My Story

CHAPTER ONE – Riders on the Storm

My parents, Ed Bergeron and Lucy Nevola, met after World War II ended in 1945. They met while working at the Shepard's Company, a department store in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. Although the store occupied three city blocks and was immensely popular, it went bankrupt in the 1970s. Since it opened in 1880 it had been an icon of one stop shopping for clothing, appliances and furniture. My mother's role was a secretary and stenographer; and my father was a salesperson in various departments of that store.

They were married on June 16, 1947, and I arrived on March 23, 1948, which was the same birth date as my father - which is a very rare occurrence.

In my newborn and toddler years, we lived in different arrangements although I do not remember anything about those. I do remember hearing something about living with my grandmother, Mary (Lane) Bergeron Woodbine, on my father’s side.

We moved to a third floor flat (as they were known back then) of a three-story apartment building on Park Avenue in Cranston, Rhode Island. My sister, Jeanne, arrived on March 14, 1950. Our family of four people lived together on that floor for a couple of years.

If you believed in a “climate crisis” back then, the 1950s were the years that gave you the evidence that shaped your opinion. Starting in 1954, hurricanes hit Rhode Island, sometimes right after the other. Nobody used the term back then of climate crisis or climate change like they do today. But Rhode Island felt the impact of at least six major hurricanes in the 1950s and they were destructive and deadly. And I arrived in plenty of time to understand their power. The Doors' hit song, Riders on the Storm, was a haunting melody about the journey and dangers of life portrayed as vast, unpredictable, and oftentimes indifferent. Although the Doors released the song in 1971, I very much felt like a “rider on the storm” in the 1950s because of these hurricanes. They were vast, unpredictable, and certainly indifferent about who suffered from their wrath.

The one that comes to mind is when Hurricane Carol hit in August 1954. I was six at the time, Jeanne was four and my mother was pregnant with my brother John who was born just a month later on September 22, 1954! My father had to work that day downtown in the department store to protect their “assets,” and my mother needed to stay here on the third floor of this building to protect our family assets – Jeanne, me, and John too! When it came ashore, Carol was a Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds near 115 mph. Over fourteen feet of water flooded the downtown Providence area. Thousands of homes were destroyed, and power was wiped out statewide for days and weeks. Tragically many people died.

As the wind blew stronger and howling louder, my mother told us to get underneath the kitchen table, which she pushed against the wall, and then covered the table with a large tablecloth, or heavy blanket.

And I am glad! Because as the howling got louder and the building shook, something came flying through one of the kitchen windows by the table, shattering the glass everywhere. She had put us underneath the table to protect us from flying glass, roof shingles or debris that were everywhere in the sky. If she was afraid (like us under the table), I did not know it. Moms can be like that sometimes. During the height of the storm, they are steady and resolute. Once the storm passes that is another thing altogether. I am quite sure my father heard something from her about whether he should have been home instead of protecting Mr. Shepard's store. Lesson learned about priorities, I guess.

These days when politicians (mostly) issue doomsday prophecies about the current climate crisis, I remember the hurricanes of the 1950s – there were more of them (six in total that impacted Rhode Island) and they were violent. Hurricanes still happen obviously but I have not seen six hurricanes pummel a small area in such a brief period as back then. Was the climate worse then? Is it worse now? The climate is always changing and always will. But the Lord is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow – He never changes.

CHAPTER TWO – Doing Hard Things

Our young family lived in that apartment building for a few years before moving to a single-family house on Doric Avenue not too far from where we lived. On Park Avenue, we started out on the third floor and then with an “upgrade” moved down to the second floor. The rent was a little bit more, which was okay, I guess. I know my mother was thrilled with the upgrade. Less stairs to climb and closer to civilization.

