St. Joseph's College
Class of 1957 - Vacation Events
A few
vacation
photos. As always any addition or corrections to my incomplete
recollections on this page are welcome. You can use the "comment" form at the
bottom of the page.
Perhaps more than most students, we looked forward to
vacations since the concept of "weekend" had no meaning there and even the
Thursday holiday and Sundays were partially taken up by studyhalls and
liturgical activities. The first vacation of the year was Thanksgiving
although, at least in theory, it was less than a full day off. If I remember
rightly, the morning routine was the usual morning prayers, mass, breakfast and
then we would board the chartered buses that would let us off somewhere
downtown San Francisco. (Was there also an east bay bus?) Our families would
pick us up at the bus stop, take us home for the family celebration of
Thanksgiving, and get us back to the bus stop that evening for our return trip
to St. Joe's.
Some years (in fact, most I think) we were fortunate
enough to get a 4 day Thanksgiving weekend by virture of the faculty applying
some mysterious accumulated holidays (I think visiting bishops had the right to
grant a holiday) and applying them to the Friday and Saturday after
Thanksgiving.
The Christmas vacation was something like 2 weeks. I
think many of us played a role in the Christmas liturgies in our home parishes.
I know that I did after my family moved to St. Emydius where Dave Pettingill
was charged by the pastor Father Motherway (or Mother Fatherway, as Dave called
him) with assembling and drilling the server contingent for the solemn Midnight
Mass. Dave was, of course, Master of Ceremonies and I got to handle the
thurifer duties with the charge to make sure we had a lot of smoke.
It was a long stretch of school year from a day or so after New Years
until the Easter break. And that Easter vacation was a short one. It started at
the conclusion of the Holy Saturday morning liturgy including (in our high
school years before the restored Easter vigil) the 12 readings which were sung
by selected Rhets. I seem to recall stern warnings from the faculty against the
practice of racing through those readings, but nonetheless they were raced
through. After the longish liturgy, we raced up to our rooms to change clothes,
pick up a few items, and go down to meet our parents or classmates' parents for
the ride home. (After the Easter Vigil was restored, I think we left on Easter
morning. I'm not sure if this was always the case, but I believe we may have
gone by bus to the Cathedral to participate in the Easter morning liturgy
there.
And then spring with the pool opening, baseball, good weather, finals,
the graduation ceremony and the nice long summer vacation.
While we very much enjoyed our vacations and the chance to be back with
our families, we also tended to spend part of that time doing things together
with our classmates and with some of our friends in other classes. The link at
the top of the page opens an album of pictures of some of the activities. Here
are the ones I recall. Please chime in if you can add details or recall
additional events.
Parties. We had class parties in San Mateo and at Distefano's house,
both of which are included in the album. Perhaps there were 2 Jerry Distefano
parties. My parents (Joe Humphreys) gave me a surprise birthday party to which
most of the class came. I think there also was one at Jim Tonna's.
Class Dinners. I can remember 3. A fourth high dinner at Pinelli's. Our
Rhet dinner?, in Fairfax (was that Deer Park Villa). And, in Poet year I think,
a bus "mystery ride" which would up in Occidental where we enjoyed steak dinner
at the Union Hotel. So, have I forgotten any?
Ski trip. Some how I think this was an Easter vacation. A group of us
managed to get ourselves to Vallejo where Mike Kenny's father (Arthur Kenny)
led us in a caravan with cars from his used car lot up to the new, small
Granlibakken ski resort for a couple of days of skiing. Besides skiing that
trip featured an evening in the lodge telling spine chilling ghost stories,
punctuated by a loud, frightening crash just outside the lodge. It turned out
to be one of our number (was it Dan Danielson?) who had slipped on the ice and
crashed into the door. I seem to recall that our trip was partially financed by
a successful trip by Mike's dad across the line to the casinos. But, the most
memorable part was the trip back in heavy snow where one one of the cars
(lacking working windshield wipers) left the road and ended up, thankfully, in
a snow bank and not in the Truckee River. This greatly delayed our trip home as
we had to wait in Truckee for everyone to reassemble and head back across
Donner Summit and then home.
Summer choir. Dan Danielson and Mike Kenny organized this activity.
Members of the class visted various churches to provide them with what I am
sure was an extraordinary experience of liturgical music. Despite Dan's best
efforts to figure out how to improve my voice, my role was limited to driving
to a few of these liturgies.
Baseball. At least one summer (and maybe more -- Fitzgerald probably
remembers this better than me), we had a "semi-pro" baseball team --
the Orioles -- that played a number
of games.
Summer camp. Many of us worked together at Summer Camps as counselors. I
know there was a CYO camp, a camp for students from St. Vincent's in Marin, and
the camp I worked at Camp St. Alberts. Camp St. Albert was located between
Willets and Fort Bragg and had its own train station on the Skunk line. It was
run by the Dominican Sisters who operated the now-closed Albertinum home for
boys in Ukiah. About half the campers were from that school and the other half
were from low-income families in and around San Francisco. A few pictures from
the CYO and Camp St Albert camps are in the album linked at the top of this
page.
That's what I remember about vacations during our years at St. Joe's.
Your turn.
This page was last modified Tuesday, 10-Apr-2007 04:45:16 PDT.
