OFF RAMP

Feb 10, 2010 | Latest

                                                  OFF RAMP

   When the sniper was striking the DC area, there was an article in the Washington Post titled “Off Ramp”.  It described how every off ramp into suburbia is similar and this made the sniper’s strikes all the more unnerving since we could so well picture the places of his crimes. 

   Off ramps into small towns are not all the same.  Recently, I have become nostalgic when Mom and I go through Wiggins, thinking of what used to be in the buildings there now and about what buildings are no longer there.  Wiggins always sort of seems the same, but there really have been a lot of changes, and I think it is the most recent change that has brought about this nostalgia.  You see, they tore down the old White Building that before my day was the junior high building and in my high school days housed the art and music rooms.  But it was Sister School, as we called it, that the White Building hosted to which I attach the fondest memories.  Every summer, several nuns from Kansas came for a week to teach catechism and music and the joy of being a Catholic.  It was a highlight of the summer.  People wanted to save the White Building, but it had so much mold that it made its salvation cost prohibitive. 

   Let me take you off ramp and into Wiggins of today and yesterday.  We’re on I76 East turning onto the first Wiggins exit. 

   The first building on the left is a residence and was the childhood home of Dan Busch who farms our farm now.  He sold it after he moved to his grandparents’ home, then it went into foreclosure.  His son then bought it back from the bank for something like $30,000 less than his father had sold it.  I’m glad it’s back in the family and I think it looks better white than turquoise.

   There’s some newer buildings here on the west side of town – the firehouse, the post office and relatively newer buildings like the grocery store and the bank.  The old post office is now an insurance company.  Then we come to the restaurant that has had at least seven different names in my lifetime.  The first I remember was the White Spot.  I washed dishes there for a few weeks one summer when it was Country Fare, but everyone called it Dorothy’s. This is also where the Continental Trailways Bus used to stop.  I road it many times to and from Virginia.   The café is now the Prairie Ranch House. 

   Across the street is a vacant lot for sale by owner.  I think it has had this status for a decade or so.  What used to be there was the Pink Hotel:  a two-storied, old hotel and very pink.  Dr. Carroll went through Wiggins one time before he ever met Mrs. Carroll and had his picture taken in front of the Pink Hotel.  The only time I set foot in it was when we bought our Christmas tree there.  I don’t know why they were being sold at a hotel.  The Pink Hotel was eventually painted brown and then torn down.  It is perhaps Wiggins’ greatest loss. 

   Next is the liquor store.  It’s closed down and for sale.  Definitely a sign of the economic times!

   Now we could turn down Main Street, but let’s head out to the east part of town past the old Stub’s – a gas station.  It’s been moved to the west off ramp and is doing quite well.  Then there is the Co-Op.  This is where we fill up now.  The #3 gas pump has had “Error” on it for the three years we have been back here and is unusable.  We use pump #4. 

   Heading back west we come to a building that is some town government place.  It used to be the grocery store.  The best memory from this store was the time the Wonder Bread Giant visited and gave away little loaves of Wonder Bread.  I’m living proof that Wonder Bread helps build strong bodies 12 ways!

   Now we turn down Main Street headed south.  There’s the Frozen Food Locker – been closed and for sale for quite a while.  A little business was in there a few years ago, but it didn’t last long.  This is where we would go after Mass on Sunday sometimes, and Dad would buy us kids Almond Joys or Mounds.   

   We cross over the railroad tracks.  Here’s the other restaurant in town – Fajitas.  This used to be the Corner Service gas station.  We used to have a gas pump on our farm and rarely got gas anywhere else.  One time I was with my sister Barb when she had just started to drive, and we needed gas.  She pulled in and asked for “half a tank”.  The guy looked at her as if she were crazy.  When we were in a hurry leaving home, we always put in just half a tank.  We had never thought about giving a dollar amount to the gas we put in.  This is when gas was about 40 cents a gallon.

   The old town pool hall is some new pool hall.  It used to be called “Bub’s”.   People of Wiggins used to fill up one way or another at Stub’s or Bub’s.  I was only in Bub’s twice.  The first time was after a basketball practice when some other guys wanted to play 4-man foos ball.  They made a big mistake asking me – I was terrible.  The other time I played pinball with my cousin Dan.  We took turns and were doing quite well.  You could win money playing and we were.  Then Bub came over and tilted the machine on us. That was an effective way of limiting payoffs.

