The Priest, the
Wine and the Cousin
by Don Drewniak
Both my
Grandpa John (grudgingly) and Grandma Sophie (devotedly)
attended a Ukrainian Catholic church located a
half mile from their tenement. Established in the
early 1900s, the church, although labeled
Catholic, had no connection with the Vatican.
Rather, it was under the control of a bishop who
resided in Philadelphia.
The priests
were allowed to marry (and, by extension, have
sex). This created a problem. Occasionally an
unmarried priest would become smitten with one of
the church ladies resulting in the two becoming
fodder for gossip by the parishioners, who for
the most part were in the fifty to seventy-year
age range. Society then was far less tolerant
than it is now.
A fund raiser
to benefit the church was held in the church’s
basement every two months. (Grandpa John claimed
that a succession of priests used the money for
liquor.) Raffle prizes were donated by area
businesses and members of the church. The food,
which was cooked and donated by the parishioners,
invariably was comprised of holuptsi (cabbage
rolls), pedeheh (Ukrainian for pierogi), kovbasá
(the Ukrainian word for kielbasa) and cake for
dessert. My grandmother would be in her pantry
from dawn to dusk the day prior to the fundraiser
preparing upwards of two hundred holuptsi.
The church
basement could hold no more than fifty people at
a time. During the 1940s, church membership was
well over one hundred (perhaps as many as two
hundred), and was thriving. As a result, the
church took possession of the deserted Laurel
Mills office building located diagonally across
from my grandparents’ tenement. The Laurel
Mills (one of what were once over 120 cotton
mills in Fall River) ceased production two years
into the Great Depression. The office building
was renamed the Ukrainian National Home. It had a
seating capacity of over one hundred and was used
for special occasion banquets and weddings.
A portent of
dark days to come. One of the few items from my
childhood days still in my possession is a black-and-white,
twenty-inch by twelve-inch framed photograph of a
gathering at the Home on Veteran’s Day, 1945.
The occasion was a “Welcome Home Banquet”
sponsored by the Ukrainian War Mothers Club of
Fall River. Of those in attendance, approximately
sixty percent were fifty and above in age. Most
of the rest were in their thirties and forties,
including World War II veterans. Among the
veterans were my father, my mother’s two
brothers and the son of my grandmother’s
sister. I was one of only three children present.
Sunday
services at St. John’s during the 1940s were
most often filled to capacity. As parishioners
began to pass on, attendance slowly declined in
the 50s. The pace of the decline accelerated in
the 60s and early 70s. By the mid-1970s, the
church no longer had a dedicated priest. Services
were performed by visiting priests from a parish
in Rhode Island.
During the 70s,
long after I left Fall River, I attended a
wedding ceremony at the church in which a
relative of the family was being married. The
priest who performed the ceremony arrived sixty
minutes late after having driven in from Rhode
Island. Strike one.
The reception
was held at a restaurant, the Coachman, in nearby
Tiverton, Rhode Island. Sitting at the head table
was the priest who performed the ceremony. I’m
guessing that he was in his early fifties. During
the course of the afternoon, he downed a good-sized
amount of red wine. Strike two.
About two
hours into the reception, I noticed quite a few
of the attendees had their attention focused on
him. Sitting on his lap was a well-endowed woman
in her mid-thirties. Coincidentally, she was a
cousin of mine who had been married four times.
The priest had a smile on his face that appeared
to extend from ear to ear. The newly introduced
couple disappeared shortly thereafter. Strike
three.
Strike three
and out — out of the restaurant to somewhere
best left to the imagination.
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