During that time, my mother wanted a clothesline from our apartment to a tall, wooden utility pole that was on the rear of the property. Since there was no clothesline in place, my father had to climb that telephone pole up at least one story, or two, to get that clothesline rope around it, and then back up to the apartment. I found out later that he hated that job. He had only one functioning eye, so distance and height were difficult for him to judge. I do not blame him for not wanting to climb that high. I wouldn’t either. He did not like it, but he did it.

And it taught me a lesson. Sometimes in life, we must do hard things, whether we like them or not. But when we accomplish those hard things, it gives us confidence that we can do something even harder the next time.

There was another lesson I needed to learn back then. My sister, Jeanne, had a play set of kitchen plates, dishes, and stuff like that. I do not know why, but I seemed to enjoy flying them off the porch in the back of the house. And they invariably broke, and she invariably cried when my father got home from work. I had no excuse (there was not anything that I could think of), so my father decided that I needed to understand the consequences of breaking stuff that was not mine and causing my sister to cry. When that happened, a painful spanking would result. Worse yet, I had to watch Jeanne smile as if she had won the war (she did). Lesson learned. Do not make your younger sister cry for anything. If you do, chances are you will be punished, and it will hurt.

By the mid 1950’s, big TVs in wooden cabinets were starting to show up in homes. Somehow my father got a used, black, and white tabletop 9-inch TV set. Did it come from a floor model at Shepard’s? I do not know but it did not matter. We were rich! This small TV sat proudly on a small table in the living room in that second-floor apartment. On Sundays, we would watch NFL football with YA Tittle as quarterback, Frank Gifford, and other great players with the New York Giants. We would sit down together with a blanket over our heads and TV, to block out the sunlight coming in from the windows. TVs were not high quality back then, but the Giants were. I remember those moments with my dad, and I have loved football ever since that time. Nothing better than Sunday afternoon football!

CHAPTER THREE – Amazing How that Works

Park Avenue was a busy street with trucks, cars, and pedestrian traffic going in both directions. There were not many stores or gas stations as I recall. And there were no fast-food restaurants or shopping centers either. Nor were there any places like Starbucks, Target, TJ Maxx, or Home Depot. Just mom and pop shops and a special place called Dolan’s Drugstore near where we lived. I would spend as much time as I could outside playing and taking it all in. And talking to a telephone pole in front of our place. Sounds weird I know but I had a reason for what I was doing – although nobody else on Park Avenue understood.

Besides a 9-inch television, our apartment had another high-tech device, a party line telephone. The phone would ring and mom or dad would pick up the handset and start talking. There was real conversation taking place somehow even though I could only see one person in the room.

It was a mystery to me, and I did not understand how it worked. But I did know that other people could call you, or you could call them, and you would talk into this strange instrument just like they were there. Curious as I was, I asked my parents at the time, “How does this work? Where do the words go?".

I got some kind of answer, but it had to have been simple because I was just a small kid with no background in that kind of science. What I did get out of it was that the words they were saying would travel to the telephone pole in front of the house, and that it would then travel over wires to other poles on the street and then to somebody else's house. I thought the magic had to be in the pole. That was the secret to the entire system.

My parents were clear that I could not use the phone – a party line phone required special procedures and protocols. So, I did the next best thing I could imagine – go to where the magic was. My parents and pedestrians on Park Avenue would find me standing on the sidewalk in front of the house, talking to the telephone pole, face to pole as if I were talking to somebody right there in front of me.

Traffic on Park Avenue changed quite a bit over the next several years when Interstate Route 95 was built. Until then, Park Avenue was the place to be. There were tall wooden telephone poles all along the road, providing many places for me to have conversations with other people.

Twenty years later while in graduate school at the University of Rhode Island (URI), I studied digital communication technology and computer-based voice processing systems. That education eventually led to a professional career in those same fields. Although I never heard back from the people I was “talking” to on Park Avenue, I was sure it must be working. Everyone seemed to smile as they passed by so it must have been working. At the very least, that weird behavior led to a challenging career in digital voice processing systems. Something people considered very weird as well as the goal was to teach computers how to talk and understand English.