   Across the street is the hardware store.  It’s been there as long as I can remember, but things have changed all around it.  My brother John, shortly before he died, won a $500 drawing for merchandise from the store.  John always did his Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve at the hardware store.  For his last Christmas shopping he had $500 to spend. 

   Wiggins Jr/Sr High and Grade School take up the rest of one side of Main Street all the way to the edge of town.  On the west side we come to a house that used to be the Catholic Church.   Lots of memories from here, of course:  First Confession, First Communion, altar serving, catechism classes,  Dr. and Mrs. Carroll’s wedding where I was the ring bearer.  It had no air conditioning and no indoor plumbing.  Sometimes as an altar boy I had to go next door to the Jones’ house (they were Quakers) and get water for the cruet.  One time their dog walked through the back door, through the sacristy and onto the altar during Mass while I was serving.  I had to lead him off the altar and back home.  In the summer months, it seemed someone every Sunday would faint from a combination of the heat and midnight fast.  There was accordion music in the days when I guess we didn’t have an organist or maybe it was that we didn’t have an organ.  Every Sunday we sang “Holy God We Praise Thy Name” and “Praise the Holy Trinity”.   I could go on, but instead let’s go on down the street.

    There’s the Wiggins Telephone Company, supplier of our high speed internet.  If we turned left shortly after it, we’d come to where the Community Hall used to be.  What great events took place there!  There were two big ones: The Fall Festival with crop judging and our church bazaar with its pig raffle.   Barb entered the Miss Fall Festival contest one year.  In the group dance routine her umbrella wouldn’t open. She made up for it by being crowned Prom Queen her senior year.  Every year at the bazaar we would win gold fish by throwing ping pong balls into their bowls – one got the fish in the bowl if the ball fell into it.  Our fish never lasted more than a couple days.  I think Wonder Bread does not help build strong fish bodies in any way.  We never thought to put a scapular around their bowls and pray for them to be returned to life.  One year in high school my sister Kath’s class was reading A Tale of Two Cities and many were having trouble understanding it.  My brother Dave had a collection of Classics Illustrated – comic books of great literature.  Kath would lend the comic of the Dicken’s classic for a night to anyone who would buy a book of pig raffle tickets.  She was a shrewd salesperson.

   Back to Main Street and we are at the edge of town.  Here is Our Lady of Lourdes with indoor plumbing and air conditioning. There’s even doughnuts every Sunday after Mass.  We thought we were almost in heaven when we had long johns after our First Holy Communion.   Catholic kids of Wiggins will never be as tough as we were.  If you come on the 11^th, its Our Lady of Lourdes’ feast day, there will be a 6:00 Mass followed by a potluck supper. Everybody’s welcomed.   

   Right next to the church is a corn field.  If you make seven turns heading southwest for 10 miles from here you would end up at our farm. 

   That’s our off ramp.

   ‘Twixt now and the 20th there is Our Lady of Lourdes’ feast day, St. Valentine’s Day and Quinquagesima Sunday, Presidents Day, Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday.  A lot can happen in 10 days.

Jezu, ufam Tobie.        

STUDENT TEACHERS II

Jan 29, 2010 | Latest

STUDENT-TEACHERS II AND THEN SOME

   The recent tremendous and inspiring news of Michael Jordan’s rescuing a family from a burning house caused me to consider again how grateful I am for the outstanding students that have attended Seton and the many things that they have taught me.  There have been so many very good students who have been exemplars.  So in this second edition of Student-Teacher  I am not going to the name the name of the student-teacher, just the family, because any one of the members of these very good families or of another family could have been the teacher.  Circumstances were what led the individuals in these families to be the ones to have the teaching moment. 

   One Lent we were discussing in class what might be some good penances to take on for the season.  I suggested going to a daily Mass during the week would be a good penance.  One of the Fegans in the class didn’t say anything at the moment, but shortly afterwards in a paper was written something along these lines:  “Going to daily Mass is a privilege, not a penance.”  I was so impressed by this.  Not just the truth of the statement, but the manner in which it was communicated.  The student didn’t want to correct me in class in front of the students, but chose instead to correct me in quiet.  It had the effect of changing my attitude about assisting at Mass – a change from something I was doing, to something that God was granting me.  How much more so do I realize this now that daily Mass is out of the question, and Sunday Mass is only a possibility.

