The Catholic School

The Catholic School

My only friends in Pfeffer Valley were the only other kids in Pfeffer Valley.  They were the Langen kids, Tommy, Larry, and their younger sister Kay.  I would usually ride my bike the mile or so to their farm and we would either hang out there or go riding bikes even further.

During the school year, Larry and Tommy were not my daily playmates because, alas, they went to the Catholic school.  I didn't clearly understand why some kids went to the Catholic school.

The school bus picked them up along with some other kids in the valley next to ours, then picked up two of my classmates, Roger and Donald Johnson, who lived in the bottoms, the back of their little farm butting up to the Root River.

On the way to our school, the bus drove up the hill and made a right turn around the Catholic church and adjoining school.  Larry, Tommy, and a few other kids got off there and that was the end of it.

I'm thinking about half as many kids went to the Catholic school as went to my school several blocks beyond.

We would have contact with them a few times a year.  Whenever we were going to get vaccinations, or booster shots we would assemble outside our old brick building and march, according to classes, down the sidewalk, past the tavern, hardware store, and several residences and businesses, to the Catholic school.  There we would wait until our turn came, and then stand in line to get our shots.

Polio vaccine was somewhat new and would entail an ordinary needle in the arm.  The authorities came up with some other methods over the months and years, however.  Small pox was really feared and we all got vaccinated.  The small pox vaccination consisted of several pokes which left a circular indentation about the size of a quarter on the outside of your shoulder.

Everybody got one and absolutely every person you ever saw with their shirt off or wearing sleeveless shirts had this little round "coin" stamped into their shoulder, boy or girl.  Furthermore, every person I saw after that had one, no matter where.  It was as much a part of a person's body as their ears or nose.

The tuberculosis test was different yet.  They pried a needle just under a few layers of skin on your lower forearm and injected a little bubble of something which amounted to about the size of an aspirin.  Then you just forgot about it and it went away over the course of a couple of weeks.  They briefly inspected the site after that.  Apparently if you were exposed to tuberculosis this little bubble would flare up and alert everyone.  It never happened to anyone as far as I know.

Once in a while we would be invited to the Catholic school for a picnic in the spring and everyone except a few of us would play baseball.  They had a diamond at the Catholic school.  I never got picked for a team because I had no skill or strength and was the smallest child in my school, including all of the girls except for one.

The small businesses and houses along the route to the Catholic school were unusual.  All small buildings, their fronts were at the grade of the sidewalk, but the backs were up on stilts, because the ground on the north side of the street dropped away significantly.  A person could--and we did, when we got a bit older and had more freedom--hunch down and explore beneath these small buildings.  People stored things under there like old tires, wheelbarrows, extra building materials, and what-all.

On one trip walking down to the Catholic school, I was running my hand along the window frames which each store or house had, because the buildings butted right up to the sidewalk, and had a large wood sliver stick right under my thumbnail about a good half-inch in, and then break off.  I had picked it up from a window sill that had gotten real dry from the sun and lack of paint.

Whatever errand we were on that day was quickly aborted for me and I ended up being taken back to our school.  I suppose that Al had to drive over from La Crosse and take me back there to the hospital, where they dug out the pieces of wood.  My thumbnail, needless to say, turned black and it was weeks before the black part grew out and was replaced.  Even then a line became visible where the nail material had to grow back together.  I can see this line to this day, some sixty-five years later.