Jesus On The Payroll

1978 (13 YEARS OLD)1 week ago

1978 -13 Years Old

As I have mentioned in another post, my first income stream started at about age 11, as an altar boy.

This resulted in Catholicism on steroids.

We went to church every Sunday on the American base (RAF Croughton) where my dad worked when he was in the military. It was a chapel that was available to several denominations/religions, and they had an interesting sliding rack behind the altar, where a cross would slide aside (and disappear) and be replaced by the crucifix.

Magic Jesus.

The was also, apparently, a Star of David, but that was used on Friday or Saturday, and would slide aside for the Protestants (who had the chapel before the Catholics on a Sunday). So I never saw it.

So I went to mass there and then went to Sunday school. After a donut at the after-mass mingle.

Two, if my mum wasn’t looking.

That was sort of OK, until I started at Blessed George Napier (BGN – my Catholic secondary school). Then I had mass on Sunday, mass during the week (at school), Sunday school, and three classes of RE (Religious Education) at school.

I was having more religion than a bloody medieval monk.

So I decided to pack in being altar boy.

Oh yeah, and there was that, too.

One Sunday after mass, I decided I was going to tell Father Heffernan that I was packing it in. I had had a major growth spurt over the holidays, and my red cassock was getting so short, it was almost the length that Phanny Gray (our school’s deputy Headmistress) would have sent a girl home for daring to wear it.

But before I could drum up the courage, Fr. Heffernan asked me if I wanted to serve (as an altar boy) at an upcoming wedding. He had even ordered me a properly-fitting cassock.

So my Catholic guilt said alright.

So I served at the wedding, and the best man (I think) came over to thank me and gave me an envelope.

Probably a thank-you card.

It was, but with one addition:

a $20 bill.

I had already started to create a shopping list before putting the bill back in the envelope. On top of the list was a Scorpion tank for my Action Men.

But my parents were having none of that. They wanted me to open a savings account.

The gits.

And it wasn’t just a one-off thing. I became popular. Because I wasn’t a midget and because, unlike the other 11-year old military kids, my dad didn’t make me have a crew cut.

I had flowing locks. I was relatively tall. I wasn’t Spotty Muldoon.

So I was quite photogenic. As much as one could be in the mid-70s, at least.

I didn’t ruin wedding photos.

And so it became a regular gig, alongside the organist and the four choir members who were also always asked. We had formed a cartel.

I “worked” three weekends a month (on the fourth weekend, we’d be visiting my grandparents in Manchester). Sometimes there wasn’t a wedding; some Saturdays there were two.

Americans, on an individual level, are generous. So in addition to the cash (which ranged from $20 – $30), I was usually invited to the rehearsal dinner and to the wedding reception itself.

I would go to the rehearsal dinner, but I never went to a reception. That would have been weird. But more often than not, a mother of the bride or groom would send me home with a box (or boxes) of the food they’d be serving.

Fried chicken was always the best.

The rehearsal dinners were usually held at the Officer’s Club or the NCO club, but once in a while, we’d get a special treat.

Such as the time that the older sister of one of my schoolmates, Suzie Rafferty, was getting married. The father of the bride was a Colonel in the US Airforce, and he had booked the rehearsal dinner at Banbury’s one Chinese restaurant located on Horse Fair (the name of a street).

I’d never eaten Chinese food before, and it was outstanding. Especially the king prawns.

I made the joke, should we be worried about eating Chinese food at a restaurant on Horse Fair?

And everybody laughed. Oblivious as we were to political correctness back then.

And as we feasted on limitless prawns the size of bananas, we listened to Abba.

But not this Abba:

This one:

Eventually I left the cartel. I can’t remember the reason why. But the lure of money you can’t spend having lost its appeal was probably a big part of it.

Plus, fried chicken loses its charm after a while.

So I stopped being an altar boy. And Father Nee, the new irreverant Irish priest on the base convinced my parents that Sunday school wasn’t necessary as I was going to a Catholic school.

It probably went along the lines of, give the poor little fekker a break.

Whatever it was, the monk days were over.

I had forgotten about my altar-boy savings account until I moved to the US, many years later.

I used it to buy my first car. An MG Midget that was both glorious and crap.

But mostly glorious.

And I would drive it around (when it felt like working), pretty girl in a headscarf by my side, listening to, amongst other things, The Thrashing Doves.