Teaching at Ignatius 1957-58 school year. Learning while you work, Mal's quick kick, quick slap to lippy kid, cherry bomb in the library, "Bud Bowman," sophomore reads a book . . .

Beverly Irish, Taylor street paisanos, yes . . .

FESTO ITALIANO

Teaching was rough going, as was common in one's first year; but the year ended well. The students, mostly south and west siders, were a good lot from whom you could learn things. From a Taylor Street Italian I heard the word "paisan" (“pie-zahn,” accent on second syllable) used for "friend." It’s related to the English "peasant."

It was also the title of a 1948 war movie. In my mind I spelled it "pyzon" and heard it used contemptuously by non-Italians. But young Caifano, a very good kid with the same last name as a prominent mobster, referred with a smile to his "paisano," meaning friend or at least countryman. You talked to people, you learned things.

Ignatius backed up on an alley just north of Taylor Street, Little Italy's Main Street. An eight-foot stone wall separated property and alley, enclosing a football practice field that had all the grass that one would expect to find in a vacant lot. The coach was Dr. Ralph Mailliard, “Mal,” a math teacher who also coached track, at which the students were successful. He was much loved and appreciated, but by the mid-50s was much suspected of having lost that winning football touch.

His team's trademark surprise was a quick kick on third down, meant to throw the opposition into disarray as the punt sailed over their heads, depriving them of good field position but at the same time giving them the ball. The school gave up on football a few years later.

Holy Family Church next door to the school had a mostly Taylor Street Italian membership. There was Our Lady of Pompeii a few blocks west and north, a Giovanni-come-lately in that church-rich but increasingly worshiper-poor neighborhood. And there were St. Callistus and Notre Dame, which my grandmother, Kit O'Connell, called "the French church," to which for reasons of personal devotion she had a grandson take her years earlier.

Holy Family had the old-church flavor, its inside newly and garishly painted and full of small altars strewn throughout at which the school’s many priests said separate, private masses every day, each with a scholastic as server, as early as 5:30 a.m. It was quite a way to begin one's teaching day in a huge drafty building on a cold winter morning. Years later came the "concelebration" option for priests - two or more saying mass together at one altar, the better to profit from the communal aspect of liturgy - the only way there was, reformers would be claiming.

STUDENT REVOLT

The year ended well, I say, but not before I'd had my share of classroom disturbance. That was my big problem, though our principal was also a problem for me. This was Rudy Knoepfle, who was new at the job, as I was new at mine. Classroom work was rough going, especially with my two sophomore sections, of four in all. The other two were freshmen. They were all boys, of course. Not for many years was Ignatius to go coed. When it did, in a moment in the school’s history not foreseen by founding Father Arnold Damen, the principal stood in the pulpit of Holy Family church and informed the newly arrived girls that among other requirements they had to wear bras.

In 1957 we had other issues. Our students were rough and tumble, from Beverly on the far South Side, Taylor Street, Oak Park and even west suburban Hinsdale and points beyond and between. (The Hinsdale student had been given no choice in the matter by his alumnus father, as had others by their alumni fathers, to be sure.) One hundred parishes were represented. When those born outside the U.S. had to declare themselves to the immigration service, 100 did so, out of 1,000 or so students.

Years later, when Martin Luther King marched on the Southwest Side, when I was back teaching at Ignatius, students of mine jeered from the sidewalks while rocks flew, one of which felled the good doctor, as was widely reported. One student, who was black, was catching the rocks with a baseball mitt. Not that we had many blacks -- almost none in 1957 and a scattering in 1965, a year or so before that march.

In 1957, I was having little of racial protest and counter-protest, however. My problem was heading off daily commotion in a roomful of 42 boys, though one of the roomfuls had only 36! The freshmen were cowed by the novelty of their circumstance and less buffeted by puberty's onslaught. The sophomores were not cowed and were all buffeted, I presumed.

