FRIDAY POTPOURRI: HISTORY OF THE RECTORY: CHAPTER 2

On a drizzly afternoon in June, the Knights of Columbus council at St. Sebastian came to St. Clare in Lyndhurst, about 45 minutes away and where I had served as parochial vicar for the past three years to help pack up my belonging and move me south to Akron.  St. Clare had been very good to me.  The rectory there had been recently renovated and my room was very generous.  It was one of two parishes in the diocese that still had a live-in who cooked and did laundry; Social Security and rising standards of living having all but wiped out the need for a person to find work in a rectory to make ends meet.

Though that rectory that stands out in the diocese as a very fortunate place for a priest to live, the St. Clare rectory was in the middle of the church and school parking lot as well as right off of one of the busiest roads in Cleveland: Mayfield Road.  Mayfield is one of those magical roads on which you can find just about anything you might need with the exception of quiet and easy driving.  Businesses on the East side of Cleveland gravitate to this road that stretches from Little Italy in the heart of Cleveland to the rich suburbs far out toward the rising sun.  But that also means that it is a nasty tangle of traffic most of the day and being a main thoroughfare, if an emergency vehicle is going to be called to any place, it is going to go past St. Clare on the way there with sirens screaming.  

One night, waking me from a deep sleep, the sirens made their usual racket becoming louder and louder as it neared the parish and then, at its peak, abruptly stopped instead of fading as it made its way past.  I opened my eyes to find my room awash in blue and red flashing lights.  Padding over to my window I saw a car turned over on the immaculate front lawn.  Apparently someone had thought it a good parking spot but not wanting to mess up the lawn with tire tracks decided to park it on its roof.  (Fortunately no one was hurt – or wouldn’t be until the next morning when the hangover and the clarity of what happened the night before set in.)

All the rectories that I had lived in previous to coming to live at St. Sebastian had been in the middle of a field of a tarmac parking lot.  This was particularly evident at my first parish when car alarms were finishing their first blush of being standard equipment on cars.  Gentlemen, and I use the term loosely, still thought it hysterical to wait until a female acquaintance walked by their car so they could set off the alarm from a distance and bend over laughing when the lady would screech.  Neither the women nor I, listening to it for the umpteenth time in my room, found it the least bit funny.

Privacy, then, is always at a bit of a premium.  I remember once, at St. Ambrose, I had been taking a nap, woke thirsty, and stepped out of the room to go downstairs to get a cup of water.  The door was locked to keep well intentioned persons from coming in.  After stepping out into the hall, the wind from an open window caught the door and slammed it shut locking the room up tight.  It was one of those days that I wanted desperately to have a little alone time so I snuck downstairs in my stocking feet, hair mussed (having hair then) and clothes crumpled.

I butter knife was snuck out of the kitchen and I tried to jimmy the door open.  First one person than another showed up to try to get me in my room.  Soon there was a group of about seven people offering advice on how to get the door open.  The handle was completely disassembled and still there was no gaining entrance.  I snuck away, got an extension ladder and, in front of the entire school out for recess, climbed up to my window, slid in and announced, “I’m in my room!  You can all leave now!” and then curled up on my couch to finish a nap.

Of course, having people around is also a blessing.  When John Paul II died and I was in one of my wanting to be left alone moods, I got that same ladder out and climbed to the roof of the church to hang the black mourning banners.  A strong wind came along and blew the ladder down trapping me in the roof (this was long before I owned a cell phone.)  Fortunately a kind jogger came along and heard my cries for assistance and righted the ladder.