CHAPTER FOUR - Life Was Easy Until It Wasn’t

Back in 1955, I was seven years old and life seemed rather good. Other than when the word “hurricane” was heard on the radio. The mood in the house changed then as preparations began for what could happen if windows broke, power was out, food was spoiled, etc. I was sure glad I did not have to consider those problems. Overall, I did not have much responsibility other than to take care of my schoolwork, probably a few chores, and somehow not tease Jeanne or knock John over.

One of my jobs was to dispose of the household trash in a “burn barrel” in the backyard. It was nothing more than a rusted out 55-gallon drum that smoldered all day. Recycling was not a word yet nor did anyone know anything about an “EPA.” As far as I can tell, anything and everything was thrown in that nasty barrel. Chicken bones, newspapers, cooking oil, broken toys all made it into that smelly barrel.

Life was easy until it wasn’t. Little did I know that a new crisis was unfolding quickly, and it wasn’t the weather. It was the polio epidemic.

Polio was a national health problem but in 1955, the disease claimed over four hundred victims in Rhode Island alone, giving the state the third-highest polio rate in the nation. The situation was so severe that schools in Providence and elsewhere were delayed reopening until after summer ended.

Polio is an aggressive disease that attacks the central nervous system and can lead to paralysis. Children are highly susceptible to the disease, and although rare it can also be contracted by adults. President Franklin D. Roosevelt contracted the disease at age 39 and suffered paralysis but was able to partially recover, though he remained disabled for the rest of his life. Polio epidemics were common back then and highly feared and for good reasons.

In the first half of the 20th century, summer was a dreaded time for children. Although we could enjoy the long days of being outside and playing with other kids, summer was also known as “polio season.” Children were among the most susceptible to the disease as it spread by infected food or water (i.e., swimming pools) and other kids sneezing around you.

I remember my parents being afraid that their three children would get polio and require iron lung machines just to breathe, being permanently crippled, or, worse yet, even dying. The phrase “shelter in place” was not used back then but that was what everyone did. Stay inside and away from other kids.

Radio broadcasts, newspaper articles, magazines, stories, and conversations over the backyard fence regarding polio were ongoing, and a frequent way of life. It seems my mother did worry about it and sought help by going to St. Matthew's Church where I attended school. It was a Catholic church, not too far from where we lived on Park Avenue. It was my first introduction to a faith experience back then. It scared me to go there to be honest. I didn’t understand what the priests were saying as they spoke in Latin. The standing, kneeling, sitting, and bowing was confusing. But the church was full oftentimes because people, like my mother, were afraid and hoped that God would help them.

Then one day, the story broke that Dr. Jonas Salk had created a vaccine to protect people from polio and it was clearly an answer to the prayers of countless people. By 1956, Rhode Island successfully inoculated over 150,000 children, causing polio cases to plummet to just nine that year and zero the following year. Dr. Salk was a hero!

Another researcher, Dr. Albert Sabin later created an oral vaccine which was economical to produce and very easy to administer on a sugar lump to children which was used worldwide in the 1960s. Kids would gladly take the sugar cube rather than a scary needle injection in their arm. Interestingly, the Sabin vaccine inspired the popular song featured in the film Mary Poppins whose refrain states, “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down....”

At this point in time, I had survived hurricanes, dad’s punishment for throwing Jeanne's toys off the porch and polio. What else could possibly happen?

CHAPTER FIVE – Uphill in Both Directions

My formal education began at St. Matthew's Parochial School where I started kindergarten. I remember seeing a photograph of me dressed in a white graduation cap and gown and standing with a nun outside St. Matthew’s School when I finished kindergarten. She might have been smiling because I was no longer a troublemaker in her class. Just a few months later I started first grade and was just five years old at the time. From then on until I graduated from Hendricken High School in 1995, I was the perpetual youngest person in the class. I don’t recommend that experience to anyone!

