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When I began the second grade at St. Gerard's in San Antonio it was quite a change from St. Anthony's, that school that I went to in San Antonio. The school was filled with more affluent children - children of affluent parents than St. Gerard's. St. Gerard's was just a run-of-the-mill folks. One of the guys in my class in St. Anthony's, his name was Mark Watson, his family had a - was pretty wealthy - they owned an insurance business and when I had my uniform that I wore to school that my mother bought for me that had a

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Dad and Uncle Doc and Tony Faldyik and Uncle Jim Raz liked to play baseball and they were part of a team. I might have mentioned this earlier. Anyway dad was the catcher and we used to go in somebody's car that had a rumble seat and I used to get in the back while the men folks were in the front and ride that rumble seat. That was something else. The wind would hit me in the face and I'm glad there weren't any love bugs in the air at the time or I would have been full of them in my teeth I guess but we'd get to the ball park and I was very disappointed that I didn't get to watch the game. I had to sit in that rumble seat until the game was over and dad explained to me that he didn't want me to get hurt crawling around the bleachers and I'm sure that's what I would have been doing. Dad had a compound fracture on his left thumb and when he broke it that bone stuck out and it had to heal over with skin because they didn't go to the doctor in those days. He must have been in a lot of pain for a long time until that healed over. Dad was something else. He was tough. I mean tough in that he didn't give in to pain. He just toughed it out but he was a very gentle person too and I loved him dearly.
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When I was in grade school in St. Gerard’s in San Antonio we lived in a two story house and all of the back of the top floor was our kitchen and that’s where, on the double doors that led to one part of the kitchen, that’s where I hung my stocking. And it wasn’t a fancy stocking it was one of mom’s.
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Well mom and I just got back from taking me to the doctor, the pediatrician no big deal. All he did was trim my toenails, they were extra long and it’s nice that he can do it and Medicare pays for it. Well actually we pay for it but more of us are involved with the payment. I was thinking what Christmas was like when I was a kid. We never had a tall Christmas tree but what we used to do was put a Christmas tree on like a lamp stand in front of the window in the living room. And we didn’t have full sized trees until I guess when we lived in, on Odessa Drive. You know it’s really something when you’re 79 years old you get a lapse of memory. Probably in another few months I won’t have any memory and maybe that’ll be OK. Anyway we’re getting ready for Christmas and all excited about that because we’re going to Suzi’s this year for the family gathering Christmas and we’re excited for Bethany’s present. She’s been borrowing our electric chain saw so she’s going to have a brand new one for Christmas. Since that is their – they use a lot of wood since that is their fuel in their wood burning stove. I’m just getting over Obama’s revenge, I mean Montezuma’s revenge. I had about two weeks of pooping so if you get a big bonus this year Jim that’s because we used so many of those paper rolls. Thank God for them.
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Well today is a beautiful fall day and I thought I’d sit down and share some of my memories with you guys. Excuse me. Got a frog in my throat. I’m sitting on the deck in back of our house. It’s just wonderful looking at the grounds here and seeing the statue of our Blessed Mother in the back, in the foreground I guess. Just finished having breakfast and a wonderful lecture from grandmother on my weight so I have to start today to do something about that. I think the last part of my memoirs that I dictated were some of the first grade memories and what I remembered from my time in San Antonio in the first grade. I started the first grade, as you know, in Yoakum at St. Joseph’s school. It’s a parish school and it was a parochial school that was staffed by the Sisters of Divine Providence – the same group that Sister Mary Christine is a member of for many years from Our Lady of the Lake College. So when I went to St. Anthony’s I believe it was also staffed by the Sisters of Divine Providence. Going to St. Anthony’s was a lot different than going to St. Joseph’s in Yoakum. San Antonio was an exciting place to be and almost scary for a little guy in the first grade – all the so called traffic. I did walk to school. It’s amazing, we would do that today. I didn’t have to go very far but it was several blocks and I never did take the same route every day cause I loved to explore different neighborhoods. St. Anthony’s was a parochial, not a parochial but a, I don’t know what you call it but it was a stand-alone school that like I said was staffed by the Sisters of Divine Providence. (sneezing) Excuse me. Had to sneeze. It only did the grammar school, no high school.
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