St. Monica’s
Church
Willows, California
1950’s through into the 60’s
We would
arrive about five minutes before the start of Sunday Mass at 10 am. Our family would parade to the front of the
church, since most of the back pews were filled to capacity. There
were eight of us in the family and we almost filled the entire pew from the
center aisle. I wished we could sit in
the back pews, since those people were blessed with a quick exit at the end of
the service. It was always the same
people that occupied the back pews. They
must have arrived an hour early to lay claim to those pews or maybe they had
some kind of reservation on them.
Leaving church was the slowest process I can remember as a
youngster. It seemed like everybody
would stop as they got to the doors and talked to the priest as he was there to
greet everybody as they departed. There
was not even enough space to squeeze between people. It was like trying to get through a defensive
football line. Maybe it was my
punishment for not paying attention during the service and for just thinking on
how fast I could make my exit.
The service
was scheduled for an hour, but then there was the sermon that sometimes lasted
an hour itself. It seemed like
days. The sermons covered many topics, some that I
was too young to understand at the time.
There were discussions on church facilities, church functions, money,
and people in need and of course the need to avoid sin. There was a sermon on the subject of
fornication which I had no idea what the priest was talking about due to my
ignorance of that word at a young age.
Later at home I asked my mother what that meant and she said, “never
mind”. Years later I found the
definition in the dictionary. There were other sermons about how the young
girls were leading young boys into sin by the way they dressed.
After
communion some of those people in the back pews started leaving early. A good friend of mine with his two sisters
and their dad would leave early as we could all hear the dad starting up their
old 1949 Chevy truck parked in the back parking lot. We
could see an expression on the priest’s face that he was not impressed with
those leaving early.
By the time
we finally got out of the church many of the men would light up a cigarette,
including my dad, who would get into a conversation with an older farmer by the
name of George. They would talk about
how their crops were doing as George would roll his own cigarette as he got
tobacco from a blue tin placing it on the paper and sealing it up by licking
it. I always found this fascinating. My
younger sisters would stare at the growth of hair shooting out from his ears
and make comments later at home about it.
Finally at home mom and dad would
make a big breakfast as we were all in the edge of starvation since eating
before communion was not allowed in those days. Then the thought would reoccur that in
seven days we would have to go through all this again.
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