As with most students at that time, we walked to school uphill in both directions. Although people did not believe it was possible, the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher sketched what that would might look like. (I still have his 1960 lithograph called Ascending and Descending at my house!) This lithograph depicts a large, castle-like monastery building whose roof features the famous Penrose stairs. Two lines of hooded figures walk endlessly in loops—one line perpetually climbing, the other perpetually descending—on a staircase that is geometrically impossible.

Regardless of what others said at the time, I was convinced that going from home to school and from school to home was always uphill and involved snowstorms, hail, and certain people.

I often dreaded walking home, because somewhere along the way, a guy by the name of Joe Duffy would stop me. He would be hiding behind a bush or something, and when I got there, he would jump out and smack me around a little bit. He was a bully, and he enjoyed doing it – every day.

Every day I went home, bruised and crying. Until one day when I walked up the stairs to the second floor in the house and hoping to get a sympathetic hug from my mother, I got something I did not expect. She really laid into me verbally. She said, “I watched the whole thing from the front, and you let him hit you. And I am telling you now, you are never going to let that happen again. If you let him hit you, when you come home, I am going to hit you again.”

And I am thinking, wow, this is what they call a mother? I did not expect that response. I thought walking uphill in both directions was hard but this was incomprehensible.

Then she told me what to do, that the next time he approached me, I was to whack him as hard as I could in the nose and see what happened.

On the next day, sure enough, I am walking home, and there appears Joe Duffy suddenly out from behind a bush, and I remember what my mother said. Although I could not see her, I suspected she was watching from the front of the apartment building. What a crisis of belief. Get smacked around by Joe Duffy or get smacked by your mother. Tough choice for sure. But with my eyes closed, I just whacked him as hard as I could in the nose. And voila. He started crying.

With his nose bleeding, he ran away, not saying too much of anything. And I went home, proud as I could be. My mother looked at me and gave me a hug. All was well and life was good once again. And, you know, from then on, Joe Duffy never bothered me again. Ever.

My mother taught me a good lesson. Bullies are bullies because people let them be bullies. Unless you want to be their victim, you must knock that sucker down and keep doing it until they leave you alone.

CHAPTER SIX – The Monster in the Basement

A substantial change happened in 1956 when our family moved - not to the first-floor apartment on Park Avenue - but to an entire house on Doric Avenue in Cranston, Rhode Island! Thankfully, polio and hurricanes were in the rear-view mirror when we moved and life settled into a more peaceful time. My sister Denise was born in May 1958 although we did not know then that she had suffered permanent brain damage during birth. During those first few years, she was just an ordinary toddler enjoying the indulgence of being the baby in the family.

This was a 2-story house with the bedrooms on the second floor. The basement of the house was dark, dirty, and held a secret very few people knew. It had a monster disguised as a furnace. In the hit movie, Home Alone, young Kevin McCallister ventures into his basement alone and sees a large dark-green furnace that groans, opens its fiery mouth, and taunts him with a demonic "Hello, Kevin!". Our basement and furnace were just dark, dirty, ominous, and hot! I thought for sure, that the “furnace monster” would grab me one day and I would become an appetizer before it stuffed buckets of coal into its mouth.

As much as I hated the job, I needed to shovel shiny, black, and dirty coal into the mouth of that furnace to keep the house warm. If I failed, the house would be cold and I was to blame. The coal man would come during the winter, and dump wheelbarrows full of the stuff through the coal chute in the basement window. I needed to open that chute for delivery, wait for the man to leave and then close the window again. Besides the eerie appearance of the “monster,” there were enough spiders in that basement and coal bin to scare anyone half to death when they went down there.

I would have preferred the burn barrel assignment, but I was not given a choice, and John was still too small to share the responsibility. But I was able to keep the house warm during the winter when my father was at work and that is what mattered.