   Not long ago, I looked up the availability of  My Catholic Faith, a catechism book that I used as the basis for Religion 9.  At the site there were comments on the book by readers.  One had this to say:  “Nothing new here that hasn’t already been told to a psychiatrist.”  I presume he didn’t have a real happy upbringing in his Catholic family.  I was reminded of a story that one of the Skubes told as part of many family stories on a long ride home from some game.  I probably have some details wrong, but such can be the case with the retelling of legendary stories.  Here’s how I remember it.  The younger Skubes were given charge of an older Skube’s goldfish.  The goldfish died under their watch.  The death of the goldfish made them both sad and afraid,  so they gathered around the goldfish bowl trying to decide what to do.  Pray for a miracle came to mind.  They carefully placed a scapular around the bowl and prayed in earnest for life to be restored to the fish.   It remained dead.  Probably many of us have endearing stories of growing up Catholic.  Far from making us need a psychiatrist, their memories are part of what help to keep us sane in this crazy world.  Whether the story is from a family of 15 children like the Skubes or from an only child, the joy of being a Catholic is what our stories help us to see.

    Being able to go to school in the same building in which Our Lord has chosen to take up residence is indeed a remarkable and great grace.  I would acknowledge His presence interiorly when I would pass by the chapel during the school day, but then I saw one of the Cooleys make an outward sign of piety.  It was not ostentatious, just a simple sign of the cross, but it required a brief moment to stop and make  in the crowded hallway.  It caused me to remember other signs of reverence that I had seen  people make  that had made a lasting impression on me.

   When I was in Mexico, I saw a very humble looking man pass by a church on his bicycle.  As he did so, he raised his hat.  It was truly a beautiful act in all its simplicity.  In Spain there was a large group of school children headed home walking along a street near to a place where I was sitting.  I could hear them singing “Una sardina”, a song I had learned but never heard sung in Spain.  I was so excited to hear it, but they had only just begun when those in front started to pass in front of the doors of a church.  They began to shush those behind them, and all the students were quiet as they passed by.  They didn’t pick up the song again within my hearing.  I was disappointed not to get to hear the whole song but was very impressed by these grade school students who showed such reverence.

  Visible signs of the Faith are so important.  Through the years, I saw more and more Seton students making a sign of reverence when they passed by the chapel.  One day in freshman religion class, a student  asked, “Why are there students who make the sign of the cross while walking through the halls?”  I told him that it was to acknowledge God’s presence and to pay Him homage.    It took just a second, but then I could see the light bulb go on.  He said, “Oh, you mean in the chapel.”  I could see it was a revelation to him, and one that he was very happy to understand.

  This reminded me of a moment in my early days at Christendom.  Growing up in rural Colorado with our parish being a mission, the church was always locked except on Sundays.  Making a visit was not something I had ever done or thought about.  The day being considered, I was walking through the halls of St. Francis School in Triangle, which was CC’s first campus, talking with  Chris Foeckler (uncle of Seton alumnus of the same name) when he suddenly stopped and said that he was going to make a visit.  I had no idea what he was talking about, but he just turned and walked into the chapel.  I walked on and then realized to Whom he was paying a visit.  I thought “That is really a good idea.”  I have always been grateful for that lesson.  My college classmate, by the way, is now Father Foeckler.

   Acts of piety that we make and may take for granted may just be a moment God uses to make fruitful an actual grace.   (I’m not sure what I just wrote is theologically right, but I don’t know how else to say it.)  I don’t remember the student who told a story of her family in religion class one time.  We had been talking about making outward signs, and she said that once her family was in a restaurant and they said grace, making the sign of the cross before and after.  When the dad went to pay the bill, he was told that it had been paid for by someone who was so grateful to see a family pray before eating.  Our outward signs of faith may not gain us a free meal, but there must be much grace to be gained and maybe some inspiration to be given by making them.

