HOW IT WAS
A humorous look at Catholic parenting in the 1950s
by
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I'M SO GLAD IT'S A BOY OR I WARN YOU Of course, Mary, having children is not something new to you. But you've never had a boy. This is not to imply that boys are not children. They are just not "girls”. Girls are children and may be considered small adults because they require a minimum of care and very seldom bother neighbors, parents or relatives. But boys---ahhh---their upbringing requires not just care; but nerves of steel, the swift reflexes of a gazelle, the imagination of a Dahli, the strength of a lion, the patience of Job, a Sense of humor, and if one of the parents is fortunate enough to be stone deaf it is all to the good. Deafness on the part of a controlling adult will very likely produce an independent, well-balanced boy. Little boys can be depended upon to emanate love and destruction in proportionate amounts, for the more loving their nature it would seem the more destructive their hands. They can be depended upon to shatter furniture, dreams and systems. By the time your son reaches ten years and realizes that he must dodge your home furnishings because they will not move when he gets near them, you will not have any furniture left. If you have lived with a terrible dream of his actions denoting a talent for the field of sewer-cleaning, he will probably end up a "dandy" who won’t allow his children to make mud pies. Or if he causes relatives to sigh and beam "He must be a joy," don't get all wrapped up in dreams of a high place in diplomatic circles or high finance because he’ll probably end up a ditch digger. And systems, be they small or large, are shattered by little boys just on general principles. Even to your husband’s system of walking in the back door after work. Such a small system! You wouldn’t think your son that thorough but he is. Your husband might have been walking through that back door for ten years but after your son is two years old, he will re-route his father by meeting him at the bus stop and begging for candy, ice cream, toys, a live horse, a radio or a trip out West to see the real cowboys. If Dad doesn’t get stopped at the bus, he will get floored and fractured by a roller skate, baseball bat, toy car or a dish of ice cream left on the back steps.
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About the Book
Before 9/11…
Before President’s sex lives were talked about on the 6 pm news…
Before the sexual and feminist revolutions…
Way, way before Political Correctness…
There was a simpler time...a time when large families were not unusual...a time when everyone read “The Smith Family” cartoon in the Boston Globe (and other newspapers across the country).
In the mid 1950s, Elsie Jennings, writer, and George Smith, cartoonist, were collaborating on a book with her stories and his drawings. Elsie’s stories, like George’s cartoons, found humor in the everyday occurrences of large-family life. Elsie became quite ill and died before finishing the project, but her daughter, Mary, has kept the material for over 50 years.
- If you remember “Duck and Cover”
- Nuns with yardsticks used as weapons on knuckles and knees
- If you grew up Catholic in the 1950s or early 1960s, or if you know someone who did
- If you’ve seen the play “Late Nite Catechism” and it brought you back to your own parochial school days, and you laughed so hard you had a stomachache for days...
About the Author
This book is a compilation of short stories written over 50 years ago by my mother (Elsie Jennings) and illustrated by George Smith. Elsie, a convert to Catholicism, battled life-long with respiratory ailments, and although advised by doctors not to have any children, she was determined to have a family and bore 5 children. The stories are about raising those children. She found humor in every-day situations, as did George Smith who portrayed large-family life in the nationally syndicated cartoon "The Smith Family". I live at present in the Tuscan area of Italy. I retired here after serving in the US Navy. I garden, teach English and give piano lessons.