There were times when my mother would come up to the second floor where the bedrooms were, and with a clothes iron, would press the sheets before we went to bed for the night. Nothing like warm sheets on a cold January night!

We moved again in 1960 when the house was taken by eminent domain so that I-95 could be built. I do not know what happened to that coal monster. Was it moved to another house or was it buried in the ground never to be seen again?

Our last year there, my father worked an additional job in the toy department around Christmas time at the Shephard Company. He wanted to make that Christmas special and he did! Not only were the decorations that he would bring home more than I had ever seen before, but we all got more toys than ever before. The decorations on tree included multi-colored lights that were shaped like candles with flickering flames created by some kind of liquid (oil?) that when heated electrically, bubbled as a result. The tree also had large, round glass Christmas bulbs that were 3 to 4 inches in diameter. They reflected sunlight beautifully and I know my parents enjoyed them. And so did I but not for the same reason. They became targets for a great gift I received that Christmas – a truck that fired rubber tipped missiles launched by compressed air.

I became a good shot at hitting targets like enemy tanks, troops and even planes from a good distance away but those targets never looked destroyed after being hit. But then I saw those big shiny globes hanging on the tree. Could I hit those “enemy targets” across the room if I aimed it properly?

I am not sure what I was thinking of in terms of what do I expect to gain by this? Is anybody going to notice? After a few successful hits, multicolored glass fragments lay on the floor as testament to another poor decision just like Jeanne’s dishes that sailed in the air until they crashed and broke. My mother knew what I did but waited for my father to come home from work. That night I got another one of those lessons about stupid decisions and consequences. Although he took the missile firing truck away, I did get it back again eventually. I chose my targets more carefully after that.

One of the memories of Doric Avenue I enjoy the most is the ice cream truck that came weekly in the summer. No longer did I have to wait for someone to take me to Dolan's Drugstore on Park Avenue. I just waited outside our house now when we heard the special bell on his ice cream truck. I’d get a single scoop of chocolate ice cream for 6 cents. And if I had 12 cents (which I did sometimes), it would be scoop of chocolate and a scoop of maple walnut. It was the best ever!

CHAPTER SEVEN - How Does a Fox Trot?

Our family moved to 37 Yucatan Drive in Warwick, Rhode Island, in the late spring of 1960. My parents paid around $8,000 for the house, which had three bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, dining room, living room, and a basement without one of those scary, coal-burning furnaces! My parents took the first-floor bedroom, while the four of us kids shared the two bedrooms upstairs.

We had plenty of room on the cul-de-sac in front of the house to play baseball, ride our bikes, and just hang out. After living on Park Avenue and Doric Avenue, this place seemed enormous!

My father was particularly excited about the garage and could not wait to clean it up so he could park his car inside. I joined his cleanup crew and made an interesting discovery: several cases of glass bottles that had once been used for milk and cream. I was allowed to keep the bottles as my “compensation” for helping. When I returned them to the store, I received five cents for each one. For the first time I could remember, I was a rich man! And let me tell you, it felt good.

I quickly discovered, however, that sleeping on the second floor of a house without air conditioning during the summer was not exactly a pleasant experience. The ceiling in our room was low, and there was only one window, which was not in particularly good shape. It would not stay open unless we propped it up. Thankfully, it had a screen, although that didn't stop the mosquitoes from finding their way inside and attacking John and me.

In the fall of 1960, I began eighth grade as a twelve-year-old at Gorton Junior High School. Since the school was about a mile and a half from our house, I walked there and back in about every kind of weather. Mild days, bitterly cold days, sunshine, rain, and snow - it did not matter. My mother did not have a car of her own, and we were not on the school bus route. So, walking it was!