Jezu, ufam Tobie

Blogic 2

Jan 19, 2010 | Latest

BLOGIC 2

  With the reminders of the 37^th Anniversary and the March for Life coming up this Friday, I was in a bit of a somber mood and thinking that I would need to write something somber.  Then I thought of Todd Summers’ (’87) pro-life speech his senior year.  It was a great speech which, if I remember correctly, he outlined how much there was to do for pro-lifers.  I think he used a line from a John Wayne movie in it.  For sure it was clever, logical with some humor and well-delivered.  It ended something like this:  Saddle up cowboys, we have a long way to go.  It was clearly the best speech at the district contest which involved a number of schools.  I was stunned when he didn’t win.  There were three judges, two of them had Todd’s as the winning speech.  The third judge was the previous year’s winner, and he had Todd’s speech dead last because, he said, there was no place for humor in a speech about abortion.  Let’s not critique the critique. 

   One of the most frustrating things we face in the pro-life cause is that we meet head on with seemingly intelligent people who have no concern for logic in their arguments.  They embody what Pope Benedict has labeled as the “dictatorship of relativism”.    I indirectly heard recently from three different people who have met with this dictatorship at college. 

   Carter Stevens is taking a college logic class.  The teacher said that they would be doing debates and wanted topics.  Carter suggested they debate the nature of truth.  The teacher said that she didn’t like that word “truth”.  Her substitution:  mutual agreement.

   Gage Arnold found he needed to name a new fallacy after a short time at college.  He called it “Negating the Question”.  People would answer a question such as “Why are you reading Marx?” with “Why not read Marx?”   

   A third person texted home after a college class with this description of what he had just endured – “Fallacy Festival”. 

   We must always know that it is truth, not mutual agreement, that we stand for; we must always be ready with clear answers when asked, in whatever form, why we are pro-life;  and we need to be able to identify the errors in the arguments that we hear so often because they certainly are fallacy festivals. 

    It’s easy to forget the names of fallacies that we have learned.  We know an argument is bad, but we can’t always name the fallacy.  A couple years ago Mrs. O’Herron sent me a birthday card and asked me to analyze it for fallacies.  I never got around to sending her the analysis, so here it is now.

   The card had two dogs talking to each other with the moon in the background.  The one dog was saying to the other “I do not know why, but if you howl at it all night it goes away by morning.”

   Clearly this is a funny card, but its full humor can only be appreciated by someone who has studied logic.  The non-logician would simply say something like, “Ha, ha, pretty dumb dogs.”  Unless, of course he was a member of PETA, then he might say, “What precious, thoughtful co-sharers of our planet.  If only we could understand their deep thoughts and intentions.”

   Now for the analysis.

   The humor in this card involves three fallacies.  It is rooted in the main fallacy of a category mistake.  We know that dogs cannot talk and reason, even poorly because they are non-rational, not irrational, non-rational.  So we first chuckle a little realizing the absurdity of dogs discussing the appearance and disappearance of the moon.

   But we now allow ourselves to consider the dogs as rational and look at their thought process.  We see that the reasoning of the “wiser” dog is based on induction, but that he has done a poor job of it.  He repeatedly howls at the moon at night and each time experiences the disappearance of the moon.  He concludes that it is his howling that has been the cause of its disappearance.  This is a clear example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc – after this, therefore because of this.  Detecting this fallacy prompts great laughter.

   The third fallacy is the specific induction error that has led to the post hoc fallacy.  This canine has not done his induction well.  He has, we assume, many times howled at the moon, therefore, there is no problem with the # of examples he is considering – he has not committed the induction fallacy of hasty generalization.  But look at the examples he has considered.  Every one of them is of the same type.  He has invariably howled at the moon when it appeared and continued howling until it disappeared.  If he had decided some nights not to howl at the moon and then had seen that it still disappeared, he would have realized that his howling was not the cause.  Thus, we can accuse the dog of selected instances – taking a non-representative sample to reach a conclusion.  By the time we recognize this fallacy we are howling with laughter. 

   It is clear that a little logic greatly increases our sense of humor.

   Pretty dumb dogs, huh?

Note:  Todd graduated the year of the big March for Life Blizzard when 20 inches fell in DC.  The busses didn’t run that year, but Mr. Purdy bravely drove a small band to the March:  Helen Purdy (’88) and Sharon Lloyd (’88), Mr. and Mrs. Scheetz and their two month old Annie (’05), Dr. and Mrs. Carroll, Dr. Antus and me.  The Vander Woudes drove their van and they had Kim Fejes (’87) with them.  There might have been others who made it, but those are the ones Mrs. Carroll remembers.