In contrast, the rectory at St. Sebastian is located in the middle of green lawns, hemmed in by the school and the church building.  But no general parking lot comes near it.  Across the brick avenue is a park named Elm Hill Park though everyone calls it Forest Lodge which is the building that stands on its grounds.  The new building built by the WPA was named after the hunting lodge that once stood there when this part of Akron was considered way out in the country.  All in all it is about as nice a setting one could hope for while still being inside the city limits and it was this house that the truck carrying all of my worldly goods drove up to using the curving brick driveway under a canopy of oak and maple trees to the rear entrance of the rectory.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: RECTORY HISTORY: TO EACH HIS OWN

That is not to say that the way the pastor had the rectory set up is wrong.  It was right for him.  He is of the type of gentleman that gets his energy from being around people.  My first pastor was like that.  Fr. Hilkert of St. Ambrose Parish (God rest him) loved being around people and he didn’t have a lot of boundaries.  His suite was off the first landing on the stairs and easily visible from the front offices.  It was not unusual for him (he was in his mid-80s when I was with him) to be in his pajamas by 8PM.  The secretary might phone up and say that someone stopped by to see him and, putting the phone down would holler down the steps, “Just come on up.  I’m in my chair and have no intention of getting up.”  It would be unheard of today in our litigious society to greet somebody in your pajamas but back then it was a funny quirk.  

Once, getting back to the St. Ambrose rectory late the secretary stopped me and said, “Would you please go up and see if Father is alright?  A couple of big young men stopped by to talk to a priest and he told me to send them up and they have there has been a lot of yelling coming from up there.”

I ran up the stairs, knocked, and went in.  There were two rather beefy young men with Father and they were all holding Bibles and talking over each other.  It turns out that they were Protestants and one of them was getting married to a Catholic and wanted the straight story “from the horse’s mouth” exactly what Catholic believe.  Greatly relieved I said, “Hold on, I’ll get my Bible,” and so joined in on the conversation.

In many ways, though I think we had the relationship I had with that pastor was that of Grandpa and Grandson, Fr. Hilkert and I were polar opposites.  But it was his rectory and whatever he wanted went.  That is, until he decided he was going to put a deacon’s office on the second floor where the living quarters were, directly across the hall from my bedroom.  This house was built in the ‘50s when there was no need for as many offices as a modern parish needs and so, as happened at St. Sebastian, offices crept further and further into this house until there was only one spot left un-invaded by office workers – the guest room directly across the hall from my bedroom.

Sometimes I worry that I am a little too private or picky.  But the idea of taking a shower and changing my clothes and hearing a meeting going on out in the hall with only an inch thick door separating us was more than I could bear.  So I went to Fr. Hilkert’s office, with whom never an ill word passed, and said, “This is your house, and you may do whatever you want with it and I will support you.  But I just want you to know that if you put an office across from my bedroom, I will move out.”  I said it in a very calm and matter of fact way – or at least that is the way I remember it.  There I times that I think I am being very calm about things and friends will say, “Boy, could we tell you were loaded for bear.”  I am always amazed by this.

“They aren’t gonna be coming in your room!” he grumbled back, perhaps sensing an underlying feeling of petulancy.  

“I didn’t say they were.  I am just saying that if there is an office up there, I will not be.”

“I can put offices anywhere I want to.”

“I know that.  I didn’t say you couldn’t.  I just said that I would be moving out.”  

That was the closest we had ever come to fighting in the seven years we were together.  He finally gave in and I apologized.  Looking back I know I was bull headed enough to carry out my threat but I have no idea where I would have gone.  Living in the rectory, after all, is part of our compensation.  One night in a hotel is more than a priest makes in a weekend of Masses.  And the food isn’t as good.

Priests who are extraverts are few and far between.  At least of the ones I know.  This is a good thing.  If you put 5 introverts in a room with a bowl of peanuts, come back in an hour and they all will have found something to read.  Put 5 extroverts in a room together with a bowl of peanuts, come back in an hour and at least one will have to go to the hospital to have the bowl of peanuts removed from his nostril.  So considering we end up living together in situations not far removed from arranged marriages, it is good that so many of us so inclined to some amount of passivity.