Attending public school was quite a change from my experience at St. Matthew's parochial school. At St. Matthew's, the nuns were allowed to discipline you physically, something that was not permitted in public school. The nuns frequently used wooden rulers. Minor offenses earn you a whack with the flat side, while more serious offenses would get you the edge of the ruler. You learned quickly that there were consequences for misbehaving! One day I was bored with the lesson and decided to teach myself physics. I was sitting by the window, so I tied the cord from the window shade to the watering can that sat on the ledge. And with a simple, short tug that cord flew upwards banging the watering can on the window. That day, I learned a law of physics - what goes up must come down. Although the watering can remained up at the top of the window, the nun became like a linebacker for the N.Y. Giants and came down the aisle in seconds. The result? Many hits with the edge of the ruler on both hands. My friends thought the entertainment was worth the price, but I did not dare tell my parents for more punishment would have ensued.

Besides discipline, there were other differences, too. At Gorton, I could wear whatever I wanted, if my parents approved. At St. Matthew's, we wore the same uniform every day: dress pants, a maroon dress shirt, and a clip-on tie. It was boring, but at least it was cheap!

Then my parents came up with an idea that seemed to come completely out of left field. They convinced me—or simply informed me in their usual firm, unwavering manner—that I would be taking dance lessons at night at Gorton Junior High School.

Dance lessons? Seriously? Why would I want to do that? Dance with a girl? How does a fox trot?

I could not understand the reason behind it nor did I like the implications. I would walk home from school, do my chores, finish my homework, have dinner, and then head right back to Gorton in the dark. It seemed like a lot of unnecessary effort for something I had absolutely no interest in. But, as I would discover later when I attended Bishop Thomas F. Hendricken High School, there was a method to my parents' madness. More about that in the next chapter!

Rather than walk the mile and a half back to school a second time each day, I rode my bicycle to the evening lessons. Understandably, my parents were concerned about my safety and insisted that I tape a flashlight to the handlebars so I could see where I was going.

I do not remember whether I had any regular dance partners that year, but I did learn ballroom dancing, including the fox trot, the cha-cha, and a few other “moves.” I figured these new skills would surely come in handy during my public-school career. I still had no idea why anyone would name a dance after a fox, but at least I was learning something new.

By the time I finished eighth grade, I was feeling proud of my dancing abilities. I was ready for ninth grade, armed with a few dance moves and the confidence that I had finally figured out what school was all about.

Then came the spring of 1961.

My parents informed me that I would not be returning to Gorton, nor would I be attending a public high school. Instead, they had enrolled me at Bishop Thomas F. Hendricken High School, a Roman Catholic high school in Warwick, Rhode Island.

That news came as quite a shock. After my experiences at St. Matthew's, the thought of returning to a Catholic school was not exactly comforting. I imagined older, bigger, and meaner nuns waiting to make my life miserable. And, of course, there would be another school uniform to wear. At least Hendricken, I learned, required sneakers to be worn inside the school building but never to school! They wanted the sneakers to remain clean thereby not scuffing the floors. Just more rules to live by and I was afraid my parents would endorse the same rule for Yucatan Dr.

I had just spent an entire year riding my bicycle back to school at night to learn how to dance, and now all that effort might have been for nothing. Based on my limited experience with parochial education, I was convinced that nuns hated dancing. I figured I would never see a dance floor again!

By the summer of 1961, I was thirteen years old. I survived hurricanes, burn barrels, scary coal furnaces, and an entire year of dance lessons. I was hoping that life at my new school would finally become a little easier and less confusing.

It did not.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Hidden Roots of the Thistle Plant

(This chapter is unlike the others you have read so far, because it reveals an ugly side of who I became as a teenager. The good news is that, by the grace of God, it is not who I remained.)

When I finished eighth grade at Gorton, I was looking forward to starting at a public high school, but my parents had other plans. Instead of Warwick High School, I would attend a new Catholic school for boys. Bishop Thomas F. Hendricken High School had opened its doors just a few years prior to 350 students in September 1959. Named for the first Bishop of Providence, it was staffed by the Brothers of the Holy Cross and run in their traditions. My parents wanted me to continue my Catholic education, and this was the place to do it. Nobody asked my opinion, which is standard procedure when you are thirteen.

