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FISH ON FRIDAY And Other Sketches Leonard Feeney (Sheed and Ward, 1934) It was in the smoking car of a fast express going from
Boston to New York. The first thing I do, when I get on a train, is to recite
my Breviary. Then I go at once to the smoking car. And there always seems to
be somebody there who has been waiting for me to come. “How d’ye do, Father? You’re a Catholic priest, aren’t
you? . . . I thought so . . . Oh, I dunno . . .
I can tell you priests by just lookin’ at you . . . Oh, I dunno
. . . I just size you up for a minute or two and then I say,
‘There’s a priest!’ or else, ‘There ain’t one!’ . . . Oh, I dunno
. . . It’s like lookin’ at an automobile. I say, ‘There’s a
Packard, or a Buick, or a Rolls-Royce!’ It’s the same way when I see a priest
. . . These Episcopalian ministers with their Roman collars don’t
fool me . . . “My name is Charlie Maloney, Father. I come from
Schenectady, New York. I’m a traveling salesman. I’m on the road selling
gelatine. I work for the Cosmopolitan Gelatine Company . . .
There’s one of my cards, see? ‘Cosmopolitan Gelatine Company; Representative:
Charles J. Maloney!’ . . . That’s yours truly . . . “Of course, we’re not exactly
cosmopolitan. As a matter of fact, we’re only in two states, New York and
Massachusetts. But Cosmopolitan sounds big. Makes it sound like a big league
company, see? And that goes big with the customers. Sounds like International
Harvester, or Standard Oil, or League of Nations; see what I mean?
. . . Big stuff! See what I mean? . . . “What
do they use GELATINE for? . . . Who? You mean the public?
. . . What do they use GELATINE for? . . . Say, what are
you tryin’ to do, Father — kid me? . . . What do they use GELATINE
for? Wow! That’s a good one. Why, did you know one eighteenth of the food you
eat is made of gelatine? . . . You didn’t know that? . . .
Of course it is! . . . Certainly! . . . Pies, cakes, jellies, soups, desserts, ice cream.
Didn’t you know there was any gelatine in ice cream? . . . Why, of
course! Didn’t you know that the gelatine industry is the ninety-seventh
largest industry in the United States? Why certainly! Gelatine is a basic
product like wheat and corn and sugar . . . You didn’t know, did
you, that if the country stopped producin’ gelatine New York’d go bankrupt
tomorrow? . . . Well, it would! Why, just think of all the bakeries
closin’ and all the ice cream parlors! Why, there’d be a famine!
. . . What do they use GELATINE for? Gee, that’s a good one!
. . . Of course I’m not blamin’ you, Father. That’s not your
business. Gelatine, after all, isn’t your business. Your business is ‘Dominus
Vobis cum,’ et cetera,’ isn’t it? . . . But naturally it sounds
kinds of funny to ME, bein’ in the business MYSELF, to hear anybody ask ME,
‘What do they use GELATINE for? . . . “Sure, I’m married. I got four kids . . . Just
a minute and I’ll show you a picture of my family! . . . There you
are! There’s the whole gang! . . . That’s my wife, Ella!
. . . That’s my oldest daughter, Eleanor! . . . Then
there’s Margaret and Alice! . . . And finally the baby, Charles,
Jr., named after his old man! . . . “My wife’s a wonderful woman! . . . A
wonderful woman and a wonderful Catholic! . . . Yes, sir, she’s
right there with the goods when it comes to religion! She belongs to the
Married Ladies’ Sodality and the League of the Sacred Heart and about
everything else that we have at the church up home . . . And talk
about prayers! I never saw anybody say so many prayers as she does. She keeps
prayin’ all the time. And of course she keeps prayin’ like the deuce for me
so that I won’t go off the handle when I’m on the road . . . A
couple of weeks ago we had a Mission in our parish, and one night the priest
gave a sermon on the General Judgment, an’ my wife comes home after the
sermon and she says to me: ‘Charlie, on the Last Day which are you goin’ to
be, one of the sheep or one of the goats?’ . . . An’ I said: ‘Well,
which one am I supposed to be? Which one gets saved?’ . . . She
couldn’t remember which one gets saved, only she thought it wasn’t the goats
. . . Which one DOES get saved, Father? . . . The sheep?
. . . Oh, I see! The sheep go up and the goats down, is that right?
. . . I must remember that! . . . “My wife worries about the funniest things. One of the
things she’s worryin’ about now is because her name Ella ain’t a saint’s name
. . . She said the priest who gave the Mission at our church said
that all the Catholic girls ought to have saints’ names. And she can’t find
no Saint Ella anywhere in her prayer-book . . . And I said, ‘Well,
what’s the use of worryin’ now? I can’t take you down and get you baptized
all over again, can I?’ And she says, ‘No. But I wish I had a saint’s name
just the same.’ . . .’ And I says, ‘Well, what do you want me to
do, start callin’ you Mary Magdelene?’ . . . An’ she says, ‘No, I
don’t want you to do that.’ . . . ‘And besides,’ I says, ‘you got
other names besides Ella. Look at all the other names you got: Ella,
Margaret, Mary, Veronica Maloney! Every one of them’s a saint’s name except
Ella!’ . . . And she says, ‘Well, anyhow, I’m glad we named our
little girl Eleanor instead of Ella. Because Eleanor is a real saint’s name.’
