mullen's mother's name had been Mary Ryan. It seemed like a logical choice.

For Ryan's middle name, our doctor humbly suggested Patrick -- it was his middle name -- and of course, it fit the Irish holiday theme. So Ryan Patrick it was.

St. Patrick's Day conjures up a lot of great memories for this dyed-in-the-wool Irish Catholic. Although, dyed-in-the-kettle might be more accurate.

When I was a first-grader in Catholic school back in the predominantly Irish town of Emmetsburg, Iowa, I had the distinction of being chosen to play the lead in our parish's annual St. Patrick's Day pageant. I was to portray an Irish country lad named Paddy Padraic.

I'm not sure if Sister Mary Ann Dolores picked me for the role because of my acting ability (my resume was blank up to that point -- I was only 7 years old); or perhaps it had something to do with my flute playing.

Let me explain that one. Every one in our class that year had bought little flutes fashioned with an aluminum tube and plastic bell and mouthpiece. They were called flagolets, as in "fladge-o-lets."

Lack of musical talent aside, I was probably in trouble right from the beginning because I mispronounced "flagolets." The day the flagolets arrived, we all excitedly began trying to play them. I said to the nun, "Sister, listen to our flatulence!'

One of the songs in the accompanying songbook was called "The Wearin' of the Green," so Sister chose that one for the pageant because the lyrics spoke of an Irishman named Paddy, so it fit nicely with the script. Some of the children were picked to play the song on their flagolets, others were picked to sing in the chorus. I was given an acting role. Hmmm.

In keeping with the St. Patrick's Day theme, Sister wanted me to wear a green shirt. She sent a note home to my mother.

Now Mom wasn't the type to run right out and buy her son a brand new shirt in March. Mom bought our clothes once a year, in August, when the stores offered back-to-school specials.

So she went through the shirts in my closet and came across a long-sleeved dress shirt that was pink (I believe it was a hand-me-down, probably from my sister). Then she went to the store and bought a package of green Rit dye. (Apparently they were running a March special on Rit dye).

I can still see my mother dunking that pink shirt into a kettle of dye until, like magic, it turned a lovely shade of shamrock green. Which was just fine with me because I never was comfortable wearing a pink shirt to school. I felt like a member of that girl gang from "Grease."

Well, the pageant came off without a hitch. I was one proud Irishman standing on the stage in the church basement in front of all the parishioners and wearin' my green. And Sister Mary Ann Dolores was so happy. She didn't have to listen to my singing or my flatulence.

So as the Irish blessing goes, may the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be always at your back, and may God hold you in the palm of His hand...just pray that he doesn't squeeze.  

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

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