All I could think of was the stern, unforgiving, ruler-wielding nuns of my childhood, and my knuckles hurt just remembering them. So, I was relieved to learn that brothers would be teaching us instead. They were not priests, but they were unmarried men, nonetheless. Surely, I thought, they would have a better sense of humor. I do not know where I got that idea!

My parents paid the tuition, fees, and uniform costs so I could start ninth grade in September 1961. As usual, I was the youngest in my class at thirteen. I made the JV football team, though I did not play much, given my size (and ability). I played linebacker, which in my case meant I got run over on most running plays. I was less a linebacker than a speed bump in a helmet. I also ran the high hurdles and cross-country to build endurance, which had the added benefit of playing sports where nobody could tackle me. Whatever the weather, I walked to and from school every day, a habit I knew well. My freshman year flew by as I made new friends and settled into the routine and demands of a college prep school.

Let me set the stage with an analogy for what happened next. Where I live today in southwest Ohio is an incredible blessing. Many of my children and grandchildren live nearby, which is wonderful. The house is new, the neighborhood is quiet, the grass is green and the landscape beds are easy to take care of. The one exception is the planting bed along my back porch. Between the butterfly bush and the ornamental grass, a persistent weed keeps growing and choking out the plants around it, apparently convinced it owns the place. You cannot simply spray it with weed killer or pull it up by the roots. I have tried both, and the weed seems to take it as a personal challenge. What you cannot see from the surface is an underground network that sends “tentacles” in every direction to sprout above ground. You can kill one sprout, but the rest of the network carries on unharmed and sends up new shoots where there were none the day before. Like the villain in a bad horror movie, it always comes back.

It is the thistle, a weed above all other weeds, with spiny stems, deep roots, and an ugly reputation. (Admittedly, it supports pollinators, breaks up compacted soil, and has edible and medicinal parts. Still, I prefer to think of it as ugly and annoying!)

At some point, we may be hurt, disappointed, or taken advantage of by someone we know. In our fallen world, it is bound to happen. When it does, we may bury that hurt as we are unsure what to do or how to express that anger safely. Sometimes that anger is aimed at the people who hurt us, and sometimes it is aimed even at God. Like the thistle with its network of roots, our anger can grow bitter roots out of sight, even from ourselves. These roots of bitterness are fed from deep emotional hurt, unfair treatment, or unmet expectations that we replay repeatedly while failing to forgive the offender. And just like the thistle, they are not easy to remove.

Back to the story. I started my sophomore year at Hendricken after what seemed like a truly short summer vacation. Then a bomb (sort of) dropped In November 1962, when my parents told me they could no longer afford the tuition. As a result, I would be leaving Hendricken by Christmas and attending a public high school instead. When I asked why, I was shocked by the answer. My parents were expecting their fifth child in May 1963. As I recall, my brother John was struggling in school, and my sister Denise’s developmental problems were becoming obvious. My father and mother were hardworking people doing everything they could for their family. Still, it made no sense to me, and it seemed unfair.

I was also embarrassed that our family was growing again, in a small house with small bedrooms, one bathroom, and none of the “things” my friends enjoyed. My friends all had finer things than I did, whether it be food, clothes, summer vacations, or sporting gear, while I always seemed to get whatever was left at the bottom of the barrel. I should not have been bothered by that, but I was. My reaction was clearly selfish, but I still resented what happened.

I did have a choice, however: leave Hendricken after Christmas for Warwick High School or start working and pay the tuition and fees myself at fourteen. I chose to work. That sudden change in schools spawned years of bitterness and resentment that I did not really understand. I wanted things to calm down so I could make friends, play sports, and simply enjoy that time of my life, but that was not going to happen if I was working every day.

