The last Catholic in America

This is the funny, piercing, and bittersweet memory of a Catholic childhood in a poor but righteous household on the South Side of Chicago a few short years ago. Surrounded by seven cemeteries, the neighborhood where the author grew up was popularly known as Seven Holy Tombs. It supported two V.F.W. halls, a Moose lodge, a Knights of Columbus chapter, seven music stores (all of which specialized in teaching accordion), a three-story hobby shop, four dime stores, two custard stands, the world's largest Little League organization, a dozen gas stations, and about four thousand corner food stores. To the denizens of Seven Holy Tombs, there were two major religions in the world: Catholic and Public. If you were Catholic, you received your early schooling at a place like St. Bastion's Parish grammar school, which had no guidance counselors, television, gym, school nurse, faculty room, cafeteria, or field trips. St. Bastion's had classrooms. Lots of them. And each classroom had kids. Lots of them. Education at the parish school was handled by an unusual assortment of nuns -- Sister Eleanor, who told her class that God did not like people who chewed gum in class, talked in line, or insisted on going to the bathroom more than five times a day; Sister "Cyril Savage," who, with either hand, could throw a curve, a slider, or a fast eraser the length of a classroom; and Sister "Boom Boom Bernadine," who liked to grab kids by the ears and bang their heads against the walls whenever they annoyed her. As a parochial school student, the author received the usual instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, but he also learned about mortal and venial sins, about confession and indulgences, about church carnivals and bingo. And somehow, between Father Vendel's twenty-minute color film on "The Life Cycle of the Polar Bear" and Felix the Filth Fiend Lindor's dirty books, he managed to learn about sex. In the deft and talented hands of John R. Powers, The Last Catholic in America is a work of universal charm and appeal, filled with affectionate and wistful nostalgia for growing up Catholic in the fifties.