There are ways, however, in which it is far easier to be extroverted priest than one that is introverted.  One would be in the arrangements of the rectory.  It is easy to open up your house and invite everybody and their pet cat to roam through at will, dropping in on your breakfast to get a cup of coffee and make idle chatter, taking a short cut to the church when you have company, popping in at night to “get some things done” while you are sitting in the living room in sweats, eating popcorn and watching the game.  True extroverts love this.  “No!  You’re not interrupting!  Sit down and talk for a few minutes.”

Woe for the introverted priest whose assignment as pastor follows that of the extroverted priest.  While the extravert gets his energy by being around people and the more the merrier, the introvert (such as myself) gets his energy by being alone.  And we know from experience that when we try to fashion our home as is befitting an introvert after an extrovert has been there, we seem territorial and mean spirited.  Maybe we are.

So at first you try to live with it, silently crushing your newspaper when someone interrupts breakfast to catch up.  Or scuttling out of the kitchen late at night not wanting to be seen on your PJs when an unexpected visitor with keys comes in the back door to work on a project for the morning.  First we try polite explanations such as, “Could you please not come in to the rectory late at night without warning me?  Sometimes I like to come down from my bedroom for a late snack and am not dressed for visitors.”

Inevitably will come the reply, “Oh but Father, I don’t mind seeing you in your PJs.”  Which may be very true.  But the problem stems from not wanting to be seen in my PJs.  So then the introverted priest starts laying down rules such as “Nobody in the rectory after office hours!”  Maybe that’s it.  We stuff it down until we are upset and then it comes out a bit harsh.  So you feel guilty and so maybe you bake a little something and leave it on the kitchen counter to try to make up for it.  It is best to be a good baker in times like these.

*

Baking only ingratiates one for so long.  Soon the complaints of ruined diets start marring the positive effects that the initial baking created.  But there was a perennial favorite: my mother’s apple strudel.  It always appeared around the fall and would disappear like a freed helium balloon on a windy day – more of a flash of sweet memory than anything lasting.  

MOTHER VALENCHECK’S APPLE STRUDEL:

(As copied from an ancient piece of notebook paper, written in her own hand and covered with grease spots.)

¼ cup of water

3 eggs

2 Tbsps. of vinegar

2 cups flour

2 sticks of butter (½ pound)

9 (Mom always used half Macintosh and half Jonathon)

1 cup sugar

Dash of cinnamon

Dash of lemon juice

1 cup crushed cornflakes

(I add a little vanilla to the dough.)

Mix together the water, vinegar, and 3 egg yolks (& vanilla.)  (Save the whites for later.)

In another bowl, cut the butter into the flour as you for pie dough.  When the butter is “pea size” add the liquid ingredients and knead until it forms a ball and no longer sticks to the side of the bowl.  A good amount of flour may need to be added as you knead.  Let the dough sit covered in a bowl in the refrigerator for at least an hour or even overnight.

The Filling:

Peel, cut and slice the apples to a size of your taste

Add to the apples the sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, and 1 cup crushed cornflakes.

Preheat oven between 325-350

Divide dough into four to six balls and roll out a thinly as possible into a large rectangle.

Place apples along one edge.  Place a row of cornflakes alongside.

Roll the dough, folding over the ends and sealing all with the egg whites.

Paint the rolled loaves with egg whites or melted butter, sprinkle with sugar bake for 1 hour or until golden brown.

APPLE DUMPLINGS:

Instead of slicing up the apples, peel and core depending and size, about 10 of them.  

Roll out dough into as many squares.

Place apple in the middle of the square and fill the now empty core with sugar, a dash of cinnamon, and a pad of butter at the top.

Fold the dough up and around the apple securing with the eggs whites like glue.

Coat with egg whites or butter, sprinkle with sugar and bake for 1 hour or until golden brown.

In a double boiler melt some red cinnamon candy.

Put dumplings in a bowl with ice cream and pour to cinnamon mixture over.  Serve piping hot.