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When I was a kid, many of my parochial school buddies gave up going to the movies during Lent. Being a compassionate fellow, I didn't want to see the guy who owned the movie theater go out of business (even if he was a non-Catholic), so I continued patronizing his place on Saturday afternoons between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday.
Besides, in a way I, too, was giving something up -- companionship at the movies! While my friends were off playing ball or riding bikes on Saturdays, I was sitting through a double-feature ALONE!
I'm telling you, when John Wayne was having it out with the bad guys or the girl in the haunted house was about to be strangled by Vincent Price, not having a friend in the seat next to me to share the excitement with was almost unbearable to an 8-year old boy.
But I suffered through it in silence. It was my Lenten duty.
Some kids gave up eating candy during Lent. For me, that wouldn't have really been a major sacrifice.
My mom -- or as we called her, Mother Most Frugal -- rarely bought candy or sweets. So eating candy wasn't a habit. To my way of thinking (or what's known as Catholic rationalization), giving up something that you didn't eat on a daily basis wasn't really giving something up.
Besides, that poor guy who owned the movie theater didn't survive on ticket sales alone. Why, he might have gone belly up before April if folks like me hadn't plunked down our nickels for a Slo-Poke sucker or a box of Boston Baked Beans to get us through the movie.
But while giving something up for Lent was encouraged by the Church, it still remained an option. One thing that did not was abstaining from eating meat on Fridays.
Today, the Catholic no-meat-on-Fridays rule applies only during Lent. In my younger days, it applied to every Friday. All year. No exceptions.
That rule never really bothered me. While I love fried chicken or a good slab of roast beef, I would be just as content to eat a catfish dinner or a plate of spaghetti smothered in sauce (meatless sauce, of course).
What did bother me was the macaroni-and-cheese casseroles my mother used to make every third Friday. This is where the Lenten suffering came into play.
Growing up Catholic, our Friday evening menu rotated. One week we would have tuna and noodles (tolerable). On another Friday we had salmon and baked potatoes (not bad). But the third Friday on the rotation was the dreaded macaroni and cheese.
Don't get me wrong. Mom wasn't a bad cook. The problem was my dad. Mom cooked to suit his taste (and when it came to macaroni and cheese, he had pretty poor taste).
I remember the big brown baking bowl. Mom would bring the macaroni to a boil on the stove, drain it, then dump it in that bowl. I'm not sure what kind of cheese she used -- Velveeta, I think, but I remember she used enough of it to bind up a small continent. Then she poured in the milk. Lots of milk!
The brown bowl went into the oven where the casserole baked. And baked. And baked. Until it was done to Dad's liking.
When it came to macaroni and cheese, Dad's liking meant the casserole was covered with a thick, crusty brown skin and all that cheese and all that milk had bubbled and boiled and blended into a curdled soup.
Come and get it! Dinner's ready! Mmmmmmmmm.
Well, you can imagine.
So there you have it. Maybe I didn't give up movies or candy during Lent, but believe me, when "Crusty and Curdled Macaroni and Cheese Friday "rolled around every three weeks for as long as I care to remember -- how I did suffer!
Copyright by Wendel Potter
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