“Say, remember Robideau?”
“Sure.” Koesler was grateful for the turn in their conversation. He was trying to forget the funeral, the investigation, the whole Hunsinger affair.
“He was notorious for not paying attention to whom he was burying or marrying. He got help with the weddings because he could carry their marriage license along with him. But he had real trouble with funerals.
“Well, one day he had this funeral and not only did he not know whom he was burying, he forgot whether it was a man or a woman. He had a devil of a time preaching. He used phrases like ‘the loved one,’ Our dear, departed friend,’ ‘the deceased.’ Finally, he decided to get off the fence; after all, he had a fifty-fifty chance of being right. So he said, ‘We must remember to keep him in our prayers.’ At that, he became aware that one of the pallbearers was shaking his head no.”
“Good old Robideau.” Koesler laughed. “He preceded me by several years at St. David’s. They said they were always afraid he would start a fire in the confessional because of the speed with which he kept opening and closing the confessional screens. Someone once accused him of absolving with both hands and both feet.”
They ate steadily. Their drinks would do them little harm. And the entrees had not yet arrived.
“There was a hypochondriac in the parish,” Koesler continued, “who was also really ill-”
“Sort of like the paranoid guy whom everybody actually does hate,” McNiff interjected.
“Right. Well, it was the feast of St. Blaise and this lady called Robideau and actually asked him to come to her house, since she was bedridden, and bless her throat. Robideau of course was not about to do any such thing. He told her to prop the phone between her ear and the pillow, pretend her arms were blessed candles, and cross them underneath her chin, and he would give her the blessing over the phone.”
McNiff snickered. “Reminds me of an incident they tell about that happened in Grand Rapids. This lady’s husband died. They had bought a couple of lots in a public cemetery and she couldn’t get anyone to come and bless the grave. It wasn’t that she couldn’t get anyone to get off his ass and go bless the grave; the guys who were willing to go would check with the Chancery and discover that the Chancery wasn’t giving permission to bless graves then.
“But she finally finds this one guy-must have been a clone of Robideau’s-and pleads with him. So he asks her which way is the cemetery. North, she says. So the guy swings his chair around so it’s facing north and he traces a large sign of the cross in the air.
“The good news is he didn’t charge her a stipend.”
They both chuckled.
The busboy cleared away the dishes and trays and Kay Marie served the entrees. A huge amandine fish. The largest hamburger steak in captivity, smothered in mushroom gravy. And mounds of French fries.
Oh, yes, thought Koesler; a very long walk tomorrow.
As the two got down to serious eating, Koesler reflected on the stories they had exchanged and undoubtedly would continue to recount.
As long as he could remember, at least among his peers in the sacerdotal fraternity, priests were wont to recall and recount stories of the past. Some more than others. The recent phenomenon of Catholic nostalgia had led to such books as the popular The Last Catholic in America and the spinoff play, Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? In all probability, had there been no Vatican II, there would not be this wave of Catholic nostalgia because everything would still be pretty much the same. Very little would have changed. Most Catholics would not know or would not be informed that many of the things they had done seriously a quarter of a century earlier were now considered funny.
But stories of “the good old days” had been and would remain favorites among priests, with or without Vatican II.
“You know,” said McNiff as he loaded tartar sauce on the fish, “I got a document yesterday in the mail from the Tribunal. They wanted the document to be put in the parish’s secret archives. Put me in mind of when I was at St. Mary Magdalen in Melvindale-”
“With old Jake Parker.” Koesler was relatively certain that McNiff would not be coming up with any old Jake Parker stories that hadn’t been told before. But, what the heck, they were good stories.
“Right.” McNiff warmed to the memory of old Jake Parker. “So, anyway, I got a document then, too, from the Tribunal, to be placed in the secret archives. So I went to Jake, told him the problem, and asked where the secret archives were. And he said, ‘Father, they’re so secret, even I don’t know where they are.’”
They laughed. Good for the digestion.
“Didn’t you miss Melvindale your first time out?” Koesler recalled.
“Yup. Drove right through the little suburb. Finally asked a cop where Melvindale was, and he said, ‘Father, you just left it.’
“But that’s the way Jake looked at it too. Once I got another missive from the Tribunal. This time they wanted me to do a notary job on a marriage case.”
“You don’t get those as much now as you used to. . at least I don’t.”
“That’s right. But back then, I was getting them almost every week. And I’d have to go out and call on somebody-who was usually pretty hostile-and ask a lot of personal questions. Well, anyway, I’d had it, so I went in to see Jake and I told him, ‘I’ve had it with these notary jobs. What would they do to me downtown if I don’t do it? If I just refuse to do it, what could they do to me downtown?’
“And Jake says. ‘Father, they couldn’t do anything to you; you’re already here.’”
They laughed again. As anticipated, Koesler had heard the story previously. But when consummate raconteurs such as Myron Cohen or Flip Wilson begin to tell their stories, one looked forward to hearing one of their familiar anecdotes.
“Actually”-McNiff had polished off the fish and was working on the few remaining fries-“I think old Jake was ashamed about being in Melvindale, though I don’t know why; it’s a nice enough little town. But for some reason, he just didn’t think anything good happened in Melvindale.
“Now that I think of it, it might just have been something in old Jake’s personality.
“I remember for years I used to get at him to ask for another assistant. We had almost three thousand families and there were just the two of us. But he wouldn’t do it because he was afraid of being turned down. Finally, one fall, he broke down and asked the Chancery for another priest. Well, his worst fears were realized: he didn’t get one. They turned him down. And those were the years when every September and June they shifted hundreds of priests to different parishes and all the new appointments were published in the Detroit Catholic.”
“I remember it well. I was the editor. I used to publish those new assignments. We’d start on page 1 with pastoral appointments, then stick all the assistant assignments on page 2. It always took at least the entire page. Sometimes they ran over onto page 3.
“I remember once our reporter wrote a mock account, which opened, ‘Seven tons of priests were transferred. .’”
“Exactly. Well, the day the new assignments were published-none of them being to St. Mary Magdalen, Melvindale-old Jake sat at the dining-room table all day long with the Detroit Catholic in front of him, opened to the assignment page. And every time somebody would pass by, old Jake would call him over and point to the page and say, ‘Look at that! Just look at that! You couldn’t put your finger on one of those assignments and say, ‘Now there was a smart move.’”
Koesler hadn’t heard that one before. “It’s rationalization like that that can lead to mental health.”
Having finished the ground round, Koesler was sloshing the fries in mushroom gravy. Oh, yes, it would have to be some walk tomorrow. “Reminds me of when I was at Patronage of St. Joseph parish. It was just me and the pastor, Father Pompilio. Then a monsignor from the Chancery was going to take up residence at Patronage. He was offered a single room, just like the one I had. But a Chancery monsignor wasn’t about to take that lying down-literally. So Pomps was obliged to surrender his very nice three-room pastoral suite to the monsignor. Later, he explained to me how, in the end, he had outsmarted the monsignor: The single room was closer to the ceiling fan in the hallway than the suite was.”