My maternal grandparents, Pietro and Josephina Nevola, immigrated to the United States from Sicily through Ellis Island in the early 1900s. Although their education was limited, they achieved the American dream through hard work, careful spending, and saving. They raised their five children in New York City and eventually bought a home in Providence, Rhode Island. No one handed them free housing, welfare checks, or food stamps when they arrived. They earned everything they had by hard work and sacrifice. For that reason, my parents thought it would be good for me to learn the rewards of the same work ethic at an early age. Their reasoning made sense, but I still thought it was wrong and inconsiderate.

After my parents explained the situation to the Hendricken principal, I was hired to work in the rectory after classes each day. I helped prepare dinner for the brothers, washed the dishes, cleaned the floors, and put everything away. Then I walked home carrying my books to start my homework. I did this for the second half of my sophomore year, which meant no more football, track, or down time of any kind. I had little time for my friends, and they often asked where I was and why I was always working. I was too embarrassed to tell them the truth, that my parents were having another baby. Few people back then had four children, never mind five. Little did I know that the roots of bitterness were not only invisible but grew silently until they surfaced in my life years later.

My mother was a wonderful cook and seamstress. Jeanne, Denise, and Mary (born in May 1963) all benefited from her sewing, with beautiful dresses, blouses, and even coats. I do not recall John or me wearing handmade clothes until my junior year at Hendricken, when my mother decided I needed a new pair of pants. They were not like the pants the other boys wore, and certainly not like jeans. She bought fabric at a discount store and sewed me a pair in multi-color plaid. It was a modern version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, only louder, stiffer, and, well, ugly. I could be spotted in these plaid pants from several blocks away, and quite possibly from low Earth orbit. I had to wear those pants to school everyday walking along Warwick Avenue, and I hated them. In my mind they were another symbol of poverty, and I was the billboard.

My mother had tried to make something I would appreciate, and it missed the mark. When I tried to hide the pants, my father told me, “Wear them, and do not hurt your mother’s feelings.” And the thistle root grew stronger, out of sight and destructive.

I remember a time when my friends wanted to go ice skating at the pond near our house. I did not own skates, and I had never skated, although my sister Jeanne had skates and often went skating with her friends. So, I secretly took her white skates and squeezed my feet into them at the pond and it hurt! The other guys all had hockey skates, and there I stood in a pair of girls’ white figure skates. The outing did not last long. I fell more than I skated, my feet were killing me, and I suspect I provided the afternoon’s entertainment for everyone on the pond. How come Jeanne had skates and I did not?

Why did my life have to be so hard? My friends all had it easy, or so I thought. They did not have to work. They had nice clothes, they could play sports, they had the best of everything. Was God at fault? John Piper says we should never be angry at God, but we should always tell Him when we are. Given my Catholic upbringing, being angry at God was a bridge too far and would bring the wrath of heaven down on me. I figured a lightning bolt would find me before I finished the sentence.

So rather than vent at God, I chose to be angry with my parents. Not verbally but silently. I knew my parents cared for me, and their lives had to be hard with all they were contending with at the time. As their oldest child, they had no prior experience of raising a child, leaning instead on the advice of others and drawing on what they had experienced themselves. In my case, being the youngest in all my classes and the oldest at home was a recipe for a toxic, strange brew of feelings. Eric Clapton and the rock group Cream had a hit song in 1967 called Strange Brew. The refrain was:

Now what you gonna do? Strange brew – killing what’s inside of you

I did not know how to communicate with God or even how to ask Him to heal the disappointment and the myriads of other feelings I had so I did nothing and let bitterness do its work. One of the most destructive realities about bitterness is what it does to your heart. I wish I had known back then what the Bible had to say:

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. Proverbs 4:23

I thought that if my life had to be lived with this poverty mindset, then I would have to take control and steer my life to where I wanted it to go. Before that happened, however, my Roman Catholic faith and overall belief in God was challenged.