1946 - I REMEMBER

Today, driving home from a morning "mission" my mind got to wandering.  I was listening to the radio of course, and of a sudden, I remembered a time in my life when automobiles didn't have standard equipment radios.  The buyer of the vehicle had to buy the radio.  They were not inexpensive.  A new car was maybe an $800.00 dollar purchase and the radio at the time was around $75.00.  A real luxury.  

Along with that, I moved on to one of the great experiences of my childhood life.  I was coming home from a fishing expedition with my three uncles, brothers to my father.  We had been fishing in the morning and now were heading back home toward the end of the afternoon. On the way the radio was playing so that we could hear the play-by-play description of the seventh game of the World Series.  It was a very special series that year because the Boston Red Sox were engaged in the World Series.  We lived in the western part of Massachusetts. My uncles were all Red Sox fans.  My father and I were Braves fans.  

As I was basking in the memory of the game, I enjoyed remembering that in those days there were 16 major league teams.  I enjoyed remembering the distribution of their locations.
Boston - 2; New York - 3; Philadelphia - 2; Chicago - 2; St. Louis - 2; Washington, DC, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Detroit, one each.

Anyway, the score is now tied at 3 apiece.  Second half of the 8th and St. Louis gets a man on first. His name is engraved on the brains of every baseball fan in the state of Massachusetts, one, Enos Slaughter.  It all happened so quickly.  Slaughter breaks for second and  the hitter swings and drills one into left center field.  The regular centerfielder, Dom DiMaggio had to be replaced by Leon Culberson because of a pulled hamstring.  Now Slaughter is already around second and steaming ahead at break-neck speed with absolutely no intention of stopping at third.  Culberson gets lackadaisical and sloppy while Slaughter has pulled out all the stops.  The throw from the substitute centerfielder is late and short and Slaughter scores from first, spit, sweat and a cloud of dust at home plate.  My uncles are stunned, shouting semi-swears (I'm only 9 years old) and stating that what happened to Dom was the curse that made this happen.  Well, as everyone in the galaxy knows, the Red Sox did not recover and that is why the picture at the top of this article is of the Cardinals. 

Surely there is someone in the audience who has a memory of this event. It should also be mentioned that back then each team played 154 games and the Word Series were finished by the third or fourth week of September.

As for me, I have come a long way since then.  Now I don't even know who the participants in the World Series are from year to year.  The Braves are no longer in Boston and Bickford, Spahn and Sain are gone.  So has my interest.  But the memories are great.  

No, I did not have to check this out at Wikipedia.

I GOT A J.D., NOW WHAT?

I find myself around the parish church a lot.  I get to do a lot of important things around campus.  I check the postings that deface the walls and take them down when the dates that they announce are many weeks past.  When the dates are still in the future and the material is not all wrinkled and torn I leave it up.  Many times during my quasi aimless wandering I am acosted by people of various sizes, ages and colors.  Most of the time they are lost and want to know how to get to an office that may or may not be occupied for the moment.  This is the easy stuff because I have been vagranting around the same campus for well nigh 12 or 13 years now.  Sometimes I get asked something interesting. Like a short while ago I was met by a quiet, soft spoken lad who, after the initial greeting formalities announced that he had just passed the bar...first try, too. I was impressed and then quickly unimpressed.  Soft spoken lad says to me, he says, "What do I do now?  I have a JD and I want to know where I can find work where my JD will give me an advantage."  Whooooaa!  Similar to a question that I had 45 years ago.  So, I am ready.  Here's what I say to my new found quasi child.

This is a question that drives me to my innermost, deepest conviction about education. I am convinced that human life is a complex of experiences, all of which make up the “university” of hard knocks. So, every day we live and breathe is a day at school. My father drilled that into me from the day of my birth, and maybe even before.

I, personally, have come to the conclusion that we don't have JD, MBA, Ph.D, etc. we live the initials we place after our name.  

EFR Dion had to leave school in his sophomore year because of the death of his father. My father was the eldest of 8 children and this was 1914, before social services were a common way of life. He grew up in a machine shop environment. His leadership skills put him in lower management at 22. Before he was 30, he was the superintendent of a 50 person machine shop. At 38, he passed the state of Massachusetts professional tool engineer certification exam on his first and only sitting. All along the way, he told me to knit all of my life experiences together so that everything that I did would be inter-related to make me more and more knowledgeable about many things.

I have a master’s degree in Theology. That means that I was in school a long time. I worked my way through a private boarding school for 6 years. I worked for the Church, so a lot of my education was payment for my “in-house” work. Along the way I married, fathered children, lost jobs, quit jobs, was in debt, out of debt, totaled a couple of cars, sold vacuum cleaners, painted, drove airport shuttle vans, security guard, teach Catholic doctrine, Bible studies, organize and host religious pilgrimages and make a little bit of change as a translator. Through it all, I was a missionary pastor, a canon law counselor, a personnel recruiter and a personnel director. How much of what I learned in school did I apply? All of it. However, not all at once, of course. We never apply what we have learned, in school or along the road of life, all at once. No matter how much life learning we knit together, we only use what is sufficient for the moment. Furthermore, while we are using, we are learning from the feedback that the job gives us.

Therefore, everything that you have learned, from the crib to now is going to be useful for you on your first job, assuming that you are talking about your first job. If not, realize that you already know a lot. The first day on the job is going be your first day at new learning experiences as well as a new day of practicing some of what you have learned, not just in school but also in life.

So, don't carry your JD around like a badge or a passport. Live it.  Do what you want to do.  No matter what you do, you will be better at it because you are a JD.

We entered the church.  I said a short prayer for him, blessed him and he left.  I suppose that the next time we see one another he'll be on St. Peter's Public Defender staff.