. . . “And by the way, Father, I don’t like to talk about my
daughter Eleanor, but between you and me she’s a wonder. She’s really a
wonder . . . She’s nine years old and the Sister down at her school
told me she’s the very brightest girl in her class, especially in Geography
and Catechism . . . ‘Mr. Maloney,’ the Sister Superior said to me,
‘Mr. Maloney! Your daughter is the very brightest girl in her class,
especially in two things, Geography and Catechism!’ . . . Father,
you ought to hear that kid recite her Geography! . . . It’s simply
uncanny! . . . You can ask her where any place on the map is and
she’ll tell you. North Dakota, South Dakota! Any place! . . . Bays,
rivers, mountains, capes, she’s got them all right on the tips of her
fingers! . . . Just imagine that, an’ only nine years old, eh?
. . . And Catechism! Boy! . . . You ought to hear her
recite her Catechism! It’s simply uncanny! It’s marvelous! The answers she
knows in her Catechism, it’s simply marvelous! . . . When I come
home at night she says to me, ‘Daddy, would you like to hear my Catechism
lesson?’ And I say, ‘Why certainly! Give me the book!’ . . . So I
open the book and ask her the questions . . . Of course I put up a
bluff that I know some of the answers without the book, but between you an’
me, Father, I don’t think I’d be so very hot without the book in my hand
. . . The other night I was askin’ her questions in Catechism, an’
I says, ‘Of which should we take more care, our soul or our body?’ ‘Our
soul,’ she says. Right off! Just like that! Not a moment’s hesitation!
. . . Why, did you know, Father, she actually knows the names of
all the Apostles? . . . Think of that, at nine years of age!
. . . Yes, sir! I said to her the other night, I says, ‘Eleanor,
name the Apostles! Name the Apostles,’ I says. And right off she starts
namin’ them . . . ‘Peter, Andrew, and so forth and so forth!’
. . . ‘James, Joseph, and so forth, and so forth!’ . . .
She didn’t miss one Apostle out of the whole darn bunch, true as I’m tellin’
you! . . . “Wait
a minute! I want you to look at the pictures of my other three kids
. . . There’s Margaret! She’s seven. She’s next to Eleanor.
Margaret’s a little bit delicate, I’m sorry to say. She’s got weak eyes, for
one thing, and she has to wear glasses. But, boy! Does she love her father
and mother! . . . She thinks I’m the greatest thing that ever
lived. She thinks I’m a big shot in every way; you know what I mean?
. . . My wife was very sick when Margaret was born and the doctor
told her she had better not have any more babies because it wouldn’t be good
for her health . . . So we just let that go right in one ear and
out the other . . . And there’s the two other children we’ve had
since the doctor told Ella to stop bein’ a mother! . . . Nothin’
the matter with them, is there? . . . That’s Alice sittin’ in my
lap! She’s four. I call her ‘Sweetheart,’ because she’s a bit of a vamp. . . . You know? Makin’ eyes at
everybody? . . . And then there’s Charles Junior in his highchair,
at the age of one and a half . . . “My name is Charles JOSEPH, but we called the baby
Charles BERNARD, because my wife has a fourth cousin named Bernard that’s a
priest in Foreign Missions. He’s in China tryin’ to tell the natives about
the Catholic Church. My wife thinks that’s great, so she insisted on calling
the baby Bernard for his middle name after her fourth cousin, the priest
. . . As a matter of fact I don’t believe this priest is a real
relative of hers at all except distantly, but you know the way Catholics
start in claimin’ relationship with a fellow as soon as he becomes a priest
. . . Of course Ella hopes Charles Bernard will be a priest, too, I
don’t need to tell you that . . . Only I say to her, ‘Now, listen!
I don’t want any undue influence brought to bear on him! There’ll be nobody
in the world prouder than me to have that kid a priest, but I want you to let
him make up his own mind about it. If he wants to become a priest himself,
all right. But let him choose for himself. The worst kind of a priest in the
world is one whose mother got the vocation.’ . . . So, of course, I
never say anything to the youngster about bein’ a priest or anything like
that. And I told Ella I wouldn’t stand for any of this showing him holy
pictures and sayin’, ‘And when little Charles gets to be a big man, what’s
little Charles going to be?’ I don’t want any of that stuff! . . .
I want the kid to stand on his own feet . . . He’ll be a year and a
half old next Tuesday and I haven’t mentioned the word priest to him once yet
. . . Ella wants to buy him a little altar to play with. And I
says, ‘You mean as a toy?’ And she says, ‘Yes, as a toy.’ . . . So,
I said, ‘All right. You can get him a little altar to play with as a toy, but
don’t start lightin’ any candles on it or the kid’ll get burned. to death.’
. . . “It’d be kind of funny, wouldn’t it, Father, if he did
grow up and become a priest? It’d be kind of funny, wouldn’t it?
. . . I met a Bishop once! I shook hands with him, that is to say,
I kissed his ring! . . . Wouldn’t it be funny if my kid grew up an’
became a Bishop with a ring? . . . It’s possible, ain’t it?
. . . ‘The Right Reverend Charles Bernard Maloney, D. D.,’
that’s right, ain’t it? . . . Gee, wouldn’t that be funny?
. . . Imagine that! . . . And then all the folks in our
town’d be sayin, ‘Gosh, and HIS old man used to go around the country sellin’
gelatine to Jew bakers!’ . . . “By the way, do you see that fellow sittin’ down at the
end of the car . . . smokin’ a cigarette? . . . Well,
he’s a great friend of mine . . . He’s one of my pals
. . . He’s a hardware salesman. His name is Shmitty. His right name
is Smith, but I call him Shmitty . . . He’s one of my pals and a
darn nice fellow . . . But he don’t know beans about religion
. . . He ain’t got NO religion . . . If you ask him, ‘Who
made the world?’ he don’t know; see what I mean? . . . He don’t
know! . . . ‘Search me!’ says Shmitty if you ask him who made the
world. . . . He don’t believe in anything . . . If you
ask him, ‘How many persons in God?’ he’s just as liable to say, ‘Two’; see
what I mean? . . . He don’t know what it’s all about!
. . . I’d like to call him up here and have you give him a little
talk on religion. Would you mind? . . . I wish you would. It’ll do
him a lot of good . . . I’ll just call him up here and introduce
him and then you can give him the works. It’ll do him a lot of good
. . . Oh, no, he won’t mind! . . . “Hey, Shmitty!
. . . Shmitty!
. . . Come up here!
. . . Come up here! I want
to talk to you! . . . “Sit down, Shmitty! . . . Father, this is my
friend, Shmitty! This is one of my pals. We travel around the country
together . . . He sells hardware and I sell gelatine, but we’re
good friends just the same . . . Shmitty, this is a Catholic
priest. You know, Catholic, just the same as me! . . . And I want
him to give you a little talk on religion. Because I think you need it
. . . Now, wait a minute, Shmitty! Listen, Shmitty! Wait a minute! . . . Just a minute, please!
. . . Don’t start talkin’ that way! . . . Give Father a
chance to talk! . . . Bible? . . . Bible? . . .
What do you know about the Bible? . . . You don’t know beans about
the Bible; what are you tryin’ to talk about the Bible for? . . .
Listen, Shmitty! . . . Listen! . . . Don’t be talking to
Father about the Bible! Why, Father knows the Bible upside down, inside out,
don’t you, Father? . . . Why, Father knows the Bible in Latin,
don’t you, Father? . . . He can read it in Latin, the language Our
Lord wrote it in, can’t you, Father? . . . Listen, Shmitty, don’t
be talkin’ about Our Lord that way! Don’t call Him Christ, call Him Our Lord!
. . . What do you know about Our Lord? . . . Well, who
was He? . . . Yes, who was Our Lord? . . . The King of
the Jews? . . . The King of the Jews? . . . He was NOT
the King of the Jews! . . . Listen, Shmitty, He was not the King of
the Jews! . . . No, He wasn’t! . . . “He
was the King of the whole world, wasn’t He, Father? . . .
Certainly! He was the King of the Irish and the Germans and the French and
everybody! . . . He was the King of the whole world!
. . . He WAS NOT the King of the Jews! . . . No, sir!
Listen, Shmitty! . . . Listen, please! .Listen! That’s what they
said to Him when they put Him to death, when they wanted to insult Him. They
said, ‘You are, — Thou art — the King of the Jews!’ And Our Lord said, ‘I AM
NOT. I am the King of Everybody!’ . . . No! . . . Listen,
Shmitty! . . . That’s what the fellow said who condemned Him to
death. He was the one who said, ‘You are the King of the Jews!’
. . . The fellow who put Him to death! . . . Was it
Herod, Father? . . . Oh, yes, Punches Pilate! . . .
Punches Pilate, the fellow who put Our Lord to death, he was the one who said
‘Write on His cross: The King of the Jews.’
. . . Punches Pilate! . . . Do you know what a punch is?
. . . Well, a lot of them! Bing! Bing! Punches! . . .
That’s right, Punches! . . . Well, he was the one who said, ‘Call
Him the King of the Jews!’ . . . Listen, Shmitty! Who wants to be
King of the Jews? . . . Nobody does! . . . Battling
Levinsky and all those guys? Who wants to be King of them? . . .
No, Our Lord is King of the whole world! . . . He’s the King of
Kings! . . . Certainly! He’s the Good Shepherd! And all the world
is His sheep! . . . And furthermore on the Last Day the sheep get
saved and the goats lost! I’ll bet you didn’t even know that, did you,
Shmitty? . . . Well, Our Lord is the Good Shepherd, because He said
He was, didn’t he, Father? . . . And He said, ‘I am the Good
Shepherd and I lay down my life for my sheep!’ didn’t He, Father?
. . . “Yes, Charlie, He did!” |