7 Alben W. Barkley (1877–1956), who was Truman’s running mate.
8 From Collegeville and St. Cloud.
9 Burlesque theatre in Minneapolis.
10. If you can’t win with me, stop playing the horses!
1 Roethke.
2 Renewal of the Guggenheim.
3 Father Bandas.
4 Prince of Darkness.
5 Play-by-play announcer for the St. Paul Saints baseball and hockey teams.
6 Lexington Park, St. Paul.
7 Kentucky Derby.
8 Joe H. Palmer, racing correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. “Assistant,” meaning parish assistant (a priest).
9 Caroline Gordon.
10 Catholic Worker.
11. I’m beyond the point where I think the world is waiting for me as for the sunrise
1 Manager of the Brewers.
2 Good shepherd (Latin).
3 Don Humphrey.
4 For collections at Mass.
5 The Grand National at Aintree, the race upon which the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstakes was based.
6 Harry Sylvester.
7 Robert Paul Mohan, review of The Cardinal, by Henry Morton Robinson, Priest, June 1950: “Mr. Robinson … has none of the depressing negativity of Powers or Sylvester, who have also given pictures of the clerical scene.”
8 The Sun Herald. (Jim has the name wrong here.) A national Catholic daily newspaper (with an antiwar position) founded in 1950 in Kansas City, Missouri, it lasted six months.
9 Albany, New York.
10 “Youth” section in the St. Cloud diocesan newspaper (Stearns County pronunciation).
11 Bill Kraft.
12 Bookseller and outspoken advocate of good literature who had a radio show called Books and Brent.
13 Yaddo.
14 John Louis Bonn, SJ, novelist and teacher.
15 Huge college basketball scandal involving point-shaving and payoffs from bookies.
16 Joke.
17 From The New Yorker.
18 “Defection of a Favorite,” The New Yorker, November 10, 1951.
19 A society of Spanish-inspired flagellants in New Mexico and Colorado.
12. The water, the green, the vines, stone walls, the pace, all to my taste
1 “I don’t feel right about the Church here. Even thought the poor Protestants might be holding back the deluge, one finger in the dike.” Journal, November 4, 1951.
2 Parish priest (the pastor).
3 One of Father Fennelly’s pamphlets.
4 Clark Bars — Jim’s favorite.
5 Racecourse south of Dublin.
6 Two shillings.
7 A book of prayers.
8 Egan’s to-do lists.
9 Don Humphrey.
10 William Howard, 8th Earl of Wicklow (1902–1978), converted to Roman Catholicism in 1932.
11 Prince of Darkness.
12 Joke.
13 Como Park, St. Paul.
14 They hoped for a Republican president.
15 A. A. Stagg, University of Chicago football coach for forty-one years.
13. In Ireland, I am an American. Here, I’m nothing
1 “Tide Rips in the Teacups,” The New Yorker, December 13, 1952.
2 “The Devil Was the Joker,” The New Yorker, March 21, 1953.
3 Peter W. Bartholome (1893–1982), coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of St. Cloud, 1942–1953. He became bishop of the Diocese of St. Cloud in 1953 and retired in 1968.
4 A 1952 movie, directed by John Ford, starring John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, and Barry Fitzgerald.
5 Jim’s agent, Henry Volkening.
6 Garrelts and Keefe.
7 Joseph F. Busch (1866–1953), bishop of the Diocese of St. Cloud, 1915–1953.
8 Mother of Peter Bartholome, now bishop of the Diocese of St. Cloud.
14. A place too good to believe we live in
1 Eugene and Abigail McCarthy.
2 Ammon Hennacy (1893–1970), pacifist, member of the Catholic Worker movement, Christian anarchist.
3 Father Pacifique Roy, who prepared a retreat at St. John’s given by Father Hugo that Jim attended.
4 Father Emeric Lawrence, OSB.
5 Newman Club in Minneapolis.
6 Philip Hughes, SJ (1895–1967).
7 John Courtney Murray, SJ (1904–1967), moral and ecumenical theologian.
8 Leonard P. Cowley (1913–1973), pastor of St. Olaf’s and head of the Newman Club at that time.
15. I had a very fine time — laughing as I hadn’t in years
1 On the way from Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia.
2 Roethke.
3 As in fact became the case.
16. There have been times, though not recently, when it has seemed to me that I might escape the doom of man
1 Both played baseball for the St. Paul Saints.
2 Walter Alston. Big year for the Dodgers, who finally won the World Series.
3 To spend Thanksgiving in Beardsley — as he preferred.
4 With Jim’s “Blue Island,” Accent (Autumn 1955).
5 Not until the next year: “Zeal,” Commonweal, February 10, 1956.
6 Garrelts.
7 Bridgeman’s ice cream.
8 The day after Thanksgiving.
9 A pooka, in the shape of a large rabbit, played a part in the movie Harvey (1950).
10 Had been in favor of birth control and eventually left the Church.
11 Railroad salvage store, much frequented by Jim.
12 In Accent (Autumn 1955).
13 The New Yorker, November 5, 1955.
14 Bishop Bartholome.
15 Father Robert Hovda and Father Henry Fehrenbacher, liberal priests, associated with the Catholic Worker movement and liturgical reform.
16 Orville Freeman (1918–2003).
17 Whether the game — so popular in Catholic parishes as a way of levying money — should be illegal under the antigambling laws.
18 Thomas d’Esterre Roberts, SJ, Black Popes: Authority; Its Use and Abuse.
17. Four children now, Jack. And this year, the man said, bock beer is not available in this area
1 Published in Commonweal, February 10, 1956.
2 Walter Ong, SJ (1912–2003), professor of English, historian, and philosopher.
3 Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), French Thomist philosopher and social thinker.
4 Review of The Presence of Grace, Commonweal, March 30, 1956.
5 Catholic Worker.
6 Joke evocative of “the green banana” in Jim’s short story of that title. To give “the green banana,” meant roughly, in Jim’s and his friends’ parlance, to dismiss or reject, in this case linking it to the powerful Cardinal Giovanni Montini (who later became Pope Paul VI).
7 Chicago Sun-Times, April 1, 1956.
8 Huntington Hartford Foundation, a colony for artists and writers.
9 Food supplement.
10 Don Humphrey.
11 Wanderer, May 1956.
12 Northern League baseball team, New York Giants — affiliated Class C team at the time.
13 William Otterwell Ignatius Brady (1899–1961), appointed coadjutor bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul, June 16, 1956.
14 He was invited to teach at Ann Arbor.
15 Merchant marine.
16 He remained (Billy) Cosgrove in Morte D’Urban.
17 Mud.
18 Bishop William Brady had been appointed coadjutor bishop to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis on June 16, 1956. He succeeded Archbishop John Gregory Murray on his death in October 1956.
19 Wolverine: train from Michigan; LaSalle Street Station: in Chicago; IC: Illinois Central.