I began to read more carefully what Jesus said about doves and serpents -- about being wise as the latter, simple as the former -- noting that he put the wise part first. Not for me, I hoped, was to be the lot of the scholastic in another school who reportedly told his room full of boys, "There are entirely too many people walking around here," when in the ordinary course there was supposed to be only one, himself.

I discussed my problem with a young priest assigned to the Ignatius community, a trained counselor who sometimes received clients at the school. He had the answer to my problem with unruly boys: slap them. I did, open hand front or back across face, or once a book on top of head, whatever it took to gain instant respect or that fear which looks a lot like it. Respect did not always follow, of course, though many of the boys seemed to see the rough justice of a blow if timed right and given only after warning.

The potential slapper could say, “That's enough. . . OK, quiet,” approaching with a very serious look, and only when it was clear to the others that the kid, forewarned, was asking for it (or couldn’t stop asking for it), slap him. Rudy Knoepfle was not happy with my discipline problems. Discussing the situation with him, I told of the slapping. "Strike a boy?" he said, incredulous. I told him who had recommended it. He looked away. They were both good men.

Knoepfle was right, of course, but it was clear that if I couldn't achieve order in the class, I was a goner, and it was a matter of them or me. How to do it was the question. Mostly decent kids they were, doing dumb things, but there was work to do, I figured.

Besides, I had the memory of Father Regan at Fenwick giving a quick slap to a lippy kid who wouldn’t stop defending or excusing himself. It was in the hall between classes. Regan in his white robe would have been carrying his sheaf of papers in his left hand. The kid was stunned but hardly hurt: it was quick and accurate. He got the message and shut up. Fenwick was not known for hitting kids, however. Neither was Ignatius, and Knoepfle was shocked to hear of it. Later, as a priest teacher, I didn’t do it, though once I shoved a kid.

The trouble was mostly in my first few months at Ignatius. By year end, when a cherry bomb went off in the library, where I was monitoring a study period, I had a better grip on things. With great deliberation, I had one student shut the door, which meant I had the culprit in hand if I could distinguish him from the other 60 or so, which was impossible, I knew. I had another student take names. It was dumbshow. I was not about to jug the 60. I had not even a small chance of nailing the guilty one. He had covered his tracks. Main thing is, I did not get excited.

It helped too that these Ignatius kids were not out to subvert me but to have fun, as with the cute-little-archer “Bud Bowman” sign, a Bowman Dairy point-of-sale cutout four feet high, which I encountered in the library stacks during another study period. I had to laugh, of course. Indeed, by later in the year, I could stand in the gym next to bleachers at a basketball game with a bunch of my students and enjoy it. It was the likes of these who had put up the Bud Bowman sign.

The Beverly-mostly-Irish and Taylor Street-mostly-Italian division was something to consider, however. The Taylor Street boys generally did not get with the program, as in extracurricular activities, except to come to class and get the prized diploma. The Beverly Irish were mostly on top of things, involved. I gathered that I was seen by the paisanos as favoring the Irish. This could have been because I enjoyed them. One of them flinched in the seat in front of me as I raised my hand to make a point. He meant it too. I had nothing of the sort in mind. I stopped and looked at him quizzically. A very funny moment.

On the other hand, a Holy Family boy whose growth spurt had given him a man's appearance as a sophomore was delighted to read for my class his first book. It was one I might have read as a seventh-grader, but the more satisfaction was in it for me the teacher. I cherish that memory, but the divide was there. Another paisano told a teacher he had two ways of talking, on the street and at Ignatius. Knowing the difference, he was able to manage in two worlds.

A few years later, in the mid-60s, when I was at Ignatius as a priest, I accompanied another former student one summer afternoon into a Taylor Street bar. We had a beer and I got hard looks from one or more patrons who knew me not only to be a priest but also as the priest who spent time on the other side of Roosevelt Road with "the coloreds." In his view, I had chosen my side, and it wasn't theirs.