I had a very, very good friend there. Though
I don't know where he is now, I pray for him every day. We were
out for a walk one day when he stopped, and, obviously under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he said, "Phil, we're going
to enter religion on the same day." I don't know what happened
to him later, but there was my vocation laid right in front of
me in sixth grade.
In my own freshman year we had a layman whose
method was to put eight students up at the blackboard and have
them recite in turn. I was bored to death, and I said to myself,
"One thing I will never do as a teacher is to bore my students."
In my classes, I would ask the question and have the whole class
answer. I hate to see students shaking when they are called upon.
One teacher came to me and said, "You know, you have got
seventy percent of the class paying strict attention." I
consider that very high praise.
I had to separate two of the wise guys. The second
day I went, the two boys were sitting near one another again.
So I brought one of them down front. The other one kept trying
to cause trouble. When he did not succeed, he asked to come down
front and get something from the retreat. Since I got them to
behave, they called me Hoppy Hopalong Cassidy, a TV cowboy, was
ruling the roost on television just then. One day during my first
year of theology, when I returned to B. C. High, I got to Northampton
Street Station, I met some guys, and they started yelling, "Hello,
Hoppy."
I was appointed there for weekend supply
by the priest at B.C. High in charge of such assignments, Fr.
John Chapman, S.J. It's important to know he was involved. But
at first the pastor and I did not hit it off at all! The pastor
used to love to go in the evening to the Jenny gasoline station
and talk to his friends. There he ran into a friend who had been
accounting for his parish. He asked the pastor, "Where did
that little kid come from